‘I see,’ said Jeremy, then he gestured to his right. ‘This is my girlfriend Alice,’ he said. ‘Alice, this is Rochelle – from …’
‘From Paris,’ I said, holding out my hand to shake Alice’s. As I did, I noticed her look me up and down, appraisingly. Like Tatiana and Morgan, Jeremy and his partner were expensively, unadventurously chic.
I kept drinking, and chatting, borne along by the crowed and my increasing lightheadedness. I gave little of myself away, and equally I invested little in what people said to me. But I tried not to wish the evening away. I was determined to extract something of value from it. I just needed to be patient.
After a few hours, when I found myself installed on a bar-stool beside a New York art dealer who specialised in sourcing artworks for hotels such as this one, I felt Tatiana’s claw on my shoulder.
‘We’re moving on,’ she said.
‘Oh, well thanks for tonight,’ I started, with a certain feeling of relief.
Her pearl-white teeth flashed at me. ‘Oh, you don’t escape my clutches that easily, Roch,’ she said. She was purring again, but this time I thought of big cats rather than kittens. She laid her hand on my thigh. ‘Come on,’ she said, gesturing towards the door with her head.
I looked over and Morgan and some of the crowd they had hooked up with, including Jeremy and Alice, stood waiting for us.
I inhaled deeply. Here goes nothing, I thought, and I stood up, smoothing down my dress, and walked over to them.
***
It was dark, when I opened my eyes – pitch dark. For a while I had no idea where I was, but I was too scared to stand up and find out. I certainly wasn’t in Rachel’s flat, where the flimsy curtains meant that light poured in from dawn. But for a while I was flummoxed.
And then, as I lay in the blackness, listening to the breathing of strangers around me, it all came back to me. There was another short walk, up Park Lane, and then we entered a mansion block. I don’t know how many of us there were at this time – perhaps ten or twelve. There were a few couples, and then a few people who seemed, like me, to be unattached.
Upstairs, we were ushered into a breathtaking penthouse flat with a terrace looking over the darkness of Hyde Park. As we entered, I realised that Tatiana and Morgan had been at my shoulders since we’d left the hotel, like bodyguards. Only I sensed that they weren’t protecting me so much as preventing me from running away.
The penthouse was loft-style, with a vast bed almost dominating the space. I clocked the handcuffs on one of the bedposts almost immediately, and my heart skipped a beat. I’d wanted this, however little I now wanted to admit that to myself. I’d thirsted for sleaze, and now here it was. My throat was dry with apprehension, but at the same time my pussy was moistening.
‘More champagne!’ cried Tatiana, clapping her hands and then turning to look at me meaningfully. Her pupils were huge and I wondered if she was on something.
Then her claw closed in on one of my shoulders and she began steering me towards the bed. Puppet-like, I gave myself over to her. Suddenly I was without any will of my own, a plaything. Let them do what they want to me, I thought. Let them do their worst.
Tatiana sat on one end of the bed, pulling me down with her. For a moment she clasped my face in her hands, and I thought she was going to kiss me. It wouldn’t be so bad, I thought – she was an attractive woman. But instead she pushed me back on the bed and loosened the straps around my ankles then slipped my shoes off and let them fall to the floor. When that was done, she pushed the bottom of my dress up around my waist and busied herself with my panties. I lifted my arse to make it easier for her to pull them down. Bring it on, I thought. My cunt was dripping wet.
Tatiana sat back, throwing my panties to the floor. At either side of her appeared Morgan and Jeremy. She looked at them in turn, nodding to each, and as if by some prearranged ritual they both unzipped their trouser flies and started stripping. I watched, fingering my pussy, moaning at what I knew was to come. Then, as both men clambered onto the bed, I threw back my head and arched my body up to meet them, pulling the bodice top of my dress down so that my breasts overspilled the top.
Fingers played around my cunt now – I wasn’t sure whose, and I didn’t care. They could be Morgan’s or Jeremy’s, or even Tatiana’s – it didn’t matter, it felt so good. I raised one hand and bit my knuckles, unsurprised when I saw blood spring forth.
