SEAL'd Honor (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts) by Gabi Moore (25)

Chapter 11 - Mark

For the thousandth time that morning, I cast eager eyes to the door. It wasn’t even noon yet and I had already died a thousand times with every phone call that wasn’t her, every buzz at the gate that wasn’t her.

I placed a swollen, purple finger on the chipboard and lined up my hammer for another strike.

I had been working wood for basically all my life. I never hit my damn thumb like some kind of amateur. And yet here I was, flustered, making mistakes, wishing she’d just come already, nervous to death that she eventually would…

The hammer came down carelessly and bounced off the already aching tip of my thumb. I roared and flung the hammer aside, thrusting my hand to my mouth and wincing.

“Fuck!” I cried and examined the damage. A red split grew angrily from the base of my nail and down. This woman was making me come apart, literally.

“Bad time?”

I spun around. She stood in the doorway, like a vision.

“The gate was already open and I called, but you didn’t answer, so I just came in…”

I waved her in and shut the door, still sucking my thumb.

“Come in. You’ll want to see your piece,” I said and hurried inside.

I was never like this. Never nervous. I was always the calm, instigating one. Always the one who lured women further and further out to more and more distant sexual horizons, the way you slowly coax baby chicks with a little grain in your hand.

But not this time.

I was surprised to see her clear-eyed, tranquil and smiling confidently. My head was a mess. I was an idiot. There were millions of women in this world, why did I have to fall for one who was getting engaged, one who expressly told me how much she couldn’t have anything to do with me?

Looking at how beautiful she looked, how perfectly open and sweet her face was, I felt a pang inside. I couldn’t do this. This was all wrong. I felt like some sleazy asshole trying to take advantage… it suddenly became clear as day to me: she was just a bored housewife looking for some distraction, looking for the thrilling confirmation that she still had ‘it’, just taking a little skip on the wild side before she fucked off to play house with the guy she really wanted.

This rush of thoughts hit me almost as hard as the hammer did. I swallowed hard and tried to act professionally. This was just another order. And she was just another customer. An ethereal, otherworldly customer, unfortunately, but one who was as good as married.

I led her over to the finished piece and watched as her hands went to her mouth and she gasped.

“This is it? Oh my god, it’s beautiful,” she whispered, eyes darting all over it.

It was a beast of a thing, more than seven feet tall and mimicking in every way a fairy tale oak tree, except without leaves. The polished wood gleamed bright and from two of the main twisted branches hung twin purple, galvanized chains, laced across the boughs like it was a witchy Christmas tree. Bolted all up the length of the trunk were velvet-lined clasps. Two for her feet. Two for her pretty thighs. One bigger one for her waist. Another two for her upper arms.

It was like nothing I had created before.

I had fretted with ideas and materials, played with leather and rope and steel, but it was all wrong somehow. She was a goddess. It wasn’t for her to be put in a dungeon and defiled. No, I wanted to elevate her, pin her to a tree, ready to be beheld. And devoured.

She walked slow circles around it as I watched from afar. She had dropped that nervous habit of giggling and blushing at things like this, and was now silent, taking it all in, dragging her fingertips over the surface.

I tried not to think what she’d do with it once it left my studio. Or with who. I tried not to think of any of that. I needed to believe it was a mere gift. A gift given because she deserved it, and nothing more.

“I want to try it,” she said quickly and turned to look at me with serious eyes.

I balked. I had sent her those stupid messages, hadn’t I? I had opened this whole can of worms. But here she was standing before me and I felt so nervous I could puke. I nodded silently and started to undo the buckles at the base of the tree. I gestured to her to come forward and put her feet in the cuffs.

She hesitated and came forward, giving me a quizzical expression. I tried the cuff round her foot as though I was nothing more than a shoe store salesman. Satisfied the fit was snug, I gently took her by the shoulders and lined her up against the trunk, seeing that each of the other restraints lined up perfectly with her shapely body. I nodded. Everything aside, it was a well-made piece, and it was built for her, no question.

“I …I must admit I kind of pictured all of this differently,” she teased, and tried to catch my eye. I avoided her gaze and fussed with the chains in the branches.

“I thought I’d be, you know …wearing less clothing, for one!” she giggled.

I gave her a serious look.

“I don’t think Anthony would feel good about that, do you?” I said curtly.

Her face reddened.

With her arms strung up high above her head, I took a step back and examined the lines of her body. The chains could be adjusted to different heights, from Jesus-on-the-cross style to straight up above. She looked like a beautiful wood nymph, or a mythical forest sprite. Well, except for the fearsome daggers she was now glaring at me.

She wriggled a little but the restraints were solid.

“You know, I actually resent that. Just because Anthony wants to marry me, it doesn’t mean I’m suddenly his now. It doesn’t mean I owe him a damn thing. I haven’t led him on. I haven’t agreed to anything. God, I haven’t even known him for two months!”

I tilted my head to the side to examine the weight she was putting on the top left branch, and wondered if I needed to make any adjustments.

“The strange cages we put ourselves in, huh?” I said and tried to smile.

She tossed her head to the side in irritation.

“Oh come on, spare me the pop philosophy please, I—”

“Kat, stop. Just stop.”

She seemed stunned.

“It’s hard for me to admit this, but I haven’t been with a woman in a very long time. I don’t play games, Kat. It took time for me to make this for you. A lot of time. I get that you’re curious and whatever, but I’m not playing around. This is important to me. Either you want to do this with me or you don’t.” I took a deep breath. It felt like the most I had ever said to her. Or to anyone.

She was silent.

“You’re starting to sound like Anthony now,” she said.

“I don’t care. I only want a woman who’ll surrender to me, completely. Nothing less. No fear. No doubt. No holding back. I’m all or nothing, Kat. Now you keep coming here to tease me, and that’s cool, but I don’t want to just tease anymore…”

Her eyes were wide as she hung onto my every word.

“Mark, he’s just …he’s just a sweet guy who’s, you know …I don’t—”

“Have you turned down his stupid proposal then?” I asked her bluntly. That was all that mattered to me. She didn’t respond. I rubbed my face and paced the room.

“I want to do this with you…” she started to say meekly.

“Well, you can’t half do it,” I said, a little angry. “Why don’t you just call it off with him?”

She cast her eyes to the floor.

“Please take me down,” she said softly.

I did.

She closed her arms round herself.

Fine. If she wanted to leave, I wouldn’t stop her. I would rather legitimately lose her once and for all than pine over the stupid hope that I’d win her someday.

But she didn’t leave. She didn’t walk out. Instead, I heard a clink and looked up to see her taking her watch off and putting it on the floor. Then her earrings came off too.

“What are you…?”

She gripped the hem of her shirt and in one sweep pulled it over her head, revealing a bright blue bra against her angelic white skin. In an instant she had peeled her jeans off, too, kicked her shoes aside and stood before me in her underwear, hair tousled. She looked at me earnestly.

“I want to do this with you,” she said again, this time more insistently.

I gulped.

“I’m not a cheater,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Neither am I.”

“So you’re done with him?”

“There’s nothing to be done with. I’d be crazy to marry him.”

I took a step towards her, then slid my eyes all the way down her body and then up again. She was even more beautiful than I had imagined.

“Take it all off,” I said under my breath. Her little hands worked so quickly to tear off her blue lingerie it nearly broke my heart. Her breasts were milky; each salmon-pink nipple perched on her small breasts like a puffy rosebud. There was one long, smooth curve from her sternum all the way to her pubic bone, the lines of a ballet dancer, lean and fragile, ending in a blonde patch of fluff at the cleft between her shapely legs.

“Tell him you’ll never speak to him again,” I said. I had no idea where it came from, but it was all I wanted to hear from her, when it really came down to it. I wanted her to leave her stuffy, well-behaved life, untangle herself from all those threads of obligation, just walk away from it all and come to me. Naked.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded her head.

“Nobody else,” I growled.

She lifted a cautious gaze at me from underneath her eyelashes. Her bare nipples were hardening.

I walked slow circles around her.

“Your body seems different now. More open. Good.”

Once my eyes had taken their fill, I nodded towards the tree and gestured for her to go to it. She did so without hesitation, planting first one and then the other dainty foot into the half circle of the restraint. There was a fluidity in her shoulders. Something loose and slow about her gliding movements, something nearly serpentine.

“Not like that. Turn around,” I said. She paused to give me a confused look and then obediently turned around to hug the tree, her magnificent ass now facing me.

“Now put your arms up.”

Her long, slim arms trailed upwards and I took my time chaining her wrists in, watching the folds and swells of her shoulder and neck tense and release as my hands nearly brushed against her skin. I buckled all the way down her body, till I reached the ankle cuffs, taking care not to touch her. She was breathing more deeply now, as though in a trance. Her eyes were closed. Strands of copper hair fell down her back and whispered at the skin just where her ribcage dipped in and flared out again over her tight hips. She was without question the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.

“Now it’s my turn to tease you, Kat. I knew it from the moment I saw you. I think I knew it before you even knew it. But this is what you really want, isn’t it? To be chained up there like this, naked? I suppose you want me to tell you all the dirty things I’m going to do to you now…?” I said, keeping my voice low. I could tell she was listening intently.

I went over to the work table and picked up a braided leather strip, the same on I had sent her in the message. I tightened it round and round my fist, hearing the leather creak against my fingers, and walked back over to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, twisting her head from this side to that side, trying to understand the vague noises she heard behind her.

“I’m going to teach you a lesson,” I said. The silence in the studio was deafening. But her shoulders stayed soft, and her breath still came in smooth, easy rolls. It’s hard to explain, but I was impressed by this. I made a silent, internal vow to do whatever it would take to get that pretty breath to come in great heaving gasps instead.

“Zen Buddhist teachers sometimes strike their meditating students on the back with a stick,” I said slowly. I saw her breath enter her chest, then leave again.

“Do you know why?”

I audibly stepped closer towards her, one end of the strip knotted in my fist and the other free.

“It’s to bring them screeching right back to the present moment, to the now. To their breath. That’s all that matters, the breath.”

Her breath went in again, out again.

I took another step closer.

“I think you’re dying for me to fuck you right now. That’s all you can think of, isn’t it? Of me spreading open those pretty legs of yours and fucking you so hard you’ll have to limp out of here. You can’t stop thinking about it, can you? But I don’t want your thoughts to wander all over the place. Oh no. I want you to stay right here, right now. With me.”

I was now standing right behind her, as close as I could without physically touching her goosebumping skin. Something in the exquisite way her skin was puckering up told me she was focusing intently on the sound of my voice.

“Can you do that?” I breathed.

She gave a small nod.

The air in the room was electric. Slowed down and amplified, like the world seems just before a car crash, like the beautiful sharp moment before something delicate comes smashing to the ground…

I crouched down.

Her skin smelled like cotton and heat. I could feel my cock tightening in my jeans but paid it no attention. This was all about her. A long, slick wet trail on her inner thigh caught my attention. It nearly drove me into a frenzy to see it there. I hadn’t touched her, she had been in this studio for less than fifteen minutes, and already she was soaking wet. Fuck, it was hot.

“Tell me what you want,” I growled.

“I want…” she moaned softly, her head falling to one side.

I gently touched the looped end of the leather strip to her ass cheek and held it there. She was breathing more quickly.

“I want …I want to be fucked. Hard.”

I was silent. I only stroked the coiled strip over her defenseless flesh again and again. I wondered if I could hear her voice crackling and breaking.

“I want you to use me,” she moaned, “completely use me, and hold nothing back. I want you to take it all away from me, everything, I just want to come and come and come until I can’t think straight anymore.”

The passion in her voice sent a delicious thrill all through me.

“Good,” I said, and twirled the leather strip.

She was so fantastically wet. Little minx. I liked that. I traced the edge of the leather strip lower down until it was resting in the split between her cheeks, then slid it lower, and lower still, gently into that hidden little pool. When I pulled it away again it was glistening wet.

“Now see what you’ve done…”

“I’m so sorry, I’m just, I’m sorry I—”

In one swift movement I pulled the rope back and in a split second brought it whizzing back down again, hard, leaving an instant pink welt across the plumpest part of her backside. She yelped out in surprise, clinking the chains above.

“I told you to stay here with me,” I cooed into her ear. She said nothing. The breath only entered her chest, and left it again. The air still stung with the sound of leather against her skin. The pink disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. To my delight, she seemed even wetter than before.

“I’m here,” she said, so quietly I almost wondered if I had only imagined it.

My whole body swelled and hardened at the sight of her. Any other woman I would have been balls-deep and fucking by now. But she wasn’t any other woman. In fact, I had never seen a body respond like this before. She was electric. Like a goddess kept in the cage of a normal woman’s body for too long, she was so pent up I felt like she’d ignite before my very eyes with just a touch.

I matched my breathing to hers. Every fiber of my focus went to her body, so that I almost felt melded to her, so that when the second blow came down on her milky white ass, I felt it just as she did. This time she didn’t cry out, she only twisted, sucked in breath and writhed on the tree. The tree that I had built for her.

She seemed to swell and open before my very eyes. The bud of her pink pussy peeked out from between her legs, so wet now she was nearly dripping. I had to restrain myself. I had to breath deep and tell myself to calm down. The sight of her slick white thighs had me nearly blacking out from lust, but we had a deal. We were in this moment now, her and I together. And I was going to stay here, me, her, and the writhing mess that her body was becoming.

The whip came down again.

And again.

The studio – and the world – simply fell away. All that remained now was the sound of her breath slipping in and out of her amazing body. All of reality came crushing down around us, and condensed on that bright, perfect spot on her flesh. My cock bulged and strained in my jeans.

The next strike, she began to whimper. Her head fell to the side and she began to shake a little. It was unbelievable. I felt it in my own body – she was close to coming. Neither of us needed to say a word. I watched mesmerized for a moment as her body bucked and squirmed. She was in a daze, cunt soaked, skin slick with sweat.

“I’m going to make you come now,” I said quietly. And the words were like a spell. Her body froze and tightened, her pert rump tilted upwards to meet whatever treatment I would deliver. But I dropped the strap. I took a step closer to her, feeling like it took every shred of willpower to keep from reaching out and grabbing her.

I knelt down, my face a mere inch from that perfumed mound buried in her cheeks. I could almost feel the heat off of her. Almost taste it. She seemed to be losing control. Her body began to twitch and convulse.

“Kat, listen to me…”

She moaned.

“Kat, you will not come until I tell you to.”

She moaned again.

I took a deep, slow breath in.

“Wait …wait …”

Then my lips, only a few atoms removed from her gorgeous pussy, exhaled hard, and with one long, warm sigh, I breathed one word: “now.”

It was though the word was the first falling domino that set off a delicious chain reaction all through her excited body. It was as though I could actually watch the air from my lips touch her and ignite the immense powder keg she had inside her, just waiting for a touch, no matter how slight.

It took an instant, and a lifetime, but she came. The chains rattled and she bucked hard, and in an instant she was screaming, loudly. She threw back her head and flung her weight down and off her bound arms, her hips jerking madly as wave after wave of pleasure pummeled through her.

“Oh fuck … oh fuck!” she cried out.

I had to force myself to not reach out, to not embrace her and help her through it.

I could do nothing but smile dumbfounded as I watched her detonate and burn right before my eyes, her body becoming plasma. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t touched her. A braided cord had guided her to the edge and a single word had pushed her over.

She was exquisite.

“Oh god …oh please…” she was still whimpering, her orgasm sending shudders right through her long form. “Please fuck me,” she begged.

God in heaven, I wanted nothing more.

I reached forward and unbuckled her exhausted body, one clasp at a time, but before I undid the last restraints at her feet, I leaned forward and whispered into her ear.

“Kat, you couldn’t handle it,” I said, winking at her. Her face came alive and she raised an eyebrow at me.

“Really? Are you seriously telling me I’m ‘not ready’ for your cock?” she asked incredulously.

She stood before me wild-looking, hair loose, expression open and mischievous. She was glorious. If this is what one orgasm did to her, I couldn’t wait to see the effect of a whole string of them…

“Yes that’s what I’m saying.”

“Pfft!” she said and grinned. “I’m not scared.”

“You should be.”

We gave each other a look. I nodded my head, took another step back and peeled off my shirt, then unbuttoned my pants. She started laughing. But when I dropped them to the floor and whipped off my boxers underneath, she fell silent.

“Oh.”

She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Most women react that way. They’re playful at first, then they realize what they’re actually in for. The little flutter of panic turns into full-blown fear. And then, when it comes down to it, that fear morphs again, and suddenly they want it, no matter how much it hurts. It’s like a sick little dare for them, a challenge, to see how much of my cock they can take…

“It’s …big,” she said quietly.

