If you’re going to behave like a cheap whore, the best place to do it is an expensive hotel.
This was the thought running through my head as Emmett led me by the hand through the polish and glister of the lobby, towards the miniature fountain that signified the entrance to the bar.
I didn’t look like a cheap whore. Emmett had chosen what I was wearing: silvery silk shirt, knee-length pencil skirt, heels that were high enough to make me wiggle but not high enough to make me totter. I could pass as a delegate en route to pre-conference drinks, or somebody’s elegant mistress. Who would guess what I actually was?
We stopped at the fountain, and Emmett took my other hand, tilting his head and looking deep into me.
‘Are you nervous?’ he said.
‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t want to let you down.’
He let out a breath, kissed my forehead, then my lips.
‘You won’t,’ he promised.
He walked me over to a corner table underneath a potted palm, where a pinstriped gentleman in his late forties sat working on the Times crossword.
Impressions of him were quickly absorbed and filed: elegant, distinguished, wealthy, watchful, intimidating, attractive. Everything Emmett had described.
The man looked up, and I turned quickly to Emmett, lacing my fingers more tightly into his.
‘Your order, sir,’ said Emmett.
The man – I knew his name, but the idea was to pretend I didn’t – stood up and shook Emmett’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then he looked me up and down with hard grey eyes. ‘Yes, this one will do.’
Emmett nodded, unlocked his hand from mine and went away to the bar. I placed the hand he’d released on my chest, clenching and unclenching it, and looked after him. Come back, I pleaded silently, but I knew I couldn’t say it aloud.
He would be in the hotel room later. He wasn’t abandoning me.
‘You can sit down,’ said the man. ‘I’ve ordered you a gin and tonic.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, following his instruction and taking a sip of the welcome drink.
‘I’m Charles,’ he said. ‘But you will call me Sir. What’s your name?’
‘Suky,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Suky? Suky Tawdry?’
He’d got the allusion straightaway. I suppressed a smile. Emmett had said it was too obvious.
‘That’s right, Sir.’
‘And is your boyfriend over there Mack the Knife?’
‘No, Sir,’ I said. ‘He isn’t a criminal.’
‘I should hope not, although I believe procuring is still a shade on the illegal side.’
‘I don’t think it counts if no money changes hands, Sir,’ I ventured.
He smiled, running a finger around the rim of his brandy glass.
‘You’re probably right. You’re doing this for nothing, aren’t you? Why?’
I clenched my thighs in an effort to stop them quivering. The tension of this encounter was exquisitely tightly strung. A barrage of conflicting feelings coursed through me with each exchange.
‘I’m doing it for Emmett,’ I said. ‘Because he told me to.’
‘Ah, he told you to. And you do everything Emmett tells you, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ I whispered.
‘Why is that?’
‘Because he owns me.’
Charles liked that answer; he shifted in his chair and recrossed his legs, smiling expansively at me to distract me from his obvious discomfort.
‘How did he come to own you, Suky? Did he buy you?’
‘No, Sir. We came to an agreement. It was mutual.’
‘A contract?’ he suggested.
‘Yes, Sir. This is its outward symbol.’ I put my finger on the silver collar I wore around my neck and jiggled the dog tag that hung from it.
‘Show me.’ He leaned forwards across the smoked glass and took the tag in lean fingers. ‘It’s engraved, but the writing’s too small for me to make out without my glasses. What does it say?’
‘Property of Emmett J. Marlow,’ I said, a little throatily. I needed some more of that gin.
‘I see. What does the J stand for?’
‘I don’t know, Sir. He won’t tell anyone.’
‘You mean he won’t tell you,’ said Charles, with a snakily triumphant smile. ‘I know what it stands for. But I’d better not say, if he doesn’t want you to know.’
This really stung. For a long moment, I was speechless, hiding in my gin and tonic to conceal the humiliation of knowing that my lover – the man I had given myself to, and who had given himself in return – had trusted somebody else with his little secret.
‘I know you’ve known him a long time,’ I said, subdued. ‘You were his first boss at PlayCorp.’
‘Yes, yes, but you’re breaking the rule,’ said Charles. ‘We don’t know each other at all, remember. All right, to be fair, I broke it first. Let’s forget about Emmett’s middle name, shall we, and try to get back on track. What are you wearing under that stunning outfit?’
