FREE CHAPTER FROM THE KEY IS IT by Zak from bdsmbooks.com
(NB Extra spacing is due to conversion to html, actual book is normal) 

Chapter One: The Ring On Her Finger

This time it was ropes. They looked coarse, rough, as though they would hurt, but Anna could feel no pain from the thick strands wrapped around her wrists, and she was not at all afraid of the figure she could detect behind her. Hands reached out and began to grope her body, probing between her thighs, mauling her breasts, and though she couldn't speak, she knew her thoughts were being perceived by the person who had put her in this position: it may be my turn now, but it's going to be your turn tomorrow. The rough handling was now becoming more insistent, fingers pushing up inside her quim, and Anna mewled and tensed... and woke up with a start, alone in her bed and faintly disorientated.

Another damn dream, of course, just a dream. Anna sighed and looked at the clock. It was twenty past five, a good two hours before she needed to get up; there was no rope-wielding lover in the room with her, no lover at all and her body ached with frustration. Still, on one level, that was easy enough to remedy. She sucked her index finger then put it between her pussy lips. She searched for her clit, which was throbbing with need, and began to rub. She wanted to come too badly to bother with the usual preliminaries of self-pleasure, the pinching of her nipples, the slow caressing of her labia: her attention was focused entirely on her hot, hard pearl and it didn't take too long before she was biting her lips and bucking her hips, the climactic rush filling her body with heat. As she allowed herself to drift back into sleep again, her last thoughts were of the figure who featured in so many of her dreams, the man without a face. She wondered if he had a name, if this was an authentic psychic sign, or merely an indication of her own frustration.

Mel was waiting for her at the entrance to the boot sale, early as always. Anna glanced discreetly at her watch, wondering if an apology was needed and deciding not to bother. "You look tired," Mel observed as they paid their entrance fees. "Oh, it's been a heavy week. You know," Anna murmured. She had no particular desire to confide in Mel, the two of them rarely discussed their preoccupations other than the mundane ones of work. Mel was really Anna's friend by default: the two of them worked on the same floor of PJP Insurance and Mel's husband was enough of an enthusiastic New Man to insist on Mel having separate social interests from him. Anna had a few casual acquaintances from the office, but fewer by far outside it, since splitting up from Paul. The world, she sometimes thought, was set up for couples above everyone else, especially once you passed the age of 25. At 27, Anna was still as blonde and lithe as she had been at 19, her eyes the same piercing green, her measurements still 34C 26 36. She didn't feel washed up, over the hill or on the shelf and she knew she had a healthy sexual appetite. She also knew that, right now, she didn't want a repeat of what she'd had with Paul: that bland, cosy, conformity and his constant references to "settling down", yet how to embark on the kind of life she did want? What, in fact, did she want?

It was a chilly day for late summer, Anna thought, but Mel didn't seem to mind. As usual, she was burrowing among the old china and collectable ornaments while Anna had been browsing in a more disinterested fashion: there was nothing much she needed or wanted and it was only a lack of better entertainment and a disinclination to be rude that made her follow the younger woman round the boot sales and junk fairs that Mel so enjoyed. Now, however, her eye was drawn to the folding table set up next to an elderly Vauxhall Nova. Amidst a selection of mismatched junk was a tray of jewellery, and Anna had always been fond of jewellery. She glanced down at diamante pins in the shape of birds and flowers, indistinguishable earrings and charms, and then she noticed the silver ring, sitting in a battered velvet box in the centre of the tray. She touched it with the tip of her finger, wonderingly, then drew it out of the box and tried it on. It was a narrow band of silver, ornamented with five tiny, stylised keys which pointed up and down the wearer's hand, and it was like nothing Anna had ever seen before.

"Pretty, isn't it?" said the stallholder, a plump woman with hennaed hair and glasses. "Unusual workmanship. I'd let it go for twenty quid."

With her other hand, Anna fumbled in the pocket of her black combats for her purse and dug it out. She couldn't take her eyes off the ring on her finger, couldn't rid herself of the fundamental conviction that this ring was important, that buying it was something she had to do. To her own amazement, she could feel her clitoris pulsing and a kind of hollow feeling in her stomach, just like when she woke up from one of the bizarre dreams she had been having so frequently.

"It looks good on your hand, dear," the woman observed as she took the money, and Anna thought, you may only be saying that to be polite, but actually you're damn right.

