nothing like that.’
My ears burned. They must have been bright red. I could always put it down to the vigorous activities we’d recently engaged in, but somehow I didn’t think he’d fall for it.
‘Oh!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Online dating. Meeting strange men off the internet? I’m right, aren’t I?’
I stared at my Ripper Street wallpaper. The lawmen of Whitechapel stared accusingly back out at me. They would have guessed it by now, I bet.
‘I’m right,’ said Tom, sitting back with a self-congratulatory grin. ‘Oh, Foxy. You haven’t resorted to Plenty of Fish, have you? You only had to call me.’
‘No,’ I said crossly. ‘Wrong again. It’s not online dating…not exactly, anyway.’
‘Wife swapping? Sex dungeons? A cam girl! Is it a cam girl?’
‘No, but you weren’t far off with one of those.’
‘Ooh. Come on. You might as well tell me or I’ll carry on making wilder and wilder guesses. You won’t shock me, I promise. You probably won’t even surprise me.’
He winked and I squirmed in my seat.
‘You think?’ I said.
He took hold of my hands and held them tight, looking seriously into my eyes.
‘I think,’ he said quietly. ‘So, here’s my theory. Would you say that you might perhaps be a little bit…kinky?’
I held myself still, not daring to breathe. The only things that might have moved were my pupils, which, I’m pretty sure, were dilated as fuck. If they were, they’d have matched his. He looked positively brimful of lascivious curiosity.
‘What makes you say that?’ I whispered.
‘I’m a journalist. I pick up on clues,’ he said. ‘The corset, the Victoriana, the subtle hints in the way you kiss…’
‘Really? It’s that obvious? It can’t be!’ I was horrified. I might just as well have been walking around town with a billboard marked SUBMISSIVE, if he was right.
His grave expression dissolved into something more puckish.
‘Nah, I’m kidding you. There’s, uh, a book in your bedside drawer, underneath the thesaurus. I spotted it when I was getting the painkillers.’
‘Oh.’ I smote my brow, cringing. How could I have forgotten? ‘Right.’
‘Right.’ His eyes danced with amusement. ‘And don’t tell me it was a present, or came free with a magazine, because you’ve admitted it now. Just tell me one thing. Are you top or bottom? Or do you switch?’
Interesting that he was so free with the terminology, but perhaps he’d just read one too many Fifty Shades articles.
‘I’m not a Miss Whiplash type,’ I said, unable to say the words ‘I’m a bottom’ to the most attractive man I’d ever got near.
‘No? You prefer a Mr Whiplash then? Sorry. I don’t mean to be flippant. Honestly, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Like I said, it hardly comes as a shock. More a…pleasant surprise.’
Pleasant? Was I dreaming? And he had said that thing about putting me over his knee. It had been bait! He’d been fishing for a confession, not just larking about.
‘Really? Why’s that?’
He cupped my cheek with one hand, stroking it, lowering his face to mine.
‘Why do you think?’
‘You…?’ The sentence remained unfinished. I could only ask the question with my eyes.
‘Let’s just say I enjoyed binding your ankle a little bit too much,’ he said. ‘I found myself looking for a bedpost to tie it to.’
I laughed nervously. ‘Perhaps I should invest in a four-poster then.’
‘Perhaps you should.’ He kissed me and the tearful feeling came back. Could this be real? I felt as if I were tottering on the brink of something potentially life-changing, for good or ill. There was danger inherent in letting him so far inside me, but also the potential for a new level of fulfilment.
He laughed, breaking the kiss and rumpling my already rumpled hair with two long fingers.
‘You should look at yourself,’ he said. ‘What a picture. Is my eyeliner as smudged as yours?’
I smiled. ‘Pretty much.’
A beat of silence followed, into which too many questions swarmed, each eager to get to the front of the queue. He got his in first.
‘So…have you done much of this kind of thing then?’
I shook my head.
‘No,’ I admitted, screwing up my face apologetically. Perhaps he was after an experienced player and this would be goodbye. ‘Just never seemed to…come up…You know?’
His eyes shone like blue crystals.
‘But you always wanted to?’ he said.
‘Yes. Always. What about you?’
‘I’ve smacked a few arses in my time,’ he said. ‘But it’s never been serious. Just part of the rough sex fun. I’ve always been interested in taking things further, but never wanted to freak anybody out by showing them the extent of my perversions.’
I blanched a little at that. ‘The extent of my perversions.’ It sounded a bit sinister.
‘So, uh, what is their extent?’ I asked, trying to sound casual while my brain begged him not to mention knives or suffocation.
‘You look scared,’ he noted with a self-conscious chuckle. ‘Don’t worry. Your book takes it a little further than I’d go. I’m pretty much a chapters-one-to-five kind of guy.’
I covered my sigh of relief with a laugh.
‘Right. Chapter six is where it starts getting into the piercing party scene. You wouldn’t go that far?’
‘Well, probably not. Though I never say never.’
‘Pony play? Adult baby?’
He was laughing now. ‘Enough, enough, now. I’ve told you. Chapters one to five. Read it again if you’ve forgotten what they cover.’
But I didn’t need to. I remembered well enough, and the memory made me glow.
‘So. This blog then.’
The change of tone and subject was so abrupt I had to force my mind back to Mia Culpa and her disappearance. She had been all but forgotten in the excitement of shared deviance and all the delightful implications.
‘Oh. Yeah. Well,
