CHAPTER NINE
They travelled to the venue in a
limousine, Justin tight-lipped and non-communicative beside Harry on one side
and Dominic and Joely on the other.
Harry was making up for Justin.
“You look magnificent, Miss
Roberts,” he said.
”Thank you,” she smiled. “That’s a nice
tie you’re wearing.” He looked down at
it, gold, red and black, the colours of Justin’s campaign posters.
“Thank you,” he returned. “So, that ring on your left hand, is it…”
”Yes,” Dominic said. “It is. You can be the first to congratulate us.”
”Oh my!” Harry said, almost overcome at the thought of the publicity this was
going to bring. Not only had Dominic Blake fallen into his lap like manna from
the gods, he was actually going to marry the stepdaughter of the
candidate! All of Harry’s Christmases
were coming at once.
“Congratulations!” he said, reaching
forward and patting Joely’s hand.
“That’s a beautiful ring!”
”She’s not keeping it,” Justin said.
“She’s not marrying him.”
”Nonsense,” said Harry. “It’s wonderful
news.”
”She’ll marry him over my dead body,” Justin said.
“Well that would provide me with a
great deal of pleasure, but it might spoil the photos,” Dominic said
calmly. Justin glared at him and saw the
answering threat in his eyes. With a
visible effort, he calmed down and retreated into sulky silence again.
He would have made an effort on
arrival anyway, but the nature of the welcome shocked Justin right down to his
boots. Getting out of the limousine was
like arriving at a
“Mr Williams, how do you feel about
Joely and Dominic?” a voice called out.
Justin smiled, showing even, white teeth.
“Like any father, I’m happy when my
daughter is happy,” he said, using the line Harry had rehearsed him in. Joely
tensed.
”Let him go,” Dominic whispered in her ear.
“The eyes of the world are on us, sweetheart. Just keep smiling. If he doesn’t shut up soon, we’ll take the
attention off him.”
”And the photograph?” another voice called out.
“You don’t mind that Joely has been seen naked by millions of
people?”
“My daughter is a grown woman,”
Justin said through clenched teeth. “And while I’m a protective father, I
cannot…” the rest of his words were completely ignored as Dominic bent down and
kissed Joely passionately. Cameras were
aimed and questions were called out over the top of Justin’s answer.
“Do you love her, Dominic?” someone
yelled. Dominic looked up and smiled,
his lips wet from the kiss.
”Actions speak louder than words,” he said.
As he bent to kiss her again, Joely put her left hand on his shoulder,
and there was a gasp of excitement as the cameras clicked again, capturing the
image of her engagement ring. It took
some time to get inside. Dominic played
the angles like the professional he was, making sure that almost all of the
photographers got a chance to take good, clear photographs. At one point, however, he smiled and turned
to block Joely from view.
“Not that way, love,” he said to
her. “Our friend Dianne is down there clicking away, and I don’t feel inclined
to smile for her.” Joely laughed,
another perfect photo opportunity for anyone not called Dianne. The woman was jostling for elbow space with
the other photographers, calling out to them in vain. By the time they walked inside, Dominic
having pointedly kept his back to her the whole time, she knew he was living up
to his promise to her.
To Justin’s intense annoyance, the
two of them scored a louder round of applause from the assembled guests than he
did, even though he went in first. The
last one hundred and fifty seats, which they had not considered they had any
hope of selling, had gone by lunchtime, and there was no doubt why. None of the people looked disappointed as
Dominic led Joely the length of the room to the head dining table, smiling at
everyone along the way. The two of them
looked fairy-tale perfect together, the blue of her dress and the happiness in
her face showcasing Joely’s beauty in a way that had never occurred
before. Suddenly, people were remembering
that she wasn’t only Justin’s stepdaughter.
She was Jane-Anne Mistrall’s daughter.
Dinner conducted under the eyes of
everyone in the room was a staged affair, only Dominic really managing to look
relaxed. Given that he was the only
professional actor at the table, that was to be expected. Joely was keyed up, Justin was furious, Harry
was nervous that Justin was going to do something to blow the situation, and
the other six people at the table were too in awe of Dominic to say much at
all.
It was almost a relief when Justin
walked to the podium on the stage and made a short speech thanking the faithful
and exhorting them to continue to support him.
He made no mention of Joely and Dominic, winning himself no points at
all for the omission. When he came back
to the table, to muted applause, there was a hard and bitter twist to his
lips. Harry looked livid. He’d quickly written
a beautiful paragraph for Justin to read, announcing the engagement and congratulating
the happy couple, but Justin had ignored it.
The live band struck up a waltz, and
people slowly took to the floor, talk centring on the glamorous couple at the
head table. The braver ones approached
the table, usually claiming friendship with Joely, who only remembered a
handful of them. Nevertheless, she
greeted them all with grace and charm, and introduced them to Dominic, who they
all decided was even more handsome up close.
Every time Dominic was about to ask Joely to dance, another group of
people would arrive. Justin was circulating, keeping as far away from the two
of them as possible, and doing his best to avoid questions about them. He gave the same rehearsed responses as he
had to the reporters whenever he was trapped into having to answer someone.
The lead singer with the band proved
to be a comic as well as a good singer, and five songs in, after playing a
faster number to get people up and moving, he took a big chance.
“And now,” he said. “In honour of a couple of headliners at the
top table, a little bit of Madonna.”
Dominic and Joely both looked up, then Dominic burst into laughter as
the lead-in of “Hanky Panky” sounded.
”We have to dance to this,” he said, excusing them to the people still crowded
around them.
The dance floor didn’t completely
clear when they arrived, but the other dancers certainly stood back and gave
them room. Dominic was known for his
dancing skills, and it quickly became apparent that Joely wasn’t far behind
him. For the duration of the very
suggestive song, the two of them enjoyed themselves immensely, jitterbugging
and jiving in perfect step, Joely’s full skirt flying out around her. They received a spontaneous round of applause
at the end, and Dominic acknowledged it with a bow and a smile, then a sweeping
hand to indicate his partner, who surprised herself by curtseying as she
laughed. As they were walking back to
the table, Dominic leaned down to her.
