He did have a nice laugh. I wondered whether to stay a few extra days in Lima.
‘You shower and I’ll do the toast.’ He moved towards the kitchenette. ‘Bliss, you looked wonderful last night. Can I dress you for sightseeing?’
Immediately the warm-up started, and not that slowly either.
After my shower I put on the towelling robe he’d given me and ate my toast and had another cup of coffee while Carlos made a few calls in rapid Spanish. I realised that my language lessons were going to be of limited use in the real Spanish-speaking world.
‘Which charity do you work for?’ I asked as he put the phone away.
He looked puzzled. ‘Charity?’
‘Kip said you worked for a development agency.’
His brow cleared and he nodded, a smile at the corners of his mouth. ‘Oh yes, but it’s not charity funded. It’s more along the lines of encouraging industry to set up here, you know, bringing in more work and so on. I’ve got a couple of projects on the go at the moment, but I think the big one’s going to be on Chiloe, an island off the coast of Chile, so I’m probably moving down there soon. It’s crying out for development.’
‘Oh, right. I’m planning to go over there too.’ I nodded with polite interest though my mind was engaged with the prospect of dressing up. Despite trying to travel light I had put a small aromatherapy body lotion in my bag and had smoothed it on after my shower. My skin felt soft and supple and I guessed Carlos would like to handle it.
‘I hope you’re not expecting anything too different from last night,’ he said softly. ‘That corset is stunning on you. Your waist looks so much better in it . . . and I want you to be aware of wearing it with every breath.’
It was fine by me, despite his remark reminding me of a meditation class I took once where you had to be aware of each breath. Maybe bondage would do wonders for my spirituality. Once again I was laced up, though I could swear it was tighter than before. Carlos directed me to put on my black knickers and the skirt and top I’d been wearing when he came home, and then got the boots from the wardrobe.
‘I’m not going to be able to walk far in those,’ I complained.
‘We’ll go slowly.’ Carlos crouched down to ease my foot into the boots and then pulled the butter-soft leather up to mid-thigh, followed by the other. My skirt came just above the top of them. Having practised with the shoes I managed to walk quite well in the boots, adopting the same procedure as I had for the shoes chained together, a model-girl walk that made me look even more like a Parisian hooker than I already did, with my breasts swelling above the low-necked top and my nipples clearly outlined through the thin stretchy fabric.
‘More goth than hooker,’ he assured me, clasping a black velvet choker round my neck. It was only half as deep as the collar I had worn last night but the resemblance was enough to shift my sexual warming-up process into a higher gear. I was surprised that the goth revival had reached Peru but felt slightly better about going out as Countess Dracula and with Carlos’s approval did my eyes moody dark and my lips crimson, with a tinted sunscreen over the freckles. Finally he handed me a pair of black gloves.
‘If you think I’m going to walk through the streets of Lima with my hands tied behind my back –’
‘No. But I might just want to fasten them, if it’s appropriate. Trust me, Bliss. No one will know.’
Just a little longer than wrist-length, they had an innocent-looking trimming of braided loops and beads, but he demonstrated how the loops on one interlocked with the beads on the other.
‘I suppose I trust you. Anyway, you’re more likely to see someone you know than me. And this trip is supposed to be an adventure, after all.’
Churches and museums are usually way down on my list for sightseeing. I like hanging out in cafés, walking round city streets and watching the world go by in blossom-laden parks. For one day, though, I was happy to go along with Carlos’s idea of a sightseeing tour. Despite my protestations at home that textile design was not going to be my life career, I also had to see the collection of pre-Inca weavings in the private collection at Miraflores, so had got Carlos to make an appointment for that late in the afternoon, which meant that I had effectively limited the time for gazing at altars and glass cases.
We started with the main museums, which were scattered all over the city. My perch on top of the precarious heels wasn’t tested too much, just in and out of the car and around the exhibits. Not surprisingly Carlos lingered a little too long over the relics from the Spanish Inquisition, and he seemed to find the riches in the gold museum almost as interesting. In the centre of town we did the cathedral and nearby I caught my first glimpse of street sellers in traditional dress, which delighted me, though Carlos assured me I’d see plenty of that in Cuzco. I also caught my first glimpse of McDonald’s, which was a bit disappointing.
