CHAPTER ONE

 

She held the handcuffs up at arm's length as if to put them on display, one shiny steel cuff hung over her index finger, the other swinging gently below and making the links between rattle. Her eyes met his and the two of them grinned silly nervous grins and then broke together into embarrassed laughter.

"They're not mine..."

She nodded, graciously taking his word for it. She was getting to like this guy. His name was Paul; hers was Carole and they were very recent acquaintances.

Coming back here with him had been a bit risky, of course. But he was good - looking and well - spoken, not aggressive in his manner and obviously had a lot of money. The impression given by his sharp clothes and casual readiness to pay for drinks and a taxi, had been fully borne out by a look around his flat.

It was the third floor up - not the attic - of a tall terraced house, Georgian or Victorian or something and seemed to occupy the whole storey; it was completely self - contained, with five or six rooms which you could enter by way of a big lounge. The lounge curtains stood open to the night, and gave a full view of the top flat across the road; the people over there left their curtains open, too, and you could see them moving around and make out what programme they were watching on TV. "Do you know them?" she'd asked.

"Not personally. I don't mind them looking in on me if they want to."

In point of fact, the lounge made Carole think of a picture gallery. Its walls were covered with photographs, perhaps as many as twenty of them altogether, black - and - white shots hung in narrow matt black frames, portraits and arty documentary subjects; she hadn't taken them all in yet. She was chiefly struck by the size of the prints; accustomed to family snaps, a standard eight by ten seemed big to her and some of the pictures here were much larger. The largest of all was approximately a yard by two feet, a close - up portrait of a beautiful girl who confronted the camera with a dark, contemptuous stare. A larger than life - size portrait is always compelling to look at and this one met your eyes as you stepped through from the entrance hall.

"Who's she?"

He'd told her: the girl in the picture was a Spanish actress who'd been in some famous movies - "that's if you're into films with subtitles. I bought it from a place that sells film memorabilia. Nearly all the rest are pictures I've taken myself," he added.

"I thought she might be your girlfriend."

"I should be so lucky!" he said, laughing. "Don't take that the wrong way," he added and laughed even more.

They'd both laughed a lot over coffee in the kitchen, even when neither had said anything funny. Superfluous laughter has a definite social function nowadays: it's a kind of signal for "hey, I'm a nice person and I want to get on with you." So when at length they went back into the living room and she found those handcuffs, it was natural for them both to see the funny side.

She'd sat down in an armchair and felt something hard under the cushion and, as she shifted, heard a metallic clink; she'd reached a hand down and drawn out the cuffs, just as he followed her in from the kitchen. "Whose are they, if they're not yours?" she asked curiously, but with a smile.

"My old girlfriend's. Her name was Helen. She left them here when she moved out. I suppose we had one of those weird relationships..." He remained standing before her, laughed again and looked bashfully down at the carpet. He was really handsome, with thick black hair, deep brown eyes and a firm chin, but a pale, clear complexion; kind of strong but sensitive - looking. He was also a few years older than her, at about twenty - five or six.

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of perversion," she said with a feeling of taking pity on him. "Not as long as it doesn't get out of hand. You're not into things like whips, are you?"

He shook his head. "I just like a woman to be strong and powerful. To take the upper hand sometimes."

She sat back and tipped one leg casually over the other. She was dressed in a sleeveless black Lycra mini - dress, a wide leather belt and long black patent leather boots which zipped all the way up and hugged their wearer's legs at the ankles, calves and thighs. The heels were flat, but the toes were pointed. "Don't they get uncomfortable to have on for too long? I wouldn't be offended if you felt like taking them off."

She placed the handcuffs on one arm of the chair and unzipped her boots. "Actually it's quite funny how they came to be down there," he said. "I had to shove them out of sight this morning when Mrs Agnew - she's a domestic who does all the flats - when she came in. They were actually lying on the coffee table while I was talking to her in the hall and then I remembered and rushed back in here while she was hanging up her coat. Usually I help her off with it - she never said anything, but I felt really ungentlemanly."

