chapter 1

“I’m not sure about this,” Ted said dubiously, finishing his pint in a long swallow. “You’ve been chatting to this chick online for a few weeks…”

“Almost two months,” Nate cut in defensively, around a mouthful of hot dog.

“Exactly, a few weeks, and now you’re just going to meet up at her house? Not even in public? What if she’s…”

“A murderer?” Nate asked sarcastically, and Ted laughed.

“I was going to say ‘a dude’, but yeah. You know literally nothing about her, man. I’m just not sure.”

They had met up in their usual spot, a dive bar where the drinks were cheap, the food was fried and the portions were huge. They’d been friends since the first day of secondary school, and neither of them had really changed that much since those days. Ted was slight and skinny, with a mess of black curls that fell charmingly into his eyes when he looked down. Nate was shorter with a broad, athletic physique. He favoured henley shirts with the sleeves pushed up to show off his thick forearms. He had been on the wrestling team at school, and as an adult he continued to eat as though he still had the teenage metabolism that had fuelled him during those matches. Now, years on, he was developing a beer belly which filled those shirts tighter than his muscles ever had. He picked up his second hot dog and took a messy bite.

“See, this is why I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said, slightly exasperated. “You don’t need to worry about me, Ted. We’ve video chatted, the whole deal. She is who she says she is.” Ted shrugged awkwardly and Nate sighed. “How about I give you the address? If I get into trouble I’ll give you a call and you can come and get me?”

Ted conceded to this. He knew from experience that there was no talking Nate out of this anyway. He was one of the most stubborn people Ted knew, and ever since the subject of the mystery woman had come up, he’d had that familiar flicker of determination in his eyes. Her name was Ava, and Nate had been texting her distractedly the whole time that they had been drinking this evening, perhaps giving himself a little dutch courage before finally going to meet her. He pulled up a picture of her on his phone and showed it to Ted, who looked around quickly to make sure nobody else could see the screen. A tall, slim blonde woman was looking down into the camera, huge pink-tipped breasts taking up most of the bottom of the frame. Her red-painted lips smiled smugly, invitingly, as Ted tried to cover it up.

“Jesus, Nate, are you sure she’d want you sharing that one?” he hissed, as Nate grinned back.

“If you think I’m missing out on that body this evening you’re an idiot,” he laughed. “Have you ever been with a domme, Ted? She’s going to eat me alive.”

“I don’t even know why you wanted to meet up tonight, Nate,” Ted said grumpily, “It’s obvious you just want to talk to her, why don’t you just meet her sooner and leave me out of it.”

Slightly guiltily, Nate slipped his phone back into his pocket, and spent the rest of the time in the bar glancing at the clock whenever Ted looked away, counting down the minutes until he could slip away and meet the woman who had filled most of his waking thoughts these past few weeks.

***

The house was enormous. Nate asked the taxi driver to double check the address twice before he finally got out and pressed the buzzer that was on the intricately swirled iron gates. He hadn’t been expecting Ava to live in a place like this, it put his small city centre flat to shame. He half expected to see peacocks strutting in the courtyard as the gates slid open automatically and he approached the front door, nerves causing his stomach to feel like a lead weight. The door was opened by a lithe and muscular man wearing a harness, black latex shorts and a heavy black mask.

“The mistress is expecting you,” the man said quietly, his voice muted by the leather his face was swaddled in. “She bids you to wait at the bar whilst she is otherwise… indisposed.”

From somewhere deep within the house, a muffled shriek rang out. Nate grinned broadly, almost madly, as he followed the harnessed butler to the bar. His nerves were now buoyant on a sea of excitement, his stomach was roiling. The butler watched as he sat on a barstool, and then walked around to the other side of the bar and took his order. Nate turned on the stool and sipped a large tumbler of rum, taking in his surroundings. The room was empty but for him and Butler, the room dimly lit and decorated with leather furnishings. Plenty of dark corners for doing darker deeds. Eventually he turned back to the bar and spoke with a slightly croaky voice.

“This isn’t what I expected,” he admitted. He thought he saw Butler’s mouth twitch into a small smile under the mask.

“It never is,” the man replied.

“I didn’t think there would be other people here,” Nate said after a small silence had fallen. “I thought…”

“That I’d put aside my whole evening just for you, Nathan?” came a silky voice from the doorway. Nate jumped, sloshing a little rum onto the bar as he did so. Mistress Avarice stood in the doorway, her blonde hair spilling over her shoulders in a glimmering sheet. In one hand she was gripping a riding crop, in the other a fine leather lead, studded with diamantes. As she walked into the room, she tugged the lead, and an extraordinarily fat man came shuffling in beside her on all fours. “Come, piggy,” she chided, and the man hurried to keep pace with her long strides. When he failed to keep up with her, she placed one boot-clad foot on the lead and stamped on the ground, forcing his head to drop to the floor. As he crouched there, choking, she offered Nate a slow smile. “You’re early.”

“I couldn’t wait to see you,” he admitted. He was trying hard to maintain eye contact with the mistress but it was difficult - the pig’s face was purpling rapidly, though even now he seemed to be trying to suffocate quietly, respectfully. Almost at the last second, Ava released her foot from the lead, handing it over to Butler as the fat man gasped for air.

“That’ll do, pig,” she said with contemptuous amusement, and Butler led him away.

As the front door was closing, Nate heard him call in a strangled voice - “Thank you, Mistress Ava!”

She joined him at the bar, matching his order of rum, and looked him up and down as though considering if he were worth the effort. Nate hoped she was impressed, but she was already tutting and shaking her head with what he prayed was only mock disappointment. When she had entered the room he had unconsciously sucked his gut in and puffed out his chest.

“You looked bigger in your photos,” she said, running a slender finger down his body and leading him to stand up so that she could continue to appraise him. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

Self-consciously, Nate flexed his arms, hoping that this might impress her. The effort of doing this and sucking in that stomach, full of hotdogs and beer, was beginning to get a little too much for him, however. Ava’s fingers encircled one of his biceps, and then slid up towards his underarms. He gasped, feeling ticklish, and his belly expanded again, stretching the front of his shirt as he finally let go. Ava’s eyes lit up a little and she grinned at him.

“Aha,” she said, “There it is.” She hooked one of those fingers under his shirt and slipped it up, exposing his small belly, and drank it in. “We can work with this, can’t we, Butler?”

The man behind the bar gave Nate a quick glance. “I should say so, ma’am,” he said politely.

Nate wasn’t really sure what was going on, but he knew that Ava looked happy, and that could only be a good sign. Her hands felt wonderful; possessive and confident as they squeezed the bottom of his belly. “Are you pleased, mistress?” he asked, in a much smaller voice than he had intended.

“Perhaps,” she said lightly, “You might just be what I’m looking for, cutie. Come with me.”

She drained her glass - Nate following suit - and slid off the bar stool elegantly, leading Nate back out into the foyer, where twin marble staircases swept up to an impressive landing above them. Ava was already climbing one of them, a few steps above him. He stared at her arse, squeezed into the red latex dress that was stretched shiny over her curves, utterly transfixed. The corridor that she led him down next had closed doors on both sides, and Nate fancied that he could hear, or perhaps just sense, others trapped behind these walls, all in their own exquisite agonies or ecstasies. The room that they finally ended up in was up yet another set of stairs, tucked away from the others. There was an enormous four poster bed but Nate’s eyes were drawn instead to the St Andrew’s Cross which was opposite it. Ava followed his gaze and scoffed.

“You think you can handle that, do you, sweetness?” she asked, in tones that suggested that she had her own opinions on what Nate could handle.

It turned out that he could not.