For Real (Spires)

9.4

“Need?”

“It’s been about half an hour.”

I stretched—and winced. I was going to ache. But I couldn’t lie to him. “I–I don’t…need—”

“Good.” He smiled up at me, sleepy-eyed, soft-mouthed. “I like you like that, and I still have to make the meringue.”

“Oh God.”

He tipped his head back and kissed me under my chin. “Besides, I want to reward you.”

“By leaving me tied up on a table with a hook up my arse?”

“Pretty much.” He slithered down onto the floor.

“I’m sure this sort of thing is against all food hygiene regulations.”

“I’ll wash my hands really carefully.” He took the cup back to the sink and scrubbed himself thoroughly before taking his pie crust out of the oven.

Once again, he talked to me about what he was doing, but I was too far gone, too deep, too high, to be able to hold on to much of the meaning. There was just the rhythm of his voice washing over me, keeping me close.

His lemon filling was the colour of sunshine as he poured it into his golden pastry crust. And whatever went into meringues, the making of them was a vigorous business. The thin muscles of Toby’s mixing arm stretched and flexed.

“You seriously need to invest in an electric whisk. I’m getting wanker’s cramp here.”

But through determination and some strange alchemy, what had started as a bowl of thin white liquid thickened and formed glossy Alpine peaks. A few minutes later, Toby’s lemon meringue pie was fully assembled, and he was putting it back into the oven.

“The trick,” he explained, “is not letting your curd get cool.” He put the two bowls down on the table beside me. “You sometimes get this weird wet layer between the lemon and the meringue, but if the curd is still warm, then it cooks the meringue from the bottom so the layers stick together better.”

I’d seen Toby passionate before; I’d seen him certain and in control. This was the first time it hadn’t been sexual. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s cool.” Then he ran a finger round the rim of the bowl, gathering some of the gleaming, yellow curd. “Want to try?”

“I want to suck your fingers. If they’ve got lemon curd on them, I can live with that.”

“If you don’t respect my pie, I’m putting those clamps back on.”

I thought he was joking, but the terror was real enough and dizzyingly sweet. “I’m sorry. Please don’t.”

“It’s all about the combination anyway.” He dipped his finger into the second bowl and scooped up a floof of white foam. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Toby’s finger slid between my lips, filling my mouth—which already tasted of him—with sugar and lemons. “Oh.”

“It’s good, isn’t it?” He sounded smug, but he deserved to.

I nodded, twisting my tongue around his finger, chasing up the last few streaks of curd.

“More?”

“Yes. Yes, please.”

He wriggled, pushing against the table. “God, Laurie, are you trying to make me come again? I love it when you beg.”

And I loved it when he made me beg.

He swept up another fingerful of curd and frosting and smeared it across my parted lips before swooping in to kiss me.

It was a sticky mess of tongues, the flavours sweet and tart and Toby-warmed. Perhaps with anyone else, I might have hated it. But not with him. I was as powerless against his playfulness as his cruelty, and just as hopelessly enchanted, as desperate to please. My pulse quickened, the tight thrill of submission jumping again inside me, as he licked lemon from the corners of my mouth and left me breathless, moaning softly.

He tugged the bowl of curd a little closer and dipped in once again. “Oh, whoops.” He didn’t even try to sound convincing as he twisted his wrist on the way up to my lips and flicked lemon across my already too-sensitive nipples.

I screamed.

Fuck, it was fucking searing. And I was so hard my cock hurt too.

Toby leaned in and very gently cleaned me up, the tip of his tongue tracing the golden spiral across my skin, leaving a shimmering wake of damp heat, soothed pain, and gathering pleasure.

God, the sounds I made for him. I had no control. No desire for it.

He looked up, smiling. “I always knew you’d taste good with lemon.”

“Oh, Toby, please.”

“Please what?”

I writhed, hurting myself now and not caring. He steadied me with his hands. “I don’t know…just…just…please.”

I had no notion what I was asking for anymore, but Toby seemed to know the answer anyway. He came up on tiptoes to kiss me. “Yeah. I promise.”

He reached into the bowl of frosting and swirled a little up my thigh. It felt like clouds, warmed by his mouth as he chased them down, scooping up the sticky flecks with his agile tongue. He kept caressing me long after all the frosting was gone, kissing and nibbling his way towards my groin. Though studiously ignoring my cock.

I closed my eyes. Unfurled beneath his attentions. Pain had burned away self-consciousness and any hint of shame, leaving me as pliant as the restraints would allow. All that remained was need and a kind of soaring exhilaration that made me laugh aloud and say, “I thought you were supposed to be converting me.”

“I am converting you.” He bit me about as hard as I deserved for that. I imagined, with a dark thrill, the blunt imprint of his teeth on my thigh. He’d left marks on me before. I’d worn them with secret pride. Pressed my fingers into them sometimes for the memory of pain. Then he lifted his head and collected another dollop of frosting.

We both watched as the foam hung tantalisingly from his fingers in pale, soft-edged stalactites. He brought it to my cock and let it slide over me, a few flecks drifting onto the tabletop.

He leaned in again, idling his other fingers up my shaft. “How do you like my lemon meringue pie now?”

I pushed into his touch. “I love it.”

“It’s delicious, isn’t it?” His breath swirled over my cock. “Best you’ve ever had.”

Then he slid his lips over me and my “Yes, oh yes” was as sincere as it was absolutely frantic.

He’d never done this to me before. He’d admitted once, a little awkwardly, he didn’t think he was very good at it, so I told him he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do, and we’d never discussed it again. I liked to suck him though, on my knees with his hands knotted in my hair. Or lazily in the morning, pinning his writhing hips to the mattress. On my back, with Toby standing over me, his hand resting against my throat so he could feel his cock inside me.

But now he touched me without hesitation, lapping up the frosting, teasing me with his tongue, drawing me a little way into his mouth. My fingers twisted against each other, seeking some kind of purchase against the pleasure, but there was no defence. There was only something else to suffer for him. This terrible bliss. The helplessness of it, the intimacy.

I gasped out his name. Spread myself wider. It drove the hook deeper, but even that pressure was part of this now, subservient to Toby, another way he had chosen to fuck me. Everything tangled up together: freedom, restraint, pain, humiliation, rapture, fear, love. One of Toby’s hands curled round me, his grip tight, so perfectly tight, my skin sliding tenderly against the roughness of his palm. And just when I thought he couldn’t give me any more, he sucked in a shaky breath and took enough of my cock to meet his own hand. Sealing me in wet velvet warmth.

I rocked forward, heedlessly, and the ball inside me nudged my prostate.

“GodpleaseTobyIcan’t—”

I came uncontrollably. So hard I saw nothing at all. Just a flawless, unending dark.

I only got back to myself when I heard Toby coughing.

He looked up from my cock, semen and saliva dribbling down his chin.

“I’m so sorry, I tried to warn you.”

He gently released me and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “It was hot.”

I was starting to shake, and I couldn’t control that either. “Th-thank… It was… You…” My words came out as slurry as my thoughts.

I didn’t quite follow what happened next, but Toby took care of me. Unchained me. Drew the hook out as gently as he could. Held my hands through the sullen agony of stiffness and returning blood flow. And then we lay entangled on my kitchen table, Toby holding me tightly, until I was done with tears and I had skin enough to face the world again.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you. Shit, my pie.” He only left me for the time it took to rescue it. He put it on the counter and rushed back into my arms. “Final secret of a good lemon meringue pie: wait till it’s cooled before you cut it.”

“Good to know.” I turned my head and surveyed the result of his labours: a picture-book lemon meringue pie, perfect golden pastry topped by an immense swirl of baked meringue. My boy really did have talent. So many talents. Beautiful, clever, merciless Toby.

“You do realise there’s going to be a test later, right?” he asked.

I mustered a pale shadow of outrage. “Toby, that isn’t fair. I’ll fail.”

He propped himself on an elbow and peered at me with narrowed eyes. “I bet you’ve never failed anything in your whole life.”

“I excel at standardised tests. Which is hardly a skill to boast about.”

“Oh, man.” He lay back down, resting his head on my shoulder. The table was not comfortable to lie on, but right now it was as perfect as Toby’s pie. “I fail even at the shit I’m supposed to be good at. I got a D for my English Lit GCSE. I was like totally the teacher’s pet. A*s all year. Still came out with a D.”

“What went wrong?”

He sighed. “There’s this bit where they give you a poem and ask you a dumb-arse question about it. The poem was ‘The Jaguar’ by Ted Hughes. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“Sorry.” He ran his fingers over one of the reddened patches he’d left on my skin, sending little shivers through me. “It’s earlyish Hughes, so nature shit, basically. I only really like Birthday Letters. I mean, that’s just him wanking off about how sad he is his more talented wife killed herself, but at least it’s sincere, y’know? Anyway, ‘The Jaguar’ is about a zoo full of, like, stultified animals. Except there’s this jaguar who’s going all crazy in his cage. And the question was, right, get this: what does Ted Hughes think about zoos?”

It was absurd. We’d just had sex and pain and lemon meringue pie, and my standardised test impulse still leapt to life. “It doesn’t sound like he likes them.”

“Oh great. Well done. A*. Fuck you.”

“Isn’t that the answer?”

“Well, yeah, I guess, but the poem isn’t about fucking zoos. It’s about people. All the animals are anthropomorphised. Like the parrots who are cheap tarts or whatever. Because don’t we…in a very real sense”—his sarcastic voice was starting to sound increasingly similar to Jasper—“live in a social zoo. And the jaguar is a poet, because even though he’s surrounded by bars, he still sees freedom. And that’s kind of his madness and his salvation all at once.”

“That’s all very well,” I said, “but it doesn’t answer the question. Which was about zoos.”

Toby ruffled a hand through his hair. “You are so not a jaguar.”

“You’re missing the point. Standardised tests are simply about demonstrating your understanding of the question. The answer, to a degree, is irrelevant.”

“Well.” Toby pouted. “I care about the answer. And if that means I suck, then…I guess I suck.”

I brushed my thumb over the sulky curve of his mouth. “You don’t suck, Toby. But if someone puts a hoop in front of you, the quickest way to get past it is through the middle.”

“Wow, you’re on their side. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

He sounded a little confused, and genuinely hurt. It had been such a long time since GCSEs had even remotely figured in my thinking that I hadn’t stopped for a moment to consider that they might still be important to Toby. I was about to apologise when Toby sat up.

“Can you hear…buzzing?”

I’d half convinced myself it was just in my head—a side effect of too much demanding sex—but no. It was my front doorbell. “Just ignore it, and whoever it is will go away.”

Whoever it was did not go away.

The buzzing went on and on and on. Someone was clearly leaning against the bell.

Fuck. I looked down at my thoroughly ravaged and still naked body, groaned, and tried to sit up.

“Wait.” Toby put a hand on my chest and kept me down. “I’m sorta dressed. I’ll deal with it.”

He gave me a quick kiss on the nose, scrambled off the table, and disappeared up the stairs. It was probably just a really zealous Jehovah’s Witness, but clothes were rapidly becoming a good idea. I sat up and swung myself onto the floor.

God. Maybe I was getting too old for this. Everything hurt, inside and out, and I was a mess of marks and semen and lemon curd. I must have struggled against the cuffs a little, because while they hadn’t bruised me seriously, they’d left me with a matching set of rough red bracelets. I stroked my thumb over my wrist and smiled. I was tired and wrecked, unable to even answer my own front door, and I was so very, very happy.

Though, as I eased myself painfully into my trousers, I was rather glad Toby wasn’t around to see this particular indignity.

“Uh, Laurie.” His voice drifted down the stairs.

“Yes?”

“It’s, um, your friends.”

Shit. Shit. Who? Why? I reached for my shirt and pulled it—wincing—over my shoulders. “I’m…I’m coming up.”

Grace and Sam and Toby were arranged in a tableaux of awkwardness in my hallway. I chose not to think about how I must have looked to them.

Grace stared for a while. Then stomped over and slapped me in the shoulder. “I was worried about you, you dick. Next time, answer your goddamn phone, and I won’t come barging over at what is blatantly a really bad time.”

“It’s okay,” offered Toby, unhelpfully. “We’d pretty much finished.”

Sam clapped a hand over his mouth, entirely failing to stifle his yelp of laughter.

Grace flicked a glance at Toby. “Don’t think being cute is going to stop me being cross with him.”

I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call. Are you staying?”

“We’ve just hoofed it across London,” said Sam. “Course we’re fucking staying.”

Grace led the way into my living room, and while everybody was getting comfortable, I made the introductions.

Toby nodded. “I remember you from Pervocracy.”

“Believe me”—Grace smiled—“we remember you too.”

“Why were you worried about Laurie?”

“That’s not important,” I interrupted. “Does anybody want some tea?”

“Because you’d fucked off,” Grace explained. “He was in a state.”

“Really?” Toby hustled across the sofa and practically climbed into my lap. “Really really?”

I brushed his fringe out of his eyes. “Yes, really. I told you. And you know, it’s bad manners to get excited when you hear about someone being miserable.”

“Yeah, but I was miserable without you too, so it’s comforting. And for the record”—he turned back to Grace and Sam—“I didn’t fuck off. I had, like, a thing, and I didn’t have his number.”

I could feel my friends’ attention on us like heat. It wasn’t intrusive, but it was certainly intense. I could understand their curiosity and their concern, and I was tired of hiding. Since Robert, I’d been so wary. I’d lived like a jackal, hoarding my happiness as though it could be stolen from me at any moment. I slid an arm round Toby and drew him tight against my side where he belonged. “He had a funeral, and it was my fault he couldn’t contact me.”

“Well, I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about you anymore because frankly”—Grace gestured illustratively at herself—“I have better things to do with my time.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, now worrying about Laurie is off the agenda, you’ve got space for a whole new hobby. You should… What’s the name you Poms have for that thing where you jump up and down and hit each other with sticks?”

“Sex?”

“Gardening?”

He snapped his fingers. “Morris dancing. You could do that.”

“I will not,” said Grace coldly, “be doing that.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry you felt you had to worry about me.”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugged. “Love. Friendship. Comes with the territory.”

“And thank you for coming round.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to watch When Harry Met Sally with you while crying into a tub of H?agen-Dazs, or anything like that. I was going to take you to a party tonight and try to get you laid.”

“Well, thank God he came back.”

I gave Toby a grateful little squeeze, but he clearly had other ideas. “Ooh, party. I like parties.”

“I do not like parties,” I said firmly.

“Hey, look.” The unexpected seriousness of Sam’s tone startled everyone. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to mention it. The elephant in the room.” He leaned forward, interlaced fingers hanging between his knees. “Laurie, you reek of sex, and there’s…lemon sauce, I think, in your eyebrows. Can you go take a shower, mate?”

I ran out of the room, leaving them laughing.

When I came back, Toby had made tea, and his lemon meringue pie was sitting in the middle of the coffee table.

“We’ve been promised,” Grace said, “that you had sex in the vicinity of this pie, involving only the components of the pie, and not the pie itself. So we’ve consented to eat it. Though apparently we have to wait awhile until it’s cooled.”

The afternoon passed pleasantly between my friends, my lover, and a lemon meringue pie. I thought Toby was a little nervous—as he had been initially at Oxford—but he soon relaxed. Sam was so laid back he was generally believed to be impossible to dislike, and Grace was Grace.

And, as it happened, Toby’s lemon meringue pie was incredibly good. Foodgasmic was Grace’s word. Though I’d liked eating it from Toby’s fingers better.

They left around seven to get ready, furnishing me—at Toby’s insistence—with the party details, in case I changed my mind.

“Are you being ashamed of me again?” he asked, as soon as they were gone and we were clearing up the tea things. “Not wanting to take me places?”

“No, it’s just going to those kind of parties was what I did before I met you.”

“Those kind of parties?”

I cleaned a stray fleck of meringue from the pie plate. “Private parties, Toby.”

“What, you mean like sex parties?”

I nodded, hoping that would be enough to shut him up.

“If we go,” he asked, undeterred, “do we have to like…do anything?”

The idea of it turned my stomach. It wasn’t that I had any objections to the principle—after Robert, I’d shared and been shared willingly enough—it was just…Toby was mine and I was his, and I never wanted to choose between sex and intimacy again. “Absolutely not.”

“So”—Toby made his eyes very big and gazed at me imploringly—“can we go?”

“I don’t understand why you want to.”

He gave me one of his duh looks. “So I can say I’ve been to a sex party, obviously.”

“And that’s something you expect to come up in conversation, is it?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I just can’t see any reason not to go.”

I could have given him twenty, but I could also see that my resistance, rather than discouraging him, was only contributing to his curiosity. And I’d promised him only that morning: anything he wanted to do. So I surrendered. “All right, we can go.” He squeaked excitedly. “But, Toby…I need… I’m sorry… Can we talk about some things?”

“Laurie, we can talk about anything.”

I closed my eyes. This felt juvenile. Embarrassing. Something I should have been able to navigate with more sophistication. Toby was young. He deserved his adventures. But I knew, on instinct and from experience, I wasn’t the right person to share them. “Toby…I can’t… I don’t want you… Look, you have to promise you won’t…give me to anyone.”

His mouth dropped open. “You’re not a box of After Eight mints.”

“I know, but I’m your…you know…” I didn’t even want to say it. I hated those words. Sub. Dom. Lovers, we were lovers. “The expectations can be different.”

He gazed at me solemnly. Eyes so very blue. “Laurie, I promise. That’s totally not me. Thing is, I’m a greedy little shit. You’re mine, and I’m keeping you.”

I hoped he was right, and I was wrong.