Carole laughed.

"Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'd been thinking about Helen. Those handcuffs - well, they remind me of her. They're sentimental."

"Yeah?" She picked the cuffs up again and examined them, feeling their weight, taking a cuff in each hand and holding the chain taut, pulling and pushing at the locks, which didn't budge.

"Here." He reached down and took them from her. There was a noisy click - click of turning ratchets and suddenly both cuffs were swinging open in his hands. "You didn't take me for a conjuror, did you?" he said, laughing at her stare of surprise. "See those little levers? When they're pushed to one side they act as deadlocks - the cuffs won't move with them on. Otherwise you can push them right through and out again - like so."

"Oh. I didn't notice them."

"Of course, you can't do that if they're locked round something. A wrist being the usual thing."

There was a long silent exchange of smiles which grew increasingly nervous; then he held up his own left wrist and clicked a cuff into place around it. Quickly and smoothly, he put both wrists behind his back and cuffed them together and turned around to show them to his guest, who gave a giggle of unforced amusement. "I hope she left you the key!"

"It's around here somewhere - I think. Can you find it for me? You will unlock me when you do, won't you?"

She joined in with the game. "I might. I might decide you're safer locked up. All chained and bound, that's how I like a man ... What does it look like?"

"It's about an inch long. It's quite fancy - there's a design on the handle, three little loops..."

"Right, you stand there and wait while I look. Don't move!"

She searched the room, padding across the carpet in her bare feet. She was rather tall for a woman, only an inch or two shorter than her host, with long straight black hair and a heavy figure; her legs, which the thigh boots had embraced so lovingly, were shapely but muscular and she wore no stockings or tights. She scanned shelves, tables, chairs - she lifted the cushion that had concealed the cuffs, with the sense of having had a brainwave, but there was nothing else there; finally there was only a deep alcove left unexplored and, as she stepped into it, a tiny metal object met her at eye level. The key was lying on the next - to - top shelf of a tall bookcase which lined most of the alcove's rear wall.

"You've got a lot of books, haven't you?" she remarked as she took it down. "Have you read them all...?"

She was interrupted by an odd mixture of sounds from behind. It was like a grunt, a shuffle and a clicking, all within the space of a moment; and she turned her head to find her smiling host still on the same spot, but with his hands free. He held up the open cuffs and swung one cuff around by the chain. "Good as Houdini, eh?"

"How did you do that?" she gasped.

"Nothing to it."

"Are they a trick pair - I mean not real handcuffs...?"

"They're real. Genuine police issue - or sex shop issue, anyway. There's simply a knack to getting out of them. It's easy when you know how." He paused. "I could teach you how to do it, if you liked."

He grinned, shyly; but here was such a departure from common sense as cut through all the reassurances of looks, money and manners. Finally she answered. "Not behind my back."

"Of course not, if you don't want to," he said calmly.

She came out of the alcove and approached him with her arms held out before her, her hands palms up about six inches apart. The cuffs contracted around her wrists, from circles into ovals that left the hands no room to turn within them and the skin no escape from their cold, hard touch. "There. You've got the key and you can let yourself out with that any time."

"I didn't mean I don't trust you," she said apologetically. "It's just..."

"That you don't trust me," he said. "I understand, I really do. Bondage teaches you a lot about trust. Helen and I didn't trust each other completely when we began doing it. We thought we knew each other well. We ended up knowing each other better."

With a wave he guided her back into her seat and sat down himself. "Have a go at getting out of them on your own."

She gave a few experimental pulls and pushes, then tried clashing the cuffs together, all the while keeping a tight finger and thumb gripped on the key. Nothing happened. "I give up. How do you do it?"

