I can leave. I can just walk away. No consequences, no risks. I know what this place is now; my curiosity is sated.
Except it isn’t. In its place are a dozen new curiosities about Dimitri, about S&M, about how it could feel, how it could be to have fantasies made flesh.
I watch him take his place on the chair, then he sweeps his hand in a broad gesture that starts out pointing at me and ends up slapping his thigh.
It’s unequivocal enough, and so terribly sexy my cotton boy shorts flood. I shuffle over and stand by his knees, wondering if there’s a graceful way to put myself across them.
His face is set and intense. He takes my arm and manoeuvres me down until my stomach presses against his strong thighs and my view is of the floor. I’m going to have to keep my eyes shut for this, I think, though I’d love to see what we look like from a third person’s perspective. Perhaps Mal or O will take a photograph.
‘OK, OK,’ he mutters, quite gently, positioning my legs so that they are straight, tiptoes touching the floor, then he elevates his thighs a little, having an unmistakable knock-on effect on my bottom, and rubs my spine.
‘This is comfortable for you?’ he whispers and I nod. Actually, it really is. It feels so safe and held – it’s almost as if I’ve come to him for protection rather than punishment.
The word ‘punishment’ starts my juices flowing again. My heart thunders. I’m really doing this, really putting myself across a strange man’s lap to get spanked in front of witnesses. My breath hitches.
He puts his hand on my thigh, just below my skirt hem, and traces the diamond pattern with an idle finger.
‘You know, Rosie, I can’t have this skirt this way. It’s too thick. I push it up, right?’
Oh God. I’m quivering so much from the way his finger strokes the back of my thighs that I can’t speak. I just lie there while he pushes the heavy tweed up and up, over the curve of my bum, taking it unbearably slowly until I feel his palm flat on my buttocks, protected only by tights and knickers now.
‘And these things,’ he says, moving his palm in a circular motion over the target area while I try really, really hard not to buck and press my groin into his leg. ‘What you call them? Hoses?’
‘Tights,’ I gasp with a giggle.
‘Too tights,’ he quips, and before my brain catches up with his fingers I am feeling cool air on bare flesh.
The boy shorts are cut high and a good portion of my bottom swells out from beneath their edges – more, really, than they cover. I kick out in panic, but it’s hard to kick when your knees are hobbled by tights and Dimitri places a cautionary hand on the scoops of flesh he has just exposed. My rebellious nerves are quelled at once by the caress of his warm palm, moulding itself to my natural curves. It feels ridiculously good.
‘OK, Rosie?’ he whispers, leaning down so that only I can hear him for a moment.
‘I didn’t know you were going to do that.’
‘No, me either. It seems right.’
‘Don’t take my knickers down or I’ll kill you.’
‘OK. Not tonight.’
He unwinds his spine and I feel him tensing, preparing. I picture him putting his shoulders back, flexing his muscular forearms. Speaking of muscular forearms, how hard is this going to be? How much is it going to hurt?
A flash of fear plunges to my stomach as I hear him – courtesy of his multitude of bangly things – raise his hand.
‘You have anything to say to me before I start?’
His voice has changed. It’s gruff and menacing. My insides coil, my clit fattens.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. What the hell I’m sorry for, I don’t know. I’ve been transported to another headspace.
‘Who you are apologise to? To me?’
‘Uh, yeah.’ I catch my breath, realising what he means. ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’
‘You must learn,’ he says. ‘This is not respectful. I teach you respectful.’
I teach you English grammar. What would happen if I said it? I daren’t imagine.
The speculation flies from my mind at the first sharp contact of his hand with my arse. It’s loud and shocking and I actually laugh, as if I can’t distinguish slap from tickle.
‘What?’ He pantomimes horror. ‘You are laughing at me? I don’t stand it. She is nervous.’ This last presumably addressed to our audience, who chuckle understandingly. ‘I get serious.’
His hand falls again, hard enough to sting, not so hard as to really hurt. I get the sense that he is holding a lot back, but what he gives is plenty. The surreality of the situation masks some of the pain – a big part of my head is engaged in establishing the fact that this is happening at all, and then trying to work out whether it’s good or bad. I’m slightly detached from it, trying to capture each sensation individually rather than letting the experience take me over.