‘So…have you done much of this kind of thing then?’
I shook my head.
‘No,’ I admitted, screwing up my face apologetically. Perhaps he was after an experienced player and this would be goodbye. ‘Just never seemed to…come up…You know?’
His eyes shone like blue crystals.
‘But you always wanted to?’ he said.
‘Yes. Always. What about you?’
‘I’ve smacked a few arses in my time,’ he said. ‘But it’s never been serious. Just part of the rough sex fun. I’ve always been interested in taking things further, but never wanted to freak anybody out by showing them the extent of my perversions.’
I blanched a little at that. ‘The extent of my perversions.’ It sounded a bit sinister.
‘So, uh, what is their extent?’ I asked, trying to sound casual while my brain begged him not to mention knives or suffocation.
‘You look scared,’ he noted with a self-conscious chuckle. ‘Don’t worry. Your book takes it a little further than I’d go. I’m pretty much a chapters-one-to-five kind of guy.’
I covered my sigh of relief with a laugh.
‘Right. Chapter six is where it starts getting into the piercing party scene. You wouldn’t go that far?’
‘Well, probably not. Though I never say never.’
‘Pony play? Adult baby?’
He was laughing now. ‘Enough, enough, now. I’ve told you. Chapters one to five. Read it again if you’ve forgotten what they cover.’
But I didn’t need to. I remembered well enough, and the memory made me glow.
‘So. This blog then.’
The change of tone and subject was so abrupt I had to force my mind back to Mia Culpa and her disappearance. She had been all but forgotten in the excitement of shared deviance and all the delightful implications.
‘Oh. Yeah. Well, it’s a BDSM blog. And, li
ke I said, the blogger has disappeared and so has her blog.’
‘Show me.’
I typed in the URL and the mysterious ‘page not found’ message appeared on screen.
‘Not much to show,’ I said. ‘It was here, and then it wasn’t.’
Tom leant over me, peering at the screen as if he expected the generic deletion message to yield him some unique insight.
‘Not much to go on,’ he said.
‘No, but I saved all the posts,’ I told him.
‘Really? Well, come on, then. Let’s see them.’
I opened the folder and left it open without comment.
‘There’s a lot of them,’ he remarked. ‘What do you know about her? Off the top of your head.’
‘She is – or was – a student here. No idea which college or even if it is a college. Could have been the Open University for all I know.’