‘You can rely on me. I’m not going anywhere. You’re what I want. You give me everything I need and you’re good for me. You make me want to care. I mean, I’ve spent years trying to avoid caring about anything and now you …’
‘It’s real?’
‘Totally real. I know I’m being an idiot and I’ll probably scare you off, but …’
His eyes couldn’t lie. He believed what he was saying.
‘I’m not scared,’ I said. ‘Not any more. I was, but not now.’
He put my hands up to his heart. I felt it bump against my fingertips.
‘You’re going to stay with me, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘As long as you want me.’
‘What if I said for ever?’
‘Jasper …’
But his mother came back into the room with the tea tray at that crucial and rather heart-stopping moment, so the conversation had to be deferred.
‘So,’ she said brightly. ‘How did you two meet?’
We spent the afternoon chatting and wandering through the house and grounds. It was a reassuringly normal way to pass time, and yet it all seemed rather other-worldly. It wasn’t my world, anyway. Jasper had been brought up to believe he could do anything, to be absolutely confident in his choices, and yet he, like his mother, was a reclusive type who only brought out his natural charm when he wanted something.
I liked their life and their way of opting into the world when it suited them. It was a privilege, yes, but one I wished I had.
‘You realise now,’ said Lavinia to Jasper, after pointing out the carp lying mysteriously in the depths of an ornamental pond, ‘that you’ll have to get married.’
‘What?’ I said, looking between Lavinia and Jasper, laughing with horrified embarrassment. ‘Why?’
‘I’ll sound old-fashioned, but it’s the honourable thing. In my day, it meant a chap marrying the girl he got pregnant, but in our new-media age I think this situation translates.’
‘I’ve got her into trouble, you mean,’ said Jasper.
‘Exactly. If you split, she’s the one who’ll get all the whispering and bitching. Nobody’ll say a thing to you, Jas. Double standards – not a sexist thing. A fame-and-influence thing. You have it. Sarah, although I’m sure you’re a wonderful historian, you have to admit that you’re not a power broker.’
‘Well, quite,’ I said, still laughing. Was she joking? It all seemed a bit heartless if so.
‘He’ll get away with it. You won’t. Actually, perhaps it still is a sexist thing. But I don’t know. If it was a famous woman and an obscure chap, it’d probably still be the same. Jasper, I wonder at you. I brought you up to respect women.’
‘I do respect Sarah,’ he protested. ‘Of course I bloody do. We’re just a little bit different in the way we pursue our relationship.’
‘Ah,’ said Lavinia with a beatific smile. ‘The words I have dreamed of hearing from your lips. “Our relationship”. So it is one?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve had so many flings, Jasper.’
‘It’s not a fling.’ Jasper unwrapped the scarf he was wearing and looped it around my neck. ‘See. She can’t get away from me if she tries. She’s stuck with me.’
I put my arm around his waist. I felt a bit faint, so it was as much to prop me up as anything.
‘And are you happy with that, Sarah?’ asked Lavinia. ‘To be stuck with him?’
‘More than happy,’ I said.
The light was failing and a wind was gusting up, shaking the trees overhead.
‘We should be getting in,’ said Alison. ‘Supper’s in a couple of hours. Perhaps you two should go upstairs for a bit of a rest.’
We didn’t need telling twice.
In the bedroom I went straight to the window and knelt, looking out of the leaded panes at the grounds beyond.
Jasper came and crouched beside me, putting a hand on my shoulder and rubbing it.
‘I think we have her blessing,’ he said.
‘She wasn’t serious, was she? About … what she said?’
Jasper laughed. ‘Love, she’s my mother. She doesn’t have the last word in what we choose to do with our lives. She might have been serious or she might not – what matters is whether we are.’
‘We’re together in the eyes of the world now,’ I said, watching the clouds darken while leaves picked themselves up and whirled over the lawns. ‘In the telephoto lens of the world, anyway.’
‘We were together already, never mind what the world knew.’
He clasped his hands around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder, seeing what I saw through the window.
‘We are leaves tossed on the breeze,’ he said. ‘Except we aren’t. We choose our future, Sarah. We don’t let the weather choose it for us.’
I smiled at his apt metaphor. ‘The weather?’
‘Yes. The prevailing climate. Everything having to be done a certain way. Fuck that. We’ll do it our way, right?’
‘It’s hard to walk into a gale-force wind,’ I said.
‘Yes, but if you get to where you want to be …’
I turned and smiled at him.
‘Perhaps we should stop with the meteorology now.’
‘Suits me. What I want to know is; will you marry me?’
‘What?’ I grabbed hold of the windowsill, feeling as if the floor had tipped me sideways. ‘Are you serious?’
‘You always have to know if people are serious, Sarah. Why is that? Do people often joke about wanting to marry you? Or what?’
‘I don’t think anyone has ever mentioned marriage to me before, and now you and your mother have both done it on the same day.’
‘There you go. It’s in the air.’ He put his lips in my hair, whispering through it while he clutched me breathlessly tight. ‘It’s meant to be.’
‘How can you be sure after, what, four months?’
‘Four and a half.’
‘The half makes all the difference.’
