Why did I let this happen?
It wasn't the first time. It was the third, in fact. And of course she knew why. But why did she let him? He was forty-three, twenty years older than she was. Not as sprightly, as energetic, as effervescent, he said. As virile, even, he admitted.
She was tied to the bed.
He said that arousal was good for her. Kept her young. Which is why he did it.
But why did she let him?
Was it because she was his wife? Or was it because it suited her to let him? Suited her plans, say.
They had met through her acting. She'd played Sue Drabbs, in 'Escapade' - the lead. He produced.
She had tried hard. He had flattered. She succumbed.
Married in Paris.
Mother furious.
Now they lived in Hampstead.
And she was sometimes tied to a bed.
'Shhh,' she heard from the door. She was blindfolded. Black silk. No pain. No strain.
Anonymity. Like a cat who couldn't see you. You therefore couldn't see it.
A hand closed over her breast.
That tingle. That shiver. That flutter, deep down in her innards. The sexual awakening. The fluttered eyelash of the sexual soul. The languid lids that gently open. Secretive. Private. Intimate. No-one could mine her this deeply to know what went on deep down like this. They could make it happen.
But couldn't tell what.
A touch to her breasts always did this.
Heat started drifting to the surface of her skin. The private places, secret glades. With it that extraordinary sensitivity that walked hand in hand with the heat, the arousal, the start of her sexual march.
The root march into the sun.
It was a large hand. The skin was rough, rougher than her husband's. It was a hand that belonged to a man, that wasn't her husband. It touched her with reverence. Carefully. With anticipation -- a certain longing, even.
As if flattered to be there.
She tried to guess, behind her mask, who's hand it was. The tall man at the end of the dinner table? The one in the pin-striped suit? The one with the polka-dot handkerchief in the pocket of his jacket? The one with the little moustache? (He was a lawyer she had guessed.) Her husband never let her meet them. She wasn't introduced. She served the food. Wore a short black dress and a white lace apron, black stockings, black shoes. Referred to, not at all. Inferred: she was the maid.
'Gorgeous fucking maid,' one suggested, sotto voce, as she left with a tray full of plates.
Part of the game, the strategy, the plan. Anonymity for her. Anonymity for them.
Another pair of hands joined the first and started stroking her legs and with the touch the bright awareness of this other human being, wanting her, to touch her, feel the softness of her skin, see the way his touch aroused her, this smooth young prime conditioned female on the bed, tied there, displayed like a steak -- or dessert -- all clean and primed and washed and dabbed with ... spices?
She and Richard had married because he had money and influence and power in the direction she wanted to go. She was a secretary but wanted to act. He could help. He said she had latent emotion he wanted to nurture, see grow, to blossom. Perhaps to be ignited and explode!
She had a latent sexuality, he said, of unrealised potential, and unbelievable power.
'I bet that's what you say to all the pretty girls,' she had suggested.
'Certainly not,' he had objected.
