No Ordinary Love Story: Sequel to The Diary of a Submissive (28 page)

Of course, seeing James felt even weirder than thinking about him.

By this point it had been almost a year since our last meeting. We’d gone for a rather half-hearted lunch which, at the time, I had hoped might encourage a reconciliation, but instead was the last in a series of ever-more-impersonal meetings and communications which then tailed off into silence.

The last unreturned message was mine. I’d decided that it was too difficult living in a land of ifs and maybes, so I’d taken the initiative to step back – if you can call disappearing into a pit of mopey despair taking initiative. The fact he hadn’t tried to contact me again vindicated my response.

I’d moved on.

But, of course, when I saw him next I was momentarily brought up short. I was in the pub with a few colleagues after work celebrating someone’s birthday, when I saw someone who looked like him standing at the bar. This ‘recognition’ of what turned out to be strangers was something that had happened a lot in the early months following the break-up of our unusual relationship. Over time it had stopped, but something about this guy – the haircut, the way he held himself, maybe the cut of his suit – brought James back to my mind. Hell, maybe it was just the fact I’d been thinking about him a lot recently, in
light of what, in my head, I referred to as Weegate. I know, it’s a ridiculous name, but branding it that made me laugh, and I was trying to make the whole episode feel less portentous. Of course, one silly name isn’t going to do that all on its own, and in the pensive moments when it still popped into my head I began to wonder – in light of how it had affected me – if I’d been fair in how I’d tried to help James through his concerns about what we were doing together.

I stared at the man at the bar long enough that Mark, our local government reporter and the guy I sat next to at work, elbowed me in the ribs. ‘You all right there, Soph? You look like you’re about to start dribbling.’

I let myself be dragged back into the conversation. ‘Nah, I wasn’t leching. He’s not my type. I just thought he was someone I knew.’

Shona, our news editor and the bluntest woman I’ve ever met, turned to look at him. ‘He’s someone I wish I knew. Nice bum. Suit looks good on him too, looks expensive. I bet he’d be OK with buying a round of drinks every now and then as well.’ She looked meaningfully at Mark, who sighed.

‘You’re subtle, but I believe it’s my turn to go to the bar. Help me carry, Soph?’

I nodded absently and began to shuffle along the wooden booth to get up. That was when he turned round.

It was like he knew we were talking about him – although we weren’t talking loudly and even Shona was a few drinks away from her loud and rowdy best. His eyes met mine and the flicker of recognition shifted to surprise. He smiled and waved.

Shit.

Shona cackled. ‘Well if he isn’t someone you know then he’s certainly keen to meet you. He definitely looks better from the front. Is he single?’

The words were harder to say than they should have been. ‘I don’t know.’

I am a chicken. I waved at him and then walked past to go to the loo, hoping against hope that he’d have been served and moved away before I had to help Mark bring the drinks back to the table.

No such luck. He was pretty much loitering outside the loo, waiting for me.

‘Hi, Sophie.’

‘Hello.’

‘How are you? It’s been ages. You’re looking well.’

‘Thanks. I’m good, really good. You?’ The small talk felt ridiculous and made me want to run away. I suppose it was a small step forward that I mostly felt skin-crawling awkwardness rather than any surge of lust. Although I couldn’t help but notice that his hair still fell over his face – I could never resist reaching up to brush it away. I put my hand in my pocket.

The silence lengthened. Were we done? I was hoping we were done.

He cleared his throat and gestured to a table behind him. ‘So. I’m with some work colleagues, I should probably go back. They probably think I’m trying to pick you up or something …’ He laughed and I restrained the urge to kick him in the shins. Was it so unreasonable for folk to think that he’d be trying to pick me up? And, hold on,
why did I care? I didn’t
want
him to pick me up. Right? God, this was confusing. I thought of Adam – simple, straightforward, I-know-what-he’s-thinking Adam – and remembered I didn’t need to do this any more. The thought made me smile. It grounded me somehow.

‘I’m with people too. I should go. Glad you’re well.’

‘You too. We should meet for a drink soon.’

