by Vina Jackson
‘I do.’
In his mind over the past few days, Dominik had long rehearsed the situation, imagining some of the games they could play, indulge in, how he could get the best out of Liana’s undeniable nature, make her properly his. He’d always been ignorant or confused about the etiquette of such situations. Should he offer her a drink, a coffee, something stronger, and engage in innocuous conversation to delay the inevitable moment when they would cross into intimacy? Walk along the promenade like a real couple? Or should they proceed straight to the hotel, barely half a mile down the seafront in the direction of Hove? Maybe someone should one day write a book about the dos and don’ts of BDSM encounters.
The room.
In the narrow lift taking them to the top floor, Liana was pressed tight against him, the rucksack on her back restricting her movements.
‘Kiss me,’ Dominik ordered.
She got up on tiptoe and he lowered his lips to meet her. She tasted of mint chewing gum.
‘I didn’t choose the room; it was the only one left. I know it’s a bit ridiculous,’ he apologised as he unlocked the door and ushered Liana in and she was exposed to the garish decor.
‘Wow,’ she said, looking at the parade of framed brassieres and thongs circling the walls of the small room like a line of exhibits in a museum. ‘Nifty. Although most of them don’t appear to be my size, I fear …’
She slid the straps of the rucksack from her shoulders and it dropped to the floor.
‘What have you got in there, all your mortal belongings?’ Dominik queried.
‘Nah,’ Liana said. ‘Stuff, you know. Some toys …’
‘A bit presumptuous of you, no? Did I say you should bring things along?’
‘I just assumed from our chats that you were unlikely to have your own …’
‘We might not need them.’
‘Oh …’ She smiled.
Dominic dropped his room keys on the bedside table and turned to face her. ‘Let me see you, then. Undress.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
She gave him a look of uncertainty, realising they had reached a point of no return.
‘As we agreed,’ she said firmly, strengthening her resolve. ‘No permanent marks?’
‘Understood. And you remember your safe word?’
‘Of course.’
Liana undressed until all she was wearing was the thin strip of silk around her neck, and the matching bracelets on her wrists.
She was thin and fragile, but beautifully proportioned. The valley leading to her small breasts was peppered by freckles, as were her forearms, her nipples a subtle reddish hue, her thighs milky and, since the photo she had sent him, she had shaved below so that he could now make out a series of intimate piercings. There was a minuscule ring emerging from the actual bud of her clitoris and, below, two larger steel rings seemingly holding her labia apart.
Dominik held his breath.
He knew he could have stood there gazing at the intricate geometry of her cunt and its cyberpunk private landscape of flesh and steel for hours on end out of sheer fascination.
‘Turn round,’ he ordered her.
She swivelled on one foot like a ballerina rehearsing her stage movements.
Her narrow buttocks were now clean of past bruises.
‘Bend.’
Liana followed his instructions, her feet shuffling on the room’s thin carpet as she leaned over at a ninety-degree angle, her chest parallel to the floor, her arse prominently on display, the dark line bisecting her cheeks like a frontier carved by a knife, straight and inviolable.
‘Legs apart.’
She obeyed.
Dominik approached her, passed his hand between her legs, feeling the heat, extending a finger to gauge her wetness, slipped it inside to get a taste of her heat, brushing against the rings, pulled gently on one of the labia adornments. He heard and felt Liana holding her breath as he did so.
He felt a compulsion to spank her arse cheeks with terrible strength but resisted the craving. He had all the time in the world. There was no hurry. She had submitted already. A part of him wondered why; he was still a stranger to her. As she was to him. He yearned to hear her story, every small step that had brought her to this place and time. The tale of every man who had touched her, made her who she was. Each degree of further submission on a road of unknown destination.
‘Hold yourself open,’ he barked hoarsely.
Still bent over, Liana brought her hands back and held her arse cheeks apart, providing him with an unimpeded view of the pucker of her arsehole, and the concentric lines and folds of flesh surrounding it like a target and the coral pinkness of her cunt.
It was a spectacle he knew he would never tire of.
‘Who owns you now?’ he asked the young woman as she stood with her back to him, fully displayed.
‘You own me.’
‘And what do you want now?’ he asked.
‘I want you to use me, to fuck me.’
‘Why?’
For a brief moment, she was taken aback, as if she hadn’t come prepared for the question. ‘Because it makes me feel alive,’ she finally said.
‘Alive?’ he queried.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s just the way I feel when a man wants me this way. I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s just the way I am, I suppose …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Get up.’
She stood up, abandoning the humiliating position she had been holding. Turned to face him, legs still wide apart.
Dominik looked into her eyes. It was the same curious combination of shame, craving, pride and arousal he had seen so often in Kathryn’s eyes. And in Summer’s.
‘Come.’
She stepped up to him. Her nipples were hard, they grazed against his shirt. He lowered his hands and kneaded her arse. Her softness was exquisite for such a slender woman. He again passed his hands between her legs, took hold of the small ring threaded through her clit and pressed hard against the nub of flesh it highlighted. Liana shuddered.
