Chapter One
Linda leaned stiff-armed on the top of her dresser, looking at herself in the mirror.
Her shoulders shook hard enough and fast enough that the mounds of her breasts bounced and
slapped together. Damn it, but she had lovely tits! Come to that, she was hot all over.
If she was another woman, she’d do her in a shot.
Linda paused in her shaking and lifted her glorious globes on her palms. Nice nips,
Linda! Mind if I…? Her neck craned down. Her hand pulled up. A nipple met her pursed
lips. She sucked it into her mouth, gave it a flick with her tongue and nipped it between
her teeth, hard. An erotic jolt lanced down to her clit.
Why couldn’t John do something like that on his own initiative? Hadn’t she made it
plain that she liked to have her tits tortured? Why did she always have to beg for it?
Begging could be fun, if a man ordered you to beg. Begging for mercy would be nice, but
she’d never have to plead with John for less pain, only for more. She had to face it, the
man was a total write-off.
Linda tossed her mane of tawny hair back, dismissing the wimp from her life. She had
finally faced up to it, she'd made a mistake in choosing him. It was yet another error to
add to her long, long list.
She'd known the first night that she'd bedded him that John wasn't exactly brilliant,
but she'd thought that he'd had potential at least. Well, she'd explored the full extent
of his potential, and it hadn't taken long. Next to no time. There were bruises on the
fronts of her thighs, where he'd gripped her, and a couple on her upper arms. Those, and
the single hickey just under her left nipple they were it! Did the man have no
imagination?
Men were supposed to be the game players. Oh yeah? Football bridge golf chess.
Those were the men's games. All games with rules. Sure men were game players
game players who needed the security of rules. When it came to the real games the
real life games where you had to play right on the edge the games where you didn't know
whether or not a move was a foul until you either got slammed with a penalty or you scored
high men knew diddly!
There had to be a man out there somewhere who had that special instinct. Or one who
could learn it. She'd thought that John could be taught, once. Now she knew better.
She should have known that first night. She'd used a man’s game to seduce him and he'd
played poorly. Backgammon! Now there's a game that outsiders think of as dull. It isn't.
Backgammon's a game of fast moves and closely calculated risks. You might stake everything
that your opponent won’t throw a six one combination. If he doesn't you crush him. If he
does you might as well enjoy your surrender. At first it's just manoeuvring a struggle
for the better position and then at the absolutely right moment the risk!
All or nothing - your judgement against his! The game might drag on, with him squirming,
but there was always a pivot point.
Linda usually won when she played backgammon, unless she was trying to lose.
She'd hired John for his swagger and the breath of his shoulders and for the steel in
his grip. Even now even after she'd learned that the only games he would ever learn to
play were those that she'd explained the rules of in painstaking detail that grip still
did something to her.
When John took hold of her body, of her thigh, or her breast, and she felt that
strength! That close to crushing strength! It jolted her. Right through her. Linda could
have a minor orgasm right then!
But he was so predictable. He didn't have a random move in his nature. That's why losing
at backgammon had been so hard.
She'd bedded him on the night of the same day that she'd hired him. If she'd had any
sense she'd have fired him the very next morning. She hadn't really needed a bouncer. Her
tavern wasn't that kind of place. In any case, she had enough 'regulars' who were in lust
with her that any troublemaker would have been mobbed in an instant. It was funny. Those
guys, the guys in the bar, they thought of her as a tough broad, unbreakable. What else
were they going to think? A woman without a man, owning and running a tavern? The truth
of it was, she wasn't tough, she was flexible. 'Flexible' is made to be bent, preferably
in the grip of a strong man.
It'd been a quiet night, an itchy night. Linda didn’t consider herself addicted to sex.
The addiction only came when she had a special man to fixate on. That was when she became
totally insatiable. Linda could go two or three months between men, easy. That night had
been the beginning of the twentieth week.
