Exhibitions and adventures

I work for a university.

I’m finishing my PhD thesis in History (documentary evidence and textual accounts of the emergence of the common law in the eleventh century, since you ask) but I don’t have funding for my research. Not surprising really. Legal history isn’t fashionable, but my department don’t want to lose me entirely. So I spend my working day as the Schools Liaison Officer. Mostly that means I arrange open days, and visits from local kids who want to go to a small, old fashioned, Northern university. By night I try and make sense of my thesis.

For about three months of the year though I travel round the conferences institutions put on so that kids can go to a sports hall and collect hundreds of prospectuses. Honestly, it’s a mind numbing practice. The kids arrive by the bus load, and spend as little time making their mind up about uni as possible, and as much time as possible trying to do something illicit. Since most of the events are on university campuses or in sports centres that usually revolves around bars…

I take an assistant with me, a student who’ll man the stall while I’m having a comfort break or talking to other liaison officers about how pointless we think the conferences are. There’s a lot of that.

I usually take a student from one of the science departments; I haven’t a clue about science, and someone has to deal with the over enthusiastic teenagers, usually male, who have spent too long with advanced level maths and not enough time with personal hygiene or social skills.

So when I looked at my itinerary and saw that I had Joss Phelps with me I imagined another bloke in a ‘System of a Down’ tee-shirt. I can’t help it. I’m a historian. We try to learn from the past, and in the past that’s the kind of student I’ve had to work with.

So, here’s the inventory of Joss Phelps on Sunday afternoon. No ‘System of a Down’ teeshirt. No cheap trainers (scuffed) or dress shoes with worn down heels and a plasticky look. No bad haircut gelled into place. No spots, no bad breath, no underarm sweat patches (always a no no when facing a three hour car journey), and no Terry Pratchett books.

Instead?

Long black hair down between her shoulder blades. Jet earrings in silver mounts, plus a silver cuff in a celtic motif high on the curve of her left ear. An ivory high necked blouse in a Victorian style with a pleated front. Good skin under a light application of makeup that accentuated its paleness. Heavy red gloss lipstick. A long skirt, charcoal gray, with lace trim to the hem that reached midcalf, and what looked like knee high lace up boots, with substantial heels. Probably about five foot seven without the heels; long legged. Eye catching curves, both to her breasts and her behind.

Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Phelps.

Anyone who calls their daughter Jocelyn perhaps shouldn’t be surprised if she turns out to be a little bit of an individualist. Joss didn’t look like the average science student. I’d seen her round campus occasionally; she had the kind of looks you tended to remember. I’d assumed she would be an expert on Gothic novels, or Victorian perspectives on gender studies.

I’d wanted a scientist; I’d got someone doing a B.Sc in Archaeology, who spent the next two and a half hours on the A1 south explaining dating techniques to me. That’s dating as in the dating of artefacts. Carbon 14 half lifes, tree rings, techniques of stone carving as evidence of tools used, the chemical analysis of paper and non destructive testing of fibres, I could have written a plausible essay on the subject myself by the time we arrived in Brentford. Not just the simple stuff that anyone who’s ever wanted to be sure an old manuscript was genuine might want to know, but details of statistical analyses that prove the theories work, and fascinating facts about chemical analyses of iron, to name just two.

Why Brentford? A cheap hotel and easy access to the university campus in Uxbridge, that’s why. Three days there, then two in the midlands. She’d brought enough clothes for a week of meeting and greeting the public, but still, her bag turned out to be heavier than I thought. Books apparently. Books and a laptop. Kind of a matching situation. I’d brought books and a laptop as well. I didn’t have a copy of Vogue in my bag, which she admitted to with a half smile, as if an intelligent woman shouldn’t be into glamour, but then she didn’t have Personal Computer World in her bag.

The hotel was owned by a brewery, and laid out in 70s motel style; main building with reception, restaurant and bar, rooms in a low rise range of buildings opposite. The usual routine; check in, get bags to room, unpack, then settle down to writing, and re-writing, a portion of the thesis. Travelling makes me determined. I don’t want to be making my way round cheap hotels when I’m forty. I will finish the thesis, get tenure, write the second book (public order in fourteenth century England), and become a fixture in the history department. It makes for strong, driven writing. Doesn’t do much for the social skills.

Next morning was bright and full of promise, the way May mornings can be when we haven’t lost our optimism to the unexpected showers of June and July. The BBC weatherman was full of reassurance about there being no clouds in the sky. I decided to ignore experience, and go with the prediction; short sleeved shirt, loafers, pale grey trousers.

