Читать книгу Shadow Lane Volume Eleven: The Venus Club A Novel of Sex, Spanking and Modern Love - Eve Howard - Страница 9

Chapter Four

Pascal Punishes Amanda for Cutting Her Hair

“Amanda, how could you?” Pascal Robbins accused her, striding into the shop mid-afternoon and arousing her from a Lord Byron induced reverie she had been indulging in while curled up in a comfortable rocker in the main room of the shop. She sprang to her feet and let the gold leafed volume fall into the seat of the chair as she reflexively put her hand up to the mere feather cap of ash blonde hair that now adorned her head. He shook his head at her in grave disappointment. “I thought that was you at the gallery last night but was hoping I was mistaken. A woman’s hair is her crowning glory,” the photographer harangued her mercilessly. “Now how can I shoot you in a Renaissance gown, or any gown except the one you get to wear in a lunatic asylum?”

Amanda lowered her eyes and bit her lip. Sooner or later someone was going to scold her for cutting her hair, it might as well be Mr. Robbins. And yet, he was rather a new acquaintance to adopt this degree of proprietary familiarity with Amanda and her proudly independent personality balked at his impertinence. So instead of apologizing for her mistake, Amanda serenely conceded, “I would make a terrible model at the moment.”

“Not terrible,” he grunted, “but problematical.”

“I heard your wife is playing the lead in Kiss Me Kate at the local theatre this month,” Amanda changed the subject. “I can’t wait to see it!”

“Really? Are you a Cole Porter fan?”

“Of course. Plus, there’s the famous spanking scene.”

“Don’t tell me you’re into spanking too?” Pascal wondered when he’d stop being surprised by discovering spanking enthusiasts in Random Point.

“Can you have the slightest doubt?”

“What’s with Random Point? Is it some sort of cosmic magnet for spanking people?”

“It’s not a supernatural phenomenon. It’s because of Hugo having his publishing company here for twenty years. The name Random Point has become synonymous with spanking, in the fetish world, like San Francisco and leather.”

“Tell me about this famous spanking scene,” Pascal growled. He vaguely remembered a spanking scene from the movie of Kiss Me Kate he had seen once long ago. Was his wife to play the character who got spanked? Again? When she’d starred in A Doll’s House at the repertory theatre in Woodbridge two years before, she had contrived some spanking business that had never been in the play before. The little devil, he thought. No wonder she was more than over the moon about getting this part. The play was booked for a month of performances. She would get spanked numerous times on stage. Not to mention all the rehearsal spankings, during which she would be manhandled by her co-star, a buff, hearty, bullet-headed British baritone of unassailable masculinity. Pascal fumed.

“The spanking occurs during the play within the play, with Fred and Lily playing Petruchio and Kate. She takes a swing at him and he says, ‘The name of the play is The Taming of the Shrew, not He Who Gets Slapped.’ Then he spanks her on stage. It’s a great scene. Probably the high point of 20^th century musical comedy.”

“Humph!” brooded Pascal. Then he turned his attention back to Amanda’s head, looking at her critically from every angle. “I could shoot you as a tomboy, or a leatherwoman.”

“I think I’d look good in skintight latex,” Amanda said helpfully.

“Good point. Then no one will be paying any attention to your hair. Do you have any latex?”

“Not at this point. It’s pretty expensive. I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Go on line and pick out two latex outfits, send me the links and I’ll buy them for the shoot.”

“Yay!” Amanda jumped up and down.

He cocked his head at her, “Will you let me shoot you nude?”

“Skintight latex is just like nude. Especially in a light, transparent color.”

“True,” he conceded.

“Tasteful nude is fine,” she told him. Pascal smiled. “But all your work is tasteful,” she corrected herself.

“You’re a very nice girl,” he said gruffly. “but I still think you did a bad thing cutting your beautiful hair. Someone should spank you for that.”

“Not you, Mr. Robbins. You’re not even into it.”

“Who said I’m not?” he demanded, taking her by the arm. “What man worthy of the name isn’t into spanking?” he asked, pulling her over to one of the glass counters, bending her over and before she could process what was happening, smacking her slim oval cheeks over her skirt six times, bestowing three smart slaps to each before letting her up. A deep blush suffusing her face at this unexpected assault, Amanda unconsciously put both hands back to her bottom, now radiant with heat and a certain sting.

“How… dare you!” she sputtered indignantly.

