A Talent for Surrender Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  By the same author:

  Dedication

  A Talent for Surrender

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407083865

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  This book is a work of fiction.

  In real life, make sure you practise safe, sane and consensual sex.

  First published in 2007 by

  Nexus

  Thames Wharf Studios

  Rainville Rd

  London W6 9HA

  Copyright © Madeline Bastinado 2007

  The right of Madeline Bastinado to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  www.nexus-books.com

  Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  The paper used in this book is a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing process conforms to the regulations of the country of origin.

  ISBN 978 0 352 34135 8

  Distributed in the USA by Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Sadie extended one leg, lifted her foot and placed it directly under Dan’s nose. ‘Kiss my foot.’ Sadie’s voice was clear and imperious. Dan leaned forwards and pressed his lips to the top of her boot. He could smell the leather and a hint of something grittier and unpleasant. She pushed him away with her foot, forcing him back on his heels.

  It wasn’t a violent movement, yet the force behind it took his breath away and shocked him to his core. ‘The sole . . . a worthless trainee slave like you is only worthy to kiss the sole of my boot.’

  He leaned forwards and rubbed his lips against the dirty leather, kissing it as tenderly and eagerly as he might a pair of cherished lips. The leather felt rough and dirty against his skin. He could feel his cheeks burning.

  By the same author:

  THE ART OF SURRENDER

  For my friend

  Martin Tordoff

  1953–2007

  Always in my heart

  One

  Jo Lennox sat back in her chair with her feet up on the desk. Her discarded panties lay on the top of the in-tray. Her legs were spread wide and she’d hooked her stiletto heels under the desk’s polished mahogany edge. The phone was cradled between her ear and her shoulder.

  ‘Tell me what you’re doing now, Costas . . .’ Her voice was soft and throaty. Her index finger began to tease her clit. Her nipples ached.

  ‘My mouth is clamped over your cunt. I can taste you. Hot breath gushes out of my nostrils. You can feel my beard stubble scratching your skin.’

  ‘I begin to rock my hips, rubbing my crotch against your face.’ The final word rushed out in a hissing gush.

  ‘I match your rhythm. My fingers pull your lips apart. Every little lap of my tongue makes you gasp and moan. My cock is on fire.’

  Jo’s nipples tingled with excitement, standing out against her pale skin, hard and dark.

  ‘You are so wet and slippery. Your cunt tastes divine. I want so much to make you come. I suck your clit into my mouth and run my tongue over the sensitive tip.’

  Her back was arched, her legs rigid. Her crotch burned. ‘I’m rubbing myself against your mouth, my hips are pumping,’ Jo whispered into the phone.

  ‘My cock is so hard it’s painful; I want to touch it, but I manage to control myself. I slide two fingers into you.’

  ‘I moan as they slip inside.’ Her voice was ragged and breathless.

  ‘I move my fingers in and out. I know you’re getting close.’

  Jo pressed her feet against the edge of her desk. Her chest heaved. She pictured Costas in his suit and tie, crouching under her desk, his mouth clamped over her aching cunt.

  ‘Your clit is dancing in my mouth. I look up and I can see your nipples, thick and erect, pointing at the ceiling,’ Costas whispered.

  ‘Yes . . . yes. I’m wound up with excitement. I’m going to come any second.’ A tear of sweat ran down between her breasts.

  ‘Your legs are rigid. Your hips are pumping, grinding your hot crotch against my eager face. Can you feel that?’

  ‘I can . . . I’m nearly there.’ Jo’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I slide two fingers into your arsehole and suck on your clit.’

  ‘I’m . . . coming.’ Jo pressed her soles against the edge of the desk. She was panting and gasping. She was quivering all over.

  ‘I can feel you coming. You’re gripping my fingers so hard it almost hurts me.’

  ‘Your cock is aching, trapped and painful. You want to fuck me, but you know it’s not allowed.’ Jo spoke in a rapid, short burst. Her hips pumped, rubbing her clit against her fingers, wringing out every shred of orgasm.

  ‘So I suck your cunt. I eat your orgasm. I can taste it. It’s all I want, for you to come in my mouth . . .’ Costas’s voice was hungry and urgent.

  Her body was rigid. Lightning bolts of excitement jolted up and down her spine. Jo howled at the ceiling, her back arched and her legs locked.

  The corridor smelled of polish overlaid with the faint but unmistakable aroma of school dinners. Dan’s chair was slightly too small and his knees jutted almost to his chin. He felt foolish and gangly.

  The floor was buffed to a high shine. Dan remembered his schoolboy self taking a run down a very similar corridor and allowing his momentum to carry him on so that he slid around the corner like an ice skater.

