The red room

The door is plain varnished wood, the kind of cheap fire retardant door used in low-rent housing and offices. It has a chrome handle and a deadlock. The room beyond it is about twelve by twelve feet, but has no window. It’s too large to have been intended as a cupboard, suggesting that either a window has been boarded over, or the room has been created by partitioning a larger space. Illumination comes from a single florescent strip light on the ceiling. Depressions in the ceiling paper, however, suggest that there was a previous circular light fitment. The vent of an air conditioning unit is positioned high in the far right corner as viewed from the door. The controls are fitted to the wall below – a small white box with two knobs, one marked with an off position and five fan speeds, the other marked ‘Temp’ and with nine graduations of which only ‘Min’ and ‘Max’ are labelled. The controls are off and the temperature control is set to ‘Min’.

The ceiling and walls are papered with a woodchip paper, emulsioned in red. The skirting boards have been painted the same way.

Some areas of wall have a different treatment. A section from the skirting board to about four feet high and seven feet wide, behind the bed, has a tiger-print paper. A section from floor to ceiling and about four feet wide, on the left-hand wall as one enters the room, is padded in black faux leather. It is held in place with two lengths of timber, one either side, each with an eye bolt at the top and bottom. Directly opposite, on the right-hand wall, is a cheap floor-to-ceiling mirror, silvered behind a slightly fogged acrylic or plastic. In the ceiling, between this mirror and the door, there is an eye bolt. There is another similar, but smaller, mirror behind the bed above the tiger-print paper.

A similar mirror is attached to the ceiling above the bed.

Electric sockets are to either side of the bed.

The carpet comprises red carpet tiles, the kind that might be used in an office or shop. The four carpet tiles under the ceiling eye bolt, and those next to the lower of the bolts on the timbers next to the faux leather, are significantly more worn than the others. The floor has not been recently vacuumed: there is a small amount of visible hair and fabric lint.

The bed is a standard double in size, four and a half by seven feet. It is of robust, probably handmade, construction: the four corner posts are waist high and could easily have been made from recycled telegraph poles; the sides and headboard are joist timbers, lengths of five by two inch wood. The timber has been planed and varnished to make it smooth. The mattress is slightly concave. It is either old or has seen a great deal of use. The sheet is red, a shade brighter than the walls and a little rumpled. There is one pillow with a red cover.

The corner posts of the bed each have an anchor point set into them – a metal D-ring welded to a small square plate and secured to flattened areas of the posts with four screws. The D-rings all have chains padlocked to them, about eighteen inches in length; and the other ends of the chains have heavy cuffs attached, again with padlocks. The cuffs are similar in style to those used in some custodial settings – brown padded leather, closing with buckles but with a design that enables the leather tongue, once fed through the buckle, to be secured also with a smaller padlock.

The keys to all the padlocks are on a keyring which lies on the carpet under the foot of the bed. With them are four additional padlocks and three lengths of chain, each of around thirty inches. Also under the bed is a small grey plastic waste basket. This is empty and therefore condom wrappers, used condoms, tissues and, perhaps, other waste such as pill bottles or the wrappings and packaging of other stimulants are entirely absent.

The pillow has traces of pink lipstick, streaks of black mascara and a saliva stain that is still slightly damp. The bedsheet has several small stains, three of them seminal fluid from two different men and two of them vaginal secretions, both from the same woman. Three others are from perspiration, situated underneath where a person’s shoulders and buttocks would lie if they had been spread-eagled on the bed. There are in total eight hairs on the sheet of which four are black, probably dyed, and eight to twelve inches in length; two are grey and one inch in length; one is brown and about three inches; and one blonde, six inches long.

Analysis of residual auditory impressions on the walls reveal the following:

– a series of muffled moans and shrieks, probably from a female.

– a series of impact sounds that could be either clapping, or slapping or spanking of bare flesh.

– the words ‘What’s Britney going to do now?’, probably from a male voice.

– the words ‘You worked hard to get punished, bitch. Now enjoy it!’. The voice is male and deeper than the previous one.

– metallic sounds that could have come from the chains, with soft grunts and what are probably footsteps.

– the words ‘Oh fuck. Ohhh… fuck. Fuck!’ spoken slightly breathlessly and ascending in pitch.

Analysis of residual light retention in the mirrors reveals the following:

– in the full-length wall mirror, the nude body of a woman standing. The view is of her front and runs from mid-thigh to just above her mouth, which appears to be filled with a ball-gag. Her age could be anything from late teens to a woman in her late thirties who has retained her figure. The position suggests she may be chained by the wrists to the overhead eye bolt but this cannot be confirmed. An undetermined event causes her to shudder, a sideways movement of her hips followed by the muscles tensing around her stomach and then a slight bounce of her breasts.

– in the full-length wall mirror, an image of a woman seen from behind. She is on her knees. She has shoulder-length black hair. She faces a stocky figure dressed in black, presumably a man. He is out of focus and the image, as with the previous one, does not include his face. The position of the two figures is suggestive of oral sex but this cannot be confirmed from the image.

– in the mirror above the bed: a complex image that may be a composite of several time periods. It shows one person, from the physique presumably female, cuffed and spread-eagled to the bed but not much of her apart from the limbs is visible. There are two superimposed figures, from the back and their physiques presumably male, lying on top of her in what, in a sexual context, would be a missionary position. One has short grey hair and the other brown hair. There is a fourth figure visible only as the top of a head with blonde hair, shoulders and breasts, kneeling in the position that would place her on the face of the woman tied to the bed. And there are five others in the room, standing three on one side of the bed and two on the other. Whether these are the same figures at a different point in time, or observers of a scene being played out on the bed, is open to question. At least one of the male figures on the bed could easily also be one of those situated to one side of the bed but this can only be speculation based on hair colour and breadth of shoulders.

