The Influencer

AUTHOR'S NOTE: It will not escape the attention of perceptive readers that, in this episode, whilst our heroine's predicament at its start is forced upon her fully unwillingly, she is not, in substance, out of control of much of the action which thereafter occurs.

Nonetheless, as we learn, it is psychologically important to her that she does

not

give her consent -- formally at least -- to what is done to her at the hands of the man to whom she submits. Perverse as this may be, it is our heroine's view of the matter. Out of deference to her, therefore, inasmuch as we must categorise at all, we should continue to categorise her story -- and this is indeed primarily her story (notwithstanding the wider social ramifications that we will start to see unfold from chapter 3 onwards) -- as one of non-consensual, or reluctant, relations. The wisdom of this approach is, perhaps, underlined by the cruel breach of trust to which she will soon be subjected, alluded to at the very end of this chapter.

Chapter 2: Taking the Plunge

Monday morning

Rich looked at the text: "

I need your help with another leak. Come over soon. x Astrid".

Ten days ago, he had turned up at her home with the genuine intention of simply doing his job, i.e fixing the plumbing. After a certain amount of provocation, and a nasty altercation that had left him dazed and bloodied on his face, he had ended up stripping, spanking and fucking the young social media star in her own kitchen. She had been left naked, gagged and tied to a chair. Now, incredibly, she was asking him to return.

Certainly, the treatment he had meted out to Astrid had seemed to switch on something inside of her. She had orgasmed twice, which was

some

indication -- but, more than this, her whole personality had appeared to shift during their encounter: the bratty, insecure persona that had so wound him up at the start melted away as her subjugation intensified; she had become pleasant and serene, seemingly at peace with herself.

Rich was nonetheless surprised that Astrid wanted to see him again. He wondered idly what had happened in the intervening period. What, for instance, had gone down between her and her boyfriend, who, when he returned from his trip, would have found her tied up in her kitchen?

Rich would find out soon enough. He replied: "

I think I can fit you in on Friday. See you at 3pm. Greet me with a smile this time."

Ten days previously...

A short while after Rich walked out of the house, Astrid gave up struggling with her bindings. She was not going to free herself. Nearly the whole length of each of her limbs was tied to the chair by a long coil of cable, firmly and expertly tied off at its ends.

Later, she might have to revisit the problem of how to escape if, for some reason, her boyfriend, Darren, failed to return home on time. In that eventuality -- and it was an alarming possibility -- she could perhaps bite through the gag and scream to alert her neighbours.

Right now, her time would be better spent thinking how she would explain her predicament to her boyfriend, assuming he did indeed return in time to find her tied up like this. Informing Darren that Rich, the plumber, had done this to her was pointless, she realised. She had consented (arguably) to much of what had happened. The only person bearing a physical injury from the encounter was Rich. And Rich had an audio recording of her begging to be fucked by him, which he had said he would use if she ever tried to claim the sex was not consensual. What a cunning bastard he was!

The alternate tack of blaming some nameless intruder was also, she saw, unlikely to work out well in the long run. Darren would insist on calling the police. Yet there was no evidence of a break-in. The only DNA evidence that could be collected would point back to Rich anyway.

Could she, perhaps, convince her boyfriend that she had tied

herself

to the chair like this? He would have to be pretty dumb to swallow that. But then Darren wasn't the sharpest of guys. He was a fit, handsome -- but rather air-headed -- photographer who Astrid was with for no better reason -- it sometimes seemed to her in her more reflective moments -- than he looked like the kind of guy that a woman like her ought to be with.

* * *

Darren was horrified at the sight that presented itself when, after arriving back home and dumping his luggage in the hall, he walked through to the kitchen. There was his girlfriend, completely naked, gagged and tied tightly to a chair with reams of cabling. Tear tracks streaked down her face. Her long, dark brown hair was tangled and matted; a film of sweat covered her body.

She started squealing into her gag as soon as she saw him.

"Oh Christ!", Darren exclaimed as he swooped to untie his girlfriend, first pulling down her gag.

"Who did this to you, Astrid?" he demanded.

