No Ordinary Love Story: Sequel to The Diary of a Submissive (15 page)

I took a bite of sandwich to try and hide my reaction. I knew it was daft. I just had to work on working through it, if that didn’t sound all life-coach-tastic.

I’d missed what Charlotte had been talking about while my internal monologue had a bit of a meltdown, but my brain clicked straight back into gear as her sentence drifted into the kind of silence that seemed to inspire a response.

‘So do you fancy going? The dress code isn’t too formal, but you’d have to wear fetishwear.’

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I knew that anything that involved a dress code was not my sort of place, even before we got started on the outfits. I don’t mind fetishwear. I find some of it hot, but I’m not the sort of person who’d feel comfortable wearing those kind of clothes out and about.

She was waiting for me to answer. Balls. I tried to prevaricate. ‘Where is it again?’ I paused, realising how lame I sounded. ‘And, erm, when is it?’

Charlotte sighed. ‘The weekend after next, at a club in the city.’

I felt vaguely relieved. I am rubbish at lying. Really rubbish. Even the simple stuff, the ‘yes, Grandma, this jumper you’ve spent eight months knitting that isn’t the right size and is made of itchy wool, fits beautifully and I love it’ lies are beyond me. Thankfully I didn’t have to come up with anything. ‘I’m away for an old college friend’s hen do that weekend unfortunately. Sorry, you’ll have to go without me.’

Charlotte frowned. ‘Shame. Do you know if Adam is about? Maybe he’d fancy coming with us – there’s quite a group of us going. It should be a laugh.’

Adam had mentioned going to a fetish night with Charlotte previously; the conversation – when I found out they’d slept together – was one seared into my brain. He might want to go, and I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss if he did – we’d agreed to be monogamous and I trusted him – but I felt massive pangs at the thought of it actually happening.

Charlotte gave me a long look, the kind of look that was way too knowing.

‘You really like Adam, don’t you?’

I nodded and answered, possibly too quickly. ‘Yeah, of course I do. We wouldn’t be doing the kind of things we do together if I didn’t like him. And trust him, come to that.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I meant, Soph, and you know it.’

I feigned confusion. Charlotte and I hadn’t really ever talked deeply about emotions. I’d always given it a wide berth because with my past with Thomas it felt a bit like a weird conflict of interest – I deliberately gave them space. I gritted my teeth, wishing Charlotte had similar ideas.

‘This thing with you and Adam, it’s not like me and Tom, is it? It’s serious. It’s not just casual dating, a play arrangement?’

I stared intently at a piece of parsley garnish on my plate – honestly, who puts garnish on a sandwich? What’s the point? – and tried to school my features, not blush, not reveal anything. ‘Look, neither of us want the faff of anything serious. We’re just having fun, nothing more.’

The awkward thing was, we both knew I was lying. Much to my relief she didn’t call me on it, though. She just smirked a little. ‘I knew you’d get on well together. Tom wasn’t sure, but I knew.’

She sounded smug. But I let it pass. It seemed safest.

The problem with the realisation that you’re in love with someone is that you have this urge to blurt it out. It’s OK, I’m no Disney heroine, I’m not talking a big number with dancing animals or anything, but there were little moments
when I found myself about to say it, catching myself and then stopping.

And no, I’m not just talking post-orgasm. Although, yes, that is very lovely too.

The thing was, Adam and I were fast becoming a part of each other’s lives. We’d met each other’s parents (mine behaved for the most part, barring an embarrassing anecdote about a school play aged six; his mum got out his old school photos and he got so embarrassed he had to leave the room). He’d come to work events with me as my plus one. I thought about him at odd moments in the day and – if the text messages and emails were anything to go by – he felt the same. He made me laugh, he was supportive, fun to be around, easy company. I missed him when he wasn’t there. I was trying to be pretty laid-back about it, but the idea of disentangling our lives from each other for any reason made me feel rotten. Not, I hasten to add, that there was any reason that might happen currently, but the fact that the idea of it happening made me feel sick worried me. I know, I’m a complex woman. Or possibly a bit loopy. But the fact was, there was an Adam-sized shape slap bang in the centre of my life lately, and I loved that. Loved him, actually. But it still felt a bit precarious. Maybe my cautiousness was a weird self-defence mechanism, but I was constantly trying to divine if he felt the same way.

