Around the corner, in an Italian coffee place, the girls elected to stand at the counter, rather than sit to drink their cappuccinos.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Emma. ‘Ally’s a bit full-on but she’s protective of her girls. She’d stand up for you if it came down to it. She’s been brilliant with loads of the girls. Paid Sharlie’s court costs when she had to fight an eviction, sorted out private healthcare when Lia thought she had cancer, all sorts. She’s great like that.’
‘Are you in love with her?’
‘Nah, I wouldn’t say I was in love with her, but I do fancy her rotten. She’s fucking hardcore, that girl. I like a bit of both, so I wouldn’t commit, but yeah. I like her. You’re going to stay, aren’t you?’
Emma looked anxious and she reached over and put her hand on Poppy’s.
‘I tried to keep you out of it. I thought Ally would be happy to take it out on me alone. But she is what she is. Are you traumatised?’
‘No,’ said Poppy. ‘I think my bum is. But I’m not.’
Emma grinned. ‘Our arses go through a lot in this game. We should get them steel-plated or something.’
And do the same for our hearts, thought Poppy, thinking of Bruno.
She put her hand in her pocket and stroked the slim outline of her mobile phone.
Which way should she jump?
Two Tops One Crop
The brochure hadn’t lied. The cottage was as isolated and rustic as promised, with an Aga in the kitchen, a log fire in the living room and a septic tank out in the back yard.
Standing on the front step, Lucy looked out over a vista of purple and green, doing all that rolling hill stuff, with white dots that must be sheep spaced here and there. Behind and above it all, a sky like the bruises she often found on her bum the morning after a good session: dark, violet and grey, fading to yellow.
A storm was a-coming.
Oh yes.
She took her mobile from her pocket and saw, for the eighteenth time, that there was no signal for her network here. Perhaps she’d have to climb to the top of that hill if she wanted to make sure her companions weren’t tailgating on the M4 or hopelessly lost in some nexus of unpronounceable villages with names that began with ‘Ll’.
She should go inside, make a brew, enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasted, because once Rob and Richard were here, there would be precious little of it.
Richard and Rob had been ‘TopoftheCrops’ and ‘ChiefWhip76’ when she’d first got to know them. She opened her laptop and left it to boot up while she sorted out a cup of tea. The mobile signal might be non-existent, but the broadband connection was surprisingly good. If she logged on to MasterMe.com, she might find a message or two on there.
But there was nothing except the usual chancers, ignoring the fact that she’d set her status as ‘taken’. No, she wasn’t interested in a piercing party in Newark and neither did she want to meet a man who looked like the Incredible Hulk for ‘kinky fun’.
She was quite happy as things stood, thank you.
Or at least, she’d thought she was. But if that was true, would she have agreed to this weekend away à trois?
For ten months, she’d seen Richard one week and Rob the next, both knowing about the other, everything as civilised and happy as can be. She’d ricocheted between the two of them like a ping-pong ball between paddles – not an inapt simile, given their joint love of the wooden bat. A love her bottom did not share.
And then things had started to change, slowly and subtly at first. Richard started to ask about Rob. Rob wanted to see her more often. Their activities in bed, after the spankings, grew more adventurous and filthier.
‘Does Rob do this to you?’
‘Has Richard ever touched you here?’
‘Bet Rob hasn’t got a set of these?’
‘Fuck Richard, this arse is mine, oh fuck, yes, ohh, yes.’
Somehow, a discussion of what the other man did with Lucy became an integral part of their sexual dynamic, a spicy sauce without which the main dish seemed blandly lacking.
Then the rivalry grew and developed. Lucy spent more time with both of them and, as the gaps between rendezvous narrowed, it became less easy to turn up without marks on her bottom or a lovebite on her breast.