Back to Vanilla (5 page)

LittleGirlLost lived
for the times when, after everyone had drifted off – to sleep, or
in a more physical sense – they slithered into bed, door closed,
and he showed her what a truly good slut she was.

Towards the end, her
last three visits or so, she had watched as a girl, so like herself
as to make it almost futile to bother making the change, had slowly
crept into her spot. Her last visit involved her sidling into his
bedroom to find the two in a position she knew very well and had
been assured was created just for her.

Unnoticed, she slunk
back out and sat huddled, knees to her chest, by the electric fire
in the living room until 6am, when she could finally head for the
earliest train to Euston and on to her own shared house in Kent.
For a psychology student, she sure was a slow learner about human
habits, she thought, as the solemn North whizzed by the train
window.

********************

It had probably
been around that time when the brief, intense madness that had
characterised Alasdair’s relationship with Ella had finally
imploded and he’d settled down to truly devote himself to drowning
his sorrows. Although he was a man who prided himself on his
impeccable honesty, what he hadn’t told Tamsin, either before,
during or after that first meeting, was that the hotel he had
booked them into for their tryst was the very same where he’d met
his true soulmate, as he thought of Ella.

There was to be no
madness about his first encounter with the younger girl. Calm and
controlled, Alasdair had planned and worked on the details for days
before the actual encounter, and had all but brainwashed himself
into a fanatic refusal to touch anything fermented, brewed or
distilled.

With Ella, an evening
of mutual quaffing as equals with no pre-assigned agenda had led to
a conspiratorial mist of shared tales, giggles and a very natural
and funny, if somewhat botched, night in her third-floor room; with
no expectations, Alasdair had simply been himself, and that was
enough. With LittleGirlLost, however, he was to be her
Kindly_Meister and anything else was a breach of terms,
unacceptable for a man who took a pride and honour in his dom
status, if not in himself.

She opened to his
sharp rap, wearing the outfit he had chosen and had delivered to
her the previous week: thigh-length black lace hold-ups, a tight
black PVC minidress, overlaid with a black net babydoll and topped
off with a dark velour collar and fingerless black silk lace
gloves, which stopped just above the elbows on her skinny arms.

What greeted him was a
real little girl lost, barefoot, tinier than he’d anticipated, so
that the outfit grazed rather than clung to her slight curves, and
this sight kindled his appetite more than he cared to concede. In
all honesty, it was rare to meet a woman who looked even as
appetising as her online persona, but this wee thing exceeded his
already lofty expectations, a state he struggled not to convey too
blatantly.

Alasdair handed over
the small clump of velvety crimson roses he had carried all the way
from Edinburgh station, and her protracted gaze met his eyes with a
fragility that, again, he hadn’t foreseen in their
correspondence.

What she saw was a
tall, skinny older guy in a dark grey, well-cut if a trifle
overused, suit. His face, which was what she focused on, was like
the photos – weary, humane, and with what her grandmother used to
call a “kind eye”, like that of a cow or a camel, rather than a
stallion. His thinning hair, with a light touch of grey-white, was
brushed firmly back from his forehead, and he clutched the bunch of
dark flowers like a kid who’d been given them to hand over and
forgotten they were there. The tired little bouquet embarrassed
her: it was an old-fashioned romantic gesture that seemed
thoroughly pointless, considering the nature of their electronic
communications; as if meeting in a hotel room weren’t enough proof
of intent. Somewhat incongruous to the formality of his clothing, a
small navy backpack was slung over his right shoulder.

There was a genuine
benevolent smile on his well-aged face, and as he handed over the
roses, he leant in slightly to kiss her flushed cheeks. This
coincided with her swiftly half side-stepping and swooping, so that
they kind of shook hands instead. She gestured him inside.

Between Piccadilly
station and the hotel, a five-minute walk away, Tamsin had paused
for provisions. Reading between the endless lines of their
correspondence, she had detected a love for all things spiritual –
when it came to alcohol at least – and so had slipped 700ml bottle
of Jack Daniels into her velvet duffel bag, along with a turquoise
short-bobbed wig and a spanking new wet-look catsuit with front
zipper. From the minimart en route, she’d added a litre of
lemonade, a mango and passionfruit smoothie, some smoky-bacon tiger
nuts and a three-pack of Twirls.

