‘No more kitchen for me.’
‘Fantastic. Well done.’ I want to cry. I think I’m going to. ‘I’m so sorry.’ My voice cracks.
He pushes the hot chocolate towards me. ‘Drink some.’
The marshmallows stick in my craw.
‘One problem I have,’ he continues, looking gloomily at the table. ‘I need to make better my English. I have plan to ask you if you can help me. Evenings, maybe. But now, I don’t know.’
‘Oh,’ I say again. My oh-saying skills are on fire today.
‘You have bad idea of me. I have disappointment.’
‘I don’t – I never did. I just thought it was only fair to let you have some freedom. You’re going to dominate all these strangers anyway. I don’t have any claim on you.’
‘I need to understand this, Rosie,’ he said, leaning forwards. ‘You are saying that you like me a lot. This is right?’
‘God, yes. I really do. I …’ No, better not say that. Hold back.
‘There is fire, yes, for you and me? The sex, it is very good?’
‘You know it is.’
‘And we both are enjoying the kink?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So, you like me in all this way. But you also want me to fuck other girls and leave you alone? This is what you are saying?’
‘No. I’m not really saying that. I only said that because I thought that was what you wanted. Is it?’
‘Not at all. I want you.’
The sudden declaration takes what little wind I have left from my sails.
‘Really? As a submissive? A sex partner?’
‘Of course.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘But more than that too. I mean, you know, we go to a movie and so on. Meet my friends, I meet your friends.’
‘You never really said …’
‘No, because, look at me, Rosie.’
I do. It’s no hardship, but he seems to think he gestures towards something less than desirable. Weird.
‘What I have got to give you? I am poor, I am foreign, I am man who has nothing.’
‘I’ve never seen you that way. Not at all. To me, you’ve got everything.’
At last the anger seems to burn off and a genuine smile breaks out from behind the clouds. ‘See, that is why you are special to me. And you like me for myself.’
‘I think Trixietots and O might do too, though,’ I say, unable to stop the mischievous thought tripping off my tongue. ‘To be fair.’
‘No, no, they like me because they think I am a dom.’
‘You are.’
‘Thank you. I don’t think I can be professional though.’
‘Really? Why not?’
‘Like you say, to do this acts is very emotional. It works for me and for you because we love each other.’
My heart swells. That word. And now he’s said it, yes, it’s out there and it can’t ever go back in.
‘I think I can’t do it to a girl I don’t love.’
‘You only hurt the one you love.’ The thought is ridiculously cheering. I find myself smiling again.
‘That seems a little bit mad, yes? But I feel it in my heart.’
‘Me too.’
It’s as if a loud, stormy movement of music has given way to peaceful harmony. We are back. We are lovers. We love each other.
‘So, Rosie,’ he says, after spending a moment clasping my hands in his.
‘Yes?’
‘You have a bad idea of me and you try to break up with me. I don’t think this is good.’
There is a particular tilt of his head, a particular look in his eye that hints at what is coming. I shiver and squirm in my seat, my throat suddenly dry.
‘I’m very sorry,’ I say softly, adding, even more quietly, ‘sir.’
He shakes his head. ‘Apology is good, but not good enough. And, how lucky, I have booked the dungeon. Come with me.’
Chapter Nine
I’m not dressed for it, not today.
If I hadn’t been full of the resolve to end things with Dimitri, I might have gone for a skirt, stockings, something he could flip up or tear off with the greatest of ease, but I am wearing jeans and a fleece-lined hoodie. Not appropriate dungeon-wear at all.
Somehow this skews my experience. I feel like a tourist stumbling on to a film set instead of a submissive. Or perhaps I’m still dazed from all the revelations. Either way, I can’t quite connect with my kink.
Dimitri, having walked me down the staircase with a hand on my shoulder, lets go of me to conduct a thorough search of the implement store.
‘What is best,’ he mutters under his breath, ‘for a girl who has no faith in her master?’
Her master. That does it. The hoodie and jeans melt away from my consciousness and I feel naked, small and ashamed. And very turned on.