Beneath White Leather

One passenger remained, her back to me, not opposite, but further down. White coat, black hair, red fishnet stockings, and red leather heels. Not moving. Waiting, perhaps, for me to join her. The text erroneously saying northbound when she had meant south.

I started walking. The walkway that led to steps up and over the pair of lines and down again, was accessed by an opening right opposite where Mike's wife was, except before I got there, she was slipping off her coat. The same move that she had made in that hotel, facing the window. Allowing it to fall to waist height, baring her back, except instead of letting it fall not the floor, she held one side. She folded it, over one arm, butt naked, just her red suspender belt and stockings still in place.

Red signals danger. Red shoes, red stockings, red suspender belt, each a shocking contrast with the white faux leather of her coat, and the untainted whiteness of her naked flesh. She had not as much as turned her head to check that I was there, but with but thirty, forty, other people there, both platforms slowly populating, and with cameras, viewed by anonymous personnel, for the safety of the passengers, displayed on screens, recording too, she stood there naked. Other than red stockings and suspender belt.

She exited the platform, still no look behind her, nothing to confirm my presence, watching her. Disappearing down a walkway, heels clicking on the tiles. Oxford Circus. Three tube lines intersecting. Walkways like a rabbit warren. Tourist busy. Somewhere in a control room, someone would be tracking her, amidst the crowds, the whiteness of her body stark against the clothing of those walking with her, unless she had put on the coat again, once out of sight from me.

I turned, going into my own walkway, assuming she would cross the rails towards me, the text exactly as she meant it, to tease, to have me see her, not as she got off the train, but as she removed her coat. Either I would meet her coming towards me, or I would need to head on up, and out, and wait for yet another text to say where we would meet.

She was not the only person walking towards me on the internal bridge, but she was the most exposed. Jeans, tops, skirts, slacks, jumpers, jackets, coats as well, lap-top bags, briefcases, backpacks, shoulder bags, all passed me by. Then pure white skin, exquisite breasts, bare, hairless cunt, neat frame, great legs, and on one arm, a coat.

No glasses. She had dispensed with those. No contacts either. Not that I could see. Her eyes as green as ever. Impish, elfin green, gleeful and mocking, the world I hoped, and not myself. Those eyes invited me to be impressed with her. They mocked convention. They challenged rules and norms.

"You should put your coat back on," I said.

"Not yet," she answered. "Shall we go?"

Her left hand found my own. We walked together. Getting looks, of course. Curiosity. Admiration. Censure too. Disapproval. But no one intervened. No comments made. Just heads turning. The walkway opening to a bank of escalators, a queue, and then she went ahead, the step above mine, the rule complied with, that those who climb pass on the left, while those who travel standing, stay to the right.

From two steps down, I gazed with admiration at her butt. Perfect globes of flesh. Red suspender belt and straps, and stocking tops, all framing white thighs parted just enough to give a glimpse of labia. So beautiful. Not just to me. To others too, the climbers, on the left, who passed her as we rose. She just looked steadily ahead.

Another landing. Another bank of escalators, this time on our left. More tunnel walkways. She took the left. A young guy got between us. This time he got the view that had been mine. A long ride up. The barriers to exit just ahead. She queued to touch her oyster card to open up the barrier, still naked. Just when she had removed the3 card from a pocket of her coat, I had not seen.

The tube these days is lightly manned, but Oxford Circus is as busy as they come, and there were staff in uniforms.

"Sorry, Ma'am,..." a transport worker started.

"Oh, yes! Of course!" Mike's wife apologised, as if she had forgotten to dress before she left her home.

She slipped on her coat. I took her hand again. The hotel was booked already, and once there, of course we fucked.

**********

Another time, she messaged I should meet her at the Tate. The transformed power station, Tate Modern, where the turbine hall is vast, seven floors of galleries beside it, a high, internal walkway that crosses right above the hall below, for viewing exhibitions or admiring the sheer size and space, when it lies empty and serene. The meeting point, said her text, was to be mid-way on that high walkway.

