10
He was still smiling when we hit the motorway, an oldies station appropriately blasting one of Cerys’s drunken favourites – Pour Some Sugar On Me. It was much later that I found out I’d been mishearing part of the lyrics for years, but at the time I remember feeling like I finally understood the meaning of ‘living like a lover with a red hot thong’. I’d switched the thong for my softest pair of boxers, but the afterburn remained.
I shifted in my seat. Derek cracked a Tic-Tac between his back teeth and glanced over at me.
“You know,” he said. “I think you learned a vital lesson about BDSM today.”
“Really?”
“Yep. It’s the one that goes ‘Never book a session with a dominatrix on the same day you’re going to spend at least two hours sitting on your arse on the M4.’”
“I’m fine,” I said, although I was beginning to regret that final paddling. “It was nothing I couldn’t handle.”
He grinned and settled back in the passenger seat. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I like to know what I’m getting into. We were getting serious and I just thought I should…you know.”
“Get into it with floggers and spanking paddles?”
“Yes. Exactly. Look, it was that or we go the Fifty Shades of Grey route and wade through mountains of stultifying paperwork about who agrees to have what inserted into them.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, I get enough of that at work. Especially the insertion part.”
“There you go, then. I thought I’d just skip the paperwork and go and get spanked.”
“And then come home, let me wank over your bruises and clean up the mess with your tongue.” He gave me a wicked sidelong glance. “You are so fucking sexy.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said, slowing to change lane. “I hate motorway driving at the best of times and I definitely can’t do it if you’re going to talk dirty to me all the way to the Cotswolds.”
He took his hand off my knee. “No, you’re quite right. I’ll behave. Just know that once we get to that hotel room then we are going to have to get down to some very serious…paperwork.”
I moved into the middle lane, trying not to think too hard about how fast we were going. It had been a while since I’d been behind the wheel, but he was still technically concussed and I wasn’t about to let him drive.
“You all right?” he said, obviously clocking my anxiety.
“I’m fine. Just a bit nervous. I don’t know anyone at this wedding.”
“You know me.”
“You know what I mean. How do you know them? Are they politicos, too?”
“Nope,” he said. “Rav’s a cardiologist. We met at Cambridge, and Gabrielle was a more recent acquaintance I met through him. She plays the piano.”
“Right,” I said, feeling incredibly poor and thick all of a sudden. “When you say ‘plays the piano’ I’m guessing she’s not playing the piano down the pub, is she?”
Derek looked awkward. “Well, no, although I’m sure she would if there were one handy.”
I caught his eye in the rear view mirror and arched a brow.
“Fine,” he said. “She’s a concert pianist.”
I groaned. “Derek, what have you got me into? You do know I still put HP sauce on my toast, don’t you?”
He laughed. “Calm your tits, working class hero. They’ll love you almost as much as I do. Besides, you’re nothing if not adaptable.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You spent the morning in a bondage dungeon, remember?”
I shifted in my seat again. “Hard to forget,” I said. “I’m not loving the suspension on this courtesy car.”
I had never been to Bath before, only passed exits for it on my way to Wales in my undergraduate days. Unlike most cities there seemed to be no sprawl, no edge-of-town supermarkets that told you that you were moving out of the country and into the town. One moment we were driving through gold-tipped autumn countryside and the next moment we were surrounded by long Georgian terraces in mellow, pale yellow Bath stone.
“Holy Jane Austen,” I said, as we stepped out onto Great Pulteney Street. I half expected Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe to wander past, their arms full of lurid novels and their heads full of dance cards. “It’s gorgeous.”
Derek took the suitcase from me and grinned. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait until you see the view from the Royal Crescent.”
Our hotel was at the end of a terrace. We were three flights up in a room with a view of Claverton Down, the glass in the big sash window so warped with age that at certain angles it was like looking through water. The bed was a large four poster, which Derek loved on sight.
“Damn,” he said, lying fully clothed on his back across the white bedspread, arms outstretched. “I should have brought the handcuffs.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, running a finger over the carved rosette on one of the dark wood bedposts. “I’d hate to scratch this. It looks like it might be valuable.”