“God, you’re adorable,” he cried, taking her face between his sensitive, long fingered hands and kissing her lightly on her rosy mouth just once. “But you’re naughty,” he added, causing butterflies to flutter in her stomach.

“You can’t just bend someone over and spank them!” she charged, placing her hands on her hips.

“You’re my model, aren’t you? That means you have to be submissive to me,” he casually informed her.

“Really?” she sputtered.

“Of course.”

“Huh!” she retorted, now over folded arms. “I don’t need to model that badly!”

“Oh yes you do. You like to see yourself in photos.”

“Well… maybe I do,” Amanda grinned, dropping her arms to her sides.

“Don’t forget to send me the latex links,” he told her, breezing out the door as though he had remembered an appointment.

“I won’t,” she called after him, imprinting his dashing image in her mental photo album. It would be charming being one of Pascal Robbins’ models and to pose for shoots specifically tailored to her look and personality. This would be extra curricular work of the highest caliber and fit to be exhibited in any resume. Amanda was well pleased with the opportunity and in reality took only a little umbrage at the liberties the photographer had taken with her. However, mindful of his marital status, not to mention the fact that his wife was a lovely young woman also in the scene and apparently extremely jealous of her handsome husband’s affections, Amanda decided she would let him go no further with her, no matter how adorable he found her to be. At any rate, between Colby, Jaime the gardener and very shortly, Raphael Price, she already had two or three too many boyfriends.

“Pascal Robbins spanked me,” said Amanda to Pamela in the sauna at the Random Point health club that night. They were clad in two-piece swimsuits after just having done a yoga class as well as a number of laps in the pool.

“That’s not like him!” Pamela replied with surprise.

“He never spanked you for cutting your hair?”

“He’s never taken any kind of liberty with me.”

“He was so fresh.”

“It’s so typical of the disrespect these dominant men show us,” huffed Pamela, adding, “but then, Pascal is not exactly in the scene, so he doesn’t quite know the etiquette.”

“That doesn’t make what he did any less impertinent,” Amanda pointed out.

“Still, he knew he could get away with it. Even as innocent as he is, he can peg you for a submissive who isn’t going to fuss if someone smacks her.”

“He kissed me too. On the mouth.”

“Really!”

“Do you know how long I made Colby wait for our first kiss? Months!”

“What is that like, being totally in control of a man?” Pamela wondered, leaning up on her arm to regard her younger blonde friend across the cedar box in which they reclined.

“Oh, Colby’s not a man, he’s a jock,” replied Amanda carelessly, then added with more interest, “Why? What do you mean? What’s Mr. Bartlett really like?”

“Oh, he’s the worst offender imaginable when it comes to abusing his rights as a dominant,” Pamela declared candidly.

“Is it… getting on your nerves?” Amanda asked delicately.

“It is,” Pamela sat up entirely and folded her slender arms across her small bosom. “This whole business of keeping me working at the store, for example. When what I should be devoting all my time to is designing for the line and then promoting it!”

Pamela had been brooding about this all day, while fulfilling the many tedious duties of what amounted to an assistant store manager position at Bartlett’s with neither a title nor salary to match. Instead of inspecting new inventory and conferring with department managers about summer clearance merchandise, she longed to be seated comfortably behind a drawing board in the airy design studio that occupied the second floor of the Damaris shop in Random Point. It was in this sky lit room with windows looking down on the main street of the village that she and Damaris created suits and dresses, sharing the same aesthetic and happy in each other’s company.

“I’ve been to college, grad school and design school. I’ve worked on the floor. I’ve modeled. I’m a partner in a rising design label. And I’m told I’m a millionaire’s wife. When am I going to be able to do what I want?”

“What would Mr. Bartlett say if you insisted he let you go?” Amanda asked with extreme interest.

“I’m not allowed to insist on anything. I’m supposed to be submissive.”

“So, you’re finding your marriage oppressive?”

“Not the marriage, but my work load.”

“He’s working you,” Amanda observed.

“They all do. They all make me their bitch, Amanda,” said Pamela with heartfelt exasperation. It was the first time she had fully unburdened herself to another woman in the scene and she suddenly felt as if she’d been let out of a Victorian waist cinch after wearing it for six hours. “Hugo was even worse than Ambrose,” she added sensationally.

“You mean, when you worked for him?” Amanda prompted, already well aware of how cavalierly her newly discovered parent had used Pamela from his own confession of the episode.

“Oh yes, he was positively gothic with his impossible demands and relentless perfectionism.”

