Chapter Four

1.Paragraph begins with: He's also the first person who's ever taken me seriously.

Alexis:I think the gift of being taken seriously, in any context, cannot be overstated.

2. Paragraph begins with: I sometimes wonder what it means…

Alexis:Avocado is the worst.

3.Paragraph begins with: I pad around and open all the curtains for him.

Alexis:I reckon even now Laurie would still be the sort of person who had a paper delivered.

4. Paragraph begins with: And then I get performance anxiety because scrambled eggs are like this…art form.

Alexis: There might have been a touch of the author in Toby's entirely correct opinions about avocado. And there might be again here when he's talking about scrambled eggs. I will never get bored of making scrambled eggs, nor of eating them, I think. Especially with really good toast, spread with lots of butter.

5.Paragraph begins with: I have to laugh at the expression on his face.

Alexis:This idea comes from ‘Be Drunk' by, as Toby says, Baudelaire. I find it kind of weirdly charming that Baudelaire was stressed about the tyrannical influence of time on modern life in an industrialised, urbanised world. I mean, imagine if he knew about the internet? Or mobile phones. Anyway.

Here's the full poem (translated in somewhat utilitarian fashion):

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time

that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continuallydrunk.

But on what?

Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish.

But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace

or the green grass of a ditch,

in the mournful solitude of your room,

you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone,

ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock,

everything that is flying,

everything that is groaning,

everything that is rolling,

everything that is singing,

everything that is speaking…

Ask what time it is

and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:

"It is time to be drunk!

So as not to be the martyred slaves of time,

be drunk, be continually drunk!

On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

6. Paragraph begins with: I know so little about this man, but I know he unravels hands first.

Alexis:This is another one of those things that I wanted Toby to recognise even without the full context of understanding. Sort of a microcosm of their kink dynamic in a way, understanding where and how Laurie is most vulnerable, even without the basic information that he's a doctor and so his hands are a significant manifestation of his identity—and self-control—within the world at large.

7. Paragraph begins with: Dangerous question to ask me when the answer is everything.

Alexis:It's pretty much a cliché at this point for me to ramble on about particular sexual acts being associated with power/control and others not. When, as Laurie says later, as far as I'm concerned sex is less about what you do than what it means.

TL;DR It was important to me when I wrote this to present a dom, who was unequivocally a dom, who got to enjoy being penetrated. It's still important to me, to be honest.

Because if sex is about context, power is about perspective.

8. Paragraph begins with: "The right time to come, darling, is when you want to come."

Alexis:Personally, I think Laurie begins to fall in love, truly fall in love, with Toby at this moment. The darling is a dead giveaway.

9. Paragraph begins with: Jouissance, is what I think.

Alexis:I know Toby is pretty precocious for a nineteen-year-old but I kind of wanted to give him this young/old almost timeless quality. I mean, he's been raised by his granddad and his artistically ferocious mum. I think that would shape a person in certain ways. I also liked the idea of someone who sort of embodies "art" (whatever that means) just as part of who they are (like Toby is often thinking of poetry or these quite intense abstract concepts) but isn't himself artistic.

10. Paragraph begins with: Another of his secrets, I guess.

Alexis:Kindness is my romance kryptonite. I return to it endlessly. I just think, of all human qualities, a capacity for kindness is probably the most attractive.