He traces my hip bone with his thumb. Slow. Absent-minded.
Routine.
Three months ago: detonation. Now it’s. What? Background radiation?
He shifts, pulls me closer. His chest against my back, lips brushing my ear, his cock softening against my arse. He breathes against me, warmth through his ribs. It’s good. It’s warm. It’s exactly what anyone would want.
So why do I want to claw through it?
‘Don’t you ever want more? We can’t… like,date. And I liked the rope thing.’
Out before I’ve signed off on it. My mouth, freelancing again. He goes rigid, every muscle tensing at once, like someone’s passed a current through the mattress.
Shit.
‘More.’ Controlled.
‘Christ.’ I turn to face him. His expression shifts, eyes going too still. ‘More ofthis. Of us, more… variety.’
The panic recalibrates.
‘Variety.’
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. Unlock it. Find the page I bookmarked three days ago in Lewisham while Ron was in the kitchen and Mum was watching Pointless, and I was on a sex toy website with the screen brightness turned down like a Cold War operative.
I show him.
The page. Plugs, vibrators, blindfolds, and a set of restraints in matte black. Design that takes itself seriously. His eyes move across the screen. I track him the same way I watch him solving problems.
Embarrassment. There, the flush rising.
Curiosity. The eyes are narrowing, going back to the restraints.
Arousal. He twitches against my thigh, involuntarily, a body betraying intent. Telling.
‘I—’ He stops. Takes the phone from me. Scrolls. He pauses his thumb on a prostate vibrator with a curve that suggests the designer understood anatomy at an intimate level. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘The internet, Laurence. It’s not a speakeasy.’
He shifts, barely visible. He moves his thumb to the plug, silicone, tapered, designed with a specificity I respect. He stares at it longer than the others. The calculation unfolds, risk assessment, and desire.
‘We could try.’ Quiet. The Lancashire vowels drop when his spine does. ‘Nothing too…’
I take the phone back. ‘I’m not asking for a dungeon. Just. Different.’
The plug I bought at seventeen from a shop on Lewisham High Road has its own story. The bloke behind the counter didn’t even look up from his phone, and I used it alone in my room, figuring out what my body did when nobody was watching. That’s a different vulnerability, and my quota’s reached for the night.
Squeezes my hip. Body a beat ahead of his words, as always.
‘Show me,’ he says. His eyes on mine, not looking away. The glasses off, he always takes them off for sex, ‘Show me what you like.’
No. Don’t name it.
I kiss him. Slow. Months ago, this would have been impossible; urgency ate everything. His hand in my hair. Mine on his chest.
I stop looking at the ceiling.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