“I know. It’s a far cry from that Kandinsky abomination in Eastbourne.” He rolled onto his side and patted the mattress. “Come here, you. No reason I can’t tie you to the bed and get creative with cock rings.”
I lay back and laughed. “You brought cock rings? To a wedding?”
“What?” said Derek, widening his eyes. “Is that gauche?”
“No idea. I left my copy of Emily Post back in Wandsworth.” I could have done with her help earlier, when I was wondering what to say to a paddle-wielding dominatrix who a) offers to make you a nice cup of tea and b) tells you exactly how you’re going to take it.
He cuddled up against me, his head on my shoulder. I was wildly grateful to be out of the car, and my usual anxiety about being somewhere new had dimmed in the light of knowing that tonight I was going to be rolling around naked in an antique four poster bed with the man of my dreams.
“Well,” I said, smug and snug and stupidly happy. “This is all very romantic.”
“I knew you’d love it,” he said, kissing my earlobe. I turned my face towards him and we kissed slowly, softly, his tongue tracing widening whorls inside my mouth as his knee nudged between mine. I could feel him hard in his jeans and could hardly believe it had only been a few hours since he’d bent me over the dining room table. London – with its stresses and crowds and that weird Underground upholstery smell that clung to everything – already felt like it was a world away.
He caressed me through my jeans and looked down at me. The lid of his right eye had turned pinkish purple, making the gold flecks in his light brown eyes stand out all the more against the contrast. “Do you want to make love?” he asked, so sweetly that I almost said yes. The way he asked spoke of uncomplicated tenderness: no whips, straps and accessories this time, just skin on skin and sharpening sighs as our naked bodies rocked together beneath the white linen sheets.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I said. “But no. I’d actually like to have a look around first.”
Derek kissed each of my eyelids, the tip of my nose. My mouth. “We can do that,” he said, sitting up on the bed. “I thought you might want to stretch your legs.”
“Yeah. I kind of want to take the weight off my bum.”
He got up and held out his hands to me to help me up off the bed, because the mattress felt deep enough to swallow me. “She’s good, though, isn’t she?” he said, as he pulled me to my feet. “Hardly ever breaks the skin.”
“It was certainly an experience, yeah.”
“Oh dear. That sounds guarded.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s one of those things people say when they’re not sure whether something was pleasant or not.”
I retrieved my shoes from under the armchair. “No, I’m not saying that at all,” I said. “Just that it was very…intense. In a way I don’t think I’d prepared myself for.”
“How so?” said Derek.
I gave him a look and he checked himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I have a million questions I want to ask you, but I’ll stop. I promise.”
“We will talk about it,” I said. “But I think I’d just like to be normal for the rest of the day, if that’s all right?”
“Normal?”
“Yeah. Just how we usually are. You know.”
“Right,” he said. “So a man who writes tentacle porn and another man who masturbates to it?”
I looked up at him and exhaled. “Yeah. Our normal is not very normal, is it?”
Derek shrugged. “Meh. Normal is for neurotics, conservatives and people who read the Daily Express. Which is ironic because most people who read the Daily Express are absolutely fucking batshit.” He picked up his coat from the top of the suitcase. “Got everything you need?”
“Yep. All set.”
We walked down the street, the late afternoon sunlight bathing the terraces in a buttery gold. When we came to Pulteney Bridge I didn’t even realise we were on it until we no longer were and were looking down into the horseshoe weir. There were shops on both sides of the bridge, so that when you were going across it just seemed like another part of the street.
“Like the old London Bridge,” I said.
“I think it was modelled on the Ponte Vecchio,” said Derek, as we settled into a spot to admire the view of the Avon. “In Florence. Those eighteenth century architects went mental for the Italians, especially Palladio.”
“You can hardly blame them. It’s very beautiful.”