“Probably a little more than you’re used to,” I said breezily. I watched her throat bob up and down as she swallowed.

I pulled up my pants again and buckled them, watching the cogs going in her head.

“Contrary to what’s happened here this morning, I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, smiling. I leaned down and started to pick up her clothing.

“Let me get you something to drink,” I said and moved towards the kitchen. She stood for a while, thinking intently, then started to put her clothes back on. The tree loomed, all knowing, behind her, its chains hanging limp and its restraints empty.

Chapter 12 - Kat

I had already silently practiced millions of little speeches. On my way to work I internally lectured Anthony about just how ill suited we were for each other.

On my morning run I sat him down and proceeded to explain at length how I just wasn’t ready and I hated being pushed like this. And late at night, exhausted from a long day, I’d launch into a rant at him: why was he so goddam uptight about sex?

The irritating truth, though, was that Anthony had gone quiet. I had already felt boat-loads of guilt for the whole …tree incident, and I had already argued my case passionately in front of an imaginary jury of my mind, saying exactly why I hadn’t technically led him on, that we’d never agreed to be exclusive… but I soon found that he wasn’t banging on my door, demanding an explanation in any case.

My phone pinged.

Mark: Don’t worry, you can keep it here, at my place

I’ll never know what righteous bit of insanity had gotten ahold of me these days. I couldn’t believe I had sought out, commissioned and now paid for a seven-foot-tall sex toy in the shape of a tree. Once my head had stopped spinning and my toes had uncurled, the what-have-done question rapidly turned into a what-have-I-bought one.

The last thing I can more or less remember is begging him to make me come. Hard. I wanted a reset orgasm. One to truly fry my circuits. Well, I had asked, and I had received.

I had felt myself zinging all the way home, a little dazed, a little raw. It was fantastic. People all around me were going about their everyday lives while I felt like I had just touched God. All my limbs were still in place, and I still looked like myself when I peered into the mirror. But something drastic had shifted. Something was very, very different.

It seemed like a small miracle. I’ve always been the kind of woman that needed an hour of foreplay, a hot bath and six months’ written notice if I was going to eke out an orgasm. With my ex I had tackled the chore with the same seriousness I had reserved for my yearly appointment with the dental hygienist. Usually, if I could quiet my mind for half a split second, I could sneak in a quick moment of bliss and then clean up just before I had to start dinner.

But with him? He had made me come without even touching me. I didn’t know whether to stop thinking about it in case it jinxed the whole thing, or to brag to anyone who would listen. He had used that leather strap, sure, but on examining the area the next morning, I noticed there was zero evidence, no mark. Either he was supremely talented in that area or I had, in my frenzied state, imagined the whole thing…

So I was a sex zombie for a few days. Anthony had gone quiet and wasn’t really returning my calls, and I found myself idly reading the Wikipedia entry for Zen Buddhism, looking over my shoulder in case anyone caught me. And now Mark was texting me throughout the day, and we had to decide what to do with his, uh, massive creation.

Kat: Yeah I might have to. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just too damn big

Mark: So you’ve said ;)

I laughed quietly to myself.

“Kat, are you with us?”

I snapped my head up and smiled broadly.

“Sorry! Stuff at home, you know how it is,” I said quickly, and stuffed my phone away. “I’m listening though. The iron fish were premature. Now we have a cheaper option but we’re committed to Thinkcreate, correct?”

It was a stupid position to be caught in. We had funded a giant shipment of miniature cast iron fish to be sent to Sri Lanka in partnership with an aid organization there.

The idea was that the fish could be cooked along with soups and stews, releasing tiny particles in the process and boosting the families iron intake, which was often deficient in diets the area. But now we had discovered the fish had a poor reception and there was a better pill option on the market anyway – cheaper and more accurately dosed – and the women wouldn’t be tempted to drill holes in them and wear them as jewelry. The only trouble was, the company we had already signed a year contract with were also our suppliers for other vitamins and it was clear to everyone who had worked with them so far that pulling the plug on one initiative would jeopardize all the others.

“That’s the jist of it,” Linda said. “Pain in the ass.”

“How much are we saving with them for the prenatal vitamins anyway?” I said.

“Folic acid is cheap. It’s the packaging that’s the problem,” she said.

I rubbed my eyes.

“Yeah, I remember. Let me call up a few people. The budget can’t take any more this month, but let’s let them know by week’s end, there’s always a chance they’ll keep us on.” I scratched some notes in my diary. “Was there anything else?”

Linda shook her head. I nodded and saw her out.

I quickly pulled my phone out again.

Kat: Do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face at work when you send me messages like that?

Kat: And I’d feel bad leaving that great hulking thing with you. I’ll take it, just give me a few days to find a space for it. Maybe I can use it as a jungle gym

Mark: Kinky

Kat: Yes, well, I hope you’ve made it sturdy enough, my four-year-old is 100% going to try and climb it

He was still online, but didn’t reply for the next five minutes.

Mark: You have a four-year-old? Shit

I frowned at the screen.

Kat: Shit? Not sure how to take that…

Mark: Oh, please don’t worry, I’m totally fine with it

I stared long and hard at those words.

Kat: Well, I didn’t really ask if you were “fine with it”, although thanks I guess?

Again the reply took a while to come.

Mark: You’re angry

I sighed and flung myself down in my chair.

Kat: I’m not angry. But I do have a child. Anything else I need to apologize for?

I sent the message and instantly regretted it. What was it about this guy that always had me at such a high pitch all the time?

Mark: Hey, no I’m sorry, I’ve offended you now. Can I call?

Kat: I’m busy at work though

Mark: I understand. Hey, I don’t mean to be an idiot, it’s just that I’m not used to dating older women, and I guess it never occurred to me

My ears burned.

Kat: Well, I’m not used to dating men less mature than me either, so I apologize, I expected more

The phone started to buzz and ring in my hands. I hastily picked it up.

“I said I was at work, Mark,” I hissed.

“Hey, you’ve misunderstood me, can we just talk about this quick?”

I exhaled loudly.

“Sure, I’m sorry, it’s just been a stressful day.”

“Yeah, no doubt. Hey, I’m sorry. I’ve just …kids just kind of freak me out,” he said and laughed nervously. My mouth hung open. I couldn’t believe how adolescent he suddenly sounded.

“Is this …is this some kind of problem?” I asked.

The line was quiet for a while.

“Well, Kat, I’ve never been with anyone with a kid before, that’s all, you just kind of sprung it on me…”

“I didn’t spring anything on you.”

“Hey, calm down, I’m just saying I’m surprised.”

I laughed cynically.

“I’m surprised too. I didn’t take you for the commitment phobic kind…”

“Ouch.”

“I’m sorry, that was mean.

I could hear him breathing.

“Not mean,” he said. “Just kind of hypocritical.”

“Hypocritical?”

“Well… you’re the one who’s divorced, you know? And now you’re stringing along two men without committing to either of them.”

I felt so angry I wanted to throw the phone against the wall.

“I am not stringing anyone along. Jesus.

He laughed drily.

“Is that what you also tell Anthony?”

I hung up. I dropped the phone like it had turned to poison in my hands. I wasn’t mad at him. How could I be, when everything he had said was perfectly true? I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t explain why I had kept Anthony around, waiting in the wings like this. No, I had hung up because I was ashamed. Ashamed because he could see right through me, right through my fear. I was a hypocrite. I was fearful and cowardly and I didn’t have the guts to go for what I wanted.

Mark frightened me. I was afraid of myself, when I was with him. And every time I spoke to him it was to chase him away in fear, to joke, to deflect. I knew I did it. I knew what a phenomenal pain in the ass I must have seemed. But I couldn’t let go. I was too hurt. Too old. Too tired.

I had Nicky and a mortgage and a little clean house that could feature on the cover of Unexamined Life magazine and somehow, I just knew that Mark would tear all of that away. He’d expect more from me. He’d make me think about what I wanted, and then I’d have to admit to myself how so much of what my life wasn’t what I wanted…

And so I couldn’t speak to him. Not when I knew that I couldn’t be honest. Not when I knew I couldn’t offer all of myself. My phone pinged again.

Anthony: Hello princess. I have a surprise for you. Pick you up at work in half an hour?

My first thought was whether my tears had smeared my mascara and whether I’d have enough time to quickly apply a fresh coat.

Chapter 13 - Kat

And that’s how it came to be that I spent more time planning my wedding than dating the groom.

The next few weeks blustered by with their own momentum, like they were being chased. And I went along with it.

The strange buzzing between my legs, the heat, the delicious sparks and butterflies I had found in Mark’s workshop had long since fizzled out into embers, and then nothing.

He disappeared from my life almost as quickly as he had entered it. I mentally filed him away as a dream, a weird vision, a strange movie I watched once, nothing more. Nothing else in my life reminded me of him, and so it was easy to push his memory down and away, so that I only dreamt of him. Or at least, I felt like I dreamt of him, when I woke up with a weird taste on my lips and a dull, distant throb all through my body.

Life once again took on the safe, predictable rhythms I was familiar with. I had once let a handsome stranger lure me into his workshop and make me orgasm with nothing more than a whisper. But that was just a strange drug I took in a time long ago. A poisoning. A fever I had. I paid for the tree in full and never went to pick it up. He never contacted me again. Life moved on.

But it wasn’t so easy to get rid of him completely. He was a mark on me. Though I had scrubbed clean my mind and my daily routine, he still found his way into all those unmonitored, empty spaces throughout the day.

I found myself dashing across the road to escape oncoming traffic, but delaying just a fraction of a second longer than what was sane. Just to rub up against the warm shoulder of the possibility of death, just an affectionate nuzzle before I hurried off and went back to my life.

I felt him other places, too. The ache in my body was long gone but something in my mind was altered. Bodies are disposable. But a mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension. I found strange words coming into my mouth, like visitors. I woke up one day, as from a dream, in my office; wearing a skirt of such a violently red color it almost felt worse than being naked to wear it.

“Kat, are you with us?”

I shook my head and focused on the woman in front of me. A smiling pair of retirement-age ladies in twin sets, pearls and smiles fit for a washing powder commercial.

“Yes, yes I’m here, sorry I just blanked out for a second.”

“So what do you think of the gathering on the bust? We were going to make a decision on that today,” one of them said warmly.

I cleared my throat and considered my reflection for a moment.

Me, the wedding dress version. Great swathes of lace and tulle were bunched all over me. I hated it.

“It’s too busy,” I said plainly.

They looked at one another, like they were deciding whether or not to correct my bad etiquette, and then hastened to take the dress off again.

“That’s perfectly all right, dear, you take your time,” the other one cooed.

“It needs to be tighter,” I said.

“Tighter?”

“Yes, more snug around the waist.”

“Dear, this is already a corseted bodice…”

“Can it be made tighter?”

They exchanged looks again.

“And maybe I want a buckle, as well.

“Like, a belt?”

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I looked better naked in any case. Wasn’t the best wedding dress to be naked? To come to your partner with nothing, no masks, no coverings, just as you were?

“And I want the garter belt to be a leather strap as well, with a buckle,” I said decisively.

I could see them tallying up the cost of an extra custom order in their heads. I didn’t care. I can’t say why, but that was what it needed to be. I wanted it.

“Hm, well I can’t say I’ve seen white leather before…”

“It won’t be white,” I said. “It’ll be red, of course.”

I didn’t care if they liked it. Wasn’t I paying them to put up with any bridezilla bullshit I threw their way? It was my ‘special day’, after all, and they were basically obliged to bring to life all my silly whims. I didn’t want something old, something new, something borrowed, or something blue. I wanted something alive, something dead, something black, something red. I smiled at the little rhyme I had made up. I don’t know when I had become so morbid, but in a way, a wedding was like a little death, wasn’t it?

The women left and returned with armfuls of other dresses, and some cheesy looking beaded belts. I decided before they had even placed them down that I didn’t want them.

I wished I could run away, right now. Run out of this stupid place, in my underwear. Run far, far away and never come back. I wish I could die. That something would come along and kill me, so I could be a ghost and get the day off, and go somewhere where nobody knew me, and there were no rules, and nobody wanted anything from me.

And I wished that Mark was here with me. I wish that he would obliterate me, once and for all, and put me out of my misery.

I stood and looked at my reflection as the two women fussed around me, and all I could think about was his cock, and how magnificent it must feel to have it in me, all of it, to the hilt, and even further… I nodded and smiled and swished the skirts in the reflection, but inside I was lost in visions of perfect, total ruin. I wanted my entire body destroyed, burnt in flames till nothing was left. I wanted to be broken. And I wanted him to break me.

I put my clothes on and started saying my goodbyes to the women, making my next fitting appointment.

“I shouldn’t think it will be easy to find a white leather garter, to be perfectly honest, my dear…” said one.

“Oh nevermind, that’s not really necessary, I was just saying whatever came to mind. I don’t even want a garter, I don’t think.”

The day before I had read a story of an ostracized woman, in a village in Jaipur, who doused herself in petrol and set herself alight in her husband’s bean fields.

My destruction was quieter. The flames around me were made of lace and satin, but they were flames nonetheless. My cries for help were more like polite ‘thank yous’. But it was all the same. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I couldn’t stop. Why not marry Anthony? Why not dance this stupid dance right through to the end?

So that’s how my weeks went.

I picked out flower arrangements while imagining being fucked so hard I’d pass out. I took little sample bites of vanilla cake, then chocolate, then vanilla again, all the while thinking secretly to myself that what I really wanted was to taste the whip, to taste the sour tang of blood on my lip as I bit down in animal ecstasy. Anthony gave me little gems and trinkets as gifts, and I smiled and thanked him. And then imagined myself sliced open against their sharp edges.

Anthony didn’t touch me. I didn’t touch him. He believed that I was nervous, or chaste. I didn’t correct him.

Sleeping with him was a task that could wait. First, I had to book a wedding venue, and send out invites. I had to organize the dress. The reception. The favors. He didn’t seem to care. I waited for him to push the issue, he never did, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

Chapter 14 - Mark

It was the third Sexpo I had been to. I had paid for a stall, rented the truck again and diligently turned up with a few of my finest pieces and a couple hundred glossy pamphlets for all the curious visitors who would inevitably walk by.

I debated whether to show a photograph of the tree I had built for her, but decided in the end that I would. It was a work of art, and I was damn proud of it. A tool was still a tool, even if the people it was designed for only ever used it once.

“Oh wow, what’s that?”

A pretty girl peeled off from the crowd in the bustling arena and made her way over to my newly erected stall. My first visitor for the day. I smiled and watched as she looked over the display and ran her fingers over the sample items.

“Your arms go in the buckles, over there, and your feet hang down here, loose.”

She nodded and smiled. She seemed a bit young, but whatever. I watched her with interest as she flipped through a folder laid out on the table.

“And you make things like this on demand? Like, people can order things?”

I scanned the crowd around her, making sure I wasn’t missing any legitimate potential customers. She was cute and all, but there was no way in hell a moon-faced twenty-two-year-old was going to cough up for one of these pieces. No, that’s not what she wanted. That’s not what she wanted at all.

She was a perfect ambassador for what I’ve come to think of as ‘pink flags’: little signs and signals from a woman that will seem utterly endearing if you’re horny and not thinking very clearly …but like blaring warning signs if you’re not.

She was too young, for one. How could you tease the edges of a woman’s limits if she hadn’t even had time to grow any yet? Plus, she was playing coy. You know the kind of thing – cocking her head and giggling with all the confidence of a girl thinking she’s gonna blow my mind later with some wild Cosmo magazine tips or a novelty condom she bought with her babysitting money. Girls like this are like cotton candy – just sugar that dissolves, no base note, no grit. And while she may get off on the idea that you’re some big bad corrupting wolf, the game hit a little too close to home for me, honestly.

She was that girl who’d enthusiastically agree to a no strings arrangement but then linger around, hoping you’d marry her by accident or something. She had those long fake nails but hadn’t ironed her shirt. She seemed a little drunk. Like she’d come on to you but then call you a pig when you responded.

I smiled vaguely at her and nodded.

“Yup. Everything you see there was built specifically for each customer.”

“Oh wow, that’s so awesome.”

She just stood there, pretending to be interested in the folder.

“I love talented men, really. I’m an artist myself,” she said and tilted her head to the other side and smiled.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Mostly sculpture. I find your work so inspiring…”

“Oh, well thank you.”

She dawdled, looked at her feet, cleared her throat.

“Do you use any of these things yourself?”

I lifted my eyebrow at her.

