Cave Girl

Paige lay naked and spread eagled, her wrists and ankles cuffed and chained to the bed posts. Beside her a man was methodically stripping, folding his jacket, shirt and trousers, before wrapping his tie around his hand and laying it in a neat roll atop his pile of clothes. She was aware of the bulk of his body, his pale skin and the fine grey hair on his chest. A large man but muscular, and despite his maturity still agile and powerful. His white hair, inappropriately long for his age, caught the evening light.

In the cool air of the room, the hint of a breeze at the open window ruffling a curtain, she felt the acute vulnerability of her body, of breasts and sex. She twisted her forearm, and surprisingly the cuffs abraded her. She had expected them to be soft to her skin, but they were tight and unyielding. She struggled to curl the fingers of her right hand about the chain that held her. She tried to pull. The chain was taut, offering only the barest give.

Craning her head she could see, in the corner of the room, the woman who was the man's lover. Obscured by shadow yet, in the nervous shifting of her body, betraying anxiety and excitement.

Paige began, in a vain distraction from the tension of her gut, the growing ache in her arms and shoulders, to recollect the events that had allowed this self-degradation, her abandonment to another's desires and lusts.

It was an ordinary morning. The breakfast table, and the two women preparing for the day. Paige shuffled papers for an early meeting, absent-mindedly picking at her toast. Amanda, still bleary eyed, rolled her coffee mug between her hands. 'Can I tell you something?'

Paige looked up. 'You should eat. Breakfast is important. But yes, my love, what is it?'

'I've met someone. A man.'

'Yes?'

'A few weeks ago. I should have told you earlier. It was when you were away.'

Paige knew that she was away too often. They had agreed, when Amanda moved in, that theirs need not be an exclusive relationship. There would be too many separations, too many temptations, and in any case there was the complexity of sexualities. 'I'm not a lesbian, Paige,' Amanda had explained. 'Not like you. I am bi. Really. I need men. Sometimes.' So it had been decided.

'What is he like, this man? I'm guessing sex is involved?'

'Nice. A gentleman.' Always Amanda's criterion of excellence: a gentleman. Paige vaguely imagined a character from an Edwardian drama. A smart suit and manicured nails. 'And no sex yet. But there might be. That's what I wanted to say. To tell you. He knows about you, of course. Knows what I am.

'Have you seen him often?

'A few times. A couple of lunchtimes, and when you were working late.'

'I'm not home enough, am I?'

'It's not that. Not at all.'

'You want my permission to sleep with him?'

'I suppose so. We've kissed. That's all.' Amanda was silent a moment. The coffee cup rocked gently between her palms, her fingers spread and stiff.

'Something else?'

'It's not just sex. It's what he wants. The sort of sex.'

'"The sort of sex"?' Paige reached forward and touched the back of Amanda's hand. It relaxed at the contact, and the cup became still.

'You know. The bondage stuff. He's into that.'

Paige smiled. There was a certain indulgence of her lover's naughtiness, her hesitation on the brink of her perversities.

'Did you go looking for that? Bondage? Where did you meet?'

'You can guess. That club. But I am careful. He is nice.'

'Should I meet him?'

'I'm not sure. Do you want to?'

'You're a grown up. I get a bit protective, don't I? Vetting the boyfriend. No. See him, my love. Sleep with him. But take care. Let me know where you are, just in case. You understand? Now, I need to get to work. We'll talk later.' Paige stood, bending over her lover to kiss her hair. 'Love you.'

The man was opening the bedside chest of drawers. Paige turned her head. He held a slender green scarf in his hands. 'Keep still.' He reached behind her head, lifting it slightly from the pillow and straighting it. She stared at the ceiling as the scarf fell over her eyes. Lifting her head further, with a practiced efficiency, he pulled the blindfold tight and secured it with an efficiently unobtrusive knot. Her head fell back. In the muzzy darkness she felt the mattress move as the man sat beside her. She turned, fruitless, to look at him. The deprivation of sight, vision, twisted the awareness of her body - the pressure on the sheet beneath her, the chaffing of the cuffs, the ache of shoulders, and above all the exposure of her sex, legs spread, ankles secure, unmoving - blindness twisted the slightest sound, the shuffle of Amanda in the corner of the room, the whispered creek of the bed taking the man's weight, the rise and fall of her breath, even the mouse quiet beating of her heart.

