Sub on a Bus

Thank you to my beta readers Mal_Bey and 29wordsforsnow for their suggestions and corrections

Real bondage play is best conducted between two partners who know and trust each other and have fully discussed their desires and limits before the session begins. The fantasy of erotica, however, allows us to daydream doing which might be really bad ideas if attempted in real life...

1. The Shop

Rhonda was at the end of a bullshit day. She was in medical equipment purchasing, but that affected only the specific details the bullshit not the overall shape. Those would be familiar to every white-collar worker in the country: the weekly meeting that never begins on time, the e-mail chain that never ends, the memo that never nails down the point, the colleague who never responds, the client who never gives up, your predecessor's fuck-up, your boss' slow motion car crash, the broken printer, the broken coffee machine, the broken promises -- bullshit, all of it, and all of it seeming happening all at once today. For bonus points, she'd also had the extra bullshit resulting from being a woman in a male dominated field, and, while she tried to see the best in people, she couldn't help but wonder if some of the animosity from one of the clients today had been more related to the colour of her skin than the specifics of her job.

It was a bullshit Friday, which, while not necessarily worse than a bullshit Monday, always wound Rhonda up more other days because she was constantly on edge that each fresh load of BS would delay the start of the weekend. So indeed it had proved, with her being hit with the inevitable 4:55 crisis just as she was packing up to go. It was now half-past seven, raining, and she'd forgotten her umbrella. That was annoying but she couldn't count it as bullshit, because it was solely on her. She'd heard Suzanne Charlton say very clearly that it was going to be pissing it down on the breakfast news this morning. They'd even had those fancy computer graphics with the miniature thunderstorms flashing all over the bloody country, and she'd still left without a brolly. Her hair, her smart business clothes and her tights were all half-soaked. Her left leg was completely soaked, her heel having landed badly in a rapidly deepening puddle as she crossed the road.

She scanned the numbers of the buses already waiting to pick up passengers and saw the thirty-seven just as it pulled away. That wasn't so much bullshit as proof that the whole universe had a grudge against her. There was limited spaces under the protection of the bus shelter and she didn't feel much like squeezing in under there for the twenty-five minutes she'd have to wait for the next one. There had to be somewhere drier. She considered her options. There was that All-You-Can-Eat Chinese buffet over the road, although according to her latest diet it was really a Nothing-You-Should-Eat restaurant. She could go round the corner and pick up a few items from the Afro-Caribbean shop. Her cupboards were practically bare, and, if the kids hadn't been staying with her mother, she would have considered it an obligation. But by the time she got there and back, she'd have missed the bus again, no doubt, and be back in exactly the same situation. It would be better to stay closer to the stop. There was a newsagent and she could stand there flipping through the latest celebrity gossip until her brain dribbled out of her ears, but the apparent success of Posh and Beck's relationship was hardly going to make her feel better about her own failed marriage.

Her new Nokia phone beeped. She flipped it open and didn't bother to read past the first line of text from her boss. Whatever he wanted could wait until Monday. What remained of tonight was hers. She half-wished she'd taken Robert from IT Support up on his offer of dinner tonight, but only half-wished. She wasn't ready for anything more than a dinner date and accepting that would have only encouraged him to push harder for everything else. Still, a dry car, followed by a dry restaurant and an even drier white wine sounded good right now.

Then her gaze fell upon the shop. It had always been there, right behind the bus stop and she'd always been curious about it. She'd just never gone in. It wasn't really the sort of place a respectable married woman went. Or a respectable single woman for that matter. Though maybe it was perfectly fine for divorcees, who were never particularly respectable in society's eyes anyway, even when it had been their husbands who had done all the disrespecting in the relationship and who were now shacked up with fitness instructors nearly half their age in Runcorn. Put like that, she decided, and she should definitely go in just to show society who was boss. She could do with a good laugh anyway.