He wasn’t the first
guy she’d met in the past year, but was, without competition, the
eldest of a total of four. All had been older, with ages ranging
from 31 to 36, but there was something about the photo Alasdair had
sent – him standing in front of a ceiling-height pine bookcase,
totally exposed – that had touched her.

He’d just looked so
damned human, although, again, she’d focused on his face in that
shot, his nakedness jarring with her belief – one she was
challenging – that someone of this age should be covered up, and
she wondered who had taken the picture (this not being the usual
bathroom mirror selfie). Nothing hidden, he’d presented a mix of
frailty and pride, and Tamsin had seen someone who would
instinctively accept her ripening needs and temper his own to meet
them. Accept was not quite the word, she thought, as she was
hunting for someone with a more pedagogical bent, while she figured
out exactly what those needs were.

She’d also received a
close-up from the same series: a side-view cock shot, a
protractor-perfect 90 degrees, she was sure, the one hand in view
placed casually on the lower part of his hip, which thrust slightly
forward. She stared at the picture, willing it to turn her on, and
rubbing herself as she did so, to create a Pavlovian link between
the two things. This was what her mind needed, a skilled master
figure who could look after her and teach her, no doubt. The key
was to convince her body it agreed.

And so he walked
slowly into a room booked and paid for by him in her name, still
almost anonymous, but with a whiff of the young girl already
drifting in. Her embroidered brown coat lay across the back of one
of the two bucket chairs, at least one of which he intended to bend
her over before their night was done.

There was an empty
tooth glass, with a sticky film and a fingerprint or two testifying
to its recent use, probably to consume some of the bottle of JD
placed next to it on the table between the two chairs. Some shiny
bits and pieces of jewellery rested on another table beneath the
large-screen TV fixed to the wall facing the bed, the surface of
which lay smooth and untouched, and from which he quickly averted
his eyes; his primary task was to put the youngster at ease, and
staring at the bed predator-style was not the way to achieve that
goal. The transition between dominant master and pervy old geezer
was sometimes inadvertently achieved with no more than a glance and
it wouldn’t be the first time he’d made that error. And so he let
his eyes wander around the room a bit.

It was large and
fairly modern, with one wall, the one behind the bed, painted a
rich deep purple, a colour reflected in the soft blanket folded at
the foot of that pristine mattress. As well as the two more
comfortable chairs, tables and a desk with accompanying
straight-backed seat, there was a long window letting in ample
light and two full-length, rather narrow mirrors, one beside the
bathroom door and the other on a wall next to the armchairs. There
was also the inevitable tray of tea and coffee accoutrements.

Tamsin watched, gaze
unflinching, though her bottom lip had all but disappeared under
the bite of her upper teeth, a gesture more of concentration than
kittenish. He pointed to one of the bucket chairs and she nodded;
of course he could sit down.

“Can I get you a
drink?” She remained standing and spoke in a rather formal tone,
considering their previous conversations. “Lemonade, whisky… a
combination of the two…?”

“I’ll not be drinking
tonight, lassie,” he said, “although a lemonade would be nice,
thanks. Was your journey okay?”

She was surprised at
his refusal of alcohol, and it made her a little uneasy to drink
alone, but if ever a person needed a drink, she was that person.
Tamsin had promised herself that she wouldn’t let any nerves show
through, but this was proving an oath she might soon have to break,
as even unscrewing the bottle top seemed impossible with so shaky a
hand. LittleGirlLost was quivering, eyes widening, trembling from
the shoulders down. The small cloud of doubt that had hovered
around her head for the past few weeks had dispersed and total
certainty had jumped into its place.

“I don’t think I can
do this,” she said, blurting the words out like steaming coffee
from an overfilled espresso pot. “I mean, yes, the journey was
fine, great, but I’m sorry, I just want to be home. I mean, I want
this, I do, but something just seems so weird, and, you’re a nice
guy, I can see, but I just can’t. I can’t. It’s just nuts.”

