The handcuffs were Carol’s idea. The one, sure-fire way to make sure that I really had a memorable night down at The Spider’s Web.
It had also been her idea that we go there in the first place, and that we should invite the most gorgeous man in the world, Greg Watson.
I’d been more than a little dubious. True, my lust for Greg Watson was probably the worst-kept secret at Mainline recording studio. I’d fallen for him the moment he’d wandered into reception and deposited his beaten-up guitar case on the floor. He was my idea of perfection: in his early thirties, a little over average height, with a lean figure, fine blond hair that hung down past his shoulders and eyes the soft grey of the sky over Lake Windermere. The silence in the reception area had been so profound, if you’d listened closely, you would have heard me drooling.
That had been four months ago. Four long months in which I’d performed all the tasks for Greg’s band that were an integral part of my job as a receptionist. Not only did I take messages and fend unwanted phone calls, I made endless cups of tea and coffee, I fetched takeaways when recording sessions stretched out late into the night and I provided plasters for bruised and bleeding fingers. My proudest moment had been stopping a fist fight between the drummer and the producer, both of whom towered a good foot over me.
Throughout all this, Greg had invariably been charming towards me, and the nicer he was, the more I pined over him. There was now a swear box on my desk, to which I was forced to contribute ten pence every time I mentioned Greg’s name. One memorable morning, at the height of a mini-heatwave, when he’d turned up in a pair of cycling shorts, I’d had to cough up the grand total of one pound forty – seventy pence for each thigh.
And still he was nice to me, and still I lusted after him, and still absolutely nothing happened between us.
It was Carol, the owner of the studio and my long-suffering boss, who eventually decided that the situation needed to be manipulated to bring Greg and I together. Her fortieth birthday was in a week’s time, the same day as the next Spider’s Web, and she suggested we go there to celebrate.
Carol was very much into the fetish scene, and she would often stagger in mid-morning after a wild night at one or another club, regaling me with tales of outrageous debauchery while I plied her hangover with black coffee and analgesic tablets. I’ve never been turned on by the thought of pain and all the little rituals that go on in a place like that, but part of me secretly hankered after the idea of dressing up in some fabulously kinky outfit. The Spider’s Web, Carol assured me, was far more a rock club with fetish overtones than an all-out whipping and spanking parlour, and I’d love it.
‘But I don’t have anything to wear,’ I said, wondering how I was going to afford a new outfit the same month that my TV licence was due for renewal and my elderly Fiat Panda was about to attempt to struggle through its MOT.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got loads of stuff you can borrow,’ Carol replied. ‘I’ll hunt through and find something that used to fit me when I was thin.’
It all sounded very tempting; she’d almost got me to agree to go, and then she dropped the bombshell.
‘By the way, I was thinking of asking Greg and the others along,’ she said casually.
‘I’d have thought they’d be too busy,’ I replied. The deadline for delivery of the finished tapes to their record company was fast approaching, and they were spending more and more time in the studio and less and less time socialising.
She smiled. ‘Well, I’ll tell them if they don’t come along, they’ll just have to go somewhere else to finish the album.’
‘Even if they do go,’ I said doubtfully, ‘it won’t be as though I’ll even see Greg for most of the evening. You know what he’s like around women. He’s just a professional flirt. And with all those beautiful girls there in their skimpy outfits, he won’t even look at me.’
‘I’ve thought of that, too. I’m going to get a pair of handcuffs and lock you both together. And then he’ll have no choice in the matter.’
At the time, I thought Carol was joking. I continued to think so when we met up with Greg, Paul, the band’s lead singer and Andy, the bass player, in a little pub in Greenwich. The Spider’s Web was a moveable feast, and this month it had settled in an old warehouse on the Isle of Dogs. Carol and I were causing quite a stir among the pub’s rather sedate clientele in our fetish gear. She was wearing a red latex catsuit which appeared to have been varnished on to her curvy figure, and was balanced confidently on high heels which would have given me altitude sickness. She’d load me an ornate basque which had miraculously given me a cleavage, and a tiny PVC miniskirt which had had all the male eyes in the pub glued to my slender legs as we walked in.
