‘Are you ready for your close-up, Miss Wells?’ he asked as he let me into the house.
I didn’t get the chance to reply, caught in his arms and waltzed into the drawing room and on to a chaise for a long, heavy snog before I could open my mouth.
Eventually, after a battle of fingers and tongues and grinding crotches, I escaped his clutches and said, ‘No.’
‘What? What’s “no”?’
He had forgotten the original question. He looked adorably dazed and confused, not to mention rumpled and dark and hot.
‘I’m not ready for my close-up,’ I said.
‘You look all right from here,’ he growled, lowering his face to mine again and nipping at my lip.
‘I mean tomorrow,’ I persisted. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I’ll give you something to be scared of.’ His teeth reached my neck, nipping and sucking.
‘Do you really think love bites will be a good look?’ I said, trying to push him off.
‘Fair point.’ He sat up, straddling my waist, and ran a hand through his disordered hair. ‘OK. Let’s deal with this, then I can deal with you.’
‘Can we pull a sickie?’ I whispered.
‘No, we can’t,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve booked you into a spa for the day. I’ve bought you a dress and some bits and bobs to go with it. You’ll get your hair done at the hotel. None of this means that I don’t think you’re perfect as you are, because I do. In fact I prefer you the way you are. But I know you’re anxious about being photographed and compared with the fake-tannerati, so …’
I didn’t know what to say. It was all so thoughtful of him, yet it made me more nervous than ever.
He seemed to see this, because he rested his knuckles against my cheek and said, ‘Think of it as an act of submission to me, love. I’m going to make you do it, whether you like it or not. Yes? Does that make it easier?’
It did.
He was easy on me that night because, as he said, he wanted to ‘go to town’ on me tomorrow. So we stuck to kissing and fondling and sucking and licking in the big four-poster bed. No wrist or ankle marks where I might have been tied, no welts across my bottom and thighs; no sore, used pussy or stinging back passage.
Not today, Jasper Jay.
* * *
We slept well and set off early for London the next day. The spa resort was off the motorway on the way up. I had never been to such a place. In some ways it was like a very luxurious hospital, all the staff in their stiff-starched white uniforms. In others, it reminded me of a church – the hush, the semi-religious emphasis on purity.
I didn’t find it soothing, but I lay back and let them do what they wanted to me with their Dead Sea mud and their warmed-up pebbles because, in doing so, I submitted to Jasper.
We met for lunch, both of us in massive white fluffy bathrobes, and picked at crayfish salad and sipped mineral water.
‘Am I done now then?’ I asked him. He looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Pretty sure he’d had a facial.
‘I think they’re going to do your hands and feet, that’s all. Oh, and they might pluck your eyebrows.’
I inspected the sleeve of my robe to make sure the spray-tan wasn’t rubbing off on it. It seemed not.
‘What if I don’t want to be plucked?’ I said.
‘Trust me, girl, you’re getting plucked.’ He smouldered at me over the rim of his glass of San Pellegrino. ‘If I have to pluck you myself.’
The way he was looking at me made me want to fling open my robe and invite him to have me right now. We were in a private little alcove overlooking the terrace and the grounds beyond. If we really wanted to …
But I knew he wanted to wait until the evening – I think he wanted me to have something to look forward to, an insurance policy against my backing out at the last minute.
‘Even if I do get plucked,’ I said, ‘it won’t help with conversation. What shall I say? Nobody’s going to be interested in me or my geeky little job, are they?’