The shop was, on one hand, particularly coy about what was sold there, with its windows painted-over and, on the other, particularly direct about its purpose. A couple of white silhouettes on the black background hinted vaguely at couples that, while not currently sexy, were mere moments away from being so. The name above the door simply said Sex Shop.

She took a quick look around her, being happy to give society as a whole the middle finger as long as it didn't include anyone she actually knew, and then darted inside. No patrons under the age of 18 the sign said, which only really confirmed to Rhonda that she should have come in half a lifetime ago to see what all the fuss was about.

Surprisingly the shop was not actually unpleasant. To be sure, there was some potentially unpleasant stuff on the wall or on the shelves, but in terms of décor, it was nice enough. The clientele, while distinctly male and somewhat furtive, didn't actually seem like they belonged on some register. True, some of them were wearing mackintoshes, but these were more wet than dirty and entirely sensible given the weather. She spent a moment by the shop door getting her bearings -- magazines and DVDs on that wall, lingerie and sexy clothing in the middle and sex toys at the back. She resolved then and there that she was walking out with a vibrator, she'd been meaning to get one ever since the separation, but there was no rush. It was mostly a matter of killing time.

The DVDs were a shock. She'd been under the impression that hard-core pornography wasn't allowed in the UK. The girl on the front cover of the first one she picked up managed to tell her she was wrong even with her mouth full. Rhonda flipped the case over. The girl was equally busy on the back as well, entertaining three male performers at the same time. There had been a time in Rhonda's life when this would have looked like fun, now it just looked like the girl was creating unnecessary work for herself. She idly flicked through some of the rest of them. The girls' hair and breast-sizes changed; their vacant smiles didn't. She wandered over to the magazines.

As she did so, one of the gentlemen customers quickly put back a magazine he'd been examining and started to look intently at something else or maybe even anything else. This strategy would have worked in an ordinary newsagents, where he could have pretended he'd been looking at Top Gear magazine all along, but here no one section of the shelf was particularly more respectable than any other and so the new focus of his attention was barely legal.

With an "Excuse me," Rhonda reached past him and pulled the replaced magazine out for a gander. She was feeling playful, but stopped dead when she saw the title, Big Black Mistresses Monthly. No wonder he'd been in such a rush to get rid of it - the lady on the front cover even looked quite a lot like her, although, with a cane in her hand and a stilettoed boot resting on the back of a cowering white sub, it looked like the model was having a much better day than Rhonda was. She was struck with a sudden urge to buy it, just in case it contained the secret of this happiness somewhere inside the rest of its contents, although she balked slightly when she saw the price sticker. She looked back at the customer, sizing him up, although he refused to make eye-contact -- late forties, glasses, white and somewhat weedy. Not exactly her type, but as she got older she was increasingly worried that she wasn't her type's type any more, and the idea of her potentially being an object of someone's lust gave her a little thrill.

Taking the magazine with her, she moved over to the clothes. There was a tacky selection of cheap boxed costumes on a shelf on the wall -- sexy nurse, sexy school-teacher, sexy devil that promised that one size fits all -- something Rhonda seriously doubted. Next to that though was a selection of more expensive and heavier duty gear -- leather and latex bodysuits. She pulled out the largest sized item they had and, facing her towards the customer, held it up to her body as though he were her husband and she was choosing a nice floral dress in River Island. He went cross-eyed trying to look and not look at the same time.

She'd been right. This was a laugh.

She put the suit back -- it was clearly an item for a specific occasion that she didn't currently have marked in her calendar. She made a mental note to come back for it if the opportunity ever presented itself and then quickly made another mental note to find out how one made these opportunities. She checked her phone. It was time to grab a vibrator and get out of here before she missed another bus, but then on the way to the sex toy shelf she passed a hanging collection of bondage items -- whips, floggers and paddles. This was a whole new world for her and, despite the pressure of time, she stopped to investigate. She pulled out one of the smaller paddles and tried it softly against her hand. It stung very slightly. She tried again a bit harder. "Fuck." For a moment she drew the attention of all the shop's patrons and even the lady behind the counter looked up from her Grazia magazine for a fraction of a second.

