Gone Shopping 1

Prim and proper Penelope samples the BDSM lifestyle.

Nerves of steel? No. Of jelly, more like. Here was she, in a run-down London back street. Looking up at a first floor window. At shabby curtains untidily drawn together. Broad daylight. Hmmm....

She had left a note on the kitchen table at home - 'Gone shopping - back later'.

But what was the extraordinary urge that had brought her here, in mid-afternoon, to this unfashionable quarter of the city bustling with ordinary folk going single-mindedly about their ordinary day-to-day business? While apprehensive that the visit might be fruitless, she was fairly confident that at least she would not be seen by anyone she knew - her village socialites being hardly likely to frequent such a dismal area.

But she was justifiably nervous all the same. Was this legal? Could she be exposed? Would she be mugged? Would shame then prevent her from seeking any redress from the authorities should some embarrassing setback befall her? Butterflies flitted annoyingly in the pit of her stomach.

Or was she worrying about nothing? Would the whole thing be a total anticlimax? A disastrous waste of time and money perhaps? "Oh for God's sake Penny," she told herself, "act normal, get it done, don't get in a stew. If you pull out now, you'll just go home miserable, and fret for ages you never even gave it a try. It's your life, you only get one go. Get on with it."

Her resolve failed to allay the fluttering of the blessed lepidoptera.

But the positive excitement did not wane. In fact, it increased momentarily as she pressed the button labelled simply "1b" with no accompanying name.

There seemed a lifetime's delay while she contemplated her predicament. She was a middle-class, middle-aged woman whose husband, albeit a good and well-respected man, was considerably older than she, and dedicated to an important job which had made him staid and sapped his sex drive - one which was never that passionate even in the earliest days of marriage.

To put not too fine a point on it, the problem for Penelope was that she was chronically sexually repressed. Not an old maid exactly - she had a husband after all, and his sense of marital duty did afford her tame vanilla bed-sex on occasion.

But she was tired of faking it. Neither was she old - at least not old enough that hormones had stopped nagging her into fantasies about love, romance, seduction, eroticism, perversion, fetish and various other phenomena bordering on the taboo, and not usually associated with a prim and proper well-spoken English rose from the Home Counties hoping soon to become a grandmother if and when her wimpy son-in-law gets his act together and impregnates her daughter......

"Hello?" Penelope's convoluted musings suddenly hit a road block as a female voice rattled the tinny loudspeaker. She took a deep breath.

"It's Penny. I telephoned earlier."

"Push the door and come up, sweetie." The front door-lock release buzzed. At least she was expected, Penny congratulated herself.

One flight of stairs. Creaky. Not well-lit. Probably just as well - the need for redecoration thus appeared less palpable. In any case, the seediness of the apartment building added to the erotic allure of being somewhere for pleasure you shouldn't be.

The woman who had answered Penny's earlier phone call had sounded pleasant enough, and reassuringly businesslike. "Yes, my love, ladies are catered for. No problem. What kind of thing were you looking for?"

Penny had clumsily described the 'kind of thing she was looking for', not at all confident that she would be considered worthwhile street-wise clientele, given her patent unfamiliarity with the practices of bondage and sadomasochism. But one hour later, here she was, on the landing, looking distastefully down at a stained carpet which was fraying alarmingly at the edges.

Thirty-something Sharon stood by an open door. "Come in, my love, don't trip on the mat - it's a bit of a health hazard."

Penny soon found herself sat at one end of a sofa, now paying less attention to tastes in furniture and more to her hostess, the professional, communicative and rather glamorous Sharon - her with the mischievous sparkling eyes, perfect stockinged legs and strappy court shoes. Penelope's middle-class upbringing had bypassed concepts like lesbianism and bisexuality, so the pangs of physical attraction she now felt towards this confident and beautiful young woman were dramatically exercising her in-bred respect for sexual taboos.

Our heroine had envisaged encountering a younger woman, probably some little tart with pert breasts and wrinkle-free body - the standard object of desire for lustful adolescent males who crave quick gratification. Or maybe an ageing trollop, past her best, though cheap and cheerful. Penny was thus relieved to encounter the alternative - an attractive considerate sex worker possessing sensitivity and understanding of this mature woman's particular needs.

Penny had declined a 'little drink' for fear of imbibing something spiked, only to wake up in the river sans-purse. But now she changed her mind, and it went down well. She would have liked to take Sharon home with her, and install her in the spare bedroom.

