Eighty Days Red (11 page)

She reached into the bedside drawer and threw him a condom, which he caught with such a practised flick of the wrist, that I wondered how often they operated as a two-some.
‘Put the girl out of her misery,’ she said in her slow, seductive drawl.
‘Always happy to oblige,’ he replied.

It was dark when I realised that I still hadn’t spoken to Chris. Viggo was asleep again, tangled up on the bed with Luba. Her now dry white-blond hair contrasted vividly with his black locks.

That must be a good sign, I thought. Chris would have called me straight away if he hadn’t found my instrument in with all the other stuff. I’d been worrying needlessly. Then I remembered, with a sinking feeling in my heart, that I had left my phone in the living room with the fountain in it, when I’d gone to explore the house, hours ago now.

I padded down the steps, a feeling of dread hanging around my shoulders like a dark cloud. My phone sat on the arm of the panther chaise longue, just where I had left it. I picked it up and tapped in the passcode.
It was Chris. Three missed calls, a voicemail and a text message.
‘Your violin. It’s gone.’

6
The Brighton Front

When he had still been lecturing, Dominik could rely on the comfort of some sort of routine, a pattern of hours divided between preparing his talks, the lectures themselves, tutorials, marking and the regular pilgrimage down from the greenery of Hampstead on the northern line to the point where he merged into the busy grey crowds of the centre of town.

Now that he had given up academia for writing, he felt himself adrift, with no fixed point in the middle of a sea of indecision, a slave to his keyboard and the dismissive glare of the computer screen as he scrambled not so much for inspiration but for the right words.

The long day lay ahead of him, its emptiness a deep well of temptations from the moment he achieved his daily target of pages. There were occasions when everything flowed and, always an early riser, he would reach that liberating point by mid-morning and would then treat himself to a late breakfast as a reward for a job well done. On other days, however, the work proved an uphill task, more full of deletions than new lines.

But he had always been a strongly disciplined person and he stuck to the task at hand, the oasis at the end of the long slog being the prospect of leisurely empty beaches of free time when he could read, watch movies on DVD without feeling guilty or, more often than not, explore the nooks and crannies of the Internet with a mixture of detached amusement or a measure of interest in the women he came across there.

With every name flashing across the screen, Dominik would replay the episodes in which other women with the same names, or other ones – they all had become a blur in his mind – had featured and which made him the man he now was. Christel, the German au pair who lived in an attic space and had been at least ten years older than him and for whom he had pined since the day she had taken a shower in his presence and hadn’t minded his watching (or his hard on), and the weekend when he had run like a madman backwards and forwards from his base at the local Youth Hostel through the Vallée de Chevreuse in search of her. Or Catherine, who had the privilege of having been the first to break his heart when he discovered she had slept with another, the first in a seductive procession of Catherines, Kats, Cats, Kates and Kathryns. And then there had been Maryann, the American exchange student, whom you could do anything to as long as you didn’t touch her breasts, followed by Danielle whose sexual appetites had initially scared him and whom he had shamefully deserted in her hour of need. Aida who sucked his cock like no other, with an appetite that was never sated. The list was a long one. Rhoona who wanted to be spanked. Parvin who insisted on keeping her top on as she was embarrassed by the roundness of her stomach. Rebecca who invariably cried when she came and fell into a deepblue funk, until the next time when she promised she wouldn’t, but of course always did.

And then there was Kathryn, of course.
After whom everything had changed.
The way her grey-green eyes had begged him to hold her neck tight as they fucked. The

imploring for him to act rough and take her to the edge, to pin her arms down until his fingers left a deep mark on her wrists, to pull mercilessly on her hair as he took her from behind, to tighten the teasing hold of his teeth on her nipples. The constant mute demand to explore new boundaries.