Paul and Andy were dressed in their usual rock ‘n’ roll flash, all snakeskin trousers, fringed suede jackets and hats which made them look as though they were auditioning for a part in Young Guns. Greg, who was normally fairly conservative in his dress – apart from the cycling shorts – was wearing skintight leather trousers and a sleeveless leather jacket underneath which he was bare-chested. I could have taken him into a quiet corner and devoured him inch by inch.
Carol, already slightly the worse for drink, greeted them with a noisy kiss. ‘I didn’t think you were going to make it,’ she said. ‘We’ve just got time for a swift pint and then it’s off to dance the night away.’
In the twenty minutes it took to order a round and drain our glasses, it became fairly obvious that my worst fears about Greg’s behaviour would be proved right. While Carol and I chatted to Paul and Andy, he roamed the bar, flirting with every available woman in the place.
Carol noticed my worried expression. ‘It’s okay, Lorna, he’s not going to go off with any of them.’
‘I know,’ I replied with more conviction than I felt, ‘but this does nothing for my ego.’
‘Poor Lorna, you’ve really got it bad, haven’t you? Never mind, your Aunty Carol will see you right.’ And with that, she smiled enigmatically and rattled her handbag. Something clanked ominously in its depths and I suddenly realised what she was planning. This was not going to be a night I would forget in a hurry.
* * * *
The Spider’s Web was a revelation. What was normally a derelict warehouse had been transformed into a vibrant club, loud rock music pounding out into the deserted Docklands night. A couple of hundred partygoers were already displaying their fetish plumage; leather-clad dominatrix types mingled alongside men dressed much like Greg and the boys in their rock ‘n’ roll finery. I could see Greg’s eyes were virtually out on stalks at the sight of so many women in underwear that would make the average Marks and Spencer lingerie department mannequin look positively overdressed.
Carol ushered us to the bar, carefully steering Greg away from a statuesque blonde in a fishnet body stocking and suspenders. She attempted to ask him what he wanted to drink, but his whole body language suggested a greyhound about to leap from his trap in pursuit of the mechanical rabbit. We’d only been in the place five minutes and his behaviour was already beginning to wind me up. There were too many distractions for me to ever have a serious conversation with him, and my lust seemed destined to remain unrequited.
Then Carol took charge.
‘I’ve got to go to the powder room,’ she announced. ‘You will be here when I get back, won’t you, Greg?’ Without waiting for him to answer, she continued, ‘Of course you will. This will make sure.’
Before Greg had realised what she was doing, she’d whipped the handcuffs from her bag and fastened one of the bracelets round his right wrist. The other, she clipped round my left.
‘Look after him, Lorna,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him getting into any trouble.’
Then she was gone, sashaying elegantly through the crowd, leaving Greg and I staring at her departing latex-clad back open-mouthed. He looked down at the handcuffs in disbelief.
‘Did you know anything about this?’he asked.
‘She did threaten,’ I replied, ‘but I really thought she was joking. She thought you and I should spend more time together.’ I tugged at the manacles hopefully, but they were secure. ‘Are you going to kill her, or shall I?’
‘Not until we’ve got the key off her. Come on.’ With that, Greg set off in the general direction that Carol had taken. This was the moment that we discovered the drawback of being chained together in the middle of a crowd; no one looks down at your hands, so they have no idea that you’re joined at the wrist. Therefore, they simply attempt to walk through the gap you appear to be able to make for them. We couldn’t move more than three or four yards without either Greg or I walking slap-bang into some solid expanse of chest or another. By the time I’d got my nose wedged between a pair of fiercely realistic silicone breasts and Greg had mealy lost a contact lens on the end of a dangling earring, we decided the best thing to do was make out we were actually holding hands and progress in Indian file.
There was no sign of Carol; after two slow circuits of the dancefloor, we realised she had done a more comprehensive vanishing act than Lord Lucan. We saw Pete and Andy languishing by the bar; the moment we decided not to alert them to our presence was the the exact moment they ambled over, pints in hand.
