‘So.’ I draw a breath. ‘Right. That was lucky.’
‘Lucky. I am lucky person.’
‘You’ve been hanging around outside for five hours?’
‘No. I go back to my friend’s place. I go to sleep. But I wake up in two hours, I realise I have question for you. So I come here, see if you are still at the office. Through the window, I see this creep on the TV screen. I break in, set off alarm. Here we are.’
‘Here we are.’
‘You get me a coffee? In your office?’
‘Oh. Sure.’
On the way up the stairs, various things Dimitri has said slot into my thought queue, once the intense relief at not having had to murder the security guard has abated a little.
‘You told him I was your girl,’ I mention, plugging in the coffee machine.
‘What you say?’
‘The security guy. You said, “Stay away from my girl.”’ My efforts to replicate Dimitri’s accent are only partially successful.
‘You want him to try again?’
‘Do you think he would?’
‘Not now. Not if he thinks I am your boyfriend. He fears me.’ Dimitri says this with a casual air, as if it’s perfectly normal
for thugs of brick shithouse build to cower before him.
‘I see. Well, thanks. Actually, yeah, thanks for all of that. I should have said that before. Head’s not quite straight yet. Not that I needed saving or anything. I could quite easily have whacked him in the groin with my paperweight.’
Except that wouldn’t have occurred to me, in my creeping panic.
Dimitri humphs and scoops coffee into the filter, not dignifying my pathetic bravado with an answer.
‘That’s going to be quite strong.’
‘Uh-huh. Strong coffee. What we need, right?’
‘What’s the question?’
‘Question?’
‘You said you came back here to ask me a question.’
He turns and leans on the counter, primping his moustache so that the ends are perfectly symmetrical. ‘If I want to be professional dom, I need to practise,’ he says.
‘Oh, that.’ I still think he’s barking up the wrong tree. Surely there aren’t that many people who would pay for a bloke to abuse them?
‘I will like to practise with you,’ he says.
I bite my lip and watch the first few drips of coffee fall into the jug. ‘Practise … When you say practise, you mean …?’
‘You submit to me, right? I do all that whips and bondage on you. Maybe other activity too, is up to you.’
‘I thought you said you’d had all these kinky girlfriends. Didn’t you learn anything from them?’
‘Ah, I say that for benefit of that vampire man. I never have a kinky girlfriend.’