There was a before and an after Kathryn.
And he had begun to assert himself more in the bedroom, or wherever the sex took place, dominating his lovers by instinct and inclination and discovering, much to his initial surprise, that so many women were not put off and even – like Claudia – welcomed this new side of him.
Which had led to Summer.
Dominik sighed and idly began clicking on some of the profiles on the contacts website he had out of habit summoned up from the long column of bookmarks on his laptop.
Willing victims or predators? Or just normal people, like him, subject to a spider’s web of compulsions that warped their minds into perverse imaginings and compulsions?
He had long learned to navigate the words and thoughts that appeared between the lines of the profiles, becoming adept at recognising the flakes, the fakers and the jokers. He also made it a habit – snobbish, he knew, but the rule had seldom let him down – to skim over any profile or ads which were badly spelled or featured particularly bad grammar. He preferred his fucks to be literate, and if this elitist part of his character excluded a good proportion of the submissive women in search of domination, then he could live with it without too many regrets.
Lost in thought, Dominik was about to desert the shady dark alleys of the web when a window on his screen opened, indicating he had mail via his Facebook page.
A fan, it seemed, who had liked his novel and sent him a complimentary note. Even though the book had enjoyed a modicum of success, getting readers’ letters was still an uncommon thing, and appealed to his vanity.
It was the usual guff about how she loved the story and identified with the main female character in which she saw a lot of herself. Dominik smiled. It was a comfort that people were still reading the novel. For him, it felt like so long ago now.
On the left of his screen, a green dot indicated the sender not only had the same email provider but was still online. He typed a message.

Thank you for the kind words, Liana.
The response reached him immediately.
Not at all, I really loved the story. Found it so moving. Wow, and now I’m talking to you …

Dominik was intrigued, and one thing soon led to another. He briefly considered the ethics of the situation and decided the relationship between a writer and a reader was above board, and had no similarities, moral or otherwise, with that between teacher and student. On the contrary, he reassured himself.

She was a young woman in her mid-twenties by the look of the photograph on her profile. If the image was recent, of course. She told him she had an office job in Brighton. The later photographs she volunteered to send him after a few days of generally innocent chats, had migrated to flirtatious and teasing, proving both explicit and restrained, lacking vulgarity despite their amateur nature. A flash of breast, a half moon of buttock with a hint of past bruises or marks, a fuzzy almost abstract composition which turned out on further examination to be a close-up of her red pubic curls from an angle which at first sight gave them the appearance of a seductive alien landscape. She continuously brought up the fact that she had much in common with Elena, his heroine, despite the differences in nationality, eras and circumstances. When Dominik asked her whether these heavy hints meant if she was submissive sexually, her answer lit up his screen.

Yes.
His heart jumped. Might this be a chance to start again. Do things right this time?
And you, Dom?
Maybe, he answered, teasing her. Hmmm …

He was normally suspicious when a woman was too detailed about her tastes, needs and cravings. The more they wrote about extreme sexual practices from bondage to restraints, asphyxiation, ropes, collars, degradation, humiliation or whatever was the flavour of the day, the more it indicated that they were in fact unlikely to go through with it when it came to the crunch. A more limited menu was classier and more authentic and true to life, he reckoned.

Liana was interesting. She kept on dropping heavy hints but they were also tinged with a touch of humour and deprecation, and featured all the right elements to attract his attention.
They had been sparring live online and through emails for a couple of weeks already and Dominik was warming to the idea of an adventure. Somehow hoping not that this could prove the love of his life but that it might help once and for all banish the spectre and memories of Summer.

Do you have a face pic, pse
He had deliberately refrained from having his photo on the book’s dust jacket, and kept his Facebook image ambiguous, preferring at the time a form of mysterious anonymity. Maybe it would be at this stage that he lost her. Dominik had always disliked being captured by the photographic lens and there were surprisingly few pictures of him in existence.

He downloaded a rare image, a photo he’d had taken to accompany his application for the New York fellowship a few years back and pressed Send.
Yet again there was now a fifty–fifty chance that she would disconnect if he didn’t fit her criterion for whatever reason he would for ever remain unaware of. Once she saw the man behind the writer.
He waited, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the image he had called up of her bruised arse cheek, idly seeking patterns in the yellow, brown and purple stains of the bruise which he had blown up to full-screen size, colours indistinctly merging softly into each other. It now looked like a work of modern art. Enigmatic, random. Like a fuzzy cloud unforming and reassembling. A screen saver.
The response came.