‘What do you expect?’ Carlos asked, amused. ‘This is civilisation too, you know. OK, it’s not Europe, but it’s not the third world either.’
‘I suppose. It’s just that wherever you go you see the same things. Before long you’ll be walking down a street and you won’t be able to work out whether you’re in Bogota or Bognor.’
‘You obviously haven’t been to Bogota.’
‘Yeah, and I’ll put money on you not having been to Bognor either.’
Carlos decided we needed a light lunch as he was taking me to the best seafood restaurant in Lima that night. The little vegetarian café was half empty and he chose a corner table right at the back and tucked in next to me. We were half a dozen tables away from the cluster of customers who looked like lunching secretaries with the obligatory sprinkling of gringo backpackers. The darkly handsome waiter was obviously of Indian extraction and greeted Carlos with familiarity. Without even consulting me or the menu Carlos ordered.
‘Don’t I get to choose anything myself?’ I complained.
He smiled his closed-mouth enigmatic smile. ‘I enjoyed feeding you so much last night that I wanted to do it again.’
Before I could register what that statement might imply his left hand snaked round the back of my waist and grabbed my left hand while his right pulled my right to meet it. Without even having to look he fastened the gloves together.
‘Carlos, this is public. You said no one would see,’ I hissed. Still smiling but now with an edge of triumph to it he leaned over me, his left arm still around my waist and his right arm resting on the table top.
‘They won’t,’ he murmured. ‘As long as you stop trying to pull them apart.’
My vain efforts to loosen the seemingly simple fastenings meant that my tits were jiggling in the brief cups of the corset. His eyes were on them, and as I followed them I saw that my nipples had hardened in excitement.
Before I could tell myself to stop trying to get free and calm down, Carlos lifted his hand and rubbed my nearest nipple. My eyes closed with excitement and fear of being seen and I felt the colour rise in my cheeks. I sincerely hoped that the other customers were too far away and engrossed in their lunch or their conversation to take any notice, but part of me was melting with the embarrassment. Melting into a sticky pool in my knickers, that is.
He moved to the other nipple and teased it harder. My eyes were in constant movement, darting between the café customers, his face, the movements of the waiter and my now rapidly rising and falling breasts. Shamed and helpless I saw the waiter move towards us but Carlos’s hand was back on the table before two glasses of yellow juice were set before us. Did the waiter’s eyes linger on me with admiration or contempt? Or had I imagined his eyes registering anything other than just another punter?
The juice was delicious; papaya and mango, Carlos told me, as I sucked the nectar through the straw. His hand was, to my relief, around his glass and I relaxed, but not for long. The arm that was thrown caressingly around my waist was withdrawn to lie negligently in my lap and, as Carlos sucked nonchalantly on his juice, his hand snaked up between my silky body-lotioned thighs and rubbed at my knickers.
‘I suppose it’s all about power,’ I said defiantly, almost condescendingly, as his hand slipped easily up and down the wet satin.
He laughed in genuine amusement. ‘Sure it’s about power. But more than that, Bliss. I take part of my pleasure from giving it to you, as well as from seeing you unable to help responding to me.’
‘And why do you take pleasure from humiliating me in public?’
‘No, Bliss. You’re getting pleasure from that. Aren’t you?’
Of course I was. Don’t we all like that element of danger in misbehaving in public, even if it’s only as a teenager, snogging in your bedroom when your mum might burst in at any minute, or being felt up in the back row of the cinema.
‘If what I’m feeling now isn’t a sign that you’re getting pleasure, I can only assume you’ve wet yourself.’
‘Most amusing,’ I retorted, but I had to smile. ‘The thing is, Carlos, where do you stop? I’ve always associated being tied up with being whipped or walloped, neither of which are my thing.’
‘Nor mine,’ he assured me. ‘I don’t need to hurt you. Anyway there’s no point trying domination unless you want to submit: it’s a two-way thing. But don’t tell me you don’t want to be bound. Your reactions so far have spoken for themselves.’