***

Those of you who have a literary background may have come across something known as 'thick description'. Those of you who haven't come across it in that context probably know something about it from the postmortem scenes in TV crime series, which often give detailed descriptive detail of bodies. Those of you who have any interest in narratology are probably aware that the discipline makes a distinction between description and narrative, among other literary forms, but also recognises that the distinction can be fluid. But then I guess most people who read newspapers or watch TV would be aware of that, because the choice of words used in news reports that 'only give the facts' are often intended to convey information that links the story to a wider context and to the media's beliefs, values or preferred narratives. And TV crime series, again, offer the idea of a detectives constructing a narrative out of physical and other evidence.

So here you have some thick description that is also, through the use of a retrospective and 'evidence based' perspective, offering a narrative of 'what happened' - though it relies on some science-fictional techniques that, oddly enough, may soon be feasible and are currently being investigated by physicists.

If you're interested, the description is based on a room that used to exist, though probably no longer does. It was in the chambers of a pro domme I used to know, which took up the upper floors of an office building. Because it was close to the city's business district, most of the clients came on weekdays at lunchtimes or early in the evening. Hence she sometimes used it to host fetish events at weekends. And the description could have been even thicker - if I remember rightly there was also a small CCTV camera in the room so someone at reception could see what was going on in there.

And I haven't bothered to describe the corridor leading to the room (white and green tiles on the walls up to waist height, I believe, and then painted cream), the staining on the woodwork from hands clutching at it or running along it, the epithelial traces on the walls and carpet, or the streaks on the ceiling left by the use of whips. Or maybe I'm misremembering that last bit. The marks were more likely those I left on the ceiling in a studio flat I used to live in, which wasn't quite big enough for the 7-foot bullwhip I occasionally employed in play sessions.

Free until 28 July: Voodoo Fetish

Voodoo Fetish is free on Amazon until 28 July, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

It's the second novella in my Vodou Trilogy. The first book, Ridden (or go here for the UK version), details Eloise’s experiences in the Caribbean. A car accident near a cemetery in which she's possessed by the lwa and Baron Cimitiėre. Their use of her as a channel for supernatural healing. The discovery that these powers require her to undergo bdsm sex so that her pain and orgasm can channel away another person’s illness. That's the backstory.

Voodoo Fetish is set in London - a world city that's home to members of the vodou diaspora. She’s called upon by the lwa to carry out a healing ceremony for the daughter of a work colleague. Among other things this involves supernatural sex, discussions with crows and a dead witch, sex with a pagan couple she meets who are recruited to her healing project, a relationship with a houngan (male priest) who comes from the slightly different New Orleans tradition of vodou, a bass guitar with interesting properties, and discussion of the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics.

There will be a third novella in due course, which explains how the various people she’s healed are connected together and what the longer-term project of the lwa was. And, yes, bdsm and sex are involved. Extensively involved.

For now, though, you can download the second novella, Voodoo Fetish, for free. Hope you enjoy it.

Sex Art and Aromatherapy - free 27th May-9th June

Here's a heads-up: my short story Sex, Art and Aromatherapy will be free on iTunes from tomorrow, 27th May, to 9th June.

I can't give you a URL for it because the old way of constructing URLs for iTunes products doesn't seem to work any more. Just search on the title, or my name.

Brief details: Ruby is already experienced in BDSM and fetish, but she’s surprised to meet an older man in an art gallery, of all places, who also seems experienced in that world. He tells her stories about how, in his youth, BDSM was simply one part of a wider spiritual quest. Ruby lets him take her on a journey of enlightenment…

I think the cover used in this post is the right one! It replaced the original cover (which featured a woman's hands bound in red rope) when it first went onto iTunes because the bondage was deemed too racy for iTunes cover guidelines. That said, I think it's a pretty neat cover image.

I'll also just mention that at various points in the past (it's been out for a while), this story's apparently been among the most popular erotic downloads on a range of iTunes country stores.

Erotica, but not as you know it

I’ve just self-pubbed something you might or might not see as erotica: Filthy Money, and other stories of sex in the gutter.

The publishing process itself was a steep learning curve. First edition not sufficiently well proofread; second edition lost a bit of formatting in the Smashwords 'meatgrinder' (their term for the automatic conversion processes for e-publishing); third edition good, but failed Smashword’s premium catalogue submission due to not using markers (three or four asterisks) at section breaks, and having no first line indent at the beginning of each section – this part of the process isn’t automatic, but down to review by an actual human. Previous humans hadn’t seen these as problems, but never mind. The fourth version is ok and I wanted to get to that stage before promo-ing the collection.

Having got it on Smashwords and their premium catalogue - which distributes to Diesel, Ebooks-Eros, B&N and several other places - I don't have any enthusiasm for going through the same process with Amazon yet. Maybe some time in the future. 

What it is: eight quasi-erotic stories of desperate sex, sexual perversity and moral degeneracy from the margins of contemporary society. It’s set in a dystopia that actually exists – in social science literature it’s often called the underclass, though how the underclass is defined is a variable quantity. Political writers like Charles Murray turn up their noses at those who are ‘welfare dependent’, ‘feckless’, having kids outside marriage and so forth. Other more liberal writers point to the role of international capitalism and neoliberalism in reducing the life chances of the poorest, to the point that many are not only unemployed but excluded from much of what we might reasonably describe as civil society. They also, incidentally, point to the increasing dependence of the middle classes on welfare as 'professional' jobs become deskilled, and the prevalence of births outside marriage and 'reconstituted' families following separation and divorce in the middle classes; these trends don't just define the underclass any more. Or alternatively, more people with middle-class backgrounds are becoming members of it. If you want to know, I tend to side with the more sympathetic view of what 'underclass' means.

