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‘Like you?’
‘Yeah … like me …’
My phone rang. It was Rosie again. I snatched it up.
‘Hey there.’
‘Sarah, hi, guess what, you’ll never guess what, oh, my God, you are not going to believe this.’
She sounded near-hysterical and as if she was going to burst into laughter before she got the words out.
‘What?’
‘This is the weirdest thing ever, I just can’t believe it.’
‘Rosie! Please!’
‘Your Jasper Jay –’
‘Er, yes?’ I glanced sideways at him. I didn’t know if he could hear Rosie’s words but he was certainly enjoying the high-pitched squawking.
‘– he’s only gone and offered Dimitri a job.’
‘What?’
I widened my eyes at Jasper, who widened them back, drolly.
‘He wants Dimitri to be a body double in his next film. Isn’t that just so beyond bizarre?’
‘Wow.’ I took the phone from my ear for a moment and said it again, to Jasper. ‘Wow.’
‘It’s the same Dimitri?’
‘So it seems.’
Jasper laughed and clapped his hands.
‘Tell her she’s invited too,’ he said.
I put the phone back to my ear.
‘Rosie? Did Dimitri tell you that Jasper was going to invite you down here for a couple of days?’
‘Yeah, him and bloody Trixietots.’
‘Who?’
‘The female body double.’
‘Oh, right. Well, he said you can come too.’
‘Really? Awesome! Oh, my God, this is just so …’
It certainly was just so … I could hardly put my own thoughts in order, let alone hers. A big realisation was muscling its way to the forefront of my brain, though, and I couldn’t hold it back.
‘So, Rosie, this club or café you’re at …?’
‘Ah, yeah, it’s kind of like a specialist place.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘I thought you might.’
As if somebody had just wound us both up and taken out the key we began to laugh manically and in concert, a mixture of embarrassment and exhilaration at being able to talk openly about our taboo private lives.
‘I can’t wait to see you,’ I said, meaning it.
‘Isn’t it brilliant?’ she sighed. ‘So perfect. This is going to be the best Christmas ever.’
Chapter Three (#ulink_e5cbcc70-1e56-5bd8-9499-8f330f71dfcf)
As best Christmases ever went, it had some catching up to do.
Driving back to Jasper’s after two and a half days of awkward silences and desperate attempts to steer the conversation away from my private life, I reflected that I’d made the effort, been the dutiful daughter and now it was time to be me. Jasper and I had two days together before Rosie, Dimitri and the mysterious Trixietots showed up and I could hardly wait to ease back into our dynamic.
Wearing normal clothes and having normal conversations seemed such an effort now. I’d forgotten how to do that kind of thing. And Mum and Dad both wanted to know about my career plans, the museum and all of that while I just wanted to switch off from the irksome necessity of thinking and eat a tin of Cadbury’s Roses in front of the Downton Christmas special.
When Jasper had phoned on Christmas Day, Mum had said, ‘That was him, was it?’ with very tight lips.
What a shame. They had seemed to come round to him on that awkward, horrible day they met him at my flat. Mum had been charmed and Dad reluctantly followed suit. But the newspaper-story affair seemed to have shoved them back to square one with Jasper as the villain of the piece.
His name wasn’t brought up, by any of us, and we skirted around the issue, being over-effusive about the food and excessively interested in what was on TV until I could pack my bags with a sigh of relief and escape to the car.
No sight had ever been more welcome than the automatic gates in front of Jasper’s drive. I entered the combination and watched them glide open, granting me access to wonderland again.
Wonderland was looking a bit brown and slushy underfoot, but the avenue of arching bare-branched trees still gladdened my heart as I passed through it, finally catching my first glimpse of the house sitting in splendour beyond the expanse of melting snow.
Downstairs lights were on and the windows glowed. I felt myself illumine in response.
I wondered if he’d hear me drive up and park. Would he come to the door to welcome me?
I leaped out on to the gravel, but it was left to me to get my case from the boot and lug it up the steps to the front door. No sign of him yet.
