Game

I puff my cheeks out. This is a tough question. ‘Most of the stuff I haven’t done is stuff I would never do.’

‘Right. But there are different ways of doing the things you have done. I’ll have to concentrate on those, I think. Multiple partners, S&M, sex in public, picking up strangers. All your favourites. Actually, fuck, you’ll pass this test with flying colours and then I’m shafted. Leave it with me. I’m going to come up with something fiendish.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you will. You’ve yet to disappoint on that score.’

‘Thank you. Another compliment – twice in one day!’

‘Don’t get used to it.’

‘As if I would. Now, about that Dark Prince …’

***

The very next evening, after work, the Princess presents herself to His Royal Highness the Prince of Petite Mort. She is belligerent and feisty, thrusting out her chest as she stands before him.

‘I demand an explanation,’ says the Prince, who is rather dashing in leather trousers and a sword belt, though the sword is only the plastic toy kind. The riding crop in his hand, however, is real. ‘Why did you run away to the forest?’

‘Because I didn’t want to marry a tyrant.’

‘Tyrant, eh? I’ll show you tyrant.’ He whacks the crop against his thigh, making a delicious whippy sound that melts the Princess’s resistance, not to mention her pussy. ‘Thought you could dishonour your pledge, did you? No such luck, my tempestuous beauty.’

Smirk break. He does overegg it a bit sometimes.

‘You won’t be smiling for much longer. I’m going to continue with the marriage.’

‘Oh, but –’

‘And you will bend to my will. And my whip.’

‘Yikes. But there’s something I must tell you. It might change your mind. I am no longer a virgin.’

‘Wha– but, you, what? No longer a virgin? How?’

‘The usual method, I think.’

He cracks the whip again, then grabs me by the forearm and pulls me close, capturing my chin in a firm grip.

‘Who? I’ll have his head on a pike.’

‘I don’t know his name. Some peasant of the forest.’

‘He violated you?’

‘No, I wanted it. I begged him to deflower me.’

‘A peasant!’ The Dark Prince’s roar could wake the slumberers of neighbouring lands. ‘You gave your maidenhead to a peasant? Willingly?’

‘Aye. Still want me for your bride?’

He yanks me over to the table and bends me over it, holding me down with a hand on my spine.

‘You’ll pay for your sluttish ways, my little whore princess. And yes, you will be my bride. I’m not giving up the chance to rule your father’s lands because you can’t keep your legs shut. Oh no. But you will learn not to repeat your loose behaviour, unless it’s in my bed.’

God, he’s good at this. My juices gush and I squeeze my trembling thighs together. My blood is up and rioting through my veins. Do it, I silently beg him, whip me.

The skirt comes up, petticoats and all, and I barely have time to screw my eyes shut before the first stroke whistles down, a bar of red heat lighting up my arse.

My lusty yell is only partly one of pain. I am wild with exhilaration. The rougher he plays, the crazier I get. I wonder what it would take to break me, and if he’ll ever reach that point. The idea excites me even more.

He wields the crop with an expert hand, laying a succession of hard, fast strokes until I want to jump up and hop about, but his other hand on my back holds me in place so that all I can do is take it. Stroke after stroke, burn after burn, while he rants and raves about what a whore I am and how I will submit to him and him alone.

I don’t know how many he gives me, but it must be near fifty at least when he lays the crop aside and runs a hand over my scorched and welted bottom.

‘What did that teach you, Princess?’ he pants, sounding quite exhausted.

‘It taught me who my master is,’ I sigh.

‘Yes. That was my intention. So, I have conquered you?’

‘Oh, you have. It’s so sore, ouch.’

His hand glides over the burning skin and then dips lower, to the wet ridges of my pussy, alighting on my needy clit.

‘You are in heat, Princess. The whipping has given you pleasure?’

‘No,’ I lie. ‘Only pain and humiliation.’

‘Then why are you so wet here? Are you truly a slut who wants cock all the time?’

‘No, no.’

‘You are.’ He shoves two fingers up inside me. ‘And this is where you took peasant cock. How was it? Was he a good size?’

‘He was long and thick and he used it well.’

He smacks my bum hard and I whimper and twist my hips.

‘I have decided that I will take your virginity, Princess.’