She was already naked when I got there. Near naked, to be more precise. In white, another pair of diamond fishnet stockings with a white, leather suspender belt, and chain suspender straps. Her back to the handrail, leaning casually, her hands behind her, her coat dangling from her hands. As I approached, she let it go. It fluttered down the seven floors, and ended in a tiny, heap below, dead centre of the vast, deserted floor.

"Oops," she said, her green eyes staring into mine. "The key was in my pocket."

Just her, and me, on the narrow viewing bridge itself. Others by the lift and on the viewing gallery. She could be seen, though not by many.

Her hands were still behind her. A steel bracelet gracing her nearer wrist. Different, for her, since I had not yet seen her wearing jewellery of any kind. Not even rings, not even on the finger that would say that she was married, having an affair. Removed, perhaps, each time she met me. Then I realised that the bracelet was the more visible partner of a matching pair, the second bracelet worn around her other wrist, the chain that linked them looping over, and then underneath, the handrail she was leaning on.

Which meant that she would not be going anywhere, not handcuffed to the rail like that, if, as she had just said, the key was in her coat, which I had just watched floating down below.

"Can you fetch it for me?" she asked.

I checked her first, for what bankers call liquidity. Wetness within. Discretely, unobtrusively, my body shielding where my hand had gone. When I withdrew it from between her legs, I could have raised my finger in the air to test for wind.

She looked me in the eye, her irises a darker shade of green in the dim light of the gallery, no longer emerald, more forest pine, inscrutable, the Cheshire cat of Alice's wonderland, without the smile. Unreadable, yet self-assured.

I took my time. Strolled to the elevator, rode down, the doors opening at each and every floor for others to get in, or out, sauntered to the small heap of cloth that she had dropped those seven floors, returned to where she waited, just as slowly, stringing out the process of retrieval. She could wait. Her game was my game now.

She knew the risks. How long before me, she had arrived, and taken off her coat, and used the handcuffs on herself, I could not be sure. How many people had strolled onto the viewing bridge, and seen her naked there, I did not know. What I could be sure of was that, had I been delayed, she would have waited longer. How easily she could have found the key inside the pocket of her coat, while holding it behind her, and then released herself, I did not know. She might have had no choice, except to ask for help from someone. She knew the risks, and took them knowingly.

I could have played nicely, but I chose instead to play to win outright. I went to her. I checked that the key was indeed in a coat pocket. I left it there. Instead of opening the handcuffs keeping her secured, I kissed her. She played along, opening her mouth to let me tongue her, as I took one breast and cupped it in my hand, the nipple, stiff against my palm.

"Can we go to our hotel?" she asked.

"I'll wait for you," I said. "I'm sure that someone will be happy to release you."

I gave her nipple stub a final, gentle squeeze. Then left her, draping the coat over the handrail, far enough from her that she could not reach it. Then I went to the hotel.

She was there for half an hour, she said. The visitors who used the bridge to get the view from there, in spite of her entreaties, declined to get involved. It took a pair of security guards to come and release her, having been alerted. They kept the handcuffs. They just made her don her coat and then escorted her outside.

But she came. Made no complaint. Said nothing. Not until we had exhausted one another. Then told me what I have told you. For someone who was married to another guy, my colleague, she seemed so totally unphased.

**********

Then there was the London Dungeon. The museum of the macabre, of London's medieval past, of punishments, imprisonings and torturings. Less busy in the morning, which was when Marilyn suggested that we meet. Still term time. Adults only. Which was just as well.

The same white coat. No stockings, which was puzzling. Just bare legs. No heels. Black leather sandals, or what you could call Jesus boots, the kind of footwear worn in medieval times. In keeping with the theme.

We bought our tickets and went in, past the cloakroom, where I had half expected her to leave her coat. I was wondering, of course, just what she would be wearing. What would suit the dungeon and the torture scenes. Then instead of touring the displays, Mike's wife led me to a darkened corner of one room. That was where she finally removed her coat.

No suspender belt. A leather corset, string ties down the back, that pulled in her already slender waist, the upper edge tucked under, not covering her breasts, the wide areolas and the conical teats raised fractionally higher by its presence there. The lower corset edge resting on her pelvis, leaving bare her butt, her hairless mons, protruding lips, entire groin.