Of course, Adam being Adam – straightforward to the point of bluntness – he found his way to put me in the picture.

We were watching TV when I told him I loved him. I
know there’s probably a whole debate to be had about whether I should have said it first, whether it was too soon, yadda yadda yadda – in fact, if my mind had been more alert at that exact moment I’d probably have had the whole debate internally before I opened my mouth.

As it was, we were sat watching the news together – him on the sofa, me on the floor by his feet, not for D/s-ish reasons, just because it was comfy to sit with my legs stretched out.

I leaned my head against him, using his thigh as a pillow, and his hand came round to my shoulder, stroking my neck, his fingers beginning to gently massage a twinge I’d got earlier in the week that had been causing me trouble (he reckoned it was from having a handbag ‘the size of a small planet’. I pointed out he was an idiot, although I might then have emptied half of the contents into the bin and my desk drawer). As his fingers began to work the knot and we sat in companionable silence, I felt a surge of affection for him but also a sense that at this point there was nowhere else I would rather be in the world, and no one else I would rather be with.

Impulsively, I kissed his jeans just above his knee. ‘I love you.’

His fingers kept moving and his voice behind me was languid. ‘I know.’

For a split second, I felt a surge of horror. My internal monologue was beginning a panic along the lines of ‘fuck, he doesn’t feel the same, what does he even mean when he –’ and then I stopped. My brain registered what he’d said and I burst out laughing.

I turned my head to look at him and saw him smiling down at me. As I thought. ‘You arse.’ His grin got wider.

‘I love you too. Not least because you get my
Star Wars
references.’

I glared up at him, but we both knew it was mock fury. ‘You should be so bloody lucky. Otherwise you’d have got an elbow in the ribs at best.’

He leaned down and took hold of my arms, easing me up onto the sofa next to him. He leaned down to kiss me, but before he did his face stilled just inches from mine. ‘I do love you, but such empty threats are pointless.’

I stuck my tongue out at him and he leaned in, half to kiss me, half to catch my tongue between his teeth. He put his arms round me, and my hands snaked round his waist. The nibbling kiss deepened.

We didn’t say anything else for a while.

Even putting sci-fi-related protestations of love aside, my relationship with Adam was unlike any I’d ever had with a guy before. He was a loving and thoughtful boyfriend, kind and caring, but also the most challenging dominant I’d ever had because of his penchant for humiliation. As a kid my mum had often repeated ‘
sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me
’, but Adam was the D/s opposite of that (not that I intended mentioning that to my mum, whom he had charmed in typical fashion).

Our sexual dynamic included some pain but Adam took as much if not more pleasure and amusement out of messing with my mind, not least because the better he got to know me the easier it became to tie me in knots figuratively as well as literally. But it wasn’t all about the sex.
Obviously that was incredibly fun and, given half a chance, we jumped on each other at every opportunity, but I enjoyed the quiet moments, the chats between sexual shenanigans, as much as I did the orgasms. The more we got to know each other, the more we realised we shared a sense of humour, a distaste for relationship drama, similar interests, the same focus on family and friends. And the more time we spent together, the more time we wanted to spend together. Suddenly he was the person I wanted to tell if I’d had a crappy day, or drag out for payday beers. I knew he felt the same because – refreshingly – he told me. The next step was pretty much inevitable.

We’d talked about how we both wanted to get married and have kids one day (not yet, though, we were still taking precautions, although we swapped the condoms for a coil), how we wanted to live together at some point in the next couple of years, and then suddenly it happened.

His flatmate was buying a house so Adam had the option of finding new people to move into his flat or moving elsewhere. It brought our plans forward a bit but we decided to take the plunge, signing the lease on a nice two-bed flat convenient for both our offices. We were officially cohabiting. Our respective parents were thrilled for us, Thomas and Charlotte were incredibly smug that their matchmaking had worked (which made them helping us move in rather irritating at points, although they were very helpful putting together our Ikea bookcases), and we, well, we were full of the joys of the honeymoon period.

