Page 43 of For Real

“I think it’s not true. But sometimes I…forget.” He sighed. “Don’t you ever worry about it?”

“One of the few advantages of getting old is that you come to realise some things just aren’t worth worrying about. I’m gay. Submissive, if you want to call it that. Masochistic, in my way. Some people like clay pigeon shooting or Coronation Street. What the fuck does it matter?”11

“So, what we did tonight…what I did to you…that was really, honestly, completely okay?”

Toby Finch and the Infinite Tenacity. I steeled myself for honesty, a blunt knife for a complicated knot. “More than okay. I wanted you to blindfold me. Or rather, I didn’t want you to blindfold me, but I wanted you to do it anyway. I wanted you to do whatever you wanted. That was what I wanted.”

He was quiet for a while, his fingers tracing idle patterns down one of my arms, making the blood dance under my skin. “I don’t know how I’d live with myself if I actually really hurt you.”

I should have been expecting that. Yet somehow I wasn’t. A badly healed crack in my heart split a little but did not bleed. There was only dust. “I hope,” I said softly, “it would be with me, rather than without me.”

“But would you still want me? Trust me?”

Would you believe I did? A shadow of the past. I closed my lips on that answer and chose another. I chose hope. “Oh yes, Toby, yes.” I tightened my arms about him. “There’s risk inherent in most things that matter.”

“Yeah, but most people aren’t tying each other up and stuff.”

“Physicals risks. Emotional risks. Who’s to say where the lines are?”

For a little while we said nothing. It was enough simply to touch and be touched, to feel the heat of him beneath my hands, the roughened patches on his skin and the smoothness of the rest, and softly ache.

“You really get it, don’t you?” he whispered. “Get me.”12

I should have told him I didn’t know him. That this was simply sexual compatibility. But instead: “I’ve had a long time to think about these things, and believe me, there are many ways of thinking, but the way you spoke to me at the club? You didn’t give me much choice.”

He gave a muffled little groan. “Urgh, don’t remind me. I was such an idiot.”

“You were irresistible.” The words were out before I could stop them. Utterly sentimental, none the less so for being true. I’d forgotten the aftermath of submission sometimes had the power to do this to me.

In answer, he slid a knee gently between my thighs and increased the pressure until I swallowed a groan. “How do I know you’re not just indulging me?”

I should have known he wouldn’t let me escape my earliest transgression. My first lie. I couldn’t have repeated it now, even if I’d wanted to. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was cowardly. And wrong. And…not true.” The merciless little bastard had got me hard again. And with no hope of release until morning. Unless I begged? God.

I caught the gleam of his grin in the darkness. “You’ll just have to prove it to me.”

His leg nudged at me tauntingly until resistance crumbled, and I began to move with him, desire mingling sweetly with despair. “Anything. I’ll do anything.” And just then, I meant it.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“God…Toby…”

“Something you want?”

“Getting to come might be nice,” I muttered.

He laughed and tucked himself in even tighter. “You’re extra tormentable when you’re grumpy.”

I gritted my teeth and lay there, anguished with wanting. His fingers skated lightly over my chest. Found a nipple to circle like vultures. I teetered, desperate to be touched, desperate to stop him. “Oh fuck. Fine. Please. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Please what?”

“Please let me come. I don’t care…how. Just…please. I really need to—”

“Nope.” Such awful, beautiful glee. “I just wanted to hear you beg. Wanted to know what it sounded like.”

“Did it live up to your expectations?”

“Well, it was kind of grudging. So I’d give it maybe two out of ten.”

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