Astrid gulped. "No one, babe" she lied. "I tied myself up. For fun. There are YouTube videos that show you how to do it. But .... it went wrong. I couldn't get out of it!"

"What?? Why the hell did you do that?" her boyfriend asked, bewildered.

"I'm sorry, Darren. I was ... curious ... to know what it would be like. Look, just get me out of this ... Can we talk about something else for a moment? How was Brazil?"

"Fucking hell, Astrid", Darren exclaimed, ignoring the question. "I didn't know you were into such weird shit." Darren was upset. He hated surprises -- anything that pushed him outside of his narrow comfort zone, which consisted essentially of taking and posing for pictures, hanging out with hot women and working out in the gym. The discovery that his girlfriend was seriously kinky, far from turning him on, he found vaguely disgusting.

He finished untying her in silence and helped her to her feet. Then he noticed, with horror, milky white streaks around her pussy entrance and down her inside thigh.

"Astrid, that looks like a man's cum on you! What the fuck actually happened here!?"

Astrid had to think quickly. "Darren, Darren! It's not cum. Not from a man. It's female ejaculate. I came really hard, and it happened. It's embarrassing, I know." She started to cry a little.

Darren made a face and looked around distractedly. "Wow. You've never produced ...

ejaculate

when we've had sex together."

Astrid just shook her head. She was astonished that Darren had bought her cobbled-together crap. He really was quite thick. What if she

had

been tied up and raped by some man and she was, for some reason, covering up for him? (Well, that nearly was, indeed, the case...) Was Darren so credulous that he would accept anything she said, however implausible? So incurious that he would let his woman be taken by another man behind his back? She began to wonder what she had ever seen in such a gormless bloke.

Astrid showered and got dressed as Darren unpacked. Nothing more was said about the incident as the couple went through their respective evening routines. However, later, when they went to bed, Darren suggested gamely that since Astrid liked to be tied up, he was prepared to give it a go.

"That would be amazing, Darren!" Astrid said encouragingly. "Why don't you tie me to the bedposts and fuck me?"

Darren did as his girlfriend proposed. But the experience was terribly underwhelming. Darren used some neckties to tie her arms loosely to the bedposts. He had to be cajoled to make the bindings tighter and to tie down her legs as well. And then the sex was exactly the same as it usually was: no urgency or passion on the part of her lover. Darren, as was often the case when they were making love, looked like he imagined he was starring in a workout video; his body moved steadily up and down above her, a determined but vacant look on his face. When it was over, Darren rolled off and promptly fell asleep.

Astrid could not sleep. She found her thoughts wandering to the abuse she had received from Rich earlier that day and to the feelings it had stirred in her. It had been so, so hot. And it was meaningful, rich with emotions -- as if she had known the guy for years. Thrilling too, in a way that only compared, in her experience, to the feeling she got when, through skill and nous, she discovered

just

the right jacket on the rail or the

perfect

vintage dress, or perhaps the day that she got her first TV gig, or when she posted a video that got 1 million views. But perhaps more intense than any of those events. As she quietly masturbated the night away (trying not to wake Darren) she became haunted with the worry -- an enormous, crushing FOMO -- that she would never again enjoy those delicious feelings.

Astrid finally resolved that he had to get Rich back in her life... in one capacity or another. (It was still rather difficult to imagine a rough-looking, plain-speaking plumber as her boyfriend). Not to see him again would be unbearable.

First, at any rate, she would have to get rid of Darren. She told him in the morning that their relationship was over as they made their coffee in the kitchen. It just wasn't working, she explained. They had different needs and so on.

Darren took it badly. In her handling of the situation, Astrid had taken little account of the fact being dumped meant, for Darren, her boyfriend of nearly a year, being booted out of her smart London townhouse; right now, he had no other permanent place to stay. Astrid shrugged and ballooned out her cheeks as Darren complained bitterly about how sudden this all was, how she had given no warning.

Not her problem

, she thought.

