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  But I don’t. I don’t because even in my own zoned-out state I can tell she’s lost in her own rapture. She wouldn’t even hear me. ‘Tell me why you’re doing that,’ she says, as she stares at me crawling, squirming on the floor, her voice so ragged it’s barely recognisable.

  ‘For you.’

  ‘No, no, tell me why you have to move like that.’

  I change my path and start to drag myself towards her, meeting her eyes from way down on the floor. ‘Because I can’t get up.’

  I can tell how much this is turning her on and it arouses me to see her almost frozen to the spot with desire. My cock is so painfully hard now, burning against the carpet as I continue towards her.

  She stares at me in silence after that, until I reach her and run a desperate, wanting hand up her bare leg, trying desperately to reach her cunt. As my hand grazes her upper thigh, she takes half a step backwards, pulling deliciously just my out of reach. And I whimper. Begging. Helpless. Everything she loves.

  Then, suddenly, she growls like an animal and flips me over with preternatural strength, and we fuck until I feel sure she’s worn away the carpet beneath me.

  And after that, while we are still lying there, a sweating mass of heaving chests and smarting carpet burns, that’s when I say it. I don’t know why.

  I say, ‘I love you.’

  Mary pulls herself up and rolls on to her side to look at me. She’s frowning. ‘No you don’t,’ she says, quite curtly. She sounds like she is chastising me – her voice is all who’s-a-naughty-boy-then?

  ‘What?’ I complain, ‘I do.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you just like getting a lot of regular sex.’

  I’m taken aback by this reaction. I didn’t think Mary thought that of me. I’m really not that shallow. Really. I’ve had lots of sex before and I’ve never said this to anyone. I wasn’t hoping for a matching declaration or anything. But I could have done without a telling off.

  ‘No,’ I stammer, not sure what to say next, ‘no, well, not that I don’t like having lots of sex. But that’s not why. It’s just I do … oh, damnit, don’t make me say it twice. I just do, OK.’

  ‘Really?’ She smiles, a very slow, very bad, very oh-shit-what-have-I-let-myself-in-for smile. ‘Can you prove it?’ she says.

  I don’t know how to answer that. ‘Er, no, I don’t think so.’ I’m floundering.

  ‘Oh, I bet you could. I bet we could find a way.’ And I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the expression on Mary’s face has become even more chilling and thrilling.

  Did I just walk into something? Yeah, yeah, unfortunate turn of phrase.

  Mary

  In truth, I’m not sure what this relationship is, or how long it will last. I’m not even sure if I haven’t made a big mistake in not letting this just be the one-night stand it was probably meant to be. In a lot of ways David brings out the worst in me. He makes me bad. He buys me a ticket to the bad place and saves me a seat on the bus. But, whatever, I’m on board now. I might as well enjoy the ride. And it isn’t hard to enjoy it.

  I do feel guilty sometimes. I can’t help it. I find myself awake in the dark, worrying about whether what I’m doing to David is wrong in some way. Whether he really wants this. Whether he thinks that this is all he can get, so he is going along with whatever depravity I sling his way.

  Oh, but, his cock does say different. His cock tells me over and over how much he likes it. (And his mouth does once or twice.)

  But as for his declaration of love, I just don’t know what to think about that.

  So I don’t think about it. I don’t need to. I get on with other stuff. I work on my dissertation, I have sex with David and I go to work at the restaurant. That’s where Thomas comes in. Remember that bus to the bad place? I just got an upgrade.

  Oh, Thomas! Because, sorry though I might be to lose his sexy sneer, I’m guiltily thrilled that the previously super aloof Thomas is being friendlier and friendlier to me these last couple of weeks. Suddenly Thomas and I are best mates. A fact I am finding so ridiculously thrilling that it’s quite an embarrassment. I have my suspicions as to why Thomas has thawed a little towards me too, and they are very exciting suspicions, very exciting indeed.

