9 Laurie

Toby didn't come back.

At first I thought he was just late, then I thought I'd confused the day, and then I realised he wasn't coming at all. I told myself that it was entirely his right, that it was inevitable, that it was probably for the best. But I was frantic.

Was my dancing really that bad?

But he'd told me he loved me. You didn't say that to someone, and then—Oh God. Not again. Not again.

It had only been a couple of hours, but suddenly my house was full of empty rooms, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't bear to be in it, but I didn't dare leave in case Toby turned up. I kept half hearing the doorbell. He would tumble over the threshold and into my arms, just like always, and there'd be some story, some mistake, some misunderstanding, and we'd laugh, and I'd feel angry and foolish at the same time, but I'd forgive him. I'd forgive him because I was desperate to feel angry and foolish.

Instead of alone. And bereft.

And still foolish, for having let this happen. For having known all along that this would happen, or something like it, and made myself naked for him anyway. It wasn't even masochism. It was a basic failure to learn.

Toby would have called it hope.

I kept thinking about last weekend, searching compulsively for the hint, the hint that surely had to be there, of what was to come. The moment it had gone wrong, and I hadn't noticed. But I couldn't find anything. We'd been happy. Hadn't we? Wandering hand in hand through golden streets. If people had been inclined to look askance at us, I hadn't been inclined to care. Perhaps Toby had?

On Sunday, I called Grace. I didn't ask her to, but she came over anyway and kept my futile vigil with me. It helped. It meant I couldn't cry. She wouldn't have judged me for it, but I'd never liked doing that in front of other people. Without the excuse of sexualised suffering, anyway.

I tried to explain what had happened, but I couldn't because I didn't know. There was only Toby's absence.

She could have confronted me with all the nonsense I'd told them over pancakes, but she didn't. She just put a hand on my arm and asked if he wasn't answering his phone and what messages I'd left him.

Which was when I had to admit I'd never asked for his number.

Grace blinked. "Okay. Well, there's no need to panic. Toby's a young person. He probably lives on the internet. Google him."

"Isn't that basically stalking?"

"Public domain, and you wouldn't be reduced to stalking him if you'd communicated with him properly in the first place."

The truth was, it simply hadn't occurred to me. I'd been so resigned to the notion that something like this was going to happen anyway that I'd practically engineered it. And now it had and I was devastated and I had only myself to blame.

"Even if he is on the internet," I said, "what am I supposed to do? Sign up for Facebook so I can Like him? Twitter at him?"

"Tweet, love. It's tweet." She turned on my laptop and opened up Chrome. "What's his name again?"

Fifteen minutes of dedicated Googling later, we had comprehensively established that Toby was not on the internet except for the occasional fleeting reference connected to his mother or his school life.

"Sorry." Grace put my computer aside and curled up on the end of the sofa. "I thought it was worth a shot."

"I wouldn't have known what to say, anyway."

She shrugged. "How about, ‘Are you okay?' Something might have happened."

A hundred and seventy—no. No. I closed my mind to statistics. "Or he might simply have decided to stop coming. I did nothing to keep him, really, except quietly fall in love with him while telling everyone—including him—I wasn't and wouldn't."

"You're…um…you're in love with him?"

I dropped my head into my hands. A ridiculously melodramatic gesture, but one in keeping with a ridiculously melodramatic statement. "Oh, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Maybe. Probably. I've forgotten what love feels like, so how would I recognise it?"

She shook her head, sympathetic and exasperated as only an old friend can be. "You think way too much."

"I know. The world makes most sense to me when I'm working or…"

"On your knees."

We sat in silence for a while. I knew I was being poor company, but I was selfishly glad I wasn't alone.

"I don't like not knowing," I muttered, finally. "Did he just wake up on Friday morning and fall out of love with me? At least with Robert, I understood."

"See, I never did quite figure out what went on there. I thought after what happened, you'd be the one to leave, not him."

"My forgiveness wasn't even in question. He just couldn't forgive himself."

"I live in abject terror of that, you know." She drew in a sharp breath. "Hurting someone in the wrong way."1

"It was a couple of fractures. They healed." I realised I was holding my wrist protectively, my own hand a cuff. I wanted Toby's touch. "I would have trusted him again, if he'd ever let me."

"But he dropped you, Laurie."

"So? His horrible aunt once called me unnatural at a family dinner party. He dropped me then, as well, when he laughed it off."

She frowned. "It's not the same, though."

"Isn't it? It's just love and trust. Hurt and kinky sex is neither here nor there." I took a deep breath and let the truth slip out. "God, I miss him."

"Robert?"

"Toby. For fuck's sake, I've only had two relationships. It shouldn't be hard to keep up."

"Sorry." But Grace was laughing.

And then, so was I, though it hurt a bit, this helpless, sharp-edged mirth that had to cut its way through tears.

She stayed until close to midnight and then left, and I was alone again, without Robert, which didn't matter, and without Toby, which did.

I was grateful for work the next day because it gave me focus, but it was surprisingly difficult to put Toby's absence from my mind, and took far more energy than I would have expected. Perhaps I needed a holiday—a feeling-sorry-for-myself holiday. Pathetic. But I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken annual leave, and I was tired and sad and unfairly angry with Toby for doing this to me. I told myself I'd been resigned to my compromises, but he'd promised me everything, throwing love around like Smarties, and I'd believed him. Then he'd dropped me, just like Robert. And just like Robert, he'd run.

It was wrong to make comparisons, wrong to feel this hurt and empty, but I did. I did.

I kept imagining the alert, the swoosh of doors and the clatter of footsteps, and the body, the far-too-familiar body, being whisked past me to the operating theatre. It was ridiculous, of course. Nothing so dramatic had likely taken place, and even if it had, there was no guarantee it would be my hospital or my shift.

I would simply never know where Toby's life would take him. Had already taken him.

I was so miserable, I began to worry about my performance, and that was something I couldn't afford, so I booked two weeks off. One of my colleagues actually said, "Good for you." I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the time. Going away seemed both painful and pointless without Toby. But I had to do something.

Get through this somehow.

Surely it had been worse after Robert. But the strangest thing was I couldn't remember that pain at all.

* * *

On Friday night—twelve days since I saw him last, not that I was counting, except that I was—I came home and found him in a black suit, sitting on my doorstep. And just like that, all the anger, all the fear, all the misery washed away, leaving me perfectly cold. Safely indifferent.

I regarded him a moment. "Hello."

He didn't look up. "Hey."

"I didn't think I was ever going to see you again." I was actually pleased—darkly pleased—to sound so calm.

"Why? Because I didn't show up once? Isn't that a bit of an overreaction?"

"Well, what was I supposed to think?"

There was a long silence. It was an odd moment. He was right there, in front of my house, but he seemed far away, sullen and young, an unlikely cause of all that hurt. Perhaps I'd gone a little mad, investing so much in whatever it was I'd thought we'd had. A relationship? With a teenager?

"My granddad died," he said.

Oh fuck. The worst of it was that my immediate reaction was a brief flare of resentment, as if he had somehow engineered the whole situation to make me react to his absence and then render my reactions—my distress, my annoyance, my sense of betrayal—invalid. It was as if he had deliberately set out to make me look foolish. Which he hadn't, of course he hadn't. It was simply that his pain had left no room for mine, and he hadn't even thought to let me know.

"Funeral today," he went on. "He missed the snowdrops. He's supposed to come with me. That's what we do. Every year."

"I'm so sorry." I tried to push everything aside except concern. "Do you want to come in?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I really wanted to see you. It's all I've been thinking about all day, but now I just feel weird about it."

"I missed you too." It seemed a safe enough thing to say. It didn't remotely cover the mess he'd left me in, but it wasn't a lie either. I reached down and gave his shoulder an awkward squeeze, but he flinched away from me. "Toby?"

"I didn't miss you. I wanted you to be there." At last, he looked up, his eyes dark-shadowed, almost bruised. He was very pale, and his acne had flared up, blurring his jaw, his brow, the top edges of his cheeks with red and white stars. "Don't you get it, Laurie? I wanted you to be with me, but here I am as usual, sitting on your doorstep, waiting for the corner of your life I'm allowed."

On a rational level, I knew it was grief that made him speak like that to me, but the sheer unfairness of it struck at my good intentions like a pickaxe. "For fuck's sake," I snapped, "if you'd bothered to tell me or ask me, I would have been there." Then I gasped and covered my mouth. That hadn't been what I'd meant to say at all.

"Wow, yeah, okay." Toby wrapped his arms round his knees, pulling himself into an impossible ball. "How the fuck was I supposed to tell you, Laurie? Get myself shot in the hope you were the one in the helicopter?"

My whole body went cold. My worst fear, flung at me by a grieving child: arriving on some scene of terrible destruction to find, not a problem to be solved, but the body of someone I loved. "Toby, don't even joke—"

"It's not a joke. I literally have no way to contact you. You've never got round to giving me any. Because it's always on your terms. Everything is always on your terms."

Oh God. I deserved every word. He'd been alone, and in pain, when I could have—should have—been with him, and that was my fault, not his. All this week fretting because I didn't have his number, and I'd never even thought he didn't have mine. "Oh God. I'm—"

"If you say you're sorry, I'll scream." He looked at me, his eyes all shadow and shiny with unshed tears. "My granddad's dead, Laurie. The person I love most in the whole world. And I spent his funeral thinking about you. How fucked is that?"

If he didn't want my regret, could he at least accept my consolation? "It's not fucked. Funerals are…funerals. Grief is grief. There aren't any rules about what you should be thinking or feeling."

"Oh, fuck you, that's not the point."

"I know." I was almost glad, in a way, to bear his anger without flinching. It was something I could do for him. "The point is, I wasn't there for you."

His fingers knotted restlessly. "Well, at least you get it. But why's it always me?"

"Why's what?" It felt wrong now to be looming over him, so I hunkered down in front of him and linked my hands together.

"Why do I always have to ask for everything? Why do you never just…give…or offer?"

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, but I'm not psychic. I didn't know."

"Yeah, but you never ask either. Do you know how fucking hard it is to be the one who's always asking? Why do I always have to roll my heart between us like it's a fucking marble?" His voice lifted, then broke. "How the fuck am I supposed to know?"