“That’s a very personal question,” I said, laughing. Her face lit up and she kind of leaned in and gave me a breathy giggle.

“I guess. I don’t know if you’ve noticed though, but we are at a sexpo…”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but at that moment I found her almost unspeakably annoying. It’s not that she was immature. Something told me that she was perfectly mature, only this was her adult, fully settled form. There was just something wrong about it all.

“Yes, well, I try to keep my private life out of my work,” I said curtly and gave her a polite smile.

She looked deflated.

“Oh, sure, yeah, I understand that. Just curious.”

“Well, they’re really built for the connoisseur, you know? For people who actually take this kind of thing seriously.”

Her face fell. She pretended to look at something else and then hurried off, mumbling something and looking a little embarrassed.

“Poor little thing!”

I turned to see Valerie behind me. She wore beaded cat ears, black whiskers painted onto her cheeks and a naughty grin.

“Oh hey, I didn’t see you lurking there,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s like watching a nature documentary. I thought that little gazelle was toast for sure.”

“Her?”

“Yeah, are you feeling OK? You sick? The Mark I know would have pounced on that, no question,” she said cynically.

“She’s a baby,” I said with some irritation, and lined up the edges of the business cards for a second time.

She laughed.

The funny thing was that it was almost exactly the same way I had met Valerie. She had been some plucky, ‘curious’ girl at a kink festival two years back. I had just started making custom pieces, and feeling like a rock star, and when she sauntered over and twirled her pigtails at me I didn’t give it a second thought. She pouted, asked me to ‘initiate’ her and within three months we were already up to two pregnancy scares, one death threat from her ex and one evening in which her guinea pig escaped but because she was on MDMA she was convinced I had assassinated it and she called the police on me. One evening, after we had a stupid fight about whether Down’s Syndrome was caused by toxins, she broke up with me and said she’d kill herself for sure.

I don’t know how the hell it happened, but Valerie and I eventually became friends. She slowly shifted her crazy onto other unsuspecting fools, and I became something like her big-brother confidante, either because she grew up and felt bad for making my life a living hell, or because I was the only guy in her life not trying either to fuck her or actively get a restraining order on her.

And so I’d see her around. She’d pop up at events like these and come and find me, and I didn’t mind the company so much. Sometimes she’d hit me up late at night when she’d just broken up with some guy, or she’d tease me and try to make me blush with some sordid detail of her always-insane sex life. But for the most part, there was a touching familiarity there. I guess seeing one another at rock bottom has a way of bonding people.

“Hey, Mark, seriously, are you tired or something? You look like shit.” She thumbed through the catalogue herself.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Oh come on, I’m serious. You OK?”

She tilted her little cat ears to the side.

“Perfectly fine.”

She stared at me and widened her eyes.

“Ooooh, I get it. Girl trouble!” she said, like she had just figured out a riddle.

“Shut up.”

“Oh. My. God. Spit it out. Who is she?” She slid up to me like we were in a romcom and like I didn’t have a stall to manage and shit to do.

“She’s nobody. There’s no one,” I said and walked over to the other end of the stall. She gasped and looked me up and down.

“Oh man, it’s more serious than I thought.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school? Don’t you have a court date to get to or something?”

“Ok, fine, don’t tell me, I think I can guess anyway,” she said, and held up her fingertips to her temples pretending to be some kind of mystic divining the future. Her eyes fluttered closed.

“I’m seeing …I’m seeing a beautiful woman… yes, a real hottie. You think she might be something special, you’re a little scared actually, but what’s this? You’ve said something stupid to her? Ah, yes, I can see it now, clear as day… she’s so complicated, she comes with so much baggage, you’re really attracted to her it’s just you don’t know if you can take all of that shit on…” she said, using a phony voice.

I stared at her blankly.

“How do you know all that?”

She laughed and poked me in the ribs.

“Call me an expert.”

“I’ve just met someone. But it wasn’t serious. She’s getting married, actually.”

“Shit.”

“Well, yeah. So that’s that. It’s a mess.”

“Huh. And I know how much you love mess,” she laughed.

I slumped down in my seat.

“She has a kid, too. I always swore I never wanted to be a father, never wanted to take care of kids, you know? Anyway, she’s run off with this real tool, I mean, you should see this guy. And I can’t get it out of my head. Why him? What on earth could she see in him? And yet, there it is. I guess women just want assholes, right?”

“Oh please,” she said and rolled her eyes hard at me. “Don’t give yourself airs, you’re a tool as well.”

I cracked a smile.

“I’m serious. Not to be funny, but you’re getting on in years. If you don’t want to date the ‘babies’ who come around to your stall, then you’re going to have to date older women. And those women are …messy. They have kids. They need commitment.”

I sighed and rubbed my face.

“Come on already with the whole commitment spiel. Did you really just appear out of thin air to come and lecture me about relationships?”

She grinned at me.

“Actually, I’m here with someone. Don’t freak out, but we’re tying the knot early next year,” she said, and watched closely for my reaction.

“You’re shitting me.”

She burst out laughing and danced around the stall.

“No, I’m serious! He proposed last month. I can’t believe it. He’s amazing, you’d love him.”

I scoffed and looked at her sideways.

“Never took you for the marrying kind,” I said, a little surprised.

“No, you’re the one who’s not the marrying type, I’ve always believed in true love,” she said and swanned around, grinning at me like an idiot. “Anyway, seeya around, he’s probably waiting at the food court for me.” She pecked me on the forehead, gave me a little wave and then disappeared off into the crowd again.

I frowned.

When your insane ex starts making more sense than you do, it’s time to worry. I sat there for a while, mind reeling. It’s not that I had commitment problems. It’s just that I hadn’t found anything that looked worth committing to yet. That was a separate problem, wasn’t it? Goddammit it if I knew.

Kat had been on my mind every day since she walked out of my studio a few weeks ago. I had been a wreck. I had already burnt through the anger I had at that idiot Anthony and why an ass like him would get to have a woman like her. No, I was passed resenting him. Now, I had a sneakier, uglier suspicion. That maybe, he wasn’t an ass. Maybe, he actually did have something offer her along, something I was missing.

I shook my head and told myself to stop stressing about it. There was nothing I could do now. Why bother? She would marry him and that would be that. So I was a bit stupid when it came to relationships. So I didn’t exactly get emotions and all that shit. Fine. I was an artisan. I could build things, real things, with my hands, and I was independent, and I answered to nobody, and if I had to be a lone wolf till the day I died, so be it. If she wanted some white bread asshole like him, maybe she wasn’t what I thought she was anyway.

By the time I had packed up the stall for that evening and arrived home, I was in a sour mood. I slammed the car door shut and blustered inside. I took one look at the tree, picked up my phone and called Antony. I left him a terse message explaining that I wouldn’t be available to do cabinetry for him anymore, and that he needed to find a new supplier.

I pulled a beer from the fridge and slammed the door, clinking all the beers still in there, then slumped on the couch.

Fuck him.

And fuck her.

I guzzled back the drink and stared daggers at that stupid tree. It had taken me hours of work to put that thing together, and she had just left it here. What the fuck was I supposed to do with it now?

I clenched my jaw, set the beer aside and got to my feet. Without thinking about it too hard I found myself in the adjacent room, axe in hand. I went over to the tree and took one long look at it.

All the useless work I had put into each and every branch. All the carving. All the bolting and gluing and balancing. For nothing. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever made, and I had made it for her. And it was good enough to play with, sure, but not good enough to accept. I wasn’t the one with commitment problems, she fucking was.

With a strong, sinewy movement I pulled the axe off to the side and let it hover in the air for a moment before tightening my shoulders and swiping it down hard in one blow, bringing the edge of the blade crashing into the polished wood of the trunk.

The crack echoed in the studio.

I took a deep breath and opened my chest to yank the axe free and lift it up again for another blow. I struck again in the split, widening it and causing the tree to wobble on its base. I struck again. And again.

Thin, hot beads of sweat prickled my skin. Each thwack sent painful ripples all through my biceps and into my spine, but I kept on, until the trunk dislodged and came splintering down, and then I kept on still, stepping into the wreckage and hacking away further till every last polished bough was split into shreds…

Chapter 15 - Kat

“You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding, you know. It’s bad luck,” I said playfully.

He only laughed.

“Sounds like stupid superstition to me. Besides, I already know what you’ll look like. You’ll look like yourself, just in a wedding dress.”

Anthony was sitting beside me on the couch and we were watching a home makeover show. In a little while, I’d offer to make him some cocoa. And tomorrow, we’d get married. It seemed surreal. But also strangely comforting.

“A superstition? I mean, why not just throw away the rest of the wedding stuff, then, you know? It’s all more or less tradition,” I joked.

He didn’t smile.

“Not really. It’s important for friends and family that we take the event seriously,” he said.

I shrugged. “Still, it’s weird to just and pick and choose traditions, don’t you think? Kind of takes the magic out of everything.”

We both stared straight ahead at the TV; Nicky was banging something on the floor in the other room and singing a song to herself.

“I’m not sure what your point is here, Kat. It really does seem to be just a meaningless tradition.”

“Ok, fine, just forget it.”

He gave me a dry look.

It seemed like most of our arguments these days centered around what was and what wasn’t meaningful. And usually the question was resolved by him: most of the world was silly, meaningless and immature. And the things he was interested in were also conveniently the few things that were legitimate. He had laughed when I told him about the buckled garter belt. He had scoffed and asked, “but why?” and I had spent the rest of the afternoon wondering the same thing.

“Let me make you some cocoa,” he said.

Our usual conflict resolution style was to make some kind of beverage for each other.

“Sure, not so much sugar this time, please.”

Some women would call this lucky, I guess. I could learn to do the same. The doorbell buzzed, and I nearly leapt out of my skin. I got up quickly to go and see whom it was.

“My dear, are you expecting anyone?” I heard him call from the kitchen. I pretended I hadn’t heard him.

I opened the door and there was nobody there. But in the darkness, on the welcome mat, was a gift. I quickly scanned around but saw nobody, then picked up the parcel and went inside again. I heard Anthony clattering away in the kitchen. I examined the parcel: lumpy, crudely wrapped, and as big as a microwave. My hands tore it open quickly, and I took a moment to understand what it was.

It was a beautiful, handmade wooden horse on wheels. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. Rather than being painted, the different colors of the mane and the hooves and the eyes were all done in different colored woods, all polished to a high shine and worked and carved with great care. It was like something from a museum.

I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat.

“Dear? Who was it?” he yelled form the kitchen.

“Nobody. I mean, someone left a gift.”

He came into the living room and looked down at it with a quizzical expression.

“That’s odd,” he said after a while.

“It’s a wedding gift, maybe? I guess it’s for Nicky…” He took it in his hands and turned it over in his hands, trying to look for the catch. “Weird. What’s the point?”

“What do you mean, what’s the point?”

“Well, obviously it’s too nice for a child to play with. Kind of a pointless gift, don’t you think? Strange.”

He put it down again.

“I like it,” I said quickly, and picked it up again.

Uninterested in it any further, he left the room to go and finish making the cocoa. I stared at it, long and hard. He had been thinking about me. He had been thinking about …Nicky. I tried to wipe away the tears that prickled my lower lashes. Too little, too late. Anthony was right, what was the ever-loving point? Of any of it? My head was a mess.

“Don’t worry about cocoa for me, dear” I yelled towards the kitchen. “I think I want to go and try on my wedding dress.”

“Try it on? Are you worried it doesn’t fit?”

I pretended I didn’t hear him and went to my bedroom, and closed the door behind me. With eyes bleary with tears I pulled out the giant box from the closet and lifted out the great, poufy mess that was my wedding gown. I had gone with the gathered bodice after all. And the beaded belt. And the regular frilled satin garter belt and veil that looked like curtain mesh.

I absentmindedly pulled it on, zipping myself in. I thought of his face. His gorgeous, deep eyes, and the way I felt so perfectly naked when he ran them over him. About his soft, warm voice and the way he had stood before me, nearly nude, all of his strong young body hot and hard for me. I thought of his clever, well-worn hands. I thought of his breath.

I grabbed my phone and sent him a message. The first in weeks and weeks.

Kat: Thank you for the gift

I sent it, feeling as though it simply went out into the void, another pointless gesture in my pointless life. But the void responded. Almost instantly.

Mark: Do you like it?

I stood there, crying in my stupid wedding dress. Of course I liked it. I loved it with all my heart.

Kat: It’s beautiful

I flopped down onto the bed and the voluminous skirts puffed up around me like a marshmallow.

Mark: I miss you

Kat: I’m getting married tomorrow

He didn’t reply for a good five minutes.

Mark: I miss you

It was honest, at least. I missed him too. But so what? Sometimes the right things in life are the hardest to do.

Mark: Why are you doing this? It doesn’t make any sense

Kat: Remember you said that sometimes you do things and only understand why you did them later on? Maybe it’s like that

I hit send. I didn’t believe a word of what I’d written, not really. He didn’t reply. The screen went dark and so did my heart. What did I expect, anyway?

I wiped away my tears.

All at once the bedroom door came swinging wide open and Anthony stood there, doorknob in hand, staring at me like I had I was some kind of space alien wearing lace and a tiara. I made a lame effort to cover up the dress with my hands or make a dash to hide behind the door, but he just stood and gawked at me.

“Anthony! You’re not supposed to see me!” I cried out, dismayed that he was just standing there staring dumbly at me. “Get out!” I said in shock and tried to shoo him away. An expression I didn’t recognize sparked over his face and all at once he slammed the door behind him and took a step towards me.

“Do not speak to me like that.”

His tone frightened me.

“Anthony, I already told you, you’re not supposed to see the bride before the ceremony.”

He rolled his eyes and took a deliberate, bare look at me, all the way up and all the way down again.

“Well, I’ve seen you now, so we can just drop this stupid thing already.”

“It’s not stupid,” I said and hastily started to take everything off again.

He laughed.

“Are you honestly mad? Come on, you’re being silly.”

“If you tell me I’m being silly one more time,” I said, and froze to stare at him. He lifted his eyebrows at me.

“Kat, I don’t know what’s gotten into you. You’ve been acting weird all week, you haven’t been your usual self.”

“No offense, but how do you know what my usual self is?”

I had stuffed the dress back into its box and now stood before him in my underwear. It was the same blue and white set I had worn the day Mark had …well, I knew for a fact I looked good in it. I knew that many men would have crawled through mud to get a glimpse of me wearing this. Yet none of it seemed to register with him at all. He just stared at me with impatience.

“You’re tired. I’m sorry, dear, I know that these little things are important to you.”

“Anthony, we’re getting married in the morning, that’s not a ‘little thing’.”

“Sure, I know, I only mean that …well, I know that women need to have all this stuff, the dress, the wedding and all that.”

I stared at him dumbstruck. That ‘stuff’ had all been his idea.

“I guess I just don’t see the point of all that stuff, that’s all, I’m sorry for being insensitive,” he said, and extended his hand to me.

I nearly laughed out loud.

If I wasn’t doing it for him, then who was I doing it for? Why was I standing with an overpriced ugly white dress in my hands that I’d never wear again?

I stared at him sitting on the bed. I had sold my life for almost nothing, and it turned out to be even less than that. My head began to spin. A thought that I’d been trying to ignore barged its way into my head. The wedding night. Tomorrow night. I saw myself crying quietly into my pillow, wearing dry, tasteful bedclothes, him trying to tell me that he just didn’t see the point of fucking, and that we’d do it later. Maybe.

I took his outstretched hand and he pulled me down beside him on the bed. Without thinking, I leaned into him and tried to kiss him. He reacted violently; pulling away with such force I thought he’d give himself whiplash.

“Kat, what are you…?”

“Just kiss me.”

I lurched forward and planted my lips on his, but he froze, his entire body tightening in my grasp. We proceeded to bumble through a kiss so awkward it nearly hurt. Red-faced, he pulled away from me and fiercely hid his face from mine.

“I don’t get it, just kiss me…” I said. I looked down and saw both his fists balled up on his lap.

“Kat…”

“What’s wrong? For God’s sake we’re going to be husband and wife,” I cried, and reached out for him again. This time he reacted almost by instinct, his hand shooting out to deflect mine, striking me so hard I yelped and recoiled. Instantly he turned a horrified face to me.

“Kat …Kat, I’m so sorry” he whispered.

He looked mortified.

The spot on my arm was still thumping where he had swatted he off. The tears came easily now.

“Are you …are you gay or something? I don’t understand.”

His face only grey redder, contorted with some hidden shame that suddenly seemed out of his control.

“You’re afraid to do that …you’re, you have some sort of …issue?” I said blindly.

