Divertissement (6 page)

She forced
herself to sit up. “Shouldn’t we get going? Or at least offer to help clean
up?”

“We will,
but I need a shower first.” He stood and crossed to the door.

No man
should look so seriously sexy wearing nothing but argyle socks and shoes, but
John managed it. He opened the door and called down the stairs, “Alan, be a pal
and bring up our clothes. I need to drag Ellen into the shower.”

She
wouldn’t need much dragging.

As he
closed the door, she stood. A little less wobbly now, and said, “I think for a
change, I’ll drag you.”
And took his hand.
The
bathroom door stood ajar as she led him across the room and turned on the
shower.

“I’m the
only hen-pecked, pussy-whipped Dominant in creation,” he said as she adjusted
the temperature.

She
laughed.
Couldn’t help it.
“And you love it,” she
replied.
“Since it’s not the least bit true.
Now tell
me, where are we going?”

“Trying to
weasel the answer out of me with your feminine wiles?”

“No, just
asking.”

“You’ll
find out when I’m ready for you to know. Now get in the shower before I spank
you.”

Might as well.
She needed to get the whipped cream out of her hair.

* * * * *

Twenty
minutes later, dressed and hair thankfully whipped cream free and almost dry,
and Ellen sat in the kitchen, drinking tea with Annie and Jane. John had
disappeared with Alan and Mark to load some apparently essential supplies or
equipment in the car.

Tea was
welcome. Ellen’s throat was parched after all the yelling and shouting a climax
from John entailed, but sitting fully clothed while two younger women were
still naked was an odd situation.

Was this
how the Dominants felt? Or was the oddness because she longed to be naked too,
particularly when the men walked back in?

“Are you
all right, Auntie Ellie?” Annie asked. She was downright anxious. Dear girl!

“I am
perfectly fine, Annie my dear.”

“She looks
more than all right to me,” Jane said with a bit of a grin.

 
“And to be honest, I am a lot more than all
right,
I’m
positively…”

“Glowing?”
Jane added with a bigger grin. “You look so…”

“Satisfied and sated?”
Ellen added, liking Jane more and more. “Yes, that’s
about it.” She smiled at her niece. “Do not look so worried, Annie my love.
John and I suit each other marvelously and I will be eternally thankful that
you introduced us.”
Even if this went nowhere.
She’d
always look back on her time with John with fondness and damp knickers. “Trust
me, dear. I am old enough to know what I’m doing.”

“I can’t
get over it,” Annie said. “You look very, very happy, but darn it, John’s so
scary.”

“So you
once warned me, love, but keep in mind, I like being scared a little.” And
fucked a lot and tied up and spanked and generally made to feel submissive and
sexy and desirable, but saying all that might be going a bit too far, even in
this house.

“I’ll tell
you one thing,” Jane said, reaching for the pot and refilling everyone’s cups.
She lowered her voice. “John may suit you, Ellen, but you have wrought wonders
on him. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known Alan and I’ve never seen
him smile or laugh the way he does around you.”

Interesting.

* * * * *

Ellen
mulled over that conversation as they headed west. She didn’t doubt them, after
all Jane had known John for years and Annie for almost two, but as far as she
was concerned, he’d always been the same, a demanding Dominant lover and a
friend. A rather secretive friend at times, just like now. He steadfastly
refused to say where they were going or what the surprise was, but she could
make a pretty good educated guess that it involved sex.

She hoped.

They
arrived after dark at his cottage in Cornwall. No surprise that. He’d taken her
down here a couple of times.

 
“We’re here?”

He turned
off the ignition and reached over and squeezed her thigh. “Yes, my love, we’re
here and here we spend the night. It’s too late to take you the rest of the
way. We’ll go in the morning.”

Go where?
They weren’t that far from Land’s End.
Maybe the
Scilly
Isles.
She’d gone there years back on a
family holiday and Julia had broken her ankle climbing the rocks and that had
rather ruined the rest of the stay. Still, her still-bossy elder sister wasn’t
here now to disrupt things.

Thank God!

Although the look on her sister’s face if she ever got a look
at John’s attic playroom would be something to remember.

* * * * *

Ellen
awoke early and slipped out of bed, leaving John snoring gently. She dressed—
well,
she pulled on her blouse and skirt from yesterday and
went downstairs for coffee. Mug in hand, she walked down to the jetty. Planning
on dipping her toes in the water and sitting there awhile, pondering on life,
John, sex, John, her niece Annie, John, whether or not to follow up the lead
about a stock of glass buttons she heard about in Brussels and John. Hell, she
might as well skip the non-immediate and dwell entirely on the man she left
sleeping in the wide sleigh bed.

The new
boat, moored at the end of the jetty, almost put John out of her mind.

Heaven’s
alive! Was this the surprise he’d mentioned? What did he have planned?
Kink on the high seas?
Might be a bit cramped. In her
experience, boats never had quite enough room. Though getting in close quarters
with John wasn’t such a bad prospect.

Her coffee
was cooling in the morning air, but Ellen barely noticed, just stuck to her
original plan of sitting on the end of the jetty and letting the crabs nip at
her toes. Only the crabs weren’t out this morning. So she sat undisturbed until
John called as he came from the cottage.

 
“Is that the surprise?” she asked once he was
within earshot.

“No. That
is to take us to the surprise.”

So, maybe
it was the
Scilly
Isles after all. “Going anytime
soon?”

