‘Sure enough, the smell of recent sex is on you and your cunt is looking well used, as I mention to you.
‘You beg me not to sack you, I think you even burst into tears, although you’re not the tearful type, I know.
‘I say I’ll let you keep your job, but there’s a condition.’
‘Oh, I’ll bet there is.’ I try to sound scornful, but this scenario is making me giddy and my breath flutters in my lungs.
‘The condition is that you stop having anything to do with other men and surrender yourself to me.’
‘Surrender myself?’
‘Completely. Place yourself under my absolute control. Oh, the plans I had for you – in this fantasy, I mean, not in real life.’
‘What plans?’
‘I think one particularly sleepless night I drew up a daily timetable. Blow jobs with the coffee, having you chained under the desk, that kind of thing. Tying you up, having you every which way, exhausting you, making you beg for mercy.’
‘Hmm. I’m not a beggar, I’m a chooser.’
‘I know you are. That’s what maddens me about you. You seem to genuinely enjoy your promiscuity.’
‘And women aren’t supposed to, are they? They’re supposed to sleep around because they’re so terribly lonely, or so awfully damaged or whatever. It upset your little apple cart, didn’t it? You wanted to either save me from it, or punish me for it.’
‘Yes,’ he admits. ‘I did. But I knew I couldn’t. It was frustrating.’
‘I imagine so.’ But I’m beginning to see that I had a lucky escape, and this gives me so much strength that I feel surrounded with the glow of it. ‘So, tonight,’ I say, putting a hand on his thigh, ‘you can live out your fantasy.’
‘Some of them went a little further than you’d like, I should think,’ he warns me.
‘How far?’
‘I don’t want to say.’
‘Chase, I know the difference between fantasy and reality. Just because you get off to the thought of something doesn’t mean you’ll do it.’
‘The fantasies were sometimes violent. I suppose because my attraction to you was so unwanted and so problematic. I would, well, slap you around a bit. I was cruel.’
‘You are cruel,’ I point out. ‘We all figured that out ages ago.’
‘So, living out my fantasies then? Where do we stand on that now?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I think about the purpose of all this, the nature of the test. ‘I think the idea is that I live out my fantasies. So, no slapping. And I don’t trust you enough to give you control anyway. I don’t trust you at all, in fact.’
‘It’s understandable.’
‘And I still want to hurt you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘You don’t get to choose. OK. Stay there. I’m going to get this out of my system, and I think it’ll only take a moment.’
I straddle his knees, facing him. He looks furious and confused, on the verge of pushing me away, but whatever hold Lloyd has over him is pretty strong, it seems.
‘Take off your glasses.’
‘You’re going to hit me, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not a violent person. No fists, nothing like that.’