‘Fuck me,’ I heard myself pleading. ‘Fuck me now.’
For a while they tormented me, making me beg, and I thought again of how I’d turned the tables on Morgan the night before. Now it was very definitely not me who was in control. And in spite of everything, I kind of liked that.
Then suddenly they were up and upon me. Grabbing my upper legs, Morgan pulled me forwards on the bed so that my arse was on the edge of it, my legs dangling over. Then he knelt on the floor in front of me and brought the tip of his condomed cock towards me. As he entered me with a swift, hard thrust, I looked up into Tatiana’s face. She was smiling. It was a smile of victory, I thought – the smile of a woman whose plans are coming to fruition. She fixed me with her gaze as she began to take her own clothes off. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and as Morgan began to pump in and out of me, hard and fast, as if taking his revenge on me for the night before, she and I continued to look at each other.
Then, as if from nowhere, Alice appeared behind Tatiana and, looping her arms around her, clutched her breasts. Tatiana smiled at me again, but this time there was no decoding her expression. Her head cocked to one side, she began playing indolently with her pussy as she continued to watch her husband fuck the living daylights out of me. Then, stepping forward a little, she brought her wet fingers to my mouth. I opened my lips obediently and drank in some sweet nectar.
As Tatiana and Alice climbed onto the bed beside me, Jeremy appeared by my head, his cock – also condomed – straining towards my face. I took it in my fist and then brought it into my mouth. The women beside me began moaning, and though I couldn’t see them, I guessed that Alice was going down on Tatiana and that before long the latter was going to come. That sparked off my own orgasm, and I started pitching about beneath Morgan. This in turn got him and Jeremy going, and as Morgan started writhing and grunting and then forced himself far inside me and, with a bellow, stopped moving, his friend reached his climax in my mouth.
Morgan pulled back and out and stood looking down on the scene. Tatiana was in the full throes of her own orgasm now, having obviously heard all three of us come. When it was over, she lay there, spent, beside me and Jeremy. Alice, the only one not to have climaxed, rose to her knees and, as the rest of us looked on, our own sexes numbed by pleasure, she spread her lips wide with one hand and brought herself off with the other. At the moment of rapture, she fell back onto the bed, and for a long time there was silence.
I think I may have dozed for a while, for when I next sat up I was alone on the bed. When I looked about me I saw that everyone was sitting out on the terrace, drinking champagne and smoking. Some of them were naked. I reached down between my legs. I was a little sore, but I was grateful for the fact of having had another orgasm that wasn’t self-induced. If nothing much else, Morgan was a pretty good fuck.
I lay back, thinking about Konrad, missing him and wondering what he was doing, but also trying to assess where our relationship was going. I thought I’d ring him in the morning, talk to him frankly about the fact that the sex just wasn’t doing it for me and suggesting that we try to address the problem.
As I lay back on the sheets, considering all this, I felt a presence by the bed, and looking up I saw Tatiana standing over me. That same half-smile played about her lips.
‘Enjoy that, Roch?’ she purred, and this time it was predatory.
I didn’t reply – I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly I was a little fearful at this hold she and Morgan seemed to be developing over me.
She stepped closer. She was naked still, but she had on a pair of patent bl
ack stilettos. I remembered her conservative pumps of earlier in the evening and wondered where she’d got these from.
She put one knee on the bed and leaned forwards over me. Her breath was sharp with champagne. She hissed at me.
‘I hope you realise that you’ve been a very very naughty girl and that I have to punish you?’
I swallowed hard. I’d been there before and enjoyed it, but that was with a lover and not a virtual stranger, and with a man, not a woman.
Taking me roughly by the shoulders, Tatiana rolled me over on the bed so that I was lying face down.
‘Stretch your arms forward,’ she said, and I remembered the manacles on the bedposts. Sure enough, I heard a click as they opened and then felt the cool metal on the flesh of my wrists as she encircled them. They clicked again, and I tugged and realised I was secured to the bed.
I looked over my shoulder. Tatiana had crossed the room to fetch something and was now heading back over to me. She held something in her hand, and as she came closer I realised it was a spanking paddle.