The change of tack took my breath away. I put down the gin and stopped fidgeting with my dog tag.
‘A bra,’ I said, peering around to make sure nobody could hear me.
‘Describe it.’
‘Er, black, strappy, kind of demi-cup, so it doesn’t cover…everything.’
I looked down. This much was obvious – my silky shirt had two unmistakable dimples.
‘Nipples, you mean? Front or back fastening?’
‘Always front. Emmett prefers front-fastening.’
‘Don’t mention him again unless I ask you to,’ said Charles, tightening his lips. ‘And what else?’
‘Matching knickers,’ I said. Charles’s expression conveyed that he needed more detail. ‘They have a kind of criss-crossing elastic effect that means…Actually, I’m not sure you can really call them knickers, strictly speaking. They have quite a few bits…missing.’
‘Are they open at the back?’
I pursed my lips, nodding as my cheeks blazed with colour.
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’ll come in handy. Anything else I need to know about them?’
‘They’re crotchless,’ I whispered.
‘Excellent. And is there anything else?’
‘About the knickers? No.’
‘No, I mean, are you wearing anything else under your skirt?’
‘Oh! Yes. Stockings and a suspender belt. Matching all the other stuff again.’
Charles put the folded newspaper in his lap.
‘I think you’re going to have to show me,’ he said.
‘What, here?’ I sucked in a breath.
‘Yes, here. Unbutton your blouse. Three buttons should do it.’
My thunderstruck stare lasted two seconds before Charles’s commanding one galvanised me.
My fingers got to work, clumsy with nerves, but eventually the three buttons he had ordered were undone and the front-fastener of my bra was visible between the slopes of my breasts.
‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘Very nice. Thank you. Now, the stockings.’
There was no way I could show him these without raising my skirt several inches up my thighs. It would be an awkward move, and much less easy to conceal than the unbuttoning of the shirt. All the same, I had my back to the room, and we sat in a corner and at an angle that didn’t invite casual scrutiny. I had to trust that Charles, who faced outwards, was confident of our privacy.
I squared my shoulders and took a moment to level my head. I wasn’t going to panic. I thought of Emmett, watching us from the remote island of the bar.
I would make him proud of me.
I curled my fingers under the skirt hem and began to ease it slowly up my legs, revealing more and more of the sheer black nylon as it rose. In order to get it high enough, I had to shuffle my bottom in my seat, squirming from one cheek to another as I pulled first the left side of my skirt and then the right. It grew tighter, the fabric rucking, as it reached mid-thigh, and I found myself struggling to maintain composure – and to stop myself looking around the room with red-faced defiance.
‘Keep going,’ said Charles, as if he knew I was on the brink of an outburst.
I had to hover slightly now, my legs trembling as I exposed more and more of them to Charles’s view. Finally, oh, sweet relief, the first glimpse of elasticated lacy stocking-top peeked from beneath the rumpled satin.
I glanced at Charles for permission to stop, but he shook his head.
‘Keep going. I want to see the suspender snap,’ he said.
I almost huffed, almost protested, but I bit it back somehow and continued my task with fierce concentration. My face was aflame and I imagined every eye in the place on me. The thought made me long for a crotch in my panties, to soak up the juices it had stimulated.
I wanted to turn, to find Emmett, to see him watching me with proprietorial approval. The need was so bad I twisted my neck slightly in his direction, but Charles knew my game and put a stop to it straightaway.
‘You should be looking at me, nowhere else,’ he said. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ I replied dutifully.
The snap hove into view, and so did the top of the stocking, with a tiny strip of bare thigh between it and the skirt hem.
At last Charles was satisfied.
He cleared his throat and told me, raspingly, that I could leave it there now.
Then, to my consternation, he raised his hand to summon a waiter.
‘Oh, what are you…?’ I blurted, but he silenced me with a look.
When the waiter appeared, Charles ordered himself a mineral water.
‘Nothing for the lady,’ he said, succeeding in his intention of drawing the waiter’s attention to me. He averted his eyes straightaway, his face flushing. ‘But I was wondering if you still provided condoms as part of your minibar offering?’
Oh, my God, the total bastard! I clenched my buttocks tight with embarrassment, aware all the same that the flow between my thighs was becoming a steady gush.
‘Err, yes, sir, I believe so,’ said the waiter.
‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it, Suky?’
I stared down into my crumpled lap. ‘Yes…’ I stalled. Could I get away without using ‘Sir’ in front of the waiter? Charles’s stern brow told me I could not. ‘Sir,’ I added, as quietly as I could.
‘Will that be all?’ The waiter was clearly dying to get away.
‘That’s all, thanks.’
Left alone again, I kept my eyes down, waiting for Charles to speak.
‘You almost let me down there,’ he said, his tone deceptively light. ‘But you passed the test in the end. Luckily for you. You might not want to know the penalty for failure.’
‘Is there any more of this test to come, Sir?’ I asked.
‘No. And I didn’t really want that water. Let’s go upstairs now.’
We stood, and I saw Emmett move discreetly away from the bar towards the elevators in the lobby. As I crossed the bar, my bottom wiggled sensuously against the satin material of my skirt, unshielded by underwear. I was not permitted to pull the skirt back down, so I was a little hobbled by its tightness and had to take tiny steps. My blouse flapped as I moved, drawing attention to my half-bared breasts. I looked exactly how they’d wanted me to look – a blatant slut on her way to be fucked.
In the elevator, Charles made me look at myself in the mirror while he stood behind me, his hands on my hips.
‘Plenty of people got a look at these,’ he said, moving one hand up to cup a breast in its silky shell. ‘And everyone saw your stocking-tops. I bet there were a few mouths watering down there. A few jealous daggers in my back.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m a lucky man. And so is Emmett.’
He wrenched my face sideways by the chin and pressed his mouth on mine for a hot, tongue-thrusting kiss that was still ongoing when the elevator doors slid open.
The door to the suite was open. A mirror on its back wall reflected my flushed, lipstick-smeared face back at me, together with Charles above and behind me like a shadow, his hand between my shoulder blades, guiding me rapidly into the bedroom.
Emmett was in there, busy making adjustments to the giant-sized bed. He had thrown a pile of pillows into its centre, and went on to take a selection of clanking, jingling objects from a holdall beside them.
He looked up as we entered and gave me the merest flash of a smile. It was enough to dispel any doubts or fears I might have had. If he’d looked upset to see Charles handling me so intimately, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with the rest of the afternoon’s schedule.
So I let myself be scooped against the older man’s chest and thoroughly kissed once more, one hand on my tight-skirted bottom while the other held me in place by the neck.
By the time we broke apart, Emmett had unpacked the essentials and was sitting in a Regency armchair in the corner. He looked light and refreshing, mouthwateringly attractive in his pale suit and sky-blue open-necked shirt; a foil to Charles’s darker and more formal presentation.
I knew I shouldn’t look at him, though, so I tore my eyes away as quickly as I could and fixed my attention on Charles, waiting for him to give me my next order.
‘When I bring a whore up to a hotel room, I expect her to know why she’s here,’ said Charles, plucking at the half-undone neckline of my shirt. ‘Why are you still dressed?’
‘Sorry, Sir,’ I mumbled, fumbling and tugging the offending garment away from my body until I stood in the half-cup bra, nipples at attention over their pointless cradle of lace.
‘I wonder why you even wore a bra at all,’ mused Charles, running his thumbs across the stiff red buds. ‘Such a flimsy pretence. No, keep it on. You might as well. It doesn’t hinder access in any meaningful way. Now, the skirt.’
The skirt, in its bunched-up state, required a lengthy process of easing down if it wasn’t to be ripped. Bending over took me away from Charles’s scrutiny, and I was grateful for the small mercy. When eventually it reached my knees and fell the rest of the way, I knew my brief respite was over.
I stepped out of it, pushed my shoulders back and stood self-consciously aware of his attention and the disgraceful near-absence of knickers.
‘You weren’t joking about the knickers,’ said Charles, inspecting the area. ‘They leave nothing at all to the imagination. They provide framing rather than coverage. Turn around, let me see the rear view.’
I did so, keeping Emmett deliberately unfocused at the periphery of my vision.
Charles put a hand mid-thigh and ran it slowly up, past my lacy stocking-top, over the bump of the suspender button, up my inner thigh until it cupped my bare, shaved pussy, making me spread my legs a little.
‘Does your Master make you keep this shaved?’ he asked, pressing his fingers between the folds of flesh.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘So he should. So would I. I wonder what he’d say if he knew you were wet right now, very wet, on another man’s hand?’