"Know what? That I'll be there for you?" I tried to keep my voice gentle, but there was something unexpected and unexpectedly painful about his uncertainty. "Darling, how could you doubt it?"

Again, that cold, bright stare. "Because you've never given me a reason to believe it."

His words slid into me like pieces of glass. "That's…that's not fair."

"Well, neither are you."

I had no idea how to answer. Everything he'd said was true: I hadn't been fair. And sorry was so inadequate as to be insulting.

I didn't know how long he'd been sitting out there, so I stood up, took off my coat, and draped it across his shoulders. He didn't react, but at least he didn't shake it off. Then, I sat down next to him, and we stayed like that for a while, locked in our silences. He smelled faintly of the cologne I'd bought him, a hint of spice and tears, and I ached to be back in Oxford, where it had briefly seemed possible that we could be in love. Where it had been the easiest, simplest thing in the world.

He was right, though. Asking was difficult. Incredibly difficult. But there was such a lot I should have asked and asked for, such a lot I should have given, instead of pretending and telling myself I didn't want any of it. I hadn't given him freedom. I hadn't even managed my own expectations. All I'd done was place every burden of love and trust on Toby, made it impossible for him to ask for something as basic as my presence in his life, and sentenced us both to nearly a week of hell.

Perhaps it was already too late to begin building certainties. But the least I could do—at last, at long last—was try. Ask. "Toby?"

"What?"

"I know I should have done this weeks ago, but there's something I need to ask you, and something I need to give you."

"Too late. I don't want your dead-granddad pity."

"This isn't pity." I crushed my own impatience. I knew, like my anger and my hurt, it was just a form of emotional distraction—a way for me to feel less on edge, less vulnerable, less fucking guilty. "When I didn't see you last week, and I had no way to contact you, I was…I was…"

"What?" He sounded so sceptical. My fault again.

"Distraught. Devastated. Heartbroken. The thing is, I've been telling myself for weeks that you have the right to walk away from me at any time. Well, you don't have that right." His head turned sharply, and I reached out without thinking and pushed his fringe out of his eyes. "I mean, you do have the right, I'm not insane. But you have to break up with me first."

"Y'know," he said softly, "that sounds like you want to be my boyfriend."2

"I do. It wasn't what I was going to ask, though."

His lips curled into the smallest smile. "I'm still counting it."

And I smiled back, just as tentatively. "All right."

We were quiet again as I struggled with my incredibly banal, yet utterly necessary request. It should have been so simple, but somehow it wasn't. I'd pleaded with him shamelessly for all manner of violations and all manner of mercies, but the sexual vulnerabilities I allowed were nothing to sitting on my doorstep with Toby, admitting everything I wanted—and needed—from him.

He nudged his shoulder gently against mine. "What did you want, Laurie?"

I took a deep breath. "Your phone number?"

"Course. And text me, so I've got yours." Somehow he managed to say this as though it was perfectly normal. As though we weren't months overdue.

I reached into my pocket, plucked out my phone, and added Toby to my address book. Texted him my contact card.

Then I pulled out my house keys and slid Robert's old key off the ring. I'd put it on there for safekeeping when he'd finally moved out, and never got round to removing it.

Initially it had been sentimentality—it was somewhere we were still together, two keys nestled against each other on my key ring—and then just apathy. I handed it to Toby. "This is what I wanted to give you."

His eyes widened. "Jesus, Laurie."

"No more sitting on my doorstep, okay? Come whenever you like, whether I'm here or not."

"Seriously?"

I nodded. "Again, it's something I should have done weeks ago."

He arched his hips off the step, wriggled his own set of keys out of his pocket, and added mine to the bunch, where it vanished among the other bits and pieces of Toby's life. "So what do I get when my next family member dies?"

"I ask you to marry me."

"That's so not funny." It wasn't, but it was, the way only terrible things can be sometimes. Toby leaned in and kissed me chastely, a little sadly. "Thank you."

"Will you come in now?"

"Yeah."

I left him on the sofa, looking a bit like a stranger in his funeral suit, and made him tea and hot buttered toast, because it was the only thing I could think to do for him.

In grief, Toby's living far outstripped my own, for I had never lost anyone I truly loved. My parents had not been close to their parents, so the death of grandmothers and grandfathers had always been an abstract thing to me. And though I would surely mourn the passing of my own parents, our relationship was one of form and custom, love through duty, and complete mutual incomprehension.

It was strange the way some generations felt unreachably distant and others not at all. In so many ways, I had met all their expectations, but there was still one where I hadn't and couldn't. They'd never reproached me for it. In some ways, it might have been easier if they had, because then it would have given me a reason to dislike them.

I suddenly remembered a birthday—twenty-first? twenty-second?—breaking beneath their silence. "Why don't you ever ask about him?"

My mother had looked momentarily embarrassed, not because of the question, but because I had raised my voice. "I didn't know you wanted me to," was all she'd said. And, after that, at the end of every phone call, always and without fail: "How is Robert?" To which I could only ever answer, "Fine."

The most ironic thing, the cruellest, was that Robert should have been perfect—attractive, well educated, well brought up, ambitious, charming—but for the fact he was a man. All the trappings of civilisation, of good living and eligibility, meant nothing. For he would not bear children. And, while we were together, he could not have married me.

What would my parents think if I ever introduced them to Toby?

And how mortifying—how loathsome and cowardly—to be thirty-seven and still afraid of their disappointment.

I sat on the floor, my head against Toby's knee, as he nibbled the toast and sipped the tea. I didn't know what to say to him or how to comfort him. I only knew he was in pain, and that there was nothing I could do to take it away.

The hospital, of course, was full of pain, full of loss, but there I was merely a ferryman. This was different. I had no role to hide behind. There was only the nakedness and helplessness of love.

"You know what sucks?" He put the plate down—he'd hardly eaten anything. But he kept the tea, cradling the cup too tightly, the skin of his hands blotching pink and white.

"Tell me?"

"Nobody liked my granddad except me. He was kind of a horrible person."3

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but perhaps it made it easier for him to dwell on bad memories instead of good. "That doesn't seem to fit what you've told me."

"No, he was nice to me. But his daughter, that's my grandmother, hates him—I mean hated him—because he was really strict with her when she was growing up. He used to hit her and stuff. It wasn't meant to be abusive or anything. It was just the way he'd been raised."

"He didn't…?" I wasn't sure how to finish, or what I would do about the answer.

"God no. Never. Not with me."

Relief rolled through me, and then I felt like a hypocrite. I was quick enough to react to the possibility of other people hurting Toby, noticeably less so when it was me.

He stared blankly at his tea. "My grandmother married really young just to get away from him, and she wouldn't let him near my mum when she was born. But then when she got pregnant—my mum, I mean—and they threw her out, suddenly he was there, supporting her, taking care of me. He had one of those…baby carrier things you strap to your chest. Used to carry me everywhere like a little monkey."

I reached up and peeled his fingers off the cup. He didn't resist when I took it away and put it down, just held my hand instead. "People change. There's nothing strange or wrong about it."

"I guess. He had to have this operation, you know, in like the sixties or seventies. He was injured at Dunkirk and shrapnel got in his heart, so this doctor came all the way over from America to get it out. It took like nine hours or something, and he had this massive scar running all the way down his front and his back. Everybody thought he was going to die. My mum thinks that's what changed him."

"Does it matter?"

For a moment or two, he didn't say anything. Then he shrugged. "I guess not. Not anymore, anyway."

It was harder than I would have imagined possible to see him like this, so uncertain and so sad, but he was still my boy, my Toby, still so full of light. I could picture him in some churchyard, a small splash of dark beneath a grey sky. And I should have been there beside him. He shouldn't have had to mourn alone. I hated myself for that. "The fact he treated other people badly doesn't change the fact he loved you."

"No, I know. It's just"—he squeezed my fingers—"kind of lonely."

I swallowed, guilt and shame, pain and love twisting together inside me like wire wool until I wasn't sure how I could bear it or keep it all contained.

"Like normally," he went on, "all the love and loss and all the rest of that shit is spread around, but there's just me. He was there for me my whole life. How the fuck am I supposed to make that matter enough?"

I pressed myself against his leg, my face usefully hidden against his thigh, and tried to give him some sort of answer. "You grieve and you remember and you live."

My voice must have betrayed me because his free hand curled into my hair and pulled a little, as if he wanted me to look at him. "Laurie, are you crying?"

Fuck. I was. Horrible, sticky tears that burned in my eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Are you really crying for me?"

Apparently so. As if it could somehow ease his pain. Another tug made me lift my head, and I glanced up at him, embarrassed and wet-eyed, helplessly hurting for him.

"God." His thumb swept under my lashes, gathering caught moisture. "Wow."

"I know it's not about me," I mumbled, "but I'm sorry I wasn't there with you, and I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm sorry it's been difficult for you, and I'm sorry it's probably going to be difficult for a while. I wish I could make that better, but I know can't." I took a deep, ragged, teary breath. "And I'm really sorry I'm crying like an idiot, because I have no fucking idea why I'm doing that."

"‘S'okay." He tumbled off the sofa and into my lap, and kissed me through a mess of hopeless words and salt. "It's…nice. It helps. Everything kind of comes and goes. Like sometimes I feel so nothingy it's almost like I've forgotten he's dead, or maybe I'm dead or something." He curled into my arms, and I wrapped him up as tight and safe as I could. "Cry for me, okay? Since I can't right now."

So I did, just for a little while as I held him, and Toby told me stories of his grandfather—a man who had fought a war, made terrible mistakes, and learned so very late in life how to love.

Later, I carried him upstairs, undressed him, and took him to bed. At first we simply lay, our bodies entwined, but then we came together more certainly, more urgently, seeking each other in kisses and touches, some scattered words and a few more tears, and Toby mastered me with nothing but himself.

* * *

I woke in the early hours of the morning to discover I was alone. My first reaction was a wave of panicky abandonment followed by visions of a grief-stricken Toby wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night. Common sense reasserted itself as sleep receded, and I realised it was far more likely he was just somewhere else in the house. So I slipped out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown, and went looking for him.