Over breakfast it was obvious Joss had watched and believed the same forecast. She’d stuck with the Victorian theme though. Another high necked blouse, with a lace trim to the front, like a 70s comedian’s dress shirt. An ankle length white skirt, in heavy cotton, over a petticoat with the lace trim showing. Ankle boots this time, white, with square heels that still added two and a half inches to her height. Amber and silver bracelets on both wrists, and her hair pulled back by a white leather barette.

The short sleeves of the blouse, gathered around her upper arm, gave away that she had quite some muscle tone. As we walked to breakfast she talked about having been for a jog that morning. I managed more small talk than I usually do. That set the pattern for the next two days. Small talk, banter, interruptions from students who really believed that their volunteer work with the elderly should get them into our law school when their grades wouldn’t….

Oh, and lust. From me, towards her. Not instant lust. Not the kind of immediate hot flush that makes you think that you won’t be responsible for your actions. Not the breathless desire for stimulation now, for contact, for someone, anyone, even me to grab hold of my cock and stroke it. This was a slower kind of lust, a desire to see Joss Phelps naked, to see her aroused, to find out what made her tick. I wanted to see those long legs without a skirt covering most of them, and to see where they met…

You see a lot of attractive young women at student fairs. They’re dressed up, having a day away from school. You see bare midriffs, cleavage, lots of thigh. I usually ignore all of it. They’re not women, they’re customers. But Joss Phelps? I was imagining her naked from mid afternoon on the first day, disrobing her with my eyes. The shape and size of her nipples; the colour and texture of her pubic hair – would she have trimmed it away, or let it grow? Would she have flawless skin, or a mole somewhere to indicate that she wasn’t quite perfect? How much would her breasts change shape without a bra around them?

There are lots of ways my bosses can check up on what I’ve done at each fair. The forms I hand out have source codes on them. They can ask the institutions hosting the events if we were there. Colleagues gossip about who spends hours in the bar, who chats up the would be students inappropriately, and who leaves their stand unattended.

I like to take home a picture of each fair, of myself, the student assistant and the stand. It’s proof that I’ve existed. I work in a field of study where barely a tenth of one percent of all the records that might help me have survived. Joss understood the urge to make records, in the hope that someone remembers, or thinks there’s a point to remembering. We chatted about it Tuesday evening, before going back to our respective rooms to our laptops and books, and, in my case, to surprised masturbation over the mental image of a woman I barely knew.

She managed to surprise me again on Wednesday morning. The first short skirt of the week, a knee length kilt design, complete with a brooch that combined jet and amber on a gold mount to pin it together at the side, just above her left knee. Lace up boots again, almost meeting the skirt, but with a sharper, spikier heel, so that she was just below my height, and a black, sleeveless, fitted top. I was glad I’d worn my suit for the photo. An old Paul Smith, but a Paul Smith suit all the same. Shoes by Pierre Cardin. Pale blue striped shirt, a rip off of a Hackett design, and matching tie. A colleague took the photos with my camera, before I repeated the favour for him.

Something changed with her in that outfit. For the first time she seemed conscious of how she looked. She seemed conscious of the way young men stayed at the stand a little longer than was necessary. I was conscious of her every movement. I took refuge in the camera. Snapping pics of her talking to students. Formal straight portraits of her in front of the stand. An informal head and shoulders picture of her framed by the spotlights at the back of the stand.

She found it amusing, started to look over her shoulder as if preparing a pose in case the camera was pointing at her. We’d spent two days working together, but suddenly I was getting a glimpse of something more human about her than anything I’d seen previously. Teasing her helped. ‘Think Madonna; think Vogue’ made her smile; apparently Goths weren’t supposed to admit to a taste for mid period Madonna. But it made her smile, and using the camera provoked more smiles. Wet lipped (yes, yes, I know, it’s obviously Freudian, but I am talking about her mouth, and the slash of red lipstick), exuberant smiles.

At twelve thirty the tannoy boomed out the welcome news that the doors were closing. Time to dismantle the stand, pack it into its box, and head for the midlands. So all the leaflets have to go back into their boxes, all the names and forms collected have to be filed.

The stand is fully portable, a curved backdrop on a demountable frame that allows us to use the space behind it as storage. That’s where Joss was crouched down, pushing leaflets into a box. Crouched on her toes, her buttocks almost skimming the floor, her skirt in disarray so that I could see the lace tops of her stockings and a crescent of thigh, pale and stark in contrast to the black of her clothes. I put my hands up, level with my shoulders.

