Workshop

"The next". Her hand slipped down and released the next button, "Good," he said, "go on"... the arabesques traced down, slowly, into the opening V.

"Go on..."

A glimpse of the join of her bra emerged, after another moment, her navel; after another, the front of clean, white knickers. He was kissing her again, now, silencing her attempts at protest; her hands went on unbidden, until they were below crotch level. He stopped them with a gesture, and again there was silence, except for the storm muttering outside.

He raised his head and stood a little back from her. Then, quickly, smoothly, he slipped the dress off her shoulders and down her arms. It slid out of sight below table level, leaving her exposed but for her simple, plain white underclothes. In the golden light, her pale skin glowed.

John twisted the dress behind her, trapping her wrists in those close-buttoned cuffs. She whimpered and struggled slightly. The knife hand came back to her throat. "Gently, girlie, gently..." his other hand stroking her head, soothing, gentling, gently. Gradually she stopped trembling. "Very still now".

The point of the knife resumed its graceful arabesques, up to the ear, down to the valley between her breasts. He pulled her into another kiss, and the knife spiraled up again, down again... and without perceptible effort, the cups of the bra sprang apart. Her small, pointed breasts gleamed palely in the wavering candlelight. She shuddered briefly, obviously held firm by the hand cupping her chin. The knife spiraled up again, and quickly flipped first the left, then the right strap off her shoulders. The scrap of clean white fabric slid down her arms and into shadow.

There was thunder outside, and lashing rain - I know there was. We must have been able to hear it. There were six people around the big table - we must all have been breathing. Yet my memory of that night is of the most absolute silence, stillness. We sat and watched with attention a performer could only have dreamed of.

Again the knife spiraled down, sliding between her breasts and out onto the flat of her belly. Then it turned edge on like a cut-throat razor, and scraped slowly up over the barely-perceptible corrugation of her ribs and out onto the cream smooth under-surface of her breast, and up...

And as the blade slid over the nipple it suddenly erected, swelling and filling and hardening like a ripening raspberry. A faint rose flush flickered over her breasts and up towards her throat. Something very slight changed in her posture. Very slight; very slightly fluid. The knife spiraled down again, dragged up across the other nipple. She made a small whimper. The knife hand turned, and flesh to flesh, wrist and knuckles stroked over breasts and nipples and belly, gently, slowly, mesmerically. The other hand drifted down from the chin, stroking, cupping, kneading. The kiss, no longer compelled, continued. His hands roamed free.

Mary turned back the top sheet of her pad. A small movement, but it drew my attention to the watchers. Mary, I saw, was composedly sketching the scene, using her fountain pen and notepad. Elise was sitting slack, looking puzzled and a little frightened. Yasmin was intent on the scene, her eyes following the movement of the knife. Her right hand was below the table-top. As I watched her, Yasmin's eyes tracked down, and Mary said, calmly, conversationally,

"Don't you think that's far enough?"

John's left hand was over Pat's mouth, silencing her. The knife-blade was inside Pat's knickers at her right hip. John flashed a grin, the same feral grin I'd seen earlier.

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform."

The knife moved sideways, and the thin fabric parted.

Pat trembled - it would be too much to say she struggled. Again, blade pointing away from her, the back of the knife hand caressed her, gentled her. Good girl, he said, brave girl. Good girl. His left hand turned her head, and he kissed her again; while he held the kiss, the hands met, and the knife was in the left.

"Good girl... now the other side."

His right hand was over her mouth now, holding quite firmly; She was straining against it, twisting her body. Mary cleared her throat apologetically. John glanced at her, and shook his head slightly. His left hand was gently stroking Pat's shoulder, down her left arm. It settled into her waist, moving with her movements, exerting no force.

"Good girl... brave girl... gently, gently..."

Her struggle gradually subsided. The knife moved, and she was naked.

He turned her, or let her turn, holding her to him, holding her head into his shoulder, his hands gentling, his voice softly praising. The knife was lying on the table now; his hands were empty.

"Oh, you beauty, you're so brave... you're so brave. Ah, you feel so good, you feel so fine..."

She seemed to relax into him, calm.

"Lift your head, beautiful - look at me."

Her head came up. His hands moved to her shoulders, holding her a little away from him, looking intently into her eyes.

"A dangerous stranger has abducted you, and bound you, and stripped you naked in front of everyone. How are you feeling?"

