EXTRACT FOR
Sirens In Torment
(Val Offord)

     How do you make love to a masochist?

     I mean, really make love?   You want to be soft and warm and gentle and caring, to bring pleasure with every touch, with every move, and all the time you know what she needs is to be hurt...

     My friend Gil must be hurting now.  She was in her punishment boots, a recent purchase. 

     Well, that wasn't much, you might think, not likely to be enough for any real discomfort.

     But you would be completely wrong.

     She hadn't just put them on ??" she'd been zipped into them for four hours now.   And naturally when you have your punishment boots on you don't sit down. Even for a pee.

     They were a tight fit too, made especially for Gil's lovely legs, to be strict with them, with a zip that ran the whole length of the leg, with serious-strength elastic built in along the length to ensure a close fit, a fit that actually closed tighter as her calves lost their power to resist.

     Oh, and one more thing.   A six-inch heel.

     Gil's feet, her crushed toes in particular, had started screaming at her quite some time ago.

     Actually, the pain we suffer from high heels ??" I mean ordinarily high heels, like three or four inches ??" is pretty severe anyway, completely underestimated by those they are meant to lure, namely men, so severe you wonder sometimes if luring sexual partners is really enough to explain it!   Like the hateful, hateful business of jogging ??" can it really be just your figure, or even your health, that gets you killing yourself pounding away on the pavements?

     Anyway, Gil was not pounding the pavements, but might just as well have been, getting the Spanish treatment effectively in those boots. A few hours torture was the first part of her ritual.   I wasn't really needed for it, but I insisted on being with her all the time or at least making frequent checks, because the things she put herself through were pretty severe.   The pain often pushed her to the edge of consciousness and god help me that seemed very dangerous to me.

     The boots we had had made since I had moved in with her, but she had a roomful of other things, collected she said when she had 'to look after herself'.  I had already come back to the flat to find her in her 'studio', suspended from the ceiling by her wrists, which were locked behind her.

     She was motionless as she hung there, her toes touching the ground, but only just.   Her ginger hair straggling down over her cheeks was wet and stringy with sweat.   (Usually it was gloriously springy, like heather.) There was no reaction from her as I pulled it aside to see her properly.    She was gagged.   I had to unbuckle a strap running round the back of her head and pull the wad out.

     That she noticed, her eyes opening.

     "Leave me, leave me," she rasped, "It's on a timer.   Not much longer. Just leave me!   Put the gag back.   I'll be with you in half an hour tops."

     I tried a 'But ...' She wasn't having any. "Please!" she said in that voice of hers which you couldn't argue with. (Gil was not what you call a 'sub'!   She just needed the pain thing.)

     It was hard to leave her like that, really hard, but I knew that's what I had to do.   I strapped the gag back in.   Her eyes were shut again as she recovered her 'pain-management,' and that's how I left her.

     Twenty minutes later she emerged and came straight into my arms.

     "I'm all sweaty, do you mind?   But I so want you," she whispered.

     She actually felt gorgeous, totally relaxed, giving herself up, keeping nothing back.   Her gym things, uniformly dark with her sweat, clung to her body like the wet T-shirt ads.    The sweat of all things somehow made her feel divine, she tasted ??" oh, she tasted so sweet.

     She took her mouth away.  "Can you just finish me off Lex?" she asked, "Would you mind?   I'll pay.  I'll pay ....'  Her lips came back. I had no chance of replying.

     She pressed into my hands the two vicious little clips she kept handy for moments like this.   Then broke off, turned round and lent against the wall, arms up and wide.

     I knew what I had to do.

     I reached round and pulled up her T-shirt, clear of her lovely bumps - which I just wanted to josh with - clear of her not-so-little nubs which had been pricking out her T-shirt with some urgency ever since she had emerged from her room.    They were to take the hit, they knew that, but there they stood standing to attention like soldiers proud to die for their country. I dispatched them together, as instructed, letting the dogs go and sink in their fangs.

     Gil reared backwards with an almighty scream, alerting the best part of Lancashire, then cupped her boobs in her hands and went on screaming in a solo recital which gradually, gradually quietened; until she was whispering "Alex, Alex, Thank you, I love you, I love you" very close to my eardrum while hugging me tight and screwing her wounded nips into mine in a quiet and appreciative way, if I can say that, warm embers of feeling now the conflagration was spent.

     This evening it was her new boots.

     She would need me 'to finish her off'. I didn't know what that would involve beforehand, but she explained, and I did.

     At that stage, two weeks after we had peeled away from each other long enough to get the train to Manchester, I didn't know what I wanted. I knew I wanted Gil, I hasten to add, but I didn't know how to be 'finished off'!   I didn't know about being finished off, really. I thought you just kissed and stroked and rubbed until your insides went all mushy ??" mushy nice, not sick mushy -and then melted like the middle of those gorgeous Lindor chocs. I only had to think about Gil and she did that for me. "Yes, that's it," she said, then added:  "??" up to a point, Lord Copper. But then you dive in. Have you never dived in?"  I don't think I had. 