I held my breath as I felt her climb onto the bed and then straddle me. Then I exhaled as I felt the smooth leather caress me. For a while she was happy to just move it over my goosepimpled flesh, almost lovingly, it seemed. Occasionally she’d let out a purr of what sounded like contentment. But then suddenly she snapped.
‘So you fuck other people’s husbands, do you?’ she snarled, and I spasmed as the paddle came down on my bare buttocks.
‘You dirty dirty bitch,’ she added, striking me again, and then, ‘So you let strangers go down on you, do you? Well, take this.’
This time it was almost too hard. I was an amateur at this, I realised – what I’d done with my ex-lover had been more tomfoolery. Tatiana was taking it beyond the level of a game; in some part of herself, she really was angry with me. I couldn’t understand why she seemed complicit in Morgan’s actions yet felt the need to hurt me. Or maybe she was just getting so caught up in the act that her emotions had got out of control – with a little help from the champagne.
As if sensing that I had had enough – or perhaps that she herself risked spiralling out of control – she tossed the paddle to the floor then reached up and freed my hands from the manacles. Rolling me over onto my side she looked into my face, and as I returned her stare she let her hand drop to my pussy and, pushing all five digits inside, began fingerfucking me. Then she lowered her head and brought her lips to me. I opened my mouth and our tongues began to dance around each other. After a while she took one of my hands and guided it to her own pussy. I bunched up my fingers and inserted them inside her. As I did so, I felt movement on the bed behind me, and glancing over my shoulder saw Alice clambering on. Spooning me tight so that I felt her breasts and pussy against my back and buttocks, she reached round and let her fingers flutter about my nipples.
For a while Tatiana and I matched each other’s rhythms, and when we came, we came together. Alice, pinching my nipple between the fingers of one hand and fingering her clit with the other, came hot on our heels.
***
I lay alone in the dark remembering all this, and then I got up and, sneaking around so as not to wake any of the prone bodies littered about me, located my clothes at the end of the bed and pulled them on hurriedly. Then I crept out of the penthouse and took the lift down to the ground floor.
In the apartment lobby, a doorman looked at me blankly. Despite my state of dishevelment and the fact I was completely overdressed, his face betrayed no surprise. He was either incredibly good at his job, I thought, or he’d seen it all before.
I spilled out of the door onto Park Lane. The sunlight made me dizzy and I held my hand up in front of my eyes, wincing.
I couldn’t remember what happened after Tatiana and I fucked – it all became a bit of a blur. I recalled sitting up, dazed, and noticing that many of the others had come in from the terrace and had presumably been watching the three of us on the bed. Then there was nothing much. Perhaps I’d simply fallen asleep, drunk and exhausted.
As I stalked across Hyde Park in my ludicrous Space Age wedges and wilted dress, I replayed the events of the night in my head again. I didn’t feel shame, exactly, but I felt confusion. And I felt disappointed that, in spite of all my intentions, I’d got myself into trouble after all. I’d let a bunch of strangers take advantage of me and, though I’d been willing at the time, it felt all wrong. I didn’t want anything to do with them again, yet I knew that Tatiana and Morgan wouldn’t want to draw a line under it.
The sad truth was that I didn’t fancy either of them. Morgan might be a decent fuck, but he wasn’t my type at all; there was no way I would have picked him out had he not come in search of me and found me in a moment of weakness. The same went for Tatiana – although we hadn’t had any problem fucking each other the previous night, she didn’t really do it for me. She’d taken advantage of a moment when she knew I was incapable of saying no.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like girls. As I said, I often thought about the bodies of the other girls at Club GaGa, when I was wanking at home. Walking around half-naked or naked with other beautiful girls in the same state, backstage at the club, did make me feel horny too. I’d never got off with any of them, but I had slept with a few girls in the past.
The first was at the terrible English boarding school that my parents packed me of to, and that episode basically came about because I was lonely and confused. I was seeking comfort, and instead I got sex.