“Look, no camera…”

She knew what I meant, rocked for a moment onto her heels, didn’t look down at her skirt or her legs.

“I can’t hold this pose for ever while you get it. You’ll have to wait for another chance.” I made a point of going to get the camera, but we carried on working, packing boxes, dismantling lights…

I caught a glimpse of thigh again as she sat down on a chair to wind a cable round an extension block. It was another private, dangerous moment. She saw me looking, saw me raising the camera, ignored the noise around us, the other liaison officers doing the same tasks as us, and held her pose on the chair, legs crossed, thigh uncovered, not just while I pictured her from the side, but while I walked to the front of her and took a photo from that angle. Once she’d finished she stood up gracefully, and dropped the extension cable into a box. Cool, sexy, in charge. Not a word between us, just a confident smile on her face, and a slightly perplexed smile on mine.

I didn’t feel as if I could keep the camera joke up for ever, couldn’t hide behind it all the time, but she seemed happy with its presence. To tell the truth I wasn’t sure if she was driving the game, or I was. If I put the camera down would she be disappointed?

And of course there were constraints of time, colleagues moving round, trolleys squeaking on the floor of the hall. Opportunist voyeurism on my part? Or risky exhibitionism on hers? I took some more pics of her unexposed, just moving and turning, trying to let the light from the flash capture the textures of her hair.

Once the stand was dismantled there was no shelter, no space where we couldn’t be observed. So everything went onto the folding trolley, and we pulled it out to the carpark.

Good thing I didn’t put the camera away. She wanted a miniature cardigan, (I’m no fashion expert, she called it a shrug), from her bag in the back of the car. Everything else was loaded; she leaned in through the boot opening and wrestled with her bag. We were at the back of the carpark, sheltered under some trees. Only I could see her reach back to flip her skirt up to her waist . Black stockings, satin ribbon suspenders, a black thong with tiny chains that joined at the notch of her back. It was the first time she’d consciously made a movement that I could say was explicitly exhibitionist; no possibility that her skirt had accidentally fallen that way, or that I’d caught her unawares.

I found my voice.

“If you move your knees apart you might be able to reach better.” She did as I suggested, her legs forming a V, muscles showing in the back of her thighs. Briefly her right hand reached between her thighs, as if adjusting her thong. The way the fingers lingered suggested something else to me. Nothing was revealed, but I knew more, if that makes sense. She threw whatever she’d wanted onto the front seat, then stepped out of the boot opening with a dancer’s grace, and smoothed her skirt down. She mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to me, then walked round to the front of the car.

No I didn’t know how to ask. ‘Are you turning yourself on as much as you’re turning me on Joss? Are you as wet as I am sticky?’

No I didn’t know how to take the next step, from voyeurism to contact.

No, I didn’t want to risk anything that might break the spell we were under.

But I couldn’t say nothing.

I got into the drivers seat and handed her the camera; ‘You’ll have to hold this while I drive – or you can put it in the glove compartment.’

She made a gesture with her lips, half pursed, halfway to a kiss. ‘I’ll keep it out in case we stop at a picnic place or somewhere.’

I gestured to the map book in the door pocket on her side of the car. ‘You’ll find all the service stations and picnic sites in there.’ So I drove, while she studied the map, suggesting route alternatives. She talked about glamour a little, about the formality of fashion pictures and their relationship to other forms of structured communications. She used the copy of Vogue on her lap as an excuse, but an excuse is all it was.

Some of it was culture babble, some of it perceptive insights about people. She probably thought I was talking nonsense sometimes. I chipped in, like a good medievalist, with some references to Abelard and Heloise and courtly love, not that there was anything courtly about how I felt. I talked about the significance of textual codes at a time when visual arts were incapable of conveying complex messages, when so much of art was less about a representation of fact than a kind of visually pleasing hieroglyphics that substituted for the written word.

All of academic life is about talking in codes and deconstructing them; we were doing the same thing to each other. I got the idea that she was looking for something structured, something beyond the student sex life paradigm of drink, maybe drugs, confusion mistaken for spontaneity, often regretted the next day. The conversation was polite, but not restrained, as if there were rules of debate that we were obeying. No embaarassment at pauses, no trying to finish each other’s sentences.

And she liked being the navigator, even if we hadn’t explicitly talked about where the journey was taking us. She directed me precisely, without any confusion, or doubts about her map-reading. Just a young, clever woman, in control.

We ended up at a picnic site in Warwickshire; the ubiquitous red brick toilet block with three or four cars clustered round the entrance on the men’s side, the remainder of the car park empty, rutted, and shadowed by trees that looked like they’d never grown to their anticipated height. Once I’d stopped there was no embarrassment. I didn’t need to ask if she really needed the toilet.

