I shake my head.

He sinks two fingers into the soaking folds and, crooking them, begins to stroke that inner nerve that beckons the delicious whole body climax. I throw my head back and moan.

‘You like that, pretty puss?’

‘Yes, oh God, yes,’ I rasp.

He laughs wickedly.

I move my hips so his fingers will enter deeper into my pussy and he suddenly removes his fingers. I open my eyes and look at him. ‘Who told you you could move your hips?’

‘Sorry.’ I have never wanted him more. I look down to his pants. They are bulging with his erection. I know if I touch that rod it will be hot and pulsing. And the tip, my favorite part, that bit that looks like a miniature bum, will be satiny.

‘Go and lie face down over the arm of the couch.’

I slide off the table and go drape myself over the armrest. Brazenly I flip my skirt up towards my waist and present myself with my bare ass pushed high up into the air. I try to arrange my legs to be as alluring as possible, think of my bottom as a heart-shaped offering, but it is an odd position—exposed and vulnerable.

Perhaps even a little humiliating. Definitely a ready, begging position.

I am his to ride or do with as he pleases. I feel like a slut, his slut and love the fantasy of it. The loss of control and responsibility for my own body is strangely exhilarating and fantastically exciting. I have the sensation that we are no longer equal, that I have become nothing more than a faceless, anonymous body, an object for his pleasure, to do with as he pleases.

The fantasy of being taken and used selfishly by him makes heat pool between my legs. My own juices are leaking onto my thighs. He doesn’t move.

The anticipation is killing me.

Finally, the chair is being pushed back. A delicious shiver. I hear him come and stand over me. For what seems like ages he stands motionless looking down at me. The flat becomes very still. Nothing moves. It is as if time has been suspended. I want to speak, say something, but somehow I know I am not allowed to. I must not move or shift.

‘Spread open.’

Two words. Hard like pebbles. I obey instantly. I have to. I have become in the blink of an eye his little sex slave. Now I am splayed open like a starfish with an open pink eye. I feel the air around me move as he bends down and runs his fingers along the wet slit of my pussy and pushes two into the hole. The rush of hot blood into my head is amazing. I feel dizzy as if I am going to climax. My eyes close involuntarily, but he takes his fingers out.

‘A Chinese philosopher once said, ‘Beat your woman often—you may not know why, but she will.’

While I am trying to get my lust tangled mind around the philosophy of that phrase his palm crashes down hard on my butt. Only when his hand leaves and the cool air touches my skin do I feel the sting and scream. I try to wriggle away. His hands grip my legs hard, not with affection but the way my mother had, once, when I was a child and had unthinkingly tried to run across the road. So hard I cannot move an inch. My cheek is squashed into the cushion.

‘A relationship is the opportunity to try out shameful fantasies.’ His voice is level, reasonable and so dispassionate that I quit struggling.

He runs his tongue along my spine, kisses my shoulder blade. ‘Up to you. Want to see the fantasy through or want to quit now?’ His voice is now silky, delicious.

I am aroused, terribly so. At the same time I am not enjoying this new pain aspect that he has introduced, and yet I must see it through for the reward at the end of it.

‘See it through.’

‘So no more bullshit screaming and pathetic whimpers?’

Gosh, that was a flip. That he can turn his voice so suddenly cold and expressionless. I turn my cheek and look into his face, so close to mine. The eyes are beautiful, unsmiling, unfathomable.

‘No,’ I say softly.

He moves his face away and I feel his large hands gently stroke the soft burning skin of my butt cheeks. Then it is gone and the next crack on my left buttock is like a jolt of electricity. The air leaves my lungs. I bite the cushion and grunt. Fuck, how can this pain be sexual? My bare flesh is sizzling. I am no longer aroused but more alive than I have ever been. My bum is stinging so much. Tears are flowing from my eyes. Stop, stop, I am dying to cry out, but I don’t. It will stop on its own and I will be rewarded.

I begin to count them. Six. The tips of his fingers strike my vagina. I feel an unexpected and powerful spasm go right through me. Seven. I want a repeat of that strike. The urge makes me squirm and rearrange my butt. Eight. But he now confines the spanking to the base of my cheeks. The vibrations drill through into my groin. I am quivering with nerves. My ass is on fire. Concentric circles of pain are radiating out of it. My skin is bathed in perspiration. I’m not going to be able to take much more and yet I am still waiting for another strike from the tips of his fingers. Nine. Maybe he will stop at ten. He must stop at ten. Ten. That’s it. Surely that’s it. Eleven.

And then he stops. I don’t move. I actually feel humiliated. The tears will not stop flowing. But I wanted this. I asked for it, but tears will not stop. I feel used and abused. Feel like a slut or a whore. Even worse, the knowledge that I enjoyed it all—the attention, the pain, the fingers—in a sick, perverted way.

I hear the sound of the foil then his trousers being dropped, and suddenly the tears stop and my pussy opens out like a flower, oil drips from it, and shivers of strange pleasure shoot from my trembling sex. I remain quite still, unconsciously holding my breath as the rounded thickness of his cock forces itself into my dripping cunt.

It is such relief to feel it sinking into me, ending the punishment in the best way imaginable. It is what I have been waiting for. I always knew it would end this way. To be filled like this. I feel complete. I push my pelvis upwards and towards the hot, throbbing cock, ignoring, no, welcoming the pain of brushing my raw tush against his skin.

The ramming my soft center receives that morning.

The friction of my clit rubbing against the sofa mixes with the pain of his flesh striking my sore bottom, and his cock slipping and sliding in the sloppy, creamy excretions makes me ready to burst. Dizzy with erotic pleasure I bite the pillow and sob through the long, rippling climax.

I don’t feel him come, I know only my own intense pleasure. My reward. And an amazing reward it is, heightened and illuminated by the raw emotions and beating my little bottom endured that takes me to new textures, heights and depths.

I feel terrified and I feel incomparably and totally alive.

I feel sated and soiled.

Twenty-seven

I take the Tuesday afternoon off and spend the afternoon naked and sprawled on Vann’s day bed. As he paints me I watch him. He pouts when he paints. His concentration and dedication to his art is such that I am no longer a person, but an object. But when he finishes, smelling of turpentine and paints, he walks up to me, and with dark, passionate eyes, ravishes me. And each time he has found me ready, a match for his rough needs. I enjoy lying here, my mind drifting, his eyes on me. Being the object of his total attention. My phone rings. Without shifting my body I twist my eyeballs in the direction of the phone.

Lana.

I sit up. Vann frowns.

‘I’ve got to take this.’

‘Julie?’

She sounds panicked. ‘Yeah…’

‘Listen. I don’t want you to panic or anything, but Jack has been wounded.’

My bottom drops out of my world. ‘What?’

‘He’s all right. Blake has flown him back home. He’s been shot, but he’s all right. He will be all right. He’s in hospital now. And he’s being taken care of by the best doctors. Would you like to see him?’