Back to Vanilla (21 page)

When she crawled back
into their bed, very early the next morning, he pulled her tiny
body to the front of his own, her facing away from him, his warm
arms wrapped close around her. A small vivid bruise was already
appearing on her upper right arm and there were light stripe marks
on her upper back. All that mattered was that she had come back. He
clung on firmly until they both fell asleep in silence.

Megan flicked to
the tab where her PhetX messages lay open and typed a reply to
Kindly_Meister, straight from the heart.

My dear
BiGal,

If you don’t
mind, I’ll answer your questions in order, and maybe add a few of
my own along the way.

Yes, I suppose you
could say – and here I’ll combine the answers to a few of your
questions – I’ve had things published for most of my adult life,
although perhaps not in the way that you think. I was, until
recently, a journalist, and do indeed still get the odd piece
published for cash, but I’m more or less retired and have been for
a few years now. I’ll be blunt, as I generally am, and say I like
the look of you, and am happy to answer any queries that’ll help
you get a feel for who I am.

As to my characters…
yes, I’d say there’s a touch of me in all of the males. The Cabin
happened almost exactly as I wrote it, although the girl was a wee
bit older, and the Moment in Time had hints of me too.

The American story? It
was written a few years ago for a dear, dear friend. A lovely woman
I met online, but never did meet. It was exactly how I knew she
wanted it to be, and I’m glad it touches you too. It’s something
I’d be very keen to explore myself. I’ve met a few women with
permission from their men along the way, but not as open and caring
as the husband in that tale. He was, as you say, an example of real
trust and unconditional love.

I do, indeed, consider
myself a dom. I’ve helped a lot of women through tough decisions
along the way, and I hope made their lives richer for it. And yes,
I guess you could say that I always have one eye open.

As I have said
already, I would like us to be friends, but all at your pace.

I must admit, I’m
highly excited by the notion of your polyamorous relationship. I’ve
known it work a few times, but I’ve known its destructive powers
too. Has it been tested yet? Do you think he’s a man cut from
Donald’s cloth? Could he walk you to my hotel door, knowing I was
planning to fuck your beautiful wee arse all night after whipping
it red raw, and stroll casually away wishing you a pleasant night?
And, more importantly, could he look you in the eye the next day
and call you his darling slut… and would you allow him to do that?
Would it change the nature of your love?

Let me know,
Daddy’s_BiGal. I’m very interested in your thoughts.

Love, Daddy
Xxxx

Looking through
his sent folder the next day, this email rang no bells whatsoever.
As he stared at the screen, Alasdair was impressed, more than
anything, by the quality of his punctuation in a message he had
clearly written in so drunk a state, and yet still his writing
remained lucid and articulate, if a little coarser than he might
have chosen with less Dalwhinnie flowing through his veins

Megan, conversely,
couldn’t have been more turned on.

Dear Daddy,
Oh! You know me so well! Yes, that’s my greatest desire but also my
greatest fear. I mean, I want that. I want that connection and that
trust, that supreme trust and honesty, that would enable us to play
together with someone else, and I’m sure he does too… I just need
to ask him. But… but… we haven’t tested it yet. I mean, I want to,
but I guess we haven’t found the right guy.

I’ll be honest here.
I’ve made the odd online mistake, trusted people when I should’ve
listened to my inner voice, and I’m terrified of doing the same
again. Forgive me if I’m a bit hesitant sometimes. Truthfully? It’s
just blind fear :-).

But to the point: do
you really think that could work? I feel it could, but it’s so far
from my real world, from convention, that I have no clue.

God, I hope so.

Your little
BiGal xxx

This was turning,
Alasdair thought, in a delectable direction, showing him two
things: one, that his initial instincts were, as usual, just about
spot on; and two, that he ought to send more messages after a night
on the pish. He was most definitely guilty of over self-censorship
on occasion.

