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  Richard felt as if his cock were enclosed in a burning liquid tunnel which sucked greedily at him as she moved wildly in her orgasm. He was trying hard to prolong this episode. It was one of the wildest sexual encounters he had ever experienced, and he wanted it to last. At the same time he knew that he was being pushed steadily closer to the brink. When he could delay himself no longer, he too groaned with the release of tension. The girl bucked wildly as she joined him. He thought she would fling herself off into the air, so wild were her movements. Then abruptly she slumped against him, her breath sawing in her throat.

  Richard was alarmed. She seemed to be having a fit of some sort. He thought, belatedly, of those stories about having a heart attack during sex, and he wondered if that had happened to her. She lay limply against him, and he was helpless to do anything. He tugged at the handcuffs, but there was no escape. He could do nothing but look at her. And as he did he noticed that she was still breathing, albeit stertorously, and her heartbeat was strong. He could see the tiny pulse beneath her ear. All the vital signs were there, and gradually he realised that she had fainted. That was something none of his other partners had ever done. Quite an accomplishment, he thought with a quiet pride.

  He lay more quietly as the initial alarm faded and his breath slowed towards normal. Indeed, there was nothing else he could do until she regained consciousness and unlocked the handcuffs. Or didn’t. He felt a thrill of excitement as he contemplated being held for hours. It would hardly be against his will.

  They lay for what seemed like hours, until eventually she stirred and opened her eyes. For a moment she looked wildly at him, then recognition came to her and she smiled. She bent down and planted a kiss on his mouth before rolling off him. Richard felt a sense of regret as he slid out of her, but she was still smiling. She stood up warily, as if she didn’t trust her legs to bear her weight. Then she moved off to the bathroom. Richard could hear water splashing, and then the sound of the toilet flushing. Eventually she came back, looking refreshed but still tousled. She was still smiling as she bent to unlock his handcuffs. She laid them on the bedside table before laying herself on the bed next to him.

  Free now, Richard turned over and gathered her against him. She rested her head against his shoulder and kissed him again. They lay together, and gradually she drifted off to sleep. Her head rolled on to the pillow. Richard looked for a long time at the girl lying beside him. Her hair, dark against the pillow, shone softly in the glow from the bedside lamp. He stroked it idly, drowsily, before falling asleep himself with an odd sense of better things to come.

  When he woke in the morning, the other half of the bed was empty, but there was a heartening smell of fresh coffee and breakfast being cooked. He got up and followed the noises to their source. The girl was standing at the stove wearing an apron.

  ‘Cooking in the nude may be provocative, but there is a real danger of getting hot spatters on one’s tits. Or other vital parts,’ she added, with a glance at Richard’s cock. ‘But come and sit down while I finish our breakfast,’ she continued.

  Richard sat at the scrubbed pine table and admired the girl as she moved familiarly about the kitchen. She poured coffee for them both and presently set two omelettes on the table. Toast, butter and marmalade completed the setting. As she sat down opposite Richard, he voiced the thought that had been on his mind since they had met. ‘Do you think it proper we should have breakfast without knowing one another’s names?’

  ‘Is it any less proper than what we did last night without knowing one another’s names?’ she retorted with a smile. ‘But perhaps you’re right. Breakfast is a different matter, in the cold light of the morning. I am Helena Witt.’

  ‘Richard Stanfield. Are you related to Katarina, of figure-skating fame?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I am not from Chemnitz, or Karl Marx Stadt, as it used to be known. I come from Neumunster, near Kiel. Where do you live?’

  ‘In England. Near Bacton, on the North Norfolk coast.’ He went on to explain that he lived in a large old house in the country, a house inherited from his aunt, who had had ambitions for a large family but less success in acquiring one. ‘I was her favourite nephew,’ he told her. ‘I used to spend my school holidays with her and my uncle, rattling around in the old place and in the woods nearby. On special days we would make an expedition to the seaside: places like Mundseley and Cromer. They – my aunt and uncle – loved the North Norfolk coast and detested Great Yarmouth, which they thought unspeakably vulgar, with all those amusements and gawking visitors.’ He found himself eager to tell her more about himself. She was easy to talk to, and he felt impelled to share his confidences and experiences with her. But he stopped himself from running on about himself with an effort and asked her about her past.

  ‘Later,’ she told him. ‘I would like to keep some secrets. It makes me more mysterious and desirable, I think. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘You may be right,’ Richard agreed. ‘I know you’re mysterious and desirable enough for me as you are.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helena said, with another smile. ‘And thank you for saying nothing about my surprising you last night. It was bad manners, to say the least.’

  ‘Not at all. I was flattered I could help you come as you did. No other woman has ever fainted in my arms, so to speak.’

  ‘I was surprised myself,’ she said. ‘That has never happened to me before.’ She looked at him solemnly.

  ‘Well, in that case, maybe we should keep one another company. Maybe something like it will happen again.’ Once again Richard was surprised to hear himself speaking so openly about his feelings with a stranger. The English reputation for reserve was not normally undeserved in his case.