John had walked in, looking for a job, and because his eyes were steel grey and because
she'd been hungry for sex, she'd deceived herself that there was cruelty in them. The
cruelty that she fancied she'd seen in his eyes, and the obvious strength of his body had
been an unbeatable combination. She'd hired John on the spot.
There had been nothing for him to do except stand around looking like a quiet threat and
drinking beer. Beer! Scotch drinkers were better. Less obvious and more intense. She'd
known that. She'd just fooled herself because she needed to be fooled. Was she her own
worst enemy?
Closing time had come and the girls had cleaned up. Linda had got the board out from
under the bar and asked him whether he played. It'd almost come as a shock when he'd said
yes.
They'd rolled for start and he'd beaten her and then opted to roll again, which was a
no no in her eyes, but his arms were strong, leaning there opposite her, like the bars of
a cage. Linda'd never been kept locked in a cage. One day?
Then he'd thrown double twos and made the dull conservative move to protect himself
instead of taking a chance and perhaps aggressive command of the board with it.
She should have known what sort of man he was right then!
Instead, she'd played an unnaturally defensive game, and still'd had to deliberately
leave blots! It'd taken him an age to beat her.
'Two out of three?' he'd asked.
By that time the girls had locked up and left.
'No,' she'd replied. 'I'll pay up right now.'
'Pay up?' He'd looked startled, like a little boy. God, how she hated men who looked
like little boys!
'I didn't know that we were betting,' he said. 'What were the stakes?'
* * *
Linda'd been wearing her orange skin fit toreador pants and the lime green top the one
that the boys in the bar loved. It was thin and shiny. Thin enough that not only her
nipples showed through, but also their puffy halos. No buttons. It tied beneath her
breasts in a loose knot, leaving her with a long bare midriff and a spectacular cleavage.
Leaving her vulnerable.
Vulnerable! That was a word that made her cringe deliciously, deep inside.
She'd leaned across the bar and the board, knowing the view she was giving him, and had
taken his hands in hers. She'd turned them both palm up and said, 'This!'
Then she'd half climbed across the mahogany at him, dragging his hands to her and
burrowing them into her neckline so that each hand was overflowing with her naked flesh
and then she'd slid the full length of her tongue deep into his astonished mouth.
Christ, he'd been timid! She'd ravished him with her tongue while he'd gaped. She'd
folded his hands into fists around her softness, forcing his fingers to close until her
nipples extruded between his knuckles and still he hadn't known what to do
A bar is full of bar stools and benches and tables, and the floor is big. There were a
dozen places he could have taken her. Even so, he'd petted her like she was some silly
cheerleader in the back of his car until she'd led him step by step up to her apartment
above the bar. Even there he hadn't done much until she'd got him into her bed. John was
young. A mere youth in his early twenties compared to her thirty five. And she was older
inside, as old as Lilith.
Youth has stamina. Linda wished to God that youth had something else to go with it!
She'd read that in Edwardian times there had been young men who'd been depraved by the
time they were out of their teens. The good old days? John had been really proud of
himself that night. He'd had six orgasms in the space of an hour and a half.
Linda'd had one. It hadn't been much of one, at that, and she’d given it to herself.
He'd rolled off her and fallen asleep. She'd slipped out of her bed and gone to the
bathroom. Under the shower she'd checked her body. Not a mark. Nothing. John'd had six
climaxes and left not a trace to show for it. Her skin was purest alabaster from head to
toe, except for her dark nipples and her tattoo. He hadn't even seen that. John made love
with the lights off or his eyes closed, or both.
The tattoo might have given him a clue as to what she wanted. That's what it was there
for to give men clues. It was high up inside her thigh, against her groin, where the
flesh is sensitive, where just the memory of the tattooist's needle makes the skin creep.
A rose. A tiny perfect rose. Linda's kind of perfect. Its pinkness was mottled, as if
bruised. One petal was torn. It had two thorns. One was dripping blood. The other had been
drawn to look as if it pierced her skin.