“Where’s Thud?” he asked. Joely laughed again.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Dear dear,” he said. “What a disappointment. I was hoping to ask him about the bu
A few more songs in, Dominic, who’d
been relishing the sight of Justin’s sour expression for most of the night,
decided to make it worse. Taking Joely’s
hand, he led her up to the stage with him, shook hands with the band members
and then took the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his
Irish accent accentuated by the magnification of his voice. “We’ve already announced it to the press
outside, so we’d like to share it with you, too. This evening, Joely Roberts has done me the
honour of accepting my proposal. We’re
engaged.” There was a roar of approval
from around the room and a lot of applause. Just for an instant, Dominic let
himself look at Justin. There, try and
force her to back out now, his look said.
He turned to kiss the smiling woman
beside him, and as he did, a camera flash went off. He turned back to the microphone.
“You won’t be able to sell that
photograph, you know,” he said to the one favoured news photographer who’d been
allowed in.
“Why not?” asked the man
loudly.
“Because we’ve got our clothes on,”
Dominic replied, making everyone in the room laugh.
Except Justin.
………………..
A month later, Joely was still
excited to turn the television on and see images of herself and Dominic on that
night and on subsequent nights. She
found it wearing, but the novelty of notoriety hadn’t worn off for her
yet.
The night before, they’d attended
the premiere of a movie starring two friends of Dominic’s, and amid the
lightning storm of camera flashes, someone had shoved a microphone at her.
”Miss Roberts, my magazine has interviewed several other students of “The
Monastery”. Did you have to take your
clothes off while you were there?”
Dominic stopped smiling and turned to face the reporter as well.
“Well of course,” Joely said. “We all have to have showers or baths some
time, after all.” Dominic began to move
her forward, his arm around her waist.
“Did you have to perform tough
physical tasks?” the male reporter called quickly. Joely put her hand on Dominic’s shoulder,
unfazed.
“Let me see,” she pretended to
think. “Well, I had to pot some
seedlings and pick some strawberries.
And help out with a little housework and do some painting. Was that it?”
”No, you were privileged enough to be asked to help out with washing my car,”
Dominic reminded her.
”Oh of course, how could I forget?” she said.
With that, she let him lead her away, quite pleased with herself.
Dominic diplomatically suggested
later that she check with hi
He was back at work, which left her
here in the house without him on some days.
It was a lovely place, a split-level wooden house built into a
hill. There was a big courtyard out the
back, containing luxurious sun lounges and a landscaped swimming pool. The courtyard was surrounded by high walls
and protected by a high tech security system to which only she, Dominic and
Paul, the housekeeper, knew the combination.
Of all the houses Dominic owned
around the world, this one was the one he considered to be home, and it was the
smallest and least extravagant of them all.
Despite that, it had several bedrooms, luxurious fittings, its own screening
room and some of the most beautiful artwork Joely had ever seen. She’d settled into it with ease, having spent
almost ten days putting things to right at her own house, signing papers,
unsettling the servants and avoiding her stepfather whenever possible. He hadn’t raised a hand to her, although he’d
certainly lost his temper on several occasions.
He was hampered by the almost constant presence of Harry, who seemed to
be aging before Joely’s eyes, and by the frequent, unscheduled visits of
Dominic.
Early in the morning after the
dinner dance, Justin had thrown the door of Joely’s bedroom open, with the
intent of shocking her and catching her off guard. He’d spent an uncomfortable, sleepless night,
and had decided to start the day off by sorting things out. He’d had enough of this nonsense. Unfortunately, never considering that she
would allow Dominic to stay the night, he neglected to check whether the black
Lamborghini was still parked at the back of the house. It was.
Consequently, he was the one shocked
by the view of his stepdaughter straddling her lover’s hips, both of them nude,
Dominic’s hands clasped on her waist.
They’d already made love and showered, and were just enjoying the
sensation of being together.
”Good God!” Justin spluttered. “I might
have known! You slut!” Dominic’s hands moved up to cover Joely’s
breasts, and he rolled so that she tipped to the side of him furthest from the
door.
“Don’t hit him,” she said softly,
urgently. He kissed her quickly and went
to get up.
“Dominic,” she said warningly. He smiled tightly.
“Joe, there are going to be times in
our life when we will disagree, because we’re both strong-willed,” he
said. “There will be times when I’m
going to have to give way to you and times when you’re going to have to let me
have my way. This is one of the times
when you have to let me have my way.”
Justin was still standing in the doorway, looking furious. They both ignored him.
”No,” she said, tangling her fingers
in his hair and hanging on. “I hate
violence, Dominic. Don’t. Please.”
He sighed and touched his forehead to hers.
“It is a measure of how much I love
you that I’m agreeing to this,” he said.
Then he pushed the covers back off his feet, climbed out of the bed, and
walked towards the doorway. Justin
didn’t move, but the look in his eyes changed as the tall, naked man approached
him. Dominic took hold of the door.
”Learn to knock,” he advised, the look in his golden eyes saying a whole lot
more. Then he slammed the door in
Justin’s face. Joely waited for it to
open again, but it didn’t. It was the
last confrontation between the two men, even though Dominic stayed with her
every night after that and occasionally made a point of hanging around the
house all day.
Joely, knowing she was being guarded
by him, found that she didn’t mind at all.
Dominic left all of the media dealings over their engagement to his
people and refused all interviews, for which Joely was profoundly
grateful.
”Should we be doing some?” she asked him, lying in bed beside him one morning.
“You’re not just saying no to save me the difficulty of learning how to do it?”
”Not at all,” he assured her. He ran his
hand up and down her bare arm, from shoulder to wrist and back. “I’ve never thought it necessary to talk
about my personal life, and I don’t want to drag you in to public
relations.”
“As long as you’re sure,” she
said. He smiled, a heart-stoppingly
handsome smile just for her, and leaned in to kiss her.
“I’m sure,” he said.
There had been many more mornings of
waking up together since she’d moved in here.
It had been a whirlwind of activity, but a fantastic whirlwind, with
shopping every few days for new clothes for her (made a little difficult by the
fact that a local radio station had a “Dominic and Joely Spotting Competition”
on, which meant people kept squealing and diving for phones when they
recognised them) and hours and hours spent in the screening room, with Joely
watching, wide-eyed, movie after movie after movie. It was a new and wonderful world for
her.