Over the years I’ve known a lot of people who qualify for the ‘underclass’ tag. I know their world and as the blurb for the book says, it’s an unstable world where anything can happen, reality is perverse and perversity is normal. People in that world find their pleasures any way they can, and it’s often a way that’s chaotic and wild. They often end up having desperate sex in ways that can sometimes lead to trouble and more chaos. I have, frankly, edited out parts of the chaos that involve alcoholism and serious violence, but left in – and, in fact, substantially toned down – the bits that involve drug use, the police, and psychological problems including self-harming. Much of what I’ve seen first-hand would frankly be more suitable to a horror collection rather than an erotic one.

And, yes, there’s a fair bit of BDSM in the stories. Not because it’s a major part of that world, though it does happen, but because that’s my particular bent. Even so, many of the scenarios in the book are based on stuff that I’ve either seen first-hand or been told about by those involved. It’s fiction, but there are factual threads running through it.

It doesn’t, by the way, include the story of what happened to someone who was kidnapped by a drug dealer because their boyfriend didn’t pay a debt. And it doesn’t go into any detail of the sexual dynamics of couples where both parties are self-destructive and manipulative. Maybe those are for an even darker collection.

I wrote most of the stories as a form of exorcism, because I'd had the ideas running around in my brain and didn't know what to do with them, other than share them with you. It hasn't completely exorcised them, but at least I feel better now...  I don't know whether the collection will be attractive to readers, if only in a tight lipped 'Eeew, that's really nasty' way. Possibly not. I'd be gratified if you did like it, but you may not want to encourage me. 

I published them myself because I wanted to get a sense of what that involves, and now I've done the learning curve I might selfpub some stuff that's a little more conventional eroticism. Or less unconventional eroticism, anyway. I have a few ideas I'm working on.

So what would be your motive for buying this collection? I’ve described it as quasi-erotica. It has a high urban grit content, plus a lot of sex. It has a lot of irresponsible and dangerous sex entered into by people who really, profoundly, don’t care about the problems it will bring because the world’s unpredictable anyway. It has sex between people whose fantasies are utterly against the norms of political correctness and polite society – though as we already know, many people’s fantasies from all walks of life are politically incorrect and brutally transgressive. It has sex that is chaotic, perverse, pleasurable, and pleasurable because it’s perverse.

And remember, in reading this, that morals are an affectation of those who have the financial resources to afford them. Read responsibly, and if any of what you read troubles you, just remember that it probably has really happened somewhere, sometime, pretty much the way the story tells it.

The link again: Filthy Money, and other stories of sex in the gutter.

Free Voodoo Fetish

It's true. My Voodoo Fetish novella is free on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk from today, 8 May, until 12 May 2013 (these links open in new windows).

It's a novella with paranormal, bondage and bdsm themes that follows on from the earlier Ridden. In place of a blurb or plot summary (which you can get from Amazon and its 'look inside' function) I'll just point out that apart from sex, bondage and whips you get post-structuralist philosophy, fluid dynamics equations, a reference to the film Cat People, a discussion of the 1832 Public Cemeteries Act, a small and intimate orgy, a dose of syncretism, a demonic possession and an anvwar mo. And sex and bdsm, did I mention those?

Enjoy. If you get your free copy, please do me a favour - take a minute to review, rate or tag it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you please. And if you like it - please remember I have others you might like to buy...

Museum of Deviant Desires cover

If you notice a difference from the original cover, a slightly more medieval and handwritten feel to the title - that's because Sharazade at 1001 Nights Press had it redesigned using a new font. I feel a blog post on fonts coming up sometime...

The stories in it are still the same, though:

• Poppy Seeks Pain
• Waiting
• Something Different
• Burnout
• The Plastics Factory
• Fashion, Intent, Desire, Choice
• Don’t Mess With the Author
• Sex and the Giant Squid
• >Voiceover
• The Museum of Deviant Desires
• $2.99

And the places to buy remain the same: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk,  Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, Ebook-Eros and some other places, like iTunes, I don't have URLs for.

You may also like to know this is the novella-length collection that was reviewed as 'sexy and cerebral; breezy, thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly addictive', establishing 'fascinating new paradigms for the next generation of erotic fiction', and 'gritty, modern, playful, and strange.' And now, depending on how quickly the new cover propagates through the interwebz, with new wobbly and weird handwriting on the cover (the writing inside remains weird, but that's down to the stories themselves and not the choice of font).

Where she was going (flash fiction)

She knew where she was going. She’d dressed for it. Dressed for action. The urban-camo pattern skirt that was fourteen inches down the side seam, and six of those were a split. The schoolgirl-style white blouse with no buttons that she’d tied in a tight knot at the front. The guys would go for it.

She knew what she wanted. She was planning on getting it. She headed for the address she’d been given.

The address that was, for her, synonymous with sex and violence.

Abused as a child? Check.

Dysfunctional family life? Check.

Used to accepting violence as normal in a relationship? Check.

Presenting difficult and challenging behaviour as an adolescent, acting out, doing drink and drugs, struggling to find her identity, her authenticity? Check.

But this wasn’t about any of that. She could have been brought up in a wealthy, caring home with no worries, no arguments, a dog and and a pony. She could have been driving up to the house in a Ferrari bought for her by mummy and daddy. She’d still have been wearing the fourteen-inch skirt and the schoolgirl blouse with the buttons pulled off. She’d still have been rocking up to that address, expecting sex and violence.

That was her identity, her authenticity.

What happened in that house was what her dreams were made of. 

***

I might at some point turn this into a longer story, for a self-published collection. For now, the short version will have to do.

Relieving the stress

With the demise of Oysters and Chocolate last month - its owners/editors have moved on to other projects - I remembered I had one story published there back in 2010. Rather than leave it to die quietly I thought I'd put it on here.