‘What? But …’

One wetted fingertip slips between my rear cheeks until it finds the tight pucker it seeks.

‘There is more than one kind of virginity.’

‘Oh God. Not there. Please, not there.’

‘You should have thought of that when you welcomed peasant cock into your hungry cunt, Princess. I’m not going where some serf has been. I shall have to use an alternative. It won’t get me many heirs, I suppose, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come. To it.’

Cold lubricant drips onto the tiny aperture. My hot arse welcomes it, but I am still nervous and focused, as I always am when Lloyd takes me this way. Somehow, it seems like a much bigger and bolder step than mere cock-in-cunt sex. There’s a momentous quality to it.

But he knows I can take it, and he knows exactly how rough he can be, and that’s exactly how rough he is, shoving his cock firmly into my bottom until he is wedged tight and I have squealed and squirmed through the difficult moment of full penetration.

‘There we are, Princess,’ he whispers. ‘Your arse is stuffed with a royal cock. How does it compare with what that peasant gave you?’

‘I feel owned, sir, and taken.’

‘That’s what you should feel. That’s what you are.’

He edges back and I cringe, then he thrusts himself to the hilt again.

‘Take it, my princess whore bride. Take my cock in your sore whipped arse and be grateful I wasn’t harder on you.’

So I take it, gratefully and meekly, offering my most private and intimate place to the man who has mastered me.

He uses it firmly while I finger my clit, loving the way my stomach bumps against the table with each forceful sheathing, glorying in the slap-slap of his pelvis against my burning bum cheeks.

A good buggering always results in the kind of orgasm that makes me wonder if I’m actually dying and this one is no different. I am torn into pieces, floating about in space, while he finishes with a grunt and a spurt of warmth deep inside me.

I reach blindly for his hand. He clasps mine and holds it tight while we recover, sighing and trembling over the table.

‘That learned ya, didn’t it?’ he says eventually, with a self-conscious chuckle.

‘It was incredible … just gets more incredible … every time.’ My wonderment is evident.

‘It does, doesn’t it? Makes you think.’

‘No, that’s what it doesn’t do. It makes me feel.’

‘You still want to go ahead with this challenge? Because we could just scrub it and you could move in tomorrow.’

For a split second I consider saying yes, OK, let’s do that. Why can’t I say yes? I thought saying no was the thing I couldn’t do.

Chapter Two

He makes me wait two weeks for the first envelope.

Two weeks of cajolery and attempted entrapment into spilling the sex beans – but Lloyd is not to be drawn. Even when I stopped wanking him, right on the teetering tip of orgasm, and told him I wanted to milk him for information before I milked him for anything else. Even when he entered the office to find me posing on top of the desk in corset, suspenders and stockings, promising great things in exchange for a clue. Even when I locked myself into a chastity device and told him that the key would only appear on receipt of certain intelligence.

None of it worked.

He finished himself off. He swept me off the desk and sent me away to dress, with a smack to my arse. He … well, he didn’t have to do anything about the last one. I got bored of it after about ten minutes.

So now, two weeks after the deal was made, I am none the wiser about my first challenge.

I am completing some induction training for a group of new kitchen staff when my PA, Kathleen, trots up to me and tells me that ‘Mr Ellison says there’s an important note for you in your pigeonhole’.

I dismiss her, fling a bundle of leaflets and whatnot at the newbies and almost run out of Conference Room One towards the staffroom.

In the internet age, the pigeonholes are only used now for payslips and birthday cards, but they still cover one wall with boxy wooden monotony.

A couple of chambermaids are taking a tea break. They watch me march up to my mailbox and take out an A4 manila envelope. It’s quite thick. Nothing is written on the front.

I nod at the maids and subdue my urge to rip the thing open there and then, taking it instead into the privacy of the office.

The office, this quiet and sane oasis amid the hotel’s perma-bustle, always calms me. After a year, it’s lost all the associations I used to have with the former manager, Chase, and the stupid fixation I had with him. Now it belongs to me and Lloyd. Especially since the day we christened the desk …

Sitting at it, I visualise us on top of it, me riding Lloyd energetically while the stationery tipped over and fell on the carpet. It makes me smile.

I am still smiling when I pick up the paperknife and make an elegant slit in the envelope. I tip it upside down on the desktop, watching its contents slide out.

