Impudent Crimes

by Bertram Fox

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance

Synopsis

An erotic novel set in the 1980's with bdsm, f/f, female submission themes by Bertram Fox.



Party girl Celia wakes up to find a slave collar on her neck and a whole new adventure beginning. The Workshop - Peter the Master, Gabriel the leather dyke, Juno the dominatrix and Jason the sexpert - mean to use their new toy in every way they can. But the Workshop has dangerous enemies, and Celia's adventures get extremely painful before she can rest in the love of her cruel Master.

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 232

Sample

Chapter OneHow Celia Met Her Master and Two Mistresses.

Slavery holds few men fast; the greatest number hold fast their slavery.–Seneca

Celia Leseaux was used to waking in a strange bed after parties. She liked to let herself surface gradually, letting memory drift back, in no hurry to find out how she got there and whether it had been fun.

She didn’t have a hangover, so she must have pulled before she got seriously drunk. But she was sore in more places than she could count, so something must have been rough. On the plus side, she didn’t have the frustrated irritation which was usually part of these wakings: in fact, she realised as she came more awake, she felt better than she could ever recall. There was a blissful contentment with its centre in her belly sending its warmth all through her and making her squirm like a sun-soaked cat.

As she moved she noticed something else, and she brought a hand up to her chin. There was a broad hard band around her throat that had certainly not been there the night before, two fingers high with the smoothness of metal, warm from her skin. It had grooves in the front and rings as big as half a penny at the sides.

She sat up and stared.

She was nestled in the covers of a large brass-framed bed, which she seemed to recall had some unusual attachments that didn’t show. The bedroom was large and furnished with old mahogany pieces which gave it a comfortable background scent of polished wood. The curtains were open to the late morning sun, but the window was covered with a stained-glass pattern of coloured and textured plastic that turned the houses opposite into meaningless blurs. There was no sign of the clothes she had worn, but she saw a dressing table and bounced across to it.

At the mirror she hesitated, overcame it so automatically that an observer would not have seen the pause, and faced her reflection with an equally automatic thought of you’re fat. A man would have used terms like “plump” or “zaftig”, or possibly “Phwoar!”. But most men don’t call a woman fat until her waist is wider than her hips, an attitude that baffles Venus.

The thing around her neck was a collar of stainless steel with a D-ring on each side and engraved letters at the front. She bent closer to the mirror, deciphering the reversed script word by word, her mouth opening slowly wider. The inscription under her chin said:

SLAVE CELIA BELONGS TO MASTER & MISTRESS WORKSHOP

Oh, shit. He’d really meant it.

She straightened, still staring at her reflection, and it struck her that the hard gleaming band at her throat made her naked body look very soft and vulnerable. For a moment the usual message fat stupid carrot-head didn’t register: she saw red-gold hair and lush curves of pink and cream, a girl someone had wanted enough to claim for his property. She snorted and tugged at the collar in annoyance, and leant forward again to study the join under her ear.

‘Forget it,’ said Peter behind her. ‘There’s only one key to that lock, and I’ve got it.’

She met his eyes in the mirror, helpless between outrage and laughter. ‘You ... you take an awful lot for granted, don’t you?’

‘I’m usually right.’ He was dressed in what must be working clothes, jeans largely made of patches and a T-shirt patterned with oil and paint, but he looked as hot as the night before. His eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘I told you a job had got you. Is there anybody besides your aunt you’ll need to tell?’

‘You know an awful lot, too. Did I tell you the story of my life?’

‘We have ways of making you talk.’ He reached past her and ran delicate fingers up the fronts of her thighs, and she shivered. ‘Will Eric have taken your coat and things home?’

‘For goodness sake,’ she said breathlessly, holding the edge of the table and watching his hand in the mirror as it disappeared into her curls, ‘how am I supposed to think when you’re doing that?’

‘Practice,’ he told her. ‘A sensualist has to be able to think at both ends of her spine, like a dinosaur. Will your aunt worry if you don’t come back and pick up some luggage? Quick!’ He swatted her bent bottom with his unoccupied hand, and she jumped.

‘Eek! Yes, yes, she always worries about me, but I expect I can calm her down if I promise to call round soon, golly, how many fingers have you got?’ She sank on to her elbows and clutched her breasts as though they hurt. ‘Eric will have said I went without him – I’ll tell her – ask her – please, don’t stop!’ She half fell on the tabletop, scattering a couple of hairbrushes.

‘Please what?’ He pinned her down with a hand between her shoulders, the other hand holding her a fraction short of ecstasy.

‘Please, sir.’ Her fingers clawed at her collar. ‘Please, Master …’ She tugged at the unyielding steel. ‘Oh, MASTER!’ Her legs gave way and she lay gasping.

‘Attagirl,’ said Peter, drying his hand on his jeans. ‘Pick up those things, and you can meet the rest of the gang.’ He opened a drawer.

‘Yessah,’ muttered Celia uncertainly, crouching to scrabble under the table for a hairbrush. As she came up with them there was a small click below her left ear, and she looked round. Peter had just clipped a chain leash to her collar.

He met her frightened eyes and smiled.

‘Don’t worry, Ginger Puss,’ he said softly, taking her shoulders. ‘You belong here in the Workshop, it says so on your collar. And –’ he jerked a thumb at the obscured window panes – ‘we have that stuff up wherever it matters.’ He kissed her, and it occurred to her that he smelt as wholesome now as he had the night before; working clothes they might be, but he did not kipper them in smoke or leave sweat to dry on them. After a long gentle moment he said, ‘OK?’

She smiled uncertainly. She had no idea why she should feel reassured, but she did. ‘Yes … Master,’ she heard herself say.

‘That’s more like it. But we’ll just make sure.’ He stepped past her and opened the dressing-table drawer. ‘Hands behind your back.’

‘Yes, Master.’ He chuckled, and cold metal closed on her wrists. She looked back at the mirror, and exchanged a shaky smile with her leashed and handcuffed reflection before she was led from the room.

The Workshop’s house was laid out in Victorian style with gentry and servants’ sides, and it was down a narrow lino-covered backstairs that Peter led her, saying cheerfully ‘Morning, girls!’ as he stepped off the bottom stair. Celia tried to hesitate, but the pull on her collar was relentless; she had the choice of walking or falling headlong. She stepped into the room and looked around.

They were in a long neat cream-walled kitchen, fitted with modern white cupboards but keeping a quarry-tiled floor and a big china sink under the frosted-glass window. At the pine table a massive woman was scowling at her over a mug of coffee. She wore a glossy black leather suit with spike-heeled boots and many studs and buckles, dark hair falling over her shoulders; it was as if the original Avengers’ Emma Peel had grown middle-aged and burly without changing her style. Celia flinched from her glare and looked at the other person.

Presumably this one was female too, though with her back to them her loose blue trousers and purple sports jacket made her shape a matter of guesswork. She was very small and slender with a platinum-blonde crew cut, and wore shoes with six-inch heels in a style that was either thirty years out of date or six months ahead of the fashion, which brought her to almost average height as she stood at the cooker supervising a large frying pan.

Peter looked at Celia’s expression, and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Ginger Puss,’ he repeated. ‘This …’ he strode to the table, and Celia perforce followed, ‘… is June, known to her clients as Mistress Juno, and she’s nothing like as fearsome as she looks. The gear is working clothes, and she never hurts anyone unless they pay her to.’

‘Don’t you believe it, girlie,’ said June with a metallic Cockney accent. ‘You wake me at two in the morning again and I’ll hurt you buckshee. I mean it, Pete, she’s got a scream like a bleedin’ glass cutter.’

‘Has she?’ said Peter, unabashed. ‘I didn’t notice, I must have been thinking about something else. Ginger Puss, remind me to get you a silencer.’

Celia realised her mouth was hanging open, closed it and swallowed. ‘Y-yes, Master. And, and I’m sorry, June. I must have been thinking about something else too.’

June’s mouth twitched unwillingly into a smile. ‘She’ll do, Pete. S’orright, ducks, just don’t do it again. We can’t all get by on four hours a night like yer boss.’ The person at the cooker began to load a plate, and June drained her coffee and stood up. ‘See yer, ducks. Me punter’s not due till ’arf past, but if I watch Gabby filling ’er face I’ll break me diet.’

‘She’s always like that at breakfast time,’ Peter reassured Celia. ‘I wouldn’t be her morning client for all the grass in California, but he likes her nasty so it suits everyone. An hour from now he’ll be too sore to sit down and she’ll be the nicest person you could meet. June says she’ll do, Gabby, what d’you think?’