Although he had once
before asked for – and been most graciously granted – online
permission to play with the female half of a polyamorous couple,
that had eventually come to nothing. The woman had pulled out, and
simply vanished from the internet, something that, in reality,
tended to happen more often than not with his virtual
conquests.

One woman, in fact,
had got as far as arranging an overnight date with him in
Newcastle, then failed to show, leaving him to souse his loneliness
that evening in a Tyneside hotel bar. He didn’t bear grudges,
though. And then there was Tamsin, dear sweet little cunty-girl,
feasibly the sweetest prize of all, who had backed out of their
first meeting before rescheduling almost immediately. He had loved
her all the more for her courage in not running away, and thinking
of her brought a smile to his lips and, he suspected, always
would.

But this? What was
unfurling here was a new and exciting prospect and he stood up and
paced the room restlessly a little before deciding to wait and take
a stroll to calm his ardour before responding.

My dear slutty
BiGal,

Thank you so
much for your candour. If you are suggesting, as I believe is the
case, that I may be the “right guy” to join you and your husband,
let me assure you right now that I would be honoured to help you
out on your quest. Again, I remind you that anything we do is done
at your own pace. I am going nowhere. Yes, the online world can be
a minefield, my dear, and those of us who travel its wavering paths
all have similar tales to tell. I am also always available to
address any concerns that you or your master may have.

Has he a presence on
here and have you spoken to him about me? Would now be an opportune
moment for me to introduce myself?

I am totally at your
disposal in this matter. I know that you and I have a lot to share
and discuss privately, and when you decide to involve your master
is entirely in your hands.

At this point, too, I
want you to know how much I look forward to our meeting and to
initiating you in the ways of the good little sub I know you’ll be.
Truly, I can see it in your eyes.

Love, Daddy
Xxxx

Megan had been, as
she had promised herself from day one, true to herself. After the
day when, over that greasy lunch, she had told Rich of her
intentions, she had continued to talk. If she’d paused a little
more frequently for breath, she might have noticed the one-way
nature of many of these chats, but she was determined to share
where her head was with her husband, both in the name of honesty
and because, to be frank, it was good to have a sounding board,
although his responses tended to be nodded rather than spoken.

On PhetX, polyamory
was a reasonably popular lifestyle choice. It was fairly obvious
why, Rich thought, when she spoke to him about what she was
learning. The idea of remorse-free indiscretion was surely a
tempting one in any man’s book, and what man wouldn’t say no when
offered an open permission slip?

What got him, though,
was the amount of energy she seemed to dedicate to the scene. If Ms
Opportunity came and knocked on his door, okay, yes, he was,
theoretically at least, now free to open it, but he couldn’t
imagine having either the time or stamina that Megan seemed to
commit to the cause.

He was bewildered by
the direction that their conversations, once dominated by talk of
their children, had taken. The most bizarre thing of all, he
thought, as he listened to an in-depth account of an online
conversation she’d had with a transsexual who had recently left the
army and was fighting the Anglican Church for the right to become a
nun, was how bloody mundane the most extreme acts of sexuality
could become when they were reduced to small-talk. Having taken a
few casual steps down the path of BDSM, her stroll seemed to have
gained huge momentum lately, and she was now running at a speed he
didn’t have the spirit or desire to keep up with.

The vestiges of guilt
he’d had for the minor offences he committed all those years ago
had long vanished. He found himself less and less interested in his
wife’s pursuits, and as she, although always an attentive mother,
spent more of her free time hunting for the elusive “something”, he
threw himself increasingly into domesticity and fatherhood.

Megan had not
mentioned the waters she had been testing with Kindly_Meister. She
told herself that this was because while she knew for a fact that
Rich would support her, as he had done throughout this journey, of
all the things she had told him and asked of him, this, she knew,
was undoubtedly the trickiest.

