Back to Vanilla

by Jennifer Maschek

  “Well,” and here his words appeared slowly in front of her, so she hung on each one, “I think we both know what I’d like, Girl… I mean, whatever you send, I love, I do, but I kinda keep wanting more. I guess I’m just a greedy boy and I just… I want to see more and more of what I think about pretty much every waking hour. But, hey, I understand if you don’t want to. Honest, sweetie, the shorts’ll do for now. :)”

  “Aw, poor you. My heart bleeds. Shorts it is, then. Gotta go. Dishes calling. Same time, same place?”

  It was just over a fortnight since the message about her sleek, glossy fur had started her thinking, and although nothing concrete had been said, the mood had begun to intensify in ways it was hard to measure. The comments about his wife, which she was coming to realise had always been an undercurrent in their chats, were now less frequent, and it became obvious that his free time, the time he had to play with her, was increasing.

  Tonight’s dirty Scrabble game had come about quite accidentally when the letters CUM appeared in precisely that configuration in her rack and there had been nothing to do but cyber-laugh and share. But he was right; as he claimed that she flooded his mind, he was totally absorbing hers, and at night when she fantasised, it was Boyd_Cooper who was sneaking more and more into her deepest, dirtiest thoughts, the inoffensive-looking middle-aged bespectacled guy in jeans and a T-shirt with the words “Normal People Scare Me” emblazoned across the front, from the photo he’d sent from his company picnic a few weeks previously.

  Half an hour later, chores all done and their three children tucked up and snoring, Megan lay on her wide bed with her head propped on several pillows, listening to the noise of water slowly filling the bath across the landing and looking down the length of her rounded body in leggings and vest, imagining.

  Undressing, she walked into the bathroom and stood in front of the misty mirror staring at the curves of her waist and her breasts, across which she smoothed her hands. She enjoyed the natural feel of her contours, focusing on what she thought Boyd might have been thinking of “pretty much every waking hour”. This wasn’t the first time he’d hinted, and she thought now might be the moment to act on a plan that had slowly been forming in the back of her mind, a plan she felt sure would put a smile on his face.

  Dressed now in nothing but her black lace knickers, Megan slipped back into her room to fetch her phone, wiped the fog from the mirror, posed and clicked, her breath catching a little at the thrill of it. And again. And again. Not looking, just clicking, as adrenaline surged through her, tickling her skin from beneath so that she felt squirmy with arousal. Finally, turning off the taps of a very overfilled bath, she walked back into her room and sat on the edge of her bed to look at what the camera had captured.

  A rush of feelings – shame, pride, pleasure – washed over her as, for the first time in her life, she sat alone flicking through pictures on her phone of her naked torso, head missing, arms out towards the mirror where she stretched to take this body selfie, deleting more than she kept, until just three photos remained on her phone.

  They stayed there, those images of her bare breasts, while she paused and slid into a bath so deep that despite the slowness of her actions, foamy water slopped over the sides, soaking the blue towelling mat on the floor. She clutched at thoughts of Rich as she sought reasons not to send what she so keenly wanted to, but, much as she loved him, and she did, she couldn’t stir up even the slightest rousing of doubt about what she was about to do. It was just too fucking inevitable and she was intoxicated by the insane, stimulating rush of it.

  After her bath, Megan picked the favourite of her photos, fiddled a little with the brightness and contrast, then added it to an email. She checked the address at least 15 times, and her hand hovered over the send button while her entire body tingled.

  Then click.

  Megan sat staring at the screen of her phone as the email vanished with a whoosh of noise into the digital silence. She sat fixated for 11 minutes. She checked the address was correct again, repeatedly convincing herself that she hadn’t, as per her worst fear, sent that email to her boss or to her mother-in-law in error.

  That initial wave of arousal was being progressively replaced by a creeping self-disgust as she began to question what the fuck she’d been thinking. Had he asked for that? I mean, really? And she read back through his earlier replies searching for clues as to where she might have misunderstood his intent.