The other turned to them an elfin face with deep dark eyes that studied Celia appraisingly. A jeweller’s tray of rings and studs flashed around her ears. ‘This is Gabriel,’ said Peter, ‘spelt like the angel but she’s not. She does our costumes and leatherwork, and now you’ve met everyone but Jason. You won’t see him till lunchtime, he sleeps like a bear even if he hasn’t been working late, you could have screamed till the double-glazing cracked and not woken him.’ Gabriel crossed to them, her heels clicking on the tiles. Although she must have been on tiptoe in her extraordinary shoes she moved with practised ease, her slim hips rolling at every step. ‘She’s got a year’s training as a secretary,’ Peter told her, ‘she came for the first time last night, and she calls me “Master” already. Can I pick ’em or can I?’

Gabriel walked slowly around Celia, stopped in front of her again and said in an unexpectedly low voice, ‘She blushes all over, had you noticed, Pete?’ Celia felt herself growing pinker, and bit her lip. The first flush had been of annoyance rather than modesty, for there was nothing prurient in Gabriel’s study; Celia felt more like an animal in a show, and would not have been surprised if Gabriel had put a finger in her mouth to count her teeth. She decided that if so she would bite and face the consequences.

Instead, Gabriel put her cool hands to Celia’s sides and ran her fingertips from her floating ribs to the points of her hips. ‘Got potential,’ she said. ‘How far can you pull in your tummy?’

‘How far can you pull in yours?’ It was not an inspired retort, but Celia badly needed to assert some independence. Peter grinned.

‘You’d be amazed.’ Gabriel dropped into a crouch to run a hand down the back of Celia’s leg. ‘Nice. Do ballet?’

Celia looked down at her in surprise. ‘Not for years.’

‘Legs still in shape, though.’ Her fingers traced the arch of a foot. ‘Never worn platforms, I bet. Smart girl. Ruin your feet and make you walk like Frankenstein.’ Celia flinched, and Gabriel looked up with a twinkle in her dark eyes. ‘What’s it worth not to tell Pete you’ve got ticklish feet?’

‘He found out last night, thanks.’

‘Oh, that’s what that row was? Juno’s right, you need a silencer.’ She stood up. ‘You’ll do, sister. Pete, if you mark that skin I’ll have your nuts for earrings.’ She gave Celia’s bottom a friendly pat and turned back to the stove, adding over her shoulder, ‘I’m done here, coffee’s made. OK?’

‘OK,’ said Peter. He led Celia unresisting to a ringbolt near the stove and tethered her by her collar chain. ‘Hands.’ She turned, and he released one hand, brought them in front of her and secured them again. ‘Right, I’ll have a couple of eggs on toast, and white coffee. Then feed yourself.’ He pulled a chair out from the table and lounged comfortably.

Bemused, Celia moved mechanically to put sliced bread under the grill and light the gas. She hesitated, and Gabriel said, ‘Apron’s over there.’

‘Thanks.’ It had occurred to her that she was not dressed for working with a hot pan. She dropped the apron’s yoke over her collar, but found that with her hands joined she could not bring the waist tapes together behind her back without contortions she did not care to attempt before an audience. Neither of them made any move to help, so she left it; it covered her fairly well anyway.

As the eggs began to sizzle she said to the air, ‘Doctor, I keep having this dream where I’m chained to a stove wearing nothing but an apron – Eek!’

Peter stretched out an arm and pinched her. ‘You’re not dreaming,’ he told her. ‘Where’s my coffee?’

‘That wasn’t fair,’ she said with dignity, finding mugs in a cupboard over the counter. She crouched to the refrigerator for milk rather than tempt him again by bending down.

‘No, but it was fun,’ said Peter unrepentantly, taking a mug from her. Her tether was too short to reach a chair, so she perched one bare hip on the counter, wondering if a dream could be real enough to include both hot coffee and a new bruise on her right buttock.

Gabriel was working her way through a plateful of eggs, bacon and buttered toast that looked enough for a family. She cut an egg in half, forked it on top of a folded rasher of bacon, and still found room in her mouth to say: ‘Time we had a new house slave, it’s been cutting into work. Juno helps, I mean her clients do.’ She bit a quarter out of a slice of toast. ‘Would you believe this floor was scrubbed last by a Town Councillor?’

Celia was quite ready to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but she obligingly looked surprised. ‘Fact,’ said Gabriel. ‘Wearing a silly housemaid’s outfit, with the skirt tucked up so she could lay a cane across his arse if he slowed down. Trouble with them is, they always leave something done wrong. Don’t know why, they’d get the same thrashing anyway, that’s what they’re paying for. Give us another coffee.’

