*****
And afterwards, as we lie together, naked in the half-light, he says, “I have something for you if you will accept it.”
He seems a little uncertain as he produces a small satin bag from a side-drawer, the kind that usually contains jewellery. I open it to find a narrow, black velvet choker, with a dewdrop pearl suspended.
“Will you accept it?” he asks, a trace of anxiety in his voice. “Will you wear it?”
Am I being collared?
I think I am….
I finger it, rolling the pearl in my fingers; so small and delicate a thing, and yet, so laden with significance.
“You understand what you are asking of me?” I say. “When you give me something like this? When you ask me to wear it?”
“Yes, I understand,” he says. “And yes, I am asking that you wear it for me. Will you do that?”
His voice brims with hope and worry; desire and unease. “Am I asking too much of you? Or too quickly?”
The pearl, opalescent with pale, swirling, beautiful colours, sits between my fingers.
Is this too soon?
No, I want this too….
“No, I don’t think you are. It’s just that no-one before has ever wanted me like this….”
“I want you like this. Isn’t that enough?”
Unravelling the velvet, I place it around my neck, fumbling with the catch at the back.
to clip it closed. And as it fastens
my cheek, the line of my jaw and down to my neck where he has just placed his mark on
around me, he lazily stroking me. After a long while, he
when we met that you were. And because of the way that
his embrace to meet his eye. “No, I’m not. Not anymore. There was someone, but, he wasn’t right and…. I don’t even want to now. I used to
“The clubs? What clubs?”
and my big
used to go to clubs a lot for,
someone you want
Don’t fuck it up….
me. What are
clubs. I used to go a
me. My
Have
go to sex
yes… because
you for telling me this. I have
You were worrying?
to have met in the first place, but
you do to me, what we
pulls me to him again and kisses me. The kiss is hard, penetrating and possessive; and it sets
you went often? You have friends there? You
it. There’s something about the atmosphere, watching people being
“But….?”
you realise that you would be
that they will see you with me, and know that while they had you for an hour, with me, you have stayed.
*****
the lobby, with little to do right now except sit here and look alert, I gaze out of the panoramic front
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