For weeks I had blithely pretended that it wasn’t weird as hell. That it wasn’t strange at all that two engaged people had scarcely touched one another, had ‘kissed’ only a handful of times. It suddenly seemed ludicrous that I had never even seen him naked.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I said. But not to him. I stood up as though sleepwalking, and made for the door.

“What do you mean? Kat, don’t go. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do this,” I said. The words left my mouth and then the thoughts caught up with them later. “I can’t do this,” I said again, once I realized that I meant them.

“Kat, don’t go.”

I opened the door to leave.

“Kat, sex isn’t everythi--”

I turned to look at him. He suddenly seemed so small. So fragile. What if sex was everything? What if there was nothing worth pursuing in life except that beautiful moment of orgasm, of perfect ecstasy?

“I’m sorry,” I said, and slipped the engagement ring of my finger and gently placed it beside him.

“Kat …you can’t do this…”

I turned to look at him again. No matter how hard I looked I just couldn’t see it. He was a good man. A fair and kind and reasonable man. He just wasn’t Mark.

I turned to leave.

“Kat, don’t go! They won’t refund us for the venue!” he cried out after me.

I threw on a slip dress and some shoes and went to fetch Nicky. She was already playing with the wooden horse in the living room.

“Baby, do you like your new toy?” I said and went over to stroke her brow. “Why don’t we go and show it to aunt Lily and Jess?” Her face lit up and in an instant she had found her little backpack and had put her shoes on, ready to leave.

I looked up and saw him standing in the bedroom doorway, watching me forlornly.

“Don’t be here when I come back” I said quietly. Then I turned on my heel and left.

Chapter 16 - Mark

I told everyone I jogged at night because it was less busy. That I didn’t want to be out there running with all the other joggers. But the real reason was that it was myself I was trying to avoid.

Out running, I didn’t have to limp into those dark, wee hours of the morning alone in my studio, long after my hands were tired and my eyes were sore and I had blundered through every distraction I could think of and yet still couldn’t sleep.

I told myself that I was happy she left. I didn’t want her anyway if she was even the tiniest bit conflicted. Call me selfish, I don’t care. But I wanted it all or nothing. I didn’t want to share, not even a little.

I threw down each foot hard into the tarmac, finding some sort of redemption in the fatigue growing in my thigh muscles, in my breath that looked white in the black night.

I turned a corner, swiveled on my toes and kicked off hard, pulling into a sprint, squeezing out the last shivering threads of energy from my muscles. Elbows bent, I whipped my arms through the air and ran like the devil himself was chasing me.

I knew fuck all about love. About women. But I knew how to do the simple stuff. I could make the toughest piece of snakewood submit under my axe. I could tan leather and bolt together a house from scratch if I wanted to. And I could run. I could run like my fucking life depended on it. No matter what, this physical world, this world of sinew and sweat and bone was mine. I always had that.

I felt the rubber under my soles whine and twist under me. I approached the main corner stop and saw the traffic light blink yellow. I clenched my jaw and sped up. I had to make it before it blinked red. Heart pounding, I raced up to the edge but missed it by a few feet, and came skidding to an abrupt halt.

“Fuck!” I said as a few cars trickled up to the traffic light.

And then I saw her.

In her car.

At the intersection.

My head still pounding and sweat pouring, I thought for a second she had to be a hallucination. But she stared right back at me, mouth hanging open. It was me. She was driving to see me.

I melted inside, a million questions on my face. She tightened one hand on the steering wheel and with the other opened the window.

“Mark…” she said.

It was a surreal moment. A car behind her gently revved the engine as we both turned our heads to see the lights on the opposite side turn yellow.

“Just get in!” she blurted and gestured quickly to the passenger seat. The light blinked green and she sped off just as I bunched myself into the seat and slammed the door behind me.

“Good timing, huh?” she said through a nervous little smile as we pulled off, but she kept staring straight ahead. It was dim in the car, and quiet, and cool, but somehow she lit all of that up, like a furnace, and even though she was wearing nothing but a dark grey slip dress, she seemed electric to me. Luminous.

“Were you…?”

“Coming to see you? Yeah. I was.”

I wished she would just turn and look at me with those beautiful eyes of hers.

“You got my gift.”

She briefly looked over to me and then back at the road.

“Nicky loved it,” she said simply.

“Kat, I’m so sorry, for being an ass about that. I don’t know why …I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking. This is hard for me to admit, but maybe you’re right to go for him, you know, maybe I can understand that? I can’t offer you any of that shit, I can’t do the marriage thing, I’m no good with kids …and if you needed that, well, I don’t blame you for making the smart choice, I get that you--”

“I called it all off.”

Silence.

I stared ahead of me, stunned.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too. You know, always the same thing, over and over – what’s the right thing to do? That’s my whole life, Mark. All of it. I always have to do the ethical thing. The proper thing. But somewhere along the line I lost something… it scares me how easily I nearly did that, nearly got married to him.”

Her voice trailed off as I could see she was fighting back tears.

“Maybe I don’t want to do the right thing anymore. Maybe I want to do the fun thing. The exciting thing. I met you and …god, you scared me.”

We drove on into the night, my mind racing as she picked through her words, the beginning of tears sparkling darkly on her lashes.

“I can’t explain it. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about…” she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. As she did, the hem of her dress slipped up and something white caught my eye.

“What’s that?” I said.

Startled, she looked down at her lap, then, to my surprise, started laughing a low, bizarre laugh. She pulled the dress higher up and I could see it: a white garter belt, complete with bunched up lace and elaborate little pearls.

“I must have forgotten it there …isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve seen in your life?” she said and burst out laughing. I nodded and stared down at it. I couldn’t help but laugh too. It was a ridiculous thing, actually. She laughed harder.

“That cost me twenty-five dollars. But really, what’s it even for?” she said, and wiped her face again.

We both stopped laughing as she approached the turn off that would take us back to my place. She stared thoughtfully down the road and then clicked the indicator in the other direction, then glided silently away from my street.

“You’re …abducting me?” I asked, still not quite sure what to make of any of this.

A little sideways smile danced on her lips but she said nothing. The traffic around us thinned as we moved deeper into the suburbs, and then after a few minutes, further out still to the edge of a large community dog park, now dark, gate closed and empty.

She angled the car onto some gravel under a few trees, turned off the ignition, and the lights in the car went dark, too. We sat together in silence, listening to one another breath. The white of the garter belt on her almost-whiter thigh stood out bright in the darkness of the car.

God, she had beautiful legs.

My mind ran and skipped ahead, and I couldn’t stop it flooding with memories of her, of the way she had twisted and gasped, of the way her hair shook as she came, of the way she smelled…

“I think I want to quit my job,” she whispered in the darkness.

“Do it,” I said. The car suddenly became a Catholic confession booth.

“I’m done working in that industry. I’m done with Anthony. With marriage, even. I don’t want to be married anymore.” Then she turned to look at me, almost as though asking for permission.

“Good. Do that,” I said.

“And I want to travel.”

I smiled.

“I want to get rid of all my ugly clothes, I hate them,” she said, raising her voice. “And I want to get a tattoo, and take up dancing… and I want …” She turned to look at me looking at the garter belt. “And I want you.”

We gazed at one another.

I felt dizzy. Here she was, my goddess, my flame-headed idol, in her pale glory and staring right at me, eyes expectant. I had never imagined it would be like this. In some random cul d sac late at night, in her car, me in my old track pants.

“Kiss me,” she said, and in an instant she had pressed eager lips onto mine, and her little tongue flicked hungrily across mine, and I could almost taste how she’d been holding her breath, how nervous she’d been.

I kissed back, exhaling a soft groan and sinking into her lips. Touching her was bliss. She inched over to my side of the car, the seats creaking after her, and placed some of her weight on me. I was instantly, almost painfully hard. I wanted her so badly it nearly made my ears ring. She kissed me and mumbled incoherently, then kissed again, then whispered desperately again and then threw herself into another kiss.

“I …I haven’t been able to get your cock out of my mine…” she breathed and I kissed her hard for saying so.

“Oh yeah? So …what else do you want?”

She sighed and giggled. “I don’t know, fuck, I’m just done making decisions,” she said and kissed me again.

I grabbed her firmly and lifted her onto my lap. In the darkness we fumbled till she sat straddling square over my lap, her glorious hair hanging down like a veil around us, her deliciously warm crotch pressing down lightly onto me and it was all I could do to not lose my mind at this alone. I reached up and stroked her cheekbones, and her delicate chin, then pulled her down into another deep kiss.

She pulled back in surprise and looked at me, then down into my lap.

“Is that…?”

I grinned devilishly and ground my hips up to meet hers in response. She bit her lip, a wild look in her eyes.

“See, no wonder I’m scared of you!” she said.

I loved how neatly her little waist fit into both my outstretched hands. How light and quick she felt on top of me, even with nearly all her weight perched up there.

I stroked long, voracious hands all the way down the length of her and felt her body tighten and roll under my touch. My fingers came to that bit of white fluff on her thigh.

“This thing,” I teased, sliding my finger under the elastic and pulling it back so it came snapping down again, “this thing has got to go.”

She flopped back onto the dashboard, legs splayed wide, and extended her leg out long, toes pointed, the dress gathering at her hips.

“Then get rid of it,” she said.

I thought about peeling it off slowly. I thought about pulling it off with my teeth and burying my head close to that heady soap and skin smell I remembered so clearly from the time before. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I reached out, took the thing in my hands and tore, hard. The flimsy fabric ripped in two, beads flying, and I tossed it aside.

Her hands went up to cover her mouth as she howled in laughter.

“I can’t believe you did that!” she squealed.

“Yeah well, you said you didn’t like any of your old clothes…”

The look in her eyes went dark and naughty.

“Now tear something else,” she whispered.

I gave her a smoldering look and lunged at her, gripping the collar of her dress and yanking hard down in one brutal movement, ripping straight down the front of the cotton to reveal her heaving, bare chest and stomach underneath. She shrieked with laughter.

“I can’t believe—”

“What else should I tear?”

She was already shrugging the remains of her dress off and revealing soft, lily-white arms and two twin swells on her collarbones that made me feel strange just to look at. Her laugh was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I took her smiling face in my hands and kissed it. I wanted to always make her this happy.

“Now you,” she said, and soon she had peeled off all my clothing, one awkward piece at a time, hands and knees bumping the car door, both of us giggling like horny teenagers. She went quieter and quieter and then paused, her little hands splayed on my naked chest, staring down at my rock-hard cock.

“You know, when I first met you, I just had a feeling you were going to hurt me.” She gave me a cheeky smile. She was hovering above me now, her plump little pussy even juicer than I remember and so soft and hot against me I nearly broke my back arching up my hips towards her. Like she was hypnotized, she slowly slid herself down and then up my length, generously dousing me in that sweet honey of hers, till I thought I’d go crazy.

She was changing before my eyes. The little mischievous glint in her eyes became fully brazen, and her hips were moving more quickly. I groaned and held her there in my lap, hands on her waist.

“Yeah, it’s going to hurt,” I said, breath hot in her ear. “But I’m only ever going to hurt you just exactly how you like it.” At this she moaned and squirmed.

I slid my hand over her taut belly and stroked slow circles there, landing my thumb at her opening, then pressed down and gently stroked tiny, insistent swirls over her ripe little clit. Her body went limp as she relaxed into it. She lowered her lips more and put her full, wet weight on my cock, and together we moved like this, all breath and whimper and tiny, tiny movements that the whole world suddenly seemed hinged on.

My fingers were soon drenched, as was my stomach. I loved how fucking wet she got. I momentarily regretted that we weren’t in the studio. That I couldn’t cuff her. Tie her. That I couldn’t watch the pink of my whip left behind on her ass cheeks…

“I want it to hurt,” she said and flopped down onto my chest, her hair cocooning us.

I growled and sunk my fingers deeper into the flesh at her waist. She didn’t need to tell me twice. I was aching for her. Both hands on her inner thighs I pressed her open even further, then touched the head of my cock against her little wet hole. My hips shuddering, I guided my way into her, her snug body stretching around me, till she gasped out and held out a hand to halt me.

“Holy shit…” she breathed, her eyes half-closed and mouth hanging open. “Holy shit that’s a lot… that’s…”

I adored the feeling of her little pussy fluttering and tightening all around me. Screw it, I didn’t need any cuffs or ropes or props. This was enough. Every inch I slid inside her told her exactly who was in charge. Slowly, in silence, I eased her onto the next inch, and the next. She exhaled loudly. Her face was beautiful, wincing up in delicious pain, her eyes squeezed closed as she tried to adjust to being opened up so wide. To being dominated.

“That’s …only halfway,” I teased.

She looked down and her eyes widened.

“Oh god…”

I gripped the hair at the base of neck in my fist, then pulled her quivering body down, further down onto my cock, one delicious breath at a time. She went limp in my arms, her head falling back easily. She groaned low and long as I ploughed into her right to the base, so deep inside that her little pink pussy lips kissed against the flat of my belly. I bounced inside her and felt her entire body recoil from the sensation.

I could feel her excitement. Her body twitched and rolled in waves around me. The fit was tight enough that I felt I could come, just like this, just being so far inside her. From the delirious look on her face, I knew that she was close to coming too. Well, for the first time, that is.

I leaned in to kiss her softly folded belly, her nipples, but she was out of it. Her head was loose and she was somewhere far, in a reverie.

“I’ve never …I’ve never…” she muttered.

She didn’t need to finish. I knew exactly what she was saying. Her body was telling me right that instant. I would have loved nothing more than to grab both her wrists in my hands right then, pin her down and fuck her savagely until she couldn’t see straight. But I could tell how intense it was for her. I could tell how overwhelming it was to have such an immense beast crammed in right to the hilt, and what can I say, I felt bad for her.

So instead I moved very, very gently. I flexed hard, making my cock bounce inside her, and held her close to feel her reaction. I swear to god she was nearly purring.

“You like that, huh…?” I said quietly, as she shuddered around me, and then I bounced again. She was loving it. Just as she began to moan I pressed deeper into her, driving the full strength of my hips up in her little body, pressing her wide open.

She cried out.

“Does that feel good? Hm? Shhh…”

“I’m going to…” she said, nestling into the crook of my neck.

“Do it. Fucking do it. Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” I whispered.

She screamed as she came. From somewhere deep inside her, her body pulsed once, hard, and then again and then again. But I was holding her down. I was filling her up. She couldn’t go anywhere. She could only stay, right there with me, and come with me still inside her. I gripped hard on her shoulders and pulled her down.

“Shhh… shh …now come let’s do another.”

The sounds she made were indescribable.

She cried out as I pulled the full, glistening length of my cock out of her, and perched herself high up on her haunches, her pretty cheeks now glowing with sweat. Swollen head still tucked inside her, I pulled her back down again, so slowly it took us nearly a dozen breaths to travel an inch, then another to go the next inch…

Almost instantly she was fired up again. I could feel that she was ready for more. Could feel how badly she wanted me. Her warm, wet cunt gave less resistance now, and I swear I could still feel the faint convulsions of her last orgasm. This time, her hands clutched eagerly at my biceps as I slid in. She was warming up.

And so we went like this. Fucking in slow motion. It was enough just to be in her. And judging by the way her toes curled and clenched, it was enough for her just to feel it all being slowly stuffed inside. When I was nearly all the way inside again, in that warm, gorgeous hole, I saw her twitching and tightening up again.

“Ready for another?” I said, but no sooner had I spoken had she started to scream again.

I watched in wonder as she came, again, so hard I could feel her clenching down on me. I grunted and thrust up hard into her, and after a moment she flopped down onto me again, sweat in beads in her hair, face flushed and a look of pure bliss on her face. I couldn’t believe it, but she felt even more swollen inside, even more open and hungry for me. Just the thought sent lightning bolts through me and before I could stop myself I was coming hard, too, squirting hot shots of cum deep inside her body, crying out as I filled her with every last drop I had.

“Again,” she said, with me still buried in her.

She was like magic in my lap. The more she orgasmed the more she seemed to want. To my surprise, I was rock hard again. That had never happened before. I pulled out again, watched her face contort briefly, and then, head still in her, I started again, guiding myself slowly, slowly, slowly into her body, both of us so sensitized we seemed to respond to even one another’s breath, to the slightest movements we made.

I don’t know how long we went like this. We clasped each other tightly, and in silence I slowly, slowly, slowly packed myself into her, each fraction of an inch pushing her closer, filling her to the brim with the most delightful pressure, so much so that by the time I was all the way in, she came again. And so did I. And then I’d slide out again.