Celia stopped buttering toast long enough to take the mug. She lifted the eggs onto the toast, filled Gabriel’s mug and put it and the plate on the table, and went back to butter some toast for herself.

‘Ta,’ said Gabriel, watching her move. ‘Pete, d’you need her this morning? Only I’ve got some stuff that wants modelling. D’you fancy being photographed for our catalogue, sister?’ she asked Celia. ‘You can wear a mask; I’ve got some great ones.’

‘Golly,’ said Celia. ‘I always wanted to be a fashion model.’

‘You wait till you see what you’re modelling,’ Peter advised. ‘After an hour in tiptoe-trainers you might not be so keen. OK, Gabby, she’s all yours.’ Gabriel wiped her plate with the last of her toast and stood up. ‘But you’ve got a ‘phone call to make, Ginger Puss.’

‘We’ll see to it,’ said Gabriel, reaching for the tether chain. Celia watched with interest. When Peter had unfastened her handcuff it had been behind her back, and she wanted to see how it was done.

On her right hand Gabriel wore a stainless steel ring like Peter’s, with a raised block engraved M&MW. It looked purely decorative, but it fitted a socket in the chain’s clip, and with a twist the clip opened. ‘All right, sister,’ said Gabriel, gathering up the chain, ‘dump your apron and we’ll make you a star.’

‘Besides,’ she added as Celia followed her into the long dim hall they had come through the night before, ‘I like the look of your skin as much as Pete does, but you need something to wear even if it’s only shoes, and your hair’s a wreck. And make-up, I bet he brought you without so much as a lipstick, Pete thinks women are born with make-up on. And have you been to the loo lately?’

‘Um, no,’ Celia admitted, realising that her breakfast coffee was disagreeing with her last night’s drinks. ‘Could you …’

‘Soon as you’ve phoned.’ They turned into a small office with old grey filing cabinets and a green leather-topped desk, a year planner chart and a memo board headed “This Week’s Crisis”. ‘But you see what I mean. Men!’

‘That sounds funny from you,’ said Celia daringly.

‘Because you wouldn’t know if you hadn’t been told? I don’t need to advertise that I belong to the best half of the human race. I know, and if other people don’t that’s their problem. Use the black phone, the red one’s for business.’ She clipped the chain to a bar of the swivel chair, and shut the door as she left the room.

Celia sank onto the chair, jumped slightly at the cold of the plastic seat and settled down, looking at the black telephone. Help, Auntie, she thought, I’m a prisoner in a house full of perverts and sadists, like you told them about in the Public Decency Campaign. I’m sitting here naked with chains on my wrists and a steel collar on my neck, like in that pamphlet about the White Slave Trade you said I shouldn’t read. I’ve been kidnapped and abused and ravished. Save me.

She noticed a small sign above the desk of the kind sold to humorous office workers. In decorative type surrounded by flourishes, it said REMEMBER IT’S ONLY A GAME. She smiled, and made a mental bet as she reached for the telephone that Peter had put it there.

She dialled awkwardly, and held the receiver in both hands rather than leave one hand dangling. ‘Hello, Auntie,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, it’s me ... Yes, I know, I really am dreadfully sorry, I would have rung before but I’ve been really tied up ... Well, it serves Eric jolly well right for taking me there and leaving me. It was just luck I met some super people ... Yes, they’re going to find me a modelling job, you know, like I wanted ... somewhere in town, I’ll come back and get some things ... No of course not, Auntie, I’m not silly you know ... Thanks, Auntie, you are a brick. Cheerio.’

* * *

The room had been a kitchen once, in the days of coal ranges and housemaids. Made redundant by electricity and the Servant Problem, it had been demoted to a storeroom; crates and dust-sheeted furniture around its tiled walls were stacked with crockery, electrical appliances, piles of books and all the lumber of a big house. The additions stood out by their newness – a steel filing cabinet, a video system, a table and chairs.

‘You’ve done well, Captain,’ said the woman at the head of the table. ‘The publicity attending the demise of the K Book Exchange will help our public activities, while the mention of our name will not be missed by those we have approached.’ The fair-haired young man in the grey suit smiled modestly. ‘And at great personal sacrifice,’ she continued, her pursed lips tightening still furt. . .