Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (12 page)

‘Yes, I understand,’ she says, handing him back the cuffs. Their fingers brush again, and the contrast of his warm skin after the cold metal make her shiver a little.

‘Okay then,’ he says, putting the chains and handcuffs back in the drawers. ‘I have two ladies coming here tomorrow night. Rosa and Celia. They are both dancers, and they take it
in turns over who dominates and who is submissive. They are both very sensual.’

Valentina writes in her notebook:
Rosa. Celia. Dancers. Sensual
.

Leonardo opens the door for her.

‘And is that it? Just the two women?’ she asks him.

‘Yes, I think that will be enough, for the first time. They have very beautiful bodies,’ he whispers into her ear as she walks by. ‘I am sure you can create something extremely erotic and visually pleasing with those two girls.’

Valentina feels a wave of relief. Women’s naked bodies. That is something she is used to. She needs to build up to her first photograph of a full-frontal man, especially in a bondage scenario.

They are back out in the dim corridor now. Valentina glances at the steel door of the Dark Room. Its presence taunting her.

‘Neither of those girls is interested in the Dark Room, Valentina,’ Leonardo says, noticing her look in its direction. ‘Although sometimes they might be tempted behind this door,’ he adds, tapping the green leather door. ‘Our very own Velvet Underworld. I am hoping that you will use this space as well for some of your pictures. Would you like to see?’

‘Of course,’ Valentina says as nonchalantly as she can, although she is dying to see behind the leather door.

The Velvet Underworld is all that Valentina expected from a bondage den. It is the opposite of the Atlantis Room, decorated
like a nineteenth-century bordello with flock wallpaper and velvet couches. In the centre of the room is an enormous four-poster bed hung with purple drapes. The walls are covered with gilt-framed mirrors, as is the ceiling. Valentina can see a dozen reflections of herself as she walks into the room. She looks austere and judgemental in her sombre clothes, against this background of colour and opulence.

‘I have to admit, this is the more popular of our two rooms,’ says Leonardo, sitting down on the bed and fluffing up one of the pillows. ‘The sadomasochists of Milan still like a little luxury,’ he jokes, spreading his legs like he did in the Atlantis Room and leaning back against the pillow. Is he deliberately trying to wind her up? ‘There are in fact a lot of toys and implements in this room,’ he continues. ‘Would you like to explore it for yourself?’

‘Okay.’ She turns her back on him and his provocative crotch, and circles the room. The first thing she notices is a large wooden cross attached to the far wall, with leather straps for arms and legs. There is a harness of some sort suspended from the ceiling, and a hammock like the one she saw on the internet. In the corner of the room is a selection of whips hanging off the wall. She goes over to them and fingers the leather strap of the largest one, squeezing the hard tip between her fingers.

Mio dio,
that must hurt!

She finds it hard to get her head around the idea of being whipped. Why would any woman
want
to be beaten? Yet she
forces herself not to make assumptions. She needs to understand why. That’s the reason she is here, isn’t it?

‘I am afraid we are running a little short of time,’ Leonardo says, looking at his watch. ‘I have this room booked in about ten minutes and I need to make preparations.’

Valentina turns to him as he lounges on the bed. She can’t help wondering if he is one of the people using this room tonight. Her lips have suddenly gone dry, and she tries to moisten them surreptitiously with her tongue.

‘You can have another look in here tomorrow or some other time, okay?’ he says, getting up off the bed.

She has seen enough for tonight anyway. Her head is full of images from the Atlantis Room and the Velvet Underworld. Amid all the shock, and curiosity, she is also feeling stimulated, and yes, she is getting some ideas for her shoot tomorrow. Blue. Dancers. Naked beauty. All those pretty vibrators. She can work with that. Her pictures will be explicit, of course, but it will be women, and that makes her feel a little safer.

Leonardo accompanies her up the staircase and to the front hall again.

‘So you’ll be back tomorrow night?’ he asks, giving her a long look.

‘Of course,’ she says, blinking at him in the brighter light of the reception area.

‘I haven’t scared you off?’ he asks, smiling at her almost shyly now.

