‘I’m going to make it a game. If you lose, you move in with me. If you win, you don’t.’
He removes the finger.
‘I don’t understand. What sort of game? Cluedo? Chess?’
‘It doesn’t have a name. It’s a sex game, our favourite kind.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘The stakes are potentially high – for me at least. I’m going to set you a series of challenges. You don’t have to take them, but if you turn them down you incur a fail. You might find a scene or a person that attracts you more than I do – that’s the risk I’m taking. But if you don’t, and if you incur three fails, or decide to quit, you move in with me.’
‘Hang on. So – you’re going to send me off to have sex with various strangers or groups of strangers?’
‘Yeah, basically.’
‘And if I take them all on, I keep my flat?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But if I chicken out or get fed up with all the shagging, I have to move in with you?’
‘Are you up for it? Do you dare?’
Lloyd knows my weakness for a dare, the bastard. But it takes the pressure off me. All the tedious weighing up and sifting of pluses and minuses. Not to mention the fear. The fear is what really holds me back.
‘Would you be involved in these challenges?’
‘Sometimes, perhaps. Sometimes I’d just want your post-match report. You know I like hearing about your adventures. It turns me on.’
I smile, thinking back to the days when I used to sit at his cocktail bar and tell him all about the threesome I’d just enjoyed, or whatever I’d been doing. I did it to wind him up, but obviously it had had a bigger effect than that.
‘You’re sure you’d be OK with it? You wouldn’t be jealous?’
‘When have I ever been jealous?’
‘Good point.’ Then some other words tumble out, slipping past my careful emotion-filter like undisciplined fish. ‘I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you.’
He strokes my brow, smiling sadly. ‘That’s nice to know. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. In fact, it might be the only sweet thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Fuck off. I’m not that bad.’
‘You are, my darling. You are very, very bad. That’s why I like you.’
‘OK. So, these challenges?’
‘I shall deliver one a week in a sealed envelope to your pigeonhole at the hotel. You will send me a reply, telling me whether it’s a go or not. Then, on your day off, you make it happen. I’ll design the challenges so that some kind of proof of your success gets back to me, if I’m not there to watch or take part. It could be anything from, say, performing in a strip club –’
‘Been there, done that.’
‘I see I shall have to use my imagination. Hmm. Anyway, it could involve fetishes, groups, unusual situations. Or it could be something very simple. I’ll have to give it some thought. Actually, I might do a bit of research now. Exactly what haven’t you done, Soph?’
I puff my cheeks out. This is a tough question. ‘Most of the stuff I haven’t done is stuff I would never do.’
‘Right. But there are different ways of doing the things you have done. I’ll have to concentrate on those, I think. Multiple partners, S&M, sex in public, picking up strangers. All your favourites. Actually, fuck, you’ll pass this test with flying colours and then I’m shafted. Leave it with me. I’m going to come up with something fiendish.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you will. You’ve yet to disappoint on that score.’
‘Thank you. Another compliment – twice in one day!’
‘Don’t get used to it.’
‘As if I would. Now, about that Dark Prince …’
***
The very next evening, after work, the Princess presents herself to His Royal Highness the Prince of Petite Mort. She is belligerent and feisty, thrusting out her chest as she stands before him.
‘I demand an explanation,’ says the Prince, who is rather dashing in leather trousers and a sword belt, though the sword is only the plastic toy kind. The riding crop in his hand, however, is real. ‘Why did you run away to the forest?’
‘Because I didn’t want to marry a tyrant.’
‘Tyrant, eh? I’ll show you tyrant.’ He whacks the crop against his thigh, making a delicious whippy sound that melts the Princess’s resistance, not to mention her pussy. ‘Thought you could dishonour your pledge, did you? No such luck, my tempestuous beauty.’
Smirk break. He does overegg it a bit sometimes.
‘You won’t be smiling for much longer. I’m going to continue with the marriage.’
‘Oh, but –’
‘And you will bend to my will. And my whip.’
‘Yikes. But there’s something I must tell you. It might change your mind. I am no longer a virgin.’
‘Wha– but, you, what? No longer a virgin? How?’
‘The usual method, I think.’
He cracks the whip again, then grabs me by the forearm and pulls me close, capturing my chin in a firm grip.
‘Who? I’ll have his head on a pike.’
‘I don’t know his name. Some peasant of the forest.’
‘He violated you?’
‘No, I wanted it. I begged him to deflower me.’
‘A peasant!’ The Dark Prince’s roar could wake the slumberers of neighbouring lands. ‘You gave your maidenhead to a peasant? Willingly?’
‘Aye. Still want me for your bride?’
He yanks me over to the table and bends me over it, holding me down with a hand on my spine.
‘You’ll pay for your sluttish ways, my little whore princess. And yes, you will be my bride. I’m not giving up the chance to rule your father’s lands because you can’t keep your legs shut. Oh no. But you will learn not to repeat your loose behaviour, unless it’s in my bed.’
God, he’s good at this. My juices gush and I squeeze my trembling thighs together. My blood is up and rioting through my veins. Do it, I silently beg him, whip me.
The skirt comes up, petticoats and all, and I barely have time to screw my eyes shut before the first stroke whistles down, a bar of red heat lighting up my arse.
My lusty yell is only partly one of pain. I am wild with exhilaration. The rougher he plays, the crazier I get. I wonder what it would take to break me, and if he’ll ever reach that point. The idea excites me even more.
He wields the crop with an expert hand, laying a succession of hard, fast strokes until I want to jump up and hop about, but his other hand on my back holds me in place so that all I can do is take it. Stroke after stroke, burn after burn, while he rants and raves about what a whore I am and how I will submit to him and him alone.
I don’t know how many he gives me, but it must be near fifty at least when he lays the crop aside and runs a hand over my scorched and welted bottom.
‘What did that teach you, Princess?’ he pants, sounding quite exhausted.
‘It