I lost track of the time. I only knew that it was dark, that her car had misted up with our breath, and that every muscle in my body ached. I only felt the cum pooling up somewhere inside her, and the unbelievable heat of her on top of me.

I don’t know how many times it had been when we finally collapsed for the last time on one another. But I knew that I had never experienced anything like it in my life. Each stroke, an orgasm. It was like a dream. I was swollen tight inside her she could do nothing for a moment but lay on top of me and pant until her breath became more regular.

I eventually softened enough and she pulled off of me. It nearly hurt, to be outside of her. Like it was wrong, somehow, like I missed her body already.

With a goofy smile, she backed up and laid herself awkwardly in front of me, wedged between the glass and the dashboard. One knee raised to her chest and the other down long, she showed off her pert, pretty ass.

I then saw something that I would never forget.

She was filled. Completely filled with cum. I stroked her ass cheeks, not believing how exquisitely open she now was. It was like her body was a cup, and inside the cup was everything I had given her, white and perfectly contained inside her. It was like a miracle. I kissed her knee and smiled at her.

Eventually, her weight shifted and she sent a long, sticky stream of white out and over her thighs.

“Oh crap!” she said, and scrambled to get up and stop from spilling everywhere.

“Messy business,” she said, all flustered, and grabbed at her torn dress to mop things up and smile sheepishly at me.

“I think I love you,” I blurted.

She dropped the torn dress on the seat and laughed and laughed.

“Mark, what the fuck just happened?”

“I don’t know, but I want to do it again.”

Chapter 17 - Kat

And we did do it again.

I had been a dry, dead-looking chrysalis all my life and now a great, big, juicy butterfly was unfolding from deep somewhere inside me. My body hurried along and my mind staggered behind and tried to keep up. I was like a nun waking up in the body of a sex-fiend. I was like a superhero discovering her newfound powers in a movie montage, wide-eyed at all the new things her body could do.

It was as though nothing I had done till now even counted as sex. With him, I never needed any foreplay. None. It was as though just knowing him, just being aware that he existed at all was the foreplay, and even the shadow of a thought about him had me soaking wet all day, so that when we finally did meet up, I fell into his arms like someone who’d been waiting for hours for release.

My body was always frenzied with him, always ripe and bursting and impatient. It was like discovering a never-ending river of orgasms: pulling one out from the well just meant another one came gushing into its place. And then another. And another.

I suddenly hated any item of clothing that constricted or held me in. I wanted loose, flowing robes and nothing to clutter my movement. My high heels suddenly seemed worthless, when the ground felt so good underneath my feet. Everything in my life looked cheap and clunky and excessive. And so I threw it all away. One bin bag after the other, my home emptied out. And with every meeting with him, I emptied out too. There could never be enough room to contain all the bliss he had to pour into me.

“I’m just shocked by this sudden change of heart,” she said, and gave me a weak smile.

“There’s nothing sudden about it. It’s been a long time coming.”

“But you’re …you’re like the most principled person I know, Kat. I thought this work was important to you.”

And there it was. I knew my manager would have a hard time swallowing my resignation, and part of me knew that yes, she’d pull the guilt card on me. I just hadn’t expected her to be so blatant about it.

“I still am principled. And this work still is important,” I said, choosing my words carefully. The slatted blinds in her office had been drawn but I swear I could feel the rest of the office eavesdropping just outside the window. “But it’s not my work anymore.”

She gave me a strange look.

“Is it the salary? Let’s be frank about--”

“It’s not the salary.”

“Then what?”

I could see the frustration in her eyes. I knew that keeping this center afloat was a daily miracle, and I knew that she’d have trouble finding someone willing to do for this place what I had done for the last five years. I hated to put her through the ordeal of finding someone else… but I was done.

What could I tell her? Why was I really leaving? Could I possibly mention that I had undergone a transformation this last month that had turned me inside out? That I had experienced a moment of true clarity, and felt like I had just for a moment touched something divine, and now, looking at everything my life was, none of it could possibly satisfy me anymore? That I needed to kill everything I used to be and start over again? That I was changed and I would never, ever, ever go back to the person I was before?

“Please don’t take offense. It’s not the salary. You know I’ve enjoyed working here. But …I need to leave. I need to move onto the next thing.”

“You have something else lined up?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

She lifted and eyebrow at me and then smiled.

“Who the hell are you and what have you done with the old Kat?”

I smiled wryly and blushed.

“The old Kat’s dead and buried.”

She nodded her head, shrugged at me and then got up, extending her hand for me to shake.

“It took me around five years before I burnt out, too, you know. It’s OK if you need to take a break. Stay away as long as you want. But just tell me you’ll come back, though? Please?” She held my hand firmly in hers and pinned me with her gaze. I smiled and pulled myself free.

“I’m not burnt out. I feel better than ever. But thank you.”

I left her office with a thrilling sense of triumph. I was crazy to leave without another job in the pipeline. But if I didn’t want to jump from one marriage to another, why would I want to jump from one job to another? I had never asked myself whether this – any of this – was what I really wanted. And if I didn’t ask myself that now, then when would I?

The answer was no. I didn’t want Anthony. I didn’t want my boring, stifling job. I didn’t want my old, constricting clothing. I didn’t want another kid. I didn’t want to buy grocery store wedding magazines and pretend like any of that meant anything to me. I didn’t want a husband. I didn’t want a boss. I didn’t want an ordinary life. Not anymore.

On my walk back to my desk, he messaged me.

Mark: It’s all set up. You still OK with everything?

I simply texted back a long, ridiculous string of emojis and hearts.

Mark: Good. Very good. You have the address. I’m excited.

I sent another emoji-filled message, this one with more hearts.

I made a few phone calls when I got back to my desk and then glanced at the clock. I was due to meet up with the girls in a half hour. Annie had been promoted and wanted to throw a little thing for the group, and so we’d meet at our regular bar and have a chat and then afterwards …but I was too excited to think about that now. I didn’t know if I was ready for it yet, but it was going to happen, one way or another. Weird parts of me were still stuck in the chrysalis. If what I was going to do tonight with Mark didn’t finally release me from those last threads of my old life, I don’t know what would.

Annie, Kara and Lily were all seated and waiting for me, already one drink in from the look of things.

“Here comes the bride,” Annie sang in a silly voice and they all giggled.

“Haha, very funny, although watch it or I’ll ditch you guys too,” I said and sat down.

“The woman’s on a roll.”

“Quick, Kara, give her some alcohol.”

I took turns giving everyone a hug, accepted the glass handed to me and closed my eyes for a second while I savored the icy cold liquid slipping down my throat. I put the glass down and cracked my neck.

“It wasn’t technically a jilting, since it wasn’t on the wedding day itself, yes I’m seeing someone new and no, I don’t think I’m getting my damn venue deposit back. And that’s about it. So if nobody has any further questions, then let’s grill Annie about her work instead, shall we?”

“Oh no you don’t,” Annie said with a grin. “You’re going to tell us each and every last detail. What the hell, Kat, when did your life become a soap opera?”

“I know, right?” I said.

“And you’re seeing someone new?” Kara said. “So, when are you marrying him?”

We all laughed and I sighed and took a sip.

“I know, I’m crazy. I must seem crazy. I just feel…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. Do you ever get the feeling that your life is not entirely your own? That there’s just like, some invisible hand guiding things…?” I stared at the faint wiggling lines in my drink, just under the surface. They all looked at each other and then me.

“This new guy is …well he’s not even my type, really,” I said and took a sip.

Kara laughed and slapped my shoulder. “Sounds like a mid-life crisis to me.”

I couldn’t say she was wrong exactly. I tilted my head to the side and sighed.

“He’s perfect, though,” I said dreamily.

“Oh yeah?”

“Kind of rugged looking. A bit scruffy. But he’s so adorable. An artsy type, you know? I basically come whenever he says my name.”

The girls squealed and erupted into laughter.

“Kat! Oh my god!”

“I know,” I said, not minding how hard I was suddenly blushing.

“Lucky bitch. What’s his name?”

“Mark. He’s a bit younger than me. A bit wild maybe…”

“God, I’m so jealous.”

“And he’s hung like an elephant, I swear. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

The girls hosed themselves with laughter. I never spoke about sex with them. Ever. But I wanted to brag. I just had to tell someone.

“Oh my god, Kat, you have to be making this up.”

“Nope. It’s as big as my forearm, no joke.”

“Kat!”

“No wonder she’s suddenly lost her mind, she’s suffering from some kind of blunt trauma. Kat, do we need to call the ambulance or something?” Annie laughed.

“Probably,” I said and grinned.

Old Kat would have balked at this kind of raucous girl-talk. It was cheap and nasty. But new Kat? I wanted to tell the world. Not because he belonged to me now …but because I belonged to him. I felt claimed. Marked and singled out.

“Jesus, and here I am with my dumb promotion when you’re the one with something to celebrate,” Annie said and raised her glass to toast me.

“To our whore of a friend and all the great sex she’s having, apparently” said Kara wryly, and clinked her glass on Annie’s.

“Here here.”

We all took long, deep sips. Actually, the really intimate detail wasn’t how big Mark’s cock was. Although Lord in heaven was it big. No, the big revelation was even more secretive, even a little dirtier somehow, something that I wasn’t even sure how to properly explain yet. Mark hadn’t just fucked me. He had entered me. He had torn through all the bullshit, ripped away at all those flimsy parts of me that had fooled everyone else till now… he had come inside me. And he was still there.

I never felt more free than I did when he was pinning with down with his full weight, gripping my hands behind me so tightly it hurt, fucking me so hard it made my feet go numb. When he gave me that mischievous smile and slowly knotted a cord around my neck, I felt more alive than ever. Pleasure and pain were just slightly different notes of the same glorious song he could play on my body. Melting over him, breaking, dissolving around him until I barely remembered my own name …this is ironically when I felt most like myself.

“I think …I think I actually might love him,” I said quietly, and put my glass down.

The group gave me careful, concerned looks. Silence. We all went silent with the mutual recognition that this was the really scary thing.

Divorces were easy. Houses could be sold, kids could be taken every second weekend, and life could always go on. But love? Love was the real risk. The thing that truly cost. Though we all joked and laughed easily about the men in our lives, the fact is that in matters of the heart, there was always an unavoidable pain. A thing that made fools of us all, even now.

The girls nodded quietly at me.

Why not? Why not fall in love with him? He could have everything. All of me. Was my life really such a glowing success up till now that I cared about what happened to it? Was the way I did things really all that successful in the end, everything said and done? What was I holding on to so tightly, anyway?

He had shown me that suffering was nothing. Fear was nothing. Surrender wasn’t giving anything away, it was receiving. And pain wasn’t the end of something.

In fact, it was just the beginning.

Chapter 18 - Mark

“And if you misbehave, Daddy’s going to be very angry, and you know what Daddy does when he’s angry,” I said, and tightened the ropes around her wrists.

She nodded gingerly, eyes glued to the floor. She was completely naked except for the binding on her wrists and the large, black letters scrawled on her chest: YES.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said.

The Daddy thing had been her idea. She had surprised me one evening, mid-orgasm, by screaming it out as she clutched at my forearms for dear life. When she came to I had teased her a little about it, but from then on it just became one of the things we did. Sometimes she would only moan and growl like an animal, guttural sounds forced from her body as I pounded her from behind. Sometimes she was full to the brim of Oh God and Oh Jesus. Sometimes she just stared me straight in the eyes, whimpering quietly to herself. And sometimes I was Daddy.

I made her twirl one last time in front of me. She had gained a little weight lately, and she carried it beautifully. It settled on her delicate hips and gave her whole form a kind of loose voluptuousness that wasn’t there just a month ago. Satisfied she was ready, I gave her ass a playful slap.

“That’ll do. Now don’t forget, everyone there is going to see exactly what a naughty little slut you really are, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Fuck she was hot.

I took a step towards her and looked down at her naked, bashful form. She cowered a little, and I could make out waves of goosebumps rushing over her as she waited for my next instruction. I unzipped my jeans.

“Daddy’s going to teach you how to be a very, very good girl.”

She shivered.

I grabbed her hand and pressed it to my crotch, so she could feel just how wild she drove me.

“But first, I want to show you off a little. I want everyone to know that you’re my little fuck-slave.”

She lifted her eyes to me.

I would have done anything in the world for this woman. Anything. Up to and including the things I was about to do to her later tonight.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said again.

I loved how her little fingers could barely fit around me. I leaned forward and gave her a chaste peck on the forehead, then smoothed down her hair with the backs of my knuckles and lifted her chin to face me. Her eyes were the faintest, softest green. Like a color you only ever see in dreams.

“Let’s go,” I said, and I left for a moment and returned with her coat, draped it over her shoulders and kissed her again. She looked like little black riding hood.

I led her out to the truck and helped her scale the step and climb into the passenger seat. Hands bound, she reached out for me to steady her, balancing one timid foot after the other. I could feel her hands shaking. I could feel her getting turned on, even now.

I shut the door, double checked the bolts on the back of the truck to make sure that everything there was OK, then came to the driver’s seat and buckled myself in silently. She was staring straight ahead, as though hypnotized. I thought back to the first time she had been in here with me, all prickly and full of defenses and distractions. Now, she was as naked as I’d ever seen her. It made me ache. I’d build a whole world for her, if she wanted it. Somewhere she could be as naked and vulnerable as she wanted, all the time.

The engine growled awake and we pulled off quietly into the night, the massive body of the truck lumbering behind us. By the time we arrived, the dreamy look from her eyes was gone and replaced with something else. Something like excitement. Or was it fear?

I parked the truck, and in the darkness reached over and slipped my hands between the folds of her coat, between her bound wrists and gently between the folds of her already wet pussy. I traced a few tiny, slow circles round her clit and then whispered into her ear. “Good girl.”

Inside, things were still pretty chaotic. Others had already set up but we were still very early. I was glad. I wanted her to feel safe, to go slow. The best games of risk are always played with a net underneath. You can go further that way.

“Drink,” I said, and gave her a bottle of water to distract her. She was looking around nervously at the other vendors. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but I could tell she was nervous all the same.

I had snacks for her, two spare warm jackets and a beanie if she needed it, a book in case she called it all off but still wanted to stay, and a little present I had bought for her the day before. We made our way to stall number 57, and she looked around. I didn’t want to dilute the moment by blathering on about how she was, if she was OK, blah blah blah. I just watched her. Her body told me everything I needed to know. Two men were already hauling the pieces in, and then in wheeled the cage. Her eyes fixed themselves to it.

A new piece, one she asked for specifically – a lightweight cage with wooden bars carved to look like branches. It was unlike other cages on the market in every way. Four fur lined cuffs were inside – two on the top and two on the bottom. It was tall, so she could stand and show off, but had enough room at the base for her to kneel, or sit cross legged. The bars were widely spaced, enough to keep her in, but not so many that they would obscure the prisoner inside. The top was sealed with an elaborate carved lid with a fussy lock and chain. The kind of thing you’d keep a trafficked mythical creature in. Or the container you’d ship the concubine of an emperor from a far-off galaxy.

In short, it was beautiful. Like her.

The cage was set up next to the main table and the men wheeled off their trolley, giving us both long, loaded looks as they did so. I looked at her too. I wouldn’t put her in there until she was begging for it. Until then, I casually pretended it didn’t even exist. She helped me lay out catalogues and business cards. I set to work draping a piece of crushed purple velvet on the back wall.

“Am I crazy?” she blurted to my back. I turned around.

“What…?”

“You know who I just thought of? That girl. Masooma. Do you remember her?”

I did. I put down the velvet and went over to her, still bunched in her coat.

“Yeah I remember her. You spoke about her for days.”

“Mark do you think …do you doing all of this is just another form of privilege? Like, we’re just playing around with things that are actually real for many people in the world… did you know how many young women were abducted and forced into sex work in globally last year? Can you guess?”

“Kat, that has nothing to do with--”

“Almost five million,” she said and stared at me. “Five million. It’s nothing less than slavery. Women who would give anything in the world to be free…”

I grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Kat, you aren’t responsible for any of that.”

“But how can I do this? Stand here like this? It feels like a slap in the face for people who’ve legitimately…”

I sat her down and looked into her eyes.

“Kat, are you happy? Do I make you happy?”

She chewed her lip.

“Of course you do.”

“So? Then be happy. You’re not helping anyone by not being happy.” I reached over and hugged her firmly. “I know it doesn’t look much like freedom, but you know that all of this is for you. Everything. You say how far we go. You say when we stop…” I whispered into her ear.

