Easy

by Donna Alam

  This thing between us may have begun as pure escapism, but now was somehow real. Dan was probably the only person I’d ever known who could anticipate what I need to feel . . . just right.

  ‘Am I so unappealing?’ Dan’s voice cuts through my thoughts, a hint of sad humour tainting his words.

  ‘You know that’s not it,’ I reply softly

  ‘Do I? You think my ego doesn’t wound?’

  ‘Your ego is impenetrable,’ I reply, hoping to make him laugh.

  ‘How little you know,’ he responds, pulling me closer still. ‘Maybe you should tell me what you need.’

  There haven’t yet been words created to describe what was between us, had there? I turn my head over my shoulder, peering at him as best I can.

  ‘The moon on a stick?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Embarrassed at my verbal slip, I shake my head, but know this isn’t going to cut it for him. ‘Sometimes,’ I say sighing, ‘I think the only thing you could add to improve this would be the moon on a stick.’

  ‘The moon? Are you implying you feel this is pretty much perfect?’ he asks incredulously. ‘Why are we here again? Oh yes, I remember, because the lady doth protest to a little affection, to a little depth.’

  I shrug tightly, trying to pull from his embrace ‘You wish for more, and it all goes wrong. Nobody gets the moon on a stick. You can’t have it all.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard such fatalistic bullshit.’ I try harder to pull away now. ‘No, not so fast,’ he says in response to my wriggling. ‘You mean to tell me that superstition is the only thing holding you back?’

  ‘No, not superstition. Knowledge. You can’t have a connection where one partner gets to bully the other. Hurt the other.’ This can’t be a component of a healthy relationship, and I should know. Look at my parents—look at my mother, for God’s sake.

  ‘Come off it. You’re not afraid of becoming a battered partner. Enough with the smoke and mirrors act. Tell me what this is about.’

  With my hands on his forearms, I dig my nails into his skin through his shirt, holding back my snigger as he grunts, drawing parallels between the noise and his come grunt. My triumph at pulling free is short lived as, hands behind me now, he pushes his palm between my shoulder blades, forcing me down against the bed.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he growls in my ear, pinning me down with his own body. ‘Stop struggling. I won’t let you up until you tell me what’s going on.’

  Frustration tightens every fibre inside me as his weight pushes me into the mattress. My last lucidly angry, hot thought before he moves was at least he wasn’t enjoying this; his cock isn’t hard. Isn’t pressing into me from behind.

  One firm hand against my spine pins me down while the other snakes under my body, pulling at the button of my jeans.

  ‘Damned fucking jeans,’ Dan snarls, fighting to drag them off while, hands at my waistband, I try to keep them on. ‘Maybe I should insist on you always wearing skirts.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I growl, scratching his hand. My heart is racing, but it’s not fight or flight because I want this. I’m wet for him.

  ‘Ouch! Not tonight, my darling,’ Dan responds laughingly.

  He’s much stronger than I am. Plus, my fight is partly fake, so it isn’t long before my dark denim and white panties are hanging below my butt cheeks. He slides two fingers between my legs, and we both groan at the wet sound, at how obviously turned on I am.

  I place my forehead against the bed, giving in. Only, what I submit to is not what I receive. Yes, Dan’s fingers work me deliciously, but unseen, he drags the spines of the brush cruelly across my hip. My voice fills the room; is there such thing a as a squeal of ecstasy? The action is sadistic, the sensation sublime, as the bristled brush carries on down to the cheeks of ass.

  ‘Fight me all you like, darling. Fight me as your wet cunt contradicts you.’

  My answer is just garbled sound as I begin to ride his hand, pushing back, my fists curled under my chest. I want the thorns and his fingers, and I want him to make me scream.

  My mind hazy around the edges as my orgasm builds. Two fingers become three? Four? As I chant for him to do it—for him to fuck me like this. And all the while, I won’t look at him, won’t give him the satisfaction of my reddened face. My sick pleasure.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he rasps in my ear. ‘It does take a bit of imagination to make you properly submissive.’ His fingers are as rough as his voice. My answer is only to bite back a whimper as his fingers move away, sliding wetly down my legs.

