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My face flares into fiery heat. Was it that obvious? I can’t look at his sly grin, and I can’t think of an answer.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, after a few seconds of silence. ‘I enjoyed it too. Why not? It’s just a bit of sexy fun, right? Oh, now you are embarrassed. I don’t mean to embarrass you.’
One slender finger touches my cheek, brushing it tenderly. A high-voltage shot of desire streaks down to my groin. Fuck. I think I fancy this freak show of a dude.
‘This is just too weird,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t know what I think.’
‘You don’t have to be shame,’ he says. ‘Everyone has their little different what’s the word?’
‘Quirks? Kinks?’
‘Kinks. Right. You like this spanking kink, no shame.’
‘I think shame is kind of the whole point.’
‘Oh, OK! You like to be shame! I get it.’
‘Why am I discussing my sexual preferences with you?’
‘Because you like me. Anyway, what happens next in there? You think they all are spanked. Do you think it becomes sexual? Does he fuck them?’
‘What, all four of them? I doubt it.’
‘True, four in a row is hard. But possible.’
He winks at me and I slap the air in front of his face. What a cheeky bastard this man is. What a sexy cheeky bastard.
‘Maybe they all have an orgy on the desks. I haven’t got a clue.’
‘You think they pay him? Or he pays them?’
‘Oh, perhaps. Or they could just be like-minded friends who get together and play ye olde boarding schools every third Wednesday of the month. I guess that happens.’
‘Hmm.’ Dimitri’s eyes cloud over for a few moments and I watch him lose himself in thought. I start to wonder about him. Who the hell is he and what is his purpose in coming to London? Is he as mad, bad and dangerous to know as the vibe he emits suggests? ‘You see, Rosie, I need work. I need money. I think I could beat some asses for a living. Easy, no problem. And I will enjoy it too. Better than working in some kitchen, right?’
‘I’m not sure the market for that kind of thing is exactly huge,’ I demur, and then I break off and hide my face with the food menu because the ‘teacher’ and his four pupils have just walked through the door.
‘Hey, great, I can ask him!’ exclaims Dimitri, ignoring my wail of ‘Fuck, no!’ He springs out of his seat to confront our new acquaintances.
I follow him, trying to stop him, but I am too late. I hide my face in my hands and utter desperate prayers while he accosts the teacher.
‘Excuse me, I am new in town and I have a question.’
‘Oh, really?’ The teacher sounds wary, but he doesn’t seem to recognise us, which is some scant comfort.
‘Where is good fetish club in London?’
Silence.
‘Oh my God,’ I mutter into my hands.
‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘No joke, I promise. I like to spank girls back home in Russia and I am requiring this service in London, is possible you can help me?’
I really think I might die of cringing.
‘Shall we drink elsewhere tonight?’ The teacher addresses his flock. ‘I can’t cope with lunatics just now.’ He turns stiffly and leads his pupils out of the pub.
‘Great. Nice work,’ I snipe. ‘What the actual fuck are you on?’
‘Hey, you like shame, I give you shame. What’s wrong with that?’
I am seriously contemplating calling an emergency taxi when the door of the pub opens again and the girl who was caned, pigtails still bobbing, slips in and tiptoes up to us.
‘Sorry about him,’ she says, cheeks pink. ‘But if you want to know the best place in London for BDSM and fetish, it’s actually just around the corner from here.’
‘Oh yes?’ Dimitri leans towards her and she seems to quiver like an aspen. Oh God. He obviously has this effect on all women.
‘It’s called Kinky Cupcake, but you can’t just go in. You have to know the password. It’s members only.’
‘How you get to be a member?’
‘You make friends with another member. I’ll be your friend if you like.’
‘I will like that a lot.’ His voice is all low and seductive, bloody man-whore that he is.
She giggles. ‘OK, tell the doorman that Trixietots sent you. The password is Lacoste.’
‘Trixietots. Lacoste. Right.’
‘Have fun. Maybe I’ll see you in there sometime. I really ought to go now, or Mr Strict will wonder where I am. And I don’t want to make him angry, believe me.’
She giggles again, flutters her eyelashes and flees.
‘Does this happen to you a lot?’ I ask, curling my lip. ‘Random women throwing themselves at you?’
‘You are jealous?’
‘No! But you love it, don’t you? You’re a man-whore.’
‘Man-whore? A gigolo? I could do that. I am very good at the sex.’
I give up. This man’s relationship with shame is utterly opposite to my own.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he urges and drains his vodka.
‘Go?’
‘Yes, to this place, of course. Kinky Cupcake. You want to see inside, don’t you?’
Of course I do. Of course.
But now? And with him?
‘They won’t let us in. Or they might let you in, but probably not me. You’re the one old Trixietots there was interested in.’