Greg whipped his hand behind his back, dragging mine with it, but he was not quite quick enough. Andy peered round to see what we were hiding.
‘What’s this?’ he snorted. ‘Have the police caught up with you at last, eh, Greg? Got you for being in possession of offensive dress sense?’
‘Nah,’ Pete said, ‘I reckon they’re auditioning for a remake of The Thirty-nine Steps.’
‘It was Carol’s idea of a joke,’ Greg replied, tight-lipped, knowing as well as I did that this would be all round Mainline the following morning. Pete and Andy looked at each other, then burst into an a capella rendition of Chain Of Fools.
‘We’ll see you later,’ Greg muttered, and hauled me off into the crowd.
‘I hate to tell you this,’ I said as we shuffled through the throng, ‘but I really have to go to the ladies’.’
Greg said nothing, but allowed me to drag him in search of the loo.
‘They’ll never let me in here,’ he said, as I bundled him inside.
‘There are so many drag queens around tonight, this place will be heaving with them,’ I replied.
Fortunately, there was no queue; just a stack-heeled transvestite doing a quick make-up repair job. I made for the nearest cubicle, and then the logistics of the situation hit me. The handcuff chain was far too short to allow Greg to stand outside while I used the loo. Either I took him in with me, or I crossed my legs for the rest of the evening.
He looked at me; I looked at him. We both knew exactly what the other was thinking. Eventually, I said, ‘Look, just close your eyes or something,’ and hauled him into the cubicle.
He compromised by turning his back on me, but all the time I sat there, my face flushing scarlet, I contemplated interesting ways in which I was going to murder Carol when we finally got our hands on her.
‘Perhaps we should find out if anyone’s got the number of a good locksmith,’ I suggested as we left the ladies’. ‘Or access to an oxy-acetylene torch.’
‘I think we should just go and have a word with the girl in the cloakroom,’ Greg replied. ‘I get the awful feeling that she may well have buggered off and left us to it.’
This indeed proved to be the case. The gum-chewing, Gothic-haired cloakroom assistant informed us that, yes, a brunette in a red catsuit had left about thirty-five minutes earlier and no, she did not know where she had gone. She glanced down, her attention riveted by our chained wrists, chomped thoughtfully for a few seconds, then announced, ‘You must be the two. She said I was to give you this.’
‘This’ was not the hoped-for key, but a message in Carol’s distinctive copperplate handwriting. ‘Told you I’d bring you closer together. I’ll be at the studio with the key.’
‘Okay, let’s go,’ Greg said.
I reclaimed my jacket from the cloakroom girl and we headed out of the warehouse. A black cab was dropping off a fare as we emerged into the warm July night and we flagged it down. Greg gave the driver the address of the studio and we shuffled awkwardly into the back of the cab. If the driver noticed that we were handcuffed together, he made no comment.
It was a good twenty-minute journey to the studio. Twenty more minutes to spend shackled together like fugitives from a chain gang. So much for Carol’s attempts to bring us closer; Greg and I were sitting as far apart on the smooth leather seat as the handcuffs would allow. After ten minutes of stony silence punctuated only by the chattering of the taxi driver’s radio, I could take it no more.
‘Look, this really isn’t my fault, you know,’ I said. ‘I know you’ve probably had a lousy evening, but I didn’t agree to any of this. It’s not like Carol suggested putting handcuffs on us both and I said, “Oh, goody, yes please!”.’
A fat tear welled up in the corner of my eye and trickled down my carefully made-up cheek. I sniffed and turned my head, but Greg had seen that I was crying.
‘Oh, Lorna, come here.’ He pulled me to him – not that I had much distance to go – and I found my head pressed against his shoulder. The faint smell of leather from his jacket, mingled with the musky aftershave he was wearing, was intoxicating, and I breathed deeply. I had wanted to end the evening in his arms, but not weeping like a silly child.
He was smoothing my hair with his free hand; I looked up and our eyes met, and that was all it took. Suddenly, his mouth was on mine in a heavy, powerful kiss that I had no desire to break away from and his hand was moving down through my tangled curls to stroke the hollow at the base of my throat before snaking down to cup my breast.