  Under this cloud of low-grade mortification, Megan walked downstairs, switched on the kettle and placed a teabag into a cup. She wrapped the thick woollen shawl that hung by the back door, along with the family’s coats, tightly around her nightdress. Taking the scalding drink with her, she went outside into the darkness and sat on the small step that led down into the back garden.

  Phone at her side, she stared up at the glittering clear sky of that early autumn night over Hastings and sipped, the combination of chilly air and the insignificance of her frets in the face of the wider scheme grounding her somewhat.

  The unmistakable echoing ping that heralded the incoming message sent a gush of excitement through her as she grasped the phone, keyed in her password and stared.

  “Well, wow, sweetie, just wow. Now THAT is a prize worth having. So beautiful. I love it, them. Thanks. I wish we could talk now, sweetie. Same time tomorrow?”

  Relief swept over her and she felt suddenly tired; there was nothing to do but sleep. Typing an “X” in response, Megan grabbed the mug and went inside, leaving the shawl over her shoulders until the very moment when she threw it on to the floor beside her and slipped exhausted into bed.

  6. LittleGirlLost

  Tamsin walked through the front door of the 1930s bay-windowed semi-detached house in which she had grown up, velvet duffel bag in hand, and continued straight up the stairs. Her mind was idling in neutral, as it had been since she kissed the old man goodbye on the platform at Piccadilly station before stepping on to her train.

  Her parents and her younger brother were out living their daytime lives, and so she walked unnoticed into her childhood bedroom, throwing the bulging bag on to the floor and herself on to her single bed.

  Staring up at the ceiling, she tried, as she had done for the past five hours, to understand what, if anything, she was feeling, but without success. There was a dull, weary nothingness, combined with an ache she finally acknowledged as hunger. This, at least, she could do something about. Taking off the short purple dress she had put on that morning after showering in the hotel room all those miles away, Tamsin crawled into the banana-yellow SpongeBob pyjamas her brother had bought her for Christmas and ambled downstairs in search of sustenance.

  The kitchen was tidy save for a few dishes and scattered morning toast crumbs, which, out of habit, she began to wipe and clear up while opening the large fridge and various cupboards looking for precisely the kind food she needed when she was in this mood.

  Taking a tub of chicken-and-mushroom instant noodles from the larder, Tamsin switched the kettle on, and put a peach, a knife, fork and spoon, teacup and teabag, and an open packet of Bombay mix on to a large tray. After adding water to the noodles, she carried the lot into the lounge, sat down in front of the television, and, with deliberation, switched off her mind entirely.

  7. Alasdair

  Alasdair, in contrast, had known he was hungry from the moment he woke up. Indeed, his suggestion that they go down for breakfast declined, he had been almost impatient for the girl’s train to arrive so that he could nip back to the hotel before 10.30am, when they stopped serving.

  He was in luck.

  Three cups of weak black coffee, a fine fresh fruit salad and a superb Eggs Benedict later, Alasdair had his small backpack over his shoulder once again and was all but skipping back to the station he had so recently left.

  With his train not due until 2.16pm, he picked up a copy of The Guardian and set himself down in the waiting room. Around 6pm, after an uneventful journey, he walked back through his ow
n front door, splashed two fingers of 12-year-old Dalmore into a crystal glass, added one more for luck, then downed it.

  By 9.30, having settled into an evening’s drinking of similar gusto, he was aware that his best was behind him for the night, but there was one more move yet to be completed before he could retire to the familiarity of his own bed. Even drunk, Alasdair had a keen awareness of his own boundaries, and thus he trusted himself enough to sit down and write, despite his condition.

  My dear Tamsin,

  It was an absolute joy to meet you and I’m glad we had the chance to enjoy one another on mutually comfortable ground before moving on to what I hope will be our glorious next stage. I can’t stress highly enough just how much your Meister was delighted with his first taste of that delicious wee cunt of yours. You can be very proud.

