And he takes. All he wants. With a muttered obscenity he comes. And, greedy little sub that I am, I come again as I feel the familiar warm wetness of semen dribbling from me. He forces my legs higher, wider, for his total possession. He holds me still for a few moments as he swivels his hips, grinding every last pulse of sperm out of his body and into mine and I instinctively clench around him in welcoming acceptance.
At last he drops my legs, still holding his own weight on his arms and his cock still planted to the hilt. He looks down at me, briefly dropping a kiss on my forehead before rolling to one side. He takes me with him so I end up in my most familiar post-coital position, draped on top of his hard body. He makes no move to withdraw his cock, and I see no reason to either. So we lie there, both totally spent. And it is there that we sleep.
Chapter Eight
We are so normal. So bloody ordinary as we perch on tall stools at Nathan’s breakfast bar, enjoying a snatched breakfast of croissants and coffee before we both leave for our respective day’s business. Nathan is immaculate as ever for his office environment, his charcoal grey suit neatly pressed and his lavender and grey striped shirt a perfect match for his pearl grey tie. His shoes are polished to a brilliant sheen, as ever. His hair, still damp from the shower, is swept back into his customary businesslike ponytail. His jacket is slung over the arm of the sofa, scene of last night’s initial seduction, and his briefcase is waiting by the door.
I’m no scruff myself, as it goes. Not quite up to Nathan’s standard of sartorial excellence, I am still more than presentable in an olive green, mid-calf-length skirt and peach cowl-neck top. My black, heeled pumps, retrieved from the foyer by Nathan when he first got up this morning, are dangling from my toes as I stretch and flex my feet. I feel relaxed, contented and I smile privately to myself, contrasting last night’s heady debauchery with this morning’s restrained efficiency. Shy suddenly, I peep up at Nathan. He winks.
God, I love this man.
“I’ve got a meeting at eight so I’m getting off in a minute. I’ve got meetings scheduled all day, sweetheart, so no time to meet for lunch. More’s the pity. I’ll see you back here around half five, though.”
I shrug. “No problem. I’ll be at the uni all morning anyway and I’ll probably hit the shops again this afternoon. Might even give Damien a ring to see if I can get him to squeeze me in for a quick trim.” My hair is showing signs of recurring unruliness. Can’t be having that. Especially with my nether regions so beautifully smooth and tidy again.
“Sounds like a plan.” He downs the last of his coffee and gets up to dump his cup by the sink. Grabbing his jacket and shrugging into it he comes back over to me. Taking my face between his palms he kisses me, soft and lingering. “Till half five then. Have fun, gorgeous.” And he’s gone.
I take my time over finishing my breakfast, then help myself to more coffee, which I take onto the outside decking to drink. The early autumn sunshine is still warm and I lean on the rail, watching early morning commuters making their brisk way across Clarence Dock. It’s only seven thirty so not that many people are around yet. I sip my coffee and enjoy the view. I even stop off for a chat with the life-size sheep. They seem incongruous here, would be much more at home at Black Combe. I once pointed that out to Nathan who simply said that there were more than enough sheep on the moors but a distinct shortage here in Leeds. So here they stay.
I’m not due at the university until ten so I’m in no rush to leave. I potter around washing up our breakfast things then grab another coffee as I flick through today’s
Guardian
looking for the crossword. Nathan has a standing arrangement with the door staff that when he’s in residence they deliver a copy to the apartment. He was going to shove it in his briefcase for later but I scrounged it from him. I dawdle over the weird workings of Araucaria’s twisted logic for half an hour or so before heading for the bathroom to finish my daily ablutions.
I phone Damien as soon as the shop opens at nine. Needless to say, he’s fully booked but I plead until he agrees to shoe-horn me in at four thirty for a trim. I make a mental note to text Nathan to let him know that it will probably be six or six thirty before I’m back. By quarter past nine I’m ready to go, so, grabbing my oversized bag containing my notebook, Nathan’s iPad, which he’s agreed to let me borrow until I’ve time to get my own, and my other bits and pieces, I find myself out in the foyer heading for the lift doors. I reach into the pocket of my skirt for my phone, intending to text Nathan, just to let him know I love him and that I’ll see him by half past six. It’s not there, and I remember getting it out when I was grappling with the crossword to Google Russian tryptyches. Don’t ask.