Her voice came low, but quite steady; her back was to the light so I couldn't see her face, but her head stayed up. "I _am_ very frightened," she said. "I know that, beautiful. How else do you feel?" His right knuckles ran gently over one erect nipple. Her head went down. "Aroused." The hand came back up, lifting her chin. "How aroused?"

Her head moved slightly from side to side. "I don't know..." The hands were back on her shoulders. "Aroused enough to enjoy having sex with someone you were in a relationship with, in private?" She nodded slightly, her head still up.

"Aroused enough to enjoy having sex with me, in private?" Her head went resolutely down. She shivered.

"Aroused enough to enjoy having sex with me, here on the table?" Her head came up again sharply. "Please no. Not that. Please..." The hands on her shoulders were steady, calm. "Does the idea make you feel more aroused, or less?" Her head went down again, and the answer was barely more than a mumble. "More."

"Good girl," he said. "Kiss me". And she did, very simply. He held her for a moment. All around the table we were relaxing, breathing again; but John wasn't finished yet.

"Now I need you to be even braver for me, Pat."

"Please..."

"Gently, now. Remember you're in the hands of a dangerous stranger. You really are - you only met me three days ago, you don't know anything about me. You are naked and your hands are tied and you are in my power. This isn't pretend; it isn't a story."

"Please, not..."

The knife was in his hand again, under the corner of her jaw. Their eyes were locked. "Turn round," he said, and she did, shivering slightly. He took a strip of black cloth out of his pocket, and blindfolded her. The shivering intensified.

"Now we're just as we were when I cut your knickers off." His voice was gentle, caressing. She nodded, slightly. "I want you to think back to how you were feeling, then."

His hands were moving again, on shoulders, neck, breasts. "Are you feeling as aroused now as you were then?" Her head shook, slightly. "Are my hands helping?". She nodded uncertainly. "I am _very_ frightened..." "I know, my beautiful brave girl... I know." He pulled her head back into a kiss.

Around the table we were all beginning to believe that he was really going to do it, here, in front of us. Mary was looking slightly worried, slightly concerned, but she was still sketching. Yasmin was watching intently, sitting slightly back in her chair. The muscles of her face were slack, those of her right arm, moving and twitching.

"Now I want you to kneel on the table."

I was surprised how docilely she did so. His hands steadied her. "Good girl..." The dress hung down behind her, hidden from us. The dark blindfold cut across her face. They only emphasised her nakedness. His hands were less gentle now, kneading breasts, pulling nipples. her body moved now, partly meeting, partly evading them.

"Open your legs..."

She moaned an inarticulate noise.

"Pat, spread your legs."

Her knees moved apart a little. "Wider". She lifted her buttocks and crossed her ankles, her knees spreading into a wide V. I envied Mary and Yasmin, who now had a perfect view; my own was from the side, partly obscured by her thigh. The knife hand slipped down. Using the haft of it, he gently parted her labia. He stroked the corded haft back and forth in the groove of her sex. She moaned. Her body was moving. His left hand used her breasts roughly; his right held the knife.

Gradually he rotated the blade down until I could no longer see it. His hand rested in her groin as though he were masturbating her, but I could see that it was no longer moving. The only movement in the room was the rocking of her pelvis, the filling and hollowing of the curve of her belly. The only sound in the room, her little grunting moans.

Yasmin was frowning slightly, eyes wide, lower lip gripped between teeth. Mary was sitting back in her chair, cooly appreciative, her fountain pen lying still on the pad. Elise looked rapt.

"Good girl... brave girl.. Do it for me, Pat. Ride it. Come for me, my beautiful..."

Her movements were faster now, more pronounced, her torso rising and falling, the muscles of her arms and throat tight.

"You can do it, Pat, You can do it for me. Come for me, my Pat..."

Flush mottled up across her belly, flickering across her breasts like a flame, surging up her throat, Her pelvis spasmed downwards into his hand once, twice, three times; then she slumped against him, shuddering, gasping. He gathered her into him with his free arm, stroking, gentling, murmuring praise.

The silence smelled of sex. Her breathing gradually calmed. She turned her head, lifting it, nuzzling blindly into his neck. She started to say something, her voice heavy, slurred. He hushed her, holding her still for another long moment.

