Chapter 12

Suzanne seemed to want to change the subject and so although Andrew looked at her quizzically he let her guide the conversation on to fresh topics.

“Tell me about the last two weeks, how was Paris and Martinique.”

Andrew talked to her about the three days in Paris and the reactions of the Hermès customers. Suzanne just laughed at the two day trip to Italy but then he was honest with her about the week in Martinique.

“You never talk about any of the other women with me Andrew. Why now?”

“I think it is important for you to get the full background, if you are going to help me process everything then there is no point in being coy or vague. It was a strain. From the middle of the week it was an almighty strain, not helped by the weather, and the delay with the flight.”

“What has got you so thoughtful and pensive?”

“I think I have skated through modelling life without ever really understanding it. Chiara had a memorable freak out the first time I ever met her. About exactly what Renee is now facing. Not being picked at auditions, the inexorable march of time. Now Chiara was able to challenge preconceptions about age but I don’t see how Renee can do the same thing about being short. And she also thought that when we stopped working together that our contact and communication would fade away as well. It was difficult to see her being so unhappy especially when there was nothing I could do. You know me and my ‘damsel in distress’ syndrome. I can’t fix everything, I can’t fix a fraction of things, and it does not sit well with me.”

“Would you have modelling all this time if you knew it was this bad, this cut-throat?”

“I signed a contract so I would have had no choice. And the thing is I have seen it, I know what it is like. I stood as a prop as part of an audition and I watched women audition to get the role in the commercial. I stood there as women walked in naked to a studio with 50 people there. And some of them didn’t get picked. So I have been part of the process. But I allowed myself to forget or ignore the impact until Renee personalised it with me last week.”

Andrew didn’t know why he decided to be honest with Suzanne but he was talking before he could even think about it.

“Renee is the nicest, the most ‘normal’ of the models that I have worked with, at least the ones I have taken the time to get to know. Renee is a good friend and I want to transition that friendship beyond modelling. She is the one that I would invite to my wedding, I would hope to be invited to her wedding. Like I said, Renee is the normal one. I am probably as close to Heloise but her fame gets in the way of everything. Right now I would invite Heloise to my wedding but I am not sure I want her there. And it is nothing to do with her as a person but more the attendant drama. I don’t know where I am going with all this. I am worried about my friend.”

He shrugged in frustration and was surprised when Suzanne pulled him down for a kiss.

“You are a good man Andrew, don’t change. It is interesting to hear you talk about the individuals, something that you never do. So what now?”

“That is the thing. Because of the rain I was asked to consider going to Paris for a weekend next term to let them shoot some additional shots, all in the studio so just a busy weekend. What I didn’t mention to Veronique, the director, is that technically that could count as two days of the five I have remaining. So it could make July a little easier. The additional weekend in Cyprus last year I did as an addition rather than in place of. I was in Paris this summer for a weekend as well. But I have also been asked by pretty well everybody, models, the director, lots of people at Hermès, to continue beyond the end of the contract.”

“That is exciting. Are you going to?”

“What do you think of that idea? At first, I was flattered but not interested, but then I started to consider it more and before Martinique was thinking about doing some weekends. But after Martinique I am back to thinking that it is time to be done with this.”

“I think that everyone who knows about these commercials, about your racy modelling career, is secretly very jealous. You have done this insane, crazy, utterly ridiculous thing and been so honest about it. We all give you shit about the whole ‘it is really hard work’ thing but Leslie told me last week she had seen the tape when you were down in London at the start of the month. She was freaked out by it by the way, but what she did say was that the fun came through in most of the shoots. We all know you, and all three of us can make you blush with minimal effort. But what Leslie said she saw most of all was discipline. More than anything else in your entire life you have iron self-discipline. Your promise to Faith instilled this relentless drive, we just talked about it, but even more it is the discipline to not just talk a good game but to have the follow through. How many people, male or female, have sat at the pub on a Friday night and bragged about how they could do something, pick anything you want, be it modelling, acting, sport, playing football for whatever team. It had just been Leslie and I at the start of the conversation but Julian came home and sat and listened and he was the one who put it best. He used himself as the example. He could not do what you were doing in a million years. And that was just the whole thing of being naked in a studio, never mind being photographed, being filmed, all the people around. It is an odd thing to say, an odd way to look at it, but it takes huge self-control to not only do that but look happy at the same time.”

“I was called a chameleon.”

“Exactly. Look, you have to decide if you want to carry on modelling, even if it is only occasionally. But I know that we like listening to the stories. Will you bring the tape back at Easter and let me see it?”

“Sure.”

Suzanne squirmed round in Andrew’s lap and they made out with an inevitable reaction. As his hands roamed over her back he felt the straps of the playsuit, someone was prepared for action. He went to the toilet and popped into the bedroom before returning to the living room. Suzanne was trying not to smile in triumph when he started to undress her. She wasn’t succeeding but she was trying. But her smile faded when Andrew unbuckled the playsuit at the neck and middle of her back and helped her step out of it. He spun her round and patted her bottom.

“There is naughty and scandalous, but what is beyond that?”

Andrew could hear her sharp intake of breath. Her hand was trembling as he led her out of the living room but instead of the front bedroom, cold, empty and nothing but a huge walk-in closet for Suzanne, he led her through to their room. There lying on the bed was the original corset he had bought back in Hamburg two years previously. Suzanne turned and he could feel the emotion and tension ebb out of her as he held her in his arms.