They spent a lot of time splashing
around in the pool too, and in the massive Jacuzzi off the main bedroom. Between that and the inordinate amount of
time they spent in bed, Joely felt that she spent a great deal of time stripped
down to her sapphires. Not that she was
complaining, of course.
She’d taken a phone call from Maura,
Dominic’s younger sister that morning and she was still laughing over it. Dominic had warned her that his sisters could
talk, and he certainly hadn’t been exaggerating. Maura had started by apologising for calling
when Dominic wasn’t there, insisting that she never managed to get the time
difference from Dublin correct, and then launched into a conversation that was
as entertaining as it was exhausting.
“But it was you I really wanted to
talk to anyway,” she said. “Are you just
like your photographs? You’re that
pretty. I’ve been looking at all of the
photos in the newspapers and magazines.
Well not that first one, obviously, because the last thing I want to see
is my brother’s bare bod, but he’s a good-looking lad, it has to be said.”
“He is,” Joely managed to get two
words in. Maura was twenty-three and
training to be a teacher. She knew that
much from Dominic.
“So tell me everything!” Maura
said. “You met him in that monkery he
goes to? Is it true that they make
people work in the altogether? Did you
have to do that?”
”Sometimes,” Joely admitted. Maura
shrieked, almost deafening her.
“How awful!” she said. “Those monks must be terrible people!”
”Actually, Dominic was in charge of me,” Joely said, laughing. Maura’s shriek was even louder, but there was
laughter in it this time.
“Oh, you pooooor thing!” she
sympathised. “He’s a horrible tease and
he’s had such a lot of practise at teasing girls. He’s an expert on it. Clodagh and I have been his guinea pigs since
we were born, I can tell you.”
“I can imagine,” Joely said.
“Not that it was all bad, you
understand,” Maura said. “At least with
Dominic in the house we were never short of friends. All of the girls used to want to visit us in
the hope of seeing Dommie.”
”He lets you call him that?” Joely was laughing again.
“He hates it,” Maura admitted. “So of course we do it all the time. He’s not the only tease. But he’s definitely the worst one. I don’t know
what he’s told you about our upbringing, but we weren’t very well-off. And after our Ma died, it was even worse,
although it was that bad beforehand, with her not talking to Dommie and all
that. And he wouldn’t leave because he
wanted to look out for Clodagh and me.
Anyway, after Ma passed on, we lived in a two-bedroom house with the
tiniest little bathroom. You couldn’t
get dressed in there without banging your elbow or breaking your head, so you
always had to wrap a towel around yourself to get to your room.”
“He hadn’t told me about that,”
Joely said, trying to imagine tall, broad-shouldered Dominic in a tiny bathroom
and failing.
“No?,” Maura said. “Well anyway, whenever Clodagh or I had to
walk past him in a towel, he’d always say something to embarrass us. Something like “Oh, look at that – I haven’t
seen that since you were a baby” or “Ready for the nipple piercing, I see” or
“Heavens, how did you manage to get freckles there?” or my personal favourite,
because he used it on Clodagh rather than me, “We really must get some new
towels. Those old ones are so threadbare
you can see right through them”. We
tried to do the same to him in return, but you could never shame him. He was a horrible boy, he really was.” Joely was laughing so hard she had to sit
down.
“And one time, Clodagh told him that
if he said anything like that to her again, she’d brain him. So naturally, he
did. Clodagh started hitting him about
the head, and he pulled her onto the floor and tickled her. Of course, she was having to use her hands to
keep her towel on, so she couldn’t even try to stop him. She swore at him when he let her up, so he
pulled her back down and did it again.
The poor girl was a mess by the time he let her go the second
time.”
“You didn’t help her?” Joely asked.
“And risk being tickled too? Not a chance,” Maura said. “Clodagh and I aren’t anywhere near as big as
Dommie, and he’s got two hands. No, I
just laughed and was glad it was her and not me. So, was he like that with you?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Joely admitted, thinking
of some of the teasing that had occurred.
“He was different to that. Still bad, but different.”
“Just as well,” Maura said. “So what does the engagement ring look
like? It’s a sapphire, the newspaper
said, does it have diamonds too? Did he
shell out a fortune for it?”
By the time Joely got off the phone,
she felt as if she’d known Maura for years, and she couldn’t wait to meet her
in person. Clodagh sounded like she was
going to be interesting too. According
to Maura, she was a lot like Dominic in some ways, just a bit more
serious. That made sense, since she was
studying to become an anthropologist.
“I’ve just about finished cleaning
out that second closet,” Paul said, interrupting her thoughts as he came
through to the bright kitchen she was sitting in, having just come in from the
pool. She had a big towel wrapped over a
little green bikini Dominic had insisted she buy. “I cannot believe the stuff that was jammed
in there!”
“I could have done that, Paul,” she
said, smiling at him. “But thank you.”
”My pleasure,” he smiled back. A neat,
tidy man in his mid-forties, he was a good organiser and an even better friend
to Dominic, who he had started working for almost five years before. “You have to have somewhere to put all of
those trendy new threads.”
”I think I’m going to need a separate house for them if Dominic keeps going,”
Joely said. Paul laughed.
“What sorts of things were in the
closet?” she asked. Paul rolled his
eyes.
“Sports gear, old clothes, boxes of
books, promotional material for some of his movies, scripts, assorted bait...”
”Bait?” Joely asked, screwing up her nose.
“He keeps fishing bait in there?”
”No, no,” Paul laughed again. “It’s what
he calls the things people send him when they’re trying to lure him into roles. They send him gifts, sometimes clothes,
sometimes things to get him interested in the character – like a trench coat
when they wanted him for a detective role, that sort of thing.”
”Can I see?” she asked. He shrugged.
“It’s your house, Joely,” he said,
smiling.
He followed her back in later, with
several large plastic bags for the garbage.
She was sitting on the floor in front of the closet, engrossed in a
large black box from which she’d removed a close-fitting lid. Paul closed his eyes and grimaced behind her
back.