“But is it ethical, Mark? I care about the liberation of women…”

“Then start with this woman,” I said, and placed my hand on her chest.

She smiled at me.

“Kat, I admire your spirit. You have a good heart, and you’re also hands-down the hottest women in creation.”

She giggled.

“I know. I’m just …this is a big step. But I want it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I kissed her cheek and lingered there for a moment. I could push her. I could call her a filthy little whore and that if she wanted to be punished so badly I would gladly oblige. But that would be too easy. I wanted her to ask to be put in there. I got up and finished hanging the velvet and then we sat together and set up the order forms.

“Daddy,” she said eventually.

I looked up at her.

“I want to go now. I want everyone to see me.”

My heart nearly burst. Along with other things. I cleared my throat and walked over to the cage matter-of-factly. I opened the door and ordered her to strip.

With shaking hands, she slipped off the coat and handed it to me, revealing her naked body and the big, black letters on her chest. People had started streaming into the conference, and many were throwing curious glances over to us.

“Little sex animal,” I said. “You belong in the cage.”

She lifted one defiant eyebrow at me and stood her ground.

“Ah, I can see I’ve done a poor job of breaking you. I’ve been too gentle with you...” I said and moved slowly over to her.

I walked calm, threatening circles around her, like a prey animal moving in on its kill, daring her to defy me, just begging her to give me a reason to show her who was really in charge here. People passing by gave curious looks over at us, but she paid them no attention at all. I could tell that every fiber of her body was tuned to me, and to every word I was saying.

“You will behave in a manner fitting for my fuck-slave, and you will obey the commands you’re given, is that understood?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

She had that same glazed look in her eyes that I had come to know so well. That look that told me how far out her mind had gone, how ready she was.

“That’s better,” I said and slapped her ass, hard, so that she did a little bunny hop forward on her bare feet.

“Now get the fuck in the cage before I change my mind,” I said in a low voice.

Carefully, slowly, she stepped one foot and then the other into the cage. I closed and locked it, then hung the key round my neck.

She was more than a good model for the piece. She was an ambassador. Her plump, full hips and breasts and her dreamy eyes were the perfect embodiment of what I was really selling to all my customers.

Damn, she made it look good.

I gave her a cheeky wink and turned on my heel to greet some of the stall visitors who had pitched up.

When she first brought up the whole idea, I had balked. Did she really want everyone to see her? Completely naked? But she had pushed and pushed. She would be safe, in there. Completely visible and exposed, but safe. Mine. She would be promoting my work, drawing attention to the stall but all the while following through on something she’d dared herself to do for a while: expose herself.

I had agreed. I would have done anything to create that space for her. To bring to life whatever her pretty, twisted little heart desired. And if I was honest, some hidden alpha monkey-brain part of me loved showing her off anyway, loved the fact that although she was on display, she was mine and only mine. I got a sick thrill out of watching everyone else watch the woman that only I’d get to go home with later on.

The stall was getting amazing amounts of attention. Events like this always had a few bold people, a few ‘demonstrations’, much merriment and general naughtiness. But it was strange being the center of that. To my astonishment, she took to it immediately.

She thrust her shoulders back, held her chin high and surveyed passersby with the look of an evil fairy tale queen on her face. It was fantastic to watch. People ran their fingers along the bars, caught her eye and stared as they passed. She lapped all the attention up, and paced a little inside like the exotic creature she was. But they weren’t just interested in her. They liked the cage. People were actually examining the workmanship, looking at the catalogues and curiously taking pamphlets.

“I have a girlfriend who’s just as naughty as you.”

I looked to see a violet-haired woman standing at the cage and smiling at Kat.

“I think she needs one of these for sure… what do you think?” she said, and Kat, that little minx, simply shrugged her shoulders and pointed to the three big letters painted on her breasts. It was like she was born for it.

A few hours in, she showed zero signs of getting tired. I had run out of request forms and had started taking people’s contact information directly. I couldn’t keep up with the interest and the orders were coming in like crazy. People were interested in everything. But they were mostly interested in the new cage design.

I sauntered over to her and whispered close to the bars.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

She smiled.

“Am I making Daddy happy?” she purred, and fuck if it didn’t make me want to tear her out of the cage right then and there.

“Very happy. You’re going to get a big reward later on.”

She slinked over the bars, lacing her long arms in and out of the “branches”.

“I am?”

“First I’m going to put you over my knee for taunting all these nice people here, and then I’m going to take you home and fuck you so hard and so good you’ll be begging me for mercy,” I hissed through the bars.

She smiled a devious little smile, then inched closer. I came close too, my lips only a breath away from hers. In an instant, she had swiftly snatched the key from my neck and darted to the back of the cage, holding it up like a prize. I heard a few lighthearted cheers from the crowd.

“But Daddy, I’m not ready to come out yet,” she teased, and waggled her ass at me. I laughed and looked at her sidelong. She placed the key over her own neck.

“That’s very naughty,” I said. She indicated the three letters on her chest, one after the after. Y, E and S.

“You’re going to pay dearly for that little indiscretion,” I said, and again she framed that giant, black word on her chest. YES. She was a naughty cherry blossom, blooming before my eyes, a little tropical fish in a strange aquarium, a fairy, my little fuck toy. The woman I loved.

By the time we packed up for the evening, she really was exhausted. The crowds trickled out and the organizers came to talk with me about doing another stall at an event later that month. The men wheeled out the goods and we eventually took apart the stand piece by piece. I had easily taken more than five times the orders I usually do for such an event. And it was all because of her.

She waited inside her cage till the last moment, then unceremoniously let herself out, fetched her coat, and readied herself to go home. We didn’t speak a word to each other. I offered her a drink of water and a snack, but she turned it down. She still had that strange glassy glaze in her eyes. I knew she’d need a little time to come down. I’d be ready for her when she did.

It was well past midnight by the time we were back in the truck and ready to pull out. Wordlessly, she slumped down in the long seats and rested her head on my lap as I started the ignition. She fell asleep almost instantly, the lapel of her coat falling open just enough to give a glimpse of her white breast in the darkness. I drove on in silence, hand resting protectively over her. I lost myself fin my thoughts.

I meant every single threat and promise I had whispered to her while she was inside that beautiful cage. I fully intended to punish her, thoroughly, with everything I had. Images of her floated in my mind. Her pink ass, raw from the abuse I’d give it. Her little hands clutching uselessly at my chest as I curled my hips into hers and delivered blow after blow of what she needed. Those glassy eyes. The way she sometimes blushed scarlet just at the moment her little body clenched all round mine and she orgasmed… Oh, I’d fuck her all right. But later.

For now, the sweetest thing in the world was to let her sleep softly against me.

Chapter 19 - Kat

None of it made any sense, I know. I was a card carrying feminist, financially independent since the age of eighteen, had two degrees, a child I had raised almost entirely on my own, and a personal deadlift record of 215 pounds.

So why was I getting off on being put into cages? Or put over a man’s knee and spanked? Or, for that matter, why did I get desperately wet at the thought of being gagged and made to wait on him, hand and foot? Why was I lingering outside that tattoo shop for just that fraction of a second longer than usual, imagining myself making the marks on my thighs and sides more …permanent?

It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t understand it, and so I stopped trying to. I just went with it. Just like I let go and trusted Mark to do with me what he wanted, I let go and let life tumble me along, wherever it wanted to.

And now, less than six months after I had stood, a husk in expensive bridal couture while my stranger-fiancée made me cocoa I didn’t want, I was here, ferociously free …and still running.

I was walking briskly down a street I’d never been down before, brand new shoes clacking on the sidewalk and my thoughts light and quick. I had just viewed a new apartment for Nicky and I. We needed something smaller, closer to her school, easier to take care of. My savings would float us for a long while, but I had been meaning to downgrade my big, clumsy life for a long time now anyway.

It was a cozy little place, but perhaps not quite right. It ‘ticked all the boxes’, but I had already learnt a hard, expensive lesson about checklists. Instead, I consulted my intuition. I thought about the quality of the light streaming into the living room.

Give me a sign, I thought as I clacked down the sidewalk, and lo, there was one. A crumpled piece of newspaper bungled by and got snagged on my foot. The letter N stood out distinctively for a moment before it rolled away again. Fine. It was a no then. I walked on. Why not play with things a little?

I asked for another sign, then watched the trees and clouds around me, looking for evidence of the invisible trickster god that suddenly seemed to have hold of my life. When I bumped into him, it was so hard it nearly sent me skidding into the street.

“Watch where you’re,” said and angry voice. I looked up. It was him. Anthony had rounded the corner, groceries in his arms like her was carrying a baby, face flustered.

“Kat, it’s you.” He froze to look at me. I stared at him, gobsmacked.

“Oh, hi,” I mumbled eventually.

The air suddenly took on a painful quality. He looked embarrassed, but since we both seemed to be glued to the spot until someone could think of the right mix of small talk that would release us, I decided to smile.

“Hey Anthony, I just wanted to say …I’m so sorry about how everything happened…” I said. His smile was an angry one.

“Huh, passive construction, interesting.”

“I’m sorry?”

“How everything happened? It didn’t just happen, Kat. You made it happen. You did it,” he said with razors in his voice.

It was weird seeing him again. He had felt like a stranger all the time I knew him. And now he really felt like a stranger. I thought of how many quiet men at the kink festivals and expos looked just like him. Like dads. Dry, tired-looking, but with a nasty sting just below the surface. He looked like he was ready to lay into me.

“I know. Anthony, I know you’re angry. And I’m sorry. But we weren’t right for each other… you can see that, right? It would have been a disaster, you and I… I missed you, of course…” I said.

“Well, I didn’t miss you.”

“Fair enough.”

“I mean, I didn’t even know you, so there was nothing to miss.” He stared at me with those hard, ice-blue eyes, like the color of the sky on a winter day that surprises you with how cold it really is. “You deceived me from the start. It was no loss. I never had you to start with, so …”

“Anthony, come on, I never deceived you.”

He scoffed out loud at me.

“Even for the little while we knew each other, that was always clear about you, Kat. You only like to play at being miss morals, only pretend that you’re some enlightened being who has her shit together. You’re more of a mess than anyone.”

I scowled at him and tried to brush past and carry on walking. I wasn’t going to stand here and listen to any of this.

‘See? You’re called out on your bullshit and you just disappear,” he said with a bitter laugh.

“God,” I spat, “what do you want from me, Anthony? It was a stupid idea, us ever even meeting. I’m so sorry, but I never deceived you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“I hear you’ve found someone else.”

“And?”

“I hear a lot of stories.”

“I’m sure I don’t care.”

“And that’s it right there. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s fine that you don’t give a shit about hurting my feelings, I’m grown, I can take it. But you drop all the other people in your life? And your child?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. He looked me up and down with a bitter look on his face.

“You’ve gained weight,” he said simply, then pushed past me and carried on walking.

I was stunned. I quickly turned on my heel and marched away from him as fast as my feet would carry me. But nothing could shake the feeling he’d left with me.

I went home that afternoon and busied myself with a million little things, but the memory of his twisted, angry face stuck with me, burnt into my mind and there every time I closed my eyes. Then it creeped up on me slowly. Two hours later, a little while before I was meant to meet Mark for a romantic dinner, it was already full blown: guilt.

A nauseous, tight, ugly feeling that clutched at me in the center of my chest. What if he was right?

No, he wasn’t right godammit. I was allowed to date and see whoever the hell I wanted to. I was allowed to quit my job, to move houses, to do whatever else I wanted. And Jesus, wasn’t I allowed to gain a little weight? I fumed. Fuck him. If people were threatened by a woman doing something that truly fulfilled her, if they were threatened by …but what if he wasn’t threatened? What if he was right?

When I met up with Mark that evening, I still hadn’t shaken the sour feeling. He had arrived before me and when I walked in, he was sitting looking with amusement at the menu with that scruffy, eternally casual look of his. That man could wear a three-piece suit and a gold watch and still look like a handsome hobo.

“Hey, gorgeous. Maybe you can tell me what the hell jus is. Is it like juice? Like meat juice?” he said and leaned up to give me a full kiss before sitting back down with a goofy smile on his face.

“Don’t be such a fool, you know exactly what it means,” I said and sat down.

“What’s eating you?” he said, giving me the side eye.

“House hunting. It’s hell. I think I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake giving the old place.”

He put down his menu and frowned at me.

“Where’s this all coming from, Kat? You were thrilled about everything this morning…”

“Yes, well, people change,” I snapped. “I’m sorry, I just…”

I looked at his confused face. His gorgeous, perfect, confused face. How often I had stared at that same faultless configuration of eyes and nose and lips before? How often I had babbled incoherently, had begged him for mercy …or for more. I had to be honest with him.

“I bumped into Anthony,” I said miserably.

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Mark, I think it’s time you and Nicky met already.”

He looked at me, stunned.

“Okaaay …that seems a bit out of left field,” he said and smiled warmly.

“Can you just take this seriously, please?” I said. He held up both his hands.

“Kat, woah, can you just calm down? I’d love to meet Nicky, you know that. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Well, we wanted to be sure, remember? It’s a big deal to--”

“Do you want to or don’t you?” I interrupted. His smile dropped.

“Kat, is this about Anthony? Did he say something…?”

“He didn’t say anything, but maybe he made me think. Maybe I need to actually just cool it a bit with the mid-life crisising and take stock for a second.”

He looked down at the tablecloth.

“I’m sorry, that sounded harsh. It’s just …it’s time now, isn’t it?”

“When you’re ready, Kat. We don’t have to rush though. I’m having so much fun with you…”

“Yeah, but is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you only like the ‘fun’ parts of me? At some point we have to be serious about--”

“Do we? Do we really have to be serious?” he said and gave me a naughty smile. I don’t know why, but it irritated the hell out of me.

“Yes. We do, actually. I have a kid. That’s just the reality, right? You wouldn’t …you wouldn’t come to a restaurant and eat there and then claim you don’t want to take things too seriously just as soon as the bill comes along, right?”

“Kat, what on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about commitment. I have responsibilities…”

He frowned and leaned back in his chair.

“Are you even listening to me?” I said. I hadn’t shaken the feeling at all. In fact, it was like Anthony had left a dark shadow over me and I could run out from under it.

“Damnit, Kat, what do you want me to say?” He was rubbing the back of his neck, looking around with irritation. “I said I’d meet Nicky, didn’t I?”

My cheeks burnt.

“Is it really such a chore? Is it such a compromise?”

“I told you already, I haven’t been with a woman with a child before, so this is kind of new for me, I don’t know how it’s supposed to go, can you cut me some fucking slack here?”

I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

In the end I was just a middle aged divorcee with a young child and now, let’s be honest, I was unemployed and moving into a smaller apartment. I didn’t blame him for balking. It was easy for him; he didn’t have a tiny human being that depended on him for everything. He could work whenever the hell he wanted, living it up and stupid expos and whatever…I suddenly felt like an idiot. What had I expected? That I would stupidly in love with some bad boy character and then, what, he’d drop everything to have a boring life with me and my daughter? My head was a mess.

“I think I’m just going to go home,” I said, and stood up.

“What? Kat we had a date.” He quickly rose with me.

He looked so handsome, even with his eyebrows knotted like that. Even now, even with this weird shadow over me, he still looked like the handsomest man I had laid eyes on. Though I felt like I wanted to cry, there was still some part of me that ached just to look at him, like every cell of my body remembered instantly who he was, and the delicious things we had done to one another…

“Kat don’t go.”

But I had to. I didn’t like any of this. I had to think. I had to plan. And just like that, the crushing weight of my old life came thundering back, catching up with me all at once.

Chapter 20 - Mark

Calling up an ex for relationship advice probably wasn’t the wisest choice, but I fully admit it: I had no idea what I was doing. Not with Kat, not with any of it.

I was in over my head and for some reason, Valerie popped into my mind. She’d know. She did already know what an idiot I was. I could chat to her honestly about failing Kat since, well, I’d kind of failed her in the same way.

Some people call it ‘commitment phobia’ but that doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s not that I’m afraid of commitment. I’ve just never seen a convincing argument for it …or even heard anyone explain exactly what it’s supposed to mean. The promise to keep on pretending you love someone, even after you don’t anymore? A legal contract? A vow you make that nothing will ever change?

I think I’m right to be suspicious. In any case, it was kind of funny that she pitched up at the studio that night eagerly babbling about her upcoming wedding. The woman I’d never expect to get hitched and settle into married life was now showing me pictures on her phone of her bridesmaid’s dresses. She wanted to coordinate the color with the new turquoise flower tattoo she had on her collarbone. It was crazy.

