Fast And Loose. Justine Elyot

first and you won’t be the last.” Really lovely introduction to my new career, that was.’

      Contrition was written all over his face, with its drooping mouth and its glistening eyes. I wanted to reach out and stroke his cheek and say, ‘There, there.’

      ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, holding out a hand and taking one of mine, ‘I wanted to call you. But you seemed pretty anti. Well, once Tilda and Miles got their hooks into you.’

      ‘They only told me what you were like. Don’t blame them.’

      ‘What, you don’t think they might have their own agendas? Tilda’s my ex, and Miles fancies you.’

      ‘What?’ I hadn’t been party to either of these nuggets of information.

      ‘She won’t talk about it, and he won’t admit it, but come on. Isn’t it obvious?’

      ‘To you, maybe. But you’re a dirt-digger. You see sleaze in everything.’

      ‘I see what’s in front of my nose,’ he said. ‘And right now, my nose likes what it’s seeing.’

      I laughed despite myself. Tom had just shifted my perceptions of all my office relationships, but he’d done it very charmingly and I was less dismayed than I might have been.

      ‘So all that…was a misunderstanding, then?’ I said, wanting to believe it.

      ‘Classic romcom,’ he said. ‘She thinks this, he thinks that, neither of them are right, it all works out in the end.’

      ‘And is this the end?’

      ‘This,’ he said, kissing my knuckles with a decorous flourish that went well with his Victorian-style outfit, ‘is the beginning.’

       Chapter Three

      I won’t lie. I had considered the possibility that Tom might end up in my room and had set-dressed accordingly. My supermarket magazines were all in the recycling, replaced on the bedside table by a selection of intellectual heavyweights from my university reading list. All discarded, inside-out garments had made it into the laundry bin, and my perfumes and makeup were impeccably arranged on the dressing table, with no open eyeshadow trays or capless lipsticks.

      The bed was not only made – it smelled of summer meadows. Or so the linen spray I’d used claimed. To be honest, it smelled more like the time I tried to boil up potpourri in a saucepan as a child, to see if you could make soup from it. (You couldn’t.)

      Tom didn’t notice the order of things, though, having eyes only for the fringed shawls pinned to the wall and my unworn Victorian-style corset on its little dressmaker’s stand.

      ‘Whoa, you should’ve worn that tonight,’ he said, supporting my hobbling self over to the bed, where I collapsed gratefully.

      ‘I’m saving it for a special occasion,’ I said.

      ‘Isn’t a date with me special enough?’ He turned to me and pouted.

      ‘I couldn’t be sure at the time of dressing,’ I said, smiling crookedly at him. ‘But perhaps it might turn out to be corset-worthy, after all.’

      ‘Oh, the pressure,’ said Tom, swooping down to join me on the bed. ‘I have to be corset-worthy.’

      ‘You have to earn that lovely fob watch you’re wearing, anyway.’

      He took it out and dangled it in front of me. The light from my cheap chandelier twinkled on the gold engravings.

      ‘Got it at the antiques mart,’ he said. ‘Of course, it doesn’t work. But I don’t need a watch to tell me the time.’ He winked and leaned forward to take off his boots.

      ‘Oh, don’t take the boots off yet,’ I said, my voice dying away in embarrassment as I realised how eager I sounded.

      He raised his eyebrows.

      ‘No?’

      ‘Just…you’re so beautifully dressed. It seems a shame to undress in the wrong order.’

      ‘Wrong order? You mean there are rules for Victorian striptease?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said with a giggle. ‘But surely it should be frock coat first, then collar and cuffs, and…so on.’

      ‘So on?’

      ‘I’m sure you can work it out.’

      ‘OK,’ he said, rising to his feet and standing in a louche, dandyish pose in front of me. ‘I’ll undress the way you want. And then I’ll undress you the way I want.’

      ‘Seems fair,’ I said.

      Oh, to have had the nerve to film him on my phone. I thought about doing it all the way through, but I couldn’t quite summon up the nerve.

      I had to make do with trying to burn the memories into my brain instead, in order to rerun the way he shrugged off his coat, unscrewed his cufflinks, wrenched off the lace collar – and all with his eyes fixed uncompromisingly on me.

      My throat was dry by the time the top button came undone, revealing the rest of his neck and his Adam’s apple. At this rate, I’d require intravenous rehydration by the time he got to his trousers.

      The white linen parted slowly, revealing his taut bare chest, then lean but well-muscled arms. He stood with one hand on a hip, twirling the shirt seductively, his mouth curved upwards on one side.

      ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m half-naked. How about you?’

      Boots and tight black trousers advanced towards me, matador-like. He threw away the shirt and pounced, his palms flat on either side of my legs, his forehead touching mine.

      ‘I suppose you’ll need some help,’ he said.

      I nodded, my brow bone pushing at his as I did so.

      ‘Those killer heels first, then,’ he said, positioning himself at the foot of the bed to remove them. I winced and mewled as he released my hurt ankle, then laid it gently back on the bed.

      ‘Looks like a sprain,’ he remarked, frowning. ‘Nasty. Perhaps we shouldn’t…’

      ‘It’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘There’s painkillers in my bedside drawer. I’ll take a couple.’

      ‘I like a broad who knows what she wants,’ he said in a cod-noir Noo Yoik drawl. ‘Especially when what she wants is me.’ He pulled off the other shoe, grinning broadly. ‘All right, Foxy. Arms up.’

      The bra top was removed, leaving my fishnetted breasts exposed to his gaze. He made the most of it; in fact, his gaze wasn’t the only thing they were exposed to. His hands got their fair share too.

      He pulled off my elbow-length, fingerless lace gloves, then got to work on my velvet skirt. I had to lie down while he pulled it along my legs, revealing the very pair of knickers Mia Culpa’s first blog post had inspired me to buy. Lace patterned hold-ups were the last item on the dressing-for-sex menu. He seemed to want to keep those on, running a hand along my thigh, tracing the curls and curves of the lace down to my knee and then back up to the garter.

      ‘Mm, nice,’ he said, bending and kissing the bare flesh between hold-up and knicker edge. ‘You should have come out dressed like this.’

      ‘Er, I’m not sure that would have been a good idea,’ I said, but my breath was jerking the words around. He had his hands on my bum while his mouth and tongue moved ever closer to the inner sanctum inside the knickers.

      ‘Why not?’ he said, raising his face for a moment. ‘I’d have laid you on the table in that booth and given you what-for right there and then.’

      ‘Yeah, that’s why,’ I