tell you the truth, I don’t have a key.’
‘He’s locked you out of your own house?’
Joss shrugged.
‘It’s only the east wing. I didn’t use it much anyway.’
‘No wonder you want him out.’
Joss said nothing but stood behind me at the window, so that I felt his shadow falling over me. He was close enough for me to smell his aftershave. Too close.
‘What if it works, Joss?’ I said. In the distance, a deer streaked through trees.
‘What?’
‘Your hare-brained scheme. What if it works and I get my scoop and he abandons this place and releases you from the contract? You’re back to square one. You can’t afford this house. You’ll end up at Wragg’s Caravan Park.’
‘There are other ways,’ he said. ‘Tourism. Opening up the grounds. There has to be a better way than this. I didn’t realise when I signed up for it quite how –’ he swallowed, ‘– humiliating, yes, humiliating, this was going to be.’
‘How are the mighty fallen,’ I said.
‘I haven’t reached rock bottom yet,’ he said. He put his fingers very lightly on my arm, just a whisper of a touch but it made me quiver like a bowstring.
‘Speaking of bottoms,’ I said, pulling away from him and stepping back, unable to resist an evil smile. ‘Wasn’t there something we were going to do?’
There was a slightly manic quality to his answering tightening of the lips.
‘Let me show you my box of tricks,’ he said, crouching down to pull something out from under the bed.
It was a battered old suitcase.
‘Of course,’ he said, fiddling with the snap locks, ‘my collection has nothing on his. He has everything, the most expensive, the best, the latest. Mine is a bit of a ragbag in comparison. But …’
He opened it. It didn’t look like a ragbag, it really didn’t.
My skin prickled and I clamped my thighs together, noticing how my pussy tightened in response.
He looked up at me and his face crumpled in sympathy.
‘Oh, darling,’ he said. ‘You’re pale. Don’t be scared.’
He put out a hand. I took it and knelt down beside him.
‘I’m not scared,’ I lied. Whips and chains were all very good in principle, pretty sexy in the imagination, but when you saw them up close and full-sized it was somehow extremely intimidating.
‘Think of them as toys,’ he said, picking up a cat-o’-nine-tails-type affair with a red leather handle. ‘It’s all they are, really. Feel the strands – they’re soft as anything.’
‘You’re trying to tell me this wouldn’t hurt?’ I said, running my fingers through them. It was rather pleasurable and they felt lighter than air.
‘It depends on how it’s used,’ he said. ‘It can stroke you like a lover or it can sting. A bit of both is usually best, I find.’
‘When did you get into all this? You weren’t when …’
‘Oh, I was. But I wouldn’t have touched you, Lulu. You were far too sweet and innocent.’
‘Is that what you thought? Is that why you ended it? Is it?’
‘Perhaps it had a little to do with it.’
‘You twat. You had no idea who or what I was. I was just some kind of archetype to you – the naïve little village girl who would adore and worship you.’
He stared at me.
‘You’re still very angry about all that, aren’t you?’
‘Damn right I am.’ I took a breath. I was trembling. ‘You had no idea,’ I repeated, working hard to get myself back under control. ‘No fucking idea at all.’
‘I know. It’s OK. I know that.’
‘Because I would have … for you. For me, too. I would have done all of this, and more. You say you couldn’t have touched me – what you did to me was far worse. Infinitely more painful.’
He put the flogger into my hand and curled my fingers around the handle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Take it out on me.’
Suddenly I really wanted to kiss him. I wanted to offer to forget everything that had gone before and just push him down on the carpet and get him inside me. He reached a part of me nobody else ever had and I knew I would never be free of him. Why not just acknowledge it and throw my pride and all my fears to the wind?
Just as my grip loosened on the whip handle, preparatory to putting my fingertips to his cheek, he broke our eye contact and replaced it with a nervous chuckle.
‘So, how do you want me?’
‘I don’t follow. I don’t know the form – you do. You’re going to have to help me out here.’
‘The point is, Lulu, you tell me what to do.’
‘Yes, but I don’t know how to do it.’
He sighed.
‘Think of me, think of what I was like when I was nine. Be like that.’
I really wasn’t sure I could do it, then all my memories of that time came rushing in at once and I knew I could. I owed it to that shivering, scared seven-year-old girl to make her bully understand the effect he’d had on her.
‘Get on your knees,’ I said, and he dropped at my feet before I’d even finished speaking. I looked down at the crown of his head, at his luxuriant dark hair. He wouldn’t be thinning any time soon. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’
He said nothing, but bowed his head a little in acquiescence.
‘I’m going to do it,’ I continued, letting the strands drape over his shoulder before dragging them up his cheek, ‘but first I want to hear you beg me for mercy. Really beg me, even though it won’t have the slightest effect on what I do to you. I just want to hear it. No, don’t look at me,’ I said hurriedly, for he had raised his eyes to mine. ‘I can’t do this if you look at me. Keep your eyes on the floor.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, then he cleared his throat. ‘Erm. Please spare me, ma’am,’ he said. But he wasn’t taking it seriously enough, his manner overly theatrical.
‘That won’t do,’ I told him. ‘Plead.’
‘OK.’ He seemed to steady himself, furrowing his brow in thought. ‘What about … I beg you not to hurt me. I promise I’ll be good now. I’ll behave