‘Yes, it does. OK. You can think about the marriage thing. But before we go any further, I need some sort of commitment. I need you to acknowledge yourself as mine and only mine.’
‘You know I am.’
‘Yes, I know you are, but I want to see that you are.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to collar you.’
‘What, like a dog?’
‘No, Jesus, Sarah, have you not even Googled BDSM? Or are you being wilfully obtuse so I’ll thrash you?’
I giggled. ‘Perhaps. All right. I know about collaring. I just don’t really want some dog collar on me.’
‘Don’t be so literal. It doesn’t have to be a dog collar. I’ll show you.’
He went to his bag, still unpacked on the bed, and reached in until he found a leather jewellery box.
My chest was tight with a strange mix of excitement and dread. What were we doing?
He handed me the box and I opened it to find an exquisite silver chain with a key pendant. The clasp had a miniature padlock on it, and another silver key, a tiny one, lay on the velvet cushion beside it.
‘Wow,’ I said. It was much prettier than a dog collar.
‘Look at the hallmarks,’ said Jasper excitably, picking up the tag beside the clasp.
‘I’d need a microscope,’ I objected, but I screwed up my eyes and tried my best.
‘Is it Mappin and Webb?’ I asked, looking up with vivid interest. ‘It’s Victorian, isn’t it?’
‘Bingo. Mappin and Webb, or rather, Mappin, as it was then called. Webb didn’t get into bed with Mappin until the early twentieth century, as I’m sure you’re aware.’
‘Sorry, yes, I knew that. Heat of the moment. But it’s beautiful, and highly unusual for a Victorian piece.’ I lifted the pendant into my palm, examining it closely.
‘Yes, well, you see, it was commissioned by an ancestor of mine. I get the feeling kink might run in the family.’
‘Yes.’ I smiled up a
t him. ‘So do I. How fascinating.’
‘I want you to wear it. Always. You can’t take it off, unless I unlock you.’
‘Really?’
‘Will you?’ He took the necklace away from me, holding it at arm’s length.
‘It means we are committed?’ I said, not because I really needed to ask but because I was thinking my decision through out loud.
‘Yes, it does. Until you decide you want to take it off, or I decide I want to remove it. But the idea is, that never happens.’
‘I know, I know. Who did it belong to?’
‘Can we talk family history later on, please?’
‘Sorry. Yes. Yes, put it on me. I want to wear it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. I, um …’
‘Yes?’
He stopped, the necklace at my throat, its chain brushing my skin.
‘I love you,’ I said.
He smiled and told me to turn around so he could sort out the clasp and the padlock.
‘And I love you,’ he said, putting the key back in the box. It felt ceremonial, however informally it had been done. We had spoken vows.
The silver burned against my skin and I put my fingers to the little key pendant. I felt changed and ridiculously tearful. Was this what getting married felt like?
Jasper hooked a finger inside the chain and tugged at it, tightening it around my neck.
‘You are mine now,’ he said. ‘I’ve made an honest submissive of you.’
My little laugh was more like a sob. I turned to him.
‘Can we seal the deal?’ I whispered.
‘Absolutely.’
He made me strip for him in a different way, slowly, looking him in the eye with each new baring of skin. I had to cup my breasts for him when my bra came off and rub my thumbs over my nipples to make them stand straight.
I had also to keep my knickers around my ankles and turn my back to him, bending down low so that my pussy lips spread wide of their own accord, revealing everything to his view. Or not quite everything, because I was also expected to part my bottom cheeks with my hands and show him the little tight pucker inside.
‘Mm,’ he said, sitting on the bed still fully clothed, eyes fixed on me. ‘Still marked.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I could feel the bruises under my fingertips.
‘I want your arse,’ he said, contemplatively, ‘but I want to see your face while I’m having it. This makes for a challenge, but I think you’re equal to it. Get on the bed, on your back, arms up above your head.’
I lay down as instructed and he took a pair of cuffs from his luggage and secured my wrists to the wrought-iron headboard. He seemed to have packed nothing but sex aids, because the next thing he took out was a bottle of lube and a vibrator. Whether he had any clothes in there remained unknown.
He slid a pillow, then another one, underneath my coccyx, raising my bottom and pussy to an angle he approved, then he took off his clothes, every now and then asking me to perform some task such as raising my legs in the air or spreading them wider.
‘Are you wet?’ he asked, once he was naked.
I nodded.
‘Why are you wet?’
‘I’m thinking of what you’re going to do to me.’
‘Right. And that makes you wet.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What am I going to do to you?’
‘What you said …’
‘That won’t do,’ he reminded me sharply, smacking the inside of one of my thighs. ‘Be specific.’
‘You’re going to have my arse, sir.’
‘Yes, I am. And that’s not all. Get those legs as wide as you can now.’
I lay with them splayed so far apart my muscles ached while he turned on the vibrator and ran it over and around my clit.
‘Nice?’ he asked, upping the vibrations.
I nodded between hectic breaths.
‘Want it harder? Want to come?’
I nodded again and he withdrew it.
‘Tough,’ he said with a blinding smile. ‘Not yet. You know who’s in charge here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s you, sir.’