I looked around, unable to take it all in at once. Behind us was the graceful gothic spire of the abbey. We stood on the scenic parade where the likes of Beau Brummel and the whole Regency it-crowd had once strolled and gossiped and swapped notes on the ailments they believed cured by the restorative hot spring waters.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” said Derek, winding an arm around my waist. “They used to call Bath the Queen of the West.”
“Yeah. They used to call me that, too,” I said. “When I was university in Lampeter.”
He laughed and gave me a squeeze. The wind from the river caught his hair, ruffling it. The leaves of the trees were only just beginning to turn, so that his rich red hair was still the brightest thing beside the river. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “When I accepted the invitation to this wedding I had no idea I’d be in this situation. With someone like you.”
“Why? Who did you expect to be here with?”
He shook his head. “God, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t expected this. And I hadn’t expected you.”
“Does anyone expect this?” I said. “I thought that was the whole point of falling in love. Isn’t it supposed to be a bit of an adventure?”
“A bit?” he said, and turned towards me, his expression so adoring that I thought my heart would burst. “How are you so fucking sweet?”
It was news to me. Growing up my mother had always referred to me as ‘the crabby one’, compared to my sister, who was effortlessly charming. “Am I?”
“Yes. You’re sweet and sexy and creatively dirty minded. Not to mention brave.”
I had to laugh at that one. My heart still hadn’t crawled down out of my throat after spending almost two hours on the motorway. “I’m really not, Derek.”
“Yes, you are. You booked a session with a dominatrix so that you’d understand what I wanted from you in bed. I still can’t believe you did that.”
“Are you okay with it?” I asked, because we still hadn’t got to that. “Are you jealous?”
Derek frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m more scared shitless than anything else.”
“Why?”
He let out a long sigh and moved away to look me in the eye. “Because you did that for me,” he said. “For us. And that means you must really love me.”
“I do,” I said, and then it hit me all at once. How far we’d come in such a short space of time, and from where. That was the part that made me laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“This. You’re right. It was unexpected. Just a month ago I was sure I couldn’t stand you, after that interview fiasco. And I’m stubborn, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
To his credit, Derek kept a straight face. “Yeah. Just a bit.”
“I might have stayed angry at you forever if you hadn’t wandered into the Arse End and offered to buy me a drink.”
“How very Elizabeth Bennett of you,” he said, blinking rapidly into a beam of bright sunlight. He squinted and raised the heel of his hand to his eyebrow. “Ow. Jesus.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
He winced, scrunching his nose. “It’s all right. The light just went funny on me.”
“What do you mean, funny?” The depth and suddenness of my panic shocked even me. I’d been doing my best not to read about horrible neurological events following his accident, but my best – in this case – was frankly pathetic. “Do you want to sit down? Do you need some water?”
Derek gave his head a sharp shake and took my hand. “Toby, please. Relax. It’s just a migraine aura. I’ve had them for half my life. You can hardly blame my brain for acting up under the circumstances.”
He’d turned so pale that I could make out the faded spots of childhood freckles. “Are you sure? Come on – let’s find somewhere to sit down.”
“I thought we weren’t sitting down?” he said, trying to put a brave face on it, but I could see he wanted to get out of the sun. “On account of your bum.”
“Yeah, I’m not a neurologist or even a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that brains are more important than bums.”
“What if your brain was in your bum?” he said, as we headed back along the parade, arm in arm. “Like a dinosaur?”
“I thought that was a myth, actually,” I said, feeling slightly relieved. Dinosaurs and their bum brains was such a Derekish diversion that he had to be all there upstairs. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Stop worrying. I probably just need to take the waters or something.”
“People still do that?”
“Of course. There’s that famous spigot thing in the Pump Room. Why don’t we go and see if it’s busy?”
Less than ten minutes later we were sitting in the Pump Room, both of us peering sceptically at our respective glasses of warm, frankly eggy-smelling water. We were sat near the fountain, a strange draped urn affair where water poured from scallop shells into the mouths of four upended fish. The bowl was stained deep red from iron deposits and the spouts were crusted with salt and mineral deposits. There was a velvet rope line around the fountain where you were supposed to line up for your glass of the health-giving thermal spring waters, but so far we were the only takers. Everyone else was tucking into late lunches and cream teas on silver stands.