"Not like that!" he chuckled. "You get the chain hooked over your thumbs - you'll have to put the key down. Just put it beside you. Now, with your fingers squeeze the locks ... right ... now raise your elbows up high, up, up..." As he spoke, he manipulated a pair of imaginary handcuffs and lifted his elbows level with his shoulders. Carole, manacled in reality, did her best to follow him. "That's it ... squeeze the locks hard ... Now, bring your elbows down with as much force as you can - NOW!"

Muscles flexed in her bare, strong arms as she did it; then she was bent double, gasping with pain and making a desperate effort to dislodge the cuffs, which were cutting into her skin. They remained perfectly secure. "Fuck! Ow! You stupid bastard...!"

"Oh God, I'm sorry. It usually loosens them, even if they don't open right up."

"Where's the key? Where's the key?" she repeated in a higher register as she realised it was missing.

"Here. You knocked it down." He retrieved it from the carpet and, taking her gently by the hand, he unlocked the cuffs. There were shallow scarlet ruts left where they'd been; but no skin was broken and even as they sat in embarrassed silence the marks began to fade.

She spoke first. "Sorry."

"I've been sworn at before. I'll survive."

"You're clever to be able to do that. If I was handcuffed and there was no key, I'd be that way to stay."

He gave a modest smile. "Helen and I were really into escapology."

"Escapology?"

"I suppose you could call it pure bondage. We really weren't into whips or anything like that. We just really got off on tying each other up, and watching each other try to get untied. Sometimes we got ourselves both tied up together. We both ended up becoming pretty good escape artists. It was a sort of prelude to other things," he added as her lips opened. "We'd make a game out of it - time each other and the one who was slower was the loser."

"What happened to them?"

"Nothing painful. If I won, I might tie her up again and carry her from here into the bedroom, to have my wicked way with her. Or if she won, she'd sentence me to a teasing session. She'd truss me up with a big coil of rope, all the way from my shoulders down to my ankles, with about fifteen strategically - placed knots. And the loser could be gagged, blindfolded - whatever the winner chose..."

"And you were both really into that?" she said, picking up on the note of pleasant contemplation in his voice.

He nodded. "Will you tie me up now? No, never mind them," he said, catching up the handcuffs and tossing them out of her reach; even as they hit the carpet with a bang and a clatter, he was on his way into another room. He returned a minute later with a fistful of ties and scarves.

"How do you want to be tied?"

"You decide."

"Er, okay. Lie on the floor face down. Put your hands behind you."

As she bound his wrists with one of his own neckties, she was filled with a sense of clumsiness, of being a novice in the presence of a devotee. "Lift your legs up ... there, that's good and tight, isn't it?" she asked as she hogtied his ankles and wrists together.

"Yeah, that's excellent," he said with a grunt of pleasure.

"I'm gonna gag you, too." She tied a woollen muffler over his mouth in a way that wouldn't have impeded him in addressing Parliament or singing Ave Maria.

She rose to her feet and stood over him with hands on hips. She lifted one foot and gave him a gentle barefooted push in the side; to her surprise he rolled right over and lay on his back with his arms underneath him and his legs bent double, like a big frog in a smart grey suit. "Lucky your carpet's clean."

He chuckled behind the 'gag', then took a deep breath through his nose. He began a determined struggle against the bonds, squirming and writhing but remaining on the same spot, pulling with wrists and ankles and lifting his body up and down, up and down, more and more rapidly, until all his limbs came free in a single burst and he could lie at full length and relax. "I meant to give you a stopwatch," he sighed and then pulled away the muffler. He sat up and stretched out his arms. "Now it's your turn."

"My turn?" repeated Carole.

"I won't time you. No penalty for inability to escape."

"I don't know..."

She took a step back as she spoke and he laid a hand on her bare ankle to detain her. "Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm coming on too strong, aren't I?"

"It's just that I don't really know you yet..."

"I understand," he said and then, awkwardly, he went on: "I want to get to know you better, Carole. I know we've only just met and all that, but we've got on so well. Tonight could be the start of something."