“Ah, you might want to leave that
one alone,” he said. Joely looked up
from the box.
“Why?” she asked.
“Well, it’s the bait the producers
sent him when they wanted him to take on the lead role in a stage production of
a movie called “9½ Weeks”. He didn’t take the role, but they didn’t ask
for their stuff back. I’m sure he’s
forgotten it’s even there.”
“What was the original movie about?”
Joely asked. “It’s not one of the ones
he’s shown me.”
”No, it wouldn’t be,” Paul said, cursing under his breath. “It’s a very,
um…adult movie.”
”A pornographic one?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Paul said. “Although some people would disagree. Why don’t you ask Dominic about it?”
“I will,” she said. “So why didn’t he take the role?”
”Because he didn’t want it,” Paul replied.
“And it called for total nudity for almost all of the play.”
“I can’t imagine that would bother
him too much,” Joely spoke without thinking.
Paul laughed.
“No, but he’s never been one for
gratuitous nudity in his work,” he said.
“I know he’s even intervened when some of the actresses he’s worked with
have been directed to show more than he thought was necessary. He’s good like that. Ethical.
Joely, I really would recommend that you not dig around too much in that
box.”
Joely didn’t respond to that, to
engrossed in her digging.
“What IS this stuff, Paul?” Behind her back, he was retreating from the
room. “Are those handcuffs? Why would they send him handcuffs? Was the character a policeman? Paul?”
She looked back to see that the housekeeper had disappeared. She glanced at her watch. It was almost time for him to leave anyway,
but he wasn’t usually one to just go home like that. How odd.
Her attention was drawn back to the box.
She pulled out a long, white cylindrical thing. Well, she suspected she knew what that was,
although when she turned the switch at the bottom nothing happened, so she decided
she might be wrong.
Paul was on the kitchen phone.
“No, I’m not telling her what it all
is,” he was saying to a laughing Dominic.
“You’re almost home, you can tell her when you get here, but I just
thought I should warn you first. No, I’m
not going back into that room this afternoon and you can’t make me. I’m going
to sneak out the back way before she asks me any more questions. And if you don’t stop laughing, I’m
quitting!”
Back in the bedroom, Joely had
picked up some strange little things that looked like short, stubby clothes
pegs, but with winders on the side that seemed to tighten them. She tried one on her finger and took it off
again fast. Then she pulled out a couple
of candles, tapers, one black and one white.
Towards the bottom of the box, past more of the pegs and some rope and
lots of other unusual items, including some leather things, she found two black
metal contraptions. She dug them out,
letting the other stuff fall around them, then sat down on the floor and looked
at them.
Each of them had two loops that looked like cuffs. They swung open and shut on hinges and were
secured with a little sliding latch on the bigger of the metal loops and a hook
and peg on the smaller one. The big and
small loops on each of them were joined together by a short metal bar. The bigger loop on each had “ankle” imprinted
into the metal and the smaller loop had “wrist”. There was a tiny switch on one of the ankle
loops that read “in-out”, but nothing happened when she pushed it either way.
Disappointed, she put it down and
looked back into the box. There was
nothing else that she was interested in, or at least nothing she could work out
the use of. One of the leather items
seemed to be designed to fit over someone’s head, and it had zips and clips and
looked hot, uncomfortable, ugly and evil.
She dropped it back into the box and looked back at the loop/cuff
contraptions. She unwrapped her towel,
spread it out on the floor and sat on it, reaching for the two metal things.
With her long legs, it was a bit of
a stretch, and it was very awkward because she had trouble seeing what she was
doing. The round metal “ankle” loops had
“inside” marked on one side of each of them, so she deduced that the bar and
the other loop must go on the outside of each ankle. The metal loops fitted easily around her slim
ankles and the little slide mechanism did up easily. She still didn’t know what the in-out switch
was for.
She fitted one of the second loops
around her wrist, and fumbled to reach her other arm over her knee to fix the
little hook into the loop. It clicked
in. Right, now she had one wrist fastened
to the outside of one ankle. She slipped
her second wrist into the loop beside her other ankle, but couldn’t see any way
to do up the hook. With her knees bent
up, there was no way she could bend down and do it with her teeth. She tried folding her leg more to bring her
foot back up, but lacking the flexibility of a yogi, found it impossible.
“Having fun?” Dominic asked. Joely jumped and looked up to see him
lounging in the doorway looking amused.
“You’re home early!” she said,
delighted. Instinctively, she tried to
get up, to hug him, and almost landed on her nose.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” he
cautioned, coming forward quickly and dropping to his knees on the floor beside
her, giving her a quick kiss. “Here, let
me help.” Her wrist had come out of the
undone loop as she moved, and he eased it back in. Then he did up the hook.
“There, was that what you were
trying to do?” he asked, mischief in his eyes.
“Yes, I wanted to see what they were
for,” Joely said, sounding disappointed.
“But I still can’t see why anyone would bother.”
“No?” he responded. With a smile playing on his lips, he looked
down at her, barely clad in her little green bikini, her breasts squashed
against her knees, the black cuffs stark against the pale gold of her long,
lightly tanned limbs.
“No,” she said crossly. “There’s an in-out switch there, but I don’t
see what it does.”
”Probably nothing,” he said. “Because it
may not have batteries in it.” He bent
down and used his thumbnail to pry open a small hatch Joely hadn’t seen. “Nope, no batteries. Hang on, I know where Paul’s secret supply
is. Don’t go anywhere.”
Grinning to himself, he stood up and
left quickly. He’d always liked this
house, but he’d never enjoyed coming home to it as much as he had since Joely
arrived. He promised himself to not take
too much advantage of her naïveté, tempting though it was. But he was definitely going to have some fun.
When he came back, she’d moved her
knees apart and brought her ankles as far back as she could without hurting her
shoulders and hips.
“They’re weird,” she said. “What are they for?”
“Let me put the batteries in and
I’ll show you,” he said, kneeling on the floor again. “But give me another kiss
first.” She leaned towards him and
nearly toppled over. He caught her, his
hands on her breasts, and for the first time, Joely realised just how helpless
she was, as he took the opportunity to give them a gentle squeeze, to slip his
fingers down inside the bikini top and stroke her nipples. She couldn’t grab at his hands and she
couldn’t move away from him.