  A couple of weeks ago, I came in to work after a rather fun time the night before, playing with David and some ribbons and some chocolate sauce. I’d had to improvise the recipe, with some help from The Domestic Goddess, but I was rather proud of it. I had ended up talking to one of the junior chefs about the entire thing. Well, initially we were just sharing chocolate recipes, but somehow I was so high about my own sexual prowess that the conversation eventually took in the S and M aspect too.

  I’d never been quite so loose-lipped about my sexual proclivities at work before. I still hadn’t talked about the wheelchair fetish thing, of course – I kept a tight lid on that – but I might have gone on and mentioned a few more of my kink-lite escapades with David – the bondage, the nipple clamps, that sort of thing. And I reckon some of that gossip must have reached Thomas’s perfectly shaped ears, because suddenly he was my best friend and confidante, desperate to hear more.

  And he did.

  Thomas started cornering me when I went out for fag breaks. Every time I slipped outside, he’d appear. And I seem to be smoking quite regularly these days, whatever I might be telling myself about only-under-duress.

  My increasing nicotine intake might have had something to with the fact that, ever since the day I spilled my sexuality to that chef, I didn’t need to be skulking out by the bins for more than a minute before Thomas would join me and start to fish for sexy titbits.

  And in the last few weeks, since I started having regular behind-the-bins confessionals with Thomas, he has told me some very interesting things.

  The first hint was tiny, but I’ve spent enough time spotting signs like this in men – signs that they might just enjoy the kinds of things I enjoy – not to miss this one. (Especially when it falls from the mouth of a babe as pretty as this.)

  The truth is, there are lots of men who, whether they admit it or not, really get off on being tied up, struck, ordered around, made helpless, all the stuff that gets me hot too – but they do fall into certain categories. And some are easier to spot than others.

  Although I can’t quite believe I didn’t suss Thomas’s secret deviant tendencies before. What with all that sullen-faced waiting of tables, taking orders with a moody grimace plastered across his face, he might as well have been carrying a sign saying ‘Won’t someone, please, give me the sound spanking I deserve?’ But that’s hindsight for you, I guess.

  And it really doesn’t matter that I didn’t pick up on that, because as soon as Thomas got confirmation of the way I kink he started becoming another kind of bottom-boy altogether. He switched to something a lot more obvious.

  (Which, deep down, I am still a little sad about. The old Thomas was more of a David-style secret-repressed-deviant-desires-type boy, which is much more my type. But I can’t complain. Because I would never, ever have hatched a plan to seduce old-style Thomas. New-style Thomas, however – too easy.)

  The first time it happened was about two weeks ago, the day after I’d had that conversation with the chef. Thomas joined me for a smoke by the bins, twisted the conversation round to sex like a pro, and confessed, between quick nervous drags, that it must be fun ordering David around in bed.

  I coughed a bit. I was a bit confused, because this was such early days that I hadn’t figured that Thomas even knew I was kinky. In fact, at first I jumped the wrong way and thought he meant that I took the upper hand because David was disabled. So I was about to splutter a correction, when Thomas, as if spotting the ambiguity, quickly added, ‘You know, tying him up and stuff.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, with some relief – and it was at this point that I realised that Thomas had never met David and so almost certainly didn’t know he was disabled. I was grateful that my ciggie sucking had held me back from a too hasty chas
tising. (Although Thomas would probably have enjoyed that.)

  ‘Yeah. All that stuff,’ Thomas said, his bravado suddenly seeming to switch into a kind of delicious bashfulness without any warning.

  So I took a chance. An easy risk, really. Hardly a risk at all. Or, at least, a very-likely-to-pay-off risk, considering the way Thomas was suddenly acting all deferential and trying as hard as he could to make me talk bondage-sex. ‘He likes me being in control,’ I said. ‘A lot of men like that kind of thing.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Thomas, looking down at the ground. Looking at his shoes and then looking at mine. My current shoes weren’t at all fancy. They were the brown clod-hoppers with the big heel that I wear a lot when I want to feel tall without comprising on comfort. (In truth I very rarely feel like compromising on comfort.)