I thought about ringing the doorbell, but it seemed a bit silly when I had a key of my own. I opened the door and stood looking at that same Christmas tree, still gorgeously adorned and fairylit, towering over the handsome vestibule like a green bushy gatekeeper.
The tree welcomed me back, but there was still no sign of Jasper.
I pulled my suitcase on to the parquet and shut the door behind me.
‘Hello?’
Perhaps he was out. But his car was in the drive and he wouldn’t leave lights on in the house before leaving – it was just such an un-Jasper thing to do. Maybe he was chopping wood in the kitchen yard? Now that I’d like to see …
My mouth already watering, I passed through the back kitchen and looked hopefully into the yard, but there was no strapping, axe-wielding man to be seen with shirtsleeves pushed up his arms and an honest sweat gathering on his brow. Worse luck.
I returned to the hall and called out again, but without much hope of a response. As I did so, something glittering under the tree caught my eye and I noticed a parcel in holographic wrapping paper lying there.
Was this my Christmas present?
I knew I should wait until he was around to share the exchange of gifts, but I was too intrigued not to pick the box up and take a closer look.
There was a card on it. I looked for Jasper’s writing, expecting it to have the conventional ‘To Sarah, Merry Christmas, love Jasper’ format on it, but it didn’t. It said, ‘Open me now. Don’t wait.’
Ooh.
I looked around, convinced now that I must be being watched. Would Jasper have put a hidden camera somewhere? On the stairs, on the wall, in the tree?
I obeyed the directive on the tag and began to unwrap the parcel. Inside the paper was a box and the box contained a pair of brown leather cuffs with buckles and rings. Slightly disappointing, as Christmas presents go, but there was another card inside and I picked it up, my heart skippy with excitement.
‘Put on the cuffs. Find your next gift in the drawing room.’
I buckled the new cuffs around my wrists. They were comfortable and felt luxurious; obviously the best quality, which was typical of Jasper.
In the drawing room there was still no sign of the man himself but I soon found the next gift, a flat rectangular box that took up most of the chaise-longue it had been placed upon.
Inside it, wrapped in layers of silver tissue paper, was a tiny filmy black lace babydoll nightdress; more like gossamer than lace, in fact. It came with a pair of hold-up stockings and a frilly garter but nothing else. A card fluttered out when I unfolded it.
‘Put these on. Come to the office.’
Surely he had to be watching? I felt intensely self-conscious, despite the silent stillness of the room, as I pulled off my boots, stepped out of my jeans, unbuttoned my shirt. I was strongly conscious of undressing for someone, even though there was nobody there. I tried to be graceful and seductive instead of taking it quickly, imagining Jasper’s eyes, his face, his intent concentration at all times.
The babydoll was barely there against my skin, just a little gauzy web over my breasts and belly, so short that it left the lower half of my pubic triangle exposed.
I tried to smooth it down so it might cover more, but there was no point. It was supposed to be this short. I sat on a buttoned velvet stool and eased on the stockings – carefully, because they were so sheer a sharp look would probably ladder them.
Dressed and ready for action – but not the kind of action in an action movie – I tiptoed on my stockinged feet over to the office.
I felt so sure that Jasper would be in there that I knocked first.
No direction followed, either to enter or to wait. I knocked again, then turned the handle.
No, he was not there.
On his leather swivel chair was another box, stout and square.
This one proved to contain a little silk-embroidered case inside which lay a pair of shining silver balls. They jingled when I took them out. Of course, I knew what they were. I hadn’t studied the historical evolution of sex toys for nothing. But, strangely perhaps, given our no-holds-barred relationship, I’d never yet experienced them in play.
A label was stuck inside the lid of the case.
‘Insert them,’ it said, ‘and walk (carefully) up the stairs to the master bathroom.’
And now I was glad to be alone and, hopefully, unobserved. I removed the box from the chair and sat down, considering how this was best to be done. I thought it best not to put them in while I was sitting bare-bottomed on the seat, so I stood up again and leaned against the desk instead. Or did I need to be lying down?
No, I would stay in this position and, if any adjustments needed to be made, I would see to them. I took one of the balls out of the case and jiggled it up and down in my palm. It made the most beautiful low chiming sound. Whose idea was it to make them do that? It seemed a bit random, but pleasingly so.
