Liaisons Read online

  Ingrid started to open the door. I just watched him zip his trousers over his big cock and smiled.

  Our mingled juices dripped down the insides of my bare legs as I zipped my skirt. My nipples were sore and throbbing, poking against Guy’s cotton shirt. I was going to walk past Ingrid, across the quad, into the library, smelling of Baron’s spunk.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Ingrid!’ he cried, walking calmly towards the mantelpiece. One run of his fingers through his hair and he looked just the same.

  Me? Ingrid could see it, smell it, the minute she walked in. I looked totally, thoroughly shagged. I stood aside for her to step nervously over to the sofa, watching her waggle her pert bottom in tight white jeans. The same bottom my ex boyfriend had rammed himself up a few hours ago.

  Baron winked at me, right there in front of her, and said calmly, ‘Oh, Bella. Don’t forget to take your knickers with you.’

  In the Fellows’ Garden they’re already gathered, champagne in hand, and I heat up with pleasure as old faces above black bow ties turn, see me arrive and light up.

  ‘Bella, you look just the same, even after twenty years!’

  I laugh, ridiculously gratified. Glance around for him. ‘That’s down to my surgeon!’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’

  ‘Serious!’ I concentrate, stop myself peering rudely over their shoulders. They were my best friends. Although, of course, I never told them. ‘He’s brilliant with Botox. And you don’t think my hair is still naturally this red, do you?’

  ‘Whatever,’ says Rebecca, tugging at her wiry grey ponytail. ‘You look a million dollars.’

  The gong goes for dinner. Where the fuck is he? That’s what this is all about, you see. For one night, in this college, in these clothes, with these people, with this man, I’m twenty years younger again.

  ‘Who are we trying to kid?’ Seb has appeared by my elbow, as he does every year. As he did the very first day I arrived, sweating and nervous, as a fresher, and carried my bags up to my room. My spindly bespectacled admirer, sender of valentines, provider of tissues, opener of champagne. I turn to look at him and blush with surprise. He’s changed. He’s bigger, and broader, now, his eyes are sharper and bluer, more direct, his glasses exactly suit him. His suit hangs on him as cool as Bryan Ferry. ‘We’re all middle-aged now.’

  ‘My God, Seb, you look so good! Look at you! I hardly recognise – that cool haircut!’

  ‘Been the same for quite a few years now, Bella.’ He rubs the greying stubble across his head and grins, still boyish but sexy now. So sexy. ‘You just never noticed.’

  ‘Darling Seb,’ I say, closing my eyes as he pulls me into his chest, holding me for a couple of beats longer than friendship, the time it takes to feel his heartbeat. To want more. He kisses my face, his mouth a touch closer than friendship. ‘You seen Baron?’

  He pushes me away. ‘Haven’t you heard? Baron’s retired.’

  ‘Gone to the Outer Hebrides, like he always said he would!’ chimes in Rebecca. ‘You know, I always had a crush on him.’

  They start to walk across the quad towards the hall.

  I dawdle, staring up at Baron’s blank windows.

  A year after we graduated we were all back for a reunion dinner. An invitation was handed to us when we checked in to come to Baron’s study for sherry.

  ‘Look at you, all grown-up. Except as usual, Bella, you’re late,’ Baron said, standing by the mantelpiece and holding out a glass. ‘Guy, Ingrid, Rebecca, the others, they’ve all been, drunk me nearly dry, and gone again.’

  I crossed my legs, my expensive sheath dress riding up my bare thighs, self-conscious as hell. I hadn’t given Baron a thought in the last year. I’d dressed like this to tease my old flame, Guy, not him. Show everyone how sophisticated I’d become in one short year. I wanted to show Ingrid that I was more beautiful than her. I even wanted to make sure poor Seb would still love me.

  But now I was back on that leather sofa and all I could think of was Baron and that last tutorial a year ago, me sliding up and down Baron’s enormous cock while he nuzzled my breasts.

  ‘Fuck, and there’s the bell for dinner,’ I said, draining my sherry in one. Baron watched me. Looked at my legs and my high heels. My cunt went tight, and I got hot. ‘I’d better get down to hall then.’