I found him in the living room, cross-legged on the floor, his hands full of rope. In the flicking light from a black and white movie, he seemed to be practicing knots from a battered copy of The Boy Scout Knot Book.

He flinched when I put a hand on his bare shoulder. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Sorry. I didn't want to wake you."

"Always wake me." I knelt down next to him. "What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Thought it might help or something. Give me something to do with my brain that isn't think about Granddad. It's…it's like the emotional equivalent of having a tooth out, y'know? I keep touching the space with my tongue to make sure there's really…nothing there."

"Oh darling."

He rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. "Wish I could cry. That'd be normal, right? And then I could get better."

"There's no normal in grief."

"Yeah…" He glanced at the rope spilling across the living room carpet. "I think I got that memo."

"Is it working?"

He sighed. "Not really. Mainly, it's just annoying the crap out of me."

"What's the problem?"

"Well, I need my hands to tie the knots, but I need something to tie the knots around like, for example, my hands."

"Ah yes, a common manifestation of the infamous chicken-and-egg problem." I didn't know what else I could give him, how else I could help him, so I offered him my wrists. "What are we watching?"

His eyes met mine, sad and silver-touched by the screen. "You don't have to do this. I'll be okay."

"I want to. Will you let me stay? Be with you?"

A long shuddering breath, as if it was his yielding, not mine. Then he took my wrists in his cold hands and began—inexpertly—to bind them. For whatever reason, he'd chosen nylon rope. I shivered a little as it slid against my skin, a cool, silky whisper of mingled promise and danger.

"It's Swing Time. Found it on iPlayer."

"I've never seen it."

"One of Granddad's favourites. Sunday-afternoon-type viewing."

It was hard not to watch Toby's fingers working to immobilise me, but I glanced at the screen where a man and a woman were singing irritatedly at each other in the snow. Toby was whispering the words under his breath, interspersed occasionally with instructions from the book. My heart ached helplessly for him, and my body—God help me—my body was a whore.

I shifted, trying not to draw his attention, but I should have known that was foolish. His eyes flared, his face losing some of the stillness that made him almost a stranger in that eerie half-light.

And then his hand pressed between my legs. "Are you getting hard in front of Fred Astaire? That's so wrong."

"I'm sorry." I squirmed even more. "I can't help it. You're tying me up. I know it's not what you need right now."

He grinned. "It's exactly what I need."

"And I'm probably ruining all your happy childhood memories."

"Or…" He drew the knots tight, keeping a thumb beneath for control, and I moaned. "Making new ones."

I closed my eyes, everything disappearing except Toby and the rasp of rope across my skin. "If this is what you want."

"I don't know what I want."

I didn't know what to tell him. For a little while, we sat together without speaking, Toby's head bowed over my captured hands, Fred and Ginger bickering in the background.

Robert had liked to bind me. Severely, decoratively, lovingly, humiliatingly—I had thrilled to all his moods, to the strange liberty of constriction, and the peace of being so mercilessly held.

This wasn't like that at all.

I was worried for Toby. Grieving for his grief. But in a strange way, content. He was with me now, and I was going to…do better and be better. I was going to be there for him in every way I hadn't been before. Make him safe and happy.

As he did me.

He cursed softly as a knot slipped and unravelled. "I think I really suck at this."

"It's just practice." I struggled a bit and most of the rigging held. "Why the sudden interest in ropework?"

"Something to do? I don't know. I thought it might impress you."

"You don't have to impress me, Toby."

It was the wrong thing to say. I could tell by the downturn of his mouth. "Yeah, well, maybe I want to."

"You already have me." There was some…anxiety, some uncertainty in him, and I didn't fully understand where it had come from, let alone how to alleviate it. I tried a more teasing note. "You don't need ropes to keep me."

"But your last boyfriend…"

It was neither something I expected nor wanted to hear. I didn't want to talk about Robert with Toby, not because I was trying to keep anything from him, but because I'd already wasted too much of my present on my past. "It was one of his things, yes. But I'm with you now. We have our own things."

"Okay." He tucked his knees up to his chin and huddled.

And I wished for my freedom so I could touch him, reassure him with my body if nothing else. Finally I looped my hands over him and drew him in close. He made a startled sound—almost a giggle—and then settled against me.

"Are you really worried about the ghosts of boyfriends past?" I asked.

"I'm worrying about everything." He tucked his head against my shoulder and let out a long sigh. "I know I should be thinking about Granddad, but all I can think about is me. It's messed up."

"I told you, there's no normal here. Whatever you feel is okay."

"Fretting because"—he touched his jaw self-consciously—"I'm really scrofulous right now? That's normal, is it? Not completely shallow and selfish?"

"Not at all. And I'll get you some tea tree oil tomorrow."

"Oh God. I'm grotesque." He hid his face against my neck.

"Acne is susceptible to stress and emotional distress."

"Not helping, Mr. Doctor."

"How about this." I rubbed my cheek against the edge of his jaw, nuzzling into him, awkward without hands to touch or anchor me. "You're beautiful."

He twisted and looked at me, his eyes wide and a little tear-blurred. "I'm really scared, Laurie. I'm scared of being alone, and of…of the whole of my life." He took a deep, shuddering breath, and then the words came rushing out: "And then I get really angry at my granddad for leaving me. And then I feel like a shithead. And then I get stressed out at something completely irrelevant like acne or not being able to tie a double slipknot. Or that I can't live up to some guy you were with like ten years ago."

"All of that's understandable," I told him soothingly. "Except for the bit about Robert, which is nonsense."

I kissed his cheek. On the screen, the credits rolled, bathing us in flickering light.

"But…" Ever persistent, Toby ducked out of my embrace and wriggled away. "You were with him for ages, and when you couldn't be with him, you didn't want to be with anyone and—"

"I want to be with you."

After a moment, he nodded. "Okay." I hoped that might be the end of it, but he went on. "It's just everything feels so fucked up right now. I don't want to fuck this up as well."

I wanted to reassure him, but I was wary of forevers. Robert and I had promised each other so much. Possibly too much. "Let's not jump off bridges until we come to them."

Toby blinked moisture from his lashes. "At least tell me why you broke up with him, so I know not to do that."

Oh God, how to explain. How to condense all that pain and loss and confusion into a single, useful parable. "Well, you could try not to tie a slipknot on a sole load-bearing suspension line, causing me to fall and break my wrist and fracture my pelvis." I heard Toby's startled gasp, but I pressed on, wanting to be done. "And you could try not to be so consumed with guilt about it that you stop having sex with me."

I knew I was being unfair to Robert. It had been complicated, and we had both been hurt in our different ways. I'd become a permanent reminder of a single moment of failure—no wonder he hadn't been able to bear being close to me.

My voice had lost something of its careful modulation, so I took a few calming breaths before I continued. "Then you could not start going out to clubs, and doing all the things you used to do with me with other people. And when I confront you with it, you could not tell me it wasn't cheating because it wasn't sex. Because it was. Sex. Cheating. It was."4

There was a long silence.

Toby's arms came round me and held me so very tightly, my already-trapped hands trapped between us, making me feel at once safe and unbalanced and exposed. As Robert had once done with rope. "I won't do that," he said fiercely. "I won't ever do that."

"Please," I said, realising I was weary beyond reckoning, "can we go back to bed?"

He nodded and began to undo his knots.

I would have already been leaving had it been a workday, so it felt a little strange—chronologically dislocating—to be shedding my dressing gown and crawling under the duvet in the greyish half-light of an incipient dawn, my wrists still hot from Toby's ropes.

But I slept regardless, with sudden and terrible ease.

* * *

I woke again in what had to be the early hours of the afternoon. I was relieved to find Toby still in the bed with me, but he was awake and watching me, and I didn't know how much he'd slept.

I reached out to fluff his hair. "Are you all right?"

"I–I don't know. It's weird waking up with you like this."

"But you often wake up next to me."

"Yeah, but you're usually hustling me out of the house because you have to go to work."

Another unwanted but entirely deserved reminder of what a dick I'd been. "It'll never happen again. And for the next week at least, we can do whatever you like. I'm… Well…I suppose I'm on holiday."

"You…you"—his eyes widened—"took holiday? For me?"

I couldn't lie. "Um, technically, I took holiday to get over you because I thought you weren't coming back."

"It's about me. Still counts." He nipped at my shoulder, possessive and playful at the same time. "I'm counting it."

Here, at last, I had an opportunity to prove myself. To give him everything I had—for one reason or another—withheld. "Would you like… Would it help…if we went away somewhere? Together?" I heard his breath catch. And remembering his excitement at a night in Oxford, I couldn't resist teasing him gently. Anything to reach him in his loss and bring him back to me. "You know, a minibreak."

"Oh, Laurie." He sounded heartbroken rather than amused, and I was conscious of yet another failure. "I'd love to, but I can't."

"Why not?"

He gave me a watery smile. "You may be on holiday, but I have to work."

"Straight after your granddad's funeral?" I frowned at the ceiling.

"It's okay."

It was not okay. He was surely entitled to some sort of compassionate leave, paid or…ah. "Is this about the money?" I hadn't meant to ask it so baldly or abruptly, but concern made me clumsy.

"Like, hello. Tactless."

"Sorry."

He sighed. "It's not about the money."

"What is it about, then?"

"Um, it's my job."

I felt just a little bit like shaking him. His stubbornness, endearing though it was, came perilously close to destructiveness sometimes. "You work in a café, Toby. Jobs like that are two a penny." It was obvious from the silence, the sudden rigidity in his body, that I'd said the wrong thing. "I just mean, you have rights, and you've suffered a bereavement, and you shouldn't push yourself."

"It's not what you said, though, is it?" he muttered. "Look, it might not be worth anything to you, Mr. Consultant, but it's what I have, and that means something to me."

"Well, if it makes you happy, then of course—"

But this wasn't the right thing either. "Now you sound like my mum."

He was nineteen. Confused. Grieving. Patience, Dalziel. "I don't know what you want from me right now."

"How about not pissing on my life?"

"How is suggesting you take some time to deal with the loss of your grandfather pissing on your life?"

