Master of the House (5 page)

‘I’ll do it,’ I told him. ‘But I have conditions.’

‘Of course,’ he said, totally alert now. ‘Just name them. Are you free later? We should meet.’

‘Lunch?’

‘Lunch. The Trout?’

‘You’re paying.’

He sighed. ‘All right.’

‘And I don’t necessarily mean for the meal.’

‘Woah,’ he said, and I hung up.

The Trout was a picturesque black-and-white pub on the river, with a mill wheel and a popular garden. Narrowboats and cruisers drifted by while I waited for Joss at one of the white-painted wrought-iron tables with a bottle of Vimto.

How many of those boating couples were happy? Any of them? All of them?

They had taken that chance, given their hearts, and now they cut through the waters of life with such ease, leaving only the smallest of ripples in their wake.

‘Am I late?’

He looked mouth-watering in a white linen shirt and trousers in a darker cream shade – perhaps a size bigger than they used to be, but a little extra weight suited him, gave him a more solid presence.

‘No, I was early,’ I said, sucking on my straw.

‘Oh, God, the ubiquitous Vimto,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a beer – can I get you anything?’

‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘You can have a lemonade or a posh fizzy water or something. I won’t talk to you if you drink.’

He looked tight-lipped and furious for a moment, then he shrugged.

‘Whatever you say,’ he said, then he stomped off to the bar.

Oh, why did I have this awful backwash of emotion for a man who sulked and threw strops?

His little fit of pique was forgotten, though, by the time he came back with a tall glass of something transparent and carbonated, and two laminated menus.

‘Give us a sip,’ I said, reaching for his glass.

‘I didn’t put vodka in it, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said, but he was lying. He had.

I emptied it on to the grass while he swiped at it, growling, ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re not my mother,’ under his breath.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘My mother was the opposite. “Just have a drink, Luce, lighten up and have a drink.” But I spent more of my teenage years than I care to remember cleaning up her vomit and her spilled cans of cider from the floor of the van. So, y’know.’

I bit my cheek and looked away.

He sat down.

‘I know,’ he said, all quiet and sympathetic now.

‘I’ll get you another,’ I said, and took my empty bottle and his glass back to the bar with me.

‘That’s one of my conditions,’ I said, returning with two San Pellegrinos. ‘Sorry, I didn’t ask if you wanted ice and lemon, but you’ve got them.’

‘Fine. I’ll pretend it’s gin. What’s one of your conditions?’

He took a sip of the water and grimaced.

‘You don’t drink when you’re with me.’

‘Lulu, I don’t need a saviour,’ he said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not that I care about you. I just hate the company of stinking, slobbering drunks. OK?’

‘That hurt,’ he said, bringing out the big-gun puppy-dog eyes.

I laughed.

‘Considering what you’ve got in store for me, that’s a bit rich,’ I remarked.

His cartoon sad-face turned into a lecherous smirk.

‘Mmm, fair point,’ he said, and I wished I could see what he was thinking. Or perhaps I didn’t.

‘So, do you agree to my condition?’ I said, hopefully knocking any visions of me locked into a pillory or whatever out of his mind.

He did the pensive gazing into the river thing for a few moments.

‘I can try,’ he said.

‘I’m serious. If you drink, no deal.’

‘You’re a tough negotiator.’

‘You haven’t heard the half of it yet.’

‘Oh, God.’

While at the bar I’d ordered a cheddar ploughman’s for us to share – they were legendarily huge at the Trout – and this arrived with due efficiency.

Joss buttered his roll and loaded it with cheese and pickle while I continued.

‘I spent a lot of time researching all this dominance and submission stuff last night,’ I said. ‘Some of it looked easy, some of it looked terrifying. It’s not something to enter into lightly.’

‘No,’ said Joss, swallowing his first bite. ‘I know that. I’m not suggesting that we throw ourselves straight on to the scene. I’d ease you into it – take it slowly.’

‘So it would be a while before I got my story?’

‘Some journalists spend years setting up their victims.’

I humphed at ‘victims’, but he was right.

‘I’d aim to be on our enigmatic friend’s guest list by Christmas,’ he said.

‘Christmas?’

