‘You’ve come here looking for work?’ She is taken aback. ‘Well, we do have some members who work on the scene. I’m sure you’d benefit from meeting them. It’s funny, but you really don’t look or dress like the stereotype. I like that though.’
‘I have no leather pants,’ says Dimitri regretfully. ‘Too expensive. But I have other job too. I work in Russia as an actor. I want to improve my English, get into the movies, you know.’
Mal and O are obviously transfixed by this odd foreign fish. I must admit, I’m pretty hooked myself. Is he approaching this ‘dom’ thing as method-acting practice, or is it a genuine predilection? I rather hope I will get to find out.
‘How long have you two been playing together?’ asks Mal suddenly, and I dry up. We are going to be found out and kicked down the stairs by his rather sexy steel-capped boots. Or O’s gorgeous pointy stilettos. Either way.
But Dimitri saves the ball, apparently having presence of mind among his other skills. ‘Not long. Maybe six weeks,’ he says. ‘We are learning. She don’t have kinky lover before, but I do. Lots of kinky lovers for me.’
‘What a wonderful time you will have here,’ says O with a rather flirtatious smile. She fancies him! ‘I think you’re going to be valuable additions to our merry little band.’
‘And now,’ says Mal, leaning back to perch on his vast desk, ‘for your initiation. What do you want to show us?’
Dimitri looks down at me, awaiting my pleasure.
‘Um.’ I can’t hedge, I have to look confident, as if this is something I do all the time. ‘Maybe just a little spanking.’
‘Just a little one?’ He curls his lip and winks at me. I have to catch my breath. ‘OK.’ He takes off his battered leather jacket to reveal heavily tattooed arms. I try not to look too surprised at the colourful display but it’s hard not to stare.
‘Gorgeous work,’ purrs O. ‘I presume you had these done in Russia?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he says, throwing the jacket into the corner of the room with a fluid motion of his sinewy arm. ‘Can I get a chair, please?’
Mal obliges, pushing a plain wooden chair into the centre of the room.
‘Do you need any implements?’ he asks politely, then, registering Dimitri’s frown, he explains, ‘Straps, whips, you know.’
I put my hand on Dimitri’s forearm and grip it fearfully.
‘Oh, uh-huh. Well, maybe tonight Rosie is a little shy so I just use my hand, right? That’s OK?’
‘That’s fine,’ says O. ‘I love the intimacy of an old-fashioned hand spanking.’
Intimacy. I look down at what I’m wearing. A thick tweedy skirt for the autumn weather, diamond-patterned opaque tights over cotton boy shorts. Kinky it ain’t, unless you hanker after that librarian look. Will I have to … bare anything?
I can leave. I can just walk away. No consequences, no risks. I know what this place is now; my curiosity is sated.
Except it isn’t. In its place are a dozen new curiosities about Dimitri, about S&M, about how it could feel, how it could be to have fantasies made flesh.
I watch him take his place on the chair, then he sweeps his hand in a broad gesture that starts out pointing at me and ends up slapping his thigh.
It’s unequivocal enough, and so terribly sexy my cotton boy shorts flood. I shuffle over and stand by his knees, wondering if there’s a graceful way to put myself across them.
His face is set and intense. He takes my arm and manoeuvres me down until my stomach presses against his strong thighs and my view is of the floor. I’m going to have to keep my eyes shut for this, I think, though I’d love to see what we look like from a third person’s perspective. Perhaps Mal or O will take a photograph.
‘OK, OK,’ he mutters, quite gently, positioning my legs so that they are straight, tiptoes touching the floor, then he elevates his thighs a little, having an unmistakable knock-on effect on my bottom, and rubs my spine.
‘This is comfortable for you?’ he whispers and I nod. Actually, it really is. It feels so safe and held – it’s almost as if I’ve come to him for protection rather than punishment.
The word ‘punishment’ starts my juices flowing again. My heart thunders. I’m really doing this, really putting myself across a strange man’s lap to get spanked in front of witnesses. My breath hitches.
He puts his hand on my thigh, just below my skirt hem, and traces the diamond pattern with an idle finger.
‘You know, Rosie, I can’t have this skirt this way. It’s too thick. I push it up, right?’
Oh God. I’m quivering so much from the way his finger strokes the back of my thighs that I can’t speak. I just lie there while he pushes the heavy tweed up and up, over the curve of my bum, taking it unbearably slowly until I feel his palm flat on my buttocks, protected only by tights and knickers now.
‘And these things,’ he says, moving his palm in a circular motion over the target area while I try really, really hard not to buck and press my groin into his leg. ‘What you call them? Hoses?’