One sheet of Luxe Noir writing paper, one vellum business card.

Dear Sophie

Don’t ever tell me I’m not good to you. I’ve designed this first challenge around two of your favourite pursuits. One, of course, is sex. The other is photography. I don’t know what’s in your dark room these days, but one day I hope you’ll do your fixing and developing in our shared place of residence.

A task with you behind the camera would be too easy, though. Where would be the challenge in that? No, what I’m asking you to do is swap places and become the model.

The lady whose business card you will find in here is a highly regarded photographer who specialises in human sexuality. Her ‘thing’ is to capture the face at the moment of orgasm. Nice, eh? I’ve booked you in for a session.

Call the number on the card when you get this letter and she’ll give you your appointment time, and directions to the studio.

I think you’ll agree that this is a gentle, easy opening challenge for you. Nothing to scare a seasoned campaigner. Best of luck – and, of course, the evidence will reach me in the form of the completed photo set.

I look forward to viewing it.

Love

Lloyd.

I put the note down, waiting for the sinking feeling to hit the pit of my stomach before inhaling.

Lloyd knows I hate having my photo taken.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s not as if I’m shy. I’ve put out and opened up for so many men. I’ve worn outrageous outfits. I’ve demonstrated sex toys at live events. I’ve even danced in a peep-show booth. But there’s something about the camera that scares me. It captures you, holds you in a moment, forces you to see yourself the way you are seen by others. I find that scrutiny very difficult to take. It reminds me to be self-conscious, something I rarely am. I don’t need the reminder.

I have enough pictures of Lloyd to fill a gallery, but the only extant photographs of myself in the last two years are a head shot on the hotel website and a picture of my arse taken on his mobile phone.

He has set me up to fail.

‘Damn you, Ellison,’ I murmur, picking up the business card.

She is called Sasha Margetts. She has all the right letters after her name, but underneath it I read ‘Boudoir and Erotic’. Is this where wannabe porn starlets go for their portfolio shots? I wonder. Will she have me licking suggestively on a lollipop while I shake my airbrushed booty? Or will it all be dead tasteful with soft lighting and feathers covering the rude bits? Only one way to find out …

I reach for the phone at least a dozen times before finally going through with the call. I contemplate ringing Lloyd first and haranguing him for picking such an odious task, but that would only give him some kind of perverse satisfaction, so I don’t. I’m not going to fail this on the nursery slopes.

‘Hello, Sasha Margetts.’

‘Hi, my name’s Sophie Martin.’

‘Oh, yes, my afternoon booking! Is it still OK? Can you make it?’

‘I think so. Not sure of the exact time though – I didn’t make the booking myself.’

‘Oh no, that’s right. It was your agent, wasn’t it? Lloyd?’

I have to take a very deep breath. My agent? ‘S’right,’ I manage.

‘Well, I’ll be ready for you at two. Do you know where we are?’

‘Your card says Carrington Mews – I think that’s quite near here. Sloane Square tube station?’

‘Yes, that’s the closest. We’ll do the solo shots first.’

‘We’ll … solo shots?’ I struggle to make sense of this. Does she mean that there will be another model in some of the photographs?

‘Yes. You don’t need to bring anything, by the way. I’ve a full wardrobe of costumes and props and I’ll do make-up here. So, two o’clock then?’

‘Yeah. Great.’ I put the phone down, and then I can’t prevent myself calling Lloyd. ‘Lloyd!’

He chuckles down the phone at me. ‘You got it then?’

‘What the fuck does she mean? “We’ll do the solo shots first”? What does that mean? What else did you tell her to do?’

‘Wait and see.’

‘I think, as my agent, you should keep me in the loop.’

‘I think, as the orchestrator of the challenge, I should make this as hard for you as I can. Ah, why did I say that? “Hard for you.” I think I am. Thinking about what’s going to happen –’

‘Which is?’

‘As I said before –’

‘Oh, don’t bother.’ I hang up.

I look at the clock. Eleven fifteen. Am I going to do this?

Yes, I am. Failure is not an option.

I think about changing for the appointment, but in the end I turn up in the chichi Chelsea courtyard in the same charcoal-grey skirt suit I wore to work. At least Sasha Margetts will see that I am not some Botoxed bimbo but a bona fide businesswoman who doesn’t get messed around.

