Bound to You (24 page)

‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ I said, and beamed up at him.

His cheekbones had taken on a tinge of pink from the cold, highlighting their angular perfection even more in his beautiful face. His lips were pursed. Then, unexpectedly, it came.

‘Would you like to come back to mine?’

I thought my heart might spring out of my chest and into his arms. ‘Oh!’ my eyes fell to the floor in prostration. I wanted it. I wanted him. So badly. But I had to stick to my diktat. I didn’t want to become one of his one-night stands. He had to know I wanted more.

‘I’d love to,’ I replied, placing as much stress on the love as I could muster without it sounding like mad desperation. ‘But I, well. I’ve said I won’t do that any more.’ I looked up at him.

His gaze was as level, as genial as before. He got it. I think. Did he?

‘Well, we’ll have to do this again sometime.’ His voice purred like a car pulling into a drive.

‘Yes. Let’s. Definitely.’

And then we kissed. Just his mouth full on mine. A lavish yet simple lips-meeting-lips kiss, a few seconds that spilled over and magnified in my mind as I replayed it on the way home.

Next time.

The next morning I called Gina.

‘How did it go?’

‘You remembered?’

‘Er, this is the man that has stalked your dreams since December. How could I
not
remember? So, how did it go?’

‘Yes. Stupendously. He . . . it’s . . . oh God, Gina, there is so much chemistry there! On my part anyway, I swear he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.’

‘Yeah, we know that bit already, Nichi. What did you talk about? Hang on a minute . . . are you even alone?’

‘Gina! Yes, I’m alone! He asked me, but I said no.’

I didn’t always indulge myself to my loins’ content. Although generally speaking it was true, if I wanted sex I had no problem with having it on a first date. These old-fashioned, moralising rules about what women should or shouldn’t do if they wanted to avoid been labelled did not matter to me. From that perspective, I don’t know why I’d decided not to this time. Well, no, I did. I went over it again in my head. It’s because I want more than sex.

‘Oh my God, is this the first time you’ve ever NOT gone home with someone you wanted to shag into oblivion?’

‘Yes, I think it probably is!’

Gina squealed. ‘OK, OK, so what did you talk about?’

‘His art. My writing. He has a daughter, Gina, a seventeen-year-old.’

‘Jesus, Nichi! Please tell me know he’s not secretly fifty-two or something!’

‘He’s thirty-six. I know it sounds crazy but honestly, you should have heard the way he spoke about her. Juliet, she’s called. Her mother won’t let him see her. Anyway, we only talked about his daughter for a bit, I felt awkward about it. Then we talked about sex.’

‘What kind of sex?’

‘Oh, you know. The bad kind.’

‘Still up for it then?’

‘Gina, I tell you, I’ve never been more up for it.’

‘Did you kiss?’

‘Yes. It was divine. I’m never going to be able to look at that spot in Oxford Circus tube the same way now. I have to pass it every morning on the way to the office! Oh God, his
lips
, Gina. But what do I do now? I just have to wait, right?’

‘Yes, you just have to wait.’

‘But what if he doesn’t text?’

‘Can you even hear yourself right now?’

‘Yes, I know I sound utterly pathetic. But what if all he wanted was sex and now I’ve missed my chance of being . . .’ I paused for a moment and imagined for the forty-seventh time since last night Sebastian pulling me in to kiss him, my hair wrapped round his hand ‘. . . of being ravished. And now he’s going to move on to the next submissive and give her a punishing instead.’

‘So you lost out on a hot night. You want more. Remember that. And this sounds like it could be more, anyway. Nichi, you did the right thing.’

I knew she was right. I knew I was right refusing to go home with him, even if I had simply got into my own bed and masturbated deliriously about him.

‘Besides,’ stated Gina, ‘he’s going to text.’

Three days later, Sebastian did indeed text. ‘Hello. Hope you’re well. Let me know if you’re free this weekend. Drinks? Sx’

I was at work when I read it and tried and failed to contain an ‘eek!’ of joy. My colleague looked over the top of his computer screen at me. ‘Good news, Nichi?’

‘Good news.’

So it had worked. He didn’t just want sex. He wanted me.

I managed to wait a whole eleven minutes before I replied. ‘Hi, yes, that would be lovely. Where were you thinking?’

On Friday night, something suddenly occurred to me. Sebastian didn’t know my name. Or rather he knew that Jade had been my domme pseudonym and that I was in reality called something else beginning with N.