Fortunately, she liked what he was doing anyway, but the look in his
eyes was starting to worry her. It
looked like he was enjoying a joke…at her expense.
“Dominic, I’m not sure that I want
to stay in these,” she said cautiously.
He turned away so she wouldn’t see his grin.
“Oh, you might as well try them out
now you’re here,” he said, bending to her ankle. He fitted the batteries in and clicked the
hatch into place. “Now, you’ll have to
shift back so your feet are on the floor right next to each other. Here, let me do it.” He moved her with more care than she would
have taken herself, easing her limbs so she didn’t put pressure on her
joints.
“Ready?” he asked.
“For what?” Joely responded suspiciously.
”This,” he said, flicking the switch to “in”.
Her ankles flew together with a clang, the magnets in the two ankle
links locking together. Dominic’s hand
pressed warmly on her shoulder, holding her upright.
“Well that seems silly,” Joely
said. “What, is it intended to be an
exercise thing?”
”In a way,” he said, keeping a straight face.
“Now, if I turn the switch the other way...” He did, changing the polarity, and Joely’s
feet shot in opposite directions as the magnets repelled. This time, Dominic quickly shifted his hands
to her feet, to make sure that they weren’t thrown too wide. They weren’t.
The contraption was designed for restraint and display, not hip
dislocation.
“Getting some idea of what it’s
for?” he asked, grinning openly now. Joely,
still catching her breath from the surprise of having her limbs flung about,
looked at each of her widely splayed legs, her hands secured to each foot.
“Hmmm,” she said
noncommittally. Dominic laughed.
“Not something to use with someone
you don’t trust, obviously,” she said.
“Definitely not,” he agreed, his
golden eyes dancing. “A really
unscrupulous person could take dreadful advantage of the situation.” He crawled in between her feet, keeping clear
of the magnet, and slid his hands up the outsides of her legs, all the way up
to above her hips, where he gently tugged on the strings that held her bikini
bottom in place.
“What are you…Dominic, no!” she said
firmly. His grin widened.
“And who’s going to stop me?” he
teased, pulling the strings loose. He
took hold of the front triangle and tugged, and despite her protests, within
seconds, Joely was bottomless. Not
liking the indignity of her position at all, she was even less happy when he
turned his attentions to her bikini top, untying it and removing it as
well.
“There now,” he said. “That’s how it’s meant to be used.” He sat back on his heels and surveyed her,
from her face, a mix of annoyance, embarrassment and reluctant amusement, down
over the full breasts dangling between her thighs, and down to her private
parts, now wide open and completely exposed.
“Very funny,” Joely said. “Now get me out of this stupid thing.”
”What’s your hurry?” Dominic asked, his hand moving slowly, steadily up the
inside of one of her legs. She tried to
inch back from him. She felt so open, so
helpless, and the mischief in his face, while it excited her, was worrying at a
very basic, primal level.
“What else have we got in this box?”
Dominic mused, leaning over her to look in.
He left his hand where it was, spread out on her inner thigh, not quite
touching any higher.
“Oh good,” he said, sitting back
with a small black case in his spare hand. Something she’d missed. “Just
what I needed.” He flicked the case open
one-handed, not letting her see the contents, smiled, and took something
out.
“Now,” he said. “Lesson number one for naughty girls who go
looking in stuff they’ve been advised not to touch.”
“What are you doing?” she asked,
part of her still loving the look in his eyes, the rest of her wanting to get
the hell away from him and whatever he was holding in his hand.
“Oh, this and that,” he said
airily. He leaned in towards her, put
his hands on her shoulders, and firmly pushed, taking her feet off the floor
and sending her rocking onto her back on the towel. He cushioned her with his hands, then grinned
at her fro
“Which one should I start on?” he
asked, and before she could respond, brought a large, soft paintbrush down and
began stroking it teasingly over her nipples.
She was shrieking with laughter and protests within seconds, and he took
that as an invitation to continue, trailing it down into the dip between her
wildly bouncing breasts and back up to each sensitive tip, over and over
again. Then, keeping that movement going
with one hand, he reached back and took a smaller brush out of the case.
“See this one?” he asked, grinning
into her now furious face. “It’s good
for those hard to reach places.” He
demonstrated, on her belly button, twisting the little brush around her
sapphire stud until she was incoherent with laughter. Laughing almost as uncontrollably himself,
Dominic delved back into the case.
“And this,” he said, holding up a
slightly larger brush, not quite as soft as the other two. “Is going to be a lot of fun.” With that, he settled back on his heels again
and began using the two smaller brushes to tickle between her legs, where everything
was laid out like a banquet for him.
”No!” she managed, two or three times, trying to shift away from that terrible,
teasing tickle by bucking her hips, but he was having none of that. He put a hand on one of her knees and held
her steady, with no choice but to lie there and be tormented up to a reluctant
but crashing orgasm.
He watched her go over the edge,
loving it as always, his hands still.
When she could catch her breath enough to talk, she looked up at him.
“I hate you,” she said, making him
laugh again.
“Oh dear,” he said. “And here’s me thinking how much I love
you. In fact, I love you so much I just
want to eat you all up.” Joely shrieked
again as he stretched out on the floor and bent forward, laughing softly, his
tongue lapping at the over-sensitised site of his most recent teasing.
“Oh God, oh God,” she said
“No need to stand on ceremony,” he
said, his breath hot on her wet skin.
“Just call me Dominic.” She
wasn’t in the mood to laugh at his silly jokes.
“I can’t take this, Dominic,” she
moaned, tilting up into his mouth anyway.
“Sure you can,” he said, a dangerous
streak of mischief still in his voice.
His hand was busy inside the black case again. “What you probably can’t take, however, is
this.” With that, he brought a
firm-bristled paintbrush right up the middle of the sole of her bare foot.
He eventually stopped, claiming that
the neighbours were going to call the police because of her screams of
laughter, but not until he’d licked another orgasm out of her, and painstakingly
tickled in between each of her toes with the smallest paintbrush.
“Undo this thing NOW!” Joely said to
him, once she was again capable of speech.