‘’Tis the season to be kinky,’ said Joss with that crooked, wolfish smile I remembered so well. Well enough for it to have its traditional effect between my legs.

‘OK. A few months isn’t so long, I suppose.’

‘I’ll verse you in our ways. I’ll show you how it’s done,’ he said, his voice soaked in seduction.

‘I know how it’s done,’ I said, but my bolshy confidence was leaking out of me with every softly spoken word.

‘You’ve seen pictures. You’ve read accounts. That’s no preparation at all,’ he said. ‘You need to feel it – to know what it does to your head. There’s nothing like it, Lulu – the rush, the intensity of it.’

‘How do you know?’

I halved a pickled onion, thinking what an odd conversation this was to be having over a ploughman’s on a sunny day by the river.

‘What do you mean, how do I know?’ My question seemed to have thrown him.

‘You’ve been a submissive? You know how that feels?’

‘No. Obviously I’m talking about it from my side. The dominant side.’

‘All right, then that leads us to another of my conditions.’ I crunched on the pickled onion. No kissing for me today – the vinegary little chap was my protection against any foolish rushing of blood to the head later.

He seemed to know what I was thinking, because he took the other half of the onion and bit into it himself. Damn. That neutralised the situation. Kissing might still happen. Especially if I didn’t stop staring at his long slender fingers as if hypnotised. What those fingers had done to me … what they still might do to me …

‘Well, you’ve had no booze, so what’s next?’ he said snippily. ‘No sex?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ I said severely.

‘You’d sign up for the pain but not the pleasure? I can’t see how that would work.’

‘Wait, you’re getting ahead of yourself,’ I said. ‘My condition isn’t that.’

‘Good.’

So he expects us to have sex.
I filed the thought for further discussion later. First I needed him to agree to my next little stipulation.

‘I want you to feel what you’re going to make me feel,’ I said.

His eyes widened.

‘I’m not with you.’

I took a breath.

‘When we were together – before – I hated myself for being with you.’

He blinked.

‘Did you?’

‘Of course I did. After everything you’d done to me when we were kids, I’d just fallen into your arms like some idiot in a Mills and Boon. I felt like I betrayed myself, over and over, every time I let you touch me.’

He contemplated a crust of bread in a stormy manner.

‘Look,’ he muttered, ‘this is old ground. I’ve apologised for the way I treated you when I was a boy. I apologise again. Unreservedly. All right?’

‘Not really,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t think it’ll ever be all right. But I’m telling you this because it’s relevant to what I’m going to ask of you.’

‘OK.’

‘Every time we get involved with each other, you hurt me,’ I said. ‘You hurt me when we played together as children. You hurt me when we had our … summer thing … And now you want to hurt me again.’

‘But this is different,’ he said eagerly. ‘This is a contract. A proposition. Not an affair of the heart or a messed-up thing like the bullying.’

‘I know, but I don’t want to spend the next five months in a state of acute self-loathing and paranoia. I’ve done that. I’m not doing it again. So before I let you hurt me, I want to hurt you.’

‘You mean literally?’

‘Yes, I mean literally. I want you to know how it feels to be hurt.’

‘I do know.’

‘By me.’

‘Ah.’

He sat back, chewing on a slice of tomato.

‘Revenge,’ he said, once it was gone. ‘You want revenge.’

‘No, that’s not what I mean. I want you to feel something like empathy. And I think it would help me to trust you – because on all those sites I surfed last night, the main thing everyone ended up banging on about was the importance of trust. Without it, there can’t be a D/s relationship, they say. And how can I trust you, given our history?’

‘You know, that’s a very fair point,’ he said. ‘Very fair. All right.’

He stood up, holding out a hand.

‘Take my body and use it as you will,’ he said with a flourish.

People must have heard us, and I felt like an idiot, glancing around to see how many eyes were levelled in our direction.

‘What, now?’ I said.

‘Why not? No time like the present. I’ve got the afternoon free – have you?’

‘I, uh.’ My mind was in no fit state to be fabricating pressing engagements. I had the only man I had ever loved standing right in front of me, looking more delicious than anything on the Trout’s menu, telling me I had carte blanche to do as I wanted with him. It was bound to knock me a bit off course.

