Tapping in codes, I wondered how to approach the situation. I wanted to make him an offer. An offer of reparation. Rachael seemed to think he was good at what he did, and if I was going to perform this experiment, I wanted to be in the hands of an expert.
'Do you mind my asking . . .' I opened cautiously.
'Yes, I do,' he snapped.
The door behind me opened and Mr Chase looked out, frowning at my efforts on the computer.
'Everything all right here?' he asked, lowering his spectacles in Dr Lassiter's direction.
'Fine!' I said hastily.
Dr Lassiter looked as if he was on the verge of dobbing me in, but unexpectedly he nodded instead and made a noncommittal gesture. Chase returned to his lair.
'Thanks!' I said. 'I owe you one.'
'You do,' agreed Lassiter tightly.
'I'd like to . . . pay you back. However you like.' I swallowed, holding his eye, which widened.
'I'm not sure I understand.'
'I, um, well, if Rachael isn't available any time . . . I mean, I don't know how exclusive you are, but if you aren't . . . I mean . . .' Good Lord, this was turning into the worst bout of verbal diarrhoea of my life. How the hell does one ask a man for a good thrashing?
Dr Lassiter leant forward so his elbows were on the desk and his flinty eyes connected to mine. I tried to look submissive. How do you look submissive? I went for a sexually available, startled-fawn type of thing.
'Are you saying, young lady, that you share certain of Rachael's tastes?'
The 'young lady' made me feel a certain squirminess in the pit of my stomach. Suddenly I was very small and very helpless. Was this normal? I didn't know, but I rather liked it. An acquired taste, perhaps, but then most of the finer pleasures in life are.
'I don't know, but I'd like to find out. If you don't mind, I'd be very grateful if you could . . . test me.'
'Test you?'
'Try me out.'
His voice was very low and his face very close to mine.
'It would be a pleasure,' he said. I drew in a deep breath. 'You strike me as a young lady in dire need of discipline.'
'Yes, I think you could be right.'
'Yes, I think you could be right, Sir.'
'Yes, I think you could be right, Sir.'
The tiny barrier of air between us quivered. 'Very well,' he said briskly, straightening up with the first recorded Lassiter smile. 'Rachael is regrettably unavailable most of the time, due to her personal commitments. Would next Thursday suit?'
I checked my rota. 'I get off at six, Sir,' I told him, very much hoping that this would turn out to be true in every sense
'Six it is. No later.' He stepped back again, took me in long and expansively from my head to my midriff, where the desk curtailed me, then hoisted up the golf bag and strode off.
I was unreasonably excited by the prospect of this new direction in my boudoir life. The anticipation took me through the eight celibate days and nights leading up to my initiation. I lay in bed imagining the sting and the throb and the shame and the voice lecturing over my head as the lashes fell. Except the voice was not Lassiter's, it was Chase's, chiding me for some future piece of misbehaviour that threatened to derail our delirious happiness together. Lassiter would be another substitute for the man I really craved, and I wondered if it would gall him to know that. One imagines that these dominant chaps don't take kindly to unfavourable comparison with others. Perhaps he'd whip me all the more soundly if he knew. The thought made me come, hard, flooding my busy hand with my deviant juices.
You're a bad girl, Sophie. You're a very bad girl. Ooh, I know.
I was antsy all of Thursday afternoon, my eyes flicking over to the revolving doors every few minutes. Dr Lassiter had called the day before to stipulate my dress code – no trousers, plain white cotton knickers, over-the-knee socks or hold-up stockings, nothing patterned or colourful. Minimal make-up and any mascara should be waterproof. Rachael had not been wrong about Lassiter being one for the details.
I had opted for over-the-knee socks, to make the occasion stand out, since I wore stockings or hold-ups most of the time anyway, on the off- chance that Chase might unexpectedly fling me on to his desk and give me one while the guests were at breakfast or cocktails. Without hope, what have I, eh? They should probably have been white, but mine striped black and red all the way up to my lower thighs, making me look like Minnie the Minx. I wondered if Dr Lassiter was a Beano man; probably was, with all the whacking and thwacking that went on in those cartoons.