“I mean it, Dominic!”
“Oh, you mean it?” he repeated,
almost succeeding in sounding worried.
“Well, if you’d only said.” He
stood up, bent down and scooped her naked body up into his arms. “I mean, when you were begging and
threatening and swearing at me, I didn’t know you were serious. But now I know
that you MEAN it, that’s different of course.”
He shouldered the bedroom door open and walked out into the hallway with
her in his arms.
“Where are you going? Dominic, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she screeched.
“Going deaf,” he said, walking
quickly, taking the steps easily and striding quickly across the living areas
to the outside courtyard.”
“Not outside!” Joely protested, squirming
in his arms.
“No?” he asked, setting her down on
one of the lounges. “Why not, Joe? The fresh air should feel nice on your
skin. On all of that lovely, exposed
skin.” He ran his hands over her
breasts, down over her belly, dipped between her legs again, having no trouble
connecting anywhere, despite her steady stream of abuse and constant rocking
from side to side. The cuffs kept her
wide open and trapped. Dominic shook his
head and laughed again.
“All right,” he said. He bent down and unhooked her wrists, then,
despite the fact that the first thing she did was start hitting him, took the
time to undo the ankle links and slip them off her too. Laughing and dodging blows, he caught her
wrists in his hands, made sure to avoid her knees and leaned over her, holding
her down on the lounge, his face inches from hers, his hair falling down to
curtain them.
“Ssssh,” he soothed, smiling. “You wanted to know what they were for.”
”You could have just TOLD me!” she said.
Her face was still covered in perspiration from the tickling and torment
in the bedroom.
“Naaah,” he said, shaking his head
and letting his hair fall across her face. “Some lessons have to be learned the
hard way. Now, are you going to let me
kiss you, or are you going to bite me?”
“You’ll just have to take your
chances,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, leaning in further
to kiss her. She did nibble on his
tongue a little, but not for long. The
heat of his kiss was too nice to resist, and the pressure of his erection
against her hip was too tempting. And
he’d been right. She had wanted to know
what those things were for. And some of
the other things in the box, too. But
she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
“Dominic,” she murmured against his
lips. “Let’s go back to the bedroom.”
”Too far,” he said, pressing her down into the lounger. “Paul’s left for the day, let’s make love
here.”
”Outside?” she asked. “You know what
happened last time we did that.”
”We have walls around us here,” he said, tugging his shirt over his head. “And if one of them wants to scale the wall
and risk electrocution for a photograph, well, good luck to them. Let’s give them something to aim their
cameras at.”
…………………
Neither of them was in any hurry to
be married. They were enjoying each
other’s company and the novelty of their life together too much to rush
anything. Dominic was working on a movie
set close to home, his sisters had made plans to visit within the next month,
and Joely had become close to some of Dominic’s friends. She was surprised by how popular he was.
“I would have thought his success
would have made him a target for unpleasantness rather than friendliness,” she
commented to Sandra Terrazzo, a well-known sit-com actress who’d acted with
Dominic on a movie years before. Sandra
shook her mane of black hair.
“In many cases it would,” she said,
sitting gracefully on her leg as she lounged beside the pool. “But not in Dominic’s. He’s fun to be around, he’s very pleasant to
look at, and he’s genuine. People can
sense that – even artificial people like me.”
Joely smiled. Sandra was always
making comments like that about herself.
“And he doesn’t choose friends on
the basis of how useful they’ll be to him,” she continued. “Pass me the sun block will you, darling?
It’s so hard to command respect on the set when you have a sunburned nose. Thanks. When he first started out, like many of us, he
was surrounded by sycophants and users, but he got past that. When Dominic makes you a friend, you know
it’s because he likes you. He doesn’t
ask for favours and he doesn’t expect anyone to suck up to hi
“That’s why we’ve all been so happy
to help out with Dianne Ballinger,” Sandra said with a deceptively sweet
smile. Dianne had been having a terrible
time. She’d complained to the managers
of several top actors and musicians that none of them would so much as turn her
way for photographs. “She told my agent
that she felt that she’d been back-listed.”
”Back-listed?” Joely repeated. Sandra
nodded, smiling broader.
“Like blacklisted, but in her case,
it just means that all of us turn our backs to her.”
“Poor Dianne,” Joely said, not
really meaning it.
”Poor Dianne, nothing!” Sandra said with feeling. “How dare she infringe on
your privacy like that? That photograph
was unforgivable! Even if you did both look
delicious. Tell me, were you just
sitting on his lap or were you actually doing it when the camera clicked?” Joely, past embarrassment on this issue, just
laughed.
The only fly in the ointment was
Justin. His election push was going
well, but he was campaigning on a range of ultra-right wing conservative
issues. As part of the arrangement
whereby Justin released control of Joely’s inheritance, both Joely and Dominic
had agreed to not speak out against him.
They were not actively promoting him in any way, but it was still hard
for the
Justin was strongly against abortion,
he was very supportive of gun ownership, he was positively eloquent in his
comments against homosexuals, and extremely talkative on the subject of the
“sanctity of marriage” and the “traditional family unit”. With a platform that seemed to consist of a
setting back the women’s movement four decades and putting a stern patriarch
and a loaded weapon in every household, he was rapidly becoming the pin-up boy
of the moral majority.
By not speaking out, both Dominic
and Joely risked being lumped in with him on these issues, and both of them
found it difficult. After one
particularly unpleasant speech from Justin, in which he decried the decreasing
morality among those who “our children should be able to look up to”, an
interviewer asked him whether he included his stepdaughter and her fiancé in
that category, given the famous front-page photograph of them. Justin’s people had anticipated this question
and he was prepared for it. He looked
squarely into the cameras.
“Like all fathers, the welfare and
happiness of my daughter matters most to me.
And like all fathers, I have obviously made some mistakes along the
way. I don’t hold myself up as the
perfect example, it would be hypocritical of me to do so, given what occurred
several months ago. But it is because I
have had this sad experience that I know and understand the pressures under
which parents sometimes flounder. That
experience has made me stronger. And of
course, my daughter is going to marry Dominic Blake any day now.”