He rolled away from me onto his side, his body curving like a comma. A comma that didn't want me touching it. "You were sneery," he said, in a small voice.

Very tentatively I laid my hand across the smooth dip at the top of his flank, and he didn't shake me off. "I'm sorry, Toby."

"Nobody gets it. Nobody I knew at university bothered to keep in touch, and all my school friends who went to university think it's weird."

"If it's what you want to do, then"—I smoothed my fingertips lightly over his tender skin—"fuck them."

"Hah. Easy for you to say. Bet nobody thinks you've wasted your life."

Well. No. At least, not professionally speaking, although how I came to it had been an inextricable mixture of my parents' determination, my own temperament, and an early recognised need for purpose and stability. It hadn't precisely been a choice, but I wouldn't have chosen otherwise. "You can't compare yourself to what other people are doing. Only you can know what's right for you."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Once again, I was obliged to remind myself that it wasn't appropriate to lose your temper with the grief-stricken. "But—"

"Laurie, like, seriously. What part of ‘don't want to talk about it' are you interpreting as irrelevant?"

I gave up. We didn't have to do this now. I slid an arm over him, and curled myself around him so that we were two commas now—quotation marks, perhaps—and gradually he relaxed into me.

I was just on the verge of falling into a doze when he said very softly, "I'm sorry I can't go away with you."

"There'll be another time." I kissed the tops of his shoulders, where the skin was rough and sweet beneath my lips.

"Where would we have gone?"

"Anywhere we wanted. Paris, maybe."

"Because that isn't at all clichéd." His voice wavered as he spoke, which made me think he was more likely trying to hold back tears than rebuff me.

"We still have the weekend."

He sniffled. "I guess."

I put my lips to the back of his neck and felt the shiver move through his skin. "Two whole days, just for us. We can do whatever you like with them."

"Really?" His hair tickled my nose as he shifted.

"Yes."

He seemed to be thinking about it. "I–I want to make you a lemon meringue pie."

Not quite what I expected. "All right."

"And have some seriously filthy sex."

That seemed more like it. "As you wish."

"And…and…okay, I can't really think of anything else right now."

"I'm sure other things will occur to us." My ridiculous, beautiful boy. I would have found a way to give him the moon if he'd wanted it.

He pushed his arse against my cock, making me gasp. "Is there anything you want to do?"

I wasn't sure I could top filthy sex and a lemon meringue pie. I was about to say so, when I realised there was something else I owed him. "I'd like to take you on a date."

He squeaked. "What? In public?"

"No, in a nuclear bunker." I fiddled idly with the arrow through his nipple, gently moving it back and forth until he was panting and wriggly. "Can I take you out to dinner?"

"I don't know." It was a pathetic attempt at indifference. I could hear the excitement in his voice. "I'll have to think about it."

"Please."

"Well, maybe, if we can have all the courses, including aperitifs."

* * *

That afternoon, we went shopping together. As soon as supermarket deliveries had become a thing, Robert and I had signed up, and never looked back. Our lives, our time, had seemed so much better spent elsewhere. But this was pleasant in the most ordinary of ways, and I trailed along after Toby, pushing the trolley, and it didn't seem like a waste of my Saturday in the slightest.

He bounced all the way home.

"Do I just leave you to it?" I asked, once we'd unpacked and my kitchen work surfaces were covered with purchases.

The look he gave me was downright wicked. Downright terrifying. "No way. You're totally going to be part of this process."

"In a…loading-the-dishwasher capacity?"

"Nuh-uh." Oh God. "But first I need to make pastry."

So I sat at the kitchen table and read the Times, not entirely successfully, as Toby got to work. He was humming under his breath—"Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart"—and seemed a little more like himself.

At last, he was rolling out his pastry and using it to line a pie tin I didn't even know I owned. "Okay." He popped everything into the fridge. "Now I just need to grab some things from upstairs."

"For the pie?"

"For you. Give me like…five minutes. And"—he flashed his toothiest grin—"take your clothes off."

I froze. "When you said you wanted a lemon meringue pie and filthy sex, I didn't think you meant together."

"That's what you get for underestimating me."

He vanished upstairs, leaving me paralysed with awkwardness. The kitchen was warmer than the rest of the house because of the AGA, and nobody would be able to see me unless they scaled the garden walls and came right down onto the patio. But there was still something a little terrifying about stripping myself in the middle of my kitchen. I felt disproportionately vulnerable for how safe I was there. It was something about the way the light fell, bright but without heat, across my skin, illuminating and revealing me. All my desires undeniable and laid bare beneath the winter sun.

Nervous anticipation stirred the hairs on my arms.

I wasn't sure how to wait for him. On my knees? On the hard floor. Would that help? A piece of fantasy. But he hadn't said…

In the end, I rested my hips against the table and folded my arms, as though this was perfectly normal.

It seemed like longer than five minutes. It seemed like forever.

But finally I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Toby reappeared, his arms full of…things. He paused in the doorway, his eyes sweeping up and down my body with such unabashed and possessive eagerness it made me hot and flustered and a little bit shaky. I wasn't sure a nineteen-year-old should have been able to do that to me, but there was an absurd sort of gratification in knowing he found me worth looking at, that he liked me naked and at his pleasure.

He dumped a couple of pillows on top of the table, his hands tracing the worn-smooth surface. "This is so awesome."

"It's actually a magistrate's bench. I got it at an antique sale."

"That must be why I keep having kinky daydreams about it." He patted the wood. "Up you get, on your knees."

On the table? I'd be so…exposed. Little shivers chased themselves over my skin, turning me hot and cold at once. "Oh, Toby, really?"

He gazed at my hardening, traitorous cock. "Yeah, really."

So I climbed onto my kitchen table, aroused and embarrassed, or aroused because I was embarrassed, which was its own sweet-sharp torment.

"Spread."

I made a noise that was most certainly not a whimper and obeyed, sliding my thighs apart, and then further still, until Toby was satisfied.

He tucked a pillow under each of my knees and smiled up at me. "So fucking hot."

I tried to come up with something grumpy to say in response, but it was hard to think, hard to breathe beneath Toby's gaze. "The things I do for you," I managed.

"I know." Gleeful was how he sounded as he skated his nails up the inside of my legs, while I shivered helplessly at being so defenceless and tried to hold position, cock and adductor muscles already aching softly. "Okay. So…" He released me briefly from his attentions and rummaged again in his pile of ropes and cuffs and God knew what else. He held out his hands to me, the Gates of Hell in one, the anal hook in the other, and grinned again. "Choose."

That was easy. I pointed at the Gates of Hell. "Cool." He threw them back into the pile.

For a moment I groped after meaning, and then I understood, and then I groaned. "You mind-fucking little bastard."

He nodded, utterly unrepentant. "Hands behind your neck."

It occurred to me—as it always did at some point—that I could simply refuse. I could get off the damn table and not allow him to do anything to me. The only power he had was power I'd given him, and I could take it back at any moment, with a look, a word, the simplest of gestures.

But I didn't want to. I wanted him to have me, to have everything, my pleasure, my pain, my pride, and my shame. I wanted to lay it all at his feet until we were both free, until I was his and he was mine, and everything else was tatters.

I put my hands behind my neck, and he cuffed them there. His fingers ruffled through my hair, tugging it lightly so that hot sparks slid all the way down my spine.

"Okay," he said. "Down."

I didn't want to do it, but I wanted him to make me. I needed him, I needed his hand—firm and inevitable—to control my descent. He was so gentle that I nearly wept with mortification and a kind of terrible longing. I could feel the scars and whorls in the table beneath my cheek. Toby was just a haze of warmth behind me, standing at the delta he'd made of my body as he debased and opened me.5

I shuddered and yielded to him, impaled on his merciless, lube-wet fingers. Someone moaned, but it was Toby, the sound as naked as I felt. And I answered, pushing my hips up, needing him to know anything he wanted, I wanted too. That I wanted this. For him to do this to me. For me. With me.

His hand closed around my cock, and the sheer pleasure of his touch burned through me like the brightest sunlight. My sudden cry echoed on the kitchen tiles, too loud, too harsh, too desperately revealing. He bent over my back and kissed his way down the straining, suppliant arch of my spine. My fingers knotted against each other, but there was nothing for me to hold on to. There was just Toby, his mouth on my skin, and everything he made me feel. The truth was, pleasure frightened me more than pain. It demanded a deeper surrender.

It was almost a relief when he moved away.

But then came the blunt pressure of the anal hook, stretching me wider, pushing into me. It was a dull sort of violation. It didn't hurt, but it seemed like it might, and that was somehow worse, holding me on the edge of a gasp.

Until Toby whispered, "Breathe," and then the damn thing was inside me, my body struggling round it like an oyster with a pearl.

I hated it. Loved it. Loved how much I hated it.

And how safe it was to be in that place with Toby, who somehow saw the spaces between all my blurred lines far more clearly than I did.

He used the chain between my cuffed hands to draw me upright again. He was careful, but even that slight movement…jostled, reminded, pleasured, tormented. A few drops of sweat slipped between my shoulder blades, and I was so sensitive, so lost in my skin, I half thought I felt the heat of them, the scratch of salt within each sphere. My mouth gaped open, and a sound came out, wavering and unformed, a muddle of misery, need, arousal, and submission.

Yes.

Please.

This.

There was a chink of chain as Toby fed it through the ring, then the click of a snap hook as he connected it to the cuffs, and there, I was bound. I tugged, because it was always my first instinct, and the curve of the hook twisted on the threshold of my body, reminding me of its invasion, intensifying my sense of restraint. I swallowed a gasp, my pulse fluttering fearfully. Robert had often put me in more demanding bondage, but for all its crudity—perhaps because of its crudity, the harsh mixture of exposure and penetration—this stripped me, flayed me, and left me raw. My cock strained upwards obscenely between my spread thighs, pre-come slicking down the sides, and dripping onto the table.

"Oh God. Laurie." Toby scrambled up next to me, pushing between my legs, and buried his hands in my hair. For a moment, his wild, shining eyes were my whole world, and then, with a little growl, he kissed me savagely. I didn't dare move, not wanting to feel that awful tug and pressure deep inside me, but he had me braced—as long as I didn't struggle, as long as I didn't do anything but let him shove his tongue deep into my mouth, and take me, take everything.

