He lets go of me and I flop down into the cushions, unable to meet his eye as yet. He comes back with a tot of brandy and a box of tissues.
“Sit up, Beth. Look at me.” The familiarity of his command tone is oddly comforting and I do as I am told reflexively. I take a sip of the brandy and doctor my face with the Kleenex.
“I’m sorry,” I say unevenly, hoarse with the racking sobs I have just been putting out for the last fifteen minutes. “I suppose it serves me right.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” says Sinclair gravely. “I should have got rid of it really. No purpose to be served in keeping hold of it. Beth, it was a favour between friends.”
“But you…I mean…a favour? Shagging that cow?”
He almost smiles for a minute, but forces it back. “That’s my friend you’re talking about, Beth; I’d appreciate it if you could keep a civil tongue.”
“Sorry. But I don’t like her. She likes you though.”
“She doesn’t want me back, if that’s what you think. She wanted a threesome for her birthday. I was single at the time. I didn’t see any reason not to oblige her.”
“So you wouldn’t do it now?”
“No I would not. And I’m not going to be berated by you for things I did before we met; is that clear?”
“Oh, yes.” I love the implication that I have a right to berate him about anything. That makes it sound Official. He wants to be faithful to me. He thinks of us as a legitimate couple. Oh, happy day. “It’s all in the past then?”
“Very much so.”
“It was just…horrible. Seeing you with another woman. And I couldn’t help wondering…would you ever want to do that kind of thing…I mean, you know, if you really wanted to, I wouldn’t…” I can’t believe I’m offering this. But I just couldn’t bear it if he ditched me because he thought I was a prude, or something.
“Beth.” He takes my face in his hands, his eyes searching me, just a foot away from me. “Please don’t offer to do things you aren’t comfortable with just for my sake. I will know.”
“But I want to make you happy,” I wail.
“It would not make me happy to share you. It would make me horribly, insanely jealous.” He smiles at the lighting-up effect his words have on me.
“Really?”
“When I have something I value, I’m extremely possessive of it, Beth.”
“And you value me?”
“I do.”
“Ohhhh.” It comes out as a long, blissful sigh. This is the happiest moment of my life.
“Not that I might not like to show you off sometime. I’m not averse to a small display.” I squeak. “You might not want that now, Beth, but the day will come when what I want is what you want.”
I think about this. It seems preposterous. That could never actually happen, could it? This is all role play, right? Then something else occurs to me. “What you were about to do in that film…?”
“Yes?”
I don’t frame the question, merely look up at him with trembly lamb-like eyes. He smiles slightly and nods.
“When you’re ready,” he says. Eek.
I quit the questioning while I’m (marginally) ahead and take refuge in the brandy balloon. Sinclair is holding one of my hands, stroking it deliciously. He values me. He would not share me. I bathe in the glow of divine rapture.
“So, Beth,” says Sinclair softly, looking at me with undisguised affection. “I shall have to punish you.”
Oh. We’ve got to that part of the conversation already.
“You have been extremely disobedient.”