by Serena Dahl
“You look happy,” says Adam after a while, stroking my hair.
“Hmm,” I agree. I look up at him. “You too.”
“I am.”
“Surprised though,” I tell him.
“Why are you surprised?”
“No kinkiness today. Very unusual.”
“Oh. Disappointed?”
“No... I could hardly be disappointed with that,” I grin. “But I do like the kinky stuff.”
“Yes, I know you do,” he says. “But it would have been bad timing tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you just thrashed me on the University Challenge questions. If I returned the favour by literally thrashing you, I’d look like a really bad loser, wouldn’t I?”
I giggle. “I suppose so. It wasn’t my idea to keep score, though!”
“You seemed to get pretty serious about it,” he points out.
“Ah, only once you decided to turn it into a competition.”
Adam is quiet for a minute, still caressing my hair. “It’s becoming quite difficult for me, though, Justine – the kinky stuff.”
“Really? Why?”
“It goes against the grain to hurt you so much,” he tells me. “Yes, it turns me on. There’s something wrong with my brain, evidently, that makes me want to do these things to you.” I open my mouth to protest but he puts a finger on my lips to silence me, wanting to finish what he’s saying. “But while I love doing it to you, the rational part of my brain tells me it’s wrong, that I might go too far and hurt you too much.”
“But I can always tell you if there’s something I really don’t want,” I protest. “We have a safeword, remember?”
“Doesn’t it scare you then?” he asks, looking into my eyes, searching as if there’s a mystery to solve deep inside me.
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But it’s hard to describe. Although I’m nervous, afraid even, I like it. You must realise that,” I tell him, blushing as I remember how wet he can make me with his punishments.
“Yes, it can be quite obvious,” he grins, trailing his hand down to my shoulder and lightly stroking my skin. “So you want more kinky stuff then?” he asks.
“Yes,” I confirm. “I want more kinky stuff. I like the kinky stuff.”
“Okay... in that case, I’ll have to think of something extra special for next time.”
“I rather like the sound of that,” I smile back at him.
“In the meantime...” he continues, moving his hand to my breast and making my nipple harden with his thumb, “I think I can manage a little light kinkiness. Just to keep you interested.”
I grin as he pushes me onto my back, then takes hold of my wrists and pulls them up above my head. “Stay like that,” he orders me. I am only too happy to comply as I watch him fetch one of his scarves and allow him to bind my wrists tightly to the bed frame. He pulls the duvet away from me, revealing my naked body to his gaze, and fixes one and then the other ankle to the bottom of the bed, just the same as that night at my parents’. Very deliberately, he strokes a fingertip tenderly down from my collarbone, brushing my erect nipple, down past my navel and lightly grazing my clitoris, making me inhale sharply and arch up to him.
Then he opens the wardrobe and pulls out the riding crop that he’s used on me before.
“Are you ready for your chastisement, Justine?” he asks, a wolfish gleam in his eye.
“Yes, sir,” I answer, my heart thumping, and as I feel his first blow sting the tender skin of my inner thigh I strain at my bonds and feel a familiar throb of desire in my lower belly. I look up at him, so tall, so handsome, so powerful, in complete command of me, and I close my eyes, ready to surrender myself once more to his will.
Fifteen
Friday, 8 June
It’s a rare Friday night without Adam, but he’s away in Luxembourg on business and I won’t see him until his return on Tuesday. It’s a girl’s night in at Hannah’s place while Roger is away for the weekend.
We all try to get together for a meal in a restaurant and drinks afterwards every couple of months or so. But Kathy, ever tactful, suggested a night in. The excuse was our increasing age – and in truth, it does sometimes get a bit wearing going out to pubs and bars and trying to talk to each other over the loud music. I guess that proves we really are getting near to middle age. The real reason is that Hannah is having difficulty finding the spare cash to fund nights out, since she’s just moved house. It’s a nice place, spacious and modern, and it will be just right when Hannah and Roger try for a baby. With three bedrooms, they’ve got plenty of space for a nursery. But Roger was made redundant recently and had a period out of work which has made their finances tight. Luckily he’s landed a new job, but it involves a lot of travelling, and he’s currently away for a fortnight in India.
Although it’s lovely to see the girls, every time I think of Adam I feel desire and anticipation unfurl in my tummy. He promised me that he’d think of something extra special the next time we saw each other, and that’s tomorrow night. I can’t wait to find out what he’s got planned.
I ring the doorbell at seven thirty, armed with a bottle of Rioja and a selection of nachos and dips. “Ooh, lovely, thank you,” says Hannah, taking them from me, and she ushers me into the large kitchen. An appetizing savoury smell is wafting from the oven.