‘No, not at all,’ she says, kissing him lightly on both cheeks in parting. His Armani pervades her senses again, and as she pulls back she notices something else. To her surprise, Leonardo is wearing a small gold earring in one of his lobes. The image doesn’t seem to fit with his sleek businesslike appearance, as incongruous as a love heart tattoo on his arm would be.

‘Well, thank you, Valentina,’ he says as she makes her way out.

‘What for? It’s you who’s hired me . . .’

‘Yes, but you didn’t have to accept.’ He smiles at her as he clicks the door shut, and she is left in darkness on the doorstep, the image of his charming hazel eyes still imprinted upon her irises.

Valentina makes her way towards the metro, mulling over her encounter with Leonardo, reliving her impressions of the two bondage rooms he showed her inside his club. In one way they did not come up to her expectations, and in another way they confounded them. For some reason she actually finds the Atlantis Room the more erotic of the two spaces. And then there is the Dark Room. Would she ever have the courage to go inside?

She tries to stay focused on the job in hand. This is a big and exciting photographic assignment. Her first proper exploration into the world of erotic photography. How fitting that only yesterday, Theo should have given her that present of the book with the old pornographic negatives. It feels as if
it is some kind of sign, confirming that what she has just agreed to do – creating a book of S&M photography, no less – is going to be a positive move for her career. She quickens her pace at the thought of Theo and his gift. He could be home tonight. Sometimes he only goes away overnight. She finds herself hoping he is. He can explain his present to her, and afterwards . . . Well, her tour of Leonardo’s club has given her plenty of ideas for what she and Theo might do in their own bedroom. The last thing on her mind is to answer the question he left her with yesterday morning. Somehow her encounter with Leonardo has lightened her mood. Tonight, deciding whether she wants to be Theo’s girlfriend is just not as important as being his lover.

SHE WANTS DARKNESS. SO TONIGHT BELLE GOES BACK TO
Ponte di Rialto, where her career as a Venetian prostitute first took off. She cannot bear to be in the light, for her clients to see the marks upon her body. This morning Signor Brzezinski did not hit her with his fists, as usual, but decided to use the back of her hairbrush instead and beat her hard upon her backside. In the same place her Russian had spanked her, and yet this time it was not fun. He hit her again and again relentlessly until she was forced to beg him to stop. And what was her offence? She laughed at him. And spoke Polish. Signor Brzezinski was standing in the centre of her bedroom, hand on his hip, declaring what a great leader Mussolini was, that finally he was bringing Italy back to her former glory as an empire. It occurred to Louise that her husband looked a little like the Italian dictator himself – short, bald, big head and thick lips, overemphatic expressions, pontificating. Too Italian to actually be Italian. He looked ridiculous: a stout Polish
man in a red silk dressing gown, which was too long for him and trailed on the rug, spouting his rough Italian as if he had marbles in his mouth.

She laughed, and even spoke to him in Polish, forgetting for a moment that she should be careful.

‘But we are Polish! What do you care about Mussolini and Italy?’

Signor Brzezinski moved swiftly across the bedroom and gave her a hard slap across the face.

‘Don’t ever talk to me in Polish again.’

She challenged him further. What did she have to lose? She recognised the narrowing of his eyes and what would come next.

‘But it is where we are from. You cannot wipe out who you are.’

He grabbed her hand and yanked her up from the bed. She swallowed her screams. If she called out, it only made him worse.

‘I belong to this city,’ he hissed in her face. ‘And you belong to me since the day your father gave you to me.’

He grabbed her hairbrush from her dressing table. She saw its silver back glinting in the morning light, making her catch her breath. So hard and cold and painful, she thought. He pushed her down on the floor, so that her mouth was filled with felt from the rug, and sat astride her, immobilising her completely. The first time he hit her across her thighs. She gritted her teeth. She would not plead with him.

‘You are never to speak Polish in this house again,’ he snarled, pulling up her silk nightdress and whacking her hard on her behind.

Louise squeezed her eyes shut, tried to remove herself from the brutal, stinging slaps of the hairbrush against her naked backside.

