He’d follow me wherever I went. Bailing this time around would be a fool’s errand.
I indulged myself in a pitiful cry, pathetic tears of woe that I really had no business spilling. I thought back to a poster I had on my wall in my teens, a typically melodramatic piece of art bearing the words ‘all hail the queen of self-inflicted drama’in swirly font. I wondered if it was still up in my old bedroom. Probably. Maybe I’d find out. But not today.
I took a deep breath and wiped my tears with my sleeve. It smelled of Andy and Topaz and sex. At least life wasn’t all bad.
Fuck this shit.
I smoothed down my dress, and coerced my messy bun into some kind of order using the reflection of a shop window, and then little Princess Drama sucked it up and went back to sort her mess out.
No more running. Not today.
***
Chapter Sixteen
Andy
“You’re not getting me, are you? You don’t understand.” Topaz looked disappointed. She gave a pitiful little sigh and shrugged her slender little shoulders. “I’m not very good at explaining.”
“Maybe stop showering me in flouncy, flowery bullshit-speak and spit it out in words that actually make sense.”
“I’m trying to make sense!”
But she wasn’t making sense at all. Not to me. Her flurry of enthusiastic author-speak was like a foreign fucking language. I stared at her. I staredthroughher. “Cut the crap. I want it straight, no garbled emotional nonsense, I just don’t have the time for it.”
“That’s partly where your issue is,” she said, then blushed. “Faye is… passionate… deep… she wants, more…”
“More what exactly? Don’t tell me. Faye wants things her own way, right now, or she’s going to throw her toys out of the pram and bail, right?”
“She didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what she means, believe me. Flighty and whimsical, just like I told you.” I ran my fingers over my jaw, raking stubble. I was tired and grotty, and I ached. My jaw felt like it’d taken a fist, all down to Faye’s stupid gag games, and sleeping on that gurney had twisted my bloody back. I sighed in frustration. “Basically, Faye wants me to be her pussy boy?”
“No!” Topaz practically squeaked in horror. “That isn’t it!”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“She wants equality. She wants genuine connection. She doesn’t want you to be herpussy boy. She just wants you to submit freely and honestly. She wants you tofeelit. Like she does.”
“I feel it perfectly fucking fine, Topaz. That crazy bitch put teeth marks on my arse. Believe me, I felt those.”
She fiddled with her lip ring. “That isn’t what I mean and you know it.”
“Actually, no, I don’t know it. Faye wants to play stupid power games and I’ve been playing along. If she wants sissy-boy tears and snivelling and begging she’s looking in the wrong place. That’s not me.”
“I don’t think she wants that.” She fluttered her hands in front of her trying to find the words. “She wants a dominant man who knows when to kneel. A man who can lead, but can also follow. She wants you to bend in the same way that she does for you!”
“She wants a submissive, that’s what you’re saying. She wants me to be her little slave boy.Oh, Mistress Faye, I am not worthy. Please spank my naughty bottom.”
“Now you’re just being sarcastic.” She folded her arms.
“I’m no submissive, Topaz. I’m happy to play games for spice and variety. I’m happy to humour the coin toss in the spirit of Explicit and our generally fucked-up sexual dynamic, but I do have fucking limits. If she wants someone to kiss her feet and call her Mistress, she’ll have to fucking want.”
She looked so sad, pitiful. “I don’t think she wants to go back to Italy, Mr Morgan. She seems on the edge, looking for a port in a storm. I think she needs this.”
“I’ll be her port in a fucking storm. That doesn’t require me to take a fucking strap-on up my ass or beg for mercy like a little pussy.” Frustration was building, a headache bursting behind my eyes. “Faye’s the fucking submissive, Topaz. She just doesn’t want to admit our dynamic works best when she lets me take charge. She’s too much of a whiner, too much of a princess. We’d both be a lot happier if she gave up on this bossy Faye act and let me put her over my knee every morning. Fuck equality, what she needs is discipline.”
“Maybe.”