Hannah’s kitchen is decorated in a homely way with warm wooden panels and one burnt orange wall to contrast with the rest of the paintwork, which is a pale cream colour. A huge abstract painting hangs on the wall opposite the window, all bold brushwork in yellow, dark red and purple. I’ve always loved that picture. It was a wedding present from Hannah’s friend Heidi, who she knows from sixth form college. Heidi is now trying to make her way in the fickle world of modern art. Melanie and Kathy are already seated around the big wooden table.
As Hannah pours me a glass of Merlot from a bottle that’s already open, Melanie is bemoaning her bad luck in relationships as she sips at a vodka and Coke. It turns out that the odd-looking but nice Carl, who I met at our Sunday lunch, wasn’t so nice after all. “I have no idea what I’m doing wrong,” she laments, shaking her head.
It seems that Carl was more interested in her flatmate Andrea than Melanie. I’m relieved when she explains that Andrea turned him down when he tried it on with her. If Carl and Andrea had got together behind Melanie’s back it would have made it difficult for Melanie to keep on living there. Just imagine the atmosphere in a shared property where someone you thought was your friend has stolen your boyfriend. All the same, Andrea clearly feels terribly guilty about it – even though it wasn’t her fault in the slightest. So it’s making living together a little strained at present.
“You’ll do better than Carl, anyway, Mel, you wait and see,” Kathy reassures her. “For someone as lovely as you, there’s got to be a nice man out there. He’ll be worth waiting for in the end.”
“I’m not so sure,” says Melanie, still in the doldrums. “I think I’m just meant to be single. I’m the opposite of you, Justine; I need some of your pulling power! Oh, but there’s more gossip, you missed it. Hannah, who’s already got a man, has a new one after her!”
“Oh, don’t!” laughs Hannah, opening the oven door to peek at the food cooking inside. “How are you doing in there, Mr Pizza?”
“How is Mr Pizza doing, Hannah?” asks Kathy.
“He’s looking a bit crispy actually. I think I’d better rescue him...” She puts on oven gloves and gets a large pizza out of the oven.
“Is there one still left in there?” queries Kathy. “Is that one okay?”
“Oh, yeah, that one’s fine. That’s Mrs Pizza. It’s just Mr Pizza who needs to be rescued.” She puts the Pizza on a large board and brings it to the table. “You can help yourselves,” she declares, starting to slice it with a circular cutter, and sitting down with the rest of us.
“You have to tell Justine about the bloke over the road,” prompts Melanie.
&n
bsp; “Oh, yeah. He lives opposite... he’s been really friendly ever since we moved in. Roger really likes him – really liked him. He’s some kind of handyman, and the washing machine stopped working so I popped over to see if he could fix it. Of course, I was assuming that he’d give me an invoice at the end of it but he seemed to want payment of another kind, if you see what I mean...”
“Oh, no, Hannah! What did he do?” I exclaim.
“Well, I didn’t realise at first. I asked him how much it would cost for his time and he was just like, oh, don’t worry about it, I don’t mind coming over to help out such a beautiful lady, and I was a bit taken aback but I told him he must let me give him some money for the work he’d done. So then he said don’t worry about cash, but he could think of a way I could pay him and he gave me this huge wink, and he said, you know, upstairs! Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether to burst out laughing or call the police. So then I was just totally embarrassed, wondering how on earth am I going to get out of this, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do except totally ignore what he’d said. So I was like, oh, you are wonderful, thank you so much... I don’t have much cash on me now but I’ll get some out and bring it round to yours later on today. And then he started coming towards me and I could just tell what he wanted to do next...”
“Oh, no,” echoes Kathy. She’s got a nacho in her hand, originally intended for her mouth, but now poised in mid-air while she waits for Hannah to reveal what happened. “He didn’t?...”
“No, he didn’t. Oh! Mrs Pizza probably needs rescuing now, too.” She goes to the oven and checks, switching it off and transferring the second huge pizza onto the chopping board. Then she continues. “Thank God, Roger came home then and suddenly he looked all sheepish and ran away over the road to his house! I’ve never been so relieved to see my husband in my life. Needless to say, Roger, from being really good mates with him, now hates the sight of him and won’t have him in the house. Which is fine with me!”
“What’s he like then, this admirer of yours?” asks Melanie.
“Actually, he’s someone most women would probably think was really good looking, but I have to say he’s really not my type,” replies Hannah.
“No,” muses Melanie, “I know you only go for ugly blokes like Roger.”
“Ha! I’ll tell him you said that. Don’t worry, he won’t mind, he already knows he is. I only married him for his flash car.”
I narrowly manage to avoid spluttering the gulp of Merlot I’m taking when Hannah makes her joke, recalling Roger’s old Vauxhall Astra which is a not-very-attractive shade of brown.