Even by our standards, in between figuring out who was paying which direct debits and whose turn it was to do the washing-up, we were insatiable for the first few
weeks after we moved in. We fucked in every room – although, admittedly, the flat was still on the bijou side so that only really took an afternoon – and revisited every kink and fantasy we could think of as the washing-up pile began to grow in the sink.

Actually moving in and unpacking was, unsurprisingly, slow work. We had a lot of breaks. I was on my hands and knees the first weekend we moved in, rummaging under the bed to try and make room for another box of clothes, when suddenly I felt his hands on my arse.

Before I really knew what was happening he’d pulled down my jogging bottoms – oh-so-alluring, I know – and knickers and was rubbing his hand between my legs. I stayed as still as I could, conscious that if I lifted my head up more than an inch I was going to hit it on the metal frame above me. Enjoying his ministrations, I found myself getting wet, and then suddenly his hand withdrew. I’d have felt frustrated except a second later he was pushing his cock inside me. He didn’t say a word, just started moving, pounding into me as I stared at the box I’d been trying to move aside.

He slowed for a moment, and I wondered if he was going to help me up so we could fuck on the bed rather than under it, but the next thing I felt was the tip of his finger, still wet from rubbing me just a few moments before, against my arse. He slowly slid it inside me, adding it to the rhythm by pushing it in when he pulled his cock out and vice versa. I don’t know if it was the surprise of the sex, the finger in my arse or the fact I was trapped under the bed but I found my excitement building quickly,
and pushed back hard against his cock and finger as I came.

He withdrew from both my holes as I tried to catch my breath, and before I even realised what was happening I heard a familiar noise and the sound of a groan as he came across my arse. Then I heard him stand, zip himself up and walk away. I pulled my trousers back up – partly because I knew he’d get a kick out of it when he realised and partly out of pure necessity – and finished organising the boxes in the bedroom. When I walked into the living room a few minutes later he was sat flicking through the local freebie paper and drinking a cup of tea. A second cup sat on the coffee table waiting for me. He looked up and winked at me. I smiled back and shoved at him to make room on the sofa for me, our unpacking done for a bit.

After a few days off work to unpack and settle in together we both had to return to our respective offices. While we’d deliberately chosen a flat equidistant from our workplaces he often worked longer hours than I did so I was home at least an hour before him each night. Whichever of us made it home first tried to make it as easy for the other person as possible – starting dinner and any other necessary chores to minimise the amount of the evening taken up by household routine.

After a while, though, I hit upon giving him a more memorable – and much more rude – homecoming.

One of the major misconceptions about being submissive is that it means being passive, waiting for someone to
do something to you, rather than taking the initiative. Adam had often commented on how proactive I was and how much he liked that, so, on one rather dull afternoon at work, I plotted a way to brighten his evening – albeit in a way that made me blush a bit when it came time to follow through.

Normally when he walked in the door he’d be greeted by a cheery hello, or possibly the sound of cooking or the shower depending on when I’d got in and how far into my evening routine I’d got. He’d never come home before to find me kneeling naked on the living-room floor, my mouth open, with ‘please use me’ written on me in that bloody red lipstick.

Trust me, it’s one thing being proactive, but when your boyfriend gets turned on by filthy degrading things, it’s harder to do those things to yourself than endure having them done to you. And not just logistically – finding the lipstick in his leather bag of tricks and then managing to write that across myself upside down was pretty tough. It was also difficult emotionally. My hand was shaking and I was blushing a little at the depravity of it all by the time he walked in. The theory of doing something I knew he’d find hot was one thing, but the practice of it was something different – kneeling there waiting for him to come home I began second-guessing myself, wondering whether this was a terrible idea and if actually he’d be a bit knackered after the day he’d had and rather just watch the news.

Thankfully he wasn’t.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ he smiled, as he walked across the room. I tried not to flinch as his shoes echoed on the hard wooden floor, suddenly feeling very vulnerable as he
stared at the lipstick across my chest – I knew that look was all about making me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed but I also knew that later I would be mocking him for it because it made him look like he was struggling with reading simple English.