Out of the Darkness

by Juliette Banks

  I had a few love affairs, but I had never fallen in love. I saw most for what they were, men who viewed a beautiful woman as another symbol of their success, like expensive sports cars, yachts, and luxury villas. I tried to stay away from that sort of man, but I wasn't always clever enough to spot the ones who should be avoided at all costs. They didn't all look like Russian gangsters.

  My mind went back to my worst 'mistake.'

  The man who introduced me to the 'darker arts,' as I often referred to them, was Leon, a French multi-millionaire who invited me for dinner, which turned out to be on his yacht in the Mediterranean. He sent his private jet to transport me from London to St Tropez.

  "Isn't this rather a long way to go for dinner?" I asked, telling him that I had a fashion shoot in Paris the following day.

  "Not at all, ma chère. I will fly you down tomorrow at midday. We can have dinner on the yacht and you can stay overnight. In the morning, I’ll have my plane fly you to Paris. Il n'y a pas de problème."

  Leon had a very slight air of menace to him, even though he was handsome beyond words, and I hesitated briefly. He leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips and, in a moment of insanity I accepted his invitation.

  The yacht was enormous and very luxurious. He had a chef cook us a magnificent dinner and serve it on the private deck that lay outside his personal quarters where, he informed me, only very special people were invited. It was obvious that the price of dinner was to be sex, but it was to be of a type I had never encountered before, even if other men had hinted at it from time to time.

  We drank champagne and the heady mix of that, together with the velvety Mediterranean night air and the gentle rocking of the boat, made me lower my defenses. When he stood and took my hand and led me into his cabin, I offered no resistance at all.

  I was wearing just a simple, silk shift, with spaghetti straps and a thong. It took a second for Leon's practiced hands to remove my dress, which fluttered down around my feet. He bent and kissed my breasts and ran his hands over my bottom.

  "You are so beautiful. Do you understand how you make men wild with lust when they see you?" He didn't seem to expect an answer to his question. His voice became deeper and more masculine than ever. "I would love to leave my marks on you. Have you ever been whipped, ma chère?"

  He must have sensed my alarm, for he held me a little closer and kissed me on the lips, reaching the tip of his tongue to meet mine.

  "Don't be afraid. I’ll try not to be too harsh with you for your first time."

  Although I was trembling, it wasn't entirely because of fear. I felt something deep within me—something that excited me.

  Leon sensed it too. "I think you would like to try, no? You must try everything once in life, I think."

  I didn’t know what to do. I had thought myself so grown up and sophisticated, but underneath I was just a nineteen-year-old London girl, in a situation with a forty-year-old wealthy and powerful man, and I allowed myself to be swept along in the moment.

  Leon sensed my acquiescence and led me towards the bed. His voice had become a little harsher. "Lie flat on the bed, on your stomach." He put a couple of pillows in the middle of the bed and indicated for me to lie over them.

  I did as he instructed, and from somewhere, he produced a pair of handcuffs, which he attached to my wrists. He then pulled my arms above my head and hooked them on to a bar that formed part of the headboard. My legs were pulled apart and each ankle was attached to a strap that came from beneath the bed. He bent over and ripped my thong from me, and I began to panic and wonder what I had got myself into. I sensed that Leon wanted more than a little light spanking.

  My rapid breathing must have alerted him to the need to calm me a little. He sat on the side of the bed and ran his hands over my skin, bending and kissing me from time to time.

  "Don't be afraid, ma chère. You may find you like what I do to you very much. I am opening the door to an exciting new life for you."

  His hand went down between my legs where, despite my fear, the evidence of my excitement could be felt. He massaged my clitoris and slipped a finger inside me for a few moments, stroking me until he could sense that I was calmer.