He tasted like the tea he'd drunk earlier. Then of me. And it was so beautiful, that cruel and hungry kiss.

We were both dazed and breathless when he pulled away.

His hands skimmed across my body, stroking, scratching, owning it, while I shivered and moaned softly, tethered and untethered at the same time. The pads of his thumbs circled my nipples, stirring pleasure like glowing ashes until it flamed in me afresh, and I threw back my head, arching into his touch, heedless of anything else. The movement dragged against the cuffs and the hook, and the shock of those harsh adornments jolted through me, a cry catching at the back of my throat.

Toby leaned in to me, and put his mouth where his hands had been, covering too-sensitive flesh in a wash of exquisite heat. What little breath I had shuddered out of me, and I choked on Toby's name, a fly in honey, trapped and drowning in sweetness. Just when it became almost unbearable, he caught my nipple on the edge of his teeth, and that rougher touch sheared through me like lightning, and I almost came in the rush of knowing myself so utterly controlled. So utterly his.

He looked up, smiling, moisture glistening on the lips that had kissed me and hurt me, and reached below the level of the table, where I couldn't easily see. When he brought his hands back up, he was holding a set of clover clamps connected by a steel chain. They glittered between his fingers, promising pain.

I was damp with sweat and spit and ecstasy, powerless to resist, wanting and not wanting, and waiting for him to deny me the choice, to give me whatever he chose to give. His fingers fumbled against skin—once, twice—as he clamped me. And each time, his eyes held mine, the lust in them its own caress, as I hissed at the chill, sharp bite. Breathing through it and knowing it was nothing to the burning agony that waited for me when he took them off.

"There." Toby stepped back. Surveyed me, his subject, his kingdom. He was flushed and a little sweaty too, as breathless as me, the ridge of his erection outlined against his jeans. "Fuck. Wow."

I'd done that to him. Made him hot and hard and hazy-eyed. And in that moment, any pain, all indignity was worth it. No. Part of it. Inextricable from it. Inseparable, indistinguishable from joy.

Toby seemed to be having trouble looking away. "Okay. Right." I loved the harshness of his voice when he was like this, fiercely turned on and full of cruelty. "I've got a lemon meringue pie to finish."

"And…" My lips were dry, my body spread and aching, pain gathering intimately both inside and out. "What do I do?"

There was nothing but love in him as he told me, "You suffer for me."

Which was what I did while Toby put his crust in the oven and began to work on the filling, talking to me all the time about what he was doing, the words blurring with the pain and the discomfort, until everything was Toby and all the ways he touched me and loved me, hurt me and delighted me. I floated, the edges of my world turned as soft and frayed as feathers. It was strange to be so physically abject, and so completely happy. Toby's.

God. I hurt. I hurt.

There was something relentless about it, the steady heartbeat of pain and the slow drop-drop of time. Moving brought no relief, just a reawakening of harsher agonies, unwanted pleasure, the thrust and press of metal inside me, the sway of the chain, and the tightening of the clamps on my nipples. Even breathing stirred the air too much, made it rasp against skin grown tight and hot and thin.

Sometimes I could not hold back my sounds.

Sometimes my eyes would sting with helpless moisture.

And sometimes Toby would come to me, put his mouth to my mouth or against my eyes, and take my groans and all my tears.

I liked being able to watch him. My restraints, in that respect, had set me free. There was nothing for me to do but look and revel in my looking.

He seemed happy, moving around my kitchen with the same confidence he had learned in touching and taking me. The muscles of his back shifted under his T-shirt like the memory of wings as he worked, and every now and again I'd catch the flash of his forearms, all pale skin and sinew, dusted only faintly by dark hair, the occasional freckle. He was leaning most of his weight on one leg, so his arse was tightly nestled against the denim of his jeans.

Perhaps a stranger would look at Toby and see little more than a skinny postadolescent with a shockingly bad haircut. But he was my boyfriend, my dom, my fragile prince, and he was nothing less than beautiful to me. I loved the tender spot at the back of his neck and all the whisper-soft hairs that would stir beneath my breath. I loved his narrow feet and his disproportionately large toes. I loved the small, flat mole that lurked beneath his left earlobe. I loved the place between his collarbones and the hollows beneath his clavicles where sweat gathered and gleamed. I loved the slim and gorgeous cock that tasted so much of salt and him.

These were the rosary beads of my submission. Though my only god was love.6

"I've got about five minutes before the crust's done." He came and stood in front of me, and his fully clothed proximity suddenly reminded me of my own nakedness, my own vulnerability. He brought with him a waft of wholesome smells: flour and sugar and baking pastry. "Wonder what I should do with it?"

He ran his hands over the straining, sweat-slick muscles of my abdomen, and I flinched from his gentleness, which only jostled the hook and the chain and made me sob a little. He hushed me, soothed me, strung soft kisses across my body like fairy lights. I was too raw to even think of resisting. I just leaned into him, lost, seduced, begging for his touch, letting the pleasure fill me like the pain.

He gave me that as well, his nails and his teeth leaving reddened tracks and marks, gifts across my skin. By then, it was all sensation, and me all yielding. He found the tender places—the underside of my arms, the edge of my ribs, the crease of my groin, the side of a knee—and ignited them like touch paper, until I was nothing but fire and lightning, made and unmade by his harsh breath and his trembling hands and all his frantic, whispered words of wonder and gratitude, love and desire.

Then there was silence, stillness. Toby's eyes locked on mine as his fingers closed around the clamps. A tug, and they were gone.

An infinitesimally tiny fraction of a second roared through my ears. And, after, everything was pain. Engulfing, all-consuming, inescapable. A red-hot, skin-deep rush. The taste of copper in my mouth. I couldn't move. I didn't dare. I could only shake and endure. Surrender. Stare into the too-bright mirror of agony until there was no fear left. Only the sharpest light and a pure, deep peace.

I heard a feral, rough-edged screaming. Me?

"Holy God. Holy holy fucking God." Toby's head was thrown back, his throat rippling, his mouth stretched in a helpless gasp. His hands—which, I now realised, had held me throughout—tightened on my legs. Another shudder jolted through him, and then he doubled over against the table, moaning and clawing at me.

My throat hurt, but the rest of the pain was fading.

Traceless as frost in sunlight. The world looked different, clearer, cleaner, slightly photoshopped, as if I'd inhaled pure oxygen. And I felt, strangely, like laughing.

Toby uncurled slowly. "Fucking hell." He sounded shaken. "I just…fucking hell."

I carefully looked down at him. Though I still didn't precisely like them, even my bonds troubled me less. "Are you all right?"

"I…just like"—he was already flushed, but somehow he turned even redder—"totally came. When you screamed…it was…just so fucking beautiful."

"Thank you," was all I could think to say. But it wasn't just a dominance game. I meant it. Thank you for the pain. Thank you for letting it mean so much to you. Thank you for believing I'm beautiful. Thank you for making me feel so powerful. Thank you for loving me. Thank you. Thank you.

"Fuck." He undid his belt, peeled down his jeans and boxers, cleaned himself up with the boxers, and then tossed them between my legs. The familiar scents of sex and Toby swept over me like the brush of his hands. "You didn't even have to touch me."

His fingers glistened slightly with the traces of him. It made my own cock drip and ache with wanting. "Can I…"

He grinned. "Fuck yeah."

He wriggled back into his jeans, one-handed, and held the other out to me. I drew his fingers into my mouth and lapped up the taste of his pleasure, earned with pain. His eyes fluttered, and I made him moan for me, and I revelled in it. The power of pleasing, in this place where only pleasing mattered.

At last, he pulled away.

"Thank you, again," I said.

"Yikes, your voice is wrecked. I'm going to get you some water."

He refastened his belt and hurried over to the sink. I could have reminded him there was a water filter in the fridge, but I just didn't care. On his return, he climbed onto the table, nestling between my legs, and held the cup to my lips. It was an awkward angle, but it was still the best, slightly lukewarm, slightly chalky tap water I'd ever tasted. And it turned out I was thirsty—which probably shouldn't have been surprising, but there was something a little startling about being given exactly what you needed before even recognising you needed it.

Afterwards, Toby put the cup carefully to one side, and curled up against my sweaty, still slightly throbbing chest. An odd cuddle, perhaps, but I liked it. There was something comforting about it, the sense of closeness, even though I couldn't put my arms round him.

He reached up and ran a hand lazily over my shoulders. "Do you need out?"

"Need?"

"It's been about half an hour."

I stretched—and winced. I was going to ache. But I couldn't lie to him. "I–I don't…need—"

"Good." He smiled up at me, sleepy-eyed, soft-mouthed. "I like you like that, and I still have to make the meringue."

"Oh God."

He tipped his head back and kissed me under my chin. "Besides, I want to reward you."

"By leaving me tied up on a table with a hook up my arse?"

"Pretty much." He slithered down onto the floor.

"I'm sure this sort of thing is against all food hygiene regulations."

"I'll wash my hands really carefully." He took the cup back to the sink and scrubbed himself thoroughly before taking his pie crust out of the oven.

Once again, he talked to me about what he was doing, but I was too far gone, too deep, too high, to be able to hold on to much of the meaning. There was just the rhythm of his voice washing over me, keeping me close.

His lemon filling was the colour of sunshine as he poured it into his golden pastry crust. And whatever went into meringues, the making of them was a vigorous business. The thin muscles of Toby's mixing arm stretched and flexed.

"You seriously need to invest in an electric whisk. I'm getting wanker's cramp here."

But through determination and some strange alchemy, what had started as a bowl of thin white liquid thickened and formed glossy Alpine peaks. A few minutes later, Toby's lemon meringue pie was fully assembled, and he was putting it back into the oven.

"The trick," he explained, "is not letting your curd get cool." He put the two bowls down on the table beside me. "You sometimes get this weird wet layer between the lemon and the meringue, but if the curd is still warm, then it cooks the meringue from the bottom so the layers stick together better."

