Dirty Bad Secrets(85)

He smiled broadly. “Faye Devere is quite something.” I served, hard enough that he had to spring to the back of the court. “She’s spirited,” he added. “Original and playful. Quite infectious. I had a lot of fun with Faye Devere once upon a time.”

“I remember,” I said, channelling the jealousy into my game. It worked. A couple of points smashed home in my favour.

“So, what’s the landscape? Are you two a thing now?”

I was surprised at the question. James isn’t usually one for talking, and neither am I. I shrugged. “We’re hammering that out, too.”

“Nice. I’m sure you’ll be great together.”

I laughed, spinning my racket in my hand to loosen up my knuckles. “You don’t have to be polite.”

“I’m not being polite,” he said. “There always seemed to be something there, from an outside observer’s perspective. I think you’re both game enough to keep each other on your toes. That’s half the battle as far as I see it.”

“She’s keeping me on my toes, James, she’d have me twirling like a fucking ballet dancer if she could get away with it.”

He cocked his head. “And she can’t?”

I bounced the my racket against my knee, game forgotten, and James responded, backing up to the side of the court and folding his muscled arms across his chest.

To talk or not to talk. Fuck it, why the fuck not.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said. “Fire away.”

“Picture this. You wake up after your honeymoon, some day in the future, and your lovely Cat suddenly announces she wants a switch relationship. She wants you on your knees and begging for it, ready to bare your fucking asshole and take a decent pounding with a strap-on. What would you say?”

He laughed. “That’s quite specific.”

“Faye is quite a specific woman, James, she wants what she wants and she wants it now. Like I said, she’s a fucking monster.”

“And that’s what she wants?”

“That’s exactly what the dirty little cow wants.”

“What do you want?”

I propped myself against the opposite wall, and there was silence as I weighed it up, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. “I should want an easy life, to get on with running Explicit in a sensible manner, whether that’s together or not. I should just tell the snotty little mare that I’m not pissing submissive, and she can take it or leave it. I should want to tell her to get fucking lost after she bailed without so much as an explanation three years ago.”

He smiled. “And what do you actually want?”

“Fuck knows.” It was a lie, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted her. Every annoying, infuriating, zany, weird, childish fucking bit of her.

James must have sensed my difficulty in sharing. He discarded the squash ball, bouncing it around all three sides of the court, then crossed his legs, relaxing into his pose. “I can’t imagine for a second that Cat would ask me to switch. She simply isn’t that type of woman.”

“Quite.”

“But if she did, I would have to consider it carefully.”

I met his eyes. “You’d consider it?”

“I would definitely consider it. I love Cat. If she felt the need enough to switch that she asked the question, I’d be a fool not to consider it seriously. I’d want to consider it.”

His honesty surprised me. “But you’re no submissive, James, no more than I am. How would that work?”

“That’s what I’d need to consider,” he said. “Whether I could offer her that, genuinely. After all, if it’s not genuine, if it’s not authentic, there would be no point. She’d be better off finding someone else to fulfil that part of her, if it were that important, and I wouldn’t resent her that.”

“Don’t you think you’d just keep your mouth shut and take one up the ass for the team, to keep her quiet?”

He grinned. “No. Unfortunately, I don’t think that. You’ve been around, Andy, you know what it’s like to take on a scene with a submissive who isn’t really feeling it. We’ve all been there. The woman who thinks it’s what she wants, who’s playacting to be cool, who’s so full of bravado that she doesn’t let you anywhere near the part of her that really matters, the inside. That’s not what we want when we’re on top, we want the real deal. We want a sub who’s all in.” He paused, and I let him find his words. “If Cat asked me to switch and take a turn as her submissive, I’d want to apply myself fully to it, or not at all. I think it would do more harm than good to just go through the motions. She’d know I wasn’t feeling it, she’d know I was there in body but not in spirit, and that would only cause her frustration. I demand a lot from her as my submissive. I demand that she’s honest, and willing, and devoted, and that she applies herself wholeheartedly to the dynamic of our situation. Why should she expect any less from me if the roles were reversed?”