What has happened to her husband? He hasn’t always been like this. As Belle walks through the dark, silent city, the canal quietly lapping at her side, she has a memory of when they first moved into their house in Venice. It would be fourteen years ago now. Her mother was with them then. Signor Brzezinski was so kind to Louise’s mother. She remembers them sitting on the balcony, marvelling at the green hues of the canal, and for the first time since they had buried her father, her mother managed a wan smile. Signor Brzezinski joined them, a bottle of champagne in one hand and three flutes held by the stems in the other. He sat between the two women and made a toast.

‘To our new life in Venice,’ he said in Polish, turning to Louise’s mother. ‘May I always be able to take care of my two very special ladies as your dear husband would see fit.’

Louise remembers that her mother paled at the mention of her dead husband, yet she did not cry, but held her son-in-law’s gaze with defeated eyes.

What has happened to that man? While her mother lived with them he never made demands on Louise. She was so young when she married him. And he said he would wait until she was ready. Yet underneath his courteous mask, there were
demons lurking. Sometimes at night she would hear him yell out from his bedroom, followed by the crashing of furniture. She would sit up in bed, afraid to go in, wondering if her mother could hear him as well. She put it down to what he had endured himself before they left Poland. Of course such events could break a man . . . to witness the murder of his entire family . . . and yet on the outside it seemed to make Signor Brzezinski stronger, more successful and determined. She never found out how he had become so rich; or how he managed to get her and her mother out of Warsaw after her father died, right under the noses of the occupying Germans. As her mother used to remind her again and again, they owed him their lives.

Louise’s mother seemed to avoid Signor Brzezinski during daylight hours. She never really recovered from the death of her beloved husband. She couldn’t settle in Venice, and had no comprehension of Italian. As the years passed, she receded into a fog of confusion. She was a young enough woman yet, and still very beautiful, her Slavic features drawing men to her. She could have remarried, and yet she remained with Louise and Signor Brzezinski until that terrible day eleven years ago. By then she seemed not to know where she was any more. Inside her head, she moved between Italy and Poland. She would see her dead husband in their house. And often Louise would find her standing stock still like a ghost herself, talking to the empty air around her, saying again and again,
It was wrong, Aleksy. It was wrong. Look what we have done to her
.

If she tried to ask her mother what she meant, the older woman would look straight through her and ask her who she was.

Where is Ludwika
? she would say.
What happened to my little girl
?

Signor Brzezinski insisted it was for her mother’s own good that she should go into the new hospital on the island of Poveglia. He told her there was a new doctor there, making incredible breakthroughs in mental disorders. If anyone could bring her mother back, it would be him. Yet every time Louise visited her mother – which she had to admit was less and less frequently, for she found the whole experience on the island disturbing – she seemed even more lost to her. She spoke no more, and wandered along the shoreline of the miserable island communing with unseen spirits rather than recognising her own daughter.

It was the night after her mother left that Signor Brzezinski changed. Louise was upset, sobbing into her pillow, for with the departure of her mother she was racked with guilt. What would her father think of her for letting her mother go to that dreadful place? Signor Brzezinski came into her bedroom, and at first Louise thought he was there to comfort her. He climbed into the bed next to her, yet instead of taking her in his arms as she expected, he pulled her hands away from her face.

‘Stop crying,’ he ordered her in Italian. She was so surprised that she stopped almost immediately, staring at his shadowy face in the darkness of her bedchamber.

‘Now that your mother is gone, Louise, it is finally time for you to grow up.’ He pulled the straps down on her nightdress so that it dropped to her waist, and pawed roughly at her breasts with his hands.

‘No, not tonight,’ she said to him in Polish. ‘I am too upset.’

To her deep shock, her husband slapped her hard across the face. She gasped in horror, raising a hand to her stinging cheek, tears beginning to well in her eyes again.

‘Don’t ever resist me. You are my wife and it is time you did your duty. I want a son, Louise.’

Up until now, Louise had managed to retain her virginity, but that night Signor Brzezinski ripped it out of her.

Afterwards he was kinder, even held her in his arms as she sobbed in shock and fear. She remembers his words, and still they confuse her.