I reached down below, keeping my thighs apart, and rested one shiny curve against the shallow dint behind my pussy lips. It felt cold, but unthreatening. Jasper had certainly put more menacing objects than this up there quite painlessly.
I gave it a little nudge, thinking perhaps it would be better to do this lying down, because my wrist was beginning to ache. But I didn’t have to struggle to insert it at all – it glided in and my pelvic muscles held it in place. For a moment, I worried that it would be lost up there, but all the same I pushed the other one in behind it – and now I could really feel them together, squashed in and stretching me. Keeping them in would constitute a fairly serious workout for my pelvic floor. I supposed Jasper was only trying to be helpful.
I pushed myself off the desk and tried to stand up straight. I felt the balls move inside me to accommodate themselves to this new posture. I clamped my thighs together and they seemed to grow, then shrink when I relaxed my stance. I tried bending over, which threw my muscles into a panic of clenching, desperate not to lose their new guests. How freely was it possible to move wearing these? I tried a few dance steps. It required a high level of concentration, but it was possible.
Obeying the directive on the card, I left the office and headed for the stairs. I was conscious of a faint click-clicking inside me as I walked, and an occasional musical note. As I took one step after another I felt the balls slip and slide as if struggling to escape, and I was careful to keep my muscles clenched. It was a potent reminder to me that I was never to forget my sexuality. I wondered if Jasper would make me wear them in any other contexts and the thought was shiver-inducingly exciting.
The bathroom door was open and I walked in and looked around. I failed at first to locate the next parcel but found it eventually underneath the sink.
I wasn’t particularly surprised to find a string of anal beads – very pretty ones like pearls that you could probably get away with wearing around your wrist at a party – and a small bottle of lube.
I didn’t even remember to look for the card before I started coating the tip of a finger in the gloopy substance. Too late now, I thought, grimacing. Still, this was undoubtedly the thing to do, and I could read the card once this business was taken care of.
I prepared myself carefully, then began to insert the little string of beads until the plaited end was left protruding. Again, these were not uncomfortable compared with some of Jasper’s plugs and once it was done I felt no more than a little daring and very sensually stimulated.
I took a good look at myself in the full-length mirror from all angles. I was a sex kitten, ready to play. If I’d been able to send a snapshot of myself like this to my year-ago self, she’d have screamed and probably torn the thing in two. Would she even have recognised herself? It was hard to know.
Finally, after preening my fill, my attention was drawn back to the empty box – but it wasn’t empty, of course. Nestling in the tissue wrapping was the inevitable card.
I picked it up and read, confident of a summons to the bedroom now.
But it wasn’t.
‘Go to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. Attach your wrist cuffs to the apparatus you find there. And wait.’
Apparatus? What could that mean? I couldn’t restrain a little shudder as unpleasant images of torture equipment flashed into my head.
But my curiosity would not be denied and I tiptoed along the landing, keeping all my senses on alert for any signs of Jasper. But there were none.
The end guest bedroom was a spartan little chamber containing, usually, no more than lots of shelves and cabinets on which various art curiosities were displayed. It contained no bed and nothing in the way of useful furniture, as a rule, but today the Turkish rug in the centre of the room had something on it.
I laughed and then frowned.
It was a sleigh bed. You know the kind – they have a curved kind of prow at each end instead of a head and foot board. Fancy calling it an ‘apparatus’. Jasper had just been trying to psych me out, as usual. This looked really rather comfortable. But he had mentioned attaching the cuffs to something …?
I drew closer and noticed that a pair of small hooks were fixed to one of the sleigh ends. Did he mean me to kneel or lie? I couldn’t be sure.
I decided to lie, placed my wrists up behind my head and pushed their rings against the hooks until they clicked together. Now I could sit on the pillows and wait.
But for how long?
From where I sat, I could look through the window. Light was failing. Soon the room would be dark. Luckily it was heated by a radiator beneath the deep window ledge. All the same, my nipples were starting to complain, stiffening beneath the gossamer lace.