"Come up now, gently..." The muscles in his right wrist tensed; I could see he was lifting her off the knife. "Back now" - still supporting her sex with his hand, carefully controlling her - "carefully, my beautiful. Keep those knees apart... step down now. Good girl." As his fingers slid up through her curls and onto her belly, they left trails of her juices that glistened in the candle light. She stood quiet, naked, sated, sacred, glowing, a trusting virgin sacrificed to a pagan God. The sacrificial instrument stood vertical in front of her, dark, slender, erect, glistening, deadly, a molotov cocktail of symbols, redolent of violence, violation and death. Violation and death and sex.

The priest, dark and looming in the shadow she cast, slipped one arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees, and lifted her easily. "Mary," he said, "would you mind lighting us upstairs?"

Mary got up, taking one of the candlesticks. "Doesn't she get to choose where she sleeps?"

John smiled, an open smile which suddenly made him look at once young and very tired. He shook his head, "The labourer is worthy of his hire." Pat nuzzled her still-blindfolded face further into his shoulder and said nothing. Thus they withdrew into the sanctum in a little procession, the crone leading with the candle, the priest following with the maiden, and the blue dress that was still cuffed to her wrists dragging behind as a train. Silence filled the room again.

The silence smelled of sex.

Yasmin shook her head roughly, like a spaniel coming ashore. "Wow. Just Wow... that was so _raw_". She got up slowly, as if dazed. She drifted round the table to the knife. She ran the knuckles of her left hand up the glistening, sticky hilt. She raised her knuckles to her nose, inhaling. Elise moved in her chair as if easing her shoulders.

Yasmine raised her right hand to her nose and inhaled again. She sucked it, staring down at the slender steel phallus. She sucked her left. She lifted one coffee-dark knee onto the table. I sat rock-still in my chair, rigid, silent, expectant, incredulous. Yasmine put her knuckles on the table, transferring her weight onto them. Elise made an inarticulate sound. Yasmine looked at her as if through fog. She looked at me. Her eyes were wide, her pupils fuzzy edged, unfocussed. Gradually she shifted her weight back onto the floor.

Elise slumped down in her chair. "Oh Lord," she said, "I need a man tonight..." Yasmin stared at her, wide eyed.

I got up, and walked round to Yasmin. Reaching past her I pulled the knife out of the table-top - it needed surprising force. I examined it. Its blade, as I've said, was somehow finished with matt black, except for a narrow strip where the edges had been ground into gleaming metal. The haft was tightly wound with stout cord, giving it a ribbed profile, and ending in a slightly flared lump of black metal. The haft was slick and sticky in my hand.

I tried the edge with my thumb; it was truly sharp.

Moving slowly, trying not to break the trance, I grasped Yasmin firmly by the hair, and put the point to her throat. "Up on the table again," I said.

Yasmin didn't move a muscle. "If you don't put that knife down this minute," she said, "I'll cut your bloody balls off with it. Do you understand me?" I put the knife down. Yasmin got up and stalked out, passing Mary in the doorway. A moment later, Elise got up too, and followed. I sat down and put my head in my hands.

"That wasn't very subtle, was it? Two birds with one stone. And, you know, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor, one of them in the hand."

I looked up. Mary was gathering up her sketches. I shook my head. "May I see?" I asked. Mary straightened up. "As far as I'm concerned, they're Pat's. You can ask her in the morning. Now I'm going to bed."

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The old house we use for the workshops was solidly built. For the most part, the sound-proofing is good. But the master bedroom had been unreasonably big, and when the Writer's Trust had acquired the house they had had it divided in two with a plasterboard partition; and as those rooms were one side of the stairwell with one bathroom, and the other bedrooms were the other side with another, John's room was the thickness of two sheets of plasterboard from mine. The beds in that house were solidly and generously built, too, but they were old, and the springs tended to creak.

Already as I got to my room the springs beyond the plasterboard were creaking, steadily, rhythmically. As I undressed the rhythm was accelerating. As I climbed into bed, the little, grunting moans had started. I lifted my hand to my nose, smelled her cunt juices on my fingers, listened to her creakings and her little, grunting moans, and hated him.

There was a moan with more gasp than grunt, and the creaking stopped for a moment; there were some arythmic creakings, murmurs, a low, musical, female chuckle. more murmurs. I turned the light out. There were only faint sounds, murmurs. I pictured her head on...

I tried to sleep, but after a while the creaking had started again, gently at first, relentlessly building. I was sure the grunts were louder this time, building, building; again I heard her climax. But this time the rhythm didn't stop, only eased for a little, and built again - and she climaxed a third time, and soon after, a fourth. At last the creaking subsided. There was gasping, and laughter, and murmurs; then a sharp slap followed by a squeal and more laughter. Feet padded across the floor, a door opened and closed. After a moment a lavatory cistern flushed, and the feet padded back.