"What has she done to herself?" Corinne hissed into Jonathan's ear as Anna returned from the bar with a tray of drinks. Jonathan smirked and patted his wife on the arm. "Must be on the hunt for another bloke at last. I knew that happy-to-be-single crap was only a front." Accepting his pint of lager from the girl he'd previously ignored, Jonathan did let his eyes linger on her for a moment, admiring the plunging neckline of her scarlet t-shirt and the way her sequin-trimmed jeans accentuated the curves of her bottom. That red lipstick was a nice touch, as well, it made him think of how it would look smeared all over his cock. Corinne, neatly groomed, wore only a pale peach lip gloss which wouldn't show up against the skin but still, Saturday night probably did mean he'd get a blowjob when they got in from the pub. Jonathan lowered a hand to squeeze his wife's skirted thigh for a moment: best to be happy with what you'd got, and that Anna was a bit mouthy for his taste, anyway, Paul had always complained about her.

Anna knew that her appearance was making her friends uneasy. She had bought the jeans on her way home from the boot sale, not batting an eyelid at their price, suddenly filled with determination to make something different happen, to cause some small sensation at the imminent night down the local with those few friends she and Paul had shared who had refused to take sides, as they put it. Before going out, fresh from the shower, she'd played with her pussy again, fingering herself to another short, sharp orgasm, biting her lip to stifle her moans incase the neighbours heard her through the thin walls of the flat. She'd done it in front of the wall mirror, standing up, and more than once she'd found herself focusing on the ring on her finger, the way the light caught it as her hand strummed her cunt.

Now, in the pub, she could feel her earlier anticipation of something new, something exciting, draining away: nothing was ever going to happen to her here, among the same old faces, the same old places. Having handed out drinks, she announced to the indifferent faces at the table that she was just going to get some cigarettes.

She didn't notice the tall chestnut-haired man standing near the cigarette machine at first, but when she dropped some of her change on the floor, he bent over to help her pick it up.

"Thanks," she murmured, retrieving the last pound coin and taking a quick, assessing look at her helper.

"No problem," he replied. "Interesting ring, there."

Of course, it was the kind of casual remark anyone might make, Anna knew, but at the same time she thought she could detect something behind his words, some meaning he expected her to pick up on.

"It is pretty, isn't it," she said coolly, her mind racing, then, with a sudden rush of assurance, added, "I haven't seen you in here before. Come here often, do you?"

He took a long gulp of his drink before continuing the conversation, and Anna's sense of something more than the casual preliminary to a casual pick-up increased.

"I haven't been in this part of the world for a while," her new acquaintance said. "I'm Gareth. Can I get you a drink?"

She knew she had a rum and coke waiting on the table where her old friends sat but, her pussy hot and throbbing and her nipples pushing insistently at the fabric of her t-shirt, Anna smiled and accepted.

Maybe he was nothing more than a deluded idiot, and maybe he should simply settle for what he could get, Damon had thought when he invited the curvy, giggly redhead home with him that night. For a long time, he had kept the ring in its box in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, never entirely sure why he hadn't thrown it in the river or chucked it on top of the bonfire he made of everything Yvette had left behind - or even melted it down to refashion it into some other piece of jewellery. He had supposed for a while it was some kind of talisman to him, some Won't Get Fooled Again concrete reminder. But then he'd had a letter from Eleanor, now back in her native California and doing quite nicely out of a combination of New Age and SM books and lectures and she had been quite insistent that he should start engaging with the world again. A lot of what she wrote did seem like nonsense to him, but then he'd been passing the junk shop one wet Wednesday afternoon and it had come on him like an impulse, a simple Why Not.

That had been four weeks ago, and nothing at all had happened, apart from this redhead, this Beverley, chatting him up in the soulless disco pub he'd ventured into out of utter boredom. She was naked in his bed, smiling cheerfully up at him, her pale fawn nipples hardened into points, and he couldn't deny the stirring in his cock. It had been so long, he hoped he wouldn't lose control and frighten her. Stepping out of his leather trousers and tight black briefs, he joined her between the sheets and ran a lazily exploring hand over her breasts, belly and muff. He could feel the warmth of her quim and detect the delicate scent of her: she was already more than aroused. He sucked on a pointed nipple, grazing it lightly with his teeth, and she purred in pleasure and wrapped her fingers round his cock, stroking and caressing. He grew swiftly harder, and even though he yearned to pin her down, to cuff her hands to the bedframe and take his pleasure with her, he made himself carry on with slow, steady manual teasing, thumb on her clit making gentle flickering movements as he sucked first the left nipple and then the right, sucking hard enough to colour the skin. Her juices were flowing freely and she was beginning to buck and jerk against him, her hand on his cock fumbling a little as she started to lose control. She was getting noisy now, and so he pushed two fingers into the hot, sopping cleft and fucked her quickly with them, driving her sharply over the edge into a yelping orgasm. Her head thrashed on the pillow and her thighs clamped down on his wrist, but he worked through it dispassionately, waiting till the spasms diminished before hissing in her ear, "Roll over, now!" She obeyed with the eager speed that had always been one of his favourite things, and then he was on her, taking her from behind, his rigid prick plunging deeply into her channel. She pushed back as he fucked, rocking on knees and elbows, so he could take his own weight on his knees and simply hold her by the hips. He kept his rhythms slow and steady at first, though a part of him was frantic to pump and piston without stopping until he exploded; he wanted to play her like an instrument, timing everything exactly. She began to shudder and wail and then he allowed himself the luxury of a few sharp slaps on her soft, quivering buttocks, just enough to redden the flesh. She cried out and her pussy contracted, so he slapped her once more and then frigged her pulsing clit before he let himself pound the last few strokes into the wet grip, relishing the convulsive climactic squeezes of her cunt walls milking the spunk from his manhood.