Using the key card that Nathan shoved at me across the breakfast bar this morning I let myself back in and rush across to the dining table. My phone is there, hidden under the neatly folded newspaper. I grab it and head for the door again.
I needn’t have bothered thinking of texting—I can hear footsteps padding across the foyer. Nathan must have managed to squeeze a few minutes out to nip back upstairs and wish me luck on my first day in my new department. Smiling in anticipation I run to the door as it opens.
To find myself facing a perfect stranger.
And perfect sums her up quite nicely. Tall, slim, curvaceous, platinum blonde. Her grey silk sheath dress clinging to her luscious body. This paragon of female beauty is at least ten inches taller than me, even in my black heels, and immaculately made up even though it’s still only just after nine.
And she’s in my home.
“Who the hell are you?” The words are out, hostile, confrontational. Every instinct tells me this woman is not good news. She advances into the apartment, her perfect deportment more of a glide than a walk, and looks down her exquisitely straight nose at me. She smiles, displaying a faultless set of brilliant white teeth.
No doubt cost a fortune
, I think to myself uncharitably. I hate her. I’ve no idea why, but I very definitely do.
I stand my ground, determined not to let her intimidate me. Oddly, I don’t feel so much as a flicker of fear, but my loathing is coming off me in waves. If anything, she seems amused by me, a sneering smile plastered across her delicately glossed crimson lips.
“I’m Susanna. Is Nathan about?” She cranes her neck, and although something tells me she knows quite well he’s not here she’s making a show of looking around the apartment for him. As if she has every right to.
I don’t answer her question, and go straight on the offensive. “I didn’t invite you in here, so get out. Now.”
She shrugs, ignoring my suggestion that she bugger off. She strolls elegantly past me, heading straight for the bedroom. Nathan’s bedroom! Christ, it’s clear that she knows her way round.
“I’ve got my own key, thanks. Nathan likes me to just drop in when I’m in the area.” She opens the bedroom door, leans in to check. Does she think I’ve hidden him in there? Got him chained to the bed, maybe?
She turns to me. “Oh well, tell him I called. And that I brought this back.” She reaches into her beautiful, beige, soft leather, clutch bag and pulls out a silk tie, very pale grey marbled with light purple. Very Nathan.
“A little souvenir from when I was last here. I know it’s one of his favourites, though, so I thought he’d like it back before too long. I’ll just collect my earrings while I’m here.” Shoving the tie into my hands she turns and strides into the bedroom, straight over to the bedside table on the side I usually sleep on. She opens the top drawer and reaches in. Clasping something in her closed fist she saunters back towards me, stopping by the brown leather settee to delicately slide her hand along its back. She looks straight at me, suddenly pursing her deeply coloured red lips and giving a little mock hiss of pain as though in mutual commiseration. Her point made, she brushes past me as she heads back into the lounge. I stand in the doorway, furious, helpless, watching her every move. Perching herself casually on the arm of one of Nathan’s sofas she opens her palm to show me the delicate gold and pearl earrings clutched in her hand.
“They were my mother’s. Huge sentimental value,” she simpers, her smile dazzling. “Nathan always likes me to take them off because they’re uncomfortable when he blindfolds me. I can’t bear to be parted from them for more than a couple of weeks so I thought I’d pop over and pick them up. Anyway, got to be going. Tell Nathan I sent my love, and I’ll see him soon. Ciao.”
Her damage done, she turns on her heels and marches out, waggling her fingers over one shoulder at me as she walks nonchalantly away.
For a few moments I stand, transfixed in stupefied silence, looking into the space where the undeniably lovely Susanna had been as though there was a real danger that the hateful apparition might somehow reappear. Her careless words rattle around my head like ricocheting bullets, shattering my world. Ruthlessly. Totally.
‘I’ve got my own key.’ ‘When I was last here.’ ‘When he blindfolds me.’ ‘A couple of weeks.’ As the awful implications sink in I feel sick, and dive for the bathroom. I manage to reach the loo before I throw up and proceed to heave my croissants and three cups of coffee down the pan.