  The stunt once earned him a trip to the headmaster’s office and a week’s worth of detention. Maybe that was why it felt so uncomfortable to find himself sitting outside the head’s office again. Not nervous exactly, but definitely unsettled.

  Not that he expected Jo Lennox to be as scary as his old headmaster; she probably had less nose hair, for a start. From what he’d heard, Ms Lennox was a far less forbidding and distant headteacher than those he’d known as a boy. She was a woman anyway, and the fairer sex had been distinctly thin on the ground in public schools in those days.

  A pupil came down the corridor, a backpack da
ngling listlessly from one shoulder. His shoes were scuffed, his trouser bottoms covered in mud. He plonked himself down beside Dan. He sat there quietly for a minute, elbows on knees and chin on his hands. Dan smiled at him.

  ‘Are you somebody’s dad?’ The lad’s voice was breaking, wobbly and cracked.

  ‘No, I’m just here to see Ms Lennox. Are you somebody’s dad?’

  The boy shot Dan the kind of look only teenagers are capable of, intended to convey pity, contempt, boredom and a sort of world-weary disenchantment with the adult world.

  ‘Lofty Leighton caught me smoking in the science store cupboard and he hit the roof. He said there were flammable chemicals in there and I could have started a fire.’

  ‘I suppose he’s got a point.’

  The boy gave Dan the look again. ‘Can you smell smoke? Can you hear fire engines?’

  The door opened and a tall blonde woman stepped into the corridor. She smiled at Dan. If this was Ms Lennox, she was nothing like his old headmaster. Her hair was long and shiny, the front pulled back and held in a clip behind her head. Her eyes were green and sparkling and her lips were shining with red gloss.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind waiting a bit longer, Mr Elliot. I just need to have a few words with Josh here. It shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Dan was surprised his voice sounded normal, because ever since she’d appeared his heart had been beating double time. The undersized chair and his jutting knees made him feel foolish and wrong-footed.

  ‘Come into my office, Josh.’ She pushed the door and held it open, her arm outstretched.

  Josh sighed, picked up his backpack and loped into her office as if the whole experience was unutterably boring. He passed under Ms Lennox’s arm, and Dan realised that she was exceptionally tall for a woman.

  In the couple of seconds it took for Josh to enter the room, Dan took the opportunity to sneak a look at her body. Curvy but not fat, with more than a glimpse of cleavage on display. His eyes travelled down her torso and he noticed the womanly curve of her belly, the long slope of her thighs and shapely calves clad in what he was fairly certain were old-fashioned seamed nylon stockings; he could see the telltale shaping at the heel. She wore black suede stilettos that looked like something out of a forties movie.

  When his eyes reached her face again Dan realised that she was looking directly at him. She raised one immaculate eyebrow, the tiny gesture managing to convey both disapproval and amusement and he felt instantly guilty. Before he had a chance to apologise, she’d disappeared through the door.

  Five minutes later, the door banged open and Josh let himself into the corridor.

  ‘She says she’ll be out for you in a minute, OK?’ He shrugged his shoulders as if the message he’d been asked to convey was both boring and embarrassing.

  ‘Thanks. How did you get on?’

  ‘She confiscated my fags and told me off. She’s not bad really.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Josh shrugged again. ‘She could hardly give me detention on the last day of term could she? There were only a couple left in the packet anyway, and I’ve got two hundred in my backpack; my dad gets them duty free. I can make quite a bit selling them in the dorm. Don’t tell her that though, will you?’ For a moment Josh looked like the frightened child he was, all bravado gone.

  ‘Tell her what?’ Dan winked.

  Josh smiled and hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder. ‘You’re not bad either.’ He gave Dan a wave and ran down the corridor. As he approached the corner he stuck out his hands to steady himself and executed a perfect slide, disappearing out of sight.

  Jo sat at her desk reading through the long letter Dan had sent her. Actually, it was the second letter; she’d got her assistant to reply to the first, saying she didn’t think it appropriate to allow him to make a film about her school and she’d assumed that would be the end of it.

  A week later she’d received another letter explaining in more detail why he thought Hall Croft would make an ideal subject and assuring her of the purity of his motives. It sounded straightforward enough and she might even have been interested if it hadn’t been Dan Elliot making the request. His documentaries always had a hidden agenda.

  Jo was sceptical by nature and, given Dan’s reputation, she found it hard to take his letter at face value. She hadn’t even bothered to reply, but Dan had followed it up with a phone call several days later and had been so charming and courteous that she’d finally agreed to meet him.

  From their chat on the phone and their brief exchange outside her office he didn’t seem what she had expected. He was handsomer in the flesh; more manly and well groomed. On screen he always came across as slightly dishevelled, as if he’d got ready in a hurry. Another aspect of his façade, she assumed.

