Bare, White and Rosy

by Penny Birch

  ‘No. As long as somebody’s still producing the good stuff and I can afford it, why should I care what the rabble is drinking? Don’t tell me you disagree, because I know you and I know it’s bullshit.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, isn’t it a pity to destroy Hambling and Borse?’

  ‘It’s business, Natasha.’

  ‘Fair enough, but they’re paying me to bail them out, not flog the company to an asset-stripper. Anyway, I don’t have the authority.’

  ‘Maybe not, but you can present one of our subsidiaries as a genuine buyer.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Because we’ll pay you a percentage of what we make on the deal.’

  I was taken aback for a moment as I realised that she was offering to bribe me, and blatantly at that. Not that it was all that shocking, given some of the things I’d known her to do, but I’d already let my surprise show and didn’t answer immediately. She waited patiently as I finished my wine and opened the second bottle, not speaking until I’d refilled our glasses.

  ‘Well? You know it makes sense, Tasha.’

  ‘They’d be furious.’

  ‘Who cares what a couple of drunken old buffers think? Anyway, they don’t have to know you were in on the deal.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  She was right: I could do it, and she would be the only one who knew the truth. I smiled and raised my glass, to which she returned a wicked grin.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ I told her.

  ‘No,’ she answered, either oblivious to irony or fully aware that she was an evil, scheming little bitch. ‘Have you?’

  Her voice had changed in tone, growing distinctly warmer, and she was looking at me over the rim of her glass. I ignored her, piqued at the memory of her behaviour, only to think again. Her casual assumption of superiority had always annoyed me, and yet . . .

  ‘Before you came, I was going to eat my dinner in the bath,’ I told her, smiling as I fed her the line.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ she responded, as bold as ever.

  Nothing further needed to be said. I stood up and made for the bathroom, taking my glass with me. It was rather a fine bath, a big old-fashioned tub with plenty of room. I poured in a generous measure of bath oil and turned the taps on full, filling the room with the scents of heat and jasmine. Lydia hadn’t bothered to get up but was still seated at the table, watching me with a knowing, ever so slightly disdainful little smirk. I went to the bed, shook out my hair and began to undress – not a striptease, such as I would have given a man if he was watching me, but simply going nude without embarrassment. She had every right to see me naked, and I knew she would enjoy it without having to be rude.

  ‘Your turn,’ I told her as I came back to the table.

  She refilled her glass and stood up, but as I came close she gave me a solid slap on my bottom.

  ‘No,’ she told me. ‘You get in. I’ll watch.’

  Despite myself a little shiver ran through me, both at her tone and from the sudden, sharp sting where she’d smacked me. I crossed to the bathroom once more, sensing her eyes on my rear view and the red mark on my flesh. The bath was full, with bubbles already beginning to run over the side, so I hastily twisted the taps off, bending as I did so to let her see my pussy from behind – again not to be rude but to let her know that I didn’t mind what she saw.

  ‘In you get,’ she told me.

  She’d sat down on the loo, and watched as I climbed into the bath. The bubbles had come up so high that I was almost completely covered, just my boobs sticking out above the surface, looking big and pink and wet, feeling very vulnerable. Lydia watched, her smile now openly cruel.

  ‘You’re quite a big girl, aren’t you?’ she remarked. ‘Hold them up.’

  I obeyed, cupping my breasts in my hands and lifting them for her inspection, tingling with pleasure to be obeying her orders but not in the least ashamed. She was several inches shorter than me and pretty much flat-chested, but her waist was no slimmer, so it was impossible not to feel proud of myself as I showed off to her.

  ‘Put some food on them,’ she told me. She had collected our plates from the table, and handed me mine. ‘You’re going to eat your dinner off your tits.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather I ate it off yours?’

  ‘Shut up and do as you’re told.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Lydia.’

  ‘That’s better. That’s the Natasha I remember, you little slut. Now get on with it.’

