Fast And Loose. Justine Elyot

my seat.

      ‘You think?’ I said.

      He took hold of my hands and held them tight, looking seriously into my eyes.

      ‘I think,’ he said quietly. ‘So, here’s my theory. Would you say that you might perhaps be a little bit…kinky?’

      I held myself still, not daring to breathe. The only things that might have moved were my pupils, which, I’m pretty sure, were dilated as fuck. If they were, they’d have matched his. He looked positively brimful of lascivious curiosity.

      ‘What makes you say that?’ I whispered.

      ‘I’m a journalist. I pick up on clues,’ he said. ‘The corset, the Victoriana, the subtle hints in the way you kiss…’

      ‘Really? It’s that obvious? It can’t be!’ I was horrified. I might just as well have been walking around town with a billboard marked SUBMISSIVE, if he was right.

      His grave expression dissolved into something more puckish.

      ‘Nah, I’m kidding you. There’s, uh, a book in your bedside drawer, underneath the thesaurus. I spotted it when I was getting the painkillers.’

      ‘Oh.’ I smote my brow, cringing. How could I have forgotten? ‘Right.’

      ‘Right.’ His eyes danced with amusement. ‘And don’t tell me it was a present, or came free with a magazine, because you’ve admitted it now. Just tell me one thing. Are you top or bottom? Or do you switch?’

      Interesting that he was so free with the terminology, but perhaps he’d just read one too many Fifty Shades articles.

      ‘I’m not a Miss Whiplash type,’ I said, unable to say the words ‘I’m a bottom’ to the most attractive man I’d ever got near.

      ‘No? You prefer a Mr Whiplash then? Sorry. I don’t mean to be flippant. Honestly, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Like I said, it hardly comes as a shock. More a…pleasant surprise.’

      Pleasant? Was I dreaming? And he had said that thing about putting me over his knee. It had been bait! He’d been fishing for a confession, not just larking about.

      ‘Really? Why’s that?’

      He cupped my cheek with one hand, stroking it, lowering his face to mine.

      ‘Why do you think?’

      ‘You…?’ The sentence remained unfinished. I could only ask the question with my eyes.

      ‘Let’s just say I enjoyed binding your ankle a little bit too much,’ he said. ‘I found myself looking for a bedpost to tie it to.’

      I laughed nervously. ‘Perhaps I should invest in a four-poster then.’

      ‘Perhaps you should.’ He kissed me and the tearful feeling came back. Could this be real? I felt as if I were tottering on the brink of something potentially life-changing, for good or ill. There was danger inherent in letting him so far inside me, but also the potential for a new level of fulfilment.

      He laughed, breaking the kiss and rumpling my already rumpled hair with two long fingers.

      ‘You should look at yourself,’ he said. ‘What a picture. Is my eyeliner as smudged as yours?’

      I smiled. ‘Pretty much.’

      A beat of silence followed, into which too many questions swarmed, each eager to get to the front of the queue. He got his in first.

      ‘So…have you done much of this kind of thing then?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘No,’ I admitted, screwing up my face apologetically. Perhaps he was after an experienced player and this would be goodbye. ‘Just never seemed to…come up…You know?’

      His eyes shone like blue crystals.

      ‘But you always wanted to?’ he said.

      ‘Yes. Always. What about you?’

      ‘I’ve smacked a few arses in my time,’ he said. ‘But it’s never been serious. Just part of the rough sex fun. I’ve always been interested in taking things further, but never wanted to freak anybody out by showing them the extent of my perversions.’

      I blanched a little at that. ‘The extent of my perversions.’ It sounded a bit sinister.

      ‘So, uh, what is their extent?’ I asked, trying to sound casual while my brain begged him not to mention knives or suffocation.

      ‘You look scared,’ he noted with a self-conscious chuckle. ‘Don’t worry. Your book takes it a little further than I’d go. I’m pretty much a chapters-one-to-five kind of guy.’

      I covered my sigh of relief with a laugh.

      ‘Right. Chapter six is where it starts getting into the piercing party scene. You wouldn’t go that far?’

      ‘Well, probably not. Though I never say never.’

      ‘Pony play? Adult baby?’

      He was laughing now. ‘Enough, enough, now. I’ve told you. Chapters one to five. Read it again if you’ve forgotten what they cover.’

      But I didn’t need to. I remembered well enough, and the memory made me glow.

      ‘So. This blog then.’

      The change of tone and subject was so abrupt I had to force my mind back to Mia Culpa and her disappearance. She had been all but forgotten in the excitement of shared deviance and all the delightful implications.

      ‘Oh. Yeah. Well, it’s a BDSM blog. And, like I said, the blogger has disappeared and so has her blog.’

      ‘Show me.’

      I typed in the URL and the mysterious ‘page not found’ message appeared on screen.

      ‘Not much to show,’ I said. ‘It was here, and then it wasn’t.’

      Tom leant over me, peering at the screen as if he expected the generic deletion message to yield him some unique insight.

      ‘Not much to go on,’ he said.

      ‘No, but I saved all the posts,’ I told him.

      ‘Really? Well, come on, then. Let’s see them.’

      I opened the folder and left it open without comment.

      ‘There’s a lot of them,’ he remarked. ‘What do you know about her? Off the top of your head.’

      ‘She is – or was – a student here. No idea which college or even if it is a college. Could have been the Open University for all I know.’

      ‘She lives here?’

      ‘Well, I think so. Some of the places she’s been to are highly recognisable from her descriptions. If you take a look, I think you’ll agree.’

      ‘What makes you think there’s something dodgy about it? Sex blogs get taken down all the time. People move on in their lives, or the web host deletes them because of complaints. All kinds of reasons.’

      ‘Her last post was about a trip she was making to some kind of training school for submissives. She was excited about it, and couldn’t wait to update us about what happened. Then she left and never came back. There’s just something…off about it. Why would she do that?’

      ‘You think something happened to her there?’

      ‘Perhaps. I don’t think Mia was the type who would just leave us hanging like that. She really enjoyed sharing all these new experiences with her readers. It was like…it was part of the thrill for her.’

      ‘A bit of an exhibitionist, maybe?’

      ‘Maybe. It was such a big part of her life. I can’t believe she’d willingly