  But… we both know that wasn’t enough for you and that your journey has only just begun. I’ll let you get some well-deserved rest now. You know what you want and you know how to get it. I’m here when you’re ready.

  Alasdair XxxX

  He pressed send.

  Tamsin, meanwhile, left her phone uncharged so she could ignore all outside distractions, and settled into the Friday night habit of takeaway pizzas and puddings with her family. Skirting over her mother’s seemingly offhand questions about her Manchester trip, in a way that politely but firmly told her to back off, they enjoyed a family argument over the choice of on-demand movie before she eventually drifted off to sleep on the couch while life went comfortably and normally on around her.

  It was well into the next day before she switched on her phone, still lying in bed. Eight texts from her friend Ethan, the only other person who had known of her plans, and the only person, she thought, who would even vaguely understand her explorations.

  “You there yet, hun?”

  “So… tell me the goss….”

  “What’s yer old guy like? Did he bring the tardis?”

  “Too tied up to reply?”

  “Sorry, babe. Don’t mean to take the piss… let me know how it’s going, right? X”

  “You okay?”

  “Busy? Xx”

  “Home? Don’t tell me… you’ve run off to Scotland… Text me!”

  PhetX updates, voucher offers and Amazon recommendations made up the bulk of her remaining messages, and then there was Alasdair’s.

  She read it quickly. And then she reread it, before pushing its contents to the back of her mind and replying briefly to Ethan. His immediate response was to suggest a drink and debrief right away. For all his understanding, though, he tended to be pitilessly frank when they discussed anything that mattered, and she was not sure she was ready for this yet. To buy time, she suggested Sunday lunch at the local pub instead, creating the thinking space she needed to work how what she was actually feeling before being challenged by him.

  In fact, what she could remember of the night was murky, shaded with a haze of surreality. She remembered Meister’s voice throughout, and she knew that she’d drunk way too much, but she also understood that she’d had to. She was aware that he hadn’t, and that she’d appreciated that. She suspected she’d talked, and she knew that he had, calm, patient, like a vet with a frightened kitten. Tamsin was grateful for that.

  She had emerged from the bathroom a wreck. With no idea of timescale, she remembered standing there in the room, door still open behind her, trembling and shivering as Alasdair got up from his seat, came towards her, and wrapped her up like that very same kitten, stroking her hair back from her forehead and holding her while she shook and shook and shook. He told her over and over that things were okay. He would look after her, whatever that meant; he would be there, like she’d asked.

  And slowly, slowly, she remembered them sinking down to the edge of the bed, where they sat in that same human embrace, devoid of sexuality but connected, as gradually his whispers turned to kisses all over her face, slow, tender, safe, but kisses none the less, until they stopped, still and waiting.

  And he had stood up as she sat tranquil on the bed, took off his jacket and placed it carefully on the chair beside them, and undid the button and zip of his grey suit trousers. At that point, and unaware of the little blue pill he had swallowed 47 minutes earlier, she remembered seeing that same cock from the photos, now unfettered and in a direct line with her tiny soft mouth, made softer by his calming, as he leant and whispered in her ear: “Now, it’d be about that time when you suck my cock, you wee slut.”

  As she bobbed back and forth along his familiar 90-degree phallus, he had continued to smooth back her hair, murmuring what a clever girl she was, along with his groans, before tenderly steering her back on to the bed. He’d told her then, as he repeated in his email, how delicious her cunt was, and how good and how clever a girl she truly was, and how happy it made him.

  It made her happy to recall that. So with these thoughts, at least, clearer in her head, she went briefly into analytical mode and wondered if what she had been feeling was, perhaps, the submissive comedown she’d heard about and allowed herself to revisit his email and reply.

  Dear Kindly_Meister,

  Let me tell you where I am right now, because I can kick and rail, and I do... It’s what causes this confusion, I know it… but, right here and right now, the reality is this: I AM a strong, independent, educated, stand-on-my-own-two-feet kind of a woman. I HAVE been brought up this way, and it’s everything I have ever believed in. But. But andbutandbut. I want to be coddled. I do. I want to be special and to be loved and to be a naughty dirty special girl, not always, but sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes I get so sick of being in charge and, yeah, you’re right, I just want to be looked after.