‘I don’t think he’d be surprised, Sir,’ I said, which made Charles chuckle. Another sound, something breathy, reached me from the corner of the room. Emmett was enjoying this.
‘He wouldn’t? He knows you’re a slut, does he?’
‘He tells me all the time, Sir,’ I said.
Charles ran his fingertips slowly, torturingly, between my lips and over my clit, bringing his other hand round to flick at my nipples.
‘Does he like to have you used by other men?’ whispered Charles.
‘This is my first time, Sir, but yes, I think he does.’ I wanted very badly to look at Emmett, but I held myself rigid and obedient.
‘It’s a very good test of submission, I think,’ said Charles. ‘I wonder if you’ll pass?’
‘I hope so, Sir.’ His fingers continued to feather-stroke my clit, too lightly, so that I wanted to grind myself down on them.
He pulled them away and laid a sharp smack on my bottom.
‘Enough of that. This isn’t for your pleasure, after all. Get over those pillows with your bum up high.’
I climbed on to the bed and arranged myself as he desired. Once I was in the correct posture, he crossed my wrists in the small of my back and cuffed them tightly just above my buttocks.
Moving further down, he spread my feet wide and attached my ankles to a spreader bar, ensuring that everything between my legs was open and accessible to him.
Once I was helpless, he stood back and admired his handiwork.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
I mewed into the duvet as Emmett cleared his throat and said, in an uneven, husky voice, ‘Beautiful.’
‘Do you often have her like this?’
‘As often as I can.’
‘Ah, so would I. You’ve brought along quite a few interesting toys, Emmett. I’m not sure where to start. Can you recommend anything?’
‘I think – you’re going to spank her, yes?’
‘Oh, yes. That goes without saying.’
‘OK, then I think taking a spanking with her plug in really brings home the reality of her situation.’
‘Ah, good. I can imagine she’d find that very humbling.’
‘She does. Here – this is the lube we use.’
‘Thank you.’
I gritted my teeth. Emmett was a bastard! How did he manage to put his finger right on the button of what I’d find most shameful and difficult to take? It came of knowing me and my kinks through and through, and understanding how to get me quickly into the required headspace.
Charles loomed behind me on the bed and I felt the first blood-chilling drops of lubricant between my cheeks, soon joined by his fingers, rubbing it enthusiastically into my crease and the tight pucker at its centre.
‘Does she get plugged a lot?’ he asked.
‘When she needs it. We kind of keep it for “best”, if you know what I mean. So it doesn’t get over-familiar. It’s used more for discipline than pleasure.’
‘Ah, yes, discipline,’ said Charles, gloating over the word. ‘I can imagine you have to be strict with her.’
‘She knows her place,’ said Emmett. ‘But she forgets it from time to time. A firm reminder is sometimes needed.’
‘I can imagine.’ Charles finished massaging my ring and introduced the coldly slick rubber tip of the plug in place of his fingers. ‘Has she been recently punished?’
‘Just yesterday,’ said Emmett, over my little gasp of discomfort as Charles began to push it in. ‘A minor infraction. I just had her over my knee with a leather paddle for ten minutes, then six with the tawse. As you can see, it wasn’t hard enough to leave evidence, but she was red and hot for some time afterwards.’
‘I wish I’d seen it,’ he remarked. ‘No, keep still, Suky.’ He smacked my bottom hard on both cheeks, a punishment for squirming as the widest part of the plug stretched me without pity. To make sure I knew who was in charge here, he held it there, at its most uncomfortable point, until I was still and compliant, then he pushed it all the way in.
‘There, your spanking is going to feel very interesting now,’ he said, twisting the flanged end this way and that, sending tremors through my bottom that made my pussy clench and quiver in sympathy. I was soaking wet, the evidence gathering in a dewy layer on my thighs.
He turned his attention to the array of implements on the bedspread, picking up each one, weighing it in his hand, stroking it, tapping it lightly against my buttocks or between my thighs. I recognised each one from its own tactile quality without being able to see a thing that was being done to me. That was the riding crop…that was the ruler paddle…that was the knotted flogger.
‘I think I’ve made my decision,’ he said at length, and I resisted the strong urge to look around and see what he held in his hand.
‘Good choice,’ said Emmett.
