“It makes me happy,” I tell him. “I makes me feel all yours.” I want to say I feel mastered, but I can’t quite say the words.
“Does it hurt?”
“Only a little. Not too much.”
“Oh, I’m glad it hurts. But I want you to feel the pleasure as well as the pain. There will be pleasure too.”
Well, hooray. Shall we get on with it then?
Small, tight movements at first, making me whimper with each thrust, but soon the passage is stretched enough to make more forceful motion possible and he proceeds to fuck me properly, just as he would if he were taking me in a more conventional manner. I moan and squirm and on occasion try to escape the mercilessness of it, but then he reaches a hand down beneath me to flick at my clitoris and the wave of pleasure is amazing; much stronger than if he were fingering me alone, much stronger than anything…oh…BLOODY HELL, this feels INCREDIBLE…
“I can’t last much longer; you’re so bloody tight,” he complains, ramming himself hard up my back passage. “I’m going to take you like this as often as I can now, Beth; I hope you realise,” he warns, and his gently-spoken half-threat half-promise makes me wild with primitive excitement; I feel deliciously submissive yet primally powerful at the same time, and I come like a shrieking banshee, pushing back against him, which causes him to shoot his load in turn and collapse on my back, rasping raggedly into my ear for a long time afterward.
“So…” he says hoarsely, removing his now-limp appendage from my rear. “Was that as bad as you thought it would be?”
“Uh huh,” I reply. “Worse. Much worse. I’m not sure I’ll ever think straight again.”
He chuckles, shifts off me to the side and we doze off, entwined and exhausted.
*
“I don’t think you should wear a suit,” I opine, watching Sinclair run an elegant hand along the ranks of sharply-cut tailoring in his wardrobe. We are both shower-fresh, having thought it best to wash off the lingering traces of early-morning sex before setting off on our epic journey.
“No?” He frowns, replacing a tie in the rack.
“They’ve seen you in formal wear – on television and, er, probably some stills of that tape as well. I don’t think your intimidating side is the one you should be projecting towards them.”
“Hmmm. You could be right,” he muses, then he turns to me and smiles ruefully. “But I find confrontation very difficult when I’m not properly dressed.”
I blink a few times. “You mean the clothes make the man?”
“If I look the part I can take on anybody, Beth. I don’t really have anything casual in my wardrobe.”
Oh. I am stymied for minute. “OK…well…maybe just an open-necked shirt and trousers? Would that work for you? I’m worried that if you wear a tie my dad might grab hold of it and throttle you.”
Sinclair chuckles briefly. “You have high hopes for today then, Beth? Your concern for my welfare is quite moving.” He selects his habitual linen shirt and trousers combo and dresses for battle.
*
“What will you say to them?” I enquire, my head leaning on his shoulder as the train rattles through pastoral idyll after pastoral idyll. Thank God he decided not to drive, or they would be having this meeting in a hospital, no doubt.
“I don’t have a script,” he tells me. “I intend to play it by ear. I hope I can persuade your parents that I am a civilised man with your best interests at heart rather than an exploitative monster.”
“So do I, believe me,” I say, snuggling in further and catching the guilty eyes of the couple sitting across the aisle before they furtively look away.
Once we are at the opening of our cul-de-sac, I feel a jolt of nausea so strong I have to stop and jerk Sinclair’s hand in panic.
“You go on ahead,” he advises. “Prepare the ground. I’ll wait in that café over the street until you call me.”
I stare mutely up at him, all bravado evaporated in a puff of smoke.
“What if they cast me out? Disinherit me?”
He ruffles my hair and chuckles. “It won’t come to that, Beth. Go on. Be brave.”
Halfway through his go-get-em kiss goodbye, I am distinctly aware of twitching curtains in the vicinity. I watch Sinclair step back, dismissing me, thrust out the chest, throw back the head and march past the neat semis with their landscaped driveways and lead-paned upvc windows.
Mum is halfway down the drive before I get there, waving a dishcloth in a manner I’d have to describe as agitated.