She handed me the camera; reclined her seat; pulled her skirt up to her waist. I checked the camera. 31 shots left on the picture card. Was I making her wait? Possibly. She waited. Patiently. I tried not to fumble, tried not to see if her eyes were taking in the bulge in my trousers.

Instead I took pictures that focussed in on the triangle of her groin. Defined by the shape of the thong, by the satin suspenders, doorframes to that entrance. I walked around the car to her side, opened the door, and got her to sit sideways on her seat. She moved slowly, gracefully, perhaps imagining in her mind that an awkward movement would break the role play. She needed no prompting to take her top and skirt off, and sit there in just a black basque, thong, stockings and boots. I hoped that in the afternoon sunlight the camera would pick up the dark shapes of her nipples under the cups of the basque.

We weren’t saying very much to each other. No sexual contact between us either, just a crackling charge of sexual excitement. A car came and went on the far side of the car park; we didn’t comment on it, just shared wary glances to make sure we hadn’t drawn attention to ourselves.

I explained to her that we had somehow come down to three pictures left on the memory card. She chose the poses; the professional making sure her portfolio was for the best. One pose with the cups of her basque pulled down, her breasts exposed, her fingers twined round her nipples. Did I stare too long at her nipples while setting the first shot up? I don’t know, and I didn’t care. Their image and shape, apparently erect, pyramidal, nearer brown than pink, their surfaces crinkled and distorted by engorgement, was burned onto my brain before the flash triggered.

Did I spend too long waiting to take the shot of her with her hand under her thong, her breasts exposed, her eyes closed, as if she had been caught unawares? Perhaps. And the final picture with her bending forward into the car from the outside, her legs tight together, her thong halfway down her thighs, did I make her wait a moment longer than she desired, as if allowing her to anticipate something other than the flash? Did she adjust her stance so that there was the tiniest glimpse of her labia between her thighs? I don’t know. I’m not convinced she did either. She was superbly controlled, to be sure, but I didn’t get the impression she was giving a repeat performance of an earlier role.

And me? I didn’t come in my pants. I don’t know how, but I didn’t. She pulled the thong up, still in her glamorous role, professional, cool, but let me watch her trace the line of her pussy lips with a purple fingernail. She stood by the side of the car and slipped the shrug over her shoulders, leaving her top on the backseat. The whole manner of her was admirable, luminously sexy, a maturity far beyond her years. ‘Do you have more batteries for the flash if we need it tonight?’ A smile on my face; spare batteries in my briefcase, and a lead so I could download the pics from the full memory card to my laptop. Oddly, the thought of sex, the physical act, wasn’t uppermost in my mind at that moment, but if asked, I’d have said it had moved from the realm of the possible to the world of the inevitable. No details of how, or where, or when, but it would happen.

 

It was on my mind over dinner. Sex, that is. We agreed to meet for a meal at the pub next door to the Travellodge. I’d downloaded the pics to the laptop, and resisted the urge to masturbate over them. I’d showered and shaved, and changed into evening gear; black shoes, black jeans and a black teeshirt. New batteries in the camera, condoms in my wallet, and I was ready for dinner.

So was Joss. Initially I was disappointed; another ankle length skirt; the high lace up boots again, a black silk top and a black leather jacket. New for the occasion a silk choker, with a jet brooch she’d worn during the week pinned to it. Time for my eyes to take in the detail as she walked towards me, controlled and unhurried, as if making her way along a catwalk only she could see. The skirt buttoned up from hem to waist, or rather it would have done if all the buttons from just above the knee downwards hadn’t been undone.

The silk top didn’t reach the waist of her skirt; if she were fashionable there’d have been two inches of bare skin. There wasn’t though, just, from the front an underlying layer of black. As she turned to hang her jacket over the back of the chair there was a momentary glimpse of bare flesh, laces and the surrounding black material of a corset. Erect again, I resolved to try and maintain some degree of cool.

The conversation between us was easier now. Not a surprise really; there is so much more you can say when you’ve exchanged some degree of intimacy. Joss talked about the principles of non invasive archaeology, about how so much of what she wanted to do was about the history of artefacts, the relationship of the object to the built environment and the people. I talked in turn about my love hate relationship with texts, and the stories they didn’t tell. We even seemed to have common ground, looking for texts and objects that told stories that were more reliable than human sources. (Yes, I know all texts are human sources, but legal charters and records are accounts that have to conform to an external framework. Read my thesis if you don’t believe me.)