‘How long have you had the rings?’ he asked her.
‘Just under a year.’
‘Your decision?’
‘Not strictly speaking …’ She hesitated, as if reluctant to confirm his suspicions.
‘Who?’
‘I was with a dom for some months. Met him at a fetish club in London.’
‘And?’
‘He had me pierced. First my labia, and finally my clit.’
‘Did it hurt?’
‘The clit one hurt like hell. I was told the guy at the tattoo salon who did it was only going to pass the needle through the clit’s hood, just a harmless flap of skin, and it came as a shock. I almost passed out in pain.’
‘Hmm …’
‘My dom wanted to go further. Wanted me to get a piercing along my perineum, which he would then put a small metal tag through, you know, like a soldier’s dog tag, where his name would be carved, or at any rate something that would indicate I was his property. But we fell apart before that.’
‘But you kept the other piercings?’
‘Yes. I am what I am,’ Liana said, with a strong hint of pride.
Pensive, Dominik looked down at the top of her head.
Right now, he wanted her badly, although he knew that she was at his service and he would only have to say a single word and the sex would be just another transaction between consenting adults. But a nagging thought at the back of his mind also told him he wanted more than sex. Liana was the type of submissive woman whom he wanted not so much to own or use sexually, but that he wanted to possess fully – both her body and her mind. To understand what made her tick. Why the essence of her submissiveness was also the very thing of beauty that attracted him. Damn!
Why did he make things so complicated for himself?
At least there was the sex. He sighed.
‘On your knees,’ he instructed her.
She kneeled down,
understanding his instructions, and raised a hand to his belt and began to unbutton his trousers.
Dominik closed his eyes as he felt her pull his cock out from his underpants and take it into the ardent heat of her mouth.
She was talented and he came quickly. Without waiting for any further instruction, she greedily swallowed his come.
Her head bobbed away from his crotch and there was a tumultuous moment of silence as the two of them pondered what was about to happen next. The hotel room’s window was half open and the sound of the herring gulls flying wildly across the line of the seafront erupted into a deafening row.
‘Get on the bed. On all fours,’ Dominik demanded.
Liana rose from the floor. Her knees were pink from the position she had been holding. She moved to the bed and positioned herself, her back to him as he expected, presenting her arse.
Dominik undressed, untidily shedding his clothes on the floor.
His eyes were fixed on the rosebud of her anus.
Briefly wondering whether he might be too thick for her, too big, considering the slightness of her frame, the way her pelvic bones poked out in the posture she was impudently holding.
He slipped on a condom and stepped onto the bed which creaked under his additional weight. Crouching just above Liana, his semi-hard cock brushing against the small of her back, in a stand-up parody of spooning. He hadn’t brought lubricant and reluctantly forced himself to puncture the tense nature of the moment by asking her if she had any in her rucksack of unknown delights. She had. He squeezed some on his fingers and over her tight opening and brought them down to spread the dampness around her sphincter.
All of a sudden he felt an irresistible compulsion to kiss the young woman again, to feel the taste of her breath in his mouth. He leaned closer but positioned as he was, ready to breach her, his mouth was too far from her lips. Instead he allowed his tongue to slip across the lobe of her left ear and was about to affectionately nibble it with his teeth when the fragrance of her hair reached his nostril. It was like a dagger to his heart.
It wasn’t a specific perfume, more the background of the shampoo she had used to wash her short auburn hair with before travelling to this assignment. The faded perfume was laced with her own natural scent, a subtle blend of spices, musk and green flower notes, the tang of a woman.
A smell that he could recognise anywhere.
The same as Summer’s.
A million memories came flooding back like a torrent, draining emotion, highs and lows in their wake.
If he closed his eyes now, he could pretend he was fucking Summer.
But he didn’t want to pretend.
And realised he’d gone limp and the condom was hanging by a thread from his shrivelled cock.
Below him, he felt Liana tense, as if her own body had become aware of the change in their circumstances.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, but he knew he would be unable to perform further. ‘It’s just not going to work,’ he apologised and moved away from her and the bed.
‘Please …’ Liana began to plead as she watched Dominik hastily dress, oblivious to her nudity and her state of arousal.
‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ was all he could say. How could he explain it to her without making things worse?
Later, having pacified the uncomprehending Liana and paid for a cab to get her home by way of apology, Dominik felt a need for fresh air, if only to clear the heavy cloud of confusion orbiting his brain, and took to the sea front. It was still mid-afternoon. Time had passed so slowly today.
The sea was sullen, spread out all the way to a grey horizon, lines of white dotting its surface, the ruins of the old West Pier emerging from the dormant waves like the skeleton of some rusty prehistoric animal.
Holidaymakers and idle conventioneers shared the promenade with children and joggers, dodging the cyclists who rushed about in their badly marked allocated lane as if they owned it. Dominik felt hollow and as his stomach rumbled he remembered that he hadn’t eaten anything today, having rushed to catch the train at Waterloo without helping himself to any breakfast. He remembered the fish and chip stand at the entrance of the main Palace Pier and he turned in its direction, walking briskly by the parade of hotels, past the Metropole, the concrete mass of the Brighton Conference Centre, and the Old Ship, before crossing towards the pier.