By the time the taxi pulled up outside the studio, Greg and I were both breathing heavily and the long outline of his erection was visible against the leather that clung so tautly to his crotch. He paid the driver, then we went to knock on the main door. There was no answer, and the door was firmly locked.
‘What now?’ Greg asked, his voice still smoky with desire.
‘I’ve got a spare key,’ I said, and proceeded to hunt for it while Greg attempted to insinuate his hand into the fabric of my borrowed basque.
We made it no further than the grey suede settee in the reception area before Greg’s hands were on me again, unfastening the front of my basque a little clumsily, hampered by the restriction of the handcuffs and my vague attempts to stop him.
‘What if Carol comes in and sees us?’ I protested.
‘I don’t think it’ll come as a shock to her,’ Greg replied, between kissing my bare breasts enthusiastically. ‘Isn’t this what she wanted, after all? Don’t worry, if she turns up, I won’t ask her to join in.’
Then he pushed me down fully on to the settee, and his mouth was on my breasts again, more insistently this time, his tongue playing across my rapidly-hardening nipples, the warm, wet sensation triggering off a wanting in me lower down, a need I knew would be satisfied before too long.
Greg unzipped my miniskirt and we manoeuvred carefully until I was left lying beside him in my hold-up stockings and a lacy black G-string. He bent his head, his long hair brushing sensuously across the tops of my thighs, and kissed me through the G-string. The tiny scrap of lace worked its way further between my lips as I writhed and squirmed under Greg’s touch, setting up a pleasurable friction against my clitoris.
I could feel his cock, rock-hard against me, and I wanted to return the compliment and take him in my mouth, but I knew the chain on the handcuffs was too short to allow us to get into any fancy positions.
Instead, I broke the clinch long enough to prise Greg out of his trousers. Removing his jacket was out of the question, thanks to the chain again, but I had plenty of access to his lightly furred chest and its flat pink nipples. I took one in my mouth, chewing and teasing the tender flesh, and he grimaced for a moment, then relaxed to the sensation. His clever guitarist’s fingers were suddenly inside my G-string, stroking my wet, delicate lips which were already beginning to open for him, and then he found my clit again and it was all too much. His thumb was deep inside my vagina and I bucked and ground against the pressure of his fingers on my little bud, coming in a short spasm of fierce pleasure.
I let him pull the G-string completely from me, clinging to his jacket while my head cleared, and before I quite knew what was happening, the head of his cock was nudging to enter where his thumb had been. I wrapped my legs tight around him as he inched inside me, then we were moving together, setting up an urgent, vital rhythm as our bodies meshed. He pulled out almost all the way before plunging back inside me again, and I caught a glimpse of his cock, slippery with his own lubrication and mine. I cold hear the handcuff chain clinking as we moved, and it was no longer a restraint to my pleasure at all; it simply added to the feeling that Greg and I were bound together for the duration of this glorious fuck.
This was good, this was better than good. Greg knew exactly what he was doing and I was more turned on than I had ever been, reaching my peak against surprisingly quickly. Greg was close to coming, too; I could hear the change in his breathing and feel the light film of sweat that sheened on his chest and thighs. He called my name as he spasmed inside me, and pressed his head between my breasts.
Somewhere behind us, there was a small clink. We looked up to see a vague shape moving away from the main door, and shuffled over to find out what was going on. Lying on the inner doormat was a small, silver key.
Greg tried it experimentally in the handcuffs. Carol had been as good as her word; it was a perfect fit and we finally slid apart from each other.
‘I was just getting used to those.’ I grinned, adjusting to the unaccustomed lightness of my wrist. ‘Couldn’t we have kept them on for a repeat performance?’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Greg replied, slipping his sweat-stained jacket off his shoulders. ‘How about we take turns in chaining each other to the mixing desk in the studio?’
‘I think that’s the best idea you’ve had all night,’ I said, clasping the handcuffs round his wrists and leading him off to further debauchery.