‘Stop make excuses. What are you afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Yes you are. I know why you’re afraid. You may have to be honest about your, what was it, your kinks. You’re scared of your kinks, right?’
‘Wrong.’
He shakes his head, giving me a look of disapproval that makes me see exactly how good he’d be as a stern teacher type. Very good. Blinding.
My legs buckle. Suddenly I just want him so badly I could …
‘You want this,’ he says, bending down to speak the words into my ear. ‘Here is your chance to get what you want. Take it.’
‘Don’t leave me in there,’ I whisper. ‘Stay with me.’
‘I’ll stay with you, I promise.’
He takes my hand and walks with me back across the estate and into the street where I work. The office lights are all out now, but it’s too late to panic about the air-freshener campaign. I have a new campaign on my mind.
I hold on tight as he knocks on that oft-regarded door.
It opens a fraction.
‘Password,’ demands a disembodied voice.
‘Lacoste,’ says Dimitri.
The door opens.
‘Sign the members’ book,’ says a black-suited man, but as he looks at us he frowns. ‘Are you new?’
‘Trixietots recommended us,’ I tell him.
‘Both of you?’
I nod, hoping upon hope that this will be accepted.
‘Which of you is the dom and which the sub?’
I blink, understanding neither of these terms.
‘Or are you switches?’
Switches?
‘She likes for me to whip her,’ says Dimitri helpfully, and I kick him rather violently in the ankle, though he seems not to register. ‘Don’t you, Rosie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell them,’ he insists. ‘Say the words.’
Oh God, you bastard!
The doorman laughs. ‘I get the picture.’ He hands a blue badge to Dimitri. ‘You’re the dom.’ My badge is red. ‘You’re the sub. Now hold on there a minute and I’ll call up Mal and O. They’re the owners – they’ll want to vet you.’
‘Vet us?’
He nods, the phone already at his ear while he waits for the other end to pick up. ‘Yeah, Mal, I’ve got a couple of newbies here. You got a minute to come and do the necessary? Great. I’ll show them up.’
We follow him up some narrow stairs and through a door that leads to a little waiting room. It would almost be like a dentist’s waiting room, if the magazines didn’t feature cover models in latex and the pictures on the wall were of rotting teeth instead of people tied up with their rude bits on show. The pot plants and the water cooler give an incongruous everyday feel to what I am sure will not be an everyday experience.
‘They won’t be a moment,’ says the doorman. ‘I’ll get back downstairs now, if you don’t mind. Had a bit of an incident earlier with vanillas trying to spy on us – better make sure everything’s clear.’
Once he is gone, I turn to Dimitri. ‘Vanillas? I feel like I’m learning a whole new vocabulary here.’
He squeezes my hand. ‘Think of me. I am learning English too.’
‘I feel a bit nervous. What are they going to do? What’s this vetting?’
He puts an arm around my shoulder. God, it feels nice. I would be happy just to sit there like that for the rest of the evening.
‘Don’t worry. It’s an adventure. Enjoy it.’
That seems to be his philosophy of life, I muse. I snuggle into his side and he rubs his fingers soothingly up and down my upper arm. He smells of so many things – cigarette smoke, wood smoke, mint, something herbal a bit like a joss stick. I breathe him in, inhaling intoxication.
The spell is broken when a door beyond the waiting room opens and a man dressed up as a vampire beckons us in.
I look askance at Dimitri, but he appears to be qualm-free, striding into the office with that snake-hipped swagger I had admired earlier.
Sitting behind a desk is a woman in a very smart 1940s-style skirt suit and a pillbox hat with a veil.
‘Good evening,’ says the vampire, putting out a hand for us to shake. ‘I’m Mal, and this is O. We’re the people behind Kinky Cupcake – we own the lot of you.’ He laughs. ‘You’re new here, I gather, so we need to run through a few things with you. Nothing to worry about – we just have to make sure all new members are genuine deviants, if you like. It’d be a shame if a journalist or somebody unfriendly to our interests slipped through the net and ruined what we’ve got here, don’t you think?’
‘Sure.’ Dimitri nods vigorously. I offer a weak smile.
‘So I’m going to run through the dos and don’ts of the club with you, and then I just need a little demonstration of your dynamic, if you don’t mind. I gather you, sir, are the dom and this lovely lady is your sub, so perhaps you could show us how you like to spank her, or a bit of bondage maybe …’
What? My mouth falls open and I stare at Dimitri, aghast.
‘Ah, don’t be shy now,’ pipes up O in a sexy husky voice. ‘We’ve all seen it a thousand times. You’ll see me whipped by every dom in the place before too long. But I know the first time in front of other people is hard, so please be aware that I sympathise. I envy you too. Gosh, that feeling of being on the edge of a precipice – the exhilaration. I’d give anything to relive that, you lucky thing.’