She was shaking her
head, an involuntary action, which was slumped down like the rest
of her body as she spoke, as if nothing on the planet could or
would convince her to stay, and Alasdair was momentarily torn
between a fear of his own disappointment and the need to make this
young woman feel at ease. His time with Lyall’s mum, Lexi, had
given him plenty of practice with what he assumed were panic
attacks, and this felt to him like the beginnings of a spark that
could either flame up and put her on the next train home, or be
damped down. That was his challenge.

“Look, sit down,” he
said slowly, modulated and relying entirely on the power of his
voice. He stood up, and took care to keep a healthy distance
between them. “It’s fine. Whatever you choose to do, I’ll help you
with it. I’ll sort out your return journey, if you need it, but
truly, girl, you need to relax. You’re safe here. You’re safe.”

For the second time
that day, he pointed his left index finger towards the chair he’d
just vacated, and guided her bit by bit with actions, not touching
her, to sit down herself. Alasdair took the cosy woollen blanket
from the foot of the bed and threw it over her. He then poured her
a stiff one, still nothing for himself, into a plain white tea mug
from the beverage tray and passed it over with a degree of
deliberation. He sat down then on the wooden desk chair, the seat
of which was covered with black imitation leather; it squeaked a
little, fart-like, as he settled down.

Tamsin smiled weakly
in response to the eyebrow he raised sheepishly at the suspicious
noise. It was the kind of smile that curved her lips a little down
at the edges rather than up.

“I know, I know,
that’s the stupid thing, how safe I am, but I just,” she paused and
slugged a hefty shot, the dainty fingers of her right hand curled
firmly around the cup. “I just feel so silly and so totally out of
my comfort zone, and I know it’s wrong, because this is about me,
but I just…”

“You’re thinking that
maybe I’m just some dirty auld man, and that if you let me into
your head I’ll take advantage of you and you’ll be left soiled with
shivers running down at the memory of some filthy thing or things
you wished you hadn’t done?”

With pursed lips and a
slight gleam returning to her eye, LittleGirlLost started to giggle
a little, and raised her almost black eyes to look at him.

“You’re thinking that
I’m going to do things to you that your young lads haven’t and then
you’ll, maybe, lose control and not know how to get it back? Maybe
even become addicted to your old Meister? Hey, LittleGirl? Is that
what you’re thinking? Is it, you cheeky wee thing?”

Alasdair was still
studiously not touching her, or moving closer, but by this point,
she was barely holding it together, like a kid being tickled and
writhing in her chair. Her bare feet were tucked up under her and
she seemed to be decreasing in size before his eyes. She had tucked
her short straight brown bob behind her ears and looked totally
enchanting and absolutely exposed. There was something almost
oriental about her, he thought – almond eyes, snub of a nose and
full pink-lipped small mouth – and presently, when she had calmed
herself and regained her poise, she looked up at him with a flicker
of a secret smile on that perfectly drawn Cupid’s bow.

The reality was, in
her head at least, that she had to stay there, with him, in that
hotel, or this was a spectre that was going to keep returning to
haunt her. Everything she had read about and experienced of the
BDSM scene had left her, if not hungering for, then profoundly
interested in exploring what he had said could feel like an
out-of-body experience, and one that he could give her. She loved
the notion of being under the command, at the sexual mercy, of
someone she truly trusted, but, genuinely, it was more than that;
Tamsin coveted the strong whole-body buzzing feeling accompanied by
a total lack of focus that she’d seen reported again and again.

“It is apparently
caused by endorphins, adrenalin, or other body chemistry. The
actual sensation varies among individuals,” she’d read in a PhetX
post she’d instantly favourited. “For me it’s a kind of warm,
floaty, spacey, serene feeling which is less bothered by pain. Some
people attach spiritual significance to the experience. For me it
is the entire point of kinky play.”

She had already let
him down once, two weeks earlier, sending a frenzied email
suggesting that she might be wrong and that it was all a mistake,
in order to back out of their initially arranged meeting the night
before it was due to occur.