As if to emphasise it his fingers slid inside my knickers and encountered the full spate of my slickness. It was hard to stop myself from moaning as he poised his finger on the tip of my clit and stroked so delicately but rapidly that it was like the buzz of a mild electric shock. He withdrew his finger and put it to his lips, smiling quizzically.
‘I think I’m right.’
The waiter appeared with a large plate of different vegetable dishes, which he placed between us, and two plates and knives and forks. I almost told him not to bother as I wasn’t able to use the knife and fork and in moving the plate he’d put my juice, or rather my straw, out of reach of my mouth.
Once again I submitted to being fed and once again I got a real charge from it. Why there should be a difference between picking up a fork and putting food into my own mouth and taking food from the end of Carlos’s fork I couldn’t say. Maybe it was because I was submitting to him obediently, but then again I didn’t have much choice. Whatever, the food tasted good. There were potatoes in a delicious peanut sauce, a bit like a satay sauce, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, beetroot in a creamy mayonnaise and sweetcorn. He fed us alternate mouthfuls and as he lifted the fork to my lips I opened my mouth in readiness, turning myself on picturing the crimson lips parted ready to receive whatever he decided to put between them. God knows I can probably do without sex altogether and stick with my imagination. By the time we finished I’d stopped watching the waiter nervously and couldn’t have cared less what he might have thought of the customer at table 15 being fed like a baby.
After lunch Carlos untied my hands and after sashaying through the Plaza de Armas again on my heels I was driven north, crossing the river, and he pulled over on to some waste ground and parked.
‘Let me show you a part of Lima most tourists don’t see,’ he said as we walked up the busy road. I couldn’t believe that there was going to be anything to see; the river looked brown and polluted and the road was full of traffic. Then we crossed the road and I saw what he meant. Stretching out along the river bank was a higgledy-piggledy row of makeshift wooden and cardboard shacks. They were roofed with dirty discarded carpet, which also did for a door, and though no bigger than beach huts some seemed to house a tangle of filthy children and their parents, or an old, hopeless-looking couple. We rounded a corner; the shacks seemed to go on for ever.
‘Of course, it’s better than a McDonalds on every street corner,’ he said drily.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Carlos, the two are hardly the opposing choices,’ I said, angered more by the squalor than his statement. ‘Don’t you think the two present an obscene contrast?’
He shrugged. ‘You mean more obscene than people sleeping on the streets in London? It’s a damn sight richer than Lima. What’s worse, pushing aside a down and out on the way to a hamburger restaurant or on the way to the Ritz?’
‘OK,’ I said, slightly confused. ‘I’ll think about that one and we can argue later.’
He laughed almost tenderly. ‘When I have your arms pulled back in the gloves, when your tits are pointing at the sky, when . . . I think maybe I should chain your choker to the wall tonight –’
His mouth stopped speaking and came down over mine. If his last words had turned him on they had done no less to me. We kissed properly for the first time, our tongues exploring each other’s mouth. His arms were pulling me towards him and I could feel his cock hard and big against me. Totally oblivious to the surroundings I pressed back against his cock and his hands moved to my arse and circled my buttocks, then slipped under the skirt and under the leg of my knickers. My eyelids drooped, heavy with desire, and I suddenly focused on an old man watching us from the carpet door of one of the shacks. I pulled my mouth away.
‘Carlos, we’ve got an audience.’
Seemingly ignoring me, his muscular arms propelled me round to face the wall and his hand resumed its quest in my knickers. As I started to protest he stopped me with his mouth and ran his finger along the overheated moisture that had spread to my arse from my weeping slit. His other hand was on my waist, where it was holding up my skirt. Putting myself in the old man’s place I saw a girl dressed like a whore who allowed a man to pull her skirt up exposing her knickers while he caressed her cunt in full view of anyone who was passing by, and as Carlos stopped kissing me and spoke to the old man I hung my head in shame. More than shame; I was totally on the verge of coming as his fingers slid lightly over my clit and back to my glorious wet sex.
He didn’t let me come, though. After the old man answered him, laughing, Carlos pulled his hand out and showed it to him. They both laughed and Carlos propelled me away, back in the direction of the car. My head lowered, unable to look the man in the face, I felt as though my cheeks were on fire.