“If he gets a vote every time he
says my name, he’s going to be a shoe-in,” Dominic said, turning the television
off in disgust.
………..
It was Joely who came up with the
idea. She would have liked to pretend
that her motivation was pure, but it wasn’t.
She was driven by the need to make things difficult for Justin. Dominic heartily approved, both of the reason
and the idea.
“Actors have been stripping for
causes for years now,” he said. “Things
like animal welfare, anti-fur groups, all sorts of things. I can’t imagine that too many people would
have a problem.”
“So you don’t mind if I ask Sandra
and some of the others?”
“Not at all,” he smiled. “I take it
that we’re going to be in it too?”
”Well you are,” she said. He shook his
head.
“No, baby,” he said. “If I’m in it, you’re going to be with
me. Let’s really get to Justin.” Joely couldn’t help but smile at the
satisfaction in his voice.
“What cause are we going to donate
the money to?” he asked. Joely’s smile
widened.
“I thought we’d split it between two
worthy causes,” she said. “AIDS
research, and the Right to Choice group.
What do you think?”
”I love how you think,” Dominic grinned.
“I’ll start asking around straight away, and I’ll get my people onto
it.”
It took very little persuasion. With a few notable exceptions, actors were usually
liberal thinkers who disliked the politics of hatred, fear and divisiveness
that Justin Williams was coming to personify.
What had started as an idea for a calendar expanded into a book and then
an exhibition as well, as more than sixty top actors volunteered to pose for
nude photos for the cause. Word of it
got out, because top flight publicists around the country made sure of it, and
Justin was one of those who spoke out in condemnation of it – particularly in
light of the institutions the money was going to.
He did his best to distance himself
from the “perpetrators” as he called them, but he’d mentioned Joely’s and
Dominic’s names far too many times in the past for his ultra-conservative
supporters to forget his connection. His
popularity among the right-wing faithful waned dramatically, even before the
photographs had been taken.
………………….
For every photograph, a number of
criteria had been set. There was to be a
minimum of fuss, backdrop and people around.
Those who had volunteered to pose were not people who made a habit of
dropping their clothes in their movies, although some of them had on occasions
(usually early in their careers). No-one
was to be pressured into revealing more than they were comfortable with, but if
they did, there would be a separate part of the exhibition devoted to total
nudity. Three photographers were taking
all of the pictures, and they were chosen after an exhaustive selection
process. Dieter Harkoff, Etienne
E’strange and Margaret Blackwood were the appointed three.
Joely and Dominic scored Etienne,
who was brilliant, temperamental, openly gay and wildly dramatic, with a
wonderful, smutty sense of humour. They
met him on a number of occasions before the day of the photos and found him to
have lots of ideas and an exhausting amount of energy. On the day itself, Joely confessed to nerves,
sitting waiting on a sofa beside Dominic, both of them clad only in loose
dressing gowns.
“Why are you nervous?” he asked,
holding her hand tightly. “This was all
your idea!”
”It was my idea that YOU pose!” she reminded him. “You’re the famous one, after all,” she
said. He shook his head, smiling.
“The minute our photograph appeared
in the newspaper, you became famous too,” he said. “And those million dollar smiles you give
photographers whenever we’re out scores you lots of space in magazines,
too. The photographers love you.”
”Except Dianne,” she said.
“Naturally,” his smile was laced
with evil.
The sound of clapping drew their attention
away from each other.
“Time for the talent!” Etienne
announced. “Come along, my
darlings. Up you get now.” Apart from him, there were only two other
people in the room with them. They were
his assistants, who in this case were helping with everything from lighting to
makeup. Joely was glad they were both
female. In fact, given that Etienne was
so flagrantly gay, she was in a much better position than Dominic she mused as
she undid the gown and put it down on the sofa.
She stepped forward, then realised that Dominic was still dressed, and
she stopped, awkward, the only naked person in the room.
“Darling, you are exquisite,” Etienne
said. “Women the world over are going to
want to be you, and straight men everywhere are going to be sneaking your
pictures into the bathroom.” Joely
couldn’t help but laugh. And then
Dominic dropped his gown.
“Oh…My…God!” Etienne gasped. Dominic burst out laughing and turned away. “My life has purpose,” Etienne announced, his
hand on his heart. “And now, I think I
need to quietly lie down for a while.
No, please, don’t turn away. I
must get used to this view, or I’m never going to be able to use my cameras.”
“Is it too late to get another
photographer?” Dominic asked under his breath, still laughing.
“Yes,” Joely said. “I like him.”
”You would,” Dominic said. “You stay
between us at all times, okay? He’s
scaring me.”
Once he’d got over the first “rush
of lust” as he referred to it, Etienne settled down and became the consummate
professional. The first pose he put them
in had Dominic looking into the camera, a smouldering expression on his face,
the front of Joely’s body pressed against the front of his. Joely’s head was turned to the side, so her
cheek rested against his shoulder and part of her face could be seen, along
with the side of her breast, which was squashed against his chest. Her hand was draped on his other shoulder,
her thigh just blocking the view of his genitals. Dominic returned the favour by covering most
of her bottom with his hand. Etienne
fussed with their hair for a while, one of the two assistants made some changes
at his command, and the photos started.
In all, he put them in more than
twenty poses. The one that was picked up
all around the world, had them standing side on, facing each other, their lower
bodies pressed tightly together. They
were smiling at each other, smiling sincerely, with Dominic’s arms down and
around Joely, partially blocking the camera’s view of her breasts. They were both obviously naked, but nothing
private was showing. What was on show,
as Etienne said later in many interviews, was their obvious joy in each other.
Oddly enough, it turned out to be a
fun day. Joely was never going to grow
accustomed to being nude in front of other people, but Dominic didn’t even
reach for his gown in between shots unless there was a long break.
“How can you be so comfortable?” she
asked him at one stage. He shrugged.
“I haven’t appeared completely naked
in movies,” he said. “But I’ve been this
way many times on movie sets. My bare bum
appears in almost every movie I make.”
Since he’d turned away to look at how progress was going on setting up
the next shot, Joely was well positioned to appreciate why.