Tasty. And should I call you Sir?
You flatter me. But no need to call me Sir. I’m not that kind of dom … it’s not about words.

Good. I always find it ridiculous when so many guys demand to be addressed that way within a few lines when you haven’t even met.
A girl after my own heart …
I think this could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

Dominik smiled.

The train rushed across the South Downs and as it approached the steel cavern of Brighton station, Dominik could smell the sea and hear the herring gulls fluttering above. It had been ages since he had last been here, using a conference as an excuse. On the only occasion Kathryn had been able to get away from home, her husband, and spend a rare couple of nights with him. Maybe that was why he had never come back. The memories. Not that they had seen much of the city – apart from walks on the seafront and through the Lanes, and rushed seafood restaurant meals – beyond the private world of their bedroom.

There was a big convention in town and most of the major hotels were full, but he had managed to get a room at a so-called rock ’n’ roll boutique hotel called the Pelirocco on Regency Square. Every room had a different theme and he had been allocated one in which the decor evoked a camp boudoir, with pinks and reds the dominant colours and a panorama of female underwear in all shapes, sizes and compositions adorning the walls, replacing the more traditional paintings or prints. It was a bit overwhelming and not a bit incongruous, but it brought a smile to his face, bearing in mind the nature of his visit to Brighton.

They had agreed to meet on neutral territory first, next to a fish and chip stall by the entrance to the pier. When he had asked how he would identify her as her face didn’t always appear clearly on the photos she had sent him, she had joked he would have no difficulty in doing so. This of course provided her with the opportunity not to make contact if her initial sight of him in the flesh did not please her.

