precarious balancing act as I juggle my workbag and stuffed ballerina mouse.
"I want to watch it again before I decide," I say to him. I can't believe that I'm even considering it, but I've argued with myself that I'm masked and the lighting makes much of it soft focus. I'm surprised to discover that I appear to have a greater issue with my vanity than my dissolute morality.
I go to the fridge and recover a bottle of wine. Sod getting holiday leave from work, I feel 'a terrible bout of food poisoning' coming on. The figure of forty thousand pound refuses to leave my thoughts. Two thirds of that is my year's salary.
"How much did you pay Celia?" I ask.
"Three thousand in cash."
He must register some communication in my face that invites him to justify himself. "Trust me, she doesn't need the money. Celia is an heiress; she plays at being a whore because," he shrugs, "I guess it's the thing that turns her on. It's her form of foreplay. She loved the idea of being filmed."
"You seem to know a lot about her all of a sudden," I say suspiciously. "And there was me thinking we just picked her up on the night."
"We did. I met her down in the Love Dungeon and we got talking."
"The Love Dungeon?" I ask, laughing, although I'm really not sure I'm amused.
"Don't you remember?"
I shake my head.
"Oh," he shrugs, "maybe you were partying elsewhere."
I can't remember being alone that night. I certainly can't remember visiting an S&M sex dungeon.
He nods his head, recalling the details of the evening, "I remember now, you were dancing with that crowd that had come up from Brighton; you remember the guy with the rabbit onesie and that girl with the full Goth thing going on.
I think back and vaguely remember dancing with a giant rabbit. I drink down most of the glass of wine in one go.
I watch the film from beginning to end. Alexander has edited it, splicing it with other filmed images such as
spring cherry blossom,
starlings whirling in flight,
a spinning bicycle wheel
the slow motion track of a single tear.
Our bodies and our fucking are deconstructed, broken down into dismembered parts. We are not whole people; we are not whole identities. We are layered with beauty and poetry. It is like nothing I understand of pornography. The film ends with the close-up of my sleeping eye. The eyeliner smudged. I can tell from the rapid fluttering of my eyelids that I am dreaming.
I breathe in deeply. "Okay, what cut will I get?" I ask, selling myself.
"That depends on whether this is a business transaction or a partnership?" he says enigmatically.
"I'm not entirely sure I understand the difference," I say.
"Yes, you do, Charlotte." He stands up and runs his hands through his hair before turning towards the bedroom door. "Yes you do."
But I don't. Not really. And maybe if I had then it wouldn't have ended how it did.
Chapter Five: Metamorphosis
My intensive course of lessons with Arabella continues for several weeks until I have learned the art of basic submission and dominance. I have discovered that despite my casual feminist principles, which dictate I should relish being dominant, I am a natural submissive – but I have also learned that submissive doesn’t mean weak; to be a submissive takes a great deal of personal control. In all my lessons, apart from Arabella’s cold, detached applications of touch, there has been no other – it has been Alexander’s insistence that it be this way, which it is why, blindfolded and tied to a whipping post, I am startled to feel male hands cradling my slick sex, and pressing an eager, hungry cock against by buttocks. I gasp, unsure how I should be responding. After Arabella’s deliciously playful lesson, I am desperate to be satisfied; my body craving fulfilment. I flinch away, twisting into the hard wooden post. I am determined not to betray Alexander, but my hips are behaving as if they are hexed, and draw back towards that large, throbbing rod and the promise
Lois Greiman
Charles W. Sasser
Dorothy Wiley
L. Ron Hubbard
Wallis Peel
Traci Hohenstein
L. M. Montgomery
Anthony Hope
John Marsden
Jeff Strand