She knew the man's movements only in the shifting of the mattress beneath her and the pressure of the air. He leant over her, and with surprising tenderness, kissed her lips. 'Your naked body is extraordinary, Paige.' She wanted in her nervousness to speak, but he touched a finger to her mouth. 'Silence.'

'Your beautiful dark skin. An Arabian ancestry, perhaps. And of course, such muscular definition. A testimony to your dedication to the gym.'

She wanted to tell him that it was in the gym that she and Amanda had met. Amanda seeing her lifting weights and then following her to the shower, her eyes hungry. 'Silence.' He probably knew the story already.

He lay a finger on her breast, and involuntarily her body convulsed. She almost heard his smile, heard the slightly perverse pleasure, the cynicism, at her reaction.

His fingers, his hands, were so much heavier than Amanda's, than those of any woman she had known, yet they contained an almost surgical precision. The finger traced the lower curve of the breast, from sternum, down and circling up towards her arm pit. She shivered.

'Breasts so unlike Amanda's. Amanda's are firm and full, so traditionally and deliciously pleasurable. But yours are defined by the power and mass of your pectoral major. Quite different. Unusual. Such a subtle texture. The very pores of the skin, the veins tracing their bold network of canals.' He spoke, barely above a whisper, an echo of the mesmerist in the dark tone. The finger traced a vein in her arm; the stretched deltoid and tricep.

Paige was still sitting up, a glass of wine beside her and a book on her lap, when Amanda got home.

'You shouldn't have stay up. You weren't worried were you?'

'No. Just couldn't get to sleep.'

'Jealous?'

'A tiny bit, perhaps.'

Amanda smiled. 'Good. But you've nothing to worry about. I'll always come home to you.' She kissed Paige on the lips.

'Would you like some wine?'

'Please. What are you reading?'

'An art book. Photographs of Lascaux. You know, the cave paintings? Proofs for the gallery catalogue.'

Amanda snuggled down next to Paige on the sofa. The book was carefully put to one side.

'Will you tell me about it? You had sex tonight?'

There was a pause, in the silence of the apartment. The intimacy of the moment was carried in the shadows and the textures of the furniture and rugs.

'You can tell, can't you? Do I smell of him?'

'A bit. It's different. Interesting.' Paige lifted Amanda's arm. 'And your wrists are red. A little sore.'

'Cuffs. He tied me face down, to a bed. Wrists and ankles.'

'Face down?'

'Yes. But nothing anal. I know what you're thinking. He just took me from behind.'

'It was good?'

'Very. Different. Not like us. Not at all. But in its own way, very good. He is a gentleman. Very concerned with my pleasure, not just his own.'

'I'm glad to hear it. You'll see him again then?'

'Yes. And he wants to meet you.'

'Me?'

'Would you? I'd like you to. So you get to know him.'

'You think he is a permanent addition to your life, then?'

'He might be.'

A finger and thumb took hold of her nipple. It was not yet hard, and the grip pinched. Paige drew in her breath at the pain. His nails were a little longer than expected, perhaps deliberately.

'Such sensitivity. How stimulating.'

He pulled the nipple. She could feel her breast stretch. A discomfort, almost disembodied, as if some other person ached. He was clinical in his examination of her body and its reactions. 'Your breast keeps its shape far more readily than does Amanda's. How pliant hers are. The muscle again, I conjecture. Such a strong, unyielding structure.' He spoke almost like an engineer, but still in the dark tones of the hypnotist. In her blindness the voice enthralled her, wrapped and cocooned her.

The nipple was released, and the finger continued its journey. It returned to the breast bone, but now down.

'Rectus abdominis', he pronounced, as the finger traced the shallow contours of her belly. The muscles tensed. 'And yet a navel, an umbilicus, like anyone else. She is human, and not formed by the gods from clay, as I feared.'

Thighs parted by the cuffs, the chains, at her ankles; legs open. There was an inevitability in the movement of the finger. It touched the first strands of her pubic hair. 'How harshly it greets my finger. Wiry and tight to the skin.' The finger tip rubbed the first curls, circling, testing texture and resilience.

She felt her body flinch away from the touch, but the chains pulled at her ankles and seemed to invert her movement. Her pubic hair pressed against the finger. In the blackness of her blindfold she arched her back and wrenched at her shoulders. Wrists as well as ankles abraded. She could sense his pleasure in her discomfort, her growing fear. Amanda, she knew, stood silent in the corner of the room, watching.