At last my stomach stops heaving and churning, and I feel it may be safe to pull my head out of the toilet. I sit on the floor of the bathroom, tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying, but suddenly I’m sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t bother to hide my face in my hands. I don’t reach for a tissue, or even a chunk of toilet paper. I just let the grief flow.
The bastard. The absolute lying, cheating, utter bastard. The one thing, the only thing I bloody asked of him. He promised me. I asked him if there were any others, any other subs, and he promised me I was the only one. And I believed him. Like the naïve little fool I am, I actually believed him.
But he lied. He didn’t mention Susanna. And how many other ‘Susannas’ are there? How many other luscious, sexy subs popping in with their own keys, leaving their earrings in his drawers and borrowing ties? How many others who know their way around this apartment as well as I do, better probably? How many others who know exactly what the brown leather bedroom sofa is for?
I feel sick again, but there’s nothing left to throw up so I stay where I am, rocking myself in my misery, drowning in my pain and humiliation and cursing my own gullibility. He wanted to fuck me. He said so enough times. He’d have said anything, told me anything, to get me to open my legs for him. And I totally fell for it. If he’d been honest about his other women, his need for variety, I’d have accepted that. Possibly. Or at least I’d have had a choice. I gave him my virginity never expecting a long-term commitment from him. But he told me I was special. He told me he loved me. And all the time he was fucking Susanna as well.
Never one to be sparing in my misery I turn over the events of the last few weeks in my mind. When did he…? When could he have…? I remember that night he phoned me to say he was on his way to the airport to catch his flight to Ankara. It was a Friday evening and I did think at the time that it was odd to go then. Why not Sunday, or Monday morning when the construction site would be open and he could meet with his associates in Turkey? But no, he said he needed to go on Friday evening. Much more likely he was spending the weekend here in Leeds, with Susanna or someone else. Even over the last three weeks he’s been over here frequently, admittedly coming home to Black Combe most nights. But not all. He’s had plenty of opportunity, and it’s obvious that he’s been taking those chances when he could.
The shit. The cheating, lying piece of pond scum.
Leaning my head back against the wall I draw in deep, wrenching breaths, struggling to recapture my shattered soul, regain some sense of self and self-worth. Through the red and black mist of pain and jealousy I try to think, work out my options. What to do? What the hell to do now?
He’s only six floors below me. I could march into Darke Associates and demand an explanation. Yeah, like that’d work. Or I could humiliate him, like he’s humiliated me. I toy with the tempting notion of bundling all his naughty, kinky little gadgets in a bag and taking them down to his office. I could dump them on his conference room table, hopefully in front of all his business associates. With a card saying ‘Love from Susanna’. Or I could shred his clothes, cut them up with scissors and leave them in a pile on his bed. A lesser mortal than me might even piss on them. Or, most satisfying of all, I could pretend nothing’s wrong, persuade him to stay here another night, and cut his dick off while he’s asleep. With scissors.
But I’m not doing any of that stuff. All I’ve got left is my pride, my dignity. And that’s pretty thin on the ground at this moment. So I’m cutting my losses and I’m getting out of here. If my sanity’s still intact, and I’m not at all convinced at this precise moment that it is, that’ll just have to do.
I manage to haul myself to my feet. Catching sight of my ravaged face in the mirror over the sink I lean on the basin and contemplate what to do to set myself to rights. The image of dumping that bag of sex toys on Nathan’s conference room table comes to mind again, but I shove that tempting notion aside and turn on the cold tap. I splash water on my face and clean my teeth. The improvement is marginal, but I call it a draw and stagger out of the bathroom.
I take a few minutes to empty the few things that belong to me from the drawers in the bedroom and stuff them in my bag. It’s not much—a change of underwear, a hairbrush and a copy of
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
On second thoughts, I toss the book back on the bed. I dump Nathan’s iPad next to it along with my key card—I want nothing of his. I fold Susanna’s tie neatly and place that alongside the rest of the stuff on the bed, and I head out of the door once more.
It’s only been an hour since I last stood in this foyer, and in that time my world has shifted on its axis. If I hadn’t forgotten my phone, if I hadn’t decided on impulse that I wanted to text Nathan and gone back to get it, I might have missed Susanna, might never have known what a shit he was. And how gloriously happy I would have remained in my ignorance.