The two women talked on, about men, marriage, cakes and shoes. Sharon probably knew as much as she needed or wanted to, and discreetly announced that the time-slot they had negotiated was ticking away. "How about we continue in the playroom?" she suggested with an irresistibly cheeky smile.

Penelope momentarily conjured up an image of dolls, teddy bears, crayons and lego bricks. But this playroom was devoid of cuddly toys or Bunty annuals. Instead, it utilised the limited space to good effect, housing a modified four-poster bed, racks of shoes, hoods, restraints, leather, latex and vinyl garments, and a frightening array of whips, paddles and canes.

It was much as Penelope had envisaged during her recent investigations into the world of BDSM - an alternative to the conventional dull life-style she had hitherto endured.

"Make yourself at home while I powder my nose," the blonde said. "Clothes off. Hanger back of door. See you in five." Sharon flashed a smile, blew a kiss and left Penny alone. Had the gin and tonic and some affable warm-up chat steadied her heartbeat? Hardly.

A few minutes later, Mistress Sharon, her long strawberry blonde hair tied tightly back and with a pony tail, reappeared in thigh-highs with impossible heels and sporting a slinky black faux leather shirt dress zipped to the high-collar neck, and carrying a matching shoulder bag containing goodness knows what. Penelope, still sporting her Marks and Spencer 36C bra-slip, ogled the outfit covetously.

"Clothes off please, slut."

"Sorry," said Penelope, smiling.

Sharon touched the side of Penny's face, and in a chillingly different tone altogether whispered: "Sorry...*Mistress*." The admonishment had a sobering effect. "And on your knees, please, my pretty one."

During her years of adult socialising, Penelope must have kissed a hundred women - that light peck on the cheek, accompanied by a token hug and a spoken 'muhaah'. A commendable convention, but devoid of any physical or spiritual passion. Now was a different ball-game altogether. A kiss on the mouth would have been a new adventure in itself, especially if accompanied by tongue activity. But no. Our kneeling heroine needed to steel herself for a leap into an even more forbidden territory. Mistress raised the hem of her close-fitting minidress and eased down her g-string, taking up an open-legged stance in front of the inexperienced but willing subject who was knelt before her. "Kiss, kiss," she whispered.

Penelope hesitated, momentarily considering the depravity of it, then metaphorically leaped into the abyss. She willingly bent her neck forward and obeyed, first lightly engaging lips with Sharon's slit, next brushing her mouth over the whole of her mistress's vulva and embarking on a sloppy French kiss over and inside her domme's pussy - a pussy which emanated a fascinatingly musky feminine aroma. Penny curled her tongue, and using it, massaged around and under her mistress's clit hood, invoking an encouraging reaction. "Mmm... very good sweetie," the dominatrix whispered.

Having hurdled the barrier of embarrassment about nakedness, Penny soon needed to contend with finding herself adorned with adjustable calf-leather straps with steel eyes and chains which secured her wrists to the overhead beam of the bed canopy and her ankles to lock-plates bolted to the floorboards.

Legs forced wide apart, her body shape an inverted Y, Penny shuddered as the imaginative ice-cool domme embraced her from behind, roughly fondling her breasts and stroking her carefully shaven and now rather vulnerable pubic mound.

There are watershed moments when fate spins upon a femto-second and one's future is revealed. This was one such. Penelope realised she was to die.

Not from choking on a tight O-ring mouth-gag, nor from the mild electro-torture of jolts of current pulsing through her clamped nipples. Not from the light drubbing of a lash across her back, nor from the zealous application of a heavy tawse to her bottom. Not from haemorrhaging caused by Geisha balls inserted into her vagina, nor from excessive clitoral stimulation produced by the Hitachi wand lodged between her labia.

No. None of those would be recorded by the coroner. Death awaited back in the suburbs, at the end of the train journey home. A slow, lingering death, from tedium, frustration and enforced stultification in a neighbourhood society where the very existence of a darker side to one's libido was considered unmentionable, morally unacceptable, and not even interesting. Where eyebrows are raised as a result of dogs fouling footpaths, where the day's highlight is a cup of tea at the garden centre, and Mrs Sprucewood's fruitcake recipe is the feature article in the parish magazine.

Penelope shed a tear... then climaxed again.

He found the note on the kitchen table and smiled. "Women." he thought to himself. "They do like their shopping..."

End.