  ‘You can be five minutes late, because tonight I’m saying grace,’ Baron said, in front of me now and unpinning my hair. His fingers on my neck made me shudder with excitement. He kissed me, then unzipped his trousers. ‘And now you’re going to wrap those beautiful red lips around my cock.’

  So I took his hard cock into my mouth and sucked him off so hard and so fast that my jaw ached all that weekend.

  The following year I was later still for the sherry.

  ‘Guy and Ingrid are engaged,’ Baron told me, unzipping my dress and edging his fingers up between my legs. ‘Imagine that. Do you think we should tell all the guests at their wedding, when she’s all in virginal white and he’s the big hero, what you saw? What they got up to when they were students? Do you think they still do it like a couple of farm animals? Her blonde hair swinging about, those big tits dangling. God, those tits were great, Guy pulling her backside open to get inside that wet crack.’

  ‘And here was me thinking you only spoke in poetry!’ I laughed and gasped, rocking against his fingers as they poked inside me. ‘They’ll take Rob along on honeymoon, won’t they, so that she can get down on all fours and suck his cock and Guy can watch Rob pumping it, shooting into her mouth while he takes her like a dog.’

  ‘She was good. You know I had her in the first year? She could barely speak English then, let alone read or write it, but she had such amazing tits and she thought that this was what you did, fucked with your English tutor, so it didn’t matter. But she’ll never be as good as you.’ Baron groaned and massaged his crotch while he pushed his fingers harder, more urgently, up my tight cunt. ‘So you’re not upset by the idea of those two, then?’

  ‘It turns me on, Baron. I’m even grown-up enough to be turned on by the thought of you fucking her,’ I gasped, pulling away from him and lying down on the floor. ‘So maybe they try it another way. Guy takes her up the arse, and Rob fucks her cunt,’ I said, opening my legs and fingering myself, the climax already bunched up crazy and ready. ‘I’ve never done it, but I heard it’s possible.’

  ‘Bella, I’m shocked!’ Baron grinned, taking out his cock and weighing it in his hands. ‘I never thought you could be so dirty!’

  ‘I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to join in with you and Ingrid.’ I pulled him on top of me, my back scraping on the Persian carpet, and pushed his face onto my wet pussy. He parted my lips hesitantly, looked at the sweet frills inside. I tangled my fingers in his hair and shoved his face in, and felt his tongue lapping at last, sucking and licking at my clit until I came.

  ‘Now you’ll be tasting my pussy juice all evening,’ I laughed softly, walking ahead of him into hall. ‘Chef will be pissed off.’

  After about five years of these liaisons, in fact the June I got married, we added the frisson of rushing back to his room for a post-dinner fuck as well as the sherry fuck, so that dinner itself would be an elongated agony of polite tittle-tattle over duck a l’orange while my pussy clenched impatiently, and I slowly licked summer pudding off my spoon and tried to catch those tawny eyes while he conversed solemnly at the high table.

  We never phoned, never emailed in between. Never thought about who else we’d had. And we barely talked when we met. There wasn’t time. But each year we developed secret signals which made the laughter and lust bubble inside as I tried to swallow meringue, bite into Stilton. Me tugging my right earring meant I wanted him to suck my breasts first. My left earring meant he was to lick my cunt. His were simple. Twiddling his left cuff link meant he wanted me on top. Right cuff link meant missionary.

  But there was one position we never tried.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll be back, Seb,’ I say, shiveri
ng out in the moonlight. ‘I’m done here.’

  He does his thing of lighting two cigarettes and handing one to me. The others are waiting for us in the cellar bar.

  ‘We all knew, Bella. You were like a bitch on heat. And Baron? Christ, every June the man thought he’d died and gone to heaven. But there were others, you know. In January, April, August …’

  My heart thuds. The whole thing flashes before my eyes, all those drinks, dinners, signals, the calendar secretly marked, packing and preparing, the journey here, my eyes flicking to seek him out, taking the stairs to his study two at a time. He’s gone, but I’ve got a hungry pussy here that’s been waiting all year to be filled.

  ‘He could have told me he was leaving.’

