‘Is it so bad that I found it? It does affect me, after all.’
His fingertips sank deep into my tissues, freeing me from my locked-tightness.
‘No,’ he said contemplatively. ‘I guess. I just wanted to surprise you with a few things.’
I tensed again, ouching as his fingers dug into me.
‘Like that awful toilet stuff? I bloody well hope not! That is no-go, ever, in a million years, so don’t even –’
He silenced my increasingly hysterical ranting with a light smack to my behind.
‘Oi,’ he said. ‘Calm down. Nobody’s doing anything you don’t agree to. I thought we’d established that?’
‘Yeah, and then you go and buy a cane.’
He nuzzled up closer, resting his chin on my shoulder, clasping his hands around my stomach.
‘I suppose I might have given in to hope on that one,’ he said.
‘Hope?’
‘I like the thought of seeing your bum all striped. It’s a bit of a fantasy of mine.’
I nearly cricked my neck turning to look at his face.
‘You have these fantasies too? You’re not just doing it to, you know, humour me?’
‘No, not at all. I’m getting quite into it now. At first I was so worried that you would change your mind and start thinking of me as some kind of monster. It kind of put me off. But you seem pretty OK with things as they’ve gone, so …’
‘I am. I am OK with them. And if you enjoy it, I’m even more OK with it.’
‘That’s all right then. Are you going to make this dinner or do I have to take over?’
I wrenched my attention back to the kitchen counter while Dan loped off in the direction of the living room. He came back just as I was mixing the sauce ingredients.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘what’s your vibrator doing in the bathroom sink?’
My face flamed. I’d forgotten to put it away after washing it.
‘Oh, uh, just lying there, I expect,’ I said.
He came up close again, speaking low and slow into my ear.
‘Seeing to yourself, were you, after reading all about the cane? Well, I’ve got a new rule, Pip. No more secret self-pleasuring. You have to wait until I get home.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ I blurted to his retreating back.
‘Fair?’ He turned and grinned. ‘Is it fair that you get to make all the rules? I don’t think so. God, I’m starving. Is that thing ready yet?’
5 August
I got away lightly the night I discovered Book 2. He didn’t punish me for it, because he accepted that there was no rule about playing hide and seek, although it had disappointed him that he wouldn’t be able to ‘surprise’ me with something hideous like stinging nettles in my knickers. Warped sense of humour that man of mine has.
Mind you, it’s no worse than mine.
I say there was no punishment, but in a funny way there was.
Obviously, the Affair of the Vibrator had affected him in some way, and he spent the evening, after we went to bed, taking me to the brink of orgasm and then pulling back. He did this three times, until I was a red-faced, teary-eyed mess of frustration, then he kissed me all over and said it served me right.