Rhonda picked the item up from the floor and put it back. Undeterred, she saw a longer whip hanging in pride of place above everything else. It was about a meter long and had an imitation snake-skin texture and a little diamond shaped tail on the end. If the dress needed an occasion, this very clearly needed practice. She noticed that the gentleman from earlier was still surreptitiously lookeing over at her. Yes, she'd definitely gotten an admirer. She had no idea how to use the whip but she made an imitation cracking noise and motion and then hummed the first few bars of the Indiana Jones theme. She made another snap decision. This would be great for getting rid of her frustration. Even if she had no illicit activities currently in mind, she could still put empty coke cans on her bird bath and practice smacking them off. That might actually be an exercise programme she could keep up for once. Whip and magazine in hand she headed for the last of her purchases.

The sex toys were quite the collection. It couldn't quite be said that they came in every size and shape, because very clearly the phallus had played a central role in most of their designs, but there were still a crazy number of variations. Of course there was the more neutral pink egg-shaped model, for the more discreet modern lady, but Rhonda ignored this and pulled out what was, in her experience, a slightly more than life-sized model. Although it was contained in a cardboard box with a plastic window, she tested it for weight and feel in her hands as well as she could. It would do nicely she decided.

As she went over to the counter, the woman behind stubbed out the butt of her cigarette. Even before she handed over the items, she was informed, "Three free magazines with purchases over a hundred pounds. I can count that one as the first, why don't you go and get another two?"

Rhonda didn't really want another two magazines, but had been brought up knowing the value of free and, having already picked out one, couldn't really pretend she wasn't interested. She went back to the rack to have a look. No sooner had she settled there than her admirer, moving at practically a run, grabbed something from the sex toy rack and headed to the counter. Rhonda didn't see what it was, but the saleslady, new cigarette already in hand, asked, "You want lube with that? I would."

By the time Rhonda had picked out two similar bondage themed magazines and headed back to the counter, the admirer had paid and fled. The sales assistant wrapped the magazines in a brown envelope and put the rest of the items in a black bag which still screamed sex shop due to its total lack of branding or transparency.

Rhonda went outside, saw her bus was coming in three minutes, and sat down right next to her new friend, who she knew with absolute certainty was going to be waiting for exactly the same bus.

2. The Bus

The bus went from the centre of town to the western suburbs, past the university on its way. For this leg of the journey it didn't need to be a double-decker, but on its return it would be loaded with students out on the Friday night piss. With the work rush now well and truly over, only the two of them were getting on. As the doors to the bus opened, he gave way to her with a gentlemanly gesture, but a moment later she was struggling to find her purse in her bag and waved him back in front of her. By the time she'd found her change, her admirer was disappearing up the stairs. Rhonda's normal spot would be bottom-floor towards the back. Today she headed straight up as well.

As she climbed, the bus set off and immediately started its own ascent of the hill on the way out of town. She held tight to rail to keep her balance. The customer was sitting right behind the stairwell and had placed one shopping bag next to him on the seat and one on the floor, partially but not completely tucked in behind the seat. She could see his recent purchases poking out of the top of the bag. As she passed, she kicked the bag with her foot in such a way as to get it to tumble. The top three items competed in a race to see which could travel furthest. The winner was a bottle of milk which hit the back wall, the brown-paper wrapped magazine came in second and the sex toy managed a meagre handful of centimetres.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said. "Let me help you with that."

Despite his protests she immediately leant down and picked up the toy. It was a set of three butt plugs. She'd briefly perused that section not five minutes earlier. They'd sold both hetero and homosexual versions of the product, those these seemed identical except who was posing on the box. This was the heterosexual one. She deposited it back in the bag with a helpful smile.