I'd seen Toby passionate before; I'd seen him certain and in control. This was the first time it hadn't been sexual. "You're really into this, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Yeah. It's cool." Then he ran a finger round the rim of the bowl, gathering some of the gleaming, yellow curd. "Want to try?"

"I want to suck your fingers. If they've got lemon curd on them, I can live with that."

"If you don't respect my pie, I'm putting those clamps back on."

I thought he was joking, but the terror was real enough and dizzyingly sweet. "I'm sorry. Please don't."

"It's all about the combination anyway." He dipped his finger into the second bowl and scooped up a floof of white foam. "Ready?"

"Yes."

Toby's finger slid between my lips, filling my mouth—which already tasted of him—with sugar and lemons. "Oh."

"It's good, isn't it?" He sounded smug, but he deserved to.

I nodded, twisting my tongue around his finger, chasing up the last few streaks of curd.

"More?"

"Yes. Yes, please."

He wriggled, pushing against the table. "God, Laurie, are you trying to make me come again? I love it when you beg."

And I loved it when he made me beg.

He swept up another fingerful of curd and frosting and smeared it across my parted lips before swooping in to kiss me.

It was a sticky mess of tongues, the flavours sweet and tart and Toby-warmed. Perhaps with anyone else, I might have hated it. But not with him. I was as powerless against his playfulness as his cruelty, and just as hopelessly enchanted, as desperate to please. My pulse quickened, the tight thrill of submission jumping again inside me, as he licked lemon from the corners of my mouth and left me breathless, moaning softly.

He tugged the bowl of curd a little closer and dipped in once again. "Oh, whoops." He didn't even try to sound convincing as he twisted his wrist on the way up to my lips and flicked lemon across my already too-sensitive nipples.

I screamed.

Fuck, it was fucking searing. And I was so hard my cock hurt too.

Toby leaned in and very gently cleaned me up, the tip of his tongue tracing the golden spiral across my skin, leaving a shimmering wake of damp heat, soothed pain, and gathering pleasure.

God, the sounds I made for him. I had no control. No desire for it.

He looked up, smiling. "I always knew you'd taste good with lemon."

"Oh, Toby, please."

"Please what?"

I writhed, hurting myself now and not caring. He steadied me with his hands. "I don't know…just…just…please."

I had no notion what I was asking for anymore, but Toby seemed to know the answer anyway. He came up on tiptoes to kiss me. "Yeah. I promise."

He reached into the bowl of frosting and swirled a little up my thigh. It felt like clouds, warmed by his mouth as he chased them down, scooping up the sticky flecks with his agile tongue. He kept caressing me long after all the frosting was gone, kissing and nibbling his way towards my groin. Though studiously ignoring my cock.

I closed my eyes. Unfurled beneath his attentions. Pain had burned away self-consciousness and any hint of shame, leaving me as pliant as the restraints would allow. All that remained was need and a kind of soaring exhilaration that made me laugh aloud and say, "I thought you were supposed to be converting me."

"I am converting you." He bit me about as hard as I deserved for that. I imagined, with a dark thrill, the blunt imprint of his teeth on my thigh. He'd left marks on me before. I'd worn them with secret pride. Pressed my fingers into them sometimes for the memory of pain. Then he lifted his head and collected another dollop of frosting.

We both watched as the foam hung tantalisingly from his fingers in pale, soft-edged stalactites. He brought it to my cock and let it slide over me, a few flecks drifting onto the tabletop.

He leaned in again, idling his other fingers up my shaft. "How do you like my lemon meringue pie now?"

I pushed into his touch. "I love it."

"It's delicious, isn't it?" His breath swirled over my cock. "Best you've ever had."

Then he slid his lips over me and my "Yes, oh yes" was as sincere as it was absolutely frantic.

He'd never done this to me before. He'd admitted once, a little awkwardly, he didn't think he was very good at it, so I told him he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to do, and we'd never discussed it again. I liked to suck him though, on my knees with his hands knotted in my hair. Or lazily in the morning, pinning his writhing hips to the mattress. On my back, with Toby standing over me, his hand resting against my throat so he could feel his cock inside me.

But now he touched me without hesitation, lapping up the frosting, teasing me with his tongue, drawing me a little way into his mouth. My fingers twisted against each other, seeking some kind of purchase against the pleasure, but there was no defence. There was only something else to suffer for him. This terrible bliss. The helplessness of it, the intimacy.

I gasped out his name. Spread myself wider. It drove the hook deeper, but even that pressure was part of this now, subservient to Toby, another way he had chosen to fuck me. Everything tangled up together: freedom, restraint, pain, humiliation, rapture, fear, love. One of Toby's hands curled round me, his grip tight, so perfectly tight, my skin sliding tenderly against the roughness of his palm. And just when I thought he couldn't give me any more, he sucked in a shaky breath and took enough of my cock to meet his own hand. Sealing me in wet velvet warmth.

I rocked forward, heedlessly, and the ball inside me nudged my prostate.

"GodpleaseTobyIcan't—"

I came uncontrollably. So hard I saw nothing at all. Just a flawless, unending dark.

I only got back to myself when I heard Toby coughing.

He looked up from my cock, semen and saliva dribbling down his chin.

"I'm so sorry, I tried to warn you."

He gently released me and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "It was hot."

I was starting to shake, and I couldn't control that either. "Th-thank… It was… You…" My words came out as slurry as my thoughts.

I didn't quite follow what happened next, but Toby took care of me. Unchained me. Drew the hook out as gently as he could. Held my hands through the sullen agony of stiffness and returning blood flow. And then we lay entangled on my kitchen table, Toby holding me tightly, until I was done with tears and I had skin enough to face the world again.

"I love you," he whispered. "I love you. Shit, my pie." He only left me for the time it took to rescue it. He put it on the counter and rushed back into my arms. "Final secret of a good lemon meringue pie: wait till it's cooled before you cut it."

"Good to know." I turned my head and surveyed the result of his labours: a picture-book lemon meringue pie, perfect golden pastry topped by an immense swirl of baked meringue. My boy really did have talent. So many talents. Beautiful, clever, merciless Toby.

"You do realise there's going to be a test later, right?" he asked.

I mustered a pale shadow of outrage. "Toby, that isn't fair. I'll fail."

He propped himself on an elbow and peered at me with narrowed eyes. "I bet you've never failed anything in your whole life."

"I excel at standardised tests. Which is hardly a skill to boast about."

"Oh, man." He lay back down, resting his head on my shoulder. The table was not comfortable to lie on, but right now it was as perfect as Toby's pie. "I fail even at the shit I'm supposed to be good at. I got a D for my English Lit GCSE. I was like totally the teacher's pet. A*s all year. Still came out with a D."

"What went wrong?"

He sighed. "There's this bit where they give you a poem and ask you a dumb-arse question about it. The poem was ‘The Jaguar' by Ted Hughes. Do you know it?"

"No."

"Sorry." He ran his fingers over one of the reddened patches he'd left on my skin, sending little shivers through me. "It's earlyish Hughes, so nature shit, basically. I only really like Birthday Letters. I mean, that's just him wanking off about how sad he is his more talented wife killed herself, but at least it's sincere, y'know? Anyway, ‘The Jaguar' is about a zoo full of, like, stultified animals. Except there's this jaguar who's going all crazy in his cage. And the question was, right, get this: what does Ted Hughes think about zoos?"

It was absurd. We'd just had sex and pain and lemon meringue pie, and my standardised test impulse still leapt to life. "It doesn't sound like he likes them."

"Oh great. Well done. A*. Fuck you."

"Isn't that the answer?"

"Well, yeah, I guess, but the poem isn't about fucking zoos. It's about people. All the animals are anthropomorphised. Like the parrots who are cheap tarts or whatever. Because don't we…in a very real sense"—his sarcastic voice was starting to sound increasingly similar to Jasper—"live in a social zoo. And the jaguar is a poet, because even though he's surrounded by bars, he still sees freedom. And that's kind of his madness and his salvation all at once."

"That's all very well," I said, "but it doesn't answer the question. Which was about zoos."

Toby ruffled a hand through his hair. "You are so not a jaguar."

"You're missing the point. Standardised tests are simply about demonstrating your understanding of the question. The answer, to a degree, is irrelevant."

"Well." Toby pouted. "I care about the answer. And if that means I suck, then…I guess I suck."

I brushed my thumb over the sulky curve of his mouth. "You don't suck, Toby. But if someone puts a hoop in front of you, the quickest way to get past it is through the middle."

"Wow, you're on their side. You're supposed to be on my side."

He sounded a little confused, and genuinely hurt. It had been such a long time since GCSEs had even remotely figured in my thinking that I hadn't stopped for a moment to consider that they might still be important to Toby. I was about to apologise when Toby sat up.

"Can you hear…buzzing?"

I'd half convinced myself it was just in my head—a side effect of too much demanding sex—but no. It was my front doorbell. "Just ignore it, and whoever it is will go away."

Whoever it was did not go away.

The buzzing went on and on and on. Someone was clearly leaning against the bell.

Fuck. I looked down at my thoroughly ravaged and still naked body, groaned, and tried to sit up.

"Wait." Toby put a hand on my chest and kept me down. "I'm sorta dressed. I'll deal with it."

He gave me a quick kiss on the nose, scrambled off the table, and disappeared up the stairs. It was probably just a really zealous Jehovah's Witness, but clothes were rapidly becoming a good idea. I sat up and swung myself onto the floor.

God. Maybe I was getting too old for this. Everything hurt, inside and out, and I was a mess of marks and semen and lemon curd. I must have struggled against the cuffs a little, because while they hadn't bruised me seriously, they'd left me with a matching set of rough red bracelets. I stroked my thumb over my wrist and smiled. I was tired and wrecked, unable to even answer my own front door, and I was so very, very happy.

Though, as I eased myself painfully into my trousers, I was rather glad Toby wasn't around to see this particular indignity.

"Uh, Laurie." His voice drifted down the stairs.

"Yes?"

"It's, um, your friends."

Shit. Shit. Who? Why? I reached for my shirt and pulled it—wincing—over my shoulders. "I'm…I'm coming up."