While I think of it another old favourite of mine, the UK-based fetish social network Informed Consent, has also ceased operation though there is now an Informed Consent group on Fetlife. That's the thing about the internet - nothing lasts for ever and people's interests change.

On the plus side, there are new sites opening all the time. You might be interested in Erotica Ebooks and DangerLust, both erotic book blog sites of differing styles.

By the say, the story refers to three books, all of which actually exist. Including the novel by Fulani (look in the right-hand sidebar for a link).

But I'm digressing, as normal. Here's the old story.

Relieving the Stress

It had been a tough week but a successful one. Jodie had bested the alpha male in charge of Marketing. The restructuring would have seen her department gifted to him, but she’d undercut his position. Marketing was now part of her management role instead. By seven on Friday evening, at the end of the deluge of memos and spreadsheets dealing with the changes, she was massaging her temples with slender fingers. The accumulated tension wouldn’t shift. Then a vision of what she’d be doing in a couple of hours flitted through her brain, and her stockinged knees slid together involuntarily. But of course actually doing the things she imagined would be the ideal way to relieve the stress...

Most of the large open-plan office was in darkness. Her team had left promptly at five, with excited chatter about which club they’d be going to and how much vodka they’d consume. The cleaners had been through at six. Since then she’d been alone in the office.

Gathering her things, Jodie headed for the ladies’ rest room. It was time to prepare.
The plain white work blouse could stay, though she decided there was no need for the bra. The blouse was tight and with her breasts free, her nipple rings were clearly outlined through the material. She experimented with the buttons. Leaving three undone was overkill. Two would do.


I’m going to feel like a slut however I look. That’s the point.


She removed her knee-length black skirt, and took another one from the overnight bag. A short, pleated, tartan skirt in blues and grays. It looked like a schoolgirl outfit, and that was because it was the actual school uniform skirt she’d worn, ten years ago, aged sixteen. It sat low on her hips, so that every stretch or twist of her body revealed skin between the waistband and the bottom of her blouse. It barely covered her ass cheeks and left a two-inch strip of bare thigh between the hem and the top of her stockings. Back in the day she’d worn it with ankle socks and heels.

I don’t remember it being that short. No wonder I was a boy magnet!

Why did she want to revisit her schooldays? She had no trauma, no obsession, that came from that time of her life. On the contrary, it had been a period of freedom and coquettishness. Yet it was a perfect scenario to play the fantasy that had gradually insinuated itself into her brain: being sexually dominated.

Being overpowered and fucked. Having no choice, no responsibility, no social niceties and manipulative game-playing and one-upmanship. In short, being a world away from the stuff she associated with her high-salaried professional life.

Underwear or not? Jodie was wearing a thong that had cost more for the barely-there style than for the amount of material in it. But Sir would almost certainly rip it straight off her, so it was sensible to go without. She took it off. Her fingers found the clit hood ring that had inspired tonight’s session. She’d had the piercing last month.


Feels nice. There’s time for me to bring myself off... No, I want the anticipation.


She re-applied eyeliner and dusky gothic eyeshadow, blood-red lipstick, put long blonde hair in a high ponytail, approved her look in the mirror. The other parts of her preparation would be done on the way. Putting on her long leather coat and grabbing the overnight bag, she headed out of the office and into the night.

Jodie parked close to her destination; a couple of refinements to her look were necessary before ringing the bell of the quiet suburban house. From the Merc’s glove compartment she extracted a packet of cigarettes, placed them in her left stocking top. She didn’t smoke, but that wasn’t the point. She opened the screw top of the wine bottle that had been on the car’s back seat and took two deep slugs. Unlike the people she worked with, Jodie had no intention of being drunk this evening. But she wanted the smell of alcohol on her breath.

One final thing: reaching into the glove compartment, she extracted a crumpled page torn from a notebook.


Homework. Done badly, because that’s part of the game.


Leaving her coat and overnight bag in the car, she walked the last hundred yards in the cool night air, feeling deliciously exposed and brazen in the microscopic skirt.

He kept her waiting at the door.


I know his nicknames, his online names, but after all this time I still don’t know his real name…


Jodie was very aware of her nipples, tight under the blouse, and her labia, just hidden under the skirt – both were tingling in the autumnal night.


God, look at me hopping on the spot with anticipation! Like a slutty teenager who’s decided to go all the way on a first date. Was I really like that when I was sixteen?


On a moment’s reflection Jodie remembered she had been. More than once.

Behind the door was a man perhaps in his early thirties, a tweed jacket and bowtie making him seem significantly older. He looked down his aquiline nose at her.

“Young Jodie.” He consulted his watch. “A little late, aren’t you?”

“Sorry, sir, I had to...” Her mind went into overdrive. “I had to finish something else. But it didn’t have anything to do with cybersex.” Tell the truth, offer a distraction. The technique always worked.

“Hmm. Well, make your way to my study. You know where to stand.”

The study was done in a period style, dark wood and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There was a desk and a small rug in front of it. She was supposed to stand on the rug. Beside the desk was a tall, ornate plant pot. Instead of a plant, it contained a selection of canes. She knew from past experience the desk drawers held rope, handcuffs, gags...

Jodie ignored the rug, looked at the bookshelves. Chastisement Across the Ages, by Gervas D’Olbert. The Whip and the Rod, by Prof. van Yelyr. The Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation, by Fulani. She shivered with anticipation.

A cough. Sir had come in the study behind her. “You really can’t follow instructions, can you!” He sounded amused. Jodie half-turned but he was too quick. Rope slid easily over her wrists, pinioning them behind her back. Hands pulled on the rope, dragging her four steps to the centre of the room, standing on the mat.