“Devil”

Nothing but a tiny whisper. Andrew sat on the end of the bed while Suzanne stood between his legs and held the corset as he went through the time consuming process of lacing it up. The first pass did not take too long but the labour of love was tightening each individual eyelet so that it hugged her hips before drawing her waist in. The top third was always looser as it helped highlight her bust. By the time he was done she looked fantastic and he needed relief, not that it was going to take long. Suzanne had folded her arms behind her back as he tightened the corset, unconsciously he thought, and so after Andrew stripped he took the two wrist cuffs and buckled them on. The first click as the wrist cuff was clipped to the back of the corset produced such a change in her. Some combination of peace and happiness. The echo of the second click was still in the air when she sank to her knees. He was 14 all over again, her happiness combined with the visual of her body it was embarrassing how quickly he came. And Suzanne never took her eyes off him, just radiating such wanton sexual excess.

Andrew helped her to her feet before going to another drawer and picking up the two soft floggers. He walked round the bed and leaned back against the headboard, before watching Suzanne clamber awkwardly onto the bed and knee walk closer. She just fell forward between his legs and rather than let her continue to struggle he helped her edge up the bed before she once again starting blowing him. Imagine the view. Suzanne’s blonde hair in his lap, her talented tongue rejuvenating him, but then her body, squeezed and encased in the black corset, her hips and arse flared out magnificently in front of him. The swish of the floggers was almost a breath of wind, a sigh on the breeze. But the response it drew from Suzanne was a real sigh. Once he was hard Andrew helped her get into position and as she sank down on him her eyes closed and a groan of such contentment escaped her lips. They just sat there for a minute savouring the moment. Using only one flogger it swished across her bum. It was a profoundly moving moment. Need, desire, joy, contentment, they were all there in her face. It was a disturbingly calm vision.

It was the last calm moment for quite a while. For someone who was submissive Suzanne sure was demanding that night. And she was clipped and restrained the whole time. Normally doggy was by far the best position with her, the visuals were impossible to resist, but that night for the third and final time Andrew had her bent in half, arms still behind her back and he could look at her and kiss her and still just pound away. The harder he fucked Suzanne the more blissful her expression. For a minute or two they were in a feedback loop. He struggled to describe it. He didn’t know how he could describe the situation where Suzanne got happier and more turned on the harder he jack-hammered away. It was sexual athletics, His abs were killing him, the muscles in his arse were killing him, and goodness only knows what his heartrate was doing. An intensity that Andrew could only maintain for minutes. And yet when he unclipped Suzanne and she lay along him she purred against his chest. They were shattered and fell asleep within minutes.

That Tuesday morning was one of the days where they had to shower before they swam as well as after. Andrew had missed swimming and swam for a long time, no pace to his strokes but just enjoying the inevitable calmness that swimming produced. Suzanne left to shower at the flat but he swam for a while longer. But his shower was always quick and Suzanne was only just dressed herself when he returned to the flat. She moulded herself against him and they kissed for a long time.

“You were so calm last night and yet I felt totally helpless the whole time. I had been horny thinking about you returning for a whole day. I had been wearing the playsuit since Sunday evening. And then when you just so matter of factly took it off. I really thought that you were going to make me sleep in the big cold bed. And then the corset and the floggers. I had no control, no clue what was going to happen next.”

Suzanne kissed him again.

“It was wonderful, thank you.”

They sat and had some breakfast.

“I just realised you flew home. Is the car in London?”

“Yes, I put it in the garage at the house.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I talked to Leslie when she was down two weeks ago. She is letting me borrow my old car for the two weeks that I am here. I think she wants an excuse to drive the Jag. You said you saw her last week.”

“Yes, I had my first Trustee’s meeting. I was nervous beforehand but there were no issues. It was really fascinating to watch Doug and Leslie when they get going. Julian winked at me and whispered to watch this. Do they always do that?”

“Now and again, less than when we first started. I think the two of them now have these discussions without Julian and me around.”

“It was great to contribute formally for the first time.”

“When do we have to be at your parents?”

“6.00 should be fine. I am going into town to meet Mary Jones, it is a crazy day to be in the city so I am going to head off soon. Are you going to visit your grandmother?”

“No, that is tomorrow, she has a Christmas lunch with her church today. I am going to go and talk computing with Julian. And I will get the car from Leslie. Say hi to Mary for me, I don’t think I have seen her since my party.”

“I tell her an edited version of your life when we meet up. If there are others there then I hold off. It is just the two of us today.”

“You know that you are welcome to have anyone here. Other than Vanessa I can’t remember you ever bringing someone to the flat.”

“I know, don’t worry about it.”

Andrew walked down to the offices, said hi to everyone and popped his head round Elspeth’s door.

“Boxing Day still good?”

She nodded looking excited.

“Any themes?”

Her smile got even wider.

“More of the same. Lots of Ursula showing off, getting caught up in the moment, revelling in the idea that men want to pay to see her naked. You know the usual.”

Andrew burst out laughing.

“You are incorrigible.”

She nodded.

“I have bought a couple more bikinis, that are even smaller than the last one. I don’t even know if the top will contain the girls. Oh, and I have been practicing with second of my three presents.”

Andrew took a second to understand. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. Elspeth was shivering in excitement. They sorted out the logistics and then Andrew left her to her dirty dreams. Hmmm.

By 10.00 he and Julian were working away on the revisions to AIMS. The key changes were additional fields and for those fields to be able to store longer strings of text. But underlying that they were working on an updated database structure that would allow better searching and sorting. He had created the two programs for the photography business but this was a different matter entirely. One of the nearby pubs was open and they grabbed a quick bite to eat before returning to the office, making a good start of writing the new code They broke at 4.00 to talk about the business.