  All went quiet for a few seconds as he left my side. I heard a door open, but I couldn’t see what he was fetching. He returned and placed some items at the end of the bed, out of sight. There was a short pause until I felt his palm come down on to my bottom, which startled me. I released the breath I had been holding. He began to slap me, firmly but slowly, one cheek at a time. My bottom started to feel hot, but the pain was bearable, and I even felt excitement build up within me. I craved something hard inside me.

  But Leon was nowhere near that stage of the proceedings yet. He knelt on the bed beside me and began to slap me harder. I couldn't stop a little gasp escaping from my mouth from time to time as the pain began to penetrate my brain.

  "Yes, express your pain. Shout it out. Don’t worry, there is no one else on board now but us."

  I didn't know whether that last sentence was meant to calm me or terrify me. I inclined towards the latter. I recognized that I was completely at this man's mercy. He could do whatever he wanted with me and there was nothing I could do to stop him. That thought both terrified me and excited me beyond measure.

  He must have hit me twenty or thirty times—I lost count—before he paused. Was he going to fuck me now? He stood up and removed his shirt to reveal a well-toned and suntanned body. He was obviously a man who liked to take care of himself.

  He leaned over and stroked my back and kissed me on my now heated bottom. "That has warmed us up nicely. Now we are going to step things up a bit." I noticed he said 'we,' when I was making none of the decisions. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw that he was holding a cane in his right hand. For the first time the fear overtook the sexual longing.

  His voice lost some of its earlier tenderness. "Now, to take care of business."

  He raised his arm to shoulder height and brought the cane down hard on my buttocks, and the pain was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I screamed, but that seemed to excite him. He looked at my face, pressed against the sheet, and his eyes had a hard glint to them.

  I endured the cane for what seemed like forever, but was probably no more than thirty strokes, but each one brought fresh agony. I screamed, I begged, I cried—but he was in a place where I couldn’t reach him. Finally, my ordeal came to an end when he flung the cane to the ground and dropped his trousers. I lay in a pain-induced stupor while he climbed over my body and took me from behind, his body rising and lowering over my painful buttocks. With every hard thrust into me he shouted out in French until he came with a shudder and a loud groan and collapsed on to my back before rolling off to the side. Within minutes, he was sleeping soundly while I lay sobbing, still tied to the bed.

  I slept fitfully for short periods during the night and woke as the sun was rising. He had woken during the night and fucked me again, but still didn’t untie me, and when I awoke in the morning I was so stiff and still in such pain that, even when he unfastened me from the bed, I lay for a while, unwilling to move my stiff, aching body.

  Leon was a changed man from the night before. He acted as though the previous night had never happened. He was almost cheerful.

  "Why don't you take your shower, ma chère, and make yourself ready for your flight to Paris. The car will be here to take you to the airport in thirty minutes and you can take breakfast on board. I need to stay here for a few days, so you don't mind if you fly up there alone, do you?"

  I didn’t care where I went, or who took me, so long as I could escape from Leon. If this was a gentle introduction to his type of sex, I didn't want to stick around for the more advanced levels. I went into the bathroom and saw the livid purple and scarlet stripes and bruises that he had inflicted on my bottom and the backs of my thighs, as well as the restraint marks on my wrists and ankles. There was no way that I could take part in the photo session in Par
is but I said nothing to him about that, in case he tried to persuade me to stay.

  I had brought a case with a selection of clothes with me from London and I found a loose cotton shift that hid most of the marks, and applied make-up to the rest. I was much too sore to wear jeans or a tight fitted dress. I barely had time to brush my hair and apply a little make-up to my face for the inevitable press photographers who hung around airports, longing to take shots of models or actresses looking the worse for wear, which they could sell to any number of newspapers and magazines.

  Leon accompanied me to the car and kissed me on both cheeks in the Gallic way, as though we had merely met for coffee.

  "You were wonderful, my darling. We must do it again soon, yes?"

  Then he turned and walked away without a glance. I had been dismissed, and he had never once spoken my name.