She took a couple of steps forward and bent down to get the magazine. A naughty thought occurred to her. She surreptitiously slid her own set of bound magazines out of her bag and switched over the two bundles. She then returned and handed it straight to him. He eyed it for a second, clearly able to see that it was three times thicker than it had been a moment ago.

Finally, she went and got the milk. By now the bus had reached the apex of the hill and the bottle started to roll back slightly as she approached it. She picked it up from the floor. She turned, checked the man was looking at her before making her next move. She twisted the plastic top off and pulled off the plastic covering.

"Oh dear," she said, completely straight. "It seems like this has split. It's probably better I drink this now so as not to waste it."

"Err, no that's fine," the man said uncertainly. She took a deep chug, letting just a drop of the milk trickle down her chin as she did so.

Rhonda had, for most of her life, been more often the one bullied than the one doing the bullying. That came with being larger. But this felt great. She'd taken something of his, he'd watched her, and then she'd been able to make him deny the reality of what was happening. She clearly had him in the palm of her hand. He was either too nervous or too turned-on to argue with her. When she'd kicked the bag it had been an accident -- an accident brought on by her focusing on the contents of the bag as she'd passed, but an accident nonetheless. Now she was keen to see if there was a limit she could push him to.

She took a seat one row back and on the opposite side. She stretched out her legs into the aisle so that her high-heels were practically level with him. She could see him glancing down at them every few seconds. The third time he looked over, she gently slipped out of the heels and rubbed one foot over the other, as if massaging it.

The bus made a stop and picked up a couple of passengers. After it started moving and it became clear that neither of them was coming up, Rhonda started to think about her next move. She pulled her vibrator out of the bag. She picked at the sellotape sealing the top of the box and then slid the toy out. The guy hadn't looked round yet. She reached into her bag and pulled out the dictaphone she used for meetings. She undid the back and pulled out the two batteries. She fitted them into the vibrator and twisted the base to turn it on.

The buzzing sound finally got his attention. He nearly jumped out of his seat. As he turned around, she turned around, gave him a satisfied look as if to say well, that works fine, kissed it neatly on the tip and put it neatly back in her bag. He turned away again, his attention suddenly gripped by the row of shops they were passing on his side of the bus.

"Oh, drat," she said, demanding his attention again. Once she had it, she once again twisted the top of the milk bottom and very carefully began to pour a small but significant amount of the contents over the top of her tights. She stood up and casually moving down one row began to take them off. This required her to lean forward. She was wearing her usual office get-up so it was less revealing than she would have liked, but her breasts practically came into contact with his face anyway. The seat squeaked as he pushed his body as far back into it as he could. She could see he was also sporting an erection pointing through his trousers. That was all to the good.

"Be out of your way in a second."

Now she wiggled the tights down fully and slipped out of them. At least she'd chosen a reasonably short skirt this morning. She handed the soaked tights to the shell-shocked man. "Sorry, could you just hold onto those for a second?"

Now she slid her knickers down her legs the same way. She turned away in mock modesty, but all this meant was that the man got a clear view of her voluptuous bare backside. She sat back down, this time directly behind him. Although she put her pants away in her bag, she made no move to reclaim her tights. For a moment the man looked as if he was about to say something and then decided against it, rolling the tights up and putting them in his pocket.

The bus was now rounding the corner and passing the big supermarket. She had time for maybe one last play. She leant forward, wrinkled her nose and asked, "Sorry, do you have a hankie?" The man reached into his breast pocket and handed her a neatly folded piece of cloth. She took it with a "thank you." For a moment she put her hand up as it about to blow her nose and then reached down between her legs, rubbing it up and down soaking up all her pussy juice into it. She neatly folded it and handed it back to the man.

It had been fun, but that was now officially it. She rang the bell for her stop, and, leaving the half-drunk bottle of milk on the seat, got back into her heels, gathered up her belongings and made her way down the stairs. It was only as she was thanking to the driver that she realized her victim of the evening had also made his way down holding the shopping bags in front of him as he went. He was doing a good job of hiding his erection from those who didn't know about it.