  ‘There’s nothing like a bit of old school,’ he grunts, the paddle of the brush swiftly following his words. I hear it in the air before I feel the impact. It isn’t enough time to prepare.

  My cry is like an expletive in the air, my insides pulsing emptily along with the bloom of pain.

  Again. Two swift whacks. As hard as the first.

  And this time, I do swear because it really fucking hurts. But I don’t move. And I could. I could roll away. I could tell him no. As though reading my thoughts, he asks me this time, a note of something quite sweet in his voice.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I nod a little eagerly. ‘Silly girl,’ he answers, raining down a torrent of blows until my cheeks are painfully warm. Smarting. Hurting. I cry, sob, but not for him to stop. Especially not as his fingers return, filling me. Rubbing my clit. Filling me again with something entirely else. Unfamiliar and unyielding, I realise at once what he held in his hand, I now hold inside.

  The handle of the brush.

  ‘Necessity is the mother of all invention,’ he whispers hoarsely, twisting the handle. Moaning, I press my forehead to the bed as Dan pulls it out.

  The following moments happen in a blur of sensory overload, from my burning skin to the heavy weight of him. The phrase brooked no argument seems appropriate as he drives himself inside, covering me as if his own body is my skin. His hands at my shoulders, grabbing and pulling in a frenzy, fucking me so hard I don’t know where I end and he begins. The knot inside me from earlier—my loathing and fear—is replaced by the aching sensation. This need of him.

  I want to pull away, the sensation too much, but he anchors me there by the sound of his voice. By his touch.

  ‘That’s it,’ Dan rasps, pulling me back onto his cock again and again. ‘Fucking come. Come like this, now!’

  And I do. The feeling builds and builds, and at his word, the sensation bursts like fireworks. I’m aflame. My whole body a blaze of sensation. Electrified. Sent heavenward. Behind me, Dan’s movements turn jerky as he slams into me one more time. I ache instantly with the loss of him as he pulls away, before his climax lashes my back in hot, wet bursts.

  Moments later, we’re collapsed on the mattress, a tangle of creased clothing and sweat-shining skin. I shiver in the cooling air as Dan pulls the edge of the duvet over my bared skin.

  ‘Tell me that wasn’t hard on both of us,’ he says, still breathing heavily as he slides a tangled lock of hair from my face.

  ‘You’re a sadistic asshole,’ I murmur happily, allowing him to slide an arm underneath my waist.

  ‘But you love me for it,’ he growls in my ear, rolling me closer.

  ‘And therein lies the problem,’ I whisper, ‘because I think I actually do.’

  What if, what if, what if?

  Chapter Twenty

  DAN

  ‘Hello, stranger!’ Kit’s hand claps me on the back, pulling my attention from the business article I’m currently reading. I place the newspaper down and stand to shake his hand.

  ‘A bit of an overstatement. I only saw you, what? Two weeks ago?’ I gesture in the vague direction of club Mede.

  ‘Try nearly four,’ he says disapprovingly. ‘Next door. We had a drink.’ The night I met Louise. ‘You haven’t been around The Den very much,’ he adds, adjusting the knife-sharp pleats on his suit pants, taking the seat across from me. ‘What gives?’

  ‘New suit?’ I goad, ignoring what se
ems like a slight.

  Kit runs a chain of boutique hotels and works as hard has he plays. He’s also such a natty fucking dresser—tailor made all the way from his eight-hundred-pound shoes to his silk Windsor knotted tie—that his sense of dress makes him an easy target for piss taking. It’s all good-natured banter, of course, as we also happen to be friends.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he retorts immediately, removing a piece of invisible lint from his cuff. ‘And stop tryin’ to change the subject.’ Crossing one leg over the other, his brow furrows, his Scottish accent kicking in. Ordinarily, the brogue is barely discernible. Unless he’s annoyed. Or talking about his twin brother. Or playing football. Or fucking. Guess which it is now? ‘Haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in the club for weeks.’ His words are as heavy as his brow.

  ‘I’ve been coming in during the day,’ I reply with a light shrug. ‘I get more done when it’s quiet.’