Hannah has put some music quietly in the background on her iPod system – Adele’s album ‘21’, which I love. Inevitably, the conversation turns to Adam, and I get that inner glow I always feel when I think about him. Hannah asks me how it’s going with him.
“Good. Great in fact. I met his brothers last weekend, and they were nice... well, George was nice and Clive was a bit of an idiot. But you can’t choose your relations, can you?”
“Why, what was he like?”
“Oh, really argumentative. Picking fights with me for no reason, just all the time. He was a bit like that with George’s wife Christine too, but I think he was more aggressive with me.” I remember my conversation on the way back to the Tube station with Adam. “Funnily enough, he reminded me of Simon a bit – you know how Simon does that too?”
“Oh, yeah, Simon can be a real pain in the arse,” comments Melanie.
“Adam said something weird afterwards.” I frown at the memory. I still can’t believe that Simon might have feelings for me.
“What did he say?” prompts Kathy.
“He thought Simon was argumentative with me because he fancied me.” I laugh and pull a face. “How ridiculous can you get? There’s never been any attraction between me and Simon.”
I see Hannah and Kathy looking at each other with raised eyebrows. My friends are all silent for a moment and then Melanie says, “Did you really not know?”
“Sorry?”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “Simon’s been crazy about you for years,” she states. I gape in astonishment. “Didn’t you realise that? My God, Justine, I thought you understood men!”
“Seriously? Are you winding me up?”
“No, seriously,” Kathy assures me. “Simon really likes you and he always has done. I know he has a funny way of showing it. But I’m surprised you never noticed!”
“Bloody hell,” I exclaim and take another drink of wine. “I had no idea.”
Hannah laughs. “You look like you don’t want to think about that too much.”
“He’s just not my type,” I reply feebly, still taking it in. “I thought Adam had got it wrong. I thought you’d all laugh when I told you what he said.”
“Sorry, Justine, Adam’s right,” says Melanie. “I guess you’re never going to be able to look at Simon the same way again!”
Kathy changes the subject, seeing how uncomfortable the thought makes me. “But what about Adam - didn’t you take him to meet your parents too? It all sounds a bit serious, Justine!”
“Well, they’d already met him at the hospital, and because he was so good to me when I was in the accident they’d already decided he was the perfect man. So it would have been difficult for him to put a foot wrong really.”
“And did he? Put a foot wrong?”
“No, they seemed to like him even more at the end of the weekend. He bonded with my dad talking about cars and impressed my mum by doing the drying-up while Dad washed the dishes.”
“Wow, sounds like it’s female empowerment all the way in the Gardiner family home!” laughs Kathy.
“Absolutely,” I reply, my mind darting to the memory of how Adam tied me to the bed and teased me, made me beg so that he would let me come, and then fucked me senseless. I can’t suppress a secret smile to myself when I think of the irony of Kathy’s comment about female empowerment. I haven’t told my friends that in actual fact Adam’s into a very kinky brand of female subjection to his will. I’m not intending to tell them, either.
“Hmm, you look very pleased with yourself,” notes Melanie. “So who else are you seeing as well as Adam?”
“Nobody,” I admit.
“What?” gasps Melanie and I look around to see everyone’s eyes boring into mine.
“I just don’t feel like I want anyone else now – I just want Adam,” I confide.
“Really? Wow, Justine, this is a first, isn’t it?”
“It’s a first since I was nineteen years old. Well, actually I have had periods of only seeing one guy, or being single, but they weren’t exactly intentional. This time it’s a bit different.”
“Oh my God, Justine, it must be love,” announces Melanie. I just have another mouthful of wine.
“Is it?” asks Hannah seriously. “Are you really in love with Adam?”
“You know,” I reply, “yes, I really think I am.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” exclaims Kathy, and the other two join in, congratulating me on falling in love at last at the age of thirty-one. “Have you told him? And what about him, has he said anything to you?”
“No,” I explain, “everything’s all a bit different now... I used to not really care what men thought. I just didn’t get hung up enough on anyone to worry too much about what I said to them. So it was easy to tell them that I was seeing other people, because I thought, oh well, if they don’t like it they can take a running jump. But now that I’ve met Adam I just can’t tell him anything at all. I’m so anxious that I might scare him off that I’m completely tongue-tied.”
“But were you still seeing other people when you got together with Adam?” asks Melanie, looking concerned.
“Yes, and I told him – although it cost me a lot to find the courage to say it to him.”
“And he knows, now, that you’re not seeing anyone else?” questions Kathy.
“Well, no,” I admit sheepishly. “I want to tell him
– I want to tell him everything – I want to tell him how I feel; but it’s like I just said. I’m too scared. It’s such a big change in my lifestyle – I’ve always been someone with lots of partners. If I tell him I don’t want other people any more he’ll know I’m really serious about him. And that’s almost as big a step as telling him that I love him.”
