His House of Submission Read Free

boxes, but some of the contents were in long fabric bags. For instance, the whips. And canes. And riding crops.
    â€˜Is this what you’re into?’ asked Will, opening one of the boxes and showing me a selection of cuffs – leather, metal, fur-lined, velcro, you name it.
    â€˜This is … I mean. Wow. It’s a collection. Does he just collect the stuff or does he use it?’
    I opened another box, my curiosity overwhelming my caution now, and found a selection of first-edition titles, some of which – like
The Story of O
– were familiar to me, others not so well known.
    â€˜
The Harem of the Flagellants
,’ I read, my finger hovering over a cheaply but sturdily bound Victorian tome. I shivered.
    It was one thing to fantasise about these things, but quite another to see them in real life. I felt a strange kind of fear, as if I had skimmed a surface and been dragged underneath it. Now I was here in the underworld, could I get out again?
    Will hadn’t answered my question, so I asked it again.
    â€˜Does any of this stuff get used?’
    â€˜I don’t know. He hasn’t had anyone here for a while. When he stays here, he just buries himself. Doesn’t go out. It’s like hibernation.’
    â€˜I guess his work is quite intense. Ever since he won the Palme d’Or.’
    Will shrugged.
    â€˜Don’t ask me. I’ve worked here for four years but I wouldn’t say I knew him. This is the closest I’ve got to knowing anything about him. This here.’ He waved his hand at the boxes.
    I had opened another. It contained things I had never seen in my life before, silicone things that were a little bit like dildoes but with an outward flare halfway along the length.
    â€˜What the hell are these?’
    Will snorted.
    â€˜Don’t you know?’
    â€˜I’ve never done anything kinky,’ I defended myself.
    â€˜Butt plugs, my love,’ he said, picking one up.
    â€˜Oh, don’t touch it!’
    â€˜Why not?’
    I shook my head. I knew I was panicking, but I couldn’t seem to rein myself in.
    â€˜Fingerprints,’ I mumbled.
    He burst out laughing at that, waving the butt plug in the air.
    â€˜You’re funny,’ he said, between fresh gusts of mirth.
    â€˜You’ll have to share the joke.’ A third voice spoke from the doorway.
    I fell backwards on to my arse, my hand clamping my mouth so hard and fast I almost knocked a couple of teeth out.
    I watched through wide-stretched eyes as everything seeming to crash into slo-mo. Will dropped the butt plug and raised himself to his feet, shoulders back, squared for combat.
    The man in the door was, presumably, Jasper Jay, though he wasn’t the way I remembered him from that medical soap he used to be in when I was a girl. Of course, a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then – fifteen years’ worth. He wasn’t a fresh-faced bright-eyed youth in a white coat now. He stood with one arm braced against the doorframe, in an expensive suit, its light biscuit colour accentuating his dark looks. He had that famous-person thing of looking somehow bigger and shinier and brighter than a real man. I hadn’t fancied him in the medical soap, or in the many news clips of him accepting the Palme d’Or, but now I could almost see the vortex of charisma inside which he existed.
    But now wasn’t a good time to be ogling my boss.
    Now was about the worst time ever for that kind of thing.
    â€˜Shit, I thought you were in France,’ was Will’s pretty dreadful attempt at defending his actions.
    I remained silent, cowering on a Turkish rug of early nineteenth-century vintage, concentrating on keeping Will’s bathrobe tightly wrapped around me.
    â€˜Shit, you’re fired,’ replied Jay laconically.
    â€˜You can’t just –’
    â€˜Yes, I can. Pack your things. Load up your car. Get out of here.’
    â€˜But my rights