  He makes a very Scottish sounding noise from the back of his throat. ‘You’re either avoiding pussy or gettin’ it someplace else.’

  ‘And that would be none of your business.’

  ‘Indeed!’

  He sends me a lewd wink. Kit is bisexual, though the word really doesn’t encompass everything he is. Fucking filthy might. And coming from me, that’s a compliment. Though I’m pleased to say I’ve never had the pleasure. Threesomes no longer hold any interest for me, though there was a time in my marriage that . . . I brush the thought away immediately because Belle is a head fuck all of her own.

  ‘And that’s the way I like it. I can’t be doin’ with becoming friends with the people I fuck.’

  ‘And how’s it going with Simone and Greg? Still seeing them?’

  ‘Still fucking them. Well, her. He just likes to be manhandled a bit. And demeaned. But we all have our own little foibles.’

  I burst out laughing, having said something similar to Louise myself.

  ‘That was funny?’

  ‘Inside joke,’ I answer dismissively.

  ‘What I want to know is, who’s taking care of your little foibles now? And by that, I mean your little cock.’

  ‘Christopher,’ I drawl using his full name. ‘You know better than to start with those kinds of insults. How many times must I tell you, it’s what you do with it that counts.’

  ‘One time,’ he says laughing and referring to a particularly embarrassing incident he’d had on the main floor. ‘It was the first time I’d been licked from both ends—’

  I hold my hand up, warring off his words. And he stops, before returning to his previous line of questioning.

  ‘Which is it, then? You’re either avoiding pussy—though I don’t know how as I haven’t seen you with anyone at The Den lately—or else you’re getting it somewhere else. Come on, Master Daniel. Whose arse are you spankin’ these days?’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I have met someone.’ I gesture for the waitress and order us both a coffee, doing my best to ignore his delighted expression. I hadn’t meant to get into this. We’re here to talk business. Business in a sex club is still sex, though, I suppose.

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I was beginning to think you’d returned to your campanologist days.’ His words and expression are both heavy with meaning, but what that meaning is? No bloody idea. ‘Campanologist. You know, the study of bells? One in particular . . .’

  ‘Someone showed you the benefits of Google, then? I thought I’d heard screams last week,’ I say. ‘Was that you getting dragged into this century?’ Kit looks over at me, unimpressed. ‘And Belle, for fuck’s sake! If I even show the remotest signs of interest in my ex-wife, you have permission to book me a bed in Broadmoor hospital.’

  ‘Good. Glad to hear it. Also that your needs are being met.’

  My needs. Why must it always come back to kink?

  ‘And if you bump into me on the street, do me a favour? Don’t call me that.’

  ‘What? Master Dan?’

  ‘That’s not who I am. I don’t need a nom de guerre.’

  ‘I was only taking the piss. But name or not, you are what you are. You can’t hide from it.’

  ‘I was only ever that person with Belle.’

  ‘So you’re done with kink? With holding your lover’s heartbeat in your hand? Done with pretty red arses and girls tied up with string?’

  ‘All right, Julie Andrews,’ I say as the waitress returns. ‘You’ve made your point.’ I take the proffered cup, inhaling the dark cloud of bitterness.

  ‘They’d definitely be on the list of my favourite things. Anyway, who is she?’

  ‘A woman I met.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘While you were looking for new premises?’

  ‘Finally, the reason we’re here! Work shit. Let’s discuss the place in Manchester you mentioned last.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t suit your needs. I’ve already told you. Too close to residential land. And the parking is shite. Did you meet her at one of the parties you were gonna give a try? Kill Kitty? Torture Terrace?’

  ‘No.’ I’d planned on attending some very specific kinds of parties. Call them competition. I hadn’t. Because Louise had happened.

  ‘It’s like getting blood out of fucking stone,’ Kit complains in a frustrated undertone. ‘So you met her at the supermarket, then? Because Christ knows you do nothing outside this club. Unless it involves looking after Hal. Was there that spark of electricity when your hands touched over the last microwave meal? Was it love at frozen carbonara?’

  ‘You’re a nasty fucker, you know.’