  I really liked Thomas looking at my shoes, though. But I didn’t say anything.

  But right then there was a humungous crash from somewhere in the kitchens and our conversation died suddenly on the dirty concrete, where we crushed our fag butts under our oh-so-fascinating shoes, before rushing inside and into conscientious mop-wielding action.

  A few days later – not the next shift we had together, but the one after that – Thomas found me outside again, and this time he didn’t even go through the motions of taking one of my fags, he just said, almost demanded, ‘How did you know David would like being tied up?’

  ‘I don’t know. I could just tell.’

  ‘Can you always tell?’

  ‘I don’t think so. How would I know? I don’t think I’ve ever got it wrong.’ (Well, maybe once or twice.)

  Thomas went quiet. He bent over in the doorway, pushing his hands deep into his pockets and looking up at me. I remember noticing how dishelleved he was looking. His shirt was half untucked and his hair was even more wild and out of place than usual. He held my gaze for quite a long time, not saying anything, until I gave up waiting and put out my finished fag, before making to push past him back into the kitchens.

  But he stopped me, with one hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ve always wanted to try it,’ he said fast and nervy, with his face so close to mine I could smell the peppermint and coffee on his breath.

  I smiled and pushed him away from me, gentle and firm, as I continued past. But just before I broke physical contact with him, I whispered, ‘You really should.’

  The next time we were on duty together, things started to get really heated between us, bristly-prickly with sexual tension. He told me, almost out of nowhere, that he’d like to be tied up and spanked. As submissive sexual fantasies go his wasn’t the most imaginative one in the world, but Thomas is young and pretty so – much as I hate the kinky clichés – I forgave him his lack of originality.

  But afterwards I thought of David. Dear sweet endlessly fuckable David and how unimaginable it was that he should confess to fantasising about something like that.

  So, although David will for ever be my over-complicated dreamboy, these little chats with Thomas, well, they got me through the shifts. And they would never have been anything else – I swear, there would have been no evil plan – if it wasn’t for what Thomas confessed next. OK, I’m not saying it never crossed my mind. I’m not saying Thomas’s confessions didn’t make me wish and hope I’d find a way to help him fulfil his twisted dreams, but there was no way I was going to jeopardise what I had with David. No way, until…

  The next time we were taking a well-earned break, Thomas decided it was time for a little more share and share alike and told me that he thought he was a little bit bisexual – although he’d never tried anything with a bloke.

  And the minute he said that, my mind was racing. I couldn’t help thinking about how much Thomas looks like David. Thomas is a little younger, a little cockier and, of course, he doesn’t have David’s excess baggage. But they could almost be brothers. And that made me think very bad thoughts about the two of them.

  So I’m weak. But no one alive could resist the prospect of such prettiness squared. And right after that confession came the one from David, that he loved me. And so, when I asked him if he was willing to prove it, I had something specific in mind. And with Thomas apparently wanting to unravel his tangled sexuality, my plan keeps everyone happy. God, I’m practically a fairy godmother here.

  Thomas is working a double section today, because Stacey is off. (Party girl Stacey, in fact, has turned out to be something of a slacker.) Anyway, that means we’re full-on for the entire shift, so our little nightly chat doesn’t happen until really late. Meaning I have to wait it out before I get to make my very indecent proposal.

  Somewhere out in the dark depths of the town a clock is chiming midnight, and so I’m settling down with the other pumpkins, smoking a cigarette out by the dustbins. And, two drags in, Thomas appears holding a glass of water.

  He eyes up my fag packet with a greedy glimmer. ‘Hey Mary,’ he says, ‘can I have one of those?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, flipping open the pack and proffering it, although I know he doesn’t normally smoke. Then again I don’t normally smoke – well, only under duress, and I think this might well count as duress.

  I don’t do fancy. I end up just going for the most blatant tactic possible and inviting Thomas back to my place as soon as the shift is over. I don’t know what he thinks I mean by that. He doesn’t ask what David would think, even though it’s pretty obvious that I’m offering him sex. So I guess Thomas must have me down as such a stupendous pervert that things like monogamy are meaningless in my depraved little world.