  She sat back, watching and sipping her wine as I scraped the contents of my plate on to my chest. It was hot, stinging my skin, and slippery, bringing that deliciously rude sensation that comes with being thoroughly mucky. I put as much as I could on top of my tits, piling a little mound of rice and bits of meat and vegetable on each globe, but most of it slid off, down my cleavage and into the bath. It looked disgusting but felt lovely, especially with the ginger and chilli in the sauces making my nipples tingle. I was tempted to smear it all over myself, but I’d been ordered to eat.

  ‘You dirty pig,’ Lydia said, giggling, her eyes now bright with cruelty. ‘Go on, do it.’

  I took my fork, carefully scraped up some of the mess and brought it to my mouth. Lydia’s eyes were locked with mine as I ate, letting the sauce run down my chin. My nipples had gone stiff, one little pink bud peeping up through the mess, and as I took a second forkful I bumped it, giving myself a sharp little shock of pleasure and increasing my need to open my thighs to her. Her grin grew more evil still as I lifted my knees above the soap bubbles, well parted.

  ‘Come on in,’ I urged. ‘Clothed if you like.’

  She shook her head, but whether she wanted to play the stern mistress or was just being coy, or whatever her problem was, I no longer cared. Dropping my fork, I cupped my boobs, one plump, slippery globe in each hand, squeezing them and rubbing the mess over my skin before pulling them both up to lick my nipples and dirty my face. She picked up her own plate and began to eat, cool and poised while she watched me soil myself. Just that was enough to get me off, and I was going to masturbate for her when she abruptly stood up.

  ‘Roll over,’ she order. ‘Stick your bum up.’

  I obeyed without a second’s thought, turning over in the bath to stick my bare bottom up above the bubbles, my knees open to make very sure she had access to my pussy and bumhole as well as my cheeks. She slapped me, once, twice and a third time, making me gasp with each stinging impact on my wet skin, then suddenly overturned her plate and brought it down on to my bottom with a soggy slap. I felt the food squash out over my cheeks and between, soiling my pussy and spattering my thighs.

  She was laughing as she rubbed the mess into my bottom, and left the plate there, telling me to stay in place as she hastily began to undress. I watched from the corner of my eye, admiring her petite body and hoping she was going to make me be thoroughly rude with her before the evening was done. The plate slid slowly off my bottom as she stripped, leaving my filthy cheeks stuck high and open for her inspection, my bumhole still clean and pink between. Nude, she came back to me, slipped a hand between my thighs and rubbed me until I was panting and sticking myself up for more.

  ‘Yes, like that,’ I begged. ‘Bring me off, Lydia, and spank me too.’

  ‘Shut up, slut,’ she retorted, and stopped rubbing.

  Ignoring my groan of disappointment, she began to explore my bottom, stroking my cheeks and smearing the mess more evenly across them. Some of it had already slid between them, soiling my bottom hole, but she added more, squashing it into my slit and inserting something small but hard into my anus. I thought she was going to finger me and closed my eyes in expectation of the bliss of having my bum penetrated, but she simply left whatever she’d put in my hole and went back to fondling my cheeks. I tried to relax, telling myself there was no need to hurry, despite my already urgent need to come – but then whatever was up my bum started to burn. Lydia laughed as I began to wriggle, and planted a firm smack across
my cheeks, spattering herself with sauce.

  ‘It’s a piece of ginger,’ she told me. ‘Hurts, does it?’

  My response was a whimper, although the hot, loose sensation growing in my anus was more heat than pain. It made me want to stick my bottom up anyway, to be spanked and plugged and molested in any way she pleased.

  ‘Right up,’ she ordered. ‘I want your pussy.’

  I obeyed eagerly, lifting my bottom completely clear of the water and spreading my knees as wide as they would go. My hole felt open and ready, and I was expecting her fingers – only to have a handful of Thai food wadded up inside me. Lydia laughed, then gave a crow of delight and disgust as my hole closed to squeeze out the mess she’d just stuck up it. My bumhole was now burning and had begun to pulse on the ginger root, while my pussy was also beginning to sting and even my cheeks felt warm.

