Master of the House

‘So it would be a while before I got my story?’

‘Some journalists spend years setting up their victims.’

I humphed at ‘victims’, but he was right.

‘I’d aim to be on our enigmatic friend’s guest list by Christmas,’ he said.

‘Christmas?’

‘’Tis the season to be kinky,’ said Joss with that crooked, wolfish smile I remembered so well. Well enough for it to have its traditional effect between my legs.

‘OK. A few months isn’t so long, I suppose.’

‘I’ll verse you in our ways. I’ll show you how it’s done,’ he said, his voice soaked in seduction.

‘I know how it’s done,’ I said, but my bolshy confidence was leaking out of me with every softly spoken word.

‘You’ve seen pictures. You’ve read accounts. That’s no preparation at all,’ he said. ‘You need to feel it – to know what it does to your head. There’s nothing like it, Lulu – the rush, the intensity of it.’

‘How do you know?’

I halved a pickled onion, thinking what an odd conversation this was to be having over a ploughman’s on a sunny day by the river.

‘What do you mean, how do I know?’ My question se

emed to have thrown him.

‘You’ve been a submissive? You know how that feels?’

‘No. Obviously I’m talking about it from my side. The dominant side.’

‘All right, then that leads us to another of my conditions.’ I crunched on the pickled onion. No kissing for me today – the vinegary little chap was my protection against any foolish rushing of blood to the head later.

He seemed to know what I was thinking, because he took the other half of the onion and bit into it himself. Damn. That neutralised the situation. Kissing might still happen. Especially if I didn’t stop staring at his long slender fingers as if hypnotised. What those fingers had done to me … what they still might do to me …

‘Well, you’ve had no booze, so what’s next?’ he said snippily. ‘No sex?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ I said severely.

‘You’d sign up for the pain but not the pleasure? I can’t see how that would work.’

‘Wait, you’re getting ahead of yourself,’ I said. ‘My condition isn’t that.’

‘Good.’

So he expects us to have sex. I filed the thought for further discussion later. First I needed him to agree to my next little stipulation.

‘I want you to feel what you’re going to make me feel,’ I said.

His eyes widened.

‘I’m not with you.’

I took a breath.

‘When we were together – before – I hated myself for being with you.’

He blinked.