Not just a corset. Wide thigh cuffs as well, with metal buckles, worn where her stocking tops would otherwise have been. Cuffs buckled around her wrists as well. All in black leather, steel studs spaced around the edgings, steel rings and other metalwork as well, all of this in stark contrast with the vulnerable, white flesh that was now so very bare, arms, shoulders, breasts, back, buttocks, pubis, upper thighs and legs.

She handed me her coat.

"Hold this," she said.

Then she reached into a pocket. Another thickness of black leather with more metal studs. She reached around her neck, fastening the buckle at the back. A steel ring was suspended from the centre of the collar that she had just put on. She reached into another pocket. This time it was a leash, again of leather, with a metal clip fastened to one end.

She twisted to reach her left leg with the other hand, the outside of the three inch width of thigh cuff, where a clip was fastened to the leather there. I watched her use the clip to fasten her left wrist, using a ring similarly attached to her wrist cuff. Modern bdsm bondage stuff, but it would do.

"You need to do my other hand," she said.

I did exactly as she asked. Both arms were secured, hands at her sides. The leash still in her left hand, which I took from her. No need to read her mind. It was obvious what she had planned. I attached the leash to her collar with the clip. This was extreme, but she looked at me with those green eyes of hers and then she smiled.

"Maybe you should check my coat in at the cloakroom, and then come back for me to walk me round," she said.

I shrugged.

"Your choice," I said, and left her there.

Leading her around, no one appeared to mind that she was semi-naked. It seemed as if the leather corset, collar, thigh and arm cuffs served to designate her part of the theme. Not quite medieval. More modern in its style. But close enough to be in keeping.

The fact that there were paid actors playing the roles of people of the time, allowed her to be seem as one of them. They, of course, while dressed in costume, some upstanding citizens, some ruffians, street whores, and villains, were not naked. None of them. Still, no one intervened.

At the time, it was not busy, but there were enough others wandering around to create a frisson of real daring in Marilyn's display. Some Brits, some European, American, and Japanese. No one seemed to wonder why a suited businessman should be walking a subdued, semi-naked woman, by a leash. We got looks of course. But no one asking who we were, or what we were about.

Tourists take selfies. If you do not have a photo of yourself with an attraction, you have not been there. Phone cameras flashed In dungeon cells. By torture racks where wax-work models were stretched out in agony, legs wide, arms raised. In front of old Saint Andrew's crosses, standing legs apart, arms high. Beside the bonfire underneath the witch, where amber light flickered like flames, and shrill screams emerged from speakers hidden by the witch's head. Leaning forwards, neck and wrists resting on old wooden stocks, the upper bar closed over the posing tourist's neck and wrists, while someone took the shot.

Other selfie poses might be standing with an actor dressed as a Beefeater from the Tower of London. Or with the hooded executioner, the tourist's neck in a harmless rope on mocked up gallows. Or with a prisoner in his cell. Or with the semi-naked woman, in the leather corset, held by the leash, now in a tourist's hand, not mine.

Mike's wife would soon be seen by families and friends in Tokyo and New York, a smiling tourist by her side, or couple. From mobile phone by way of world wide web, to anyone, or everyone, should she go viral. I wondered whether Facebook would permit her naked breasts and cunt. How many likes would they receive.

It was a couple in their sixties who persuaded Marilyn to pose for them, not standing in between them, but in the stocks, while she, the wife, pretended to use the paddle hanging there, against her naked butt. Americans can be like that. Unselfconsciously assertive. They just say whatever thought is in their heads.

Her wrists had to be unclipped from her thigh cuffs, to let them rest on the stocks the way they should. The stocks were on a dais, raised from the floor, on imitation stone paviours, and Marilyn stepped up onto the platform, while the husband held the upper cross bar, bent with the neck and wrists resting on the lower bar, in the half circle grooves, and let him close it on her.

There was a latch, to keep the upper bar locked closed. He flicked it. Not that Mike's wife could easily have lifted it back from where it was keeping her secured, back flat, breasts swaying, butt taut, legs straight, and parted. She could, I thought, have kept her legs together. She would, I thought, be totally aware just what the view would be from those behind her, standing two feet lower than the dais height.