Though I suspect I might get messed up.

The door is answered by a smiling woman in her forties, casually but expensively dressed, giving every impression of a model-turned-photographer. In fact, I think I vaguely recognise her.

‘Yes, yes,’ she laughs, responding to my quizzical frown. ‘Sash Derby as was. That’s me.’

‘Oh God. It is you, isn’t it? I remember those perfume adverts you did.’

We climb a staircase, quoting in unison the corny line she had had to speak.

‘I know, dreadful, weren’t they?’ she says, ushering me into a vast white studio space, lined and surrounded with clothes racks and storage units. ‘I much prefer what I do now. No more pouting and trying to look mysterious. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean …’

‘It’s fine. I’m not really a model. I’m a hotelier.’

‘Oh? But you want to break into the scene, your agent said.’ She stands over by a small sink unit and waves a kettle at me. ‘Tea? Coffee? Or sometimes my models need a tot of something stronger, just to dispel the nerves.’

‘He said that, did he? Oh, tea’s fine. White, no sugar.’

‘Isn’t it true?’

‘Oh, if he says it is, I’m sure it is.’ I’m skirting close to a fail, I think. I have to go with the flow. She has been given a story, and it’s my job to stick to it. ‘The hotel’s great, but I’m looking for something on the side. Where I can express myself.’

‘That’s terrific. That’s what we need to discuss. How do we best express you, your personality and your individuality, through the medium of my camera?’

Stumped, I look for inspiration amongst the portraits on the wall. Most are innocuous enough – beautiful girls in cashmere wraps or naked but for jewellery. Until you look at their faces. Rapt, caught in another world, another state of being. Their vulnerability is shocking and arousing.

‘Seems to me,’ I say, trying not to let my voice tremble, ‘that I won’t get much choice in that. One’s face does what it does at that crucial moment.’

‘Yes, you can’t fake it.’ Sash appears at my shoulder, inspecting her work along with me. ‘It’s a moment when you are nothing but yourself. The masks peeled off, the face metaphorically bare.’

‘That’s a strangely frightening thought.’

She puts her hand on my shoulder. I’m not tactile, outside the bedroom, and I flinch a little.

‘You’re not the first person to think so. Come on. Sit down and we’ll talk about your needs.’

I take my tea and perch on her white leather sofa. ‘Didn’t Lloyd give you any idea of what was wanted?’

She laughs. ‘Oh yes, he did. But I’m starting with you. You’re the girl in the picture. What are you getting out of this?’

A win. I’m getting to win.

‘I’m getting to represent myself as what I am.’

‘Which is?’

‘An insatiable whore.’

She is taken aback. For a moment, all she can do is stare at me.

‘Sorry not to put it more delicately,’ I say. ‘I suppose people generally say that they want to express their flowering sexuality or their empowering femininity or whatever. But I don’t dress it up. I’m not a flowery feminine sexually empowered blah-de-blah. I’m an insatiable whore. That’s what you’ll see. That’s what you’ll get.’

Sash sips at her tea.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You sound a little bit angry. Are you sure you want to do this?’

‘I’m only angry because people don’t like insatiable whores. Well, they do really, but they won’t admit it, so we get bad press. It’s not fair, is it?’

‘I suppose not. So, when we pick props you want something fairly full-on? Aggressively sexual, almost?’

‘Yeah.’ I think of Lloyd looking at the photos, knowing that I hate standing behind a camera. I want him to know how I feel about it. ‘Aggressively sexual. That hits my spot.’

‘That’s a powerful concept. We could build some strong images around it. You’re a woman in charge of your sexuality, using it freely, without guilt. Actually, I can really work with that.’ Sasha’s face lights up. ‘This could be a wonderful set. Come and pick some props.’

Sasha has every type of luxe fabric and body decoration imaginable. I run my fingers through marabou and faux fur and lace and ropes of pearls. In another box, she has her kinky stuff. It looks tempting, but I’m not going to be tied up or trussed for this shoot. I’m going to be free.

‘I don’t want props,’ I decide. ‘Maybe just that chair. Just me, in the buff, on a chair. Keep it simple, yeah?’

‘I think simplicity will be the key to this set. It’s all about you and your attitude. Are you ready? Do you want to take off your clothes now?’