Linda had washed, and masturbated. She didn't usually do that. What's the point of
playing with yourself unless some man is making you do it, and preferably watching,
closely. She didn't usually do it, but after a couple of hours with a man boy? who
has only given you one minor tremor?
When she'd got back to the bed, he'd been gone. Some men are like that. They can do
things to your body, in the dark, but when it comes to looking you in the eye afterwards,
they panic. There might be a person that goes with the body.
Some men will use your flesh, but deny your mind. Didn't they know that it was all in
the mind? If it wasn't then they were just using you to masturbate with. She'd been
used as a sex object before. That was part of what she wanted. But the man had to know
that using you was what he was doing. He had to know that you knew it. That had to be the
point of it.
The second night? Well, she'd set him up for it, the best she could. It was always a
problem. A dominant woman well she could just wear spike heels and glossy leather,
bark some, and the submissive men would throw themselves at her feet, grovelling. Being
submissive was different. You can't go around wearing a leash and a collar around your
neck and trust that some man is going to take hold of it. You have to read the signs. When
you find a likely man, you have to give him his cues. The upwards glance from under the
eyelashes; the drooped shoulder; the shiver when he finally does something masterful.
* * *
There are plenty of abusive men around. The ones with heavy fists and short fuses. Linda
didn't want to be beaten up. Beaten, maybe, if it was done right, but not 'up'. That was
just a part of it, being punished when she deserved it. What she mainly craved was to be
controlled!
'Masterful' wasn't even in fashion anymore! It wasn’t politically correct.
So she'd tried to set him up. She'd worn something and white and flimsy. It was the sort
of dress that villains in melodramas tore off the quivering bodies of innocent virgins. A
bodice waiting to be ripped.
It'd been soft and floating. The fabric was fine enough that the free sway of her
breasts beneath it had been obvious. It had buttons, but she'd left them undone. When she
did her lean- across-the-bar and her soft shoulder routine, it'd slipped far enough that
only her upper arms had held it in place. Her arms and the upper slopes of her breasts.
Linda had known that there hadn't been a male customer that she'd served who hadn't felt
the urge to yank it down to her waist.
John had scowled at the leering men. When she'd prickled the broad backs of his hands
with her well honed nails, he'd pulled back. When she'd paid him compliments, he'd
blushed. She'd deliberately slopped his beer once. He’d fetched a rag and moped up.
A real man would have made her lap it up with her tongue before he punished her for her
stupid clumsiness. A real man would have taken his belt to her bare bottom.
When they'd closed, after the girls had gone, Linda had leaned across the bar, pinching
her shoulders in. Her breasts had snuggled together. The dress had slithered almost to her
elbows.
'You want to play some?' she'd asked him, her voice deliberately husky.
'Backgammon?'
'Whatever game you fancy.'
At least his eyes had touched her soft white slopes. Linda'd fancied she could feel the
heat of his gaze branding her.
Branding? Now that was a thought. To wear a man's mark, permanently? His initials
seared into the pale white skin of her breast? Then she'd be his property, owned.
She'd led John upstairs. When he'd made for the bedroom she'd steered him to the big
black leather couch. Maybe the smell of leather?
'I guess you want a drink first?' he'd asked.
'That'd be nice.'
Then he’d gone and poured her a gin and tonic. Why in hell's name hadn't he just sat and
ordered her to do it! She'd sipped and played with the buttons on his shirt. A little
careful rubbing against the back of the couch had worked her neckline down far enough that
only the points of her breasts still held it up.
John had looked around the room, his eyes crinkled as if dazzled by the light.
'Are you ready? Ready for..?' He'd nodded towards the door of her bedroom - not even
able to say the word.
Linda'd stood up. Her dress had fallen to her waist, baring her upper body, trapping her
arms in its folds. She was half naked and totally defenceless.
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