“Obviously you need some encouragement to stay where you’re supposed to be,” Sir said. Jodie felt her hands pulled upwards.


Of course. Remember there’s a hook in the ceiling beam? The rope must run over it.


As her arms were raised, Jodie had to bend forwards to relieve the pressure on her shoulders, take a wider stance to keep her balance.

Sir was standing very close, securing the rope with one hand while steadying her with the other. The slightly doggy smell of his tweed jacket mingled with his cologne – a fresh scent with notes of cinnamon and leather. It was a heady combination that added to her sense of anticipation.

“That displays your ass very nicely,” Sir observed. He patted it proprietarily. In this position the back of her skirt hid absolutely nothing. She felt one finger slide across her flesh, exploring between her legs and tweaking her clit hood ring.

“You’ve committed quite a few infractions, I see.” His hands continued to rove, unbuttoning her blouse and feeling the warmth of her breasts – and the hard metal of her nipple rings. “Arriving late. No underwear, as I notice from your pose. No jewelry allowed at school, and I think these count as jewelry.” He pulled on the rings, enough to make her gasp. “Smoking.” One hand slid up the inside of her thigh, stroking the smooth material of her stockinged leg. It reached the cigarette packet, extracted it from the stocking top. “Drinking, since I can smell wine on your breath. That’s quite a collection of misdemeanors. I’ll enjoy punishing you for those.”

“But it’s not fair to have me tied like this, Sir! Surely that’s not approved practice?”


Any position where he can fuck me is definitely approved practice, but I’m staying in cheeky brat mode tonight...


He snorted. “My school, my rules.” The palm of his hand connected with Jodie’s left buttock. The noise of the slap resounding in the room made her wince more than the slap itself. Even so, she felt sure it had colored up her ass.

“Ow! Sir!” But it was a token protest, said with a pout. The real pleading would come later.
Another spank, this time on her right ass cheek. “This, by the way, is not the punishment. It’s just to improve the circulation so the cane won’t mark you as much.” Another half-dozen slaps and her backside was feeling distinctly hot. The warmth was seeping from her buttocks to the crevice between her legs, and she could feel a slight tingling vibration from the clit hood ring at each blow. She began to twist, flex her legs, but the ropes holding her wrists high behind her back were unforgiving. Any attempt to offer his hand a different part of her ass just put more strain on her shoulders.

Jodie found it in herself to relax and let the spanking happen. She focused her attention on her nipple and clit piercings, feeling the echoes of each blow at the three points as shock waves travelled through her body. Hot and moist feelings pervaded her. Whimpering sounds followed each blow, and to her surprise she discovered she was making them. She was vocalizing her need.

When Sir finally stopped, Jodie felt her rump glowing. But she was also intrigued to note that he was breathing hard.


Hah! Is that just from the exertion or because his trousers suddenly feel a lot tighter?


“Now let’s see if you’ve done your homework properly. If it’s of a distinction standard, I’ll be more lenient with the punishments. If not, of course, I might be tempted to treat you more severely! Where have you hidden it?”

It was tucked into the skirt waistband. Sir took his time about finding it, running his hands over her belly and under her skirt, until Jodie was unable to suppress a moan of desire. In this bent-over position, her mouth and her slit were both at the right height for– But Sir wasn’t going to let her off so lightly. They both knew that she needed the ritual and the punishment that would inevitably follow.
“I want you,” he said, “to read your work to me.” She felt the rope holding her wrists slacken and sank to her knees, grateful that the strain on her shoulders had ceased. Carefully, Sir repositioned her still-bound wrists in the small of her back and wound the tail end of the rope around her body, over and under her exposed breasts. The small amount of pressure they created drew Jodie’s attention to the gentle swelling of her pierced nipples.

With her “homework” on the floor in front of her, she began to read.

“Little Red Riding Hood is a metaphor for the female sexual organs, the clitoris and its hood in particular. It’s a warning about the danger of going with a strange man who might be a predator, but it has a happy ending because she finds the woodsman who’s supposed to be a good honest man. Though he makes his living with his big chopper, which is maybe a bit strange, but he can satisfy her...

Do you have a big chopper, Sir?”


OK, I already know the answer to that one!


“No reference to the history of the story? Perrault, or the Brothers Grimm?” Sir was not easily pleased. “How about the feminist revisionist versions in the eighties?”

Jodie shook her head. She knew the arguments but had deliberately left them out. Deliberately, because it would make Sir treat her more harshly. From her kneeling position, her impulse was to open her mouth, lick her lips and reach out for his cock with her tongue. But he didn’t make it easy. Sitting on the edge of his desk, Sir stayed just out of range of her mouth. She wasn’t going to get any cock unless she begged for it – or until she was delirious with pain.

“If that’s all you have,” Sir said, “I should teach you a little more about the story. Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t have a choice, you see. Wolves can be so very charming, with their big teeth and their smiles. And woodsmen can be so very skilful with their choppers. Either way, she’s going to get taken. Men. They can’t be trusted. It’s something you’ll experience in just a while, but there’s a small matter of chastisement first. So let’s get started.”

He grasped Jodie’s ponytail, used it to pull her up and forwards, and bend her over the desk. Her breasts met the cool wooden surface, caused her to gasp.

“Now, we had five infractions I counted, plus the homework wasn’t up to standard. That makes six.” He stood back and she could hear him suck his teeth reflectively. “I’d say that’s half a dozen strokes apiece, thirty-six in all.”


Shit. That’s more than I’ve taken before.


Her heart raced with excitement – and with dread. Thirty-six was a huge number. She didn’t know if she could take it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sir said. “You don’t know if you can take that number. Of course you can. It’s just a question of whether I need to tie you down first, and whether you need a gag to stop you screaming. We’ll do a dozen here and the rest in the gym.”

