Next time, I thought with an internal sigh of delight.
‘It was all a bit sudden,’ I said, my stomach flipping at the memory of what had happened in the alley.
‘I’ll plan every detail in future,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all kinds of ideas for things I can do to you, Foxy. All kinds.’
He reclined for a moment, his eyes shut, dreaming, then he snapped back to life.
‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ he said. ‘We need to get that Safeword profile sorted. Your place?’
‘Oh…I guess,’ I said, but I had misgivings about parading him in front of Jess and Mehra. They worked in the ad sales department, and they knew all about Tom and his reputation. They weren’t great friends with Tilda, so it might not get back to her that way, but on the other hand the Clarion was office gossip central.
He raised an eyebrow at my obvious reluctance.
‘Have you got another man stashed away in there?’ he asked lightly.
‘No. But I’ve got two flatmates. Two flatmates who work at the Clarion and love to gossip.’
He tilted his head to one side.
‘You’re ashamed of me?’
‘No! But I don’t want it getting back to Tilda. Not right now.’
He gave me a long and contemplative look, then nodded slowly.
‘OK. I can see the reasoning. But Tilda and I were a long time ago now…’
‘Yes, but Tilda and I aren’t. Besides, I don’t like the whole place knowing my business.’ And I don’t want to deal with the fall-out in public when you inevitably drop me.
‘Nah, you’re right,’ he said. ‘We should keep this to ourselves for now. OK, we’ll go to mine then. You’d better button that blouse first. Don’t want the speed camera on Jackson Street getting an eyeful, do we?’
He winked and I laughed, my head light with all the implications of his ‘for now’ comment. This all seemed to be going suspiciously well.
Tom’s place was a top-floor flat in the new development by the canal.
‘Edgy city living,’ he said with an ironic smile, punching numbers into the keypad at the communal door. ‘A. k. a., overpriced rabbit warren overlooking an industrial estate. But it’s handy for town, so…’
We filled the lift with the smell of chow mein from our takeaway cartons, underscored with something substantially more animal. In the elevator mirror, we looked like two ravenously hungry people who had just had sweaty jungle sex. The mirror didn’t lie, but I wished it could at least be economical with the truth. I looked an absolute sight. I wondered if he’d let me use his shower.
But he was keen to get on with business – with the detective side of business, that is – and we ate at his computer desk, occasionally dropping noodles on the keyboard as we fabricated a Mia-alike submissive personality for the kinky social network. It would have been helpful to have Mia’s own profile – she had been a member here, after all – but it appeared to have been deleted.
‘What shall we call her?’ he asked, once he’d got the membership details email and opened up the profile page.
The question of a name took us all the way through our cartons. Tom favoured names with a punning theme, reasoning that Mia herself had used one, but I didn’t think it was necessary to copy her in every respect.
‘I don’t think she needs to sound like a burlesque dancer,’ I argued. ‘I think the doms who frequent these sites will message any new submissive, especially if they see that she’s local. We shouldn’t overthink it.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to look as if we’re trying too hard.’
‘Exactly. So it can be a bland name, and I think we should add a local angle.’
‘Northavon Nymph?’ suggested Tom.
‘Yeah…or…Northavon Neophyte. That gets the rookie angle in as well. And might appeal to the better educated types…like J, for instance.’
‘Neophyte.’ Tom rolled the word on his tongue. ‘God, I love subs.’
‘Are you talking subeditors or submissives?’ I asked with a sideways smile.