I brushed him off with a casual ‘yeah’, knowing he wouldn’t ever in a million years get round to calling, and fled to grab a couple of pints off Mark, with James’s farewell ringing in my ears.

He emailed me at work the following day, asking me when I wanted that drink.

I literally didn’t know what to say. A straight out ‘no’ seemed quite abrupt, while an ‘I’m seeing someone’ seemed a bit like gloating and made it sound like I’d assumed he was asking me out romantically, which was quite a leap bearing in mind how things had ended. I didn’t want to go out with him for drinks, though, which had to be progress, so in the end I just ignored the mail, sure he’d forget about it in a day or two.

He didn’t.

That Friday I’d arranged to meet Charlotte for drinks after work. She’d been working in town for the day and we thought we’d take advantage of that fact, and happy hour, to get a chance to catch up. I was a little wary about it – I’d not spent much time with her since Adam and I had started seeing each other seriously, and was a little worried she’d try and start a conversation about his (redoubtable)
sexual prowess that would make me want to flee. Or get drunk. Actually, that could work fine.

Shortly before I was due to leave the office I got called down to reception to sign for a massive bunch of flowers, all cellophane and ribbon and green bits. I felt a bit sheepish carrying it upstairs to my desk, but I couldn’t help smiling to myself. As Shona flapped around me, smelling the lilies that formed the centre of the bouquet, I opened the card.

How about that drink? – James x

My jaw dropped open and I pushed the gift card back into the envelope and shoved it in my pocket. Shona began to laugh as she saw my expression.

‘Is Adam sending rude messages to you at work?’

I laughed in spite of myself. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ That was, of course, a fib, but it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to admit to my news editor that some mornings when I looked like I was earnestly replying to my emails I was actually discussing what was going to happen when we reconvened in our living room later that night.

I got my head down and finished typing up some council meeting report information, hoping the tell-tale blush on my cheeks was going down. One thing was for sure: it was fairly obvious now that I needed to formally say ‘no thanks’ to that drink.

I decided the easiest way was to email. I know, a bit gutless maybe, but in my defence we’d not had the best track record of phone conversations. Or talking in person, actually. It seemed safest. Still pretty awkward, all things considered, but safest.

Hi James

Just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for the flowers, they’re beautiful.

I’m not sure a drink is a good idea, though. I have a boyfriend now.

Soph.

I know it was blunt. I wrote and rewrote it a dozen times, but I didn’t want to write anything that inadvertently made it sound like I wished I was free for drinks with him, or that I actively didn’t want to see him. Also, I didn’t want it to sound like somehow Adam curtailed my social life if James was just angling for an innocent catch-up (although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t – they were a pretty swanky bunch of flowers).

James hadn’t replied by the time I left work. I wasn’t sure he would. It’s hardly as if he was going to start asking extended questions about my love life. I hurried to meet Charlotte, keen to kick-start the weekend.

Charlotte was on good form. From the moment she burst into the bar, pulling off the hat that had been protecting her hair from the rain and using her fingers to comb out her curls as she read the cocktail menu, she chatted cheerfully about anything and everything. She seemed really happy.

Surprisingly so in fact, bearing in mind the chats I’d had with Tom. A few cocktails in I decided to risk asking her how things were going. I was pretty sure she wasn’t putting a brave face on anything, but at the same time it seemed somewhat surreal that she was happy and he had been so
down. Unless something had changed fundamentally in the last few weeks.

Definitely time to start prodding. I know it sounds nosey. But it’s not nosiness, it’s curiosity, remember?

‘So, how are things going with you and Tom?’

I’ll concede, as lines of questioning go, it was something of a blunt instrument, but I was three cocktails down myself by this point and not exactly the most insightful interviewer. That said, even I didn’t expect the conversation to move quite the way it did.

‘Brilliant. Yeah, he’s amazing. Not last weekend, the weekend before, he arranged a threesome with a girl that we met at a munch. She dominated me, he dominated both of us.’ A smile played across her lips. ‘It was intense. Really intense. Quite challenging. It reminded me of you, actually.’

I was momentarily confused. ‘I’m intense and challenging?’

My hand was resting on the table. She tapped it gently, although I couldn’t tell if it was in rebuke or a kind of affection.