  She got up and went to the door. Dan turned to look at her as it opened and, for a moment, he looked up into her eyes. Because of his low chair Jo could almost imagine he was kneeling at her feet. His head was tilted back slightly to meet her gaze and the expression in his eyes was of naked adoration. Either that or wishful thinking on her part, but either way her nipples grew hard and sensitive inside her bra and an icy tingle, like Jack Frost’s fingertips, slid up her spine.

  Dan picked up his laptop bag and got to his feet. His body seemed to uncoil, as if he’d had to fold himself up to fit in the chair, then Jo found herself looking up at him. He was uncommonly tall and slender. He stuck out his hand and she shook it. His grip was firm yet sensitive. She hated it when men felt the need to prove their strength by crushing your fingers when they shook hands.

  ‘Pleased to meet you properly at last, Mr Elliot. You’re very tall.’

  Dan laughed and Jo noticed that he had even white teeth.

  ‘Yes I am, though I was just thinking the same about you. Not as tall as me, of course, but pretty tall for a woman.’

  ‘Yes. It’s a very uncommon experience for me to have to look up at a man. But it’s a welcome change, I assure you. A constant vista of bald spots and dandruff does tend to pall after a while.’

  ‘Well, if nothing else, I’ve been able to provide you with a refreshing change of view.’

  ‘Shall we go through to my office?’ Jo held the door open.

  Dan whistled as he walked into the room. ‘This is impressive. Not at all what I imagined. Very Victorian and imposing. You can imagine Matthew Arnold’s study at Rugby looking like this, can’t you?’

  Jo sat down behind her desk and gestured for Dan to take the chair opposite.

  ‘Yes, it was like this when I took over and it seemed a crime to change it. And, to tell you the truth, I think the old-world formality works in my favour. Kids daren’t lie to me in a room like this.’

  ‘I know how they feel. Do you know, when I was waiting for you outside I felt fourteen again? Instantly in the wrong and expecting a caning.’

  ‘I’m sorry, the Education Authority no longer allow me to oblige you on that score.’ Jo smiled. ‘You went to public school, of course?’

  ‘Of course? Is it that obvious?’

  ‘I think so. There’s something about that deliberate, bumbling charm you project on screen. Somehow you have to have had a public-school education to pull it off, because there’s actually a lot of confidence and privilege underneath it. Sort of like Hugh Grant. He can afford to look a fool because underneath it all he knows he’s quite a catch.’

  Dan looked at her silently for a long moment and Jo knew he was weighing her up. She noticed that behind his fashionably slim-line glasses he had bright-blue eyes. The knowing intelligence she saw there belied the calculated boyishness of his appearance.

  ‘You’re right. When I’m working I deliberately cultivate awkwardness. If my subjects see me as a little bit innocent, there’s no threat and they’re much more likely to open up. That’s the theory, anyway, but I must admit it’s a bit strange sometimes because how I come across on film doesn’t represent who I am at all and that can take some getting us
ed to. Do you know what I mean?’

  Jo nodded. ‘I do. In fact I often have a rather similar thought about myself. I put on a professional persona at work but it’s not necessarily who I am. Not entirely who I am, anyway. It can be very unsettling when the way you look doesn’t accord with the way you are.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you are a Janus too?’

  ‘Janus? I can’t place the name.’

  ‘Roman God. The month of January is named after him; he had two faces. I named my production company after him.’

  ‘Of course, I knew it sounded familiar.’

  ‘Actually, I feel as though I’m giving away all my trade secrets. Probably not a good thing when I’m trying to get you to agree to make a film with me.’

  ‘Yes, I must admit, that is my main concern. I mean . . . your films are never about what they say they are, are they? There’s always a secret subtext. You don’t hoodwink your subjects exactly – after all, they know your reputation before they agree to it – but there is an element of deception, isn’t there? You always manage to get them to reveal more than they intend to, or something they hadn’t intended to. You can understand my reluctance I’m sure.’

  Jo looked at Dan as she spoke. His hair shone in the light and there was a slight shadow of stubble visible on his jawline. She bet he was one of those men who had to shave twice a day otherwise he ran the risk of looking like his namesake Desperate Dan. His eyes were remarkable; the same shade of blue as cornflowers and shining with wit and insight.

  ‘You make it sound manipulative and . . . I don’t know . . . rather dishonest?’

  ‘Of course it is. And you know it. You can’t tell me that you consciously play the innocent and then expect that act to work on me.’ Jo thought she saw a momentary flash of emotion in Dan’s eyes, shame possibly or alarm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms Lennox. It’s become something of a habit but, as you’ve been direct with me, I owe you the courtesy of responding in kind.’

  ‘Please, call me Jo. Ms Lennox is the persona I put on during the day, my mask if you like. Out of office hours I’m just Jo.’