Methodically, the finger came to rest upon her labia. It paused, before beginning to move, restricted, tense strokes, up and down. The lips wriggled and smirked, the pressure exaggerating the narrow separation caused by the parted legs. The finger working its way, with a cold expertise,

'Is she wet?' Amanda's voice, harsh and breathless.

'No. A little moisture, perhaps, but pleasantly dry.'

For a moment she could not comprehend how the dryness of her vulva could be pleasant.

'It will be so much tighter. I anticipate that it will be so much more painful, for us both. But that is what we enjoy, what we yearn for, is it not?'

The finger rubbed the flesh, the inner petals of her sex, the clitoris. A cold thrill as once again the precision of his touch exerted itself. A friction between male and female flesh. The finger was thick and heavy, parting her so easily, and yet it touched her clit gracefully, brushing over it, teasing and playing with it. The clitoris danced to the attendance of the finger, swaying back and forth or circling. Despite herself, she relaxed into the caress.

'Are you playing with yourself my sweet Amanda?' he asked, his body shifting slightly, no doubt to look over his shoulder.

'Yes.' She paused. 'My hand's under my skirt, in my panties.'

'Fingers parting your labia, as mine part Paige's, I suppose. But now, I must go further. Prepare her a little more. Dispel a little of that dryness.'

To be prepared. The chill expectation of his violation of her, its inevitability. She felt the cold sweat on her face, shoulders, torso. Her vagina should have clamped shut. Her thighs should have closed. But the chains tugged her open, and inner recesses of body were made public, exposed and helpless. She lay on the bed, blind and impotent, his plaything. An exotic landscape to explore and ravish.

His finger was strong. The thick first joint and its sharp nail began to press and turn and wheedle. She could not but yield, as the finger seemed to carve out her flesh. Its first joint seemed to fill her, to shape and sculpt her. She had had men before, but this was new. The second violation of her maidenhood.

'How tight she will be. Far tighter, ever, than you were, Amanda my sweet.'

The meeting took place on an unseasonably cold spring evening, in a small café near to the gallery where Paige worked.

Paige arrived first, ordered a coffee and took at seat near to the window. She spread some papers from work on the table as she waited, looking up repeatedly, scrutinising the street along which Amanda would come. Finally she saw her. A large man, his arm around her shoulder, was holding her close to him, perhaps in protection against the breeze. The door opened.

'Are we late? Sorry. Paige, this is Anthony.'

'A pleasure to meet at last, Paige.' He took her hand, rather formally. 'Amanda talks so much about you.'

As Amanda went to the counter, Paige sat down with Anthony. Her first impression was of his bulk, but also of the ease with which he carried it. He was tall but lithe, his movements controlled and precise. His nails were well manicured. Secondly, he was a good deal older than Amanda. 'Old enough,' Paige thought, chastising herself for being a little prudish, 'to be her father.'

As he sat he glanced at her papers. An image of a cave painting sat on top.

'I always find those so beautiful. The bison. It is such an obvious thing to say. I should apologise. The rather vacuous appeal to beauty. But there is something sensual about them. How they play with the surface of the rock. Sorry, I fear that I ramble.'

Paige smiled, a little relieved. She turned the images towards him. 'I always find them a little uncanny. A voice from so distant an age.'

He picked up the picture, balancing it gently on his palm, careful not to mark it.

'I know this is a little awkward,' he said at last, 'but I had to meet you. I know how important you are to Amanda, and believe me, I don't want to endanger what you have, what you two share, for a moment.'

'You too seem to have become rather important to her of late. She seems more complete since meeting you.'

Anthony had a charming smile. 'We share certain interests. Could I say that?'

'Chains and whips?'

He smiled again. 'But that is not for you and Amanda, I fear?' He placed the image of the bison carefully back on top of Paige's papers.

'Only as a fantasy. Pretend. I think you take it rather more seriously than I could. She needs that. I'm grateful to you.'

'You don't disapprove?'

'I worry a little for her safety. I'm sure you can understand.'

'I am careful. It must be part of the practice. Care. It's not about cruelty. Not at all.'

'She does seem happy with you. And she is a good judge of character.'

'She is a most remarkable woman.'

'She is', Paige agreed, as Amanda set a tray of coffees on the table.

'My love, can we, Anthony and me, can we ask you something?'

'Yes, I suppose so.' Paige was hesitant. There was something different in the excitement of Amanda's voice, the urgency with which the announcement was made.

'Of course you can. Sit down, and then tell me.'

