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NINE
If there wasone thing Jamie had become exceptionally good at over the years, it was walking and moving as if he wasn’t in pain when his entire body throbbed with it. As he crossed the campus of Royal University of London, his back and arse ached and his skin stretched with some of the remaining welts Sir had given him, but none of his colleagues would have suspected for a moment that he was anything other than right as rain.
Jamiewasright as rain, as far as he was concerned. He was happy on an inner level in a way he’d rarely felt before. The kink weekend had been a week ago, but he still felt the buzz of the whole thing. Sir had been everything he’d been searching for, and the wicked way he’d marked up his back and left his bite on Jamie’s neck had been the cherry on the sundae of everything he’d experienced in Shropshire.
And yes, he may have purposely worked out and kept his back muscles strained and aching on purpose to continue to feel the blissful damage when it started to fade, but it didn’t seem right for his body to forget when he didn’t think his mind would ever let go of how Sir had made him feel.
He had never really believed in instalove or any of the other easy explanations for attraction that his students came up with these days, and he still wasn’t certain he did, but Sir hadn’t left his thoughts for a week straight, and he was perfectly fine with that.
He’d spent the whole drive back to London last Monday with a smile on his face, reliving the thuds of the flogger as they’d hit his back and the grunts and sighs of Sir as he’d delivered each blow. He’d done his laundry and popped down to the shops while remembering Sir’s bright smile and easy laughter. And he’d lain awake in bed, stroking his cock and then denying himself release while remembering the perfection that was Sir’s toned and hard body.
He still hadn’t let himself come, even in the shower, since leaving Sir. As much as he swore that he was only submissive in the bedroom, that lingering doubt that he couldn’t get off unless Sir gave him permission provided a sweet little buzz that had kept the magic of the weekend going long after he usually left those sorts of things behind. He wondered if he could hold off until the Christmas retreat or if denial would—
“Croft. Croft, are you even listening?”
Jamie blinked out of his too-hot-for-company thoughts and glanced to his friends and colleagues, Brian and Alexandra, as they approached the Social Sciences building. His face heated when he found them both looking at him with knowing grins.
“He’s met someone,” Alexandra said, looking entirely too pleased with the idea. “Just like I told you, he’s definitely met someone.”
“That goes without saying,” Brian said as he stepped ahead to hold the door.
“You don’t know that,” Jamie said, ridiculously embarrassed and using his entrance into the building behind Alexandra to hide his reddening face.
“Jamie, I teach counseling and the Psychology of Human Relationships,” Alexandra said, waiting for him to walk by her side again as they headed to the stairs at the end of the busy hall of classrooms. “You’ve met someone.”
“I might have met someone,” Jamie admitted, rolling his shoulders a little so he could feel the remaining ache without being too obvious. He’d never told Alexandra or Brian about his kinks, and even though he trusted them, he didn’t want to press his luck on campus. “But my relationship status has absolutely nothing to do with joining the fundraising committee. Isn’t that what we were talking about?”
Alexandra laughed, as if she’d won a point because Jamie was avoiding her question, but before she could say anything, Brian said, “Exactly. Administration has stuck us on the committee because they think they need so-called young blood to bring in a different sort of donor to the university.”
“They have a strange definition of young blood,” Alexandra said as they reached the stairs. She was forty-three.
“Have you seen how old members of the administration are?” Brian asked with a wry laugh. “Those of us in our forties are young. And Jamie here is in his mid-thirties, which makes him a baby.”
Jamie grinned at the conversation, but his attention was only half in it. Walking up the stairs stretched his arse muscles and rubbed his bruises against his trousers. That made him smile and practically glow with happy memories. The fact that he wasn’t slinking around, praying no one asked questions and discovered his secrets, was telling.
He wondered what his Sir was doing right then? Had he gone back to his everyday life, as if the two of them hadn’t shared a world-changing weekend? What sort of work did someone like Sir do anyhow? If he knew Kit, and considering how fit he was, chances were that he was some sort of farm laborer.
Then again, he didn’t have the rough, calloused hands of a farm laborer. He might have been a little too posh for that, though his accent had been ordinary middle-class. And Jamie could have sworn Sir had mentioned living in London at one point.
His heart skipped a beat, as it had every time he’d paused to consider that they might meet up purely by chance somewhere in London. As part of the kink scene or at The Chameleon Club, if Sir was part of the Brotherhood, but perhaps just in passing on the street. But would he even recognize Sir? Yes, the man’s naked body and grinning, ever-so-slightly sadistic face would forever live in his mind, but the human brain didn’t always recognize people, even familiar people, when they were seen totally out of context.
“He’s away with the fairies again,” Alexandra’s voice dragged him back to the present.
Jamie blinked and turned to his friends with a sheepish look. “Sorry, what?”
Brian and Alexandra exchanged a look.
“We were saying we’ll have to get together for lunch once the first week of term madness dies down,” Alexandra said. “But if you’d rather sit out in the square, daydreaming about whomever has put such a lovely, moon-eyed look on your face, we understand entirely.”
Jamie laughed at himself and shook his head. “Sorry, I’m just having a hard time letting it all go. But yes, I’m up for any sort of get-together you want to plan, to discuss fundraising or whatever.”
“We could discuss this new infatuation of yours,” Brian said, crossing his arms and giving Jamie a flat look. “If it’ll help you to get over it and concentrate on work.”
Jamie grinned. Brian was a happily married, heterosexual man with two children, and he was notorious for losing patience with everyone’s gossip about romantic entanglements. Jamie was certain he loved it as much as the rest of them, though.
“I’ll check my calendar and make sure I have some time next week,” he said before waving to his friends and heading down the short side corridor where his office was located.
Brian had a point about him needing to focus on work, though. It wasn’t as if he had the sort of job one could just phone in. Not only did he have classes to teach, he had a full slate of advisees that had been assigned to him for the year.