  Hell, in the real world, I’d punch the guy who told me what to do, Alasdair, but I’m sick of pretending that there’s not a bit of me, just a bit, that sometimes wants to be looked after. Guided. Stroked and guided and... that bit of me that wants to stop thinking, just for a while. And that’s the bit, the bit of me, that I want to explore. That. Is. The. Bit. That needs exploration.

  And I think about how I can do that. How do I safely examine a side of me that scares me because I don’t… can’t possibly yet… understand it…? How do I learn?

  I find a teacher. I find a guide through this… So, what do I need?

  You’re right. I guess we now have what they refer to as unfinished business, and I hate to leave any task semi-completed. I guess now that we know we click, I would like, even if it’s just once, to challenge you to “take me to subspace”… Extra points available if you can make me squirt ;)

  And thanks. I was a mess, I know, but proper thanks for looking after me, Meister. I trust you. If the offer’s still there, I’m visiting a uni friend in Newcastle in three weeks, and, if it suits, it’s a short hop – it looks like anyway – to Edinburgh on the train.

  LGL x

  Alasdair smiled at her response: she truly was a delightful wee find, that girl. There were many unwritten questions there he intended to address, and soon, but for now he placed her email into a folder he had named “Current”, and logged back in to PhetX, where he sat browsing the latest entries in the groups to which he subscribed: Scottish Submissive Women; Subs Without Dominants; Gentleman Doms and Sensuous Subs; Curvy Women and the Men who Love Them; and 134 others.

  8. Megan

  Scrabble – dirty, filthy, smutty Scrabble, with all its new-found connotations – continued to consume most of her waking thoughts, while at the same time, impossible to ignore, qualms had begun to shift and twist their way into her consciousness.

  Boyd_Cooper had by now become Bill. Their friendship, with increasing undertones of a relationship, remained as addictive as ever, but those doubts were growing, and as much as she tried to ignore them and focus on the dizzy heights of the highs, these harbingers simply wouldn’t be chased away, but circled constantly, waiting for something – evidence? – to fuel their malevolent appetites.

  The highs had become less frequent, and, alth
ough she couldn’t put her finger on why – and indeed, she had no immediate desire to – the lows were hitting her with growing intensity.

  Sometimes, as when they had started, they would be back in their online palace, stomping all their opponents into the cyber-dust before swooping off into a private chatroom to talk and giggle and sigh and purr. At others, he’d ignore her messages for days, even though she could see that he was online.

  Why? The questions kept rising. Why the hell had all of this become so important that she would spend those precious evening hours sitting and staring at the little green light beside his name, wondering what he was doing and with whom?

  The photo he had sent her, taken from a distance, did nothing to reassure her. She used her fingers to stretch the images out on her phone screen, hoping to find something of the expression on a face she could measure only in millimetres; she found nothing. It was as basic as this: as much as she peered and stared and hoped, that plump, rather dull-looking man, the man in the photo at his company picnic, did not look like the witty raconteur who lived in her head. She was, she told herself, obviously a shallow person, focusing as she did on the physical when what matters is so much more, and she would search for a twinkle in the eye that connected her with the man she might recognise.

  Fearful of articulating these thoughts, lest she burst the bubble, she began to hunt for pieces of the jigsaw in which the two images – the photo, and the one she had created – met, or concrete proof that they just didn’t.

  Armed with his first name, that of his small Arkansas home city, Conway, and his occupation, it was easy for her to Google-find Bill’s Auto Repair Service, and although having done so felt unmistakably like a breach of trust, it was impossible to stop there. Although she wasn’t sure what she was looking for, she felt instinctively that it was there somewhere and that she would recognise it when it appeared. At first, it was only links on directory sites – phone numbers, maps – but she searched on.