I distract her while I strip off my business suit by talking about the make and model of her camera. I want her to know that I know my stuff. I want her to know what she is dealing with.

By the time I’m down to my black bra and knickers, we have covered image processors and the respective merits of manual and automatic focus adjustment.

‘Do you want some underwear shots first?’ she asks politely.

‘Nah.’ I look her in the eye as I unhook my bra then ease down my panties. I maintain a smile that I hope isn’t too forced. ‘Let’s start as we mean to go on.’

I fling up my arms to reveal everything, my breasts rising to optimum presentability as my hands stretch high.

‘OK, OK, keep this pose, legs wide, arms up, looking straight at me. Lovely, perfect, that’s great, Sophie.’

Light flashes, pow pow pow, while I face down the lens, my expression almost a scowl. Not a come hither, but a come and get it if you dare.

I move to the chair and sit, legs akimbo, imagining the photographs and how Lloyd will feel when he sees them. I glare, thrust out my chest, kick out my legs, cup my breasts, snarl, muss my hair, bend my knees and, finally, when Sash has melted away and become her camera, I put my hand flat on my crotch, between my pussy lips and throw back my head.

‘Are you ready for this, Sophie?’ Sash’s voice is gentle and breathy. I wonder briefly if this turns her on. Is this her perversion?

‘Ready to wank for the camera? Bring it on.’

She exhales, almost whistling, and lines herself up behind the viewfinder, hand on the button. Not the same button I have my hand on.

‘Tell me what gets you off, Sophie. What do you think about when you touch yourself?’

‘I think about how much I need it. How much I want a cock. How much I want to be bent over with something thick and hard pushing into me, pinning me down.’

‘Lovely. Go on.’ Pow pow pow. I draw languid circles around my clit.

‘I think of all the men I’ve had. Men and women. All the tongues that have licked me, all the arms that have held me down, all the come I’ve swallowed, all the cocks I’ve had in my cunt and my arse, so many, loads of them, loads of loads, all shot in me.’

Pow pow pow. I breathe more deeply, dig more deeply, rubbing faster.

‘Are you really insatiable?’

‘God, yeah, ask anyone at the hotel. Ask Lloyd. He can do me four, five times a day but I’ll still try for more. Before we got together I used to pick up strangers, just because I wanted to. They used to offer me money, think I must be a prostitute. When they found out I was just a slut, they thought all their Christmases had come at once. They came back, and they brought their friends, and my life was one long, hot gang-bang, cock after cock after cock …’

‘But now Lloyd’s fucking you?’

‘Yeah, but he likes to watch too. He gets off on me being this horny bitch who needs it all the time. That’s why I’m here … I think … I can’t remember …’

‘Stop thinking. Just work yourself, get yourself there.’

‘He wants the world to know it. He wants everyone to know I’m a sex-mad whore with a cunt that’s open all hours. Everyone will see this, everyone will look at my face and see it … oh.’

That’s it. It’s done. I have been staring at the camera lens all the while, but now, after one stunned stretch of my eyes I have to screw them shut, have to hide from that implacable gaze while the impulses sweep and swoop through my nervous system and gush out through my clit.

‘Oh Sophie,’ whispers Sash, clicking her last and rushing over to take my hands and stroke them. ‘That was perfect. That was astonishing. Are you all right?’

‘Uh-huh. Gimme a minute.’

The doorbell rings.

‘Ah, that’ll be him.’

I stop lolling and sit bolt upright, thighs clamped shut, arms crossed over breasts. Him?

The solo shots are done, but there is more to come.

Sash slips away down the stairs. I hear her unbolt and open the door, but the voices are too faint to pick up. As the sound of feet hits the steps again, I grab a fur throw out of the prop box and wrap myself in it before the company arrives.

‘Oh, don’t cover up on my account.’

‘Lloyd!’

I give him my fiercest glare, but he is unruffled, threading his way past the tripod and camera towards me.

‘Who’s looking after the hotel?’

‘Kathleen’s fine for a couple of hours. There’s nothing exciting going on.’

‘Famous last words.’

He touches the side of my face, just above my temple, but I draw away, angry with him about all kinds of things, only some of which I can identify.

‘Chill,’ he says. ‘Smile. You’re on candid camera.’

‘A bit too bloody candid,’ I grumble.