The comfort of the chips warmed him both physically and psychologically, unsophisticated but necessary comfort food for the soul. He quickly gulped them down to the very last crumb and was tempted to take a walk up West Street in search of a small second-hand bookshop he had once visited ten years earlier. By now, he’d decided he would stay the night as the hotel room at the Pelirocco had already been paid for and he was in no rush to return to London.
About to turn the corner, his attention was caught by the multitude of posters displayed outside the Brighton Centre. As well as hosting conferences and conventions, the warren-like building was also a major venue for music concerts and even featured ice-skating in the summer.
He had once seen Arcade Fire here when he had been unable to get tickets for their sold-out London gig. Maybe some music tonight would clear his mind. None of the posters displayed outside the centre appeared to be for tonight though. He walked in to the venue and located the box office.
Yes, there was a concert scheduled for the evening, but it wasn’t heavily advertised, although tickets were on sale, he was told. They were quite cheap, it was pointed out to him, as the band playing saw this as something of a warm-up, a rehearsal for a possible tour away from the prying eyes of the press and fans.
‘Do they have a name, at least?’ Dominik asked the cashier.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ the frumpy middleaged woman remarked, and pulled out a small flyer which she handed over to him. She read from it. ‘They’re called Groucho Nights. Can’t say I’ve heard of them before. They’ve got some classical violin girl playing with them.’ She peered at the small print. ‘Some foreign name …’
Dominik took hold of the flimsy flyer.
‘Featuring Summer Zahova.’
He just stood there for a while, silent, stunned.
‘Groucho Nights, featuring Summer Zahova – One Night Only, first UK performance before their European Tour
‘Their First Complete Public Performance Together.’
‘So do you want a ticket?’ The cashier’s voice brought him back to reality. ‘Yes, yes, of course.’
He handed over some cash.
The gig was not until 8.30. Almost five hours to go.
He was about to make his way back onto the street when a thought occurred to him. He doubled back and asked the cashier, who was by now reading a celebrity magazine. ‘Do you know if tonight’s band are already here? Maybe doing a soundcheck?’
‘How would I know?’ was her desultory response. ‘There’s a duty manager on the first floor. He might be able to help you.’
Dominik rushed upstairs, searching for the office where he might get his question answered.
After being bounced from one jobsworth to another, he finally found a guy who seemed to know what he was talking about but was warned that rehearsals were essentially private and that no members of the public were allowed to watch.
‘But are the musicians already here?’ he asked.
And just as he did so, the muffled sound of an electrically amplified violin, or maybe it was merely a guitar, reached his ears, wafting upwards on invisible wings of song from the distant depths of the building.
‘Is that them? The rehearsal is already under way, isn’t it?’
The other man nodded.
‘I need to see one of the musicians, the violin player, she’s called Summer Zahova,’ Dominik insisted.
‘They can’t be disturbed,’ he was told.
‘She knows me. She will come, you’ll see. I promise you.’
‘Listen, mate, it just ain’t possible.’
Feeli
ng like a walking cliché, Dominik pulled a twenty-pound note from his wallet and offered it to the centre staffer. ‘Tell her it’s Dominik, and that I need to talk to her. If she comes back, I’ll give you another note.’
The young guy looked dubious, but pocketed the money.
‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘I’m not making any promises. I just hope they’re not going to complain if I intrude on their rehearsal. But I’ll see what I can do.’ He skipped his way to the stairs.
Dominik stood there, rooted to the spot, the sounds of the music reaching him, loud, muffled, broken, dominated by the thump of drums and bass drowning out any sense of melody.
It felt like an eternity to wait.
The distant music came to an end, or maybe it had just faded away, echoing its way into silence.
He had his eyes fixed on the stairs that led to the centre’s foyer and underground performance spaces but no one came up.
Dominik had his back to the lift and heard a rush of air as the car reached the floor he was on. He turned round. The door opened.
‘There you are.’
The staffer walked out with a smile on his face. Followed by Summer.
She wore tight skinny jeans and a simple white silk blouse, her hair its customary jungle of fiery curls. She hadn’t changed one bit. She looked at him in silence.
The centre staffer also gazed at Dominik, with an air of expectancy. Dominik snapped out of his reverie, remembering his promise, and dug a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulling out a further banknote which he handed to the guy.
‘Thanks, mate.’
He walked away, leaving Dominik and Summer alone.
Neither of them had yet spoken a word.
Looking at each other in silence, hesitant, tentative, as if locked in a contest as to who would utter the first words. Thoughts crashing in their minds like a nuclear reactor stampeding and veering wildly out of control.
Dominik was the one who finally realised he had to take the initiative.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi.’ Her voice was quiet, enquiring.
‘I happened to be in Brighton and found out by total coincidence you were playing here tonight …’
‘Yes, it’s not heavily advertised. It’s the way we wanted it to be. Away from prying eyes. To see how we would gel as a group.’