Amanda sat between Paige and Anthony.

'Well, it's this.' There was a thin streak of milk adorning her upper lip. Paige longed to brush it away with her finger, but restrained herself. Each of them seemed to protect their personal space, to repress gestures of intimacy.

'It's this, really. We would really love it if you could join us. Join us, I mean, in sex.'

'A threesome?'

'Sort of, but not quite. Maybe not at first. More, you watch us. I want you to see me with a man. See me with Anthony.'

Paige could not quite help but show her surprise.

'I want you to know what it's about. The straight thing - being bi. Would you do that for me?'

'I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. Sorry, I don't think I was expecting this. You mean the BDSM stuff? I'd be watching the BDSM stuff?'

'Nothing extreme. No whips. That would be something of an imposition, I suspect. Rather impolite.' Anthony smiled, graciously.

'No. Then what do you want me to witness? Bondage?'

'We do enjoy chains, straps, just those toys.' Amanda smiled.

'Restraint. Further depravities, I'm afraid, Paige. Is it too much? But we should perhaps not, I fear, over-think it. Whatever is right. To play into the moment. Perhaps there is a risk. Does it worry you? I mean, what we do? I know Amanda frets, sometimes. Wanting such experiences.'

Paige did not immediately reply.

'It should do, should it not?' Anthony continued. He looked down at his coffee and played with the spoon a moment. 'I'm a man who, if I'm honest, is only satisfied if my partner is bound. I actually require a woman to... what? Submit herself? Surrender, I suppose. Offer to me her free will. Give up any right to act. That is not really a happy thought, is it?

'But it's who you are, I suppose. Amanda desires submission, I know. Some of the time.'

Paige wondered if anyone could overhear this conversation, and she looked up nervously. The café was largely preoccupied with its own thoughts. A handful of people, some singly, some in pairs, spending the last moments of the afternoon, waiting a train home or time for dinner or the cinema.

He knelt, now, between her legs. His knees pressed against hers. He had pushed two fingers into her, as deeply as they could penetrate. He parted them into a narrow V inside her, stretching the vaginal walls. Paige screwed up her face in pain. He pressed his thumb hard against her clitoris, and began to rub.

'How different you feel to Amanda. The bud, nestling amid the petals of your rose. Clitoris - such a nice word - between labia majora and labia minora. So hard, it barely moves. And the pliancy within, so stubborn, so unyielding.'

Despite herself, there was a tingling, manifest outwardly in a little moisture. She wondered if this could simply be some mechanical process, the automatic response of her body to his practiced attentions. But that made no sense. He could not transfigure fear and trepidation into a genuine stirring of desire. His hands, his body, still threatened, but she was coming to embrace this threat, to find pleasure in it. She still felt, acutely, how vulnerable she was, the exposure of her body to pain, to humiliation, and yet his subtle bulk now attracted her. She breathed in the male scent, felt his presence, torso, thighs, close and intimate. She knew that his organ was erect and angry, and she remembered its size with something like lust.

Perhaps it was simply due to the sound of Amanda, her lover, in her corner of the room. In her darkness, Paige could hear the rustling as Amanda moved, a rhythm of self-gratification and the whispering of her breath, heavy, excited. Or perhaps there was a mesmerism in Anthony's attentions, not merely in the voice, velvet and beguiling as it was, but in the lunge of his fingers, their joints massaging her, or the pad of the thumb exerting its pressure. For all his violence, he was neither rough nor careless. The touch carried a tenderness, even affection, caressing a surrender.

On the next convenient Friday evening, the three of them met in Anthony's apartment. He poured wine, and they sat chatting in his living room. Paige and Amanda curled on a sofa together, Anthony cross-legged on the floor nearby. Paige approved of Anthony's discrete show of taste. Original paintings on the wall and the lack of ostentation in the expensively well made furniture. Three friends, for a little while, obeyed the conventions of polite conversation, and no one, overhearing them by some strange accident, might have guessed the perversity of their plans. There was nothing in the talk of art and films and politics that would hint that each was preoccupied by their own thoughts of sex. Amanda anticipated the grip of the cuffs on her wrists; she anticipated Anthony's possession of her. He discretely compared his two guests: Amanda's soft and gently rounded body, her long silken hair; Paige's physique, her sculpted muscles. He desired Amanda, and yet Paige intrigued him, perhaps frightened him a little. Paige wondered, fearfully, how she might cope. She anticipated only her jealousy.