She knew the cane was light and thin because Sir swished it in the air. She had ample experience of the different noises the various canes made. The first couple of strokes were stingy, made her squirm, but also made her hot. And he was barely even trying. The second pair were harder, and made her gasp as much with desire as with hurt. And the next pair were distinctly harsh.

“Owww... Ahh!” Jodie was aware she was giving out mixed messages: a response to the pain stimulus that was also an expression of excitement.

She sensed his breath, cool on the lips of her pussy. “There’s nothing quite like that scent of delinquent, writhing schoolgirl,” he observed. He was taunting her. She writhed more.

The next cane had a lower pitch as it whistled through the air. Jodie registered this and knew, a split second before it connected, it meant a thicker, nastier implement. It took another split second for her ass to register the impact and the pain to kick in. Jodie felt the blow reverberate through her body, throwing her an inch further forward on the desk. But at the same time it created a familiar vibration of need in her cunt.

“Jesus!”

“Stop squawking. If you do it again, I’ll use a gag on you.”


Do I care? At least I won’t need to worry about keeping quiet!


He allowed her half a dozen deep breaths to re-focus, and the second thwack found its mark, an inch below the first. She’d be tiger-striped with bruises by the time he finished. She was able, just, to stop herself screaming by biting hard on her lip.

“Think yourself lucky I’m not making you count the strokes out loud. In Swedish.” He’d pulled that trick before. She could count to twelve in eight languages.

By the fourth strike she’d worked out he was making a “five bar gate”: five parallel strokes, evenly spaced an inch apart. The sixth would be a diagonal stroke that crossed over the others.

The fourth strike was also her undoing. The pent-up energy she’d been trying to subdue broke out of her in a howl of anguish.

Sir just opened the desk drawer and extracted something that went in her mouth – a thick rubber ring that was drawn just behind her teeth by its tight leather strap, forcing her jaws apart. It wouldn’t block much noise, but with her mouth wedged open it would, she realized, have another use.

After the final stroke, Sir allowed her to collapse slowly to a kneeling position. He perched in front of her, on the edge of the desk.

“There’s a reason I used that particular gag,” he noted.

When he pushed into her mouth, her reaction was to try to close her lips around his shaft but that wasn’t going to happen. She had to accept that Sir was the one in control, determining how far down her throat he went. He held her by her ponytail, so she couldn’t bob her head or rock her body, though somewhere in her mind she knew that moving too much would cause the flaring pain in her ass to become an inferno. All she could move was her tongue, though the faster it moved the more he seemed to like it. Saliva drooled from her lower lip and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. It felt dirty, perverted. It felt great. She detected the waves of pressure building in his shaft, had a ten-second warning of the torrent that flooded her mouth. Some she swallowed, but he left strings of it across her cheek and on her chin. With wrists bound behind her she could do nothing to wipe them, and Sir seemed not to care.

“So now we do the other two dozen strokes in the gym.” Damn, she’d hoped him coming would make him feel more lenient. She’d been good. It must be worth half a dozen strokes off the total, at least?

“The piece you wrote was on Little Red Riding Hood,” Sir pointed out almost casually. “You said the name refers to the clitoris, which of course is important for sexual pleasure. You said the Wolf equates to a bad man who tries to seduce the girl and the Woodsman is someone with a big chopper who saves her. But in truth they’re just two aspects of male identity, and they’re two different ways of capturing the clit. This is where I teach you about nasty Wolf sex and nice Woodsman sex. And look, you even have a way for me to start the Wolf part of the lesson.”

Reaching back in the desk drawer, he produced a leash – and parting Jodie’s thighs, placed its clip on her clit ring. The leash hung slack, the weight of the thin chain pulling on her. He let her absorb the information, then took in just enough slack to give her a sense of what it would feel like if she tried to pull away. “Stand up. You’re going to follow me to the gym.”

It was a surreal experience, even for Jodie. Her arms were still bound, the gag still in place and Sir’s cum drying slowly on her face. And she was being dragged, literally by the cunt, to the scene of her next “lesson”.

The gym was a converted garage. It contained a weightlifting bench, a couple of exercise machines and a set of parallel bars on one wall. And it doubled as a very effective dungeon. Like the study, a selection of canes protruded from the mouth of a large china vase. Unlike the study, a couple of bullwhips hung from a hook on the wall. Sir could be extremely cruel when he chose.

“No whipping horse,” Sir observed. “But we can improvise.” He bent her forwards over the end of the weights bench, which was just high enough to meet the length of her legs. Spreading her ankles he slapped cuffs on them, securing each one to the bench supports. Then he began to unwind the ropes.
She wondered what he was intending, but the gag put a block on any conversation. Working quickly and methodically he stripped her of her blouse, cuffed her wrists, and extended her arms forward; a series of metallic clinks signaled the cuffs being attached to the head of the bench, where the weight bar would normally rest. She concentrated on trying to relax in this position, breathe slowly, and ignore the burning sensation as the flesh of her ass was stretched by the position he’d placed her in. It wasn’t easy.
Sir carefully rearranged the back of her short skirt, lifting it to expose her buttocks and tucking the hem into the waistband. And then he left here there, unable to move or protest. There was no reason to panic, but she had to fight to stop hysteria taking hold.


He’s doing it to increase the anticipation, raise the tension. Damn him, it’s working.


The leash was still threaded through her clit ring. Every tiny movement of her ass, as she tried to pull against her restraints, transferred itself to her clit.

When he returned, he was humming to himself, and dressed now in leather jeans and an open-necked shirt. His hair was damp and the smell of cologne as he moved closer to her was spicier.

“This one, I think.” She couldn’t see what “this one” was, but he’d tied her down for a reason...