  Lydia began to play with my bottom, spanking me and tickling my holes, pinching my cheeks and occasionally pushing a teasing knuckle between my sex lips. She’d sat down on the edge of the bath, her thighs wide, her hand between, rubbing herself as she molested me. I began to shake helplessly as she amused herself with my body. Twice she scooped up a handful of mess from my cheeks and fed it to me, giggling lewdly as I gobbled it up like a pig feeding from the hand. More bits of ginger were stuck in up my bumhole and pussy, until I felt loose and open, utterly out of control. Her slaps became hard, until I was gasping and wriggling in the pain of a full-blown spanking.

  ‘Frig yourself off,’ she demanded suddenly. ‘Come on, slut, I want to see you get there.’

  I didn’t need to be told, but snatched back immediately, groping at my hot, eager pussy. She continued to spank me as I set my fingers to work, touching my burning bumhole to feel the pieces of ginger inside, plugging my cunt to leave myself agape in front of her, and starting to masturbate. I wanted her to see everything, to watch my fingers work in the slippery, fleshy folds of my sex, to see how excited she’d made me and how helpless I was under her command. I wanted her to punish me, spank my bare bottom until I howled, while I got off on my own humiliation. I wanted her to penetrate me, fill my bumhole and pussy with hot, slimy food, make me eat what had been up me while I came.

  She gave me everything, save that last deliciously dirty detail, and that only because we came at the same time, with her calling me a slut over and over again as I brought myself off in front of her, naked and grovelling in the mess she’d made of me, soiled and spanked and penetrated for her amusement.

  Three

  I FELT IMMENSELY smug the next morning, if perhaps not quite as smug as Lydia. After all, she knew she had me on a string, and that was that, while my own situation was anything but simple. I needed to think, and so instead of starting to engineer meetings as I’d intended, I took a long, hot bath – this time without Thai food.

  My original scheme had involved a good deal of duplicity, but Lydia’s visit had added a whole new dimension. For one thing I was going to have to be extremely careful about who knew what, including Percy. I would also need to decide exactly what to do before I started anything, and to think it all through very carefully in order to make sure there would be no mistakes and that as little as possible was left to chance.

  By midday I had worked out as much as I could, and only then did I turn my attention to other things. The opening of the plan was still the same, and I quickly discovered that Anton Yoshida was in Paris, where he intended to comment on the vintage as the initial reports came in. Earle Hayes was harder to track down, so, not having been to France since the beginning of my self-imposed exile, despite living within sight of the Cap de la Hague, I decided to work on Anton first. That meant securing an invitation to an event he would be attending, which was going to be tricky. Fortunately, Corkscrew magazine were holding one of their lunchtime tastings on the Friday and there was sure to be somebody on the panel who could make the relevant introductions.

  Percy was the man to secure me my place, and I spent the rest of the day at his flat. A single phone call took care of business, after which I told him what Lydia had done to me in the bath, but not the details of our business conversation. My description of having to stick my bottom out above the bubbles for spanking got him going, inevitably, and I spent a happy two hours being put through a punishment regime that culminated with him coming all over my hot cheeks.

  The Corkscrew tasting was intended to back up an article they were doing on the top wineries of the Napa Valley. I knew that would mean a series of big whites and strong, heavy reds, which I don’t really care for, so I resolved to spit and stay sober. They’d moved to new premises, the top two floors of a squat office block in Putney. The tasting room was large and open, looking out over the Thames, and they had lined the wines up on two sides, each decanter placed just so on the white tablecloth with glasses beside it and a place number large enough for even the most bibulous old hack to see.

  There was no shortage of bibulous old hacks, five in all, of assorted shapes and sizes, along with three smart young women, two of whom were from the magazine. I knew most of them more or less well, and had soon been introduced to the others. We were already running late, but it wasn’t until I spoke to Percy’s old friend John Thurston that I found out why.

  ‘Oh, we’re waiting for Earle Hayes. He’s always rather late. Likes to imagine himself as the grand old man, I suspect. Here he is now.’