  ‘He’s done here, too.’ Seb shrugs. ‘But I’m not.’ He takes out a key. ‘June comes round every year, right?’

  Talk about signals. I look at the key, glinting in the lamplight. He’s wanted to fuck me for twenty years. Still does. And, God, he’s gorgeous. Why did I never see it? He starts to walk across the quad, through the archway to his staircase.

  I take my shoes off, and follow him.

  ‘I want you to take me like a dog, Seb.’

  Primula Bond is the author of the Black Lace novels Club Crème and Country Pleasures, and of the Nexus novel Behind the Curtain.

  Advanced Corsetry

  Justine Elyot

  I FELL INTO this business unintentionally. I started out as an enthusiastic amateur, became a connoisseur and now I am proud to call myself a master – or mistress, I suppose – corsetière. If you ever want to talk busks, fan-lacing, whalebone, or the respective merits of under and over-bust models, I could be your woman.

  Of course, should you choose to engage me in conversation on this subject, I must warn you that certain assumptions may be made regarding your personal preferences. These days we get our share of trendy young things surfing the wave of the burlesque revival, but our traditional customer has more personal reasons for favouring this most retro-chic of foundation garments.

  Few people are better placed than I to appreciate the allure of the corset; her restrictive embrace, her provocative display of the finer feminine features, her fetishistic cross-lacing. You cannot ever forget you are wearing one; like an insatiable lover, she demands your full attention.

  This is why I often find myself measuring and fitting women who want a little more than the traditional ribboned satin or silk. I have requests for custom-made pieces in rubber, latex or leather; others require additional features, such as delicate chains crossing the breasts, or linking the front and back of the garment between the thighs. One customer even emailed me to request that I add a harnesslike leather construction connecting the panels, which could run between the thighs and up the cleft of the buttocks, and to which could be attached various phallic objects. I wish she could have summoned the nerve to request this of me face to face; I always had a feeling we might have hit it off.

  I thought then that I had heard every outré suggestion possible: corsets for fetish balls, corsets for waist restriction, corsets for the bedroom, corsets for lovers of Victorian kink.

  As it turned out, however, things could, and did, get more decadent still.

  My clients had occasionally come with friends, or even lovers – the intention being to canvass an additional opinion on what suited best, or perhaps to add a little titillation to the experience.

  The couple I saw on that memorable afternoon were a different proposition entirely.

  When I arrived in the small waiting area outside my atelier, she was sitting, hands folded demurely, while he stood scanning the photographs and framed magazine clippings on the wall. At first, there seemed nothing of especial note about them; indeed, they were rather less showy in their style and fashion taste than many I see. This in itself seems noteworthy in retrospect; at the time I simply cocked an admiring eyebrow at his Italian suit and her immaculate haircut and invited them into my fitting room.

  At first I was taken aback when my initial ‘what can I do for you?’ spiel, addressed to the lady, was responded to by the man. He appeared at least twenty years older than her and, for a bizarre moment, I wondered if he were her father. It was a relief when he used the words ‘my wife’ in his reply, and I presumed the more exotic dynamic of Dominant and Submissive – a bread-and-butter breed of customer, though I usually only interview one of the two.

  Instantly her silence became fascinating to me and, throughout the man’s lengthy discourse regarding their wants and tastes, I kept my eye on her. She was somewhere in her 20s, though conservatively dressed for her age in a blouse of ecru silk, the high neck adorned with what is incongruously termed a ‘pussy-bow’. A knee-length tweed skirt and low courts completed the ensemble; she was hardly the pink-haired, rubber-skirted brigade I generally tend to en route to the Fetish Ball.

  Her head remained bowed, our eyes never met, and I found myself wondering whether her doggedly maintained silence conveyed weakness or strength.

  When the time came for her to have her measurements taken, she stood unbidden and planted herself in the centre of the room, chin up and shoulders back, awaiting instruction.

  ‘You will need to remove your blouse and skirt, Mrs Fox,’ I told her, affecting intense concentration on my tape-measure while she unbuttoned and cast off her outer layers of clothing. I was struck by two things once the clothes were neatly folded: the 1950s styling of her underwear, which was a flesh-coloured bra and girdle with old-fashioned metal suspender snaps; and the understated magnificence of her body, all luscious curves and creamy skin.