I texted him to that effect.

S: ‘Ha, yes, it did occur to me. But I planned on using my powers of clairvoyance to figure it out. N . . . hmm, let’s see. Natalie?’

N: ‘Nope.’

S: ‘Not Nefertiti?’

N: ‘Alas, no, something way more prosaic.’

S: ‘Nancy? Nadia?’

N: ‘No and no (oh, and it’s not ‘no’ btw ;) )

S: ‘As you can see, I don’t have a baby name book! Hmm . . .’

N: ‘Well, do you even need to know? I’m sort of amused by the fact you don’t. Let’s stretch it out a bit longer.’

I mean, I would need to tell him my name eventually. Or how else could he call it out?

Saturday arrived. What to wear? Since last weekend, spring had danced in seemingly from nowhere. I pulled out of my wardrobe a dress I’d bought the last time I’d gone to visit my family in Australia. It was backless, with a black bodice and a netted, dusky rose-print skirt. With its stitched-in cups, the construction gave incredible cleavage, and the back, a generous and provocative display of flesh. Shoes. Hmm, snakeskin heels? The colour of the rose stamen matched the shade of snakeskin. Anyway, I didn’t want to be too matchy-matchy and black was boring. And then there was an angora cardigan, with a plunging neckline, which fastened at the waist with a single satin button. Layered over the dress, the effect to my shape was of soft corsetry. It tied at the back with a luscious inky ribbon and begged to be stroked.

But really, I had no idea what Sebastian liked, or what he would like me in. It was still cold enough for stockings. Of course they went on, too. And black lace knickers, which could never be wrong.

It took me two hours to get ready properly for a date. But before I could prep myself I had to clean the house and my room. And change the sheets. It didn’t mean anything, of course. I was resolved not to sleep with him until the third date. They just had to be changed.

We’d arranged to meet at London Bridge tube station at 6.30 p.m. Prom prep, as Gina called it, took longer than I had anticipated. Twice. Twice I moved our meeting back. ‘Chronos has kidnapped me,’ I texted him. Would he know who the Ancient Greek God of time was? Let’s see. ‘Yeah, that guy’s always causing trouble. Not a problem. See you soon!’ So he was as smart as he looked. But was he always so genial, so laidback?

At the station, Sebastian was nowhere to be seen. Then there was a text message. ‘I’m right in front of the escalators, near the annex shop.’

Did I have to go and fetch him? Why couldn’t he come to me? He had me skivvying about after him already. I scurried through the station and took the escalator up to where I knew he’d be waiting. Suddenly a half-remembered feeling seized me. What? It was . . . wow, no, really? I had butterflies. I hadn’t felt like this since Christos.

I stepped off the escalator and scanned the station, spinning on my heels. I was on tenterhooks. Suddenly an arm clinched about my waist and reeled me round. It was him. Sebastian beamed at me, his blue eyes burning. He kissed me on the lips. More butterflies.

‘Shall we?’ He offered me his arm once again.

The pub was unusually quiet for a Saturday night. Sebastian held open the door. ‘Watch your step in those shoes.’ He smiled, first at me, then the shoes, then at me again. Did that mean he liked them? Did he have a shoe fetish?

‘What would you like to drink? Wine again?’

He’d remembered. Shame it wasn’t actually my usual. ‘Gin and tonic, please.’

He ordered that and a whisky for himself. The man at the bar gave him a stingy double and so I decided to turn on the charm to get him a top-up of the extravagant scotch he’d chosen. The double soon became a generous triple.

‘That’s enough to get me absolutely wasted. Thank you!’

Really? A tall, muscular man like him with his boxing- and fencing-honed body was wasted on three whiskies?

‘I don’t really drink any more,’ he explained. ‘I can’t paint when I do.’ He raised his glass.

I liked that. Dedication to the things that mattered to him. He was wearing the jersey he’d worn the night of Violet’s party and my eyes devoured once more the way it accentuated the hard and handsome outline of his chest and biceps.

As before, our conversation darted about as regularly as our eyes. We discussed the artists he loved and the ones I did, our favourite Greek myths, how little we understood about Middle Eastern politics and how much we loved living in London.

Sebastian had a real gift for exuberant impressions. Of rock stars, politicians, African dictators. ‘Sebastian, you’re better than me! And I was going to be an actor!’

‘Oh, me too, at one point!’

‘I blame it on my obsession with the eighties film
Labyrinth
with David Bowie in it. Do you remember?’