“He was fucking with you for some reason, right?”

“That’s true enough,” Pamela admitted. “I was engaged to Sloan at the time and was jealous of Hope Lawrence working under him at the bookshop. Hugo attempted to distract me by working me to exhaustion every day and eventually beginning to spank me for mistakes.”

“Why did you even let him do that?” Amanda marveled, as shocked and disconcerted at her father’s inappropriate behavior towards Pamela as when he’d originally revealed the same details about the episode, which had concluded with Hugo’s simultaneously firing Pamela and ending their brief dominant/submissive love affair.

“Oh, because I’d fallen madly in love with him by that time,” Pamela smiled, even though the experience had caused her many tearful moments. “I must be a genuine masochist, I always love the man who is the meanest to me,” she concluded.

“But, Mr. Bartlett isn’t really mean to you?” Amanda asked with concern.

“I don’t think he thinks he is,” said Pamela.

“Pamela, it seems to me you could easily get your own way with him if you put your mind to it,” Amanda suggested.

“What would you do?” Pamela asked with interest, almost to the point of open rebellion.

“Well, first I’d ask myself what would be the worst thing that might happen if you just stopped going into work.”

“He might very well beat me.”

“So let him beat you a few times. Just be stubborn and don’t give in.”

The girls were silent for a moment, thinking about Ambrose Bartlett. Then Amanda said, “Let’s go eat!”

“Really?” Pamela looked doubtful.

“I found a great little vegetarian place in the village. The food only tastes sinful, it’s really healthy,” said Amanda, leading Pamela out of the hot box. “Don’t tell me you were planning on skipping dinner?” Amanda demanded of her obsessively weight conscious friend.

“Well, yes. I had a big lunch.”

“But you just worked out.”

“I know, but…” Pamela quickly donned a white lace under-wire bra and matching French cut panties and briefly regarded her image in the locker room mirror before stepping into a pair of khaki capris, beige laced espadrilles and a fitted, open collared white cotton shirt.

“Pamela, you shouldn’t let yourself get so thin. Let yourself gain ten pounds. Men in our scene like curves.”

“Not Ambrose,” said Pamela, running a brush through her smooth black geometrically cut bob. “He insulted his first wife into leaving him because she gained weight.”

“Seriously?” Amanda got into a tailored black cotton bra and panty set, pulled a sleeveless black vee neck top over her head and tied a tan wrap skirt around her small waist. She sat on the wooden bench to strap on black cloth platform sandals. “The more you reveal about Mr. Bartlett, the more of a complete piece of work he sounds like.”

The girls emerged on the street under a full moon, put their gym bags into their cars, then relocked their cars and began walking arm in arm into the heart of the village of Random Point.

“You’ve been a model, you’ve been in a book, and you design half the clothes in the line. You should be going on talk shows promoting yourself,” said Amanda.

“I think so too, but I don’t have time.”

“I can see you on Project Runway in a heartbeat,” said Amanda, who would seldom pause to watch television, unless a fashion show was on.

“Stop Amanda, you’re agitating me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If Ambrose knew you were steaming me up like this he’d be furious,” Pamela observed. She knew her husband that well. “But what you say makes sense. Except about gaining weight. I’d die.”

“Whatever you do, don’t make Mr. Bartlett furious at me,” Amanda begged. “I like walking in the shows at the store.”

Pamela Bartlett had become even more tired of showing up for work at her husband’s department store than she had admitted to Amanda and did in fact feel cruelly ill-used by her husband to the point of fully considering open rebellion even before Amanda suggested it.

That morning, after showering and perfuming herself in the black and pink tiled art deco bathroom that joined the master suite of Bartlett’s house on the cliff, Pamela in a slate blue cotton wrapper, gazed long and hard at the perfect size 2 pencil skirted suit she had laid out. Summer inventory clearance was going on all over the store that day and Pamela knew she could look forward to hours in designer dresses deciding mark down percentages on various numbers and assigning personnel to retag them. She picked up the smart pair of four inch tapering stacked heels in black suede she had been going to wear with the suit. The notion of hours on her feet in those shoes suddenly oppressed her mightily. Swallowing the lump that rose in her throat, Pamela deliberately rehung the chalk gray suit back up, replaced the shoes in the area of her connecting shoe closet reserved for pumps, and then pulled out a navy a-line skirt and sleeveless white open collared shirt along with a pair of navy flats to wear instead. This outfit she slipped over a light, lace trimmed white cotton bra and panty combination.