  But it doesn’t really matter what Thomas thinks of my morality. I have my plan to consider. So when Thomas’s death-trap of a car judders to a halt outside my flat, I smile in the dark and say, ‘Actually, Thomas, I wonder if you could give me a lift to my boyfriend’s place.’

  ‘Your boyfriend? You mean David? Oh, sorry. I thought you wanted …’ His words fade away as he revs the engine, burying his confusion, about to pull away. So far, so good.

  We have to stop at traffic lights a few moments later and, with the car stationary, I feel confident I am not going to cause an accident when I say, ‘No, Thomas, I think you should take me to my boyfriend’s place for exactly what you thought we’d be doing in my place.’ I hate that sentence as soon as I’ve uttered it – the words seem to clump up inelegantly in my mouth. I wish I’d planned what to say better. The lights change just before I finish speaking and Thomas pulls away.

  I wait in the dark, listening to the appalling sounds coming from the engine of Thomas’s car. Thomas doesn’t say anything until he has finished manoeuvring and can afford to give me a questioning glance. ‘What?’ he says, which is fair enough as my last statement was rather befuddled.

  ‘Well,’ I reply, ‘you said you were curious about trying something with a guy …’

  I stop.

  I start.

  ‘And I thought things might be more fun with the three of us. You and David and I. The more the merrier and all that.’ Oh god, there really ought to be some manual of kinky etiquette somewhere that tells you never, ever to use the phrase ‘the more the merrier’ when proposing group sex. I really need to get a copy of that manual. I’ll check Amazon, first chance I get.

  But right now I have more pressing worries. I’ve said what I’ve said now, so all I can do is hold my breath. This is where it can all go so very wrong.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and say a quick prayer to Morrissey – would Morrissey even approve of what I’m doing? – ‘Oh please, please, please let me get what I want.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ says Thomas, after a few seconds of forever.

  ‘I am deadly fucking serious,’ I say, trying to lighten the tone by making an amusing mock-serious face, which is wasted on Thomas as we’re already out on the ring road and he has the roundabouts as well as the world’s most fucked gear box to distract him.

  ‘Wow, er, you mean I’m going to meet David and you’re going to do all the things you do with David but wit
h both of us?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Maybe. Probably.’ I’m being vague. Although I do have a plan; I always have a plan. But right now I’m more concerned with whether I can take Thomas’s excited query as a consent.

  And I don’t know, although Thomas makes it sound so weird and furtive, it really isn’t like that at all. Honestly.

  I give Thomas a couple of directions, showing him where to pull off the ring road and directing him into the sprawling suburban close where David’s bungalow squats in the darkness. Thomas’s breathing seems more laboured and deep. I wonder if he’s excited, if he has an erection. Would that be dangerous? I’ve never driven a car or had an erection so I don’t know how well (or badly) the two combine. But, what with that on top of everything else, I’m starting to feel quite glad we’ve arrived in one piece.

  Poor Thomas, having all this pervery sprung on him. OK, he knew all along that I was not in the sexual mainstream – that was always kind of the point. But, still, I’d pretty much given him the impression, however obliquely, that I was bringing him back to my place for one-on-one kinky sex, and then, next thing he knows, I’m pitching him into something rather more life-changing. If things go the way I want, memories will be made tonight. Dirty memories. The kind of memories that get dragged out and replayed on cold lonely nights.

  I guess maybe a brighter man might have figured out where I was heading a little earlier, put two and two together with the fact that he had given me far too much info on his suspicions about his own fluid sexuality. But not Thomas. So he’s still reeling right now. I reach over and give his thigh a little squeeze and then kiss him on the cheek as he creaks the handbrake on.

  Then Thomas says, ‘Are you sure David is going to be OK with this?’

  ‘Yeah. Um, well, I reckon.’ I pause for a moment’s consideration. Maybe springing this out of the blue isn’t the best of ideas. ‘I’d better text him.’