*****
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.
he whispers, reaching behind me to clip it closed. And as it fastens he kisses the soft skin at the nape of my neck.
jaw and down to my neck where
me, he lazily stroking me. After a long while, he speaks
when we met that you were. And because of the way that we met, I don’t
Not anymore. There was someone, but, he wasn’t right and…. I don’t even want to now. I used to go to the clubs a lot, but now I
“The clubs? What clubs?”
and my
go to clubs a lot for,
you want
Don’t fuck it up….
to me.
er, sex clubs. I used to go a lot before
stares at me.
Have I
to go to sex clubs, but you don’t anymore? Because of
because
kisses me. “Thank you for telling me this. I have
You were worrying?
enough for you and me to have met in the first place, but that perhaps I could not…. be
heart skips a beat. “Ryan, you are ‘enough for me’. I love what you do to me, what we do together. You have me thinking of you
is hard, penetrating and possessive; and it sets my heart pounding again.
you went often? You have friends there? You would
There’s something about the atmosphere,
“But….?”
that you would
Yes, I realise that. What I also realise is that they will see you with me, and know that while
*****
at in the lobby, with little to do right now except sit here
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