Thoughtfully she brushed her gleaming black bob while looking in the mirror, realizing that Amanda was right, she was very thin. Pamela was not the victim of body dysmorphia, but she was never the less actuated by all the typical anxieties of the modern cosmopolitan woman, first and foremost of which was the imperative to stay thin. Had not the immortal Anita Loos, creator of Lorelei Lee and surviving beauty until age 90, murmured, “Fat is death?” Didn’t Wallace Simpson say, “A woman can never be too rich or too thin?” “One should eat to live, not live to eat,” came from Molière. “Eat not to dullness,” Ben Franklin had advised, as well as, “To lengthen your life, shorten your meals.” Pamela didn’t know who had said, “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels,” but had read that even Thomas Jefferson had observed, “We never repent of having eaten too little.” These adages had been her law since a teen and they had served her well in maintaining the figure that had always gotten her noticed. But she saw Amanda’s point just as well at that moment. Amanda was her same height, 5’8” and Amanda claimed to be all of a hundred and twenty five pounds. Pamela hadn’t allowed herself to get above 110 in years. Amanda appeared slender to a fault but she also looked strong. Through the application of scientific exercise joined to a conscientious effort not to skip meals anymore, she too might allow herself to gain a healthy ten to fifteen pounds without appearing any less sylphlike. Perhaps it would be easier to stand up to her tyrannical husband if she were more robust. Possibly regular meals and the subtraction of the pharmaceutical amphetamines, which had been supplying her with frantic energy for so many years, would result in an overall relaxation of tension and stress in her day-to-day existence.

Pamela went to the medicine chest and looked at her bottle of Ritalin. She opened it. Ten left. Almost time to call in a refill. She took the bottle off the shelf and tossed it into the wastebasket, a sensation of relief passing through her frame. She hadn’t taken one yet that morning.

She sat at her vanity mirror and reddened her wide, full lips with burgundy lip-gloss, just to the point of moist rosiness. Instead of applying any more make-up, she left her smooth, soft, faintly olive toned skin clean and ignored even her eyeliner, shadow and mascara. Her dark and wide set almond shaped eyes were naturally long lashed and she was determined not to expose them to any chemicals that day to enhance what was already lovely. Hanging small gold hoops in her ear and a thin gold chain and pendant around her neck, she felt herself to be adequately adored to greet the summer day.

Calling in sick, Pamela packed a white and navy leather tote with gym gear and a change of lingerie, as well as her Kindle, on which she had recently placed The Ladies’ Paradise by Zola and deliberately left her phone on her dressing table before going downstairs.

Pamela was happy that her husband always left for the store an hour before she herself arose. He was never very cheerful in the morning before work, so it was best not to encounter him at that time if one could possibly avoid it, especially on a day when one looked far too good to seem in the slightest off color, no less to call in sick. In the kitchen she brewed coffee, poured whole milk over a half cup of fruit and nut granola and ate one entire quarter of a rapturously sweet honeydew melon, all the while watching one of her favorite HBO dramas, which she had dvr’ed on the kitchen TV. It was ten am before she left the house, got into her BMW and drove into Random Point to spend the morning at the gym and spa and then meet Amanda for lunch at the wonderful vegan café that Amanda had discovered earlier that week.

After lunch, Pamela drove over to the Damaris shop, climbed the polished wooden staircase to the pleasant design studio above it, and surprised her partner at her drawing board under the window.

“Pamela,” cried Damaris. “I didn’t expect to see you here today. Isn’t there a big sale going on at the store?”

Pamela regarded the petite proprietress of the shop and co-designer of the Damaris line with affection as she announced, “My love, I’m here to stay. I’m never going back to Bartlett’s. Never, never, never!”

Damaris got up to throw her arms around Pamela’s waist and danced up and down the studio with her willowy friend.

“What changed?” Damaris asked.

“Today I awoke from my dogmatic slumber,” Pamela declared, “and suddenly realized, with Amanda Sands’ prompting, that being married to Ambrose Bartlett hasn’t benefited me one iota, unless you count being mistress of the pretty house, which is nice, but doesn’t equal the lifestyle upgrade that marriage to a millionaire once promised.”

“You’re not saying you’ve quarreled with Ambrose?” Damaris asked, concern flitting across her expressive face.

“Not yet. But that’s inevitable,” Pamela sighed, letting her charming friend go. “Because I am in full rebellion mode.”