  ‘Aye, I do know.’ As though struck by divine inspiration, he slaps a sudden hand to his head. ‘It’s not one of the divorced yummy mummies from Hal’s school, is it?’ Such a ridiculous sentence to come out of this man’s mouth. ‘If it is, Belle will probably end you both!’

  ‘She’s American,’ I say quite suddenly. ‘A little younger. And she knows nothing about any of this.’ I open my palms, indicating the space around us. The Den, the lifestyle, anything.

  ‘How can that be?’ His expression then morphs to one of knowing. ‘Too busy fucking?’

  ‘It’s not like that. I like her,’ I begin tentatively. ‘I really like her.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ he asks, not without frustration.

  ‘Honestly? I’ve no idea what she thinks of me, beyond how I fuck her.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’s hard and often,’ he deadpans. ‘Which says she might not be opposed to all this.’ He mirrors my earlier action, opening his hands to indicate the space around us. ‘You’re a complete bellend. What happened to the immortal line, spare the rod, spoil the sub?’

  ‘She’s not my sub.’

  ‘Sounds like she isn’t your anything at the minute.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ There’s no malice in the words, though his assertions stings.

  ‘Take a ticket and get in line. I’ll see if I can fit you in. Look,’ he adds, seriously, ‘The longer you leave it—’

  ‘Don’t you fucking think I know that already? But it’s more than that. It’s like she doesn’t want to know. What kind of woman doesn’t even ask what the man they’re screwing does for a living? She’s closed off and new to all this. I just don’t know. Maybe she’s only in it for sex.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a fatalist. When did that happen?’ I shake my head, too weary to even defend myself. ‘Ask her—you bring it up. It’s not like you to be such a pussy, is all I’m saying.’

  ‘Yeah, well, this is where divorce leaves you.’

  ‘No, this is where Belle left you. Move the fuck on, man!’

  Easier said than done though.

  ‘And there’s one thing for sure. If she’s not asking those kinds of questions, it’s because she’s hiding shit of her own.’

  And truthfully, that’s what scares me the most.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  DAN

  Weekends seem to be our thing. Dinner Friday night.
Saturday morning in bed. Sunday Brunch, if I’m lucky, before she leaves on Sunday night. And that’s where we are right now. On the brink of another week we’re in bed. Her body is a soft weight against me, knees fitted behind knees with my possessive arm slung across her waist. We’re not sleeping. In fact, we’ve barely spoken since we’d fucked. It’s strange, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. It feels as natural as breathing having her in my arms. She’d said she loved me last time we fucked, but I don’t think that heavy a declaration can be valid at that point. I don’t know how it is for women, but I can be pretty effusive in my love for all kinds of things right after I’ve come.

  As Louise begins to fidget in my arms, I can’t help but think she’s building up to something that’s weighing on her mind. I decide to help her along.

  ‘Spit it out,’ I drawl, tightening my grip on her. ‘My brain’s never at its best for a while after I’ve woken up. Or after I’ve come.’ I draw a languid finger down her arm, making her shiver. ‘Words of small syllables,’ I now whisper. ‘Make it easy for me.’ I keep my words as unhurried as my movements as I stretch out along the bed.

  ‘This can’t be normal, can it? Do you think I’m . . . normal?’

  ‘It’s a relative term, darling, and—’

  She pushes my arms away, sitting upright, the look in her eye one of combat. ‘This can’t be normal,’ she spits, daring me to deny her words. ‘Being spanked, being fucked with a brush. Who enjoys that?’

  She’s not looking for an answer. Just an argument, for some reason. ‘You’re a pussycat.’ Rolling onto my back, I slide a hand beneath my head. I close my eyes with a sigh before speaking again. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. Besides, you haven’t the capacity to be truly hurt.’ I’m thinking of canes, especially. That she isn’t truly a pain whore is more than fine by me. These are thoughts I’ll keep to myself today.

  ‘I shouldn’t want to be hurt. I shouldn’t want this.’

  I can’t be sure if her words are aimed at me, but they cut all the same. She shouldn’t want me? Us? This?

  ‘And if I’d been born without a dick, you’d be sleeping with a lesbian.’