In Sebastian's Hands
Portia Da Costa
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Portia Da Costa.
This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. With exception of quotes used in reviews, this story may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
Please be aware that this story contains sensual content that is only suitable for adult readers who are comfortable with frank language and descriptions of erotic scenarios
A Walk on the Wild Side Publication - shorter versions of "Life, the Universe and Sebastian" and "It's Time" have previously appeared in print.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Life, the Universe and Sebastian
More BDSM Romance from Portia Da Costa
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Life, the Universe and Sebastian
He was the most unusual looking man at the party. Even in a room full of Batmen, Supermen and cowboys he stood out. His long, pale face, his peculiar silvery blue eyes, and his curly black hair did remind me vaguely of an actor I rather lusted after on the television, but he didn't seem to be in fancy dress like the rest of us. Unless his shirt, jeans and jacket in unadorned black stood for something of which I wasn't yet aware.
"Hello, who are you supposed to be?" I enquired, with all the boldness of two sizeable gins inside me as I zeroed in on him across the crowded room.
"I'm just myself, I'm afraid," he replied, his voice amused and quite distinct despite all the hubbub, "Sebastian Holmwood. At your service." He paused, cocked his head a little on one side, and gave me an appraising look, "Pleased to meet you Miss Peep," he said, holding out a narrow elegant hand towards me. "Would you like me to help you round up your lambs?"
I felt embarrassed. Not only by my Victorian nursery rhyme costume, but because I didn't have a free hand with which to shake his. I had a glass clutched in one, and my so called "crook" in the other; a sort of cut-down affair made of yellowish rattan with a blue bow tied round the curly end. This object had come with the costume, but looked more like a school mistress's cane to me than anything, and certainly nothing like a shepherding implement.
Sebastian Holmwood looked at me expectantly, then quirked one fine dark eyebrow. Shaking his head slightly, he first relieved me of the glass, and put it aside, then drew the crook from between my suddenly sweating fingers.
To my surprise, he didn't abandon it straight away, as he had done the glass, but ran a forefinger slowly along the length of it. There was an odd expression on his face as he handled the long, yellow stick, something I couldn't define. It sent a delicious yet icy shiver down my spinal column. The look in his eyes was far away, almost dreamy. Feeling uneasy, I held out my empty hand.
"Megan Chambers. How do you do?" I said.
As if loath to tear his attention away from the crook, Sebastian offered his right hand, his left still curved around the rattan.
"I do well, Megan," he said, with an oblique playful smile, "And I soon hope to be doing much better." He glanced down at the crook, balanced across his fingers, and then passed it back to me with a hint of reluctance.
Cheeky sod!
The fact that I'd been so obvious stung me. He knew I fancied him and he seemed to find that highly entertaining. And what was all that business with the crook too? He was still looking at it as I hung it from my sash and reached for my drink.
"Nice party," I murmured, resolving to invest only a few further moments of small talk, and then move on to someone a tad less disturbing if not quite as attractive.
But it didn't happen that way.
In spite of our prickly beginning, conversation flourished and I soon found myself warming to Sebastian. His manner was wry and charming, with a quick effortless wit, and before long attractive became downright enthralling. Our chat started with jobs, mine as an admin clerk for a retail chain and his as a software development consultant. Then, we moved on to TV, books and films, and effortlessly progressed through hopes, fears and phobias, and right on to life, the universe and everything. The more we talked, the easier it was, and we both agreed that we were like fishes out of water in a frivolous, booze-sodden gathering like this with raucous, seeming atonal music and a lot of people shouting and some falling down. We both admitted we'd only turned up as a favor to our hostess because she'd been nervous about the party being a flop. I soon started to get ridiculously excited at a piece of information Sebastian imparted to me under cover of some ancient disco tune or other. His own flat was only two floors above us, in this large old converted Edwardian building.
We were trundling along beautifully, with me feeling more relaxed with a man than I had in a long time, even if I was a tiny bit scared of him too, when Sebastian's eyes narrowed at something or somebody he'd obviously just caught sight of right behind me. The look on his face was dismissive, almost contemptuous, as if what he'd seen deserved nothing but disdain.
Intrigued, I turned around.
One of our fellow guests, a girl I knew vaguely from work, stood giggling and swaying on very high heels, as she brandished what looked like a riding crop over the back of a man kneeling before her. "Go on, Doreen, whip him!" somebody cried out, and Doreen giggled even louder and tapped her victim with the crop. She was wearing a short leather skirt, fishnet tights, and a low cut red top made of some shiny nylon stuff. Affixed to her bosom was a large, ribbon trimmed rosette bearing the crudely printed legend "Miss Whiplash".
I turned back towards Sebastian, wondering why he disapproved of such a pathetic, but basically harmless spectacle.
The expression in his silvery eyes was more like pity now, and he was rubbing the very tips of his fingers together as if testing the texture of his skin. Questions surged to the tip of my tongue, but before I could ask them he said, "I've had enough of this. Come on, Megan, let's leave."
"What's wrong?" I enquired in the rather antiquated lift, fiddling with my crook because Sebastian seemed unsettlingly preoccupied.
"I..." He paused, watching me fidget, "Some people... They get ideas." He hesitated again, and then smiled, his eyes very bright and intense.
"What ideas?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"I might!"