     "It's a great help if someone gives you a push."

     "That when you go rigid and yell, is it?"

     "Yup."

     Over dinner (Little Yang Sing on George Street ??" we hadn't cooked for ourselves once since we moved in together!) the Question. "Well," I said, walking across the tablecloth with my fingers until I reached her hand, just lying there waiting to be taken, and then slipping mine over it, "What do we do now?  Now we've got our million quids?"   A long story, but each of us had recently come into a million pounds ??" a million pounds for each of us, that is!

     "Our first millions," Gil replied, correcting me.   "We make the next twenty, that's what."

     Our first two millions had come from a most improbable source!    We had both of us signed up for the most stupid thing, looking back, which involved us going to hell and back ??" putting ourselves totally in the hands of maniacs who were willing to pay these huge sums in return for having us (and a few others) to play with, exactly as they wanted, for 12 months.  Each one of which, I can tell you, turned out to be absolutely horrendous.   But we had survived, and we got the money!  And we fell in love. And here we were.

     The next twenty.  I could go along with that.   Hadn't thought of it myself ??" one I had thought was quite enough for me.   But Gil, INSEAD graduate, knew a thing or two and what she said was that in these difficult times you either grow your money or you lose it.   Savers do not get the bail-outs. 

     So what were we two hungry entrepreneurs to do?   "We build on last year," she said.   "We've got an 'in' with a gang of really loaded people and we know at least one way of relieving them of it."

     NO! I thought.  And said ??" shouted.    "I am no way going to go through that again.   It was insane and I still don't know how we got out alive." (We had spent the last three hours of our contract hanging from crosses like they do in the Bible!)

     "Calm down, Alex, calm down!   That's not the idea at all.  We don't get hung, we hang!   We run the show.   And up the scale.   I thought of a ship."

     "What??"

     "I thought we could offer a special cruise.   You can get up to anything on the high seas and nobody need know.  A special cruise with lots of special entertainment and a big, big special fee."

     My hand slid back over Gil's.  "Oh," I said, "that sounds better.  Bags me be Captain though. You can be Cabin Boy and get keelhauled and nailed to the mast every morning."

     I don't think I got that quite right, but the general idea was enough to win lover's approval.

     Renting a small liner was only the start of the plan. We were then to recruit 'stakeholders', apparently, on the promise that we were dedicated to meeting their every need.  We would then line up the required entertainment, by finding and hiring those who were willing for their fee to provide the specialist services we knew by that time we would require.

     The voyage would then take place.

     The bottom line would be a balance of about £100 million apparently, a perfectly decent return, in Gil's considered opinion, on our £2 million investment.

     And we would have fun!

     Gil would get her keelhauling, anyway, and lots of lovely tortures like that, and I would get ??" well, Gil didn't quite know at this stage she said.   Maybe what I would get out of it would be discovering what I really wanted.

     As we played with the idea over our little Yang Sing table that evening there was a little seedling of an idea in my brain that began to grow, and grow: could it be ??" could it possibly be ??" that Gil was being serious?

     Of course when I tried to check, the play continued. "Yes, of course I'm serious.   We've got the 'in'.   There's obviously a network of really loaded people who will pay anything for confidential services for which they would ordinarily be banged up for the rest of their natural.    We just need to provide them."

     "It's far too dangerous!" I said. "The punters would think they could do anything if they were paying 3, 4 figure sums."

     "Up to a point, Lord Copper," said Gil, her way of saying 'rubbish'.   "These will be people who want to return to Chelsea or Rublyovka when the cruise is finished.   They won't want us brandishing the DVDs of their mid-ocean exploits."

     Gil, being Gil, had a jokey/half jokey answer for everything.   She was oh so clever, and sometimes it made me so mad that you could never get a straight answer out of her. Like that night.   It just wound me up and wound me up, so that when we got back to the flat for once I was ready for what she wanted.

     Now Ms Crane," I announced, closing the door behind us, "I think you have an appointment in the surgery in 15 minutes."

     Gil flashed a look back over her shoulder. "Yes, of course, thank you.   I'll be there."

     As I said, Gil was no sub.   If it had been somebody else I was going to torture it would be more like

     "Now you filthy whore, you have one hundred and twenty seconds to get ready. Strip off.   Punishment uniform.  Kneeling up, mouth open, arms up."

     And off the sub would scurry.   But this was Gil and Gil wanted the pain but didn't want pissing on, literally or figuratively.   So we had settled on health care as the scenario.  I doctor, she patient.   She strip, I probe, I perform unfortunately uncomfortable procedures, and she suffers.

     Tonight though, I was mad and she might get more than she bargained for.