Unlike Lisa’s husband
in
Decently Indecent Proposal
, who had been past it and all
but impotent, Rich had, until this whole business started, been a
fairly regular and enthusiastic lover, if a trifle vanilla by her
current standards. Since that initial chat, though, he had taken to
falling asleep most nights on the couch downstairs, so much so that
the kids had started referring to it as “Dad’s bed”.

Getting him to read
the story, Alasdair’s tale, which had so deeply touched her, seemed
like the most logical place to start. If nothing else, she thought,
it would show him quite clearly where her head was at the moment,
as well as introducing the concept of the man she was considering
to play the part of Mike.

It was late on Sunday
night; she had school the next day and she was weary to the core.
With Rich not due home until the small hours, she WhatsApped a link
to the story to his phone, along with a message saying, “Let me
know what you think. Love you X”, snuggled under her voluminous
duvet and went straight to sleep.

As the frog-sound
alarm on her phone began burping a cheery wake-up call a few hours
later, she reached straight down and checked. He’d seen the message
– the two blue ticks confirmed this – but had sent no response as
yet.

Downstairs, her
husband was already up and crazily lively in the way he tended to
be around their children, despite his late arrival home and the
minimal amount of sleep that inevitably ensured. As she walked into
the kitchen, he was pouring milk on to Sam’s breakfast cereal to
the noise of what sounded remarkably like the drone of a 1940
Spitfire.

“Hey-hey-hey!” he
called out at her arrival, making Sam look up and beam at his mum.
“Look who’s here!”

Megan was immediately
caught up in the mêlée of family life, which swept her from that
first point, through a cup of tea for herself, past breakfast for
three kids in varying states of awakeness and more or less
continued as she walked out of the front door, the two girls in
tow, 32 minutes later.

It being a Monday, Sam
was staying with Rich a while longer, to be dropped off as the
nursery doors opened just after 9am. For the next 13 hours nothing
counted except work and family – children. There would be no time
even to think, and the lack of mobile reception anywhere on the
school premises rendered checking her messages futile.

In fact, it would be
four more days before she saw Rich alone, during which time
Daddy’s_BiGal had got to know her potential master incredibly well,
online at least.

Their contact wasn’t
constant by any means – that didn’t suit either of them – but each
night, as the house finally fell into the hush that so evaded it
during most of the day, the two would speak through what she
already knew to be her own wants and what he was gradually
suggesting to her might be her needs. Through what some might call
a manipulative drip-drip-dripping of ideas, Megan became obsessed
with the burgeoning notion of a threesome unlike any she had
previously contemplated.

Their messaged
conversations would often start with almost an academic tone, but
as they spoke, a new fantasy was formed, and the exchanges took a
more feral turn, exciting them both. His words were, more often
than not, the last she saw each night, and for Megan there was no
reluctance or scepticism whatsoever.

She was going to meet
this man.

It was Thursday
evening and with Rich on early shifts for the next few days, she
had decided it was worth staying up for that chat. The link she had
sent him had been greeted only with silence. She hadn’t pushed it.
While his compliance in anything she chose to do was something she
assumed rather than sought, this was still a hurdle over which they
had to jump before she took things with Kindly_Meister any further.
And even though she knew he would say yes, she still needed to find
the words to ask.

Alasdair was at the
monthly munch in his home town and they’d not chatted all day, so
in a twist so rare of late as to be remarkable, she had spent the
two hours before Rich’s return from work at 11pm sitting in front
of the TV, phone unglued from her left hand and lying glow-free on
the kitchen surface. For the first time in the weeks since meeting
Kindly_Meister online, she was totally relaxed as her husband
walked through the door, and the smile with which she looked up at
him from the couch lacked the distracted distance she had done
little to disguise recently.

As a result, Rich was
instantly warmed and pleased to see her; it felt, for the most
fleeting of moments, like old times. Instead of walking into the
kitchen, offering tea and pottering, he came straight in and
plonked himself down next to his wife, cocking his head a little to
the left to stare into her eyes before speaking.