Once the food was on the table and the second glass of wine poured we started to put some flesh on the intellectual bones. It’s a poor historian who can’t find parallels between what he does and how he lives.

“Were we communicating via images this afternoon Joss? Creating artefacts that tell a story we don’t trust voices to do?” She laughed and wagged a finger at me.

“Those pics are art, not artefacts Ed. You made them, I posed for them. They have no other purpose than to turn us on. So they might be fictions themselves. Have you looked at them again?” I thought for a moment that a coy response might be the right thing to do, changed my mind; honesty might be more productive.

“I didn’t want to wank over them when the real thing might be a possibility later.” Her turn to consider an answer.

“A couple of years ago I used to think that that was the ultimate in sex, to make boys want to wank over me. I used to get them all hard and turned on, watch them coming. The I started to wonder if the boys I was at school with would have wanked over any girl who got her tits out.”

“You mean your preferred them wanting Joss for who she is, rather than what gender she is?”

“Precisely. You’re a man; you know about how other men are. And of course, there’s your reputation around the uni…” Swallow the piece of food that’s suddenly the size of a bowling ball in my throat.

“My reputation?”

“Your reputation. The women’s grapevine grades post grads who teach as well as lecturers. Letches, sexists, gays, misogynists… You have this reputation of being fair and honest; a friend of mine called you the Wysiwyg tutor.”

I recognised the nickname straight away; I’d taught a woman called Sam the previous year, when I’d filled in for a tutor on sabbatical. Joss kept on going.

“And you’ve proved it this week. You’ve been honest and fair. And even today, when I’ve made a pass at you, you’ve been how I want you to be.”

“Which is what Joss?”

Why do any talking when she was willing to do all the work?

“Well, confident but not arrogant. I get the impression you’re enjoying this, enjoying waiting to see what happens.”

“Enjoying it Joss? One of the best looking women in the uni strips for me, and I’m not supposed to enjoy it? I know we both know that you were taking your clothes off to please you, and to turn yourself on, but it wouldn’t work without an audience and you decided I was this week’s audience. Of course I’m enjoying myself.”

“The first audience Ed. I had a girlfriend paint me once, a portrait to prove she could, but you’re the first person I’ve posed for like that. It’s about trust and desire – I’ve ached to feel that way for years, but…. Why does it matter who the audience is?” I was struck by the pause and the change of direction, turning the conversation back into a dialogue, cutting off the flow of information about herself.

“It’s a power exchange Joss. You may be the one doing the explicitly sexual things, but you’re depending on me to do the right things to make it sexy.” She looked as if she was going to disagree, but changed her mind. Instead she just stared at me. Shared insights? Or just gathering our thoughts?

I sat back, as if waiting for the moment to pass. Joss flicked some hair off her brow, fussed with the neckline of her top.

“So if it is a power exchange, what’s this conversation about?” I offered her more wine before I went on; she declined, and we settled on a bottle of mineral water.

“Have you ever studied theatre? There’s a power exchange between audience and performer; it’s like the actor is saying to the audience ‘this will only work if you respond appropriately. I’m putting myself in your hands.’ That was the deal this afternoon; it was only going to work if I responded appropriately. Would it have worked better if I’d been more assertive and overly sexual? I don’t know. So now, tonight, we talk, and I try to work out what’s appropriate next, and you try to tell me…”

“What’s to tell? You’ve told me I turn you on, and I’ve told you…” Her voice trailed away.

“Not quite Joss. You did something exceptional this afternoon. I might want to know where it leads, where we go…”

She shook her head, the colour of her hair shifting as it caught in the light, a strand of brown hair amongst the black.

“You think I haven’t thought about that?” She took a sip of water, then went on.

“I was the clever girl at school who liked to dress differently and knew odd looking boys who were grateful for whatever they got. At uni in the first year I was the girl who didn’t fancy attending an extended club 18-30 holiday with added books. So I ended up having a girlfriend rather than a boyfriend until I realised I was sleeping with somebody I didn’t like because of the things we both didn’t like about college life. And this year? This year I’ve had a vibrator, a head full of thoughts and a drunken fumble with an impotent lecturer who wanted to know if I could get him some viagra for the next time.”

I hadn’t expected such an outpouring.

“And then along you come; Mr nice guy, smiling and charming, intelligent and handsome, with a big smile, a camera and all the right attitudes. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Except what if you’re not the right one?”

“Then I’ll have a good friend in the Arch department and some memories. And you’ll be closer to knowing what works. What works down here as opposed to in your head that is.”

