Page 74 of For Real

“Because,” I explained, “it’s part of me, and if I deny it or ignore it, it feels like I’ve had to give something up for someone else. Even if it’s something that some people would consider, I don’t know, unimportant in the grand scheme of love and desire.”

He grabbed my hand and gently uncurled my fingers. “It’s not unimportant.”

“I think it’s almost incomprehensible sometimes. The truth is, somebody could be perfect for me in every way, but if he didn’t want me on my knees occasionally, then I couldn’t be happy with him.” I looked down at our hands, at Toby’s skinny fingers and knotty knuckles, his pared-down, slightly ragged nails. I could imagine them on my skin. “That’s when I got into the Scene, where everything is about this.” Another tap on the chest. “And I realised I was going to have to choose, so I did, but it was just another compromise really.”

He twisted round so he was facing me, and since it felt a little odd to be in profile to him, I turned too. Perhaps this had been his plan all along, because he slid his spare hand round to the back of my neck and pulled me close, his gaze intent on mine. “Is that how you see me? A compromise?”

I swallowed.

Yes. And no.

And maybe. And no.

No. But perhaps that was just the answer I wanted to give him, and it wasn’t fair to lie.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He still didn’t flinch. “Because you aren’t any sort of compromise to me.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly. “You’re perfect.”

I blushed. I actually blushed. All because of a chaste kiss and a childish compliment. “Nobody’s perfect, Toby.”

“Well, okay, if you ever felt like actually believing in me. In us. That’d be nice. And, like, someday you could maybe make it easy, instead of making me fight for every scrap of you like you’re the fucking Somme.”

His thumb swept back and forth over my wrist. I hadn’t realised I was sensitive there, but my pulse quickened at his touch. “So not perfect, then.”

“You could work on it.” He smiled. “Wouldn’t take much. And then I’d have a sexy, clever, kind, and interesting guy who’d be willing to love me back.” Before I could answer, or—more likely—protest, he went on. “It doesn’t have to be this or that with me. Because all that stuff and all this stuff”—he tapped his chest, missing his heart as usual—“they’re the same, y’know. They’re just reasons I’m into you.”8

I couldn’t afford to think about any of that right then. Toby had too many ways of making me naked. I shuddered suddenly, remembering being on my knees for him, remembering wearing chains for him, suffering for him, begging for him. The wild light in his eyes. The way I made him gasp and moan and come apart, just by being helpless. By being his.

“All right,” I said.

He let me go, laughing. “Someday you’re going to stop being the Somme and be…like…Zanzibar.”

“Um, I’ll last thirty-eight minutes?”

“You’ll just stop fighting.” He leaned in and nudged my nose with his. “You can occasionally and voluntarily say something nice to me, you know. I won’t expect you to marry me after.”

I kissed him instead. Concession, apology, promise.

Afterwards, he grinned at me. “Hey, since we’re here, can I have another look in the magic box?”

I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, so we climbed off, and I unleashed Toby. I stared out of the window at the grey morning sky as he rummaged, trying not to pay too much attention to the clinks and thumps.

“Laurie?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Will you come back? I don’t have a fucking clue about any of this.”

Which was how I ended up sitting on the floor with Toby, surrounded by sex toys like the most depraved Christmas morning imaginable. Most of it, thankfully, was self-explanatory and Toby was a child of the internet age, so it never quite became a show-and-tell. But there was no denying that it felt good—some impossible, shiver-inducing mixture of anticipation, fear, and pleasure—to watch him there and imagine myself at the mercy of Toby and all these things.

“This,” he announced, “looks like something you’d use in the kitchen.”

Oh God, help me. “It’s not something you use in the kitchen.”

“Like one of those really complicated things people buy for separating eggs that never work properly because that’s what hands are for.”

I gave him a look. “And verily the Lord beheld Adam, who He had fashioned in His image, and thought to Himself, ‘I had better give him some appendages for the separating of eggs,’ and thus he gave man two hands for that purpose, and, lo, eggs were separated, and it was good.”

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