Afterwards, smoking a cigarette with her head resting on his shoulder, Damon listened to her not-unpleasant chatter and found his attention drifting away. She was sweet, and she was a pretty hot fuck, but there was something more he wanted, that he would never get from Beverley or from a hundred girls like her. If he wanted it, he would have to do more than make a wish, though _ he'd have to go out and go looking again.

It wasn't until they were back in his house that Gareth mentioned Anna's ring again. He'd made coffee, and as she took the mug from him, her ring chinked against the china, and she saw his eyes go to it.

"Do you keep it on in bed?" he asked her, with a slight smirk. Anna raised her eyebrows slightly, and nodded. "All the time," she said, omitting to mention that she had owned the ring for less than eight hours, yet sure, somehow, that it would not leave her finger for the foreseeable future. She could see him pondering what to say next, and waited with some anticipation, intrigued by his reaction to the thing as much as she was aroused by his undeniable attractiveness. However, after a few moments' contemplation, he changed the subject and suggested that they finish the coffee and go to bed.

His bedroom was something of a revelation to Anna, with black satin sheets on the bed and a wall of books that appeared to be entirely devoted to the more esoteric extremes of sex: fetishes, bondage, spanking. Anna knew that many of her acquaintances and even the good, party-hard friends she'd had in her student days might well have fled shrieking but, to Anna, such things were more of a temptation than a threat. Gareth, unbuttoning his shirt, saw her look at the bookshelves and grinned at her. "Can't say I'm in the mood for anything elaborate tonight, and anyway, we don't know each other well enough to toss a coin," he said. "I take it you like to fuck, though."

Her pussy was quivering, needing to be filled, and she was well aware of the moisture gathering in the folds of her sex as she watched him undress. With slightly clumsy fingers, her mouth dry and her heart pounding, she stripped off her own clothes and dropped them to the floor,  fighting the urge to touch herself. He lay back on the bed and held out his arms to her, still smiling that catlike smile, and Anna crossed the room in two steps to join him.

He kissed hard and demandingly, but it made Anna less inclined to yield gracefully, more determined to match his force and lust with her own. She raked her fingertips down his shoulders, only just managing not to claw with her nails, and tangled her fingers in his slightly wavy hair. His thigh pushed between hers and she rode it, feeling the crisp hair on his leg tickling her pussy lips as her quim opened up. His cock, short and thick, was hard and warm against her belly, and she knew she didn't want to wait. She pushed him gently with the whole of her body, rolling him onto his back, and though he resisted for a moment or two, he gave in and lay beneath her while she swung her leg over him and mounted him, guiding his cock inside her slippery cleft as she gave in to the need to finger her aching clit.

Anna's first impulse was to bounce on his pole and ride him like a bucking bronco, but she controlled it, listening to some inner instinct, and sat very still, moving only her hands, from his bottom rib to his throat and up again, and making her cuntwalls clench and release, clench and release. He gave a little choking sigh and reached up for her breasts, fondling the titflesh and teasing the nipples, while Anna clenched and released, clenched and released. The sensations building in her body were like a slow-growing thunderstorm, gradually increasing as Gareth's moans of delight grew louder and more impassioned and his body began to twitch and shake beneath her. She put her index finger back on her clit and moved it slowly around in tiny circles, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she made her pussy muscles grip and let go even faster, the pressure rising, a series of flashes like tiny electrical shocks clicking all over her body, from the soles of her feet to her fingertips, and now Gareth was pushing upwards, raising himself on his heels and elbows, grunting harshly, beyond words, and the feeling was like a thread pulled tight, tighter, tightest, and then Anna shrieked and pitched forward, coming in a great heaving rush with his arms clamping round her and his cock shooting hot jets of spunk in her cunt.

They lay quite comfortably together, legs half-entwined, with some light mellow jazz drifting out of the CD player. "Five keys on your ring," Gareth murmured. "I reckon you deserve all five of them, baby." Anna, dozing, almost roused enough to ask him what he meant by that but, for the moment, sated, allowed herself to drift deep down into sleep. She'd find out soon enough.