‘In a kitchen.’ He shrugs. ‘It isn’t for ever.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘So drink your coffee. I book the room one till two.’
‘Which room did you book?’
‘The schoolroom.’
‘I see. And what might we be practising?’
‘I am going to whip you,’ he says, infinitely casual, dabbing coffee from his moustache with a napkin.
‘Lovely.’ I shudder and have the urge to hug myself. I have this sense of being in exquisite danger. Danger I have signed up for.
I linger over the coffee, keeping an eye on the clock, while we discuss my advertising campaign, his associates in the squatty-sounding dive he is staying in, his new kitchen-portering job, until the time comes and I can divert him with light chatter no longer.
He holds out his hand. ‘Come.’
I hope so.
But first I have to descend with him into that sinister basement where all thin
gs dark and dreadful take place. No events are taking place this lunchtime – those are reserved for the evening hours – so the corridor is quiet. In the medical room, there seems to be a little activity going on – another booking, presumably.
Dimitri pushes open the door to the schoolroom, as white and bare and chalk-dusty as I remember with its row of little desks and its cupboard of pain.
It is to this last that Dimitri addresses himself, opening the door and pulling out a gown of coarse black material.
‘This fits me?’ He puts it over his shoulders and flaps about like a vampire bat, trying it out for size. It’s a little short on him, but the effect transforms him from pure gypsy to, I dunno, scholar gypsy.
‘You look a bit like Dracula,’ I say, doubtfully. ‘Maybe the mortar board?’
‘The …?’
‘Square hat thing.’
‘This?’ He perches it at a jaunty angle and tosses his head so the tassel swings.
‘Why didn’t my head teacher look like that?’ I wonder aloud, then I squeak when he finds the cane and swishes it dramatically through the air.
After a few moments of fencing with an invisible opponent, he flexes it in both hands and fixes me with an evil grin. ‘So, my naughty girl, are you ready to bend over?’
‘Um. Could we start with something a little gentler?’
‘Of course. Actually, I am thinking perhaps first I need to know what this things feels like.’
He rummages in the cupboard, producing a number of implements and laying them in a fan shape on the nearest desk.
‘You mean, you mean, I use them on you?’ I pick up a varnished wooden rectangle with a narrow handle at one end and smack it experimentally into a palm.
‘Sure. If I become an expert dom, I want to know what submissive is feeling. Otherwise how do I make best decision of what to do?’
‘That makes a lot of sense.’
‘Of course.’
Without further discussion, he whips off the cloak, turns his back to me and drops his jeans.