“There’s the rub, if you’ll pardon the expression. In my head my little spell of lesbianism should have been perfection. She wanted glamour, I provided it. She wanted to take the lead, I let her. She was superb in bed, but it was always on her terms. God could she lick..” I knew she was putting on the shoulder shudder for effect, but it was still sexy.

“…but ask her to be different, to step outside her preferences or to think about who I might want to be. God she was uptight…”

“Are you scared I might be uptight?”

“I don’t think so, but the refinement of taste in post modern culture means that sometimes people’s tastes are exotic but narrow. So people are into the sexual equivalent of musical subcults – happy trance with a touch of handbag or emo rock with a death metal twist.”

I tried not to smile at the sardonic tone to her voice even as she slipped back into an almost academic mode of speaking; I didn’t want her to think I was being patronizing.

“Do you not think those boundaries are about safety Joss? Let me hazard a guess. Was your ex troubled by the role of the dildo? You said she loved to lick but…” She laughed out loud..

“Precisely right. Penetration was a male defined act, and she was a woman who loved women, so how could she use a dildo? Or have one used on her?”

“So she was happier to leave you unfulfilled than to risk asking herself if the politics of sex as she understood them were right?”

A nod of the head, a direct look from Joss, head tilted slightly to one side. Answer not required, but maybe an indication too that the conversation was straying too close to the emotional as opposed to the erotic. She turned the point back on to me.

“Which would you do?”

“I have a theory; the more I make you come, the more likely you are to do what I want. Part of the negotiation process is finding out whether I tell you what you want, or you tell me what you want, or I explore you until we find out what you want.”

That smile again, broad lipped, open and generous.

“What if I say you have to guess?”

Under the table her foot had moved between mine so that the arch of her right foot was resting against the back of my left calf.

“Guess? Not me. If you don’t tell me, and I have to guess with too little information to go on, then I’ll just do what pleases me and see if you like that. If you do I’ll keep on doing it. If not, I’ll do something else that pleases me and see what your reaction is to that.”

I moved my right leg to push her left leg away from the right; to push her legs open, in effect. She moved slightly forward on her chair.

“Experimental sex then?” I smiled and laughed.

“Call it dialectic sex. My thesis, your reaction as antithesis, move onto the synthesis or try another thesis. Sex as a debate perhaps.”

“So it’s an intellectual exercise…”

“Of course…”

“What do today’s photo’s say?”

It genuinely was quickfire conversation. Challenging and intriguing.

“Defining glamour on your own terms. Gothic is a form of romanticism, but you’re trying to connect it to eroticism that doesn’t depend on a love interest. It asks questions as well. Are you playing with images from pornography, or are you saying that those things can have other meanings than the ones we traditionally attach to them?”

No movement from the leg resting against mine, no change in facial expression that you could describe, but a sense that we’d made the transition from flirtation to something else.

“Traditional meanings?”

“Traditional porn, if it’s visual, doesn’t tell you about the model’s intelligence. We always attribute the intelligence to the photographer, or the consumer. But the intelligence today was yours.”

“So who was in charge?”

“Do I tell you I was in charge, and risk offending you? Or tell you that you were in charge, and risk disappointing you?”

“Would you rather be a voyeur or be in charge?” Deep breath time; a moment to place my cards on the table.

“When I’m in charge I can be both. And I’m sure that can make space for what you want to be…”

“You know what I want to be? I don’t know that I do…”

“So I create the space. Right now, based on what I know, I think you like being submissive. I don’t think you like being led so much as being in a place where things happen. I didn’t tell you to bend over the boot of the car; you did it, to see what happened. You weren’t submitting to me; you were putting yourself into a place where you might have to submit to me. Where you are now…

I think you love yourself being glamorous. I can arrange a coincidence of glamour and sex for you.”

“So when does this start? This adventure in submission for me?”

I know mocking ironic enthusiasm sounds like a cumulative contradiction, but that was what her expression conveyed.

“It can start as soon as we’ve finished these drinks. You can take your jacket into the toilet, put your top and any panties you’re wearing in your handbag, unbutton your skirt almost to the top, then come and pose for some pictures on the way back across to the hotel.”

And she obeyed.

As simply as that.

Picked up her coat, walked to the toilets, and returned. The pub was almost empty; she saw me waiting for her, camera in hand, and paused at the step up onto our raised seating area, her left leg on the step, her right leg at floor level, coat half open and the skirt falling around her raised thigh. I took the first photo, then gestured to her to hold her coat wider. She did. She reached down and held her skirt wider apart as well, not revealing any more of her groin, but showing more of her legs, turning so that her thigh was more clearly visible.