The first half-dozen were little more than playful; he’d pushed her hard already. Then he ramped up the pressure. There was more force to the stinging swipes and Jodie writhed in genuine agony. She could feel it most where the blows criss-crossed the five bar gate, raising welts on skin that was already bruised.

The next series switched to a heavier instrument, one that tested her to her limits. The torment made her feel light-headed, almost out of her body. She knew that the beating should hurt, and yet her body had ceased to recognize pain. Instead, each new blow was another step on a road to ecstasy. An ecstasy that she voiced in muffled cries from behind the gag.

The remaining dozen blows were like the Stations of the Cross. Three from the end, it was too much. She came, hard.

It was only when she collapsed limply against the restraints that he entered her. Her body was ready for him, her slit quivering. He felt huge inside her, pumping remorselessly. Her mind and senses were already spinning out of control and the fucking, after the thrashing had taken her to orgasm once, pushed her into a trance state. She lost sense of time, place, wouldn’t even be able to remember her own name if Sir had asked. Yet it was a trance state in which she moved seamlessly from one climax to another. It wasn’t so much a multiple orgasm as a single long continuous orgasmic fugue.

Some time later he released the bonds, allowed her to sink to the floor. Carried her to the lounge and wrapped her in a blanket, lying on the sofa. Removed the gag, though it didn’t restore her powers of speech. Semi-conscious, she shook silently, taking her time to recover. In a way she didn’t want to come round, because as the trance state left her, the burning and throbbing in her ass became stronger.
Eventually she recovered the use of her mouth. “Sir? Thank you for my lesson. It was… hard. But fun at the same time.”

Sir laughed. “I was a bit rough at the end. No doubt I’ll have to go easier on you for the rest of the weekend.”

She stretched gingerly, wincing as skin moved against the fabric of the sofa. It had been a hard lesson. And she smiled. “Not that easy, I hope. You’ll just have to find different ways to punish me...”

“Hmm. Well, for tomorrow I have in mind the myth of Persephone. Abducted and forced to serve Hades in his underground lair…”


Jodie smiled. “A whole day being held prisoner and ravaged in your basement? Sounds good to me!”

Museum: 5 paddles, 4 stings

I've just caught up with a review of my Museum of Deviant Desires, from BDSM Book Reviews. They liked it a lot. Comments included:

Fulani’s writing is nuanced but accessible and of great quality, and his grasp of both the submissive and dominant mindset is spot on and comes through in every story. There is BDSM content in every story ... Edgy, modern, industrial-flavored stories full of unlikely situations, grit, grease, and urban decay.  Some are very strange, some are very sexy, and all are quite memorable ... So: absolutely recommended if you are looking for something gritty, modern, playful, and strange.  

The reviewer calls me on one thing: the word 'trannies' in the title story. One character uses the term and another corrects him. Showing that the two principal characters have differing levels of sensitivity to gender identity descriptions was a quick way to help build the characters and has some relation to what follows, so if that's an issue for you, now you know.

Just to remind you, this is a collection of 11 short stories ranging from the lengthy down to flash fiction.

The book's currently languishing in the lower reaches of Amazon's rankings despite two five-star reviews there, so I'm guessing its problem is not too many people know about it yet. But now you do, so it should improve.

Museum is published by 1001 Nights Press and available at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, and also on Smashwords. It's $2.99 or £1.92 (I think).

But if, instead of parting with actual money, you'd rather get something for free you could always try Ridden, which is a completely different type of erotic writing with a vodou twist (though still driven by BDSM), and which is free on Amazon until Sunday 18 November - here's the Amazon US link and UK link.

Finally, whether you buy Museum or go for the temporarily free Ridden, please remember the one thing any book needs is an honest review - whether on Amazon, Smashwords, your own blog or wherever - that others can read make a choice about whether they should buy the book too. 

Ridden, now out

A week or so after my Corporate Slave novel came out, here's the new novella: Ridden, available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

It's a vodou-themed paranormal erotic novella with a lot of bdsm, and it draws on a fair amount of factual material as well. Among other things, vodou is a syncretic religion with a diaspora that means you can find practitioners/followers in almost every world city, by no means all of whom are from the original West African/Caribbean/Latin American/New Orleans areas where it emerged or became embedded in the culture. And it involves the practice of followers being possessed - or 'ridden' - by spirits, of in vodou terminology, lwa. Hence the title

Ridden is book 1 of a trilogy. It's complete in its own right, but books 2 and 3, out in the next few months, will extend the story somewhat.

It should appeal to anyone who's into bdsm erotica who likes paranormal themes - or who likes the idea of the 'paranormal' being treated with some degree of seriousness.

Not being a practitioner myself I have not done a travail to encourage anyone to read the book. It'll have to make its own way in the world, on its own merits. I hope you enjoy it.

If you want to read an extract, there's one on my Tumblr blog. And of course the first pages are visible on the Amazon 'look inside' function.

I'll also have some publicity-related news for it next week.

Corporate Slave now more available

Because it's just appeared on Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Slave-ebook/dp/B00A0VFJ32

See the posts below for an outline of the novel and an extract... 

> Edited 5 Nov to add: also now on Amazon UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporate-Slave-ebook/dp/B00A0VFJ32

Corporate Slave now available

It's out now, initially via Pink Flamingo's Erotic Book Network site. Here are links for the paperback ($12.75) and the ebook ($7).

More links will become available over the next 1-2 weeks - Amazon and others take a couple of days from upload to the file becoming available. I'll keep you posted.

By way of a reminder, this is bdsm erotica with sex, fetish, bondage and more bursting unrestrained from almost every page. Have a look at the previous blog post for details and a short extract.

Those links again: eroticbooknetwork.com/corporate-slave.html for the paperback, eroticbooknetwork.com/corporate-slave-ebook.html for the ebook.