I laughed and we got to work on our beers. I knew she was going about the wedding partly for the distraction. For my sake.

“Looks like we’ve lost another victim to the wedding industrial complex,” I said. She laughed and shrugged me off.

“Yeah, more or less. Anyway …what’s up with you? I’ve been thinking about you lately, wondering if you were doing OK,” she said at last, and put away her phone.

It was easy to talk to Valerie.

So I did. I launched into a story about Kat and I, about asshole Anthony, about her wanting me to meet her daughter, about the fight we’d had at the restaurant …and she listened quietly to it all.

“So what’s the problem?” she asked when I was done and took a sip of my beer as a kind of full stop.

“Well, she’s going on and on about commitment and stuff… it just freaks me out. I’m not sure what she even wants from me. Everything was so great. We were having so much fun. Now she’s pushing this thing with her daughter, getting all serious on me.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So commit to her then,” she said and smiled.

I laughed.

“It’s not that simple. I don’t know if we’re …if we’re there yet. If we’re ready. Why mess with a good thing, you know?”

“Mess with it?”

“Yeah, well, why suddenly add all these expectations and obligations onto everything? I thought that’s what she liked about me, that I didn’t do any of that crap, you know?”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Hey, Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

I laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about this, what do you want from her?”

I thought about it for a moment.

“I just want to enjoy her company. I want us to have fun. I want her to trust me and to …just enjoy each other. That’s it.”

“That’s it? Dude, think about what that actually costs her, to do all that with you. You told me she’s coming to expos with you now, that she quit her job, that she even called off her engagement for you. And you accepted all of that gladly. You encouraged her even, and now you’re telling me you don’t know if you’re ‘there yet’? That you don’t know if you can budge out of your comfort zone even a little and try and meet her half way?”

“Yeah, but she chose to do all those things…”

“Man, she’s already committed to you. Lucky you! For some reason she thinks you’re awesome and can’t get enough of your oblivious ass.”

“So what? What does commitment even look like? She doesn’t want to marry again, she knows I’d rather cut off my right arm than get married …so what? What does she want?”

“My advice?”

“Yeah, I guess I did ask for it,” I said and gave her a wry smile.

“My advice is to ask for whatever she needs, and just give it to her. That’s it. Not hard.”

“Sounds dumb.”

“It’s smart. Think of it this way. She wants to let go with you. Think about how quickly she dropped that other guy, about how she keeps coming back to you. How’s the sex with you guys?”

“Amazing,” I mumbled.

“Exactly. She wants that. I’ll tell you a little secret: every woman wants that. To let go. To give a man her everything. I don’t care who she is, she wants to go all that way with him. She’s desperate, just waiting for someone she can truly open up with, someone she can be as much of a slut with as she wants… but she’s not going to do any of that shit if the guy’s not willing to do the same. If he’s not willing to make her feel safe. To feel completely chosen and wanted. You’re asking her to push her boundaries, to be all vulnerable with you, to take the risk of letting you into her heart and mind …but you’re still on the fence about whether she’s worth it or not?”

“But …well, I guess …it’s just that.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” she said again, and gave me a mischievous wink.

“Fair enough. Really, I get it. But I don’t want to be tied down, you know? I don’t want to be caged…”

She burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“Dude, you don’t have to tell me the gory details, but if you’re anything like you used to be, you’ve totally tied that poor woman up, haven’t you?”

I blushed.

“You’ve literally put her in a cage!”

I laughed.

“They’re different cages,” I said, trying to defend myself.

“Nah, they’re really not. You’re asking her to let go. But she won’t let go unless she knows she had something solid to hold onto when she comes back…” she said, contemplating the peeling label on the bottle.

“When did you get so wise, huh?”

She raised her beer to me and took a drink.

“When? Man, I’ve always been this wise,” she laughed.

We sat in silence for a while.

Maybe she had a point. I couldn’t fault Kat at all. She had completely given herself over to our experiences together. Sure, she’d had her doubts, but it suddenly occurred to me how she hadn’t let them stop her. How I had pushed her and she had come, every time, to meet me right up against the boundary, fearless. Would it really hurt so much, to just meet her damn kid? The thought turned my blood cold, but I couldn’t deny that Valerie had a point. What was I so afraid of? And hadn’t Kat already gone way, way further than me in confronting her fears?

Valerie and I drifted away from the conversation and back to her and her new guy. I felt like I was an anthropologist, standing on the outskirts of some elaborate alien mating ritual and having no earthly clue about what the hell I was looking at. But she seemed happy. Really happy. Of course I wanted Kat to feel that way, too.

I drank in silence and listened to her going on about this and that, comfortable for a moment that the spotlight wasn’t on me anymore.

“You’re right, though,” I said eventually, once there was a pause in the conversation. “I’ve been a dick about everything. I’m going to do whatever she needs, whatever she wants to feel safe with me.”

Valerie smiled proudly. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it, I know this kind of thing is new for you.”

I knew all Valerie’s dark secrets. And she knew mine. She knew that despite my work, despite the people I did business with and despite the fact that women were constantly drawn to me because of it, I was in truth laughably inexperienced. There had been a handful of casual girlfriends. There had been Valerie. And now there was Kat. Nobody would ever guess it, and I was happy to go along with their assumptions.

I thought of Kat. About her fragile her collarbones looked when she was naked. Of how small her hands seemed as they stroked over my chest and neck. And yet she was the strongest, most passionate woman I knew. It made me ache somewhere deep inside. I wanted to protect that. Valerie had, in her own way, made me realize that. I had preached about following intuition to Kat, but I suppose I could stand a dose of my own medicine.

“Do you ever feel like your life is just guided by fate sometimes? Like there’s just some invisible force guiding it?”

She stared meditatively at her fingers as she spun her engagement ring round and round her finger.

“Nah, of course not. No such thing as fate. You always get to choose,” she said after a long pause. “But there might be guardian angels along the way, helping out. I don’t know, I could believe that” she said and smiled sweetly at me.

It was late when she left and I was fast developing a huge headache. A mountain of empty green bottles littered the table but I told myself I’d clear everything away in the morning. I grabbed my phone and fired off a message to Kat.

Mark: You’re 100% right. I’m sorry. I’m in this for the long haul. I want to do whatever it takes to convince you of that. I can’t wait to meet Nicky

I typed it quickly and sent it without double-checking anything. Then I lay in bed, thoughts and images drifting in and out of my consciousness. It started to seem kind of hot. Half-asleep, an image flitted into my mind. It was her, in bridal white …and chains. Her beautiful, milky breasts. The sexy way she’d always shiver and bear down those first few seconds I entered her. Her lips. Her unbelievable ass.

Her image dissolved into symbols and impressions. Maybe committing could be hot. Maybe there was something erotic about claiming someone, about the ceremony and ritual of the thing. I wanted her to trust me with everything. With her life. With her soul. With her body. I reached down and stroked an idle hand over my engorged cock, and pictured her lips over me. My phone buzzed on the bedside table.

It was Kat.

She’d sent nothing but a string of emojis and hearts in response. I threw down the phone and stroked myself slowly to a deep, dreamy orgasm, then slipped easily off to sleep.

Chapter 21 - Kat

“May I have the credit card you used, ma’am?” she asked and extended a manicured hand.

If organizing a wedding was stressful, it was nothing compared to un-organizing it. I rummaged around in my purse, pulled out a card and gave it to her. She returned a tight smile and fiddled with the computer in front of her.

“Ok, just a few more things I need from you, ma’am. Now as I’ve already explained to Mr. Burgess, Littlefield Willows will only be refunding the price of the venue less the booking fee and a 40% cancellation charge, which means--”

“I’m sorry, 40%? I’m pretty sure I was told it would be 10%?”

She tightened her already tight smile.

“Yes, ma’am, you’re absolutely correct, but that applies to postponed events only, whereas a full cancellation forces us to take 40%.”

“Well, you’re not forced…” I muttered as I took my card back from her.

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. Just …it’s a lot of money.”

She nodded, thought for a moment then handed me a brochure she pulled from under the counter. People were already lining up behind me in a queue.

“There is this, however, which you might like to consider. Seeing as you and Mr. Burgess didn’t opt for any of our insurance options, we can’t help much with the fee. However, we do have a new program where you can effectively pass on your wedding date to another couple independently and settle the fee that way.”

She handed me the brochure. I gave it a confused look.

“So …you basically sell your wedding to someone else?” I asked, incredulous.

Her laugh was forced and too high pitched.

“Yes, something like that, ma’am! I mean, it does offer a way for people to recoup some of the losses in the event that a wedding should, you know…” she gestured towards me like she was alluding to some strange but unmentionable sickness I had.

I forced a smile. It’s all red carpet and complimentary canapes when you’re signing up, but a 40% kick in the teeth when you cancel and a patronizing nudge over into the second hand wedding market. Bizarre.

“I’m sorry, I think I’d really just like the refund right now, please. I don’t have a lot of time to be sorting all this out.”

The cashier gave me a pitying look. “Of course, ma’am,” she said, and continued to fuss with the computer.

I waited impatiently.

“That’s a very pretty tree necklace.”

I turned around to find the source of the voice. It was a pretty young woman with bleached hair and great big blue tattoos all over her neck and collarbone.

“Oh, thank you. It’s …it was a gift from someone.”

The woman was behind me in the queue but quickly came to stand beside me.

“Boyfriend?” She touched her fingers to the necklace Mark had given me the first expo we did together.

“Something like that. Maybe. I don’t know, right?”

She smiled warmly and winked at me.

“Oh it’s like that, huh? I got you.” She leaned in close to me and dropped her voice. “Now don’t be alarmed or anything, but I’m something of a psychic. Just a little gift I have. Had it since childhood. But I can see things, you know? I can just tell, the guy that gave you this, he’s a bit of a strange one, isn’t he?”

I looked at her, a little shocked.

“You could say that,” I said cautiously. The cashier eyed us as she sorted some documents for me to sign.

“I’m seeing a kind of scruffy looking guy. A builder? Makes things from wood? Name of Mike maybe…?”

“Oh God, Mark, yes that’s right,” I said, a little stupefied.

“Well, I can see it all very clearly, he loves you, a lot,” she said emphatically.

“He does?”

“Oh yes. That’s very clear. And you should be patient with him. It’ll be worth it. It might not look like it now, but he has wounds of his own, you know?”

She gave me another knowing look.

“Uh …thanks?” I mumbled.

The cashier handed me some receipts, I signed on the dotted line and then turned to leave. The bleached haired woman nodded to me and then breezily started talking to the cashier herself. I stood off to the side, a little taken aback for a moment, and then left the building.

What a bizarre day it was turning out to be. Why not? If I was letting intuition guide me, then why not …psychics? I laughed to myself as I walked out into the parking lot. I had wanted a less ordinary life. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I finished a few other errands and hurried to Lily’s to pick up Nicky and take her over to see the new apartment. Moving in had turned out to be a days-long affair, and Lily had mercifully agreed to babysit Nicky while I sorted it all out. I had promised her that once her room was unpacked and everything laid out properly, we could spend the first night there, and I’d get us pizza and we’d watch movies.

I bundled her into the car along with her bags and three separate plush toy dignitaries and we waved goodbye to Lily and set off for the new apartment.

Strange, but the whole thing reminded me of my college days. The mood, the black bags of bedding tucked in the back seat… I would have felt like I was moving into a new dorm room, only now my roomie was a kindergartener and the course I had enrolled for was called ‘getting back on your feet after your entire life crashes and burns’.

I smiled to myself and Nicky, and I sang songs till we arrived at the new place.

“It smells like dog food in here!” she announced as I cracked open the door and peered in.

“It’s just a little stale, honey. Help me open up some windows.”

She bounded off and I took a look around. Half opened boxes, and the curtains hadn’t been put up in the kitchen yet. But it looked good. It felt good.

With perfect timing, landline suddenly rang. It was a new line and he was the only one who had the number so far.

“Well hello.”

“Hey.”

The phone was silent as we both tried to think of what to say to one another.

“I got your email,” he said eventually. I heard myself exhaling into the receiver.

“I’ve been thinking about all the things you said in it. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And I think it’s a good idea.”

I smiled and walked around the room, examining the dust on the floorboards.

“Good to hear,” I said.

“Good.”

“Yes, good.”

We both giggled.

“Are we crazy?” I asked him, then flopped down into the still plastic-wrapped sofa.

“I don’t know. But there’s nobody else I’d rather be crazy with, if that helps.”

I could hear the smile in his voice.

“It does help,” I said.

I wanted to tell him how much I missed him. How desperately I just wanted him here, with me, right now. I just wanted his warm, hard chest and to lean into it and forget about everything.

“By the way, your new design is selling like hotcakes.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. I think you have a real eye, Kat.”

I scoffed.

“It’s just a fancy bed. No big deal.”

“Yeah well, you’ve obviously tapped into something. I can’t make them fast enough.”

“Pffft…”

“What about yours? When are you getting rid of that nasty thing of yours and letting me make you something pretty for your bedroom?”

“I already said not to worry about anything for—”

“Nonsense. I’m making you a bed, and that’s that. A twisty four-poster. Scandinavian style, I know the kind of thing you like.”

“Mark…”

“And I’ll carve your initials into it, too.”

“And do I get sneaky hidden latches and bolts and things?”

“Naturally” he said. “It’ll be uh …a multipurpose bed.”

Even months later, he could still turn me on in a split second. The soft, low growl of his voice sent a delicious little ripple through me that pulsed right to the end of my clit. I leant against a wall and lowered my voice.

“I miss you,” I whispered.

“I miss your ass.”

I giggled.

“It’s been too long,” I complained.

“Do you think I could make you come over the phone?” he said.

“Well, you’ve made me come every other single way, I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Challenge accepted,” he purred through the line.

“Mark, I’m wet.”

“Fuck yes.”

“I was thinking about you this morning…”

“Oh? And what were you thinking?”

“Mommy! Why does it smell like dog food everywhere?!”

I spun around and saw Nicky standing in the door, with a look of disgust on her face that only she could muster, her wooden horse dragging behind her. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. When I finally put the phone again to my ear, Mark was giggling too.

“Mommy, for real, why does it smell like dog food at your house?” he teased.

“Shut up, you!” I said.

“Mommy is it Mark?” Nicky said. “I want to say hello.”

I lowered the handset down to her and she took it in her tiny, fat pink hands, then held it up against her ear. I could hear Mark’s faint voice coming through the line, but she said nothing in reply.

“Nicky, say hello,” I said. She lifted her big eyes to me.

“Hello, Mark,” she said dutifully, then immediately handed the phone back to me and toddled off, the wooden horse clattering like hell behind her.

“She’s hilarious,” he said once I took the phone again.

“Well, she drives me bonkers.”

The phone was silent for a moment.

“Kat, I’m looking forward to it,” he said, his voice again dipping low.

“Me too,” I whispered.

“It’s a big step.”

“I know, but I want to do it with you.”

“I know. Me too.”

We said our hushed, hurried goodbyes and I hung up, and before I had any time to think about it, Nicky came whizzing into the room again and I decided to get her to help me unpack some boxes. She sat opposite me on the floor and we peeled the newspaper off wine glasses for a while, then chatted about pizza. It was a good, sweet, perfect moment. And in my mind, I thought about all the good, sweet, perfect moments ahead of me. I was petrified, truly. But in a few days Mark would meet Nicky, and we’d head off together for a break to the mountains, just us three.

Chapter 22 - Mark

I have the quintessential ‘edgy’ lifestyle. I do things in my down time that would make even an open-minded girl blush hard. I’ve endured countless tattoos and circular saw accidents and one summer I felled a 90-foot redwood with nothing but grit and a hand axe.

So I had to laugh that I sweating bullets this morning at the mere thought of meeting the acquaintance of a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler.

I checked and double-checked the camping gear. I had already called Valerie the night before for moral support and she had laughed uproariously at me, telling me I should thank my lucky stars for the love of a good woman and to just call her when I got back. I wiped sweaty hands down the front of my jeans and nervously peeked out the window again. They were late.

I drummed my fingers on a loose plank of mahogany and tried to calm my nerves. Some people, I guess, are like saplings. Still growing, still pliant. You’re not quite sure what the final shape will be, but it’s pretty in the meantime. I remember cutting down an alder once up north with my father, and the following year we came back, there was another tiny alder growing right in the middle, a little leafy green phoenix, utterly undeterred.

A horn beeped outside and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I scrambled to open the gate and almost immediately they both blustered in. Little Nicky came skipping in first and stopped to stare up at me with a silly look on her face. Her mother followed behind her, placed her hands on the little girl’s shoulders and smiled at me.