For our heroine was, at this stage, still a rather selfish person. To adopt Rich's initial characterisation of her, she was "a bitch". As is true of many successful individuals -- men and women both -- Astrid's default mode was that of not giving a shit about anyone else unless doing so held out the prospect of reward. Transactionality was a guiding principle of the society in which she existed. Astrid, as intelligent and capable of insight as she was, nonetheless, being a well-adjusted member of her society, held to that principle religiously in her everyday dealings. The previous day's session with Rich, eye-opening as it was, was hardly sufficient to dent her sense of entitlement or shake her from her instinctively callous attitude towards those who she regarded as weak.

As Darren was packing his belongings in readiness to move out into a hotel room, he made an odd comment: "I wonder what your fans would think if they knew you were into ... kinky sex practices."

"Indeed, I don't know, Darren," Astrid said. "That's a funny thing to say, because there is no reason that they ever would know."

"Well, who knows" Darren said, bitterly. "These things can sometimes get out." Astrid paid no further attention to these remarks, which just sounded like random expressions of spite. She was glad to be ridding herself of this guy.

Darren gone, Astrid would spend the next few days catching up with work. A new script needed to be filed. Instagram updates had to be made. An outfit needed to be selected for the recording of this week's TV appearance, and so on.

Yet concentrating was hard. Her thoughts kept drifting back to Rich and how he had dominated her. She found herself repeatedly fingering herself as she imagined being controlled and fucked by the rough plumber over and over again.

But she found it hard to pluck up the courage to contact Rich. Eventually, she took the plunge and sent the text asking him to come round to deal with "

another leak

" (a reference to Rich's sarcastic commentary on her wetness during their last encounter). It was a humiliating thing to type out. But she figured -- with a degree of shame at the realisation -- that humiliation was a part-and-parcel of what she wanted from that man.

Friday afternoon

Astrid's heart quivered as she opened the door.

"Come in," she said meekly and ushered him in.

Rich stepped into Astrid's hallway, immaculate with its period cornices, expensive wallpaper and polished wood floor. He was calm, with a slightly wary, sceptical expression on his face. Instead of the overalls he had worn on his previous visit he wore a white shirt and jeans. Astrid noticed that he carried no toolbox with him; evidently, he had understood that she wasn't after more plumbing work. But he did, mysteriously, bring with him a fully laden tennis bag, which was chucked onto the floor with a thud when he got inside.

She noticed too that there was a faint scar on his cheek (where she had ripped his flesh with her fingernails during their last encounter). It would probably soon heal over completely. For now, it served as a shaming reminder of her own atrocious behaviour the last time they met -- behaviour that had brought about the punishment, humiliation and sex that had followed.

Astrid had planned to greet Rich by saying something assertive, such as "I want you to fuck me like you did before". But her confidence had evaporated. This was a critical moment. It would set the tone of their whole future relationship, if there was to be one. She was scared of saying the wrong thing, if she was not frightened enough by the mere presence of this wily, sadistic man back in her house.

"I'm not sure how much I can trust you," she said after a long pause.

"Did I go a bit far last time we met?" Rich asked levelly.

"Well, leaving me tied up to the chair and then just walking out was pretty insane."

"No, that is a fair comment, Astrid" Rich agreed, surprising Astrid. "If there is one thing that I feel

slightly

guilty about it was that. I didn't want to put you in fear. You should know this though: I checked your Instagram page early the next morning to make sure you were still posting. If you weren't, I would have come straight back to rescue you."

"Hmm," Astrid said. "That's very sweet. But it doesn't address the fact that you left me naked and tied up for my boyfriend to find me like that!"

"Hey, well, perhaps he ought to know that you had been having steamy sex with your plumber. I don't know the guy, but it seems only fair, Astrid."

"That was not your decision to make!" Astrid exclaimed, angrily. "Anyway, he -- Darren -- doesn't actually know about what we did..."

Rich gave her a quizzical look. Astrid rolled her eyes. She explained: "I told Darren that I had tied myself up like that. Yes, I know. He's a fucking moron to believe that. In fact, I kind of dumped him the next day."

"OK, well, enough about Darren then," Rich said. "What about the rest of what happened between us? Did you make me come over here just to tell me that you are upset about it?"

"Yes and no," Astrid replied. "You really pushed the limit of what was acceptable." She paused. "... And I loved it. I loved the way you fucked around with my head... and how you fucked me. I'd like to recreate that." She added wistfully: "But I don't know if we can."