  Helena smiled abruptly, her solemnity disappearing. ‘I am so glad you feel that way. I feel the same. I think we will go on to discover some wonderful things together.’

  They were silent after their mutual revelations, embarrassed perhaps by their own frankness. But there was an underlying current of excitement as they ate their meal.

  At the end of it, Helena asked him if he had anywhere important to go that day. Richard said no, he was having an indefinite holiday from England. She seemed pleased by his answer. He was happy, because her question implied that she wanted to spend more time with him. Helena stood up.

  ‘Do you mind doing the washing-up, Richard? I need to get ready to go out for a bit.’

  Richard nodded and watched as she took off her apron and hung it up. Nudity became her, he decided. As he washed up the breakfast things, he could hear her moving about in the apartment. The small domestic noises were reassuring. As he was finishing up, Helena came back. She was dressed and carrying a large canvas hold-all in addition to her handbag. She said she would be back in a few hours and he should make himself at home while she was out. Did he have any special requests for dinner?

  ‘Anything, so long as you’re around to cook it. I’m not much good at haute cuisine.’

  She nodded, and withdrew. Richard heard her high heels tapping across the floor, then the sound of the door opening and closing as she left the apartment. He dried his hands on the apron Helena had worn and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He liked being alone in her apartment. Her leaving him there implied a certain degree of trust in him.

  He took the coffee through into the bedroom, where he noticed she hadn’t made up the bed. He smoothed the sheets and drew the quilt up over the pillows. Then he picked up the clothes she had worn the last evening, hanging up her dress and taking the underwear through into the bathroom as he went to take a shower. There was a wicker basket more than half full of her underwear and tights. Richard added the things he carried to the collection and stepped into the shower. He had left his toilet things at the guest house and so had to use Helena’s things. That added another degree of intimacy to the novel situation.

  He dried himself on her towel and put it into the basket of things to be washed before going in search of his clothes. He remembe
red Helena undressing him in the bedroom but couldn’t find his clothes there. Puzzled, he looked into her wardrobe, in case she had hung them up. That seemed unlikely, since she had left her own things lying around. There was no sign of his clothes anywhere in the bedroom, so he wandered out into the living room. They weren’t there either. Could they possibly be in the other bedroom, the one she had turned into a work room? They weren’t, although Richard spent a good deal of time there both looking for his clothes and studying the drawings Helena had made of her fetish fashions. As on the previous evening, he felt a stirring of excitement as he looked at the drawings of the male and female chastity belts she had designed. He thought again how exciting it might be to be locked into one of them.

  After he had looked all around, he reached the only possible conclusion: Helena had taken his clothes with her, stranding him there. He recalled the canvas hold-all she had carried, which had seemed so incongruous with the way she was dressed. He had no idea why she had done this, and he felt a flare of resentment. They had seemed on the brink of a relationship, of exchanging confidences, maybe even of becoming partners. And now this. But in spite of Helena’s playing this trick on him, he could see the funny side. He could think of a lot of men who wouldn’t mind being stranded without clothes in the apartment of a beautiful young woman who had showed a sexual interest in them. And now it had happened to him. Richard wasn’t afraid of being stranded permanently. This was Helena’s home, and she would be back eventually. It was merely a matter of being patient until then. Then he could take any measures he thought appropriate. He toyed with the image of turning Helena over his knee and spanking her until she sued for mercy.

  But suppose Helena returned without his clothes? There was nothing he could do in that case. Spanking her, or doing anything else along those lines, would not produce the clothing he would need when it came time to leave the apartment. He shrugged the thought away. There was nothing he could do except wait and see.

  Richard wandered around the apartment once again, looking into wardrobes and drawers and reading Helena’s bookshelves. He turned on the television, but there was nothing on except the bland daytime fare. It was no better in German than the programmes he had seen in English. For want of something to do, he brought Helena’s basket of washing to the kitchen and sorted through it. As he put her underwear into the washing machine, he could smell the faint odour of her that clung to it.

  While the washer was going through its cycle, he settled down with one of Len Deighton’s Berlin spy thrillers. He got up to put the damp washing into the dryer and returned to the book. When he looked up again it was nearly one o’clock. His stomach said it was lunch time, so he explored Helena’s refrigerator. There was schinkenwurst and cheese, from which he made sandwiches.

  Helena had still not returned by two o’clock, when Richard went back to the kitchen with the dishes. He washed them in the sink and left them on the drainer to dry. He took Helena’s clothing from the dryer, folded it, and put it away in the drawers in the bedroom. Then, having nothing else to do, he set about tidying up the apartment. Helena didn’t appear to be especially untidy, but there were things to put away and others to replace in their proper places. The workroom alone he did not touch. He thought she would probably have arranged things in there to suit her work habits, and would not appreciate his efforts to rearrange them.

  As he was putting the vacuum cleaner away, he heard the key turn in the door. A moment later Helena entered, calling over her shoulder to an unseen companion to come in. She noticed Richard with the vacuum cleaner. So, a moment later, did her companion, a statuesque blonde in a dark, severely cut pinstripe suit of the type worn by lawyers and bankers. Helena smiled mischievously at him. Her companion looked at him with undisguised astonishment, turning in a moment to outright appraisal.