He arrived a few minutes early and was thinking of treating himself to a portion of chips when a chirpy voice greeted him.
‘Hello, Dominik.’
‘Liana, I presume?’
‘Were you expecting anyone else?’ She sounded amused.
‘Do you have a real name?’ he asked.
‘Liana.’
‘Good.’
She was slight in stature, almost spindly at first appearance, but stood resolutely straight, the weight of an oversize rucksack strapped to her shoulders maintaining her equilibrium, an untidy mop of auburn hair, almost boyish, crowning her delicate features. She wore a thin silk choker around her neck. On others it would have looked like an affectation or a misplaced attempt at being fashionable; on her it hinted at so much more. Just a hint. Now he knew what she had meant. However, she was not dressed, contrary to his expectation, in fierce black leather or torn jeans to compound some punk ethos, but in a surprisingly demure beige cotton blouse and a pleated skirt in darker brown which reached down to just below her knees. Around each wrist she wore identical thin silver bracelets. And clearly secure in her lack of height, she wore flat ballet shoes.
Her features were impish, making her look much younger than she probably was, small, turned-up nose, a weakish chin but full scarlet lips, eyes dark-green pits and a natural Snow White circle of crimson highlighting her prominent cheekbones. He thought she had a good figure, though the looseness of her blouse obscured her curves.
Liana looked up at him.
‘Do you like what you see? So far?’ she asked him.
‘I do.’
In his mind over the past few days, Dominik had long rehearsed the situation, imagining some of the games they could play, indulge in, how he could get the best out of Liana’s undeniable nature, make her properly his. He’d always been ignorant or confused about the etiquette of such situations. Should he offer her a drink, a coffee, something stronger, and engage in innocuous conversation to delay the inevitable moment when they would cross into intimacy? Walk along the promenade like a real couple? Or should they proceed straight to the hotel, barely half a mile down the seafront in the direction of Hove? Maybe someone should one day write a book about the dos and don’ts of BDSM encounters.
The room.
In the narrow lift taking them to the top floor, Liana was pressed tight against him, the rucksack on her back restricting her movements.
‘Kiss me,’ Dominik ordered.
She got up on tiptoe and he lowered his lips to meet her. She tasted of mint chewing gum.
‘I didn’t choose the room; it was the only one left. I know it’s a bit ridiculous,’ he apologised as he unlocked the door and ushered Liana in and she was exposed to the garish decor.
‘Wow,’ she said, looking at the parade of framed brassieres and thongs circling the walls of the small room like a line of exhibits in a museum. ‘Nifty. Although most of them don’t appear to be my size, I fear …’
She slid the straps of the rucksack from her shoulders and it dropped to the floor.
‘What have you got in there, all your mortal belongings?’ Dominik queried.
‘Nah,’ Liana said. ‘Stuff, you know. Some toys …’
‘A bit presumptuous of you, no? Did I say you should bring things along?’
‘I just assumed from our chats that you were unlikely to have your own …’
‘We might not need them.’
‘Oh …’ She smiled.
Dominic dropped his room keys on the bedside table and turned to face her. ‘Let me see you, then. Undress.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
She gave him a look of uncertainty, realising they had reached a point of no return.
‘As we agreed,’ she said firmly, strengthening her resolve. ‘No permanent marks?’
‘Understood. And you remember your safe word?’
‘Of course.’
Liana undressed until all she was wearing was the thin strip of silk around her neck, and the matching bracelets on her wrists.
She was thin and fragile, but beautifully proportioned. The valley leading to her small breasts was peppered by freckles, as were her forearms, her nipples a subtle reddish hue, her thighs milky and, since the photo she had sent him, she had shaved below so that he could now make out a series of intimate piercings. There was a minuscule ring emerging from the actual bud of her clitoris and, below, two larger steel rings seemingly holding her labia apart.
Dominik held his breath.
He knew he could have stood there gazing at the intricate geometry of her cunt and its cyberpunk private landscape of flesh and steel for hours on end out of sheer fascination.
‘Turn round,’ he ordered her.
She swivelled on one foot like a ballerina rehearsing her stage movements.
Her narrow buttocks were now clean of past bruises.
‘Bend.’
Liana followed his instructions, her feet shuffling on the room’s thin carpet as she leaned over at a ninety-degree angle, her chest parallel to the floor, her arse prominently on display, the dark line bisecting her cheeks like a frontier carved by a knife, straight and inviolable.
‘Legs apart.’
She obeyed.
Dominik approached her, passed his hand between her legs, feeling the heat, extending a finger to gauge her wetness, slipped it inside to get a taste of her heat, brushing against the rings, pulled gently on one of the labia adornments. He heard and felt Liana holding her breath as he did so.
He felt a compulsion to spank her arse cheeks with terrible strength but resisted the craving. He had all the time in the world. There was no hurry. She had submitted already. A part of him wondered why; he was still a stranger to her. As she was to him. He yearned to hear her story, every small step that had brought her to this place and time. The tale of every man who had touched her, made her who she was. Each degree of further submission on a road of unknown destination.
‘Hold yourself open,’ he barked hoarsely.
Still bent over, Liana brought her hands back and held her arse cheeks apart, providing him with an unimpeded view of the pucker of her arsehole, and the concentric lines and folds of flesh surrounding it like a target and the coral pinkness of her cunt.
It was a spectacle he knew he would never tire of.
‘Who owns you now?’ he asked the young woman as she stood with her back to him, fully displayed.