She turned as I joined her, smiled at a barman who was trying to work out what was going on, left her coat undone as we made our way through the porch into the car park. I held out my hand to her.

“I’ll take your coat.”

Again no question from her, or indeed, any visible reaction.

I folded the coat over my forearm as I took in the view of her, began to direct her to pose.

The corset, tightly laced, the neat bows hanging from the middle of the back, the bare landscape of her shoulders, the black fall of hair along the line of her spine.

The skirt, plain and undemonstrative from the back, provocative and wicked from the front, a frame for thighs divided along their length by suspenders..

The boots, gleaming in the flash light as I made her pose with one foot up on a plant pot as if adjusting the laces.

The silver ring on her second finger, almost as pale as the skin of her mound, sharply contrasted when I demanded she stroke her clit while leaning back against the fake pillars of the portico of the pub.

And the whiteness of her teeth against her cherry lipstick as I took the final shot, of her licking that finger.

She was relieved when I gave her the coat to drape round her shoulders. She would have been happier if I had allowed her to put her arms in the sleeves. But then the hotel receptionist wouldn’t have got as clear an impression of how lucky I was to be with such a sexy woman. Joss smiled at that. She smiled too, but more nervously, when I made her repeat the clit stroking for the camera in the lift, the door held open by her foot, her head bowed a little by the awkward pose, while I stood away from her. I could see around the corner, could see the receptionist and any guests making their way to the lifts. Joss had to trust me. She didn’t stop touching herself until I lowered the camera, not even when her face flushed and her mouth pouted around a murmur of arousal.

She had to trust me. If she were to obey, as she wanted to, she had to trust me. I started to say that sentence as the lift doors closed, and she finished it for me. Between the ground floor and the second I unfastened her skirt completely, took it off her and folded it over my arm. Try as she might her coat wouldn’t close completely from the waist down. I told her to stop trying.

Our rooms were around a corner of the corridor, the last two on a south facing wing of the hotel. At the bend in the corridor I stopped, gestured at the coat. She understood, took her card key from the pocket of the coat, then added the coat to the skirt draped over my arm. She walked away from me toward her bedroom door, and I called to her to slow down so the camera could get another shot of her buttocks, athletic but pale against the black of the corset.

Something inside me expected the spell to break when she opened the door. It didn’t. She hung the coat on a hanger in the wardrobe, the stood in the centre of the room, hands by her side. Waiting.

So I instructed her to pose. In front of the mirror looking at her reflection. Seated on the only chair, looking at her legs. Spreadeagled, legs over the arms of the chair, hands behind her head. Kneeling, buttocks raised, on the bed. Kneeling on the bed with her hand between her legs, her fingers entering herself. Lying on the bed, one knee raised, a parody of the recovery position, one hand on her buttocks. The same pose, with the hand straying lower on the buttock, closer to her crease. On her back knees apart, no pretence at art, except perhaps the languid way her hand draped over her pussy, one finger parting her lips and probing. Not the index finger but her middle finger, stroking and pushing at herself. I took pictures selectively, waiting for the flash to recharge, waiting for her breathing to become more ragged, her face more flushed. She came, with the camera pointing at her face. As she caught her breath she called me a bastard. A lovely cruel bastard. And stayed in her pose on the bed, waiting to see what happened next.

So I did what I thought a lovely cruel bastard would do in that situation. I found a discarded stocking in her laundry bag, and tried her wrists together. I posed her at the bottom of the bed, kneeling, hands above her head, bottom raised, knees wide apart. I took pictures of her in that position. Then I stripped, standing one side so that she could turn her head and watch me. I took care to make sure she watched me take my belt out of the loops of my trousers. I didn’t speak, didn’t comment on my obvious erection, didn’t offer it to her or try to sexualize my actions. Only once I was naked did I walk to my position behind her, wrapping the buckle end of the belt round my hand.

“This will hurt.”

She didn’t flinch, not from any of the six blows with the belt. She gasped a little at the fourth and six blows, and let out a tiny sob when I told her it was finished. She flinched as the flash went off, as I recorded the reddened state of her cheeks. She sobbed again, and sagged at the waist, as I pushed my cock into her pussy. I reached under her, stroked her clit, pushed harder and faster at her. She came again as I came, arching my back.

She let me strip her of her clothes, putting them away as she would, the corset on a hanger in the wardrobe, the boots neatly placed under, aligned with her other shoes. She let me unfasten her earrings and place them in her jewellery box. I offered to unfasten her wrists, to undo the knotted stocking. She shook her head. ‘Not yet’. So I lay behind her in bed, her bound arms stretched out in front of her, while a late night radio station ran the gamut of emotions from A to B, from Will Young to Air Supply, and listened to her talk, and answered her questions.