Etienne started a campaign to get
them to pose for the total nudity part of the exhibition just before they
stopped for lunch and kept going for hours afterwards. Joely flatly refused, and continued to do so,
but Dominic finally gave in to Etienne’s begging and agreed. The series of black and white nude shots
showed all of him, but in an artistic way, highlighting his bone structure and
his physique. In one of them, Etienne
did something clever to allow Dominic’s eyes to show through the black and
white, providing the only burst of colour in the photograph. The one that was most popular and became a
permanent part of any exhibition of Etienne’s work however, showed Dominic
laughing.
Again, he was nude, all of his lean,
toned body on show from head to toes, but his face, and in particular his eyes
were lit up with laughter. Etienne had
just offered him every cent he had, every cent he would ever make, to spend one
night with him. Later on, Etienne would
protest that he hadn’t been joking, but that the sight of Dominic’s genuine
amusement was too wonderful to not capture on film.
……………
Predictably, Justin was furious
about it all. Not only had his
stepdaughter chosen to appear artistically naked with her husband, right in the
middle of her stepfather’s campaign on the need to return to morality, but his soon
to be stepson-in-law had blatantly bared all for a gay photographer! And the money from the exhibition and book was
going to support AIDS research and women’s right to have access to abortions!
Bitter, he conveyed a message to them that he thought they were showing a
complete disregard for his feelings and aspirations. They sent him a message in return agreeing
totally and recommending that he get used to it.
…………
The pre-orders of the book were
phenomenal, the exhibition was an unqualified success, and there was talk of
making it an annual event. Joely, lying
flat out on the bed while Dominic rubbed her feet, vowed that she was having
nothing to do with it in future.
“I’m exhausted,” she
complained. “I can’t move, I can’t
think…”
”Yet you can still talk,” he commented.
“Although not as much as Clodagh and Maura, thank God.” That brought a smile to her lips. His sisters had stayed with them for almost a
week, and she’d loved every minute of it, but he was right – her ears still
hurt from the barrage.
“I mean it, Dominic,” she said. “I don’t think I could even roll over at the
moment. Ohhh, that feels good. I’ll love you forever if you keep doing
that.”
“You’ll love me forever anyway,” he
smiled confidently. She opened one eye.
“You’re right,” she said. “But keep doing it anyway. I’m going to sleep just like this, in the
middle of the bed, on top of the covers, fully clothed. I hope you don’t mind.”
”I mind,” he said. “I have plans for you
tonight, my lovely.” Her second eye opened.
“You have got to be kidding,” she
said in disbelief. “Dominic, I am nearly
dead!”
“I know,” he said
sympathetically. “But don’t worry about
it. I’ll do all the work. I’ll get you down to your sapphires and then
I’ll drag that black box out of the closet and just work my way through
it. You can sleep if you like.” She laughed.
“You’ve always refused to use most
of it,” she said. She clearly remembered
trying to get him to try out what had turned out to be nipple clamps on her,
but he wouldn’t hear of it.
“They’re perfect,” he’d said,
kissing her breasts. “I’m not hurting
them, and that’s final.” He’d been
equally unequivocal about a long leather sleeve that he’d explained was for
lacing arms behind backs. He hadn’t
wanted to strain her shoulders. And
besides, he’d pointed out arrogantly, he could restrain her any time he wanted
to. A short, fun struggle had ensued, at
the end of which he triumphantly proved his point. Joely didn’t mind at all.
“There are some things in there that
might be fun,” he said.
“Not the leather face mask,” she
said. His expression made it clear what
he thought of that.
“No,” he said. “I’ve never understood that. I mean, each to their own, but why would I
want to cover up your beautiful face? No, I was thinking of those ankle and
wrist cuffs again, actually. Shall I get
them? Since you’re too tired to do anything
except just lie there?”
”I have suddenly received a burst of energy,” Joely said, laughing as she sat
up and reached out to him.
“It’s a miracle,” he said with a
grin, crawling up the bed towards her.
Some hours later, after Joely had
found she actually had quite a surprising amount of energy left, they lay
quietly, their arms around each other, and enjoyed the cool darkness of the
bedroom.
“Bernard rang this morning while you
were at the gallery,” Dominic remembered.
“He did?” she responded. “We haven’t heard from him in more than a
month.”
”No, he’s been busy with some new students,” Dominic said. “Our notoriety brought them a lot of
business, it seems. He’s planning to
come see the exhibition some time later this week.”
“Ohhh,” Joely buried her face into
his shoulder. “That’s a bit
embarrassing.”
”It’s not as if he’s going to see anything he hasn’t before where you and I are
concerned,” Dominic smiled. He sighed, a
sigh of pure contentment.
“He also asked if we want to get
married at the monastery,” he said. “In
the main hall, if we like, or outside in one of the courtyards if we want to
keep it small.”
”Would everyone have to take their clothes off and put on robes?” she
asked. Dominic laughed.
“No,” he said. “They would give us
all a special dispensation for the day, and would even allow conversation
inside.”
“It would be perfect, wouldn’t it?”
she asked, raising herself up on one elbow.
“Who would perform it?”
”Bernard himself,” Dominic said. “He’s ordained. And unless you want your stepfather to give
you away…no, I didn’t think so, and that was a very unladylike noise I have to
say, young lady, then you might like to ask Daniel to carry out that duty.”
”Yes,” Joely said, smoothing her hand flat down over Dominic’s bare chest, down
lower, over his smooth, flat belly.
Hers, she smiled. All hers.
“Of course, Andy would probably want
to be in on the act too,” Dominic said, catching his breath as her hand moved
lower still. “Just out of interest, are
you doing that to drive me crazy, or are you hinting that you’ve discovered
another hidden store of energy?” Joely
laughed.
”You find out,” she said.
…………………
After the exhibition, his exclusion
from their wedding, from what might have been an opportunity to redeem some
points on the “family values” part of his platform, Justin finally and
completely washed his hands of them, publicly disowning Joely. In a statement to the newspapers, after being
asked how he felt about being “publicly snubbed” by his stepdaughter and her
new husband, he responded: “Joely Blake is a grown woman and is
responsible for her own actions.”
Joely had it enlarged, framed and
hung on their wall.
THE END