  ‘Surely you will need her naked?’ said her husband, standing behind her with his arms folded. ‘To get the true measure of her, I mean.’

  ‘I … do not usually insist …’ I told him, though my throat dried at his suggestion. I longed to see what was held in by that severe girdle, cut so tantalisingly high and yet retaining the letter, if not the spirit, of modesty.

  ‘I think in this instance …?’ His voice trailed away, questioningly.

  I nodded, caught up in his scheme, made complicit by the slightly menacing smile he flashed in my direction. ‘If you could just slip out of your underthings for me, Mrs Fox,’ I said, my voice much lower now.

  Even then, she did not look up or speak. Almost casually, she turned to present the clasp of her bra to me. I unhooked it briskly and took it from her, touching her shoulder to indicate that she should face me once more. Beautiful tits, high and firm with strawberry-pink areolae, were my reward. I caught myself fidgeting with the tape-measure again while she struggled and wriggled out of the tight girdle and, although I am noted for my composure, I found I could not look at her husband for fear of blushing.

  Besides, a feast for my eyes was before me: the legs were not model-perfect, but they tapered nicely; the thighs were milky and a well-tended cluster of golden brown fleece curled between and above them. Unusual, I thought, that he doesn’t make her shave; I had understood it was de rigeur these days.

  ‘Could you raise your arms above your head for me, please?’

  I moved around behind her, placing one end of my measure in the small of her back, risking a swift glance down at the curve of her arse (perfection) before returning in front to run my smooth tape across her breasts. The coldness of it perked her nipples up more so they stood stiffly, and, without even thinking about it, I pulled the tape a little tauter and rubbed it slightly back and forth. She bit her lip, and I had to exhale briefly, watching her rock on the balls of her feet and clench her fists. She felt that. Again, her husband sent that flicker of a smile in my direction, emboldening me.

  Keeping the tape firmly held in one hand, I scribbled down her measurements on my desk pad, pulling slightly at her numerated tether while I did so. I had to admire her poise and grace; she did not stumble in the least.

  Passing swiftly through the duller terrain of underbust and waist, I came to another favoured spot – her hips. ‘Let’s keep th
is smooth – you have just a little pot belly here,’ I clucked at her.

  Her husband laughed and said, ‘Yes, she does, doesn’t she.’ Her cheeks flamed, but she kept her eyes fixed to the floor and made no other response.

  ‘The corset will hold that in for you; nobody will know it is there,’ I said reassuringly, working hard at keeping my hand steady when I laid my length of plastic-coated fabric across the upper slope of her buttocks. Then I took a measurement I often eschew – the broadest part of her bottom and around the upper thigh. I had to kneel to check the measurement, my nose no more than an inch from her triangle of fuzzy hair, and the smell of her was, for a moment, almost too evocative. I took a lungful of it, to keep and bring out in my bed that night, thinking of other white thighs parted and welcoming, other crimson lips glistening at me. It had been so long.

  But I am a professional, and I rolled my tape back up, wrote down my figures and turned to the gentleman, ready to enact business.

  He held up a hand. ‘Don’t put your tape away yet,’ he suggested. ‘I think we may want something in the way of a garter or stocking top – perhaps you could measure the circumference of her thighs. Just at the very top, perhaps – as high as you can comfortably go.’

  I stifled a smile. ‘Certainly, Sir. Madam, may I ask you to stand with your feet a little apart.’ The very tops of her thighs were tightly encircled, just below the crease of her bottom. It was impossible to perform this task without brushing my hand against her muff, and so very easy to rest it gently between the slightly opened lips of her vulva. Good Lord, she was dripping. I pushed my knuckles discreetly upwards, garnering a good coating of her juices, before completing my task. My tape also harvested a little of her lubrication.

  It was all I could do not to put my hand to my nose and take a deep breath while I trotted out final arrangements for our fitting at top speed. I wanted them out, door locked, feet up on the desk, skirt hitched, hand inside knickers, post-haste.