“I’ve wanted to feel like that since I was sixteen. The moment you hit me with the belt? The first time? Better than any fuck ever. Will you do it to me regularly?” There was no hint of fear in the question.

“It depends; judging by your reactions so far, yes, I will.”

“I’ve wanted to feel like this as long as I’ve known about sex. To feel possessed, to feel that I’m wanted. Not a girl, not a woman, generic, fucking for the purpose of, but Joss, a woman who gets what she wants.” Her nipples were still erect under my fingers, her breasts malleable but full. I laughed at her words, and kissed the nape of her neck.

“Welcome to your brave new world Joss.”

“It is a brave new world Ed. I don’t want to be some kind of little girl, dreaming of how bad she can be, or some jaded housewife wanting to transfer responsibility to somebody else. I just want these feelings…”

“Domesticity would be a waste Joss. You are attractive because you’re the complete package.”

She arched forwards, experimenting with the position of her hands.

“Yes. ” Her position brought my semi hard cock up under her buttocks again.

“I am the complete package, and will be. Have you ever read the Story of O Ed?”

I started to trace her ears with an index finger, to weave my hands through her hair.

“Yes…”

“I wanted to be that woman, but I wanted to be the improved version. I wanted to know more about how to be that woman but to live and work, about how he would tell me to stop being Miss Professional and become Miss Submissive.”

“Did you work it out?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got somewhere this week…”

“Did your ex not talk about this sort of stuff?”

“Are you kidding? She couldn’t organise a meal without a debate about who was in charge, or who was responsible for the other’s oppression. Talk about denial…”

I put one hand firmly on her buttock, coaxed my stiffening cock between her buttock cheeks, towards the wetness at the base of her crease.

“Maybe you were in denial as well. Better a woman than the wrong bloke.”

“mmm…” Her voice was stiffer, so was her body language.

“What’s wrong?”

She’d turned her head down towards the pillow, muffling her words.

“I know what you’re going to do.”

I was glad she knew. I was just rubbing my cock in her wetness, feeling the hardness return, but without any ache to get to orgasm immediately. So I leant forward, put my mouth against her ear and whispered

“And? Should I stop?”

She shook her head.

I wanted to hear her voice, so took her left nipple in my hand, squeezed it tight, then twisted it.

“Should I stop?”

“No.” Clearly spoken this time, even though her head was still resting half on her upper arm, and half on the pillow. I moved my hips away from her a little, thinking about rolling her onto her knees for penetration, felt her stiffen and realised, with my cock resting against her arse, what she was expecting.

So I did it.

I started to press the end of my cock against her arse, felt my foreskin retract, felt her tense then try to relax as the muscle gave way, a little at a time. She started to pant, little short breaths, as I held my place for a moment to allow her to become accustomed. Was I doing the right thing? Patience may be a virtue, and the key to painless anal sex, but I had a flash of insight. Painless wasn’t necessarily what she was looking for.

I moved my right knee under me, turning my body so that I was half above her. I put a hand on each of her hips, held her firmly, then pushed my erection into her at the same time as pulling towards her.

She groaned, and sobbed a little. I was up to my hips in her, embedded, her bottom grinding against my pelvis, and I decided to stick to the plan. Hard, uncompromising, penetration.

Joss responded. She rolled under me, so that she was face down on the bed, her hands stretched above her head again. She didn’t try to muffle the sobs that came from her as I pushed hard down into her, but didn’t try to respond either. When her hips raised to meet me, and make the angle of entry easier, it was because I pulled her upwards. If she came it was a different orgasm to her earlier ones, more desperate, more pained, like a gasp of achievement at the end of a race.

I came, inside her; holding her hair in one hand, arching my back and supporting myself on one hand. I untied her hands, went to wash myself in the bathroom, and came back with a face cloth to wipe her face. She accepted the gesture, wide eyed, staring at me. Her mascara and eye shadow were a smear of half diluted shades around her eyes; I found a makeup remover wipe on the desk and tidied her up. She kissed me then and muttered something. I kissed her back, wiped her face again, dried it with a towel and asked her to say it louder.

“You cruel, cruel bastard. Why couldn’t you just do it and leave me?” I kissed her cheek, lemon scented now, and sat back.

“Do you want me to go?”

She shook her head and I climbed back into bed, and fell asleep with her head resting in the crook of my arm.