Grace and Sam and Toby were arranged in a tableaux of awkwardness in my hallway. I chose not to think about how I must have looked to them.

Grace stared for a while. Then stomped over and slapped me in the shoulder. "I was worried about you, you dick. Next time, answer your goddamn phone, and I won't come barging over at what is blatantly a really bad time."

"It's okay," offered Toby, unhelpfully. "We'd pretty much finished."

Sam clapped a hand over his mouth, entirely failing to stifle his yelp of laughter.

Grace flicked a glance at Toby. "Don't think being cute is going to stop me being cross with him."

I sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't call. Are you staying?"

"We've just hoofed it across London," said Sam. "Course we're fucking staying."

Grace led the way into my living room, and while everybody was getting comfortable, I made the introductions.

Toby nodded. "I remember you from Pervocracy."

"Believe me"—Grace smiled—"we remember you too."

"Why were you worried about Laurie?"

"That's not important," I interrupted. "Does anybody want some tea?"

"Because you'd fucked off," Grace explained. "He was in a state."

"Really?" Toby hustled across the sofa and practically climbed into my lap. "Really really?"

I brushed his fringe out of his eyes. "Yes, really. I told you. And you know, it's bad manners to get excited when you hear about someone being miserable."

"Yeah, but I was miserable without you too, so it's comforting. And for the record"—he turned back to Grace and Sam—"I didn't fuck off. I had, like, a thing, and I didn't have his number."

I could feel my friends' attention on us like heat. It wasn't intrusive, but it was certainly intense. I could understand their curiosity and their concern, and I was tired of hiding. Since Robert, I'd been so wary. I'd lived like a jackal, hoarding my happiness as though it could be stolen from me at any moment. I slid an arm round Toby and drew him tight against my side where he belonged. "He had a funeral, and it was my fault he couldn't contact me."

"Well, I'm just glad I don't have to worry about you anymore because frankly"—Grace gestured illustratively at herself—"I have better things to do with my time."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, now worrying about Laurie is off the agenda, you've got space for a whole new hobby. You should… What's the name you Poms have for that thing where you jump up and down and hit each other with sticks?"

"Sex?"

"Gardening?"

He snapped his fingers. "Morris dancing. You could do that."

"I will not," said Grace coldly, "be doing that."

I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry you felt you had to worry about me."

"Oh, you know." She shrugged. "Love. Friendship. Comes with the territory."

"And thank you for coming round."

"Well, I wasn't going to watch When Harry Met Sally with you while crying into a tub of H?agen-Dazs, or anything like that. I was going to take you to a party tonight and try to get you laid."

"Well, thank God he came back."

I gave Toby a grateful little squeeze, but he clearly had other ideas. "Ooh, party. I like parties."

"I do not like parties," I said firmly.

"Hey, look." The unexpected seriousness of Sam's tone startled everyone. "I'm sorry, but I've got to mention it. The elephant in the room." He leaned forward, interlaced fingers hanging between his knees. "Laurie, you reek of sex, and there's…lemon sauce, I think, in your eyebrows. Can you go take a shower, mate?"

I ran out of the room, leaving them laughing.

When I came back, Toby had made tea, and his lemon meringue pie was sitting in the middle of the coffee table.

"We've been promised," Grace said, "that you had sex in the vicinity of this pie, involving only the components of the pie, and not the pie itself. So we've consented to eat it. Though apparently we have to wait awhile until it's cooled."

The afternoon passed pleasantly between my friends, my lover, and a lemon meringue pie. I thought Toby was a little nervous—as he had been initially at Oxford—but he soon relaxed. Sam was so laid back he was generally believed to be impossible to dislike, and Grace was Grace.

And, as it happened, Toby's lemon meringue pie was incredibly good. Foodgasmic was Grace's word. Though I'd liked eating it from Toby's fingers better.

They left around seven to get ready, furnishing me—at Toby's insistence—with the party details, in case I changed my mind.

"Are you being ashamed of me again?" he asked, as soon as they were gone and we were clearing up the tea things. "Not wanting to take me places?"

"No, it's just going to those kind of parties was what I did before I met you."

"Those kind of parties?"

I cleaned a stray fleck of meringue from the pie plate. "Private parties, Toby."

"What, you mean like sex parties?"

I nodded, hoping that would be enough to shut him up.

"If we go," he asked, undeterred, "do we have to like…do anything?"

The idea of it turned my stomach. It wasn't that I had any objections to the principle—after Robert, I'd shared and been shared willingly enough—it was just…Toby was mine and I was his, and I never wanted to choose between sex and intimacy again. "Absolutely not."

"So"—Toby made his eyes very big and gazed at me imploringly—"can we go?"

"I don't understand why you want to."

He gave me one of his duh looks. "So I can say I've been to a sex party, obviously."

"And that's something you expect to come up in conversation, is it?"

"Maybe." He shrugged. "I just can't see any reason not to go."

I could have given him twenty, but I could also see that my resistance, rather than discouraging him, was only contributing to his curiosity. And I'd promised him only that morning: anything he wanted to do. So I surrendered. "All right, we can go." He squeaked excitedly. "But, Toby…I need… I'm sorry… Can we talk about some things?"

"Laurie, we can talk about anything."

I closed my eyes. This felt juvenile. Embarrassing. Something I should have been able to navigate with more sophistication. Toby was young. He deserved his adventures. But I knew, on instinct and from experience, I wasn't the right person to share them. "Toby…I can't… I don't want you… Look, you have to promise you won't…give me to anyone."

His mouth dropped open. "You're not a box of After Eight mints."

"I know, but I'm your…you know…" I didn't even want to say it. I hated those words. Sub. Dom. Lovers, we were lovers. "The expectations can be different."

He gazed at me solemnly. Eyes so very blue. "Laurie, I promise. That's totally not me. Thing is, I'm a greedy little shit. You're mine, and I'm keeping you."

I hoped he was right, and I was wrong.

* * *

But from the moment we arrived at the party, I knew it had been a mistake to come.

As I'd warned Toby, it was a room full of strangers fucking and hitting each other. Everything smelled rather heavily of disinfectant. But Toby glanced round curiously and without repulsion, which made me wonder what he saw that I had long decided was mere fa?ade.

Sexual liberty. Twenty-first century decadence. Exploration, acceptance, fulfilment.

The whole of the moon?

We picked our way through the moving bodies until we found the chill-out space. Toby's hand was tucked into mine.

"Are you all right?" I asked him.

"I think so." He frowned, his nose wrinkling. "It's just kind of weird, isn't it? Like, you know, when you're sober and everybody else is drunk? It's like that except with bonking."

I found a corner and drew him down onto a mound of brightly coloured cushions. "It's less weird if you're involved. But it's not really my thing."

"I'm feeling way too sheltered right now." He stretched out, resting his head in my lap. "Obviously there was stuff going on at Pervocracy as well, but it felt like a nightclub with sex. Whereas this is just people wandering around, sometimes with their bits hanging out."

I ran my fingers idly through his hair. "I know it looks like sexual anarchy, but there's etiquette and rules and boundaries. You don't have to be…a…be an all-you-can-eat buffet. You can just be with your partner or your friends. Nearly all of these people already know each other. It's actually a pretty exclusive group of perverts."

He hummed at the back of his throat, pressing into my touch, I think for comfort as much as pleasure. "Do you know them?"

"Most of them a bit. Although I wouldn't call them friends."

Grace and Sam found us a few minutes later. Sam was shirtless, fresh nail marks glowing on his arms and shoulders, and Grace was wearing a polka-dotted halter neck dress that looked eminently removable. She put her hands on her hips.

"Oh wow, look at you two. You look like the old guys in the box in The Muppets."

"Statler and Waldorf," I supplied.

"Toby, just because Laurie is one of life's hecklers doesn't mean you have to be." She held out her hand to him and pulled him to his feet, away from me. "This is your first time, right?"

He shuffled his feet, nodding.

"Okay, here's the thing, grasshopper, all parties are basically the same, whether they involve sex, or kinky sex, or drinking, or playing group Scrabble, for that matter. Fun is where you find it. If you just ignore Laurie's tortured little face and crappy attitude, you can totally have a good time tonight if you want."

Toby, to his credit, cast an anxious look at me. I didn't think he was as comfortable ignoring my tortured little face as Grace was. But then, he hadn't known me as long.

She drew his arm through hers. "You've discussed limits and boundaries, right?"

"Oh yeah." Toby nodded eagerly, as though he was sitting a test and he knew all the answers. "We don't want to do stuff with other people, and I'm not supposed to give him away, which I wouldn't do anyway. Because…just no."

"So you can fuck each other." She flashed her tomcat grin. "I think a lot of people, myself included, would enjoy watching that."

Sam put his hand in the air. "Me too! Me too!"

"We…we didn't talk about that." Toby had gone very red. I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or flattered or some combination of both. "I'm…not sure—"

"It's fine. Freedom is being able to say yes and no."7

He gave her one of his crookedest smiles, and I tried my hardest not to be hideously jealous. Maybe I should fuck him—or let him fuck me—in front of everyone. Prove he was mine. And, oh God, which one of us was nineteen? I couldn't think of a less healthy reason to have public sex. Grace was right. I did have a crappy attitude.

And I wanted to be at home. With Toby.

"Have you ever seen sounding?" Grace was asking, as if that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say to someone else's boyfriend.

"Seen…sound—"

"Oh, Toby!" She bounced—a slightly dangerous action in that particular dress—and tugged on his arm. "It's amazing. Come on, my friend Alice was talking about doing a demo."

Which was how we ended up standing around, watching some guy get a surgical steel rod shoved expertly up his urethra. At least, that was what Toby watched. I watched Toby. He was rapt and bright-eyed, leaning close to Grace so she could tell him how it worked and how to do it safely.

My own feelings were impossibly conflicted.

I didn't want to stay, but I wanted to please Toby. And right now, he seemed excited to be here, though his burgeoning friendship with Grace was likely to prove dangerous for me. Not because I had any real cause for jealousy, but because she tended to be…inspiring.

The stranger was babbling ecstatically, begging Alice to take it out, don't take it out, let him come, please, please, please.

