“Oh yes, I think you should. You are caged. You are caged within my desires. My rules are your bars, and they are not susceptible to bending or warping. And the best thing about your cage, Beth, is that you walked into it voluntarily. What do you think of that?”
“Then it isn’t a cage, is it? It’s a dwelling I’ve chosen for myself. It’s a…cocoon.”
His face flickers but it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking.
“I’d like to keep you in a box, under lock and key for the next two weeks,” he says. “I’d like to cage you. Just because I will be in another country, you needn’t think you will be beyond my reach.”
“I don’t think that,” I say. “I don’t think of it as…escaping from you. I don’t want to be beyond your reach.”
He takes my hand across the table. “I will keep you within reach, don’t you worry, Beth,” he says, and I wonder what he means, but he changes his tone to the brisk no-nonsense version and says, “We’d better go then. Zoo, lunch, then back here to discuss the next fortnight.”
*
The Zoo is fun, especially the humid gloom of the reptile house, where Sinclair takes advantage of the low lighting to slip a hand up my skirt and massage the area between my legs while he stands behind me. “What do you think, Beth?” he breathes hotly into my ear. “A nice big thick snake…would you like one?”
“Shut up!” I giggle, my hand over my mouth muffling my words. “You’re awful! I’m going to tell the BBC about you.”
“They’d probably give you a camera. Tell you to make a video diary. Would you like that, Beth? Would you like to have hundreds of thousands of viewers watching you bent over for the crop with your legs spread wide, nothing left to the imagination?”
“No I wouldn’t! Stop it!”
“Would you like to have passers-by in the street nudge one another and say ‘That’s her. I’ve seen every part of her, exposed to the camera; she looks even more wanton in the flesh. Do you think he’s had her yet today? Do you think her bottom is sore right now?’”
“Don’t! I’m going home!” He gets his fingers inside the gusset of my knickers and chuckles.
“You protest too much, Beth. You’re more slippery than these snakes down here. I could enter you in one stroke.”
I give up and sigh. Luckily there is nobody nearby; he starts to work on my clit and the imagery he has put in my head ensures that I come on his fingers within a couple of minutes, shuddering into his hand over my mouth, grabbing blindly at the hem of his coat behind me while I melt.
“I think we should go now,” he says thickly. “I’ve seen enough wildlife.”
Keeping me in front of him, his monstrous erection prodding between my skirt-covered buttocks, he steers me out of the zoological gardens and across the road to the Downs, almost running to the birch grove I know so well. As soon as we are out of sight of prying eyes, he unveils the masterpiece and pushes me down to my knees. “You know what to do, Beth,” he says gruffly.
Yes. I do.
*
Half an hour later I am washing down his semen with a chilled glass of Chablis and a crayfish salad at an expensive bistro in the Village.
“We need to discuss rules,” he says.
“Do we?”
“Of course. For the next two weeks. It’s important that you don’t feel that you are…off the leash…in any way. I still require you to obey me in word, thought and deed. At all times.”
“Oh. I know that.”
“So while I may be physically absent, on every other level, you will be aware of my presence.”
“Good. That’s what I want.”
He smiles at me – indulgently. I wonder if he loves m
e. Does he love me? Does he know what love is? Do I?
“Here are my rules then. I’ve printed a version of them for you to take home, but I thought we could go over them here first. Number one: You must ask my permission to leave your parents’ house. You will do this by text message. If I cannot get back to you straight away, you will wait. You will not assume my consent and go out before you hear from me. Agreed?”
“Oh. All right. You won’t be unreasonable though, will you? I mean, I can go out with my friends?”