  As he was speaking there had been a shift in the attention of those around me. I turned as well, to see the man himself standing in the doorway. I’d seen him a few times before, but more often in photographs, and he was taller than I’d have expected, although his heavy, serious face and shock of pale-grey hair were unmistakable. The two girls from the magazine were already fussing around him like those fish that accompany sharks, and most of the others had also moved towards him. I decided to wait my turn and continued talking to John, who was not one to be impressed by celebrity.

  ‘Extraordinary the way perfectly sensible people hang on to his every word,’ he remarked. ‘Still, I suppose today’s tasting is his speciality, and apparently he’s keen to increase his influence on the UK market, so there may well be money in sucking up to him. You’re with old Gilbert and Otto Borse, Percy tells me, so I suppose you really ought to be doing the same?’

  ‘I’m managing them so, yes, I suppose I should. There’s another man I want to contact too, Anton Yoshida. Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘A little. He’s a new boy, but extraordinarily influential in the Far East. His father’s some kind of bigwig in Japanese industry, I believe, which no doubt explains how he got his contacts. Yes, I can see you’d want to meet him, but I’m afraid I’m not even on nodding terms with the fellow. Let’s try little Jacqueline.’

  He signalled to one of the magazine girls, who came across. After a conversation in rapid French she trotted away again, returning with the information that Anton Yoshida was expected to be at the launch of a new brand of prestige Cognac that was being held at an appropriate hotel in the Place de Bourges. I thanked her and she left with a smile. Both men were now in my sights.

  ‘Good luck,’ John remarked, ‘although from what I hear he’s not easy to influence.’

  ‘I have my means,’ I assured him. ‘Speaking of which, any good reviews you might see your way to providing will be appreciated.’

  He raised his eyebrows fractionally. They were bushy and ginger, like his hair, while his body was big and slightly gangling with a pronounced paunch. He knew me well, and his reaction sent a sharp thrill through me at the thought of having to give myself to him. Not that he was on the day’s menu, because I was after bigger fish.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ I suggested.

  The tasting was of the sort that had always put the most strain on my professional objectivity. Just about all the wines were good of their type, so it was mainly a question of separating the merely vast from the colossal, especially with the reds. Not one of them had less than thirteen degrees of
alcohol, so that, despite my most determined efforts to spit, my head was spinning and my mouth tasted hot long before I’d reached the end of the table. The last wine was an absolute monster, fifteen degrees of alcohol and so dark it was almost black. I was holding it up to the light to admire the colour and earnestly wishing for a glass of cold Champagne when one of the magazine girls appeared by my side.

  ‘Natasha? May I introduce you to Mr Hayes? Mr Hayes, Miss Linnet.’

  Earle Hayes extended a hand, his normally stern face twisted into a beaming smile.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Linnet,’ he said, his accent strongly West Coast but with a curiously English inflection that might have been put on. ‘What do you make of the Bear’s Den?’

  ‘The name certainly suits it,’ I replied as the magazine girl gave a polite bob and moved away.

  He laughed, then peered deeply into his own glass as if expecting a small grizzly to emerge. I was more than a little surprised that he’d sought me out, but was not about to pass up the opportunity of ingratiating myself with him. It was also interesting, and amusing, to note that while the rest of us were tasting the wines blind, he obviously knew which was which.

  ‘Seriously, though,’ I went on, ‘I think it’s exceptional. The colour and concentration are extraordinary, the fruit, oak and tannin are in harmony, the flavours pronounced. It’s a Cabernet Sauvignon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Cabernet, obviously,’ he agreed. ‘I’d say forty-four, maybe a forty-five.’

  Having read his column a few times I knew what he was talking about: the mark he intended to give it by his system, with minus fifty meaning undrinkable and fifty representing perfection, as if there could be such a thing. I didn’t intend to argue, but I knew what his score would do to the price and made a mental note to try and get hold of a few cases. His tasting sheet showed the scores he’d given the other wines, and as I pretended to concentrate on the contents of my glass I was desperately trying to memorise them so that I could be in agreement with him over lunch while seeming keen to get my opinion in first.