‘That film was amazing. If only for Bowie’s crotch. If I’d been a girl I would totally have crushed on Bowie.’

After two and a half hours together it became clear that we couldn’t have another date like this. Every question, every anecdote, every accidentally-on-purpose brush of my breasts against his biceps was biding the time before we finally had sex.

I turned to Sebastian and smiled. He smiled back at me, his eyes heavy with anticipation. I had really intended to wait. But I couldn’t. Why deny myself this? Why deny him? We wanted each other so much. And if he only wants to fuck me anyway, aren’t I just delaying the inevitable disappointment for myself if I stretch this to a third date? I focused on the rapidly melting ice in my glass. Finally, without looking at him, I said, ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’

‘Yes,’ came the reply, before the last word was fully out of my mouth.

I looked up at him. Those dimples again.

On the tube back, a bunch of boorish boys were disturbing the carriage. Sebastian teasingly dared me to chastise them. ‘I’ll step in if they turn on you this time, I promise!’ They got off before I cold think seriously about rising to him. Instead, I turned my ire to how infuriated I became with people that didn’t reply to my text messages. ‘Noted,’ he winked. We stood at the end of the carriage, not touching, just looking into one another’s faces, full of expectant lust. There were only eight stops to go until we reached my flat, a seventeen-minute journey with a nine-minute walk once we got off.

It may have been the longest journey home of my life.

When we finally made it to my bedroom, I kicked off my shoes. Sebastian stared at them again. ‘Those shoes are very hot.’

I laughed. I’d guessed correctly then.

Without being invited, Sebastian went over to the bed and lay down, his head propped up on the pillows. Ordinarily I might have been offended at someone’s presumption in my space but this time I couldn’t wait to join him, and settled myself alongside. He slid his arm around me, pulling me gently into him so that I had to lay my head on his chest. He smelled so fresh, I thought for a moment it was the laundered sheets. How could anyone smell so pure? As he heaved a sigh of contentment I could feel the muscles contracting and releasing across his chest, and out along his shoulders. Even just laying on his strong supple body was turning me on. He stroked my hair with expert ease. Finally, he spoke. ‘So, how do you want to be topped?’

Oh God. There, there it was. So he did want to dominate me after all. Every fibre of my body wanted to kowtow to him but already I sensed that our dynamic was built on something more complex than that.

‘Who says I’m going to be topped?’ I teased back.

He raised his eyebrows and stared at me for a moment, bemused. Then he got up and went round to the foot of the bed. He stood there, lavishing his eyes over my body for a few moments. Then he lunged at me and ripped down the bodice of my dress, exposing my breasts, caressing and kissing them roughly, greedily sucking at my nipples.

I ran my hands over his face, down the back of his neck, along the groove of his spine and then round and forward along his achingly athletic arms and torso, appreciating every sinew of hard flesh as it passed under my fingers. I clawed at his jersey and we freed him of it together. Around the top of his right arm were a series of electric-blue tattoos. I had never seen such artful tattoos before.

‘I had no idea you were inked! Intelligent men with glasses and tattoos do it for me every time!’ I told him.

‘Well, then I’ll make sure I wear my glasses next time!’

Next time? I couldn’t even think about next time. I was consumed with this time. I lay there drinking in his warrior body; his pale chest glowed in the lamplight, his massive inked arms threatened to heave me up and over his knee like that night I’d watched him haul up Violet, and so I was caught off-guard when he suddenly decided to fling up the skirts of my dress, running his fingers up under the fabric of my lace knickers. He looked up into my face as if seeking permission, paused for a few seconds, then, deciding he didn’t need it, yanked them down deliberately. Then, finally, he plunged his tongue into my wetness, moaning as he took that first taste of me. ‘You’re fucking delicious.’

I could only endure his licking for a few more seconds before I had to push his head away. ‘You have to stop, I’m going to cum,’ I gasped. ‘Oh, and that would be too terrible!’ he laughed, bearing over me and kissing my lips once more. His laugh was the wicked, sexy snigger that I’d first heard at Violet’s. It mesmerised me. When it came to this man, I had no resolve. But I wanted to make this last. Playfully, I pushed his face away with my inner thigh, then scrambled up to strip out of my dress. As I leaned forward to fling it off the bed, he wrestled with the rest of his clothes, whipping off his belt to release his fly. Trousers, briefs, socks and shoes all came off in a rabid tumble.