“You first,” I said. “This was your idea.”
“Mmm.” Derek lifted his glass and peered at the contents. His colour was better already and he hadn’t taken so much as a sip yet. Probably because he was figuring out how to run away from this ordeal. He took a tentative mouthful and washed it around for a moment before swallowing. “Lovely,” he said unconvincingly. “Your turn.”
The water was hot and metallic. It tasted like it could cure a vampire of anaemia, and had a lingering aftertaste of sulphur. If you were working from the principle that the nastier a medicine was then the better it was for you, I could see how it might be seen as a panacea.
“Feel healthier?” he said.
“Nope.”
“Me neither. Let’s get something to eat instead.”
It was late afternoon so we ordered high tea, a fussy, feminine extravagance of petit fours and miniature macarons. There were tiny sandwiches and miniature shot glasses filled with salmon mousse and topped with fronds of dill and glistening blobs of red caviar. The tea was Assam, the silver polished, the linen impeccably white. I remember the tall stems of white calla lilies and the sinking sun golden on the crystals of the chandelier as the blonde pianist played Here Comes The Sun. And him, lifting his cup to his lips, laughing at something I’d said, or closing his eyes in pleasure as he bit down on the chocolate covered coffee bean on top of a petit four.
My anxiety slid away with each minute; he was obviously fine and I was simply being neurotic.
“I surrender,” I said, pushing my plate away after somehow devouring both of the fresh baked scones on it. “Do you want my macaron? I don’t think I can poke another thing down my throat.”
Derek eyed the little yellow confection with suspicion. “I’m not sure that I can either.”
“Go on. You like them much more than I do, and it will make me feel better about being such a lunatic this morning.”
“Oh, stop,” he said, but he gave in to the macaron all the same.
“No, I mean it. I don’t know what came over me. And then you gave me…head.”
His eyes widened.
“Toothbrush head, Derek.”
“Oh.”
I took a sip of tea. “Actually that kind of wrecked me.”
“Wrecked you? How? How does one get wrecked by a toothbrush?”
“When it’s not a toothbrush,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I think I’m just a sucker for small gestures. Sometimes they feel bigger than the big ones. Because they’re harder to fake.” I swallowed, conscious that I was still raw in more ways than one, and it seemed wildly inappropriate to burst into tears in the middle of the Pump Room. “Anyway. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be such a nightmare to you.”
“Don’t,” he said. “It wasn’t all you. I can see how that conversation could have sounded awful if you happened to overhear it.” He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “For the record, I like your lovehandles. And your self-doubt. It’s the thing that keeps you from going full Westminster like most of the narcissists and megalomaniacs I deal with on a daily basis. And you should never go full Westminster.”
“How am I supposed to avoid that, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Keep being you. Second-guess yourself, but just enough to keep yourself sane. Cling to your morals, even if it means you’re wasting your scruples on people who don’t deserve it, like that terrible horse girl you met in Eastbourne.”
“Ah. Jacinta.”
“Yes, Jacinta. Jesus Christ, was that really her name?”
“I wasn’t sure if she was real either,” I said. “That whole conference was full of posh cartoon characters.”
He shook his head. “It kills me that you won’t use that.”
“What? The Bramble thing? No. You should have seen her, Derek. When she realised who she’d been gossiping with she started literally slapping herself around, like she had multiple personality disorder and one of her personalities was a really aggressive pimp. She struck me as the kind of person you’d find with a hose up the car exhaust if she thought she’d done something as dramatic as spill the beans on the Health Secretary’s leadership bid.”
Derek sighed. “See? Scruples. Are you sure you want to write about politics? You’re not nearly revolting enough.”
I laughed, surprised to find it was even a question. “I don’t know. I thought I did. Before I met you I thought the only thing that would ever make me happy was being a serious political correspondent. That and never having to write tentacle porn for money again.”
“And now?” he said, and I knew the answer to that.
