Kinky(5)

But now? And with him?

‘They won’t let us in. Or they might let you in, but probably not me. You’re the one old Trixietots there was interested in.’

‘Stop make excuses. What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Yes you are. I know why you’re afraid. You may have to be honest about your, what was it, your kinks. You’re scared of your kinks, right?’

‘Wrong.’

He shakes his head, giving me a look of disapproval that makes me see exactly how good he’d be as a stern teacher type. Very good. Blinding.

My legs buckle. Suddenly I just want him so badly I could …

‘You want this,’ he says, bending down to speak the words into my ear. ‘Here is your chance to get what you want. Take it.’

‘Don’t leave me in there,’ I whisper. ‘Stay with me.’

‘I’ll stay with you, I promise.’

He takes my hand and walks with me back across the estate and into the street where I work. The office lights are all out now, but it’s too late to panic about the air-freshener campaign. I have a new campaign on my mind.

I hold on tight as he knocks on that oft-regarded door.

It opens a fraction.

‘Password,’ demands a disembodied voice.

‘Lacoste,’ says Dimitri.

The door opens.

‘Sign the members’ book,’ says a black-suited man, but as he looks at us he frowns. ‘Are you new?’

‘Trixietots recommended us,’ I tell him.

‘Both of you?’

I nod, hoping upon hope that this will be accepted.

‘Which of you is the dom and which the sub?’

I blink, understanding neither of these terms.

‘Or are you switches?’

Switches?

‘She likes for me to whip her,’ says Dimitri helpfully, and I kick him rather violently in the ankle, though he seems not to register. ‘Don’t you, Rosie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tell them,’ he insists. ‘Say the words.’

Oh God, you bastard!

The doorman laughs. ‘I get the picture.’ He hands a blue badge to Dimitri. ‘You’re the dom.’ My badge is red. ‘You’re the sub. Now hold on there a minute and I’ll call up Mal and O. They’re the owners – they’ll want to vet you.’

‘Vet us?’

He nods, the phone already at his ear while he waits for the other end to pick up. ‘Yeah, Mal, I’ve got a couple of newbies here. You got a minute to come and do the necessary? Great. I’ll show them up.’

We follow him up some narrow stairs and through a door that leads to a little waiting room. It would almost be like a dentist’s waiting room, if the magazines didn’t feature cover models in latex and the pictures on the wall were of rotting teeth instead of people tied up with their rude bits on show. The pot plants and the water cooler give an incongruous everyday feel to what I am sure will not be an everyday experience.

‘They won’t be a moment,’ says the doorman. ‘I’ll get back downstairs now, if you don’t mind. Had a bit of an incident earlier with vanillas trying to spy on us – better make sure everything’s clear.’

Once he is gone, I turn to Dimitri. ‘Vanillas? I feel like I’m learning a whole new vocabulary here.’

He squeezes my hand. ‘Think of me. I am learning English too.’

‘I feel a bit nervous. What are they going to do? What’s this vetting?’

He puts an arm around my shoulder. God, it feels nice. I would be happy just to sit there like that for the rest of the evening.

‘Don’t worry. It’s an adventure. Enjoy it.’

That seems to be his philosophy of life, I muse. I snuggle into his side and he rubs his fingers soothingly up and down my upper arm. He smells of so many things – cigarette smoke, wood smoke, mint, something herbal a bit like a joss stick. I breathe him in, inhaling intoxication.

The spell is broken when a door beyond the waiting room opens and a man dressed up as a vampire beckons us in.

I look askance at Dimitri, but he appears to be qualm-free, striding into the office with that snake-hipped swagger I had admired earlier.

Sitting behind a desk is a woman in a very smart 1940s-style skirt suit and a pillbox hat with a veil.

‘Good evening,’ says the vampire, putting out a hand for us to shake. ‘I’m Mal, and this is O. We’re the people behind Kinky Cupcake – we own the lot of you.’ He laughs. ‘You’re new here, I gather, so we need to run through a few things with you. Nothing to worry about – we just have to make sure all new members are genuine deviants, if you like. It’d be a shame if a journalist or somebody unfriendly to our interests slipped through the net and ruined what we’ve got here, don’t you think?’