Then at last there was a long period of quiet, and I think I may have slept. But at two in the morning the little grunts were back, slower this time, quieter, more spaced out, lower, more musical. Feeling wretched and desperate I tiptoed across the landing, tried the door of Yasmin's room, and found it locked.

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Neither John nor Pat where at breakfast, but when I looked out John's van was not in the driveway. We ate in silence. Afterwards I tried to get a standard sort of writer's workshop exercise going, but no-one was interested. I started them working on their own stories, and went out for a stomp in the thin, drizzling rain. After twenty minutes I was wet and cold and feeling no better. I turned back, went in by the back door through the kitchen to the stairs. Through the open sitting room door I heard laughter. On the sofa, Pat and Jasmin, heads close together, looking at pieces of paper that Jasmin held. Not writing - drawings. Jasmin was indicating something. Pat blushed dark red, and laughed again, a low, liquid sound.

Mary's voice, from somewhere further in the room, asked a question, too distant for me to hear the words. Then Elise' voice, and Jasmin started to do an exaggerated heavy breathing interspersed with gasps. Pat, blushing again, laughing again, punched her. There was a scuffle, and they fell out of my line of site, giggling, in a flurry of bare legs, pale and dark.

I walked into the sitting room. The scene was out of a soap opera set in a girls' school; as soon as I appeared laughter stopped, clothes (or in Pat's case, a dressing gown) were straightened, pads and pens seized, incriminating sketches quickly concealed. Was everyone getting on alright? They all assured me they were. I looked at Mary, and she looked back at me blandly. I started upstairs to change out of my wet clothes, and before I could reach the first landing the muffled giggling rang out again.

Later that morning John came back. We were all in the sitting room; the women were working silently, like a class kept in for detention. He strolled in through the conservatory, tossed a paper bag with the logo of a chain of chemists to Pat, and nodded to the hall door.

"Upstairs."

She got up at once, quietly, carrying the bag. As she came up to him she lifted her face to be kissed. He put a hand in the small of her back, kissing her apparently gently. His other hand moved, and the sash of the dressing gown fell to the floor. The fabric covering her arse moved as his hand slid under it. His other hand joined it; he lifted her smoothly and as he turned to carry her out of the door, I saw her naked ankles cross behind him.

There was another long moment's tense silence, and then Elise and Jasmin simultaneously burst out giggling. I slammed shut my laptop, got up, and stalked out to explain to Mrs MacLeod that there would be two fewer places for lunch. When I explained (ommitting lurid detail) why, she, bless her puritanical soul, was suitably shocked and condemnatory, and I felt obscurely better.

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Pat didn't appear again until teatime, but John came down after a couple of hours and spent the rest of the afernoon quietly writing away as if nothing had happened. After tea Jasmin read her story again. This time the buggery was explicit, and unpleasant. Afterwards we discussed the story. Pat said nothing. In a pause in the conversation, Mary asked her what she thought.

"Well, actually, I..."

Pat petered out. "Actually what?" asked Mary, blandly. Pat was blushing crimson, looking firmly at the table. "I'm sorry," said Pat. "I was distracted... I wasn't thinking about the story."

"I know that," saif Mary, stll bland. "Go on."

Pat looked at John. She looked at Mary. She looked at John. He looked back at her, cool, steady. He nodded.

"Actually, I enjoyed it. It did hurt a bit, but nothing like as much as Jasmin's story implied. And of course it is invasive and... and... but that's exciting too... the taboo thing..."

She faded out. Mary asked her directly, blandly, "so which was best, the knife, straight vaginal copulation, or buggery?"

Again the glance at John. Again the nod. Pat looked strained. John nodded again. Pat took a deep breath and, with eyes down, said that the best vaginal copulation was in her limited experience better than anything else - a flick of a glance at John - but that the worst vaginal copulation she'd ever had had been pretty nasty. As to the other two, she'd enjoyed both, but she thought it very much depended on the person and the circumstance. Mary started to ask another question, but John, speaking over her, said that he thought the dialogue at the end of Jasmin's passasge could do with tightening up. He read a bit, scribbled with his pencil, and suggested some changes. A few minutes later, Pat excused herself and went upstairs.