‘No, it reminded me of dominating you.’

I blushed.

It had happened not long before I met James. I have no regrets about it, but the experience was one of the catalysts that made me realise that I wanted a romantic D/s relationship rather than a dom with benefits. Thomas had met Charlotte before and then we all met at what remained my first and only munch. We got on very well, with a fair amount of flirtation on either side, and then, one memorable bank holiday weekend, we ended up having a threesome. She made me rim her – OK, to start with she
made me
, but then I did it willingly – and she used the cane on me. They wrote on me and then fucked lying next to me. It was intense, with lots of rising emotion, lots of pain and humiliation, and at the time it was one of the most amazing sexual experiences I’d had, albeit one I wasn’t sure I wanted to have again.

Suddenly I was the one smiling, albeit slightly sheepishly. She stroked my hand with her fingertips, before picking up her cocktail.

‘It’s funny. Before that weekend with you and Tom I hadn’t ever switched before. I thought I might be interested in trying but I didn’t think it was something I would naturally have a flair for, as it were.’

I smiled at her wryly. ‘In the nicest possible way, love, I’d beg to differ. You were a natural bitch.’

‘Bitch or switch?’

‘Both. Definitely both.’

She laughed, and two guys at the table next to us turned to look at her, not that she noticed. Charlotte might have been stunning but she didn’t care about it in the least, and that carefree nature was one of the things I admired about her.

She nodded. ‘I was quite mean to you, wasn’t I?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You think?’

She grinned. ‘It was just so much fun, though, seeing how you reacted, trying to predict what you were going to do next and figure out how to make you do what I wanted you to do. I’d not appreciated the psychological side of topping before until I did it with you. It was brilliant, I really enjoyed it.’

The silence lengthened for a bit. It was one of those
moments when the conversation could go one of two ways. I could change the subject, or I could express some interest and she would continue. Did it feel awkward? A bit, but not too much – Thomas and I hadn’t slept together for a long time, and even then there had been no jealousy there. I had to admit my overriding emotion was burning curiosity. In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘You enjoyed it, but I can hear a ‘ “but” coming in here somewhere.’

She nodded.

‘There were points where I was wondering what it would be like if it was me, being made to do the things you were made to do. Being written on, hurt.’ I felt myself getting a bit warm thinking about it. I swallowed and nodded, suddenly incapable of speech, my brain slowed by X-rated thoughts.

‘So I told Tom I was curious. That I wanted to have a threesome where basically I was
you
, dominated by them both. And he got chatting to this girl, Jo, at a munch. Really good laugh, friendly, very sexy, long dark hair and green eyes. We went out for some drinks so we were sure we’d all get on and then he arranged it all.’

Her eyes were shining with energy and remembered excitement. ‘He arranged it all for me.’

Her voice had got quieter, and I leaned in to listen. ‘I didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen, just that it was. When he first tied me up and blindfolded me in his living room on Saturday night I thought it was just the two of us doing stuff. And then the doorbell rang and he went to answer it.’

‘Did you guess it was her?’

For a moment her face looked shy. ‘Not to start with. I
thought it was someone selling something or he was somehow messing with my head. And then I heard whoever it was walk in and the murmur of voices got louder and I realised –’

I finished her sentence for her. ‘He was
really
messing with your head.’

She laughed and continued. ‘She didn’t speak to me when she walked in, but she began touching me. Not sexually, just matter-of-factly. It was like she was assessing me, pinching me, squeezing and prodding, running her hands over me like she was checking out a piece of meat.’

My throat suddenly felt a little dry. ‘How did that make you feel?’

‘Horrible. Awkward. Embarrassed. Humiliated.’ Charlotte smiled at me wryly. ‘Incredible. It was so fucking hot.’

I smiled back. ‘Ah yes. Always that awkward mixture.’

Charlotte nodded and leaned forward to clink her glass with mine. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to know it’s not just me who feels that. It was really challenging. She was relentless, she hit me all over with a ruler.’ Charlotte’s face turned to mock outrage. ‘It really bloody hurt. I ended up covered in these little square red marks from the end of it.’