I was in my bed in the dorm. It was the early hours of the morning, and I’d been unable to get to sleep. I’d only been at the school about a week and I felt lost and abandoned. I didn’t want to make any friends because I didn’t count on being there very long. Exhausted from tossing and turning, I slipped my pyjama trousers down around my thighs and started rubbing at my pussy. I tried to be quiet, of course, but one of the other girls must have been awake too and heard my breathing accelerate, for suddenly there was a dark figure leaning over my bed.
‘Can I help you with that?’ said a voice that I recognised belonged to Aileen, a pretty Irish redhead with – I’d noticed in the changing room before gym – great boobs.
‘Sure,’ I said, peeling back the bedclothes and letting her in.
She slid down beside me, and it quickly became clear that this wasn’t her first time with a girl. She knew exactly where to touch me, and before long, as she stroked her long fingers down over my clit and then teased them at my hole before starting the whole process again, I had to pull a pillow out from under my head and hold it over my face to stifle my moans and try to stop myself waking up the whole dorm.
We didn’t kiss at any point. For most of the time, her head was on my chest, her tongue encircling each nipple in turn, over and over. And I didn’t come, although I did feel an immense wave of warmth and wellbeing.
Afterwards we lay there, and I told her I was a virgin. She asked me if I wanted to fuck her and I said I wasn’t sure. She told me there could always be a next time. Then she reached down and wanked herself into orgasm, holding my hand, her fingers tightening around mine as she came, silently, head thrown back against the pillow, mouth wide open and eyes squeezed shut.
‘That looked fun,’ I whispered, and she leaned over and kissed my forehead.
‘It was,’ she said. ‘Next time I’ll teach you how.’
The next morning, I was embarrassed and avoided looking at Aileen or having anything to do with her. That made my life at the school even more stressful, and of course by raising new questions about my sexuality it made me feel even more confused about what was happening in my life. Though I’d never slept with anyone, I’d had boyfriends and made out with them. This extra question over my future – my whole identity – made me anxious.
After a few days, Aileen accosted me in a corridor and dragged me into a nearby store cupboard, where she kissed me brutally on the lips. My ignoring her, she said, was driving her crazy. She couldn’t stop thinking about me.
<
br /> I told her how bad I felt, that I liked her and wanted to be her friend but was unsure how I felt about what had happened. I just wasn’t sure I liked girls, I told her, and it seemed wrong to carry on until I was more sure.
Aileen laughed ironically. ‘Look,’ she said, touching my shoulder. ‘I really don’t mind if you use and abuse me to discover yourself. I’m good for the ride. It’s not as if I’m talking about us falling in love and spending the rest of our lives together.’
I wasn’t sure to begin with, but Aileen appeared at my bed that night and after two blissful hours I knew what it was to come and I knew what it was to give pleasure to another woman. I knew every corner and crevice of her body intimately, and she knew mine. I still wasn’t in love with her, but she had given me an incredible gift and for the rest of my short-lived time at the Grove Academy, before I managed to get myself thrown out, we fucked whenever we could, wherever we could get away with it – in our beds in the dorm, in the middle of the night; behind the boathouse down by the river; even, once, in the library, up against the bookshelves late one evening, after all the other students had headed upstairs.
I left the Grove Academy suddenly, without a word to Aileen, and though I missed her, I didn’t make any attempt to keep in touch. The Grove was part of my past now, and I felt that staying in contact with her would keep it alive in my mind. I wanted to break free and make a new start.
I’m not sure if Aileen tried to contact me, because I moved back to Paris and into the squat, so I was basically unfindable. I didn’t do any social networking or anything in the public eye so I really was out of the loop.
At the squat I led a wild life, losing my virginity to a man, to Lex, who lived there with his girlfriend Corinne. The place was essentially a commune, with much of the free living that that implies. For a while I was part of a threesome with Lex and Corinne, although all three of us slept with whoever we wanted to, men and women. There were no kids around, so we didn’t feel we needed to set any moral boundaries. We were free-spirited and happy to live without rules or consequences, knowing that it couldn’t last but determined to appreciate it as long as it did.
The Exchange (Mischief Books) Page 9