Chapter 7: Distraction

Lionel Fairbrother threw the book he was reading to one side. He couldn’t concentrate. A pile of papers – documents that he needed to review for a case at work - sat on the couch beside him, accusingly, waiting for his attention. Lionel pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and stared across at his hi-fi. He blinked. The music had stopped but he wasn’t even sure how long ago. A half drunk cup of coffee stood on a low table in front of the couch. Lionel could see it was cold just by looking at it.

This was worse than the days before a visit to Clerkenwell, he thought, and those were distracting enough. A couple of days ago, he couldn’t have imagined the situation he now found himself in. Yes, he’d noticed Allison. After all she was just the sort of woman he found attractive; self-assured, confident, neatly, if somewhat conservatively dressed. Thinking about it, he could recall three or four of the outfits she regularly wore to the office; conventional suits, sometimes trousers, sober colours but occasionally a bright blouse or top. He had paid more attention to her shoes, though. That, he confessed, was a weakness of his. He knew just which pair she had worn every day for the last week and, of course, the pair she had been wearing on Wednesday. That had been a pair of white and tan court shoes with low heels, the tan leather stitched in contrasting white, the toes slightly rounded. He remembered them well. His job required him to have a good memory but he sometimes surprised himself with the level of detail he could recall about things like this. Still, after all, they had been the only thing he could see from under the desk and they had been the focus of his subsequent fantasies.

All right, maybe he’d fantasised about her a little before that. He’d seen her around the office and he’s cast her in a role in his personal fantasies, just as he had many of the other women that worked there. Now, of course, things had moved on to a different level.

Before seeing the document, he would never have imagined that she really was a dominatrix, only that she fitted his own, particular, take on how one should look. The idea that she had slaves, held under such a contract would have seemed absurd if he hadn’t seen the draft agreement with his own eyes. That had been a revelation, one that he had hardly been able to believe. She had obviously put her experience in the firm to good use – the wording had been authentic, the scope, terms and conditions as well laid out as anything that their legal team would produce normally. The language that she had used was exactly what would be expected in any such document but the requirements placed on the signatory were onerous. The duties were spelled out carefully. The consequences of failure to comply with the agreement were also clearly described. Lionel could imagine himself being forced (well, perhaps not forced really) to submit to such an agreement.

Lionel felt himself led to an inescapable conclusion. Although it seemed extraordinary, for all his fantasising, one of the women he shared an office with was exactly the kind of woman that he desired.

It was an extraordinary piece of fortune, Lionel thought. His own experiences with dominant women had all been through paid encounters with professional dominatrixes, like the one in Clerkenwell. They didn’t need a contract – well at least not one beyond the one implicit in the exchange of cash for services. It had been much easier that way.