‘Well look at this! It’s Mark! Why don’t we say hello, Nicky?” she said, and knelt down to give the girl a kiss. Nicky blushed and muttered “hello” and tried to squirm to hide behind her mother.

“Mark, is the one that made your pony for you, remember?”

“Thank you, Mark,” she peeped.

She was like a perfect replica of her mother. It was uncanny. It wasn’t just the violently copper hair though – the little one was a match right down to her cheekbones, her little hazelnut nose and the way her chin came sharply to a point. I knelt down as well, although it felt awkward as hell. I had avoided rugrats all my life. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if I had seen one up this close ever before.

“Hey, Nicky, how’s it going?” I said, and extended my hand to hers. She took it matter-of-factly and shook it, like a miniature business woman.

“Wow! That’s a firm grip. Hope you liked your pony.”

She lit up.

“His name’s Gregory,” she said. “We can’t bring him to the mountains because ponies don’t like mountains.”

“Bummer.”

Kat laughed at her and hoisted her up in her arms and planted another kiss on her forehead.

“Mark is coming with us to the mountains, remember mommy said?” she said into her ear. Nicky idly chewed on her little pink fingers and nodded, staring straight ahead.

She seemed so …small. And fragile. How in the hell was she speaking? I reminded myself to take a deep breath. I could do this. I loved Kat with all my heart. And this was just a little Kat, right? If Kat loved her, then I loved her. That was just logic. It didn’t matter that I felt like I was in the most stressful interview of my life, I would figure out a way to win this little girl’s heart if it was the last thing I did.

Nicky was pointing to me with a quizzical look on her face.

“Oh, she’s never seen tattoos before,” Kat said, laughing.

Motherhood looked good on her. There was something really sexy about the way it was so simple for her to balance the little one on her hip before. I knew I would be seeing another side to her this weekend, but I didn’t anticipate thinking that side would be so …cute?

I rolled up my sleeves and showed her all my tats. She smiled and poked her fingers at them, then tried to rub them off.

“Nicky! Me!” she squealed.

Kat put her down and laughed. “Sure baby, you can have tattoos. Just as soon as you turn eighteen.”

Nicky ran off into the garden. Kat lifted curious eyes to me. They were eyes that were filled with vague, tender questions. She said nothing, just waited for me to speak.

“Only a woman so beautiful could make such a beautiful child,” I said, and then winced at how cheesy I must have sounded.

She grinned.

“Oh man, you look awkward as hell. She doesn’t bite you know” she teased, and poked my ribs.

She took a step forward and came up close to me, dropped her voice and grazed her lips against mine.

“Are you ready for this weekend?” she said with a naughty look in her eyes.

“Absolutely,” I said and softly kissed her lower lip, lingering there for a moment to wait for the electricity to build between us.

Even dead still, even with us both holding our breath, she was still the most wildly exciting woman to me. Slinking my hand to the back of her neck I pulled her in for a deeper kiss, tasting her tentatively, her little tongue caressing secretly against mine.

“Let’s get going then!” she said, and pulled away, smiled broadly at me and then grabbed my backpack and slung it over your shoulder.

“So we’re really doing this, huh? A weekend away with a four-year-old. Ok. All right. Tell me I can do this, Kat,” I teased as we headed for the door.

She turned and gave me a saucy look and a wink.

“If it all gets too much for you, don’t worry, the safe word is ‘Barney’”.

She called out for Nicky, who came running and we all bundled ourselves into the car to leave.

If you had told me a year ago that I’d find myself heading off for a family getaway with a smoking hot redhead and her toddler, I would have asked you to pull the other one. And yet here I was. And it was …kinda nice. She looked fresh and happy and relaxed in a white and blue dress, and as she smiled over to me as I buckled up, a new sensation washed over me. We were on a different adventure. It hit me like a revelation: I didn’t care whether we went to massive S&M party or whether we went for a good old fashioned farmer’s market on a Sunday morning. All that mattered was that it was with her. The only thing better than seeing that beautiful smile plastered on her face was the thrill of knowing that if I played my cards right, the reason she’d smile would be me.

Deep down, I was all sorts of fucked up. I was immature; a child myself, to be honest. Going on this damn weekend would be the single most nerve-wracking event of my life. But to hell with it. I’d learn to be better about it. I’d learn to do the whole stepdad deal. Really. And though it scared the shit out of me, I could be a dad figure, if she wanted it. Till I figured out how, though, I’d just keep making wooden ponies and hope I picked it up along the way.

Chapter 23 - Kat

I tried my best to hide how nervous I was. I didn’t want to be one of those women, the kind who introduced their flaky-ass boyfriends to their children, only to break everyone’s heart when he ditched them all.

But to my surprise, Mark actually seemed to be getting on with Nicky. It was around an hour in and we had hit a long, flat road, and to my amusement they both settled into a long, totally stupid game of eye-spy.

“Something ‘ginning with zee!” Nicky yelled from her car seat in the back.

“With zee? Is it a zeeeeebra?” he yelled back, and she howled with laughter. Then she suddenly went serious.

“No, silly, there’s no zebras.”

“Ok, I give up, what did you choose?”

“I choose car!” she cried.

“But car doesn’t begin with z?”

“No it doesn’t!” she said and I felt her little legs kicking the back seat.

He turned to me.

“Kat, I don’t want to alarm you, but I don’t think your daughter knows how to play eye-spy” he said and raised a cute eyebrow at me.

“I’m not surprised, I don’t think she knows what letters are, so…”

“Mummy! Mark doesn’t know how to play eye-spy,” she yelled.

The two carried on, Mark leaning back to defend his case and Nicky trouncing him utterly with her watertight four-year-old logic.

The nerves had died down and now, yes, I was enjoying myself. Two of the most important people in the world to me were in the car right now, and they seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. I almost didn’t want to say anything for fear of jinxing it all. He turned in his seat and faced forward for a second. God he was good looking. How the hell had I managed that?

“I see you and little pipsqueak over there are getting on well,” I said, smiling at him.

“Crazy, huh?”

“Well… I was worried you guys wouldn’t bond, but you’re just perfectly on one another’s level,” I said and pulled my tongue at him.

He playfully swatted my knee but it was though we were both magnetized to one another and he just kept it there, squeezing the top of my thigh just so. We couldn’t do any more than that. Not while I was driving. Not with Nicky right there. Of course not….

And yet, just his touch was distracting enough. I let my knees float apart a little. I know he noticed, even though he said nothing and kept staring straight ahead. One hand on the wheel, I put the other on the hem of the skirt and slid it up, just a few inches. Without skipping a beat his hand followed, cupping the warm, exposed flesh in his broad hands. It drove me wild.

We were at least another hour away from out little mountain camp site. But with Mark, somehow less was always more. This was, after all, the man who had first made me come with nothing more than a puff of air. The thought alone made me squirm and readjust in my seat a little. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like Mark’s ninja sex skills were the perfect match for life with a toddler. He was a very, very creative man. He knew how to make me melt with a look. He could have me wet and begging with just a few kisses on my wrist. If anyone could squeeze in a few secret orgasms around the chaos of Nicky’s schedule, it was him.

By the time we found the place and pulled up to reception, I was desperately hot and bothered. Mark smiled, cool as can be, and hauled all our stuff out the car, went to fetch our key and bantered with Nicky all the while, who was now following him like an excited puppy.

I leaned against the car and tried to catch my breath. This was never what my happily-ever-after looked like in my mind. Mark was younger than me, covered in tattoos and made his living making sex toys, for heaven’s sake. And yet …this felt more right than anything I’d done for a good long while.

We set up camp and Mark helped Nicky unpack her stuffed toys and her coloring book. I hovered on the sidelines like a hungry jackal, waiting for the moment I could finally pounce on him.

“Ok, mom, I’m ready now,” she said and stood before me in her frilled pink swim suit and little rubber shoes.

It had taken ages to organize this little vacation, but it all centered around a sweet two-hour period where Nicky would have a group swimming lesson in the lake and Mark and I would sneak off and …well, it almost felt too naughty to think of while she was right there, staring up at me with those cartoon character eyes.

“What about your pool ring?” I asked.

“Mark has it,” she said and gestured to him, following behind her like the world’s unlikeliest butler.

He had also changed, into a shirt he knew I liked the best. It was a little tighter across the pecs than his other ones, and showed off all his ink to perfection. Call me shallow, I guess. I put on my flip-flops to join them to the lake but they both stopped me.

“Mom, Mark is taking me only,” Nicky said and lifted her eyebrows at me. I glanced at him, he shrugged and smiled and off they went. They were cute together, that was for sure.

Once they had disappeared round the bend I sat down on a log in silence and marveled at how hard my heart was beating. He’d be back in a second, and then we’d leave. I knew all the routes and paths in this forest, but with Mark, everything had a way of feeling strange and new.

I was wearing a bikini and a printed sarong knotted over my breasts – not exactly PVC and black leather, but somehow, it felt just right. I went to the tent and rummaged around for everything we’d need and packed it up in a little satchel we’d take with us. Suddenly, I was tackled from behind and flung over to my side. I yelped and burst out laughing.

“Mark! You scared me!” I said as he leaned over me, grinning like an idiot.

“That was fast,” I said.

I was flat on my back with him propped up on top of me, both of his strong legs clamping round mine. He said nothing, just slowly lowered himself down for a kiss and then back up again to give me another loaded look. I smiled up at him.

“Well, come on! We haven’t got all day!” he cried and lifted me up and out the tent, and I scrambled after him, laughing and clutching the satchel.

We stole away into the forest like a pair of naughty children who’ve slipped form the adult’s watch and now were running to do forbidden things in the woods.

“We’re like dirty Hansel and Gretel,” I giggled as I led him skipping over the old familiar stones and paths deeper and deeper into the woods.

I had chosen this spot because of how secluded it was. I was sure I was the only person in the world who knew about it at all. Ten minutes of excited running later I tugged his arm off the beaten track and we ascended a rocky crag, pulling ourselves up with bendy yearlings, the beginnings of sweat on both our brows. The thought of him following close behind sent a hot, urgent ache to that spot between my legs. I knew he was watching me from behind with every step. I turned me on to think how that was definitely running him on.

We walked on in silence, no path, no nothing.

“Kat,” he said from behind me, “you’re a swell girl and all, but I’ll be mad if you kill me out here or something, ok?”

I turned to flash him a devilish grin.

“Pipe down back there. You’d be flattered, anyway,” I said and picked up the pace. I could hear his low breath and chuckle as we ascended higher still.

Then, the brush thinned a little and, just like I remembered, the trees seemed to stop all at once, in an almost perfect straight line, leaving us out in the middle of a beautiful, deserted clearing. Just a few yards off, again exactly as I remembered them, were four trees huddled together in a secretive clump, the shade between them looking dark and delightful. He shielded his eyes to look at where I was pointing, then looked at me, then dropped his weight and in an instant had sped off, sprinting as hard as he could to the trees, kicking his heels up high as he yelled behind him, “last one is a rotten egg!”

I shrieked and took off after him, but couldn’t catch him. By the time I reached the cool shadows of the trees, he was waiting for me there with strong, open arms, and I ran straight into him, panting and laughing, him closing his arms around me and tumbling us both down to the floor, giggling like preschoolers the whole way down.

It happened so quickly it was though we both had no control over it at all. Our bodies, close enough and already hot and slick with sweat, simply found their well-worn way to one another, already well-programmed on the old dance we had practiced so many times before. My mouth was on his in an instant. I found myself desperately grinding against his hip bone, frantically trying to relieve the tension put there from a whole day of frustrated glances and flirty smiles.

Fuck, I wanted him.

I wanted him so badly it nearly burnt.

Gasping lips firmly on mine, his greedy hands clutched and grasped at me, like he couldn’t decide what he wanted to grope first. It was hot, fervent fumbling of two horny teenagers, fucking outdoors in a stolen bit of time. He rose up to his haunches and towered over me, clumsily tearing at my sarong and unknotting it. My bikini flew off without any protest and the sarong was tossed aside without any ceremony either. My head flopped to the side to see them both hanging limp in the long grass all around us; grass long enough to bend under us and mold a little secret bed all around us, grass whispering almost as eagerly as we were.

“Kat! What’s that?” He pulled back and looked at me, stunned.

I flopped back down on the soft grass, threw my hands up over my hand and looked at him provocatively.

“I got it a few days ago,” I said. “Do you like it?”

His hands went down to touch the plump skin at the top of my thigh. A thick, black band of solid black circled me there, striking in the contrast.

“You got a tattoo…” he said as he passed his tanned brown fingertips over the spot again and again.

“Do you like it?” I asked and looked at him coyly.

“I fucking love it,” he growled and leaned it to kiss me passionately again.

Soon his clothing came off too, and the sudden heat of his hard body against my skin kindled the ache between my legs into a full-blown blaze. I squirmed hard against his hips, like every part of my body wanted to feast on every part of his. His fat cock bobbed hard and swollen against the now naked skin of my stomach.

“Let’s do it now,” I breathed into his ear. It looked like it took the most monumental effort to tear himself away from me.

“I’m ready,” he said, and gave me a look that was almost intoxicated.

I reached over the wisps of grass and found the satchel. Inside was a little box. I took it in my hands and handed it to him. We sat opposite one another, completely naked in our temple of grass, his dick so hard it was straight up and nearly flat against his stomach.

I opened the box and took out one of the rings. He had made them both from three bands of different colored hardwoods. I gave it to him, and he took one in his hands too.

I had thought long and hard about the words for this moment. The gestures. But the more I did, the more I realized that that would only cheapen things.

Eyes misty, I simply took his hand and slid the ring onto his finger. He did the same to me, hands trembling. The grass whispered around us, and the sky was clean and fresh and open all above us. We held hands for a moment, together, knees touching, stripped of everything and with no audience except four lonely, generous trees.

He leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips, and lingered there. Again our bodies folded into each other, easily.

It had been hard, some of the lessons we’d endured, but we had learnt one another, slowly but surely He had studied all the little signs and signals fluttering on the surface of my body, and I had taken the long and punishing path of learning how to accommodate the total, punishing heft of his oversized cock, again and again and again, until I felt completely re-sized, molded and shaped for him and him alone.

I could tell he was a little at a loss without any steel or leather to restrain me, but why bother? He had me so completely that he could pin me to the ground with just a look. I knew our original shared instruments had been cruder ones, made of bolts and ropes and buckles, but under these trees, in this wild air and sunshine, we were stripped of all our old props, of our clothing, of our pasts, of everything. It was just him, me, and the sordid things we were about to do to one another.

I leaned forward to take him in my mouth, gliding a wet tongue round his ample head and quickly swallowing down as much as of that smooth, hard length that I could. At first I had struggled to get even half of him inside my throat. But the desire to please him – and several expert lessons later – he had trained me to open up fully to him. He groaned and whimpered, pressing up his strong hips to meet my mouth.

I pounced on top of him and spread my legs wide, straddling over him.

This was the right landscape for him. My gorgeous, shaggy, big-cocked beast of a man stared back up at me with clouds reflected in his eyes, and I stared down at him, pressing the grass flat so it lay round him in whorls.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you.”

I lowered myself and popped the tip of his cock against my dripping wet body, stroking him up and down with my other hand.

“Good. Then show me,” I said.

Like a man possessed, he smirked and swore under his breath and in an instant gripped my thighs and thrust upwards into me, driving every inch of it inside and splitting me apart. I screamed in pleasure and dropped my shuddering weight even further onto him, my body hungry for all of him.

Rolling my hips with his hands, he instantly found a quick, savage rhythm inside me, pounding hard and insistent into my grateful pussy, till I felt I could barely breathe. As though I was already out of my body, I heard myself moaning gutturally with each deep pump. My hair swished and whispered like the grass, and I quickly felt that blissful, syrupy swirl growing inside, right the tip of his cock touched the deepest parts of me, right where nobody had touched before.

He was clenching and unclenching his jaw, eyes half closed as he focused intently on driving everything he had up into me. I loved the way his abs pulled and tightened with each stab, and how I could already spot the beginnings of an orgasm on his flushed face, on his quivering lower lip…

“Harder,” I whispered darkly into his ear, then cried out as he instantly redoubled his efforts, sending almost painfully delicious ripples all through me, right up my spine, so even my fingertips felt turned on.

There was nothing left of the old Kat anymore. Out here in the sun, my flesh was mortified. I was cleansed. Reborn. Impaled on his massive cock, I would have let go of every last shred of the woman I once was.

“Oh god… “I moaned. “Even harder …fuck me … fuck me till there’s nothing left…”

And he did.