Twenty Tones of Red (28 page)

At one point
, when she had just finished waving her hands in the air and jiggling back to back with Jen, James approached her with a smile and leaned close to her ear.

“You d
ance like a crazy Irish banshee.”

“Thank you.”
It was meant as a compliment and she took it as one. James loved the wild side of her. He could enjoy watching her stupidly drunk even when he was sober and he always equated her love of excess with her passion for kinky sex. His own pet theory was that her red hair was a result of the fire and passion that burned inside her leaking out of the top of her head. She had never been with a man who encouraged her to be so free and joyful and it was extremely liberating.

Eventually they got too hot and tired to carry on and while James went to get some drinks she sat down and had a rest. She was momentarily left alone sucking on a pineapple rum-based cocktail when she became aware that she could overhear bits of conversation from the next booth. The partitions between the seats were made of stacks of books glued together and when she bent forward to reach for her drink it had put her ear level with a large hole where one of the novels had fallen over. Next to them there was a group of professional dancers who were regular performers in some of the trendier pop videos. She knew they worked with James and was immediately curious when she overheard them talking about him.

One of the girls was asking who he was with and she was pleased to hear
herself described as the ‘pretty leggy redhead’. They then had a short discussion about how fanciable James was and then the girl who was asking all the questions enquired whether some dancer called Macy was still interested in him. It seemed she was. Siobhan was most pleased to hear the more knowledgeable girl dismiss her chances. “She’s wasting her time now,” she confided to the group. “He’s no fun at all these days. Totally settled down and hundred percent faithful to the redhead.” She heard the other dancers groan but her own heart was singing. It was wonderful to have her hopes confirmed. Her heart had always known that James was committed to her but it really helped to have the thought spoken out loud by someone who worked with him.

The rest of the night pa
ssed as something of a dream. She got very merrily drunk and decided not to leave the dance floor. She threw herself around to an eclectic mixture of seventies disco and ultramodern trance and electro mixes and found that she couldn’t keep her hands off James’s body. Considering that he was totally stone cold sober he put up with her well and when he finally dragged her off the dance floor and convinced her to leave she flopped both arms over his shoulders and hung smiling at him in a totally gormless way. He laughed at the hopelessness of her mood then, after letting her kiss goodbye to just about everybody in the place, managed to urge her out onto the street. Once he’d got her strapped in the passenger seat and they were driving home he told her again and again with sparkling eyes and a faint grin that she was a crazy banshee.

“Yes
, but you love me for it don’t you?” she replied.

He nodded solemnly as he glanced in the rear view mirror and pulled out to overtake a slowing taxi. “Yes I do my d
ear, yes I do.” She would have pushed him even further on the depth of his feelings for her except she then promptly fell asleep with her head against the passenger window.

There was a big irony to her life as a slave. Although she spent many hours a week either being beaten or kneeling worshipping the feet of her master she secretly considered this a great privilege. When she wasn’t sexually serving her lover the rest of her life had become incredibly indulgent. She hadn’t let herself go flabby. Far from it. She now spent as much time as possible in the gym and worked on her body ruthlessly as if it were a special project. No, the indulgence was her lifestyle and the fact that she no longer even thought about money. She could buy almost anything she wanted and if James ever got so much as a hint that there was something in a shop that she liked he would quickly buy it for her. She ate the best foods, drank the finest wines and often pampered herself at an insanely expensive West London spa. The only thing that she wanted more of was time and as soon as she mentioned how difficult life was when they were both working long hours James suggested a solution. “Why don’t you go part-time?” he asked. “Focus on just doing the important pitches and big sales meetings. Get them to cut your basic but keep the same commission. You’d probably end up doing less work but earning the same money.”

There was a
lot of sense to what he was saying. A lot of the time in the office was spent dealing with internal issues and petty politics. All she really wanted to do was sell to clients and win business.

For a
long time she dreaded having the conversation with her boss but when she’d carefully planned out what she would say and the possible benefits for the company she booked a meeting and put the proposition to him. He said nothing at first and asked for time to think about it but at the end of the very next working day she received a simple email saying that the idea sounded fine and they were happy to go ahead with the changes. It was as simple as that, and she went home feeling excited and liberated. Somehow the world seemed very different. She would now have more days off than she worked with a ratio of four to three. It was significant. It meant that her life was more about herself than earning money. Her sales career was now pushed into the background and she felt for the first time in her life totally free. The irony was that this meant that she was now much freer to serve her master. Sometimes it was impossible to explain all the contradictions and paradoxes in life but ultimately she had no doubt whether she wanted to be a slave who sat at a desk typing emails or a slave who was chained up sexually pleasuring her lover.

With the change in her working pattern the new stage in her life was totally complete. She had achieved a level of happiness and contentment that she’d never thought possible. Every part of her was satisfied. She was no longer twitchy or nervous about her relationship with James. There was something solid reliable and steadfast about him that left her at ease. He never played games or tricks with her. He was open and honest and totally reliable and she knew that she’d been lucky with her timing. It was very clear that during his wilder days he’d been completely the opposite. Every story that leaked out about his youth involved him being unreliable and unfaithful to women. He used to have many girlfriends on the go and treated them all pretty badly. Not out of malice but simply because he was so spontaneous and moved so quickly that he was never where he said he would be and would sometimes leave one girlfriend waiting in the pub while he went to a party with another one. That life was now behind him. Whenever he talked about those days he looked exhausted. He told her he was tired just thinking about it and now he just wanted to be in his own home with the woman he had chosen to settle down with. Her.

