‘What’s your favourite?’ asked Jenna impulsively. ‘And your least favourite?’
‘Well, I can take quite a lot of pain, so I’d say my favourite was the cane. It really hits the spot when I want more than sensation play. My least favourite – oh, I don’t have one. I love them all. Every single one has its good points. Yourself?’
Jenna had not expected the question to be turned back on her.
‘Oh. Well. There’s a lot I haven’t tried. I don’t
think I’d like any of those thin, whippy things. For pleasure, I like one of those light flogger things. They don’t really hurt.’
‘Ah, you see, for me, that would be a disappointment,’ said Lindo. ‘What about you, Mr Watson?’
‘I like ’em all,’ said Jason equably, after swallowing a mouthful of wine. ‘Paddles are good cos she squirms so much. I like to see a good squirm. But, yeah, we’ve got a few others to try out yet, before I pick a favourite.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Lindo. ‘I sometimes wish I could go back to the days when it was all new and I had no idea what to expect. These days, we work like a well-oiled machine, but there’s something about that genuine anxiety of the first few sessions . . . Ah. I do miss it.’
‘How long have you and your wife been together?’ asked Jenna.
‘Twenty-two years,’ said Lindo. ‘It wasn’t our kink that brought us together – it took a few years for that to come out. What a piece of luck when it did.’
‘It must happen the other way too,’ mused Jenna. ‘Two people who love to be the one in control getting together, for instance, or two submissives.’
‘If they love each other, I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ said Lindo, shrugging.
‘If they love each other,’ echoed Jenna. For the first time in days, she found herself thinking of Deano. Perhaps that was their problem. They had been too alike. If she had asked him to be more dominant in the bedroom, what might he have said?
She couldn’t imagine it. How, then, could she say she knew him well?
‘Well, then,’ said Jason, draining his glass with a cavalier flourish and banging it on the table. ‘Cheers, mate. I’ve really enjoyed this afternoon. Learnt a lot. Might open my own workshop.’
‘Oh, I don’t want competition,’ said Lindo, smiling.
‘Nah, just for my own personal use,’ he said with a wink. ‘You can keep your customers.’
Jenna was glad to get out, back into the sweaty jumble of London. She’d had the feeling that Lindo was constantly on the verge of revealing too much information and she didn’t want Jason to feel obliged to join in.
‘Nice bloke,’ said Jason, as she called for the car.
‘Good craftsman,’ she said.
‘Yeah. Like me. What do you think? Shall I start knocking my own stuff up? I’d like to do that. I mean, painting is great, but I love all that hammering and sawing and stuff. Made me feel proper manly, you know?’
She laughed. ‘You don’t need a hammer and nails to prove that, my darling.’
‘Not to you,’ he said, digging her in the ribs. ‘But to myself.’
‘You seem obsessed with proving yourself just now,’ she observed. ‘It’s OK to take things slowly. You don’t have to do everything at once.’
He leant back against the wall, exhaling into the clammy air.
‘If not now, then when?’ he said, turning his eyes to her. ‘I’ve dossed about for too long. Feel like I need to make up for lost time. And there’s so much to prove. Prove I’m an artist, prove I’m a decent bloke, prove I’m a man.’
Jenna laughed. ‘Who doesn’t think you’re a man? It seems pretty clear to me.’
‘To you, babe,’ he said, reaching out to tickle the back of her damp neck. ‘In the bedroom, yeah. But I mean outside the bedroom. In the other places where it counts. In the house, in the street, at the bank.’
‘Ah, money again. It will come,’ she said seriously. ‘It might take its time at first, but it will. In the meantime, if you like, you can consider everything I pay for as a loan. I know you’ll pay it back. I believe in you.’
‘Yeah, you do, don’t you? Weird.’