“Just a bit,” she muttered.
“Jeez, Lydia, are you allergic to vanilla or something? First a bisexual polyamorist and now a sadist. You know how to pick ‘em.”
Lydia burst into mortified giggles.
“He’s not a sadist, really,” she said. “He just likes to take control.”
“Yeah, we’ve noticed. Does he spank you on the bottom with his baton?”
“Shut up!”
“Okay, okay. The subject is closed. For now. But I might need to ask you some more later. Purely for information, of course. I need to take my mind off my own sex life.”
“Oh. Everything’s okay between you and Ben, isn’t it?”
“More than okay. Wonderful. Amazing. But he wants me to meet his parents.”
“Oh, Ness, that’s brilliant. He’s really serious about you.”
“I’m terrified.”
“They’ll love you. You’re so good for each other—they’ll see that, surely.”
“I hope so. I really, really hope so.”
Lydia put down her bow, the piece being finished and the rehearsal brought to a close. Could she get out of here without getting nabbed by Milan? She stuffed her violin rather clumsily back into its case and stood carefully, making sure the skirt of her dress had fallen to mid-thigh before removing her hand from its hem. Underneath it, she was wet, and had been since her journey to work. There was something about going knickerless that just seemed so very, very rude, even if nobody knew about it.
“Lydia.” Milan’s voice behind her. “Come for a drink with me and Sarah.”
Fat chance, sunshine.
So he was playing Mr Nice Guy now, was he? Let’s all be friends and cosy up together?
“Got to dash—need the loo,” she said, heading for the double doors at a rapid pace.
She stood in the stall for a good ten minutes, giving Milan ample time to round up his usual suspects and bear them off to the Delius Arms. While she stood there, she lifted her skirt and looked down at her bare pubic triangle. An earlier challenge of the week had been to get a full wax down there. The skin was so smooth and her lips stood out, puffy and pink. If only von Ritter would come into the bathroom now, drag her up against the wall and slam himself into her, over and over and over… She thought about touching herself, but no. She was meeting von Ritter, and he would know.
She stepped out of the stall, washed her hands even though she hadn’t used the toilet and pouted at herself in the mirror. Then she set off for the hotel.
Von Ritter was ahead of her, waiting at the bar. He waved her over, smiling, and invited her to sit down on the high bar stool—a precarious place for a knickerless girl to be.
“Did you do as you were told?” he said, looking down at where her hem grazed the upper slopes of her thighs, which were pressed tightly together.
“Yes,” she whispered, glancing over at the barman to make sure he wasn’t listening.
“And how was it?”
“Different. Bad for concentration. I was too busy keeping my legs together to think about anything else.”
“That’s good. I wanted it to focus you on your cunt.”
She looked sharply at the barman again, then at von Ritter, frowning as if to shush him. But von Ritter wasn’t a man to be shushed.
“I wanted you to be constantly thinking about how wet you are, how your clit feels, how you want to be touched down there. You do want to be touched down there, don’t you?”
Lydia could barely get her voice out of her constricted throat. She nodded instead.
“Good. Shall we go?”