I walked around her. Petite as she was, the stocks were perfect height for her, but then people were much shorter several hundred years ago. I loved the way her butt was so beautifully positioned to receive whatever punishment the villagers might chose, the vulnerability of her breasts, so easily groped and mauled by peasant's hands, her teats pointing to the floor.

Of course she could be pelted, with rotten fruit and vegetables, her face, if she looked up, her hair should she not dare. Left overnight, she could be used by men who had no woman of their own. Not that that would happen here, not in what was just display of times long gone.

"Okay, Jeanie," the husband said, stepping from the dais to help his wife climb up.

I had not seen the paddle, but she had found it somewhere, and already had it in her hand. Tennis racquet sized, in solid wood, but shorter handle. The husband used his phone to take the shot, the paddle touching butt flesh, the wife's face looking stern, as if she were an outraged citizen punishing a trollop, caught in adultery. No impact. Just touching, in pretence. They say that photos do not lie, but this one would. It would depict a punishment that had not hurt one bit.

I guess they would have freed her, but I asked the woman for the paddle first, and lied that Marilyn was happy to stay exactly as she was, so that others could take photos of her too. They shrugged. But they stayed and watched a moment longer, as I climbed onto the dais with Mike's wife.

The sound of wood landing on soft butt flesh is like hands clapped together, but lower in its tone. She gave a grunt, and exhalation that came from shock and pain together, and shifted her butt, as if to avoid another blow, but with her neck and wrists held by the stocks, there was nowhere she could go. The second landed on the other buttock. Another grunt.

The husband laughed.

"Now don't you wish you had done that?" he joked to his wife.

"I didn't think I'd be allowed," she said.

More of an audience arrived. Young Japanese, who might be on their honeymoon, the girl giggling at the scene. Exchanging thoughts in whispered Japanese. The Americans moved on. Another couple wandered in. European of some kind. Forties. I set down the paddle, and moved back.

The Japanese went next. A selfie. The guy standing ready with his phone. The girl taking the paddle, but first reaching for one of Marilyn's breasts. Fondling the teat. Saying something. Laughing. The Japanese do that. Laughter covering embarrassment, self-consciousness. But she kneaded the full flesh, using her slender fingers, squeezing all around the teat.

I went back around, just as Marilyn raised her head. I looked into her eyes. They flared green with something between anger, that I had converted Yankee posed selfies into Japanese sado-play, and resolve, that she would handle what was meted out, would not complain.

The girl was slight, shorter than Mike's wife, even more slender, twig-like, envious, perhaps, of her victim's womanly physique, the reason for her groping breasts that she could only dream of, and the motivation for the perfectly timed swing that she performed. Minimum effort, for maximum effect.

I had not seen the cane, but then I had not seen the paddle either. Where these woman found their tools of punishment was a mystery. But it was in her other hand, the one not fondling breast. Straight, long and narrow, not bent at one end as a teacher's would have been. More a garden cane, for staking beans.

It swished. The warning sound of cane arcing through the air. The slight movement at her wrist sent the end of the long cane accelerating hard, landing with a thwack against white flesh. The next sound followed fast, a gasp, not quite a scream, but close. Then a camera flash. Too late. The guy the girl was with had missed the moment when she struck. The photo that he took would not quite catch the moment of the impact, or of inflicted pain.

He said something to her. In Japanese, of course. My guess was, something like, do it again.

She did.

He got the timing perfect. The flash from his camera phone coincided perfectly with the moment of impact. The smack was audible again, as was the second muted scream. But Marilyn stayed still, her legs still straight, her butt held proud. Had another shot been needed, she would have taken it, as if it were deserved.

The girl giggled with delight. She said something, pointing to Marylin's buttocks, and the guy went round the dias to see them for himself.

"Oh, wow!" is the same in English as it is in Japanese.

He said it quietly, but used his camera phone again. A naked butt, with not just the labia exposed between the parted legs, but twin red lines that crossed both cheeks, the impact of the cane having inflamed the vulnerable flesh, now going viral, the talk of Tokyo.

I guess if you allow yourself to be placed in stocks, you have to take what comes. But once the pair had gone, I climbed up to the stocks, unclipped the latch, and raised the upper bar, releasing her.