JERMYN STREET (Wicked Weds – shopping)

Catherine took her seat in Patisserie Valerie on the corner of St James Street and Piccadilly and ordered an orange juice, exactly as she had been instructed. When the client, one she knew well, had suggested a shopping trip she had been thrilled but the instruction to take a table on her own and wait had seemed strange, unusual.

She had spotted him as she walked in, sat at a window table in a smart business suit. Once she had her orange juice, the client paid his bill and left the café, pausing only to lay an envelope on the table in front of her. Inside were four crisp fifty pound notes, a hotel room key and, to her surprise, a tiny, discrete, Bluetooth telephone ear piece. Within moments she had paired it with her phone and fitted it, invisible beneath her long hair.

“Good afternoon,” he said when she answered the soft buzz in her ear. “Ready for your shopping trip?”

“Yes, but where…. I mean, why aren’t you…”

“Ahh! This is not a normal shopping trip. I want you to follow my instructions exactly. Are you prepared to do that”

“Err. Yes,” she said hesitantly then again more positively as her sense of adventure overrode the initial unease; “Yes Sir, I will.”

“Vey well. Put the £200 in your purse.  I’ve paid for your drink. Turn left and walk down St James Street and stop outside the Beretta shop.”

She walked slowly, heels clicking, her summer dress swaying slightly, enjoying the warmth of the sun through her cotton blouse. She felt people were looking at her, as indeed they were.

His voice in her ear again. “In the window display you will see a long leather shoe horn in a walking boot. I want you to enter the shop, pick it up and smack it on your calf, as if seeing how much it hurts. Do it three times so everyone in the shop is watching, then pay for it, put it in your bag and leave.”

“What? I can’t do that” she argued. “I mean, that will be embarrassing. People will think it’s weird”

“Well this is how this shopping trip works. I thought you were up for it!”

Hesitantly, breathing fast, she entered the shop, finding it full of ostentatiously countrified clothing and cabinets of gleaming shotguns. A shop for the moneyed, shooting set. She picked up the beautifully made shoe horn and tapped it on her calf. None of the staff in the shop noticed. She smacked herself harder with it twice, immediately feeling the sharp sting on her leg. The prim, 40 something, tweedily attired shop assistant looked over at her quizzically. Flushed, Catherine paid over the £60 (sixty pounds, for a shoe horn she told herself!) and left.

“Good girl!” said the voice in her ear. “That wasn’t too bad was it? Now turn left into Jermyn Street, walk 200 metres and turn into the Piccadilly Arcade. Stop at Carlo Anichini.”

The shop, which looked as though it was last refiited in 1950, sold male grooming items. A sign pointed to a barber’s down a spiral staircase.

“On the left of the shop you will see hairbrushes. There is one about 10″ long in olive wood. Test the sting of it on your hand. I am outside the shop and if you don’t do it properly I will punish you later.”

This time she enjoyed the game a little more, relishing the male shop assistant’s  look of surprise that turned to barely disguised lust as she smacked her hand three times with the brush, enough to make absolutely clear what it was to be used for.

“I’d like to buy this please” she said brightly, looking so directly into his eyes that he visibly squirmed under her gaze. This game was strange but kind of fun. For once she didn’t have to hide her submissive, masochistic nature but could flaunt it, challenge people with it. She felt she was saying; “Yes, I’m into spanking! You have a problem with that?”

More instructions. “On the other side of Jermyn Street is a venerable establishment called Taylors of Old Bond Street. I guess it must have been there once before it moved here.”

“I want you to buy a shaving strop; they’re hanging at the back.” The strop with its wooden handle felt weighty in her hand, the thought of it’s heavy, yet soft, leather smacking into her bottom made her pulse race and she felt herself flush deeply.

 “I want you to ask the assistant to have the end of the strop cut off. I want you to make it clear why.”

This time she had no hesitation, absolutely loving being the only woman among the four gentrified customers and three obsequious staff in the outdated environment, reeking as it did of the old-school-tie establishment male, a breed she had little time for.

She approached the young man waiting behind the counter in his dark suit and neat, striped tie.

“I’d like to buy this shaving strop” she said in a firm clear voice that would be heard by everyone in the shop, “but I need you to have someone remove this metal end for me.”

“But, Madam,” said the young man, all formal, plummy vowels and condescending tone, “that is used to attach the strop to a hook so you can tension it. Without that it won’t function properly at all.”

She looked him straight in the eye, “I’m sorry but you don’t understand; I am to be punished with this and I don’t want the metal loop to damage my bottom.”

She eventually left laughing to herself at the embarrassed silence she had caused, everyone trying to find something to look at that wasn’t her.

Following the final set of instructions from the voice in her ear, she crossed over Duke Street and entered the Cavendish Hotel, taking the elevator to the fifth floor and using the room key to let herself into his large suite. She laid out her purchases on the bed in a neat line, the long shoe horn, the solid wooden hairbrush and the leather shaving strop. Her heart raced from the excitement of what was about to happen; excitement that was tinged with exactly the perfect amount of fear.

Having removed her clothes and folded them neatly onto a chair, she lay on the bed, naked apart from a lacy G string that she knew would emphasize the curve of her behind. After a moment’s thought she grabbed a large pillow, pushing it underneath her middle, raising her bottom off the bed slightly.

“Yes,” she thought, “that’s the picture he’ll want to see when he walks in.”

The shopping trip was over.

The encounter was about to begin.

I didn’t have to think up this story for the Wicked Wednesday “shopping” prompt. It was already in my head fully formed. You see, I once had these scene all set up; I’d spotted exactly these items in these shops and laid out in my mind how it was going to work (apart form the Cavendish Hotel obviously, way beyond my budget). In fact I was disappointed to notice recently that the shoe horn was no longer part of the window display at Beretta. I had known exactly the submissive I wanted to play this game with but unfortunately it never happened. However, writing it down has got me thinking again. I wonder if…..

More wicked shopping here: