Chapter 4 Saturday Afternoon
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
“Sorry, I kind of passed out,” she says shyly. “You, uh, wore me out a little this morning I guess.”
“I guess so.” I cross the kitchen to take her in my arms, and she gazes up at me with those big brown eyes. “Are you alright? After this morning?”
She nods, biting her lip, and there’s an unwelcome, comforting tug in my chest.
“Good.” I kiss her forehead, and allow my hands to stray just a little, over the curve of her ass. “Can I get you something to eat? You must be hungry?”
“Ooh, yes please. I’m starving.” She perches on one of the stools at the counter, tucking her hair behind her ear. She looks heavenly, as usual, half naked and tanned and delicious.
I stop staring long enough to cross the kitchen to the fridge, pulling it open and regarding its contents. “I can make you an omelette if you like. I have spinach, mushrooms, bacon.”
“Sounds great!”
I get the ingredients out of the fridge and set about cracking eggs into a bowl, chopping up the vegetables, all the while keenly aware of her watching me.
“Were you always into that kind of thing? What did we did this morning?” She asks after a while. “Y’know, BDSM, all that stuff?”
“I, uh, yeah.” I shrug lightly as I keep slicing the mushrooms. “I discovered it back in college. A girlfriend of mine, she was really into spanking and choking and being tied up. She took me to a dungeon she used to go to a lot.”
“A dungeon?” Amber squeaks. “Like, a sex dungeon?”
I chuckle and nod. “Yes, a sex dungeon.”
She leans on the counter, and her eyes are wide when I look up again. “Did you have sex there? In front of people?”
My cheeks flush, because I haven’t spoken about this in a long, long time. “I did. I, uh, was tied up to a cross once, and had the domme jerk me off and edge me for an hour, in front of a lot of watching eyes.”
Amber’s mouth drops open. “Theo! And here I was thinking you were some sweet engineering professor who just happened to like the gym.” She giggles and shakes her head. “And now I find out you’re into BDSM and sex dungeons.”
I laugh as I chop the spinach and drop it into the bowl of eggs. “Look, it was a long time ago. But it did introduce me to things that I liked, and that I wanted to do with other partners. And I got a bit of a reputation at college for my… proclivities.”
“Now that’s a big word for sex fiend.” She holds up her hands and gives me a brilliant smile. “I’m joking, I’m joking! It’s seriously kind of hot. Like, really hot.”
“Yeah, but all of that kind of fell by the wayside when I got married, and then being a dad, working, all that kind of thing, you know, it just wasn’t that important anymore.”
I turn on the frying pan, seasoning the eggs with plenty of salt and pepper, and Amber comes to sit on the counter beside me, her long legs crossed at the ankles and swinging gently back and forth.
“So you still enjoyed vanilla sex after that?” She asks, running a hand through her hair and flipping it over her shoulder.
“Of course, I don’t need it to be kinky to enjoy it.”
“But if you had a partner who was into that kind of thing, would you do it more?”
I consider my answer as I fry the bacon in the pan, listening to it sizzle in the heat. “I mean, sure. If that’s what she wanted. But finding people who are on the same wavelength as you isn’t always easy.”
“That sounded heavy.” Amber raises her eyebrows as she looks at me. “Did you have a bad experience or something?”
I give her a smile, shaking my head. “Are you sure you’re not psychic, Miss Pope?”
Her cheeks flush when I call her that, the slight shift in her hips telling me she really likes that nickname. “You just looked really sad when you said it.”
I flip the bacon and sigh heavily, shifting on my feet as I take down a plate from the cupboard overhead. “After Mella and I divorced, I got involved with a woman I’d met at the gym. She was a little younger.” I look at Amber over my glasses. “No, not as young as you.”
She giggles, but doesn’t say anything.
“We got on well,” I go on, taking the bacon from the pan and putting it on the plate. “She was funny, smart, worked in investment banking. And after a few weeks of us sleeping together, she opened up to me about her likes and desires, and told me that she went to sex clubs in the city regularly.”
“Oh, like swingers clubs?”
I smile at the term. “Swingers club always makes me think of those 70s pornos. But yes. A swingers club, I suppose. Glory holes and voyeur rooms and you name it. She asked me to go with her, and I did.” I pour the eggs into the pan, and brace a hand on the counter.
“It was a lot of fun, at first. After the divorce and all that, it felt good to let loose a little.”
“So what went wrong?”
I stare at the eggs, setting in the pan, and try not to focus on the icy coil forming in my stomach.
“We’d been dating for over a year, she’d met Laurie, they got on great, I was going to ask her to move in.
It all seemed good.” I trail off, folding the omelette on top of itself, and flipping it.
“Then I woke up one morning, in agony. It felt like someone had my… balls in a vice.”
“Oh my god.” Amber’s eyebrows shoot up. “What happened?”
“I went to the doctor and it turned out I had gonorrhoea.”
“Holy shit!” Amber sits up straight, covering her mouth with her hands. “She gave it to you?”
I take the omelette from the pan, putting it on the plate beside the bacon, and get a knife and fork out of the drawer. Amber follows me back to the counter and sits on the stool, but she won’t touch the food, her eyes still fixed on my face.
“Come on, eat.” I gesture to her plate, and she shakes her head.
“What happened?”
I sigh heavily. “She’d been cheating on me. The entire time. When I confronted her, she acted completely surprised, saying it was part of the lifestyle. She said… she said that maybe I just didn’t understand BDSM like I thought I did, what it was all really about.”
“That’s called gaslighting, and it’s disgusting.” Amber’s voice is filled with outrage. “She never said anything to you about sleeping with other people?”
I shake my head, and am relieved when Amber finally huffs out a breath and takes up her knife and fork to start eating.
“At the club, we’d played with other couples, that was fine. But it was always talked about before, and agreed on. I had no idea she was out there, sleeping with other men, and not using protection. I thought she was just with me.”
Amber gives me a sympathetic look as she chews her food, and reaches out to take my hand.
“Anyway, after a very expensive course of antibiotics I was fine. Thankfully it was easy to cure. But she was angry that I broke up with her over it.”
Amber’s face is pure violence. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, she got kind of vindictive. Started telling people at the gym that I was some fiend, that I’d forced her to have hardcore sex, that I’d tied her up and hit her against her will.” I hang my head as I remember the way people had started looking at me back then. “It was all kind of a mess.”
“Oh shit, Theo.” Amber turns in her seat and takes my hand in hers. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it was.” I frown and clear my throat. “I changed gyms, never went back there. Told my dean at the college that an ex was spreading rumours about me, because I was honestly afraid I’d lose my job.”
Amber sighs and shakes her head. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s alright. She got bored of smearing my name pretty fast, thankfully.
And then, well, I guess it made me nervous.
” I stroke Amber’s hand with the back of my fingers.
“To do that again with someone. I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody, it was always meant to be about having fun, about bringing pleasure to each other.
I’ve always used safe words and the traffic light system, non-verbal cues, everything to keep my partners safe.
It was meant to be something I did with someone I loved.
” I look up at her and shrug. “Doing that with you this morning, it… It was kind of healing. To see you enjoy it so much, to have you trust me like that. It felt really good.”
Amber throws her arms around my neck, pulling me over to her to kiss me, slow and deep. Without breaking the kiss, she climbs into my arms, straddling me on the stool. Her skin is warm under my hands, and having her wrapped around me like this, it’s blissful.
“I loved doing that with you,” she murmurs against my mouth.
“I did. I felt safe, and cared for.” She takes my face in her hands, and her eyes meet mine.
“You’re a good man. The best man there is.
And when I walked in here yesterday, I did because I knew I could trust you.
I knew you would treat me good, and look after me.
” She kisses me again. “I know that I’ll always remember this weekend.
I will. And only because you were so wonderful to me. ”
The words drop into my stomach like a lead weight. Just this weekend.
I lean my head against hers, and swallow what I want to say. Because I’m just an old fool giving a young woman a good time. That’s all it ever will be. I know that.
But it hurts all over again to hear it.
I don’t let myself dwell on my internal struggle for too long, because Saturday is fading away, and I’m not going to waste any more time feeling sorry for myself.
And it’s easy to let all the sad, self-pitying thoughts ebb away when Amber drags me upstairs.
When we end up in bed, it’s not to fuck, although we’re both mostly naked.
She just wants to kiss. I don’t know how long we lie there, but it feels like a moment I could exist in forever - the rain beating against the window, the light fading as the afternoon wears on, and Amber, warm and soft in my arms as my mouth devours hers.
“I haven’t made out like this since high school,” I say with a soft laugh, rolling onto my back with her, so she can straddle me.