‘Thank you. Now then, Suky, keep that bum up high for me. Do you think you can keep your voice down, or would it be better if I gagged you?’
That depended on what he was using – but I didn’t say it. I calculated the likelihood of Charles using one of the milder toys and found it to be low.
‘Perhaps a gag, Sir,’ I said.
‘Very well. Emmett, could you do the honours?’
Emmett came to stand by my head. I gorged on the sight of him from the corner of my eye, drinking in his long fingers as they stroked my face, putting the long rubber gag in place. He pulled down my jaw, settling the gag between my teeth, and fastening it gently, but with unforgiving tension, at the back of my head. I wanted very badly for him to kiss me – just a brush of his lips on my cheek, anything – but he didn’t. My heart sighed as he went back to his chair to watch.
Charles stood at the side of the bed, from which I deduced that his weapon must need to be wielded at arm’s length. That ruled out some of the oval paddles, and the short, thick strap.
He laid it across the fullest part of my bottom, and I knew my fate.
The riding crop. Better than the cane, but only just.
‘So, then, Emmett,’ said Charles. ‘What does a sound thrashing look like for our Suky?’
‘She can take quite a bit,’ said Emmett. ‘You don’t need to hold back. I’ll know when she’s had enough.’
‘Good,’ purred Charles. He drew back the crop. I tried not to clench up.
He sliced it down smartly, so that it landed square across the flange of the butt plug, causing mad vibrations to mix with the sizzling smart. I moaned into the gag. As a statement of intent, this was quite something.
He didn’t wait long to lay on the next stroke, and he placed it in exactly the same spot. I chewed on my gag helplessly as he repeated, with quick cruelty, the same manoeuvre over and over until I was bucking on the pillows. Only then did he turn his attention to the rest of my bottom.
His treatment was similar even then – he concentrated on one stripe, over and over, until I could picture the deep crimson bar sinking into its white surroundings. It was almost unbearable, and he put plenty of wrist into each snapping smack. He moved slowly around my buttocks, making sure he achieved full coverage. No patch of skin was going to be left untended, and Emmett wasn’t going to come to my aid, no matter how much I tried to bounce and writhe out of the target zone.
Emmett knew I could take it. He’d given me more and harder than this before.
‘I hope she’s going to feel this for a while,’ remarked Charles to Emmett.
‘A whipping with that will leave bruises,’ said Emmett. ‘She won’t sit comfortably for a good day or so. The best I’ve managed is four days, after a really hard caning.’
‘I’d like to cane her sometime,’ said Charles, whipping my upper thighs with brutal and systematic efficiency.
‘Well, you can, of course,’ said Emmett, his breathing heavy now. ‘You know the arrangement.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles, a long and satisfied exhalation. ‘There, now let’s try…’
My bottom and thighs were on fire, as if a layer of skin had been stripped from them. Charles moved the whip between my legs and began to flick it, quickly and devastatingly, between my inner thighs. Their tender skin was soon overwhelmed and throbbing, causing Charles to slap the leather tip of the crop upwards, catching my spread pussy and pulsating clit so cruelly yet so sweetly. It burned like buggery, but I opened myself up to the pain, embracing it, showing my obedience and submission to the two men who now demanded it.
He spanked my pussy until I let out a sob into the gag, then he let it go and gave my bottom and thighs a sound and salutary reprise of their earlier treatment, just in case I’d forgotten to feel sore.
Only then was he content that I’d taken what I deserved. He threw down the crop and crouched down by my head to untie the gag.
‘You’re a very well-whipped little whore now, Suky,’ he said softly, stroking my cheek. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Do you have anything to say to me?’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘You needed that, didn’t you?’
‘Very much, Sir.’
He turned to Emmett.
‘I’m in awe, Emmett. You’ve trained her so well.’
Emmett didn’t reply for a moment or two, and the pause caught at my heart. Was he pleased with me? Had I been everything he’d hoped for?
‘I’m so very, very proud of her,’ he said, and his voice shook on the second ‘very’.
I pressed my face into the bedspread, letting the tears soak into it, then I let myself look at him. His face shone with love, a transfiguration.
I pushed my bottom out, enjoying its heat and tenderness. I could take all that again, double, triple, if it was for Emmett. Anything for Emmett.
‘So,’ said Charles. ‘What shall we do next?’