They had a pattern to their lives together. Although in her youth the idea of being settled had sounded deadly dull their day to day activities were anything but boring. During the middle of the week both of them concentrated on work. She went into the office or attended sales pitches and he often had a video shoot. On these days they tended to eat and go to bed early. James would not neglect her however. He would usually spend about an hour or so every night putting her through her slave drills and either tying her, beating her or making her worship his body. It was enough to keep things interesting and he would usually tease her until she was very close to orgasm then leave her wanting more. He would remind her that she’d get much heavier treatment at the weekend and this always turned out to be true. They both kept their social life to a minimum and treated Thursdays as the beginning of a wild weekend. If they had the energy they would dine in one of their favourite restaurants but if they both agreed they were tired then one of them would cook and they would eat as early as they could and then begin their serious fetish play.

Sometimes she didn’t always get the attention she wanted from her master and that
meant she had to find ways of misbehaving and getting him to focus on her again. One week at the end of their first summer together she felt she’d been particularly neglected and put quite a dramatic plan into action.

For a good few days James had been lenient and almost dismissive of her.
He was clearly a bit tired and distracted by a big name video shoot that was coming up and their play had been very light and a little half-hearted. As a very lame weekend passed she felt her frustration and irritation build. Previously she would have dedicated a lot of quality time to some intense self-pleasure but she was now under pact to a master. She was not even allowed to touch herself without his permission and she honoured this. Power play relationships were built on promises and oaths. The chains were just decorative extras.

On the Wednesday she woke with
an insistent tingling between her legs and an ever increasing desire for some intense play. James was long gone though. She’d been vaguely aware of him slipping out of their bed and moving around in light steps just as the first faint glow of sunlight had been pressing at the curtains. After a quick trip to the loo and a piece of toast she stood and stared at the pad on the hall table. As usual he’d written out her instructions for the day on a single piece of paper then folded it and labelled it with the single word
slave
.

Her imagination ran through some of the wild things he could have written for her. There might be instructions to set up a camer
a and beat her own backside with a hairbrush then touch herself to orgasm. He might have insisted that she strap a dildo inside herself until he got home or even put herself into bondage sometime late in the afternoon and lie waiting for his return. Deep down she knew that all these were unlikely. He had scribbled a few lines at six am while he waited for his cab and whatever slave demands were contained on the piece of paper were likely to be brief and practical.

After
a while she picked up the single sheet and held it delicately between her fingers and thumb. She didn’t open it. The longer the moment of anticipation lasted the better. Instead she moved to the ornate full-length mirror that was hung near the door and stood and examined herself. She was not naked. For the past week or so James had laid out extravagant lingerie and nightwear on her side of the bed. The previous night she’d gone to bed in a black baby doll. Her breasts were tightly held in a couple of smooth black cups and below them sheer and almost transparent lace fell to the level of her crotch. The piece was deliberately short and only covered her if she was leaning forward. It had ridden up frequently during the night and produced the delicious feeling of being more than naked; one moment she was half covered the next she was exposed.

She leaned back a little so that she could examine her pussy in the mirror.
A few months previously James had introduced a new stipulation to her slave duties; she was to remove all her pubic hair and keep her crotch totally smooth and soft for him. She’d been delighted with the command as it meant that she was even more exposed and naked when she was serving him. Today had been diarised for her depilatory duties. Already there was short red fuzz growing over her pubic area. She knew that it would be quite rough and bristly to the touch but she didn’t allow herself to reach down and check. She would obey her master; her intimate places belonged to him and weren’t hers to explore.

S
he stood and let herself drift deeper into her sensual dream state. Just standing alone half-naked in the hallway was increasing her desire. Her heart was thumping in her chest and an insistent heat pulsing around her sex. There was something so outrageously indulgent and naughty about her situation. In her hand were her only instructions; apart from eating and going to the toilet she had no other duties for the day except to wait to for her master to come home. This left her imagination free to run wild.

Still she didn’
t open the note.  Instead she studied herself some more in the mirror. What she saw she was proud of. Yes she could have bigger breasts, but her thighs and buttocks were rounded and rock solid from her daily gym work.  Her skin was smooth and had a permanently healthy glow about it. The only real question of taste was her colouring. There wasn’t much she could do about that, her skin would always be pale and marked with orangey brown freckles. Her thick long hair wouldn’t take dye well and would always be a glorious shade of copper. James loved it, Magda and the girls in her hairdressers all loved it and now over the last few months she had learned to appreciate herself as special and uniquely beautiful.

She didn’t know how much time had passed but she recognised
that she’d slipped into an erotic trance state. It was something that had happened to her all her life. Even as a little girl she had waited for the house to go quiet then slipped out of all her clothes and stood naked in her tiny wardrobe. She hadn’t known why except that it had produced a strange excited feeling in her tummy and made her skin tingle. When she’d been old enough to play out on her own she had crept through the woodland copses near her home until she was certain that there was nobody around and then stripped and positioned herself against a tree. She would hold her arms above her head as if she was tied and just wait, watching bees buzz lazily amongst the flowers and listening to the distant sound of woodpigeons. She liked to let the stillness of the air and her nakedness intoxicate her. Later still when she had discovered the secrets of self pleasure she had planned longer more remote walks so that she could end up in a lonely silent spot and strip and slowly rub herself to orgasm.