'Smart, kinky, laugh-out-loud delight'

The blog title is the headline to the Museum of Deviant Desire's first review on Amazon.com.

This is a collection of eleven short stories on a variety of themes, often with offbeat and slightly dystopian themes. And a lot of fetish, bondage and BDSM.

Apparently I'm 'meta-sexual', 'delightfully self-referential' and able to 'pleasure open-minded readers with intense multiple brain-gasms'.

Apparently I have my finger 'firmly on the g-spot of popuar culture' and strike a good balance between 'light fluffy diversion' and 'crunchy intellectual substance', using erotica to make serious points.

And apparently I'm establishing a 'new paradigm for the next generation of erotic fiction.'

It's a very pleasing review from Terrance Aldon Shaw - so, many thanks to him for taking the time to write it. I won't let it go to my head, though, and I won't stop trying to do better in future!

Oh yeah - you can read the full review and buy the book on Amazon.com, and the book's also available from a bunch of other places including Smashwords (the link is in the right hand sidebar on this page) and the outlets mentioned in my earlier blog post on this collection.

Vampire Skye reviewed, and some other stuff

First, the good news. Xcite published a novella of mine, The Vampire Skye, at the back end of last year and it's now been reviewed by BookAddict at The Romance Reviews under their GBLT topic heading (it's a lesbian story). The key bit is:

'It exceeded my expectations in world building, hot characters and erotic sex scenes. I look forward to reading more from this talented author. I recommend this to Sapphic readers who enjoy a paranormal story dominated by a sexy female vampire.'

The Vampire Skye is available in ebook and other electronic formats from Xcite Books, from the Kindle stores at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, in Nook format from Barnes and Noble and probably from other places as well.

And now for the annoying news: if you weren't previously aware of it, PayPal has decided to enforce regulations against its use as a transaction system for certain types of erotica, principally of the nonconsensual and quasi-incest varieties. The Huffington Post has the most concise reporting on this.

OK, so it's not the kind of erotica I write or read, and in principle my novella isn't affected (and nor is any of my other writing): but the regulations are being implemented in a typically hamfisted way and causing all kinds of problems for publishers who don't, actually, publish material that infringes the new guidelines. And why does a payment processor decide it's their business to have a moral stance on what people are buying, anyway? A legal stance I can understand: banks and payment processors have legal obligations to prevent money-laundering, etc. But would I, in my everyday life, continue to do business with any other kind of company that felt it should have a say in my moral welfare? Well, no.

There was, for those who are interested in the wider implications, a similar go-around with credit card companies last year: they threatened to withdraw facilities from companies that 'weren't consistent with their brand image'. I would have thought their image was that card transactions should be as easy as cash, but apparently not. It didn't affect a lot of 'adult services' providers anyway, who have long since bit that particular bullet and use a network of processing agencies that handle 'high risk accounts' - for an additional fee, of course. But publishers had to react, and Pink Flamingo, who publish my Secret Circus novel, ended up removing it from their own website (along with the majority of their other books) and selling via eroticbooknetwork.com, which uses different card payment processors who weren't affected by the shift in US card company policies.

The only new thing about all this is that erotic writing has suddenly come to be seen as part of the 'adult services industry'. Adult services themselves have a long history of difficult and tangled relationships with the financial sector, as a 2004 article from Forbes magazine indicates (there's an earlier 2003 article as well). In the 2004 case a card processing company that specialised in adult services accounts had its agreement terminated by its bank, was taken on by another bank (weirdly, one based in the Mormon homeland of Utah, which raised many eyebrows) and was then taken over by a larger card processor that itself has since been bought out itself by an even larger one. The whole process resulted in payments to hundreds if not thousands of adult services companies being disrupted. Also, here's another 2003 Forbes article about how the whole banking sector blows hot and cold over the adult industry, often with banks soliciting transactions at one time and then shutting up shop when they find their involvement embarrassing. Unsurprisingly, the 2003 article fingers PayPal as a big transactions channel for adult services - and at that time they didn't seem to have any problem with it...

So publishers are now chasing their tails to set up more robust and morality-proof payments systems, and of course small independents and self-publishing authors are for the moment going to be the losers. No doubt in the longer term, new options will emerge. There are already anonymous internet banking companies, virtual currencies, token-based systems and the like and if PayPal and other mainstream companies want to impose their corporate vision in this kind of way, the likelihood is that other structures will come onstream fairly quickly and be used not just because people want to buy erotica but because substantial numbers of people will, on principle, no longer want to offer business to a company that tells them how they can and can't spend their money (though no doubt some people will continue to use them because they agree with their morals!).

And if they can decide erotica isn't something you can buy using their payment mechanisms... is that the thin end of a wedge that will mean they'll start making other restrictions on moral grounds?

Erotic Books Network - the new home for my novel

Remember the consternation caused recently when credit card companies in the US announced they would no longer do business with publishers of explicit adult fiction?

This just in from Pink Flamingo:

Erotic Book Network (EBN) www.eroticbooknetwork.com is now online! Featuring the entire Pink Flamingo Publications BDSM catalog

Lizbeth at Pink Flamingo has just announced: "On this site we’ll include all titles with BDSM content, including the nonconsensual titles that were removed due to bank/credit card restrictions. We’ll also include consensual BDSM titles that still appear on the main PF site.

"If you access EBN now, you’ll note that we still have some work to do uploading images and ebooks. However, ALL paperbacks are available for ordering now. We expect most of the ebooks removed from the Pink Flamingo site to be up and ready for download by early next week. All books released in 2011 are ready for download now. It’s great to see these books online again!

"And… We have secured a new credit card payment gateway for the EBN site so books can be purchased with credit card, paypal, check or money order."

My Secret Circus novel is now available on the new site (link opens in new window). I'll update links to it on this site and elsewhere shortly.