‘Now and for as long as you wear that necklace, your sex is mine.’
The vibrator buzzed back into life and he flicked it over my greedy pussy again, teasing me until I was gasping and on the point of begging for mercy.
‘Your face is bright red,’ he said casually, taking it away again. ‘Are you close?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Poor Sarah. I’m making her wait. I might go and make myself a cup of tea, actually. Would you like one?’
I shook my head, miserably desperate for him to fuck me.
‘Please, sir,’ I wailed.
He laughed. ‘I’m a meanie, aren’t I? Sorry. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to put this inside you now.’
He pushed the vibrator, which was one of his longer and thicker versions, up into my stretching passage, filling me with its smooth silicone firmness until it was all the way there. A little attachment at its base covered my clit, meaning that I would be double-stimulated by the buzzing when he switched it on.
‘There, that’s part one,’ he said. ‘But we haven’t got to the main event yet. Push your bum right up, love, that’s it.’
I dug my heels into the mattress, bent my knees and presented my bottom to him, feeling the vibrator shift inside me as I did so.
He wetted his fingers with lube and massaged me between my cheeks, pushing gently but firmly ever further into his target, taking it slowly and thoroughly until I was expertly greased and ready to accept his cock up there.
He reassured me with low crooning words as he digitally penetrated my tightest hole, speaking to me as if I were a treasured pet he had to stroke and fuss through a nasty injection. In a way, that was quite apt.
‘Now then,’ he whispered. ‘Put your legs over my shoulders, love.’
He held my hips as I obeyed, straining my stomach muscles to get myself into the required position. Once I was up, vibrator even deeper inside me than before, my lubricated bottom hole lined up perfectly with the tip of his cock, which rested between my cheeks, ready for the big push forwards.
I tried to relax and persuade myself that it wouldn’t hurt. Even if it did I wouldn’t care. I wanted him inside me, taking everything, making me his in the dirtiest way possible.
‘Tell me you want it,’ he said, looking into my eyes with a kind of pity.
‘I want it,’ I said.
He reached between my legs to start the vibrations, then he edged his cock tip forwards, starting the slow and steady process of stretching me wide. The vibrator was both distracting and intensifying, making me focus on what I was feeling in my pussy as well as the first stinging sensation behind.
He watched me, forbidding me to close my eyes, as he slid inside by slow degrees.
‘Let me watch you while I’m getting inside your arse,’ he said. ‘Let me see your face. Oh, does it hurt? You look a little bit scared, love.’ He pushed again. ‘That hurts, doesn’t it?’
I nodded, screwing up my face.
‘But you’ll take it. Fuck. This feels … I could … live here.’
He pushed further. I felt the peak of the discomfort, cried out briefly, then clenched my cuffed fists as the burn began to fade.
Once he was all the way in, I felt his tip nudge against the end of the vibrator, sending its waves in a slightly different pattern.
‘Oh, I felt that,’ he said, wonderingly. ‘Quite nice, actually. You must be loving it. Are you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. Now. To work.’
All conversation was suspended as he moved into earnest buggery, taking no pity on me but establishing a firm thrusting rhythm that worked in harmony with the vibrations. It was what I needed. The invader in my pussy was driving me mad and Jasper’s hard use of my bottom took the worst of the edge off it. All the same, I came quickly and noisily within
a minute of penetration, which made him grin like a demon and grip my hips tighter, riding me through it.
I lost my head after that and was only barely capable of following his occasional orders to open my eyes, look at him, keep my thighs wide.
He fucked me until I had come three times and was a melting mess of primal confusion, far away in the inky, sticky depths of subspace. Every time I came he turned the vibrations up and thrust even faster. His own orgasm was a little frightening, something torn from the heart of him. He flopped his head on to my stomach and kept it there for a few moments until he was sentient enough to turn off the vibrator.
He raised his eyes, foggy and blurred, to mine.
‘Nobody else,’ he panted. ‘For you. Or me.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Nobody else.’
‘I want a picture,’ he said.
His mobile phone was within reach and he snapped a shot of me lying there in my position of total subjection before he removed his cock and then the vibrator from my body.
‘One hundred and three missed calls,’ he said ruefully, still looking at his telephone screen. ‘Seventy-eight texts. Ah, fuck ’em.’
He lay down beside me and held me close. We were so damp and hot we seemed to melt into each other, infusing each other with our essences. I couldn’t have loved a man more. It wasn’t possible. My necklace was stuck to my skin, and it felt right.
‘I wish I’d made that tea now,’ he said, yawning, after we’d lain listening to each other’s heartbeats for a good ten minutes. ‘I’m parched. Are you all right, love?’
I nodded, still too bleary to make sense.
‘Oh, love,’ he laughed, kissing me all over my face. ‘Look at the state of you. I’ve broken you, haven’t I?’
‘I’ll survive,’ I slurred. ‘I think.’
‘Better get used to it,’ he said. ‘You are going to move in with me, aren’t you?’
I made an effort to unglue my eyelids.
‘Oh. I suppose. Yeah.’
‘Good.’ He kissed me again. ‘Better forget about being able to walk straight for the foreseeable future then. I’ll get that tea.’
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