“After breakfast.
Come on in,” he said “We can’t hang around all day or we’ll
be going against the tide.”

* * * * *

She helped
load the boat. An interestingly assorted cargo it was too—towels, a large,
heavy backpack, blankets. “Are we staying the night?” She wasn’t exactly
enthused about camping.

“Don’t
think so.”

Very
informative that was! Still, she helped stow them below along with the picnic
hamper and a carton of bottled water. “Are we headed for a drought?”

“Just hand
the small box, will you?”

Ellen
recognized that.
One of his many toy boxes.
So, sex
was on the agenda. Pretty much a given around John.

“Here you
are.” She resisted the temptation to drop it and see what fell out.

A couple
of baskets followed. They obviously weren’t going to starve, and—a bit of a
surprise this—a rolled tarpaulin that he lashed to the deck.

“What do
you have on under that?” he asked, eying her up and down.

“Nothing except my skin.”

“Good. Put
on a lifejacket and let’s cast off.”

They set
off, almost due north in the bright of the morning. After about half an hour,
Ellen turned to him as he steered the boat. “That’s Goose Island, isn’t it?”

“That’s
right.”

“But it’s
private property.”

“Yes.”

The man
could be very irritating. “If it’s private and people can’t land there, why are
we heading in that direction?”

“I bought
it.”

Wasn’t the
first time John had robbed her of speech. But the other times they’d been
having sex of some variety or another. Not chugging across the Bristol Channel.
“You bought it?” Why not? The man was full of surprises.
“Just
like that?”

“No, not
‘just like that’. It took some haggling. The agent tried hard to convince me
there was a desirable, gothic Victorian house on the island that needed a bit
of updating. I knew it was a half-tumbled-down ruin and argued the point.” He
sounded quite pleased with himself.

“So you
went ahead and bought it?”
Definitely a surprise to remember.

John
turned from staring at the sea ahead and smiled at her. “I bought it for you.”
Yep, he was getting very good at depriving her of the means of speech. “You
said you’d always dreamed of having an island retreat of your own. Remember?”

She did.
Very well.
It was during a rather wild and totally
unforgettable weekend in a kinky B and B on Guernsey. “So, you bought this
one?” As she spoke, the island came closer.

“It was
the only one on the market within easy reach. The Seychelles or even the
Adriatic is nowhere near as convenient. The house needs a lot of work but I
thought we could spend the day here and you could look around.”

“Just look
around?”

“Hell no.
I’m going to tie you up and fuck you, but we will look over
the house too.”

They
moored the boat on an old stone jetty. It was solid and sturdy but covered with
barnacles and seaweed. “I’m getting a crew over from the mainland to clean it
up and work on the house,” John said.

They
unloaded and piled everything in a wheelbarrow. “Crude but workable,” he said
with a grin. “What we’ll need is a small tractor with a trailer. I’m not going
to try to haul furniture up the hill in a wheelbarrow.”

She
wouldn’t argue. Pushing the wheelbarrow was hard enough over the uneven ground.
“Planning on redoing the road?”

“Glad you
brought walking boots?”

“You bet.
But seriously, what about a road?”

“Since I
don’t plan on bringing a car over, not sure if I need one, but I would like to
set up some tracks to ride bicycles.”

“This
really is an end-of-the-world escape, isn’t it?” No wonder it had been
uninhabited for ages.

“Perfect for our purposes.”

That was a
loaded comment if ever there was one. But he was right. Here they could make
love in the open air, run around naked—well, naked with strong boots on—and
generally have a wonderful time. “What if it rains?”

He
laughed. “That’s why I brought the tarpaulin. The stables and sheds still have
halfway-sound roofs. The tarp will keep the rain off our stores. Only the house
is in bad shape.”

“Forgive
me being picky, but the idea of sex in a cowshed is a bit of a turn-off.”

“Not with
me it wouldn’t be!”

The man
had an ego and a half, but she suspected he was right. “I’ll take your word for
it.”

“You can
take my cock for it too!” She would.
As often as she could.
“But we’ll leave the cowshed for a rainy day. I have something else planned.”

She bet he
did.

As they
reached the crest of the low hill, the house came into sight—a solid,
square-built structure of gray stone. He was right about the roof though. It
was half caved in. No doubt the wood inside would be equally rotten.

She was
right. They climbed in a window—the door was blocked on the inside by a fallen
beam—and looked around.

“John,
it’s a ruin.” Not the ambiance for wild sex—unless one went in for
kidnap-and-abduction-in ruined-buildings fantasies.

“That’s how I knocked the price down, but look
around, the walls are solid.”

And a good
foot thick. “But it’s going to take masses of work—and a hell of a lot of
money—to get it habitable.”

“So what?”
He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “It’s only money, and then I
can bring you here and have you stranded and at my mercy. If you don’t accede
to my wicked demands, I’ll abandon you here.”

Seemed
John was into abduction fantasies. “I could always sneak out and take the boat
and leave you stranded.”

“Not if
you’re tied to the bed. Maybe I’ll just lock away your shoes.”

That would
work. Walking on this rocky ground barefoot would cripple her. “I think I’ll
make shoes a hard limit.”

Would she
ever tire of his sexy, lovely laugh? She hoped not.

“You’ve
seen the ruin and the worst. Help me unload and I’ll show you the best.”

They
stowed most of the supplies in what appeared to be a shed of some sort and tied
the tarp down on the roof to seal off any gaps or cracks.