‘Come on then. Or have you lost your nerve now? Did you only mention it to put me off and put an end to the whole scheme? Well, I’m calling your bluff. You have to put your money where your mouth is.’

‘Right. Put my money …’ I stood up, haltingly.

‘Though, I have to admit, I’d rather you put your mouth where my mouth is,’ he said, devilishly low.

He wasn’t playing fair. Seduction was not on the menu. It was strictly an arrangement, nothing more. Perhaps I should have some kind of contract drawn up. No cutting the skin, no plastic bags over heads, no thieving of hearts.

‘Don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Flirt. It isn’t fair. It’s unkind. And it creeps me out.’

Actually, it didn’t. But I thought it might stop him if I implied that I found his oh-so-charming attentions repellent.

He had the grace to look a bit crushed, and tossed his hair.

‘Are you going to sit there taking pot shots at me all day or are you going to come home with me and beat me into submission?’ he demanded.

‘You don’t want pudding then?’

He shook his head and slapped his stomach.

‘Bad for the waistline,’ he said. ‘Got to look the part if I’m going to be getting the old leather trousers out of the wardrobe.’

‘God, you aren’t, are you?’

He grew impatient of waiting for me to stand up and reached down for my hand, grabbed it and yanked me out of my chair.

‘To be honest,’ he said, once I was standing close enough for him to murmur into my ear, ‘I usually prefer a well-cut suit. But you’ll be wearing leather for me. And feeling it, too.’

Jesus. A flash of pure electrical sensation lit me up, starting at my crotch. This was really on the cards. A realisation of the danger I was in blared in my head like a siren.
Run, Lucy, run.

But I didn’t run. I followed him to his car, leaving mine on the gravel.

The scaffolders were still at work on the east wing when we entered the Hall through the back-kitchen door.

‘Don’t want Fran to know I’m back,’ muttered Joss, leading the way through the hanging copper pots and pans and wooden worktops. ‘She’ll waylay me with a VAT registration form or something. I’m taking the afternoon off, as far as she’s concerned.’

‘Fran Woolley?’

‘You know her?’

‘Willingham isn’t exactly the metropolis, Joss, people do tend to know everyone in the village.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘Nearly thirty and still clueless about real life, aren’t you?’

He looked over his shoulder at me, frowning.

‘Are you saying that my life isn’t real?’ he said.

‘No. But, for God’s sake, don’t ever check your privilege. You’d never get to the end of it.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do. Look, I’m only joking. I’m nervous.’

I was pretty close to vomiting, actually, and after all the pickles I’d consumed this wasn’t an appealing prospect.

The back stairs were like old friends with whom I’d been unexpectedly reunited and, in just the same way, they brought a lot of memories to the fore as I climbed them behind Joss.

Chief among them was that first time, treading cautiously on the creaking boards, feeling that I was being allowed inside a sacred inner sanctum. And knowing that, by the time I came down, I would no longer be a virgin.

Joss had been holding my hand that day, looking down at me from time to time with ardent eyes. Oh, how I missed those ardent eyes.

He’d asked me at the bedroom door if I was sure. I wasn’t, but I said I was.

Certainty came when we fell together on the bed, all wrapped up in each other’s heat and scent, kissing as if we’d never get the chance again.

He was so sweet with me, so gentle and kind. He wasn’t the same person who’d whipped my legs with a bramble, he just couldn’t be.

I was so stupid, but at least I’d had the excuse of youth.

What excuse did I have now?

The upstairs landing was just as I remembered it, but shabbier. Everything had a faded, regretful look. Outside Joss’s bedroom door was a recycling box full of bottles.

‘Nice touch,’ I said. ‘Classy.’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, quite reflexively and without real malice, then he spun around to face me and said, ‘God, sorry. I don’t mean that. Don’t fuck off. Please.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, with a little grin. ‘I’ll make you pay for it.’

He smiled back, but nervously.

‘I’m sure you will. Anyway – enter the palace of delights.’

The palace of delights, also known as Joss’s bedroom, had seen better days. The four-poster bed was still splendid and glamorous, but the duvet was on the floor and the antique bedside table overflowed with clutter.

I picked my way over a discarded dressing gown and slippers, aiming for the window.