  At the airport, I telephoned my agency and told them I wasn’t well and that I would be unable to fulfill the booking in Paris. I left the private jet at Orly airport and hopped on a flight to London, and home. It was a shame that a photograph of me arriving at Orly made the cover of a French weekly gossip magazine. The client and my agency were most displeased at my duplicity, but I could tell no one of the real reason why I didn’t make the photo shoot.

  I learned my lesson after my experience in St. Tropez with Leon and I tried never to put myself in such a vulnerable situation after that. I never met Leon again, but I heard a year later that he had died of a drug overdose and that they had found a woman in the room with him, tied up and badly beaten. I had had a lucky escape.

  Chapter 2

  On the flight to New York, the steward leaned over and asked if I would like a pre-dinner drink and I looked up from my book.

  "Just a glass of water, please," I said. I had learned over the years that flying was quite dehydrating, and that alcohol made the problem worse. As a model, my appearance was all I had to sell, so, if I wanted a long career, then I had to make a few sacrifices along the way. I was also much more wary after my experience all those years before in St. Tropez. I liked to keep my wits about me, especially where men were concerned, so I only really relaxed when I had people around me whom I felt I could trust.

  The steward brought me the water and I was about to settle down again with my book when I saw that the man from the departure lounge had stopped next to my seat and was looking down at my book.

  "You're reading one of mine," was his introduction.

  I was startled and looked again at the front cover, momentarily confused. The author was a woman.

  He saw the puzzlement in my face and smiled. "I didn’t write it. I own the firm that published it. It’s one of our top sellers at the moment."

  "Oh, I see. Well I can understand why. It is a very absorbing book. I can hardly put it down."

  "So I’ve noticed."

  There was a pause, but the man made no move to continue down the gangway. He was looking at me quite intently, but his face carried no hint of malice. I had become an expert at reading people's characters from their facial expressions. Besides, within the confines of a transatlantic flight, I felt very secure and safe. I don't know what made me do it, but I asked him if he wanted to join me in the empty seat beside mine.

  "I would like that very much. My name is William Northcroft and, as you now know, I own a publishing company. And you, I believe, are the very famous and very beautiful Marianne Delaney. It would be very ungallant of me not to know the name of one of the top British models."

  I smiled at him. "Believe me, there are times when I would give anything to go back to being anonymous. But I've no right to complain. Fame has brought me many privileges, like travelling First Class for example."

  "I quite agree. I have no wish to return to flying Economy, have you?"

  He demonstrated one such benefit when, merely by lifting a finger, a stewardess read his mind and brought over the drink that he had left by his previous seat. The woman, who was young and very attractive, was reduced to a blushing wreck when, after taking the drink from her, he stroked her hand just once and with one finger. I noted also that he looked very intently at her for perhaps a second longer than was usual, and I gained the impression that the woman was known to William. He was clearly a frequent flyer and used to receiving prompt attention.

  He seemed a very powerful, charismatic man, but one who exercised his power in an understated way. I couldn't imagine him losing his cool and shouting. Some sixth sense also told me that he was a dominant man, especially in bed, and the thought brought a spasm and dampness between my legs. I hadn’t had a lover for a little while, so it didn’t take a great deal for my normally healthy libido to respond. He looked sideways at me and I knew that he knew about my spark of interest. He was clearly very intuitive, but he gave no obvious response. He was not flirting with me and he made no attempt to touch me as he had the stewardess.

  "So, Marianne, what takes you to New York, work or pleasure? Or perhaps the two come together for you."

  "Mainly work, although I am hoping to do a little shopping while I’m there. And you? Work, I suppose?"

  "Yes, but I never overlook the need for a little pleasure too. Life is too short for all work and no play. As someone once said, very few men on their deathbed say that they wished they had spent more time at the office. Is that not true, Marianne?"

  I loved the way he looked directly at my face as he spoke my name, even though he was sitting alongside. He gave me his complete attention, unlike many men who seemed to look everywhere but my face when they were talking to me. I often thought I should have a second pair of eyes on my breasts, so men could look at both at the same time.