He looked at me very steadily, very searchingly, his expression lit as if from a fire within. I sensed him thinking very carefully about something, weighing possibilities, and assessing me again, even more stringently than before. "You might at that," he conceded at length, as if I had indeed passed some kind of test. "Yes, perhaps I ought to give you a chance."
In spite of my protestations, he'd lost me again. I understood nothing. But I had a feeling I might be learning pretty soon, and that excited me and made me uneasy, in equal measures.
Sebastian's flat was just the opposite of the chaos we'd left, just as spacious, but elegant, spare and silently and beautifully tranquil. The room we ended up in was as much an office, or library as it was a sitting room, with a leather-upholstered settee, a desk, and quite a lot of well-stocked book cases. The air seemed to hum with knowledge, and with a quiet, civilized peace. As I crept around, awestruck, examining prints and the spines of his books, Sebastian fixed drinks and put on some music; a light, but very stately piece by Mozart.
I didn't drink neat whisky as a rule, but after a moment, I found myself enjoying it. Not to mention needing it. Sebastian had picked up my crook from where I'd left it on his desk, and he was twirling it slowly in his fingers.
It gave me a very peculiar feeling in my stomach to see him almost caressing the thing like that. His hands were very pale, yet they looked strong. The word "capable" sprang to mind. The weirdest thoughts began to pass through my imagination, and when he swished the crook through the air, then smacked it against his palm, the hairs on the nape of my neck seemed to stand up one after another, a phenomenon I'd never actually experienced before, and always believed was just an old wives' tale.
Blushing furiously, I looked away, then sat down on the settee and picked up a book from his coffee table. I flipped a few pages, attempting to cover my nervousness, and then realized I'd made a huge mistake.
Sebastian's beautiful coffee table volume was full of pictures of people being punished. Women being beaten, their bare white bottoms lifted up and offered to a variety of different implements and techniques. As I stared down at a woman being thrashed across a table with a cane, a huge light bulb came on in the space behind my eyes... and I finally understood about life, the universe and Sebastian.
"Those people, downstairs at the party... You realize how very little they know, don't you?" he said, a heartbeat later, as if my revelation had been flashed up on a screen.
"I... I think so... I'm not sure." I looked down at the caned woman in the picture, then across at my crook, its length revolving slowly between Sebastian's pale fingers, its true nature not at all hidden by that absurd blue ribbon.
Anxiety must have shown in my face, because Sebastian laughed, very quietly and very kindly.
"Oh no, not with this," he said, taking a step towards me, still twirling the cane. "I would never start a girl off with a cane. And this," He paused, that look of distaste resurfacing on his stark, rather aristocratic features, "This 'thing', is quite unsuitable anyway." With a swift, ruthless gesture, he snapped my faux crook in two pieces, and then dropped it into the waste-bin beside his desk.
"A girl's education should always begin with the hand," he observed, making a steeple of both his hands before him at waist level, and then raising them to touch the very tips of his fingers to his lips. "The hand is intimate. The contact is skin to skin. There's no better way to gauge the effect of a smack, and thus modify the force of the next one." He looked at me evenly, his pale eyes unblinking and slightly narrowed, then he nodded infinitesimally. Like an android, I rose to my feet.
Mozart played on softly, but all of a sudden I was in a new and surreal dimension. Sebastian Holmwood could control me with the very slightest gesture, and as he walked smoothly towards the settee, then sat down just a yard or so away from me, I turned to face him, my head meekly bowed. He was lower than me, seated whilst I was standing, but in all things he had the upper hand.
"So, Megan Chambers, do you want to understand? Our friends downstairs are woefully ignorant. You know that, don't you?" He reached out, took hold of both of my hands, and then held them in one of his. He let his free hand slide lightly down my hip, tracing its approximate shape through my costume's fluffy petticoats. Sensing that he required it, I looked up and met his eyes, realizing he was a little older, and far wiser, than I'd originally thought he was. I nodded, knowing instinctively what I'd let myself in for, and feeling both fear and curiosity in equal parts.
"Good," he said with a thoughtful smile, then let his hand slip beneath my skirt and petticoats. "Are you wearing anything beneath these?" He plucked at the long, lace trimmed mock Victorian pantaloons that peeked out from beneath my hem, then flattened his hand, slipped it upwards, and cupped the rounded cheek of my bottom.
"N... No," I quavered as he squeezed. I'd expected to get the costume grubby at the party, and as I'd be laundering the whole thing anyway, I'd decided to be naughty and go without any extra knickers.
"Excellent!" His eyes gleamed. "Now lift up all these skirts up for me. There's a good girl." He released my hands and nodded to my Bo Peep dress and all the frippery beneath it.
"But..."
Sebastian didn't speak, but his cool old-fashioned look spoke volumes. Trembling, I reached for my hem, then hauled up my skirts and held the whole lot in a haphazard bunch at my waist.
"Back and front," he specified. I obeyed with a graceless scrabble, and then closed my eyes as he gripped my pantaloons, whipping them down to my knees with one smooth, efficient jerk.
"Lovely," he said softly. I could almost feel the weight of his gaze on the curly triangle of my sex, like a radiant therapy that made my hidden folds heat. "Now turn around for me."
Shuffling, I presented my bottom, keenly aware of its plump, curvaceous shape.
"Perfect." His voice was a whisper and I heard the leather upholstery creak as he shifted position. I was quite disappointed that he didn't try to touch me.
"Turn again."