  Richard was embarrassed, of course, but Helena seemed not to be. To his further embarrassment, he felt his cock stiffening as he looked at the two beautiful and stylishly dressed women who stood looking at his nudity.

  ‘Margaret, meet homo erectus. Richard, this is my aunt, Margaret Wagner. I’ve invited her round to look over my drawings and discuss my business venture. If she likes what she sees, she may be persuaded to lend me enough capital to start making a few things to display in the shops.’ Helena smiled brightly at him and then, somewhat more tentatively, at Margaret.

  It was apparent from the way Margaret was looking at him that she already liked at least part of what she was seeing. Richard was flattered at her interest, but taken aback at his abrupt inclusion in Helena’s social circle. He tried not to let his surprise show. He didn’t want to do anything to upset her plans if he could help it, but he was not at all sure he was ready to handle this complication to his fledgling relationship with Helena.

  ‘I see you’ve trained him well,’ Margaret said, with a gesture that included both Richard’s nudity and the vacuum cleaner he still held. ‘That’s a good sign. One’s associates should be able to work on their own without continual supervision,’ she continued, with the ghost of a smile that betrayed irony and interest in equal measure. ‘It looks as if he has made a good job of the place in your absence. Has he been with you long?’

  ‘About twenty-four hours,’ Helena said with a straight face.

  Margaret crossed the room to take a closer look at Richard. He heard the faint silken rustle of nylon as she approached him, and he found himself wondering if she was wearing stockings. Her faint perfume smelt expensive. Richard felt his cock grow stiffer and tried to avoid looking down at himself. He kept his eyes on Margaret’s face, in particular her eyes, which were a startlingly deep shade of green. Like a cat’s, he thought. She moved with a feline grace as well, unusual in a woman of her size. In her high-heeled shoes she stood as tall as Richard, so that their eyes were on a level. Richard imagined a canary might feel the way he did under the steady gaze of those cat’s eyes.

  In order to make the bizarre situation more normal, he set the vacuum cleaner on the floor and held out his hand to her. Instead of shaking his outstretched hand, Margaret reached out and grasped his cock, enveloping him with the warmth of her hand. He felt a shock pass through his body as she took him. His first reaction was to jerk away, but he managed to stand his ground and even to look again at her face.

  He thought Helena might be feeling jealous or angry, but then he remembered she had brought Margaret back to the apartment knowing he would still be there and in the nude. The only thing she couldn’t have anticipated was Margaret’s intimacy. Or maybe she had, and had relied on it as part of her plan to interest this tall, beautiful woman in her business. Richard could see a certain logic in that. If Margaret liked what she saw and held, as she evidently did, then she might like the rest of the plan as well. He wondered fleetingly if prostitution, of which this was a form, should make him feel like an object, as many women had argued. Instead he felt excited. Maybe he wasn’t a prostitute.

  Still holding Richard’s cock, Margaret asked Helena, ‘Would you consider lending him to me for a while? My house is in need of a good cleaning too. I would be able to return him to you even better trained than he is now.’

  Although Margaret could not see Helena’s face, Richard could. He caught the spasm of anger in her glance, followed by the mute appeal to him. Helena gestured pleadingly at him behind Margaret’s back before she replied, ‘Of course.’ Obviously she dared not ask Richard what he thought about the bargain.

  He thought it might be impolitic to deny her, for reasons he would have been hard put to explain had an explanation been demanded of him just at that moment. Such a refusal might even be considered impolite in some circles. He imagined his acquiescence would make the matter of starting-up capital easier for Helena. Also, he reflected, it is hard to refuse the request of a beautiful woman who has hold of your cock. Let’s see where this goes, he told himself.

  ‘Thank you,’ Margaret said. Still holding Richard’s cock, which she seemed to regard as her persona
l property now, she asked Helena to show her the rest of the proposition.

  Helena led the way into the workroom, and Margaret followed, pulling Richard along in her wake. Even leading him by the cock, Margaret lost none of her feline grace.

  Helena began setting out her drawings for Margaret’s inspection. To Richard she looked nervous, moving quickly and jerkily around the drafting table she used as a work surface. Once she snatched a drawing so hastily the corner tore off. Richard could see the effort it took to control herself. Even with Margaret holding him so intimately, he had enough wit left to wonder if Helena was feeling jealous at the way Margaret had moved in so quickly to make him her own prize.

  When the drawings were laid out, Margaret led Richard over to the table to inspect them. When she squeezed his cock he shuddered with excitement. She noticed, and smiled at her power over him. Then she turned her attention to Helena’s designs.

  Richard admired them as well. Helena had a good deal of skill and imagination, he decided. If these designs were made to measure, rather than merely bought off the peg in a sex shop like those on the Reeperbahn, they would be truly stunning. At the same time, he couldn’t help noticing that all of Helena’s designs incorporated some degree of restraint for the wearer. She must be deeply into bondage, he thought with another flare of excitement. Margaret squeezed him again, believing no doubt that he was reacting to her touch.