  "Yes, you’re right. My father worked himself into an early grave and never got the chance to enjoy the fruits of his labor."

  That was a lie, because I never knew my father. For all I knew, he could be the British Prime Minister. But it just seemed the right thing to say at the time, and for some years I had talked to people about this fantasy father, as though it was more acceptable to have had a father and lost him, than never to have had a father at all. Perhaps it was the lack of a father that made me search for a fatherly figure in my life; a search that had only brought fleeting happiness so far.

  "Oh, I work hard, but I play hard, too. Do you play hard, Marianne?"

  I shivered and half turned in my seat to look at his face. Sure enough, there was the glint in the eye and the almost imperceptible facial expression that I had seen before, and I knew that he was a Dominant. I had been around enough of them to recognize one. After my past experiences, I should have been more wary, and run a mile. But where do you run to when you are 33,000 feet in the air over the Atlantic? I couldn't stop myself from saying it as though an invisible force was drawing it from me. "Yes, I do like to play hard, Sir." He lifted my hand to his lips and gave me a soft kiss. From that point on my fate was probably sealed. The attraction had been instantaneous. I knew that William and I were almost certainly going to play together, in one way or another.

  There was only one other man in my life to have had the same powerful effect on me. My mind drifted back to an earlier time in New York, in what seemed like another lifetime ago.

  After my experience with Leon, I was very wary of men and hardly dated for nearly a year, but at the age of twenty, I decided to take advantage of an offer from another model, Lily, to move to New York with her and share an apartment. We had both been earning well and knew that there would be just as much modelling work—if not more—on the other side of the Atlantic.

  We found a rather charming place, a three-bedroomed condo in Greenwich Village, and soon a third girl, Emma, to take the extra room. Within weeks, it became party central for the models, photographers, playboys, and general hangers on, who would flock there several times a week for riotous evenings (which sometimes lasted whole weekends). It was great fun and I came to love the whole atmosphere, shops and restaurants of the Village and the people I met. For the first time in a
long time, I managed to avoid the rich and powerful men who had flocked around me in London, and I met actors, artists, and musicians instead.

  We felt that we were in the center of the universe and that we were indestructible, but drugs began to appear and before we knew it, people would be sniffing coke and shooting heroin in our bathroom. We would wake up in the morning and find a comatose body lying on the bathroom floor, or drug apparatus on the side of the bath, and I began to feel anxious that things were getting out of control. Sure, I'd smoked a few spliffs over the years, but I had always managed to resist taking anything else.

  I spoke to Lily about it, and about Emma, who I suspected was doing heroin.

  "We’re going to get raided before long if we don't watch out. I don't know about you, but I don't want the negative publicity, especially with the ad campaign I'm working on. They wouldn't take kindly to being associated with drugs."

  Lily agreed, but didn't seem willing to take action. "Don't worry, hon, I'm sure it will sort itself out."

  I wasn't prepared to let it sort itself out, however, and within a few weeks had found myself a single bedroom apartment, still in the Village, but several blocks away. It was lonely at first, after all the partying at the other place, but I wasn't afraid of being alone. It was kind of nice to come home to a peaceful sanctuary after a long day in front of the cameras or after a long flight from the west coast, where I sometimes went on assignments. Besides, I had already met a lot of people in my short time in New York, and still received invitations to gallery openings, concerts, and parties, so it wasn't as though I was completely alone.

  I was glad of my decision two months later, when a guest at one of Lily's parties was found dead one morning. All hell was let loose after the police and press became involved. Poor Lily lost a job she was up for when the client decided that they didn't want to be associated with the seamier side of life when advertising wholesome, family products. She was lucky to even hang on to her contract with the agency. Models had been let go in the past for similar connections to scandals. I reckoned I had had a lucky escape.