a stain on the sleeve of her cream jacket; a slight deviation in the straight lines of her stocking seams. He appears almost disappointed to find none.
‘Do sit down,’ he urges her, before beckoning the waitress over. ‘Could you fetch the young lady a glass of white Burgundy?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
And so it begins. He hasn’t asked her what she might like, and by taking the choice away from her he has subtly reinforced his dominance within their relationship. She can’t explain quite why this show of control turns her on so much; all she knows is that it’s suddenly hard to focus on anything but the pulse beating insistently in her pussy.
‘So, how are you, Matilda?’
With those words, he gives her permission to enter into conversation. He could just as easily have returned to his perusal of the obituaries, making her wait till he was ready to speak to her, but even though he’d never admit it to her face, she knows he’s missed their regular chats.
‘I’m fine, thank you, sir. Work’s as boring as ever. How was America?’
The waitress returns and places a glass in front of her. He motions with his eyes for her to take a sip. She does, savouring the complex, buttery taste of the wine. It’s an excellent choice, but she wouldn’t have expected anything less. He’s taught her so much in the time they’ve been together, not only in the bedroom. Before him, she existed on microwaved ready meals and supermarket plonk and never read anything more challenging than the weekly gossip magazines. He has refined her palate, given her a thirst to learn more about the world and fill the many gaps in her education.
He grins, the lines around his eyes deepening, one of the few reminders that he’s almost fifteen years older than her. With his boundless vitality and body he keeps honed with an exercise regime bordering on the obsessive, it’s sometimes hard to believe they aren’t the same age. ‘Oh, it’s always nice to have a new audience for my one-liners.’
At his urging, she once sat in on one of his lectures, hidden away at the back of the darkened theatre. His dissection of love metaphors in metaphysical poetry went completely over her head, though some poem of Donne’s in which he complained about how long it took for his lover to undress for bed still stuck in her mind, thanks to the outrageous manner in which he had acted it out, a neat pantomime of impatient male and coy female. He had the knack of keeping his students hanging on every word, enthralled by his obvious personal magnetism and unfettered sexuality. She’d overheard a couple of girls talking on the way out, describing all the deliciously filthy things they’d like to do to Professor Matlow if they got him alone. If only you knew, she thought.
Taking a sip of his whisky, he continues, ‘Seriously, it was very productive. I’ve made some useful academic contacts, and one of the senior editors at the Harvard University Press is very keen to read the manuscript of my Donne biography, but four months on your own in hotel bedrooms grows a little wearying by the end.’
She’s about to ask him more, happy to bask in the reflected glow of his success, but they’re interrupted by the arrival of a man she doesn’t recognise. He’s around her own age, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he was another academic; he has the same dishevelled dress sense and distracted air, as though he’s not properly connected to the world around him. He pushes a stray lock of blond hair out of his eyes, before thrusting out his hand.
‘Robert, great to see you.’ The man’s grin is broad, revealing slightly crooked teeth. He smells vaguely of vetiver and shag tobacco, a combination she can’t help finding strangely alluring. If she hadn’t already found her master, she’d be curious to learn whether he was single.
‘Dan. Glad you could make it. Matilda, this is Daniel Morison. We used to work together in the English department at Leicester. He’s faculty head there now. Dan, this is Matilda.’
Nothing more in the way of introduction, which surprises her. The stranger now shaking her hand can’t possibly know she is his friend’s submissive; this side of their relationship has always been kept a sworn secret between them.
‘Do sit down, Dan.’
Daniel accepts the invitation, making himself comfortable in the one available armchair. She wondered why her master had settled himself among a group of three chairs; it’s becoming clear this is not going to be the cosy tête-à-tête she’d envisaged when she received his e-mail.
‘So, how are things?’ Daniel asks. ‘I bumped into Maurice a couple of weeks ago and he said you were in Boston …’
The two men launch into a conversation peppered with names and references to past incidents that mean nothing to her but seem to amuse the pair of them greatly. They only break off when the waitress arrives to take Daniel’s order for a glass of Merlot, before returning to the anecdote they’re sharing. All the while, she sits patiently, sipping her wine. He hasn’t given her permission to join in and, even if he had, there’s nothing at all she could add.
At last, he seems to remember she’s there. ‘So, Matilda. I believe that before Dan arrived you were just about to show me whether you’d complied with the dress code.’
He’d implied nothing of the sort. It’s another part of their ritual with which she’s becoming very familiar over the years – the raising of her skirt to reveal the tops of the stockings he loves so much, proof she’s followed his instructions to the letter – but it’s always been conducted in private. She’d make a strong objection, if it wasn’t for the fact that the thought of submitting to him in front of an invited audience is making her even wetter.
‘Didn’t realise they had a dress code for women here,’ Daniel interjects. He smiles at Matilda in conspiratorial fashion. ‘Though you wouldn’t be the first person they’d caught out, believe me. This isn’t my tie; they found it for me because I didn’t have one on when I arrived.’ He waggles the end of the tie at her. It’s a sober, black and grey striped affair that doesn’t go with anything else he’s wearing. Which makes it no different to the rest of his outfit.
Her master shakes his head. ‘I don’t think the club knows anything about this, and, if they did, they’d probably make it compulsory for all their female staff. You see, Matilda’s dress code applies to her underwear as much as to anything else.’
Daniel’s eyes widen. He grasps the implications with lightning speed, if the way he’s shifting in his seat as though his baggy trousers have grown a size too small for him is any indication.
‘So, Matilda, are you ready for your inspection?’
Her eyes can’t help but dart round the room. Fortunately, the only man she can see is some old duffer reclining on the brown leather chesterfield close to the fire, snoring gently, a crumpled copy of the Telegraph clutched to his blazer-clad chest. Everyone else must have retired to the dining room for plates of steak and kidney pudding and spotted dick.
Satisfied her little display won’t be seen by prying eyes, she replies, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very good.’ As she begins to rise to her feet, he adds, ‘Don’t stand up, girl, there’s no need.’
She should find his use of the term ‘girl’ patronising and unnecessary, but it simply causes her pussy to cream more strongly. And he isn’t being kind to her by telling to remain seated. Hiking up her tight skirt the required distance is difficult enough when she’s standing; doing so sitting down is next to impossible, involving a wriggling manoeuvre that slows the process to a humiliating