‘You own me.’
‘And what do you want now?’ he asked.
‘I want you to use me, to fuck me.’
‘Why?’
For a brief moment, she was taken aback, as if she hadn’t come prepared for the question. ‘Because it makes me feel alive,’ she finally said.
‘Alive?’ he queried.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s just the way I feel when a man wants me this way. I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s just the way I am, I suppose …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Get up.’
She stood up, abandoning the humiliating position she had been holding. Turned to face him, legs still wide apart.
Dominik looked into her eyes. It was the same curious combination of shame, craving, pride and arousal he had seen so often in Kathryn’s eyes. And in Summer’s.
‘Come.’
She stepped up to him. Her nipples were hard, they grazed against his shirt. He lowered his hands and kneaded her arse. Her softness was exquisite for such a slender woman. He again passed his hands between her legs, took hold of the small ring threaded through her clit and pressed hard against the nub of flesh it highlighted. Liana shuddered.
‘How long have you had the rings?’ he asked her.
‘Just under a year.’
‘Your decision?’
‘Not strictly speaking …’ She hesitated, as if reluctant to confirm his suspicions.
‘Who?’
‘I was with a dom for some months. Met him at a fetish club in London.’
‘And?’
‘He had me pierced. First my labia, and finally my clit.’
‘Did it hurt?’
‘The clit one hurt like hell. I was told the guy at the tattoo salon who did it was only going to pass the needle through the clit’s hood, just a harmless flap of skin, and it came as a shock. I almost passed out in pain.’
‘Hmm …’
‘My dom wanted to go further. Wanted me to get a piercing along my perineum, which he would then put a small metal tag through, you know, like a soldier’s dog tag, where his name would be carved, or at any rate something that would indicate I was his property. But we fell apart before that.’
‘But you kept the other piercings?’
‘Yes. I am what I am,’ Liana said, with a strong hint of pride.
Pensive, Dominik looked down at the top of her head.
Right now, he wanted her badly, although he knew that she was at his service and he would only have to say a single word and the sex would be just another transaction between consenting adults. But a nagging thought at the back of his mind also told him he wanted more than sex. Liana was the type of submissive woman whom he wanted not so much to own or use sexually, but that he wanted to possess fully – both her body and her mind. To understand what made her tick. Why the essence of her submissiveness was also the very thing of beauty that attracted him. Damn!
Why did he make things so complicated for himself?
At least there was the sex. He sighed.
‘On your knees,’ he instructed her.
She kneeled down, understanding his instructions, and raised a hand to his belt and began to unbutton his trousers.
Dominik closed his eyes as he felt her pull his cock out from his underpants and take it into the ardent heat of her mouth.
She was talented and he came quickly. Without waiting for any further instruction, she greedily swallowed his come.
Her head bobbed away from his crotch and there was a tumultuous moment of silence as the two of them pondered what was about to happen next. The hotel room’s window was half open and the sound of the herring gulls flying wildly across the line of the seafront erupted into a deafening row.
‘Get on the bed. On all fours,’ Dominik demanded.
Liana rose from the floor. Her knees were pink from the position she had been holding. She moved to the bed and positioned herself, her back to him as he expected, presenting her arse.
Dominik undressed, untidily shedding his clothes on the floor.
His eyes were fixed on the rosebud of her anus.
Briefly wondering whether he might be too thick for her, too big, considering the slightness of her frame, the way her pelvic bones poked out in the posture she was impudently holding.
He slipped on a condom and stepped onto the bed which creaked under his additional weight. Crouching just above Liana, his semi-hard cock brushing against the small of her back, in a stand-up parody of spooning. He hadn’t brought lubricant and reluctantly forced himself to puncture the tense nature of the moment by asking her if she had any in her rucksack of unknown delights. She had. He squeezed some on his fingers and over her tight opening and brought them down to spread the dampness around her sphincter.
All of a sudden he felt an irresistible compulsion to kiss the young woman again, to feel the taste of her breath in his mouth. He leaned closer but positioned as he was, ready to breach her, his mouth was too far from her lips. Instead he allowed his tongue to slip across the lobe of her left ear and was about to affectionately nibble it with his teeth when the fragrance of her hair reached his nostril. It was like a dagger to his heart.
It wasn’t a specific perfume, more the background of the shampoo she had used to wash her short auburn hair with before travelling to this assignment. The faded perfume was laced with her own natural scent, a subtle blend of spices, musk and green flower notes, the tang of a woman.
A smell that he could recognise anywhere.
The same as Summer’s.
A million memories came flooding back like a torrent, draining emotion, highs and lows in their wake.
If he closed his eyes now, he could pretend he was fucking Summer.
But he didn’t want to pretend.
And realised he’d gone limp and the condom was hanging by a thread from his shrivelled cock.
Below him, he felt Liana tense, as if her own body had become aware of the change in their circumstances.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, but he knew he would be unable to perform further. ‘It’s just not going to work,’ he apologised and moved away from her and the bed.
‘Please …’ Liana began to plead as she watched Dominik hastily dress, oblivious to her nudity and her state of arousal.
‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ was all he could say. How could he explain it to her without making things worse?