In spite of myself, I shuddered. I could too easily imagine Toby's hands upon me, the slick-slow invasion of metal.

Robert had never done that to me. He liked control, but Toby liked to be under my skin. He wanted to be inside me, in my body and in my mind. In my heart. So similar in some ways, so utterly different in others, the two men I loved.

We left Alice and her partner—or partner of the night—to each other and moved into another room. We were in the basement, which our host had lavishly transformed into a series of smallish dungeons. I might have whispered something to Toby about the sheer lack of imagination on display down here, but I didn't want to be the play-party heckler Grace had claimed I was. Besides, Toby was still talking enthusiastically about what we'd just seen, bombarding Grace and Sam with questions. They were walking a little ahead of me so I couldn't hear much of what they were saying over the usual noises—leather against skin, the clank of chains, the occasional gasp or broken cry.

Suddenly Toby stopped. "Oh my God."

Without even a premonition of misfortune to protect me, I turned to see what he saw: a man, tall and broad-shouldered, gleaming with sweat, wielding two floggers against a blood-flushed back with such consummate skill he made it look effortless, the tails flying and falling in that harsh, wild rhythm that had once been his gift to me.

"That's amazing." Toby was still staring at the two men locked in their cycle of give and take, trust and acceptance. "That's totally fucking amazing."

He sounded positively worshipful. My own voice seemed to come from some distant place. "It's called Florentine flogging. Like anything else, it's just practice."

"Um." Grace tried to draw him away. "Maybe we should go somewhere else."

But Toby was still transfixed. "No way, I want to watch this. It's like poetry. Who is that guy? Can I talk to him after? Do you think he'd show me how to do it?"

"His name's Robert," I said.8

He was using the matched pair of black-and-green bull-hide floggers. He'd had them specially made. I'd been there. I knew them as well as I knew Robert, those rough extensions of his touch, his dominance, his love. His…lover…was bound to a Saint Andrew's cross, his arms spread wide. I knew how that felt too, that physical openness at once powerful and vulnerable, the sense of waiting to be transformed. His body had the laxity of deep surrender, as if he was falling into every stroke, as if they were part of him now. I didn't think he was even aware of the sounds he was making, low purring moans, not pain, not pleasure, just the intoxication of pure sensation, liberty and submission, barely audible beneath the swish and slap of leather.

I missed the end of their scene, lost in the torn-open spaces between past and present. When next I looked their way, they were embracing, Robert enfolding his new partner as he had once enfolded me, his heaving chest pressed to all that burning, gorgeously reddened skin.

The intimacy of it was almost unbearable.

But before I could turn away—get away—do anything—Robert looked up, met my eyes, and smiled.

So I had to smile back.

I had to wait for him to uncuff his lover. I had to wait for them to kiss, exchange love whispers, touch each other gently, familiarly. I had to wait for them to walk over and join us.

At some point, we'd become a crowd. Since he'd begun playing in public, Robert always drew a crowd. It was easy enough to understand why. He was so good at what he did, and the chemistry between him and…Noah, the man's name was Noah…was undeniable. They were beautiful together.

"Laurie." He was still smiling as he greeted me, sweat glittering on his brow, arousal still hot in his eyes. "It's been ages. How are you? You remember Noah, right?"

He always said this. I didn't think he meant to torture me, but it seemed unlikely that the man who possessed everything I had once so deeply cherished would just slip my mind. "Yes, I remember, Noah. I… You… That…"

I had run out of everything it was possible for me to say.

Toby cleared his throat loudly. His hand wriggled into mine, and I folded my fingers tightly around his.

I took a deep breath. "Um, I don't think you know… I don't think you've met… Um. This is my…partner, Toby."

I waited for shame, triumph, pride, anything. But there were just these truths, stark and undeniable: Once Robert and I had loved each other. Now Robert loved Noah. And I loved Toby.

A ripple of something—surprise, curiosity, amusement—went round the assembled kinksters. Toby and I were nothing like Robert and Noah. We were mismatched, implausible, absurd. My tastes were well known, as was my availability, my preference for casual encounters. For Toby's sake, I wished there wasn't that familiarity. I wished I didn't have that history. It made me feel washed up and well used, a poor exchange for all his passion and sincerity.

I was afraid I reflected badly on him. I was afraid I made him laughable.

And that made me hate myself.

Robert touched me—he touched my arm—as though we were friends, as though he had the fucking right to do that. "I'm happy for you. And good to meet you, Toby."

I still couldn't think of anything to say. I wanted him to leave, disappear into his fucking happy ever after with Noah, and leave me alone with whatever I had with Toby.

"Thanks," said Toby into the silence. I had no idea what he was thinking. If he was all right. If he hated me. "I loved what you were doing with the two floggers. That was awesome."

Robert smiled his easy smile. Everything was easy for Robert. "You should try it on Laurie. He loves it."

I gazed at Robert, mute and pleading. Please. Don't. Just don't. The worst of it was, I didn't think he was trying to be cruel. He was just so far away from me, so far from us, that none of this even mattered to him.9

But Toby was laughing. "Mate, I'm worried about fucking up with one flogger, let alone two."

That turned the laugh general. Most of the doms here would never have dreamed of admitting something like that. And there was little Toby, who either knew too much or too little to be ashamed of his fallibility, his uncertainty, his beautiful, imperfect humanity.

"You mean," asked a different voice, someone I maybe recognised, maybe didn't, "you've never flogged him?"

"They haven't been together very long." I thought that was Grace.

"Oh, Toby," said Robert, "you have to. He needs it." I shook my head, hating to be so discussed, revealed, made public, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to me. "He's beautiful under the whip. Beautiful."

"He's beautiful all the time." My Toby. So ridiculously loyal. Ridiculously stubborn. "And we'll get round to it, y'know, when I'm sure I'm good enough."

"I can give you some pointers, if you like."

I was dimly aware of audience approval. Everybody liked a little theatre.

"I'm sure he's fine." Grace again.

"Come on, lad." That was a stranger, someone I'd probably subbed to or slept with. "Don't be shy. Show us what you've got."

Various other comments followed—most of them fairly well-meaning, but humiliating nonetheless, in their certainty that Toby had something to prove or stripes to earn.

His hand was sweating, or mine was. I was desperate to tell him he didn't have to listen to these people, that he was everything I wanted and needed, exactly as he was, but I didn't know how. Not without making him look weak—weaker—in their eyes.

"Look." I heard the anxious waver in his voice. "That's…uh…really nice and everything, but it's up to Laurie."

He couldn't have said anything worse if he'd actively tried. I had to do something. I didn't care what these people thought about me, but I cared what they thought of him. Or rather, I hated that he would show them who he was—his fearlessness, his vulnerability—and they would think less of him for it, blind to the power in him, his tenderness, the sugar-twist of his cruelty, everything that made him worthy of the truest submission I could give.10

I found words, and made them carry. "I'll do anything you want."

Which was taken as assent from both of us.

I didn't protest. I'd meant what I'd said. I'd do anything for Toby. I'd do this. I wouldn't let them shame him or dismiss him.

Dismiss us.

Everyone cleared a space around the cross. I stilled my shaking hands, unbuttoned my shirt, and shrugged it off. It was probably nothing they hadn't seen before, but still my skin crawled.

Robert handed Toby one of his floggers. Toby's grip was awkward—the weight and length were probably all wrong for him. Whatever he did—perhaps he was trying to find the balance point, perhaps he was just trying to get used to the feel of it—sent the falls spinning chaotically until they wrapped around his wrist.

He yelped. "Ow, fuck. Um… Look… I don't…"

Don't laugh at him, you fucking bastards. Don't fucking laugh.

"This is kind of heavier than I'm used to," he muttered. Robert reached out and expertly untangled the tails.

"It's bull-hide—heavy thud, with a bit of weight behind it. It used to be one of Laurie's favourites. It's a bit long for you, but I'll show you how to compensate."

"Or"—a different voice—"he could just use something better suited to his height and build." Dom-the-dom eased out of the crowd. He was leather-clad as usual, holding a short-handled flogger, and I wished to God he wasn't here to see this. But perhaps I deserved it. I hadn't treated him well, after all. "Try this one… Toby, isn't it?"11

Somewhat hesitantly, he swapped floggers. Then he grinned up at Dom. "This feels super nice."

Toby's smile should probably have been government classified. Even Dom went a little pink. "It's, uh, elk, Scandinavian elk."

"Oh wow, I'm glad I know where the elk came from."

Dom chuckled. "Yes, his name was Sven. I'm afraid it's all I've got with me with a shorter handle, and it's shot-loaded so the balance should suit you. It's a little bit softer than bull-hide, but it's still got a decent thud."

"Right. Thanks." Toby adjusted his grip and threw a couple of figure eights.

To everyone's ill-disguised surprise, they were perfectly competent. The tails went were they should, his wrist action was loose and fluid. For the first time since Robert had put a flogger in his hand, he looked comfortable. In control. But only I caught the curve of his lips, the glow of his eyes. He genuinely liked this.

There was a spattering of applause.

Then he crossed the dungeon to where I was waiting for him, went up on his tiptoes, and kissed me. "Are you all right?"

No.I nodded.

He peered at me doubtfully. "Are you sure? We don't have to do this. I don't care what they think. I only care about you."

"I care."

"Okay. Um…" He glanced past me, at the cross. I wasn't sure how I would bear it if he chained me to it in front of Robert and Dom and all these people who had already done far worse to me. But I would. I would find a way. For him. "Can you just hold on or something? Like when you did me?"

I could hardly breathe. So I nodded again, turned, and obeyed. I tried to make myself open, receptive, like Noah had been, but my muscles were twisted into knots, tight with painful reluctance, and I couldn't.

Toby must have sensed something wasn't quite right, because he ran his palm over my shoulders and down my back.

I loved his touch, but just now I couldn't bear it. It was an intimacy I couldn't afford. It certainly wasn't something I wanted to share with a crowd of onlookers. "Do it," I told him. "Just do it."

He stepped away, leaving me alone. I'd let strangers do this before even bigger crowds. There was no reason to be afraid now. No reason to be heartsick.

I rested my head against my upper arm, waiting.