“Now there are other things that make me happy,” I said, nudging his foot with mine under the table. He smiled, looking red and golden and gorgeous in the early evening filtering through the tall, graceful windows. “And – if I’m going to be honest with myself – I kind of enjoyed writing tentacle porn.”
“I enjoyed reading it.”
I had a vivid, filthy flashback to last night. Derek, wearing nothing but his glasses, his eyes full of want and his cock in his hand. The way he looked at me as he approached his climax, like he wanted to say to hell with the game and tell me to come over there and just fuck him. “I noticed,” I said, and he gave me a sly, sexy look that said he was right there in the same place as me. Or maybe just afterwards, when he rewarded my patience by urging me to straddle him on the couch and push myself into his still-gasping mouth.
“Did you ever consider writing any other kind of fiction?” he said. “You know…without tentacles?”
“Yes. There’s a stupid little sci-fi thing I’ve been working on – on and off – for far too long. Dug it out the other night, actually, while you were sleeping.” And while I was getting bollocked by the editor of the Independent. “It was weird. I’ve been stalled with it for a long time, but then…I don’t know. I suppose in all the chaos it was comforting. Having something that I had total control over.”
“Interesting. You like taking control?”
I laughed. “Are you serious right now?”
“What?”
“This from the man who has raised topping from the bottom to an art form.”
“Me?” he said, with near hilarious disingenuousness.
“Yes, you. You were at it from the very beginning, improvising blindfolds and nipple clamps and…” I didn’t finish the sentence because it seemed somehow wrong to say ‘begging me to fuck you’ in such genteel surroundings. “I don’t know what you are. The term power bottom doesn’t even begin to do you justice. You’re like…like an alpha male power bottom.”
He looked pleased with himself. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes. Even when I’m in charge I’m not in charge.”
“What if I were submissive?” he said, and his eyes glittered. “What if you were spanking me?”
“You would still be calling the shots and you know it.”
Derek folded his arms and leaned across the table. “All right,” he said. “What if I only did what you told me to do? Let’s say we go back to the hotel, we go to bed and you get to be in complete control of everything that happens. I’ll do whatever you tell me and nothing else.”
“What? Like some kind of sexbot?”
He nodded. “Sure. If that’s what gets you off.”
“No,” I said. “Please don’t do a sex robot thing.” I started to laugh. “Oh God. I just said ‘sex robot’ in the fucking Pump Room.”
“Is there a rule about that?” he said.
“No, but it just feels wrong. This is where Catherine met Henry in Northanger Abbey, for God’s sake.”
“Henry Tilney would absolutely have done the sex robot thing for Catherine and you know it.”
I took his hand again, laughing and loving him more than ever. “And Mr Darcy?”
“In a heartbeat,” he said. “I mean, he was basically a sex robot to begin with.”
“Beep boop, engage Colin Firth mode?”
He laughed and kissed the palm of my hand. “Come on,” he said. “I’m serious. Tell me how you want me and I’ll do whatever you want.”
“And what if I don’t want that?”
His face was a picture of frustration, and part of me didn’t blame him. “Okay,” he said. “What is it that you want, Toby? Be assertive. Do you want me to call the shots? Or do you? Any game or scenario you want…”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No games. No scenarios. No subs or doms or power plays. It’s not that I don’t like it, because I do, but it feels like there’s been so much of that lately.” He pushed his fingers into the gaps between mine and I gratefully clasped his hand across the table. He leaned forward, but let me keep talking.
“I’m all kinked out,” I said. “I just…I just want to make love, the way you made it sound before we left the hotel room.”
“I wasn’t aware I made it sound like anything, but go on.”
“You did,” I said. “You made it sound simple. And tender. No games. Just the two of us, naked in that big, romantic bed, making each other feel wonderful.”
I had him. I could tell. His gaze lingered on my mouth, his fingers squeezing mine. When he opened his mouth to speak he hesitated slightly, as if he’d been holding his breath and hadn’t even realised it. “We should get the bill,” he said.