Rich strode up to Astrid and put his arms around her waist. "Look, Astrid. You know as well as I do that we are not going to end up 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'. I'm not a celebrity or a fashionable person. You date fashionable people. I get that. And I date nice women. Don't get me wrong. I don't think you are terrible. But I meant it when I said you could be mean and stuck-up."

Astrid started to well up at this. Rich gave her back a stroke and went on: "You are not a bad person, Astrid. You've got real...

tenderness

, sometimes. Like when you cleaned up the cut on my face of your own initiative -- that was really sweet. You do have a good side. You just need to have better respect for people who help you. I think you've worked out that much yourself. You need a firm man who will take you in hand."

Rich squeezed Astrid's butt through her skirt. He continued: "And, let's be blunt, you seem to need discipline to get off sexually." (Astrid bit on her lip; she could not deny this.) "I will give you that discipline if you want. I can help you be submissive -- be a slave for me -- a sex slave. That's what you want from me, right?"

"No, not quite," Astrid said, pulling away from Rich's embrace. "Look, surprising as it may seem, I'm not

horrified

at that suggestion..."

Rich chuckled at the haughty way she said this. "Oh, fuck you!" Astrid let out, forgetting herself, annoyed by his sarcasm. Rich smiled and gave a sharp slap to her chest for her rudeness. Astrid gasped and straightened, but otherwise ignored the blow. The smack -- in fact, more so her own instinctive acceptance of it -- gave her a tingle of submissive pleasure.

"I'm not horrified that you have just suggested that I be your "sex slave". You know my inclinations. But I'm not that interested in role-play. I don't want to enact some little fantasy where we both go through the motions -- where you say certain things and I say certain things in response, and it's all formalised, silly... and consensual."

"So, what then Astrid? What do you want from me?"

Astrid sighed. "I want you to

make

me serve you. I want you to dominate me. Force me. I want you to torture me if needs be. Within reason, obviously: no marks or injuries. But I want you to punish me and fuck with my head like you did before..." She paused. "Oh, I don't know! Maybe this makes no sense...?" Indeed, she could hardly believe some of the words coming out of her mouth. Was this really what she wanted?

"I get it," Rich said. "Here is how we will do it. No contract, no safe words. I'll treat you as I see fit. But I am not imprisoning you, Astrid. You can walk away at any time. I mean, maybe not when you are gagged and tied up, not right when I'm torturing you, as you put it. Any day, though, you can decide you've had enough. But if you do, that's it between us. No renegotiation. We would go our separate ways. You would have to find yourself another man to dominate you."

Rich paused to let his words sink in, before continuing. "I mean, to be clear, if you stick with me, I will push you, Astrid. Maybe it will change you a bit. Make you less of a selfish cunt."

Astrid pouted and frowned. She was sure she was not the complete bitch that he kept implying she was! Rich's moralising annoyed her a little. She wished he would just get on and rough her up or something. As if he could sense her thoughts, Rich gave her cheek a hard slap -- this for pouting at him -- which caused Astrid to clasp her face and cower down for a moment.

"You're going to have to get used to being insulted if we are doing this," Rich said. Astrid silently acknowledged the point.

Rich undressed Astrid unhurriedly. She looked at him a little warily as he pulled off her top and pulled down her shorts and panties. She wondered if she had made a terrible mistake in letting this man back into her life and telling him basically that he could do what he wanted with her.

When Astrid was naked, her clothes thrown in a pile on the floor, Rich pushed her down so she was sitting on her bare bum, cross-legged on the wooden floor.

"I'm going to use your loo. I want you, cunt, meanwhile, to think of the most submissive pose you can, and hold it while you wait for me to return." He gave her back a slap and walked off the downstairs bathroom.

Astrid was now loving this. The phrase "submissive pose" turned her on, as did being called a "cunt" so casually. She got on all fours, stretching out her arms in front of her against the floor and forcing her torso to crunch up into a ball, her chest doubled up against her belly. She made her arse go up in the air as far as it would go. Her lush hair pooled around her on the wood floor, which her bare nipples brushed against.