Chapter 2

While Suzanne finished her shower and got dressed again Andrew made fresh coffee and took it through to the living room. She padded through, barefoot, took a sip of her coffee before cuddling up next to him on the couch.

“I think you fucked the hangover out of me.”

He smiled at her happy face.

“I loved lying there with you chatting away. It really was amazing when I slipped the money into the garter belt and I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound false or contrived. I was leaning over you and all I could see was your face on Monday night, your arms restrained behind your back, bent in half on the bed and the look of bliss. It is the wrong context to call it serene, we were fucking too hard for it to be serene but you were just so happy. I can totally see the importance of being true to yourself, how you let yourself go. I didn’t understand, and given how much I keep learning I am sure there is a lot still for me to try and understand, but being submissive is very powerful. That completely confused me at first. But you just let yourself go, trust the other person. I can’t speak for anyone else but I feel the pressure to perform, to make the experience as wonderful as possible for you. You have handed me this incredible trust, literally helpless in my arms or in front of me on the bed, and I have to match this gift, try and top this gift.”

He shook his head.

“I will need to think about some more. Everything about this is surprising.”

Suzanne leaned up, spun round and straddled him on the couch. They kissed for a long time.

“They are two sides of the same coin. It isn’t just me lying there expecting you to make it special. I want to rock your world, I want you to slump over me, collapse on me, at the end. When we are both shattered it is perfect. So thank you.”

Andrew wasn’t sure what he was being thanked for but he took it.

“We talked when we were first in bed about escalation and how my needs had plateaued. I am confident and comfortable enough in myself, in us, for you to push me. I have no idea what it is, like the throat fucking there just now. It sort of came to me when I remembered September or whenever it was. Don’t be afraid to try new things with me Andrew. If it isn’t working or is upsetting me then I know I can say ‘Paula’ whenever I need to. Even little things like being able to say it with my eyes today. You have earned my complete trust and I am not afraid of trying a new dish. If there is some squid in it then I will let you know and we can order something different off the menu.”

That might have been the most important thing of all. It was becoming normal this version of their sex life. It was not mainstream, the vast majority of people would not and could not understand it, but to them it was no different than any other way to have sex. Some people were once a week, with the lights out on a Saturday night. Andrew and Suzanne were at the other end of the spectrum.

“Can I ask you about escalation?”

“Sure.”

“I fought my nature for a long time before finally acknowledging this is who I am. I don’t think my sexuality has changed, I don’t know that my limits have changed, what I like, what I dislike. All that has happened is that I am accepting of who I am. Do you think you have changed?”

“Do you mean have I become dominant, or more dominant?”

“Yes. Because to me you seem calmer about the whole thing. Take this morning. I am not sure that a year ago you could have held my head and forced your dick down my throat. Yet within 10 minutes of me asking you to try it you were amazing. I loved how you kept the pressure on my head. I couldn’t just lift off, I had to open my eyes and get you to let me lift off. It was so visceral, so controlling. I fucking loved it.”

“Your face is key. I actually had the same thought, at the same time. When I am spanking you or using the crop or flogger on you, I can’t see your face. So I have to deal with the way I am wired and you know I don’t like doing that. But today it was completely different, because I could see your face. Think about it, one minute I am all tentative, then you wink at me, and suddenly my balls are bouncing off your chin. As you are more accepting of who you are, and most importantly of what you need, then I am right behind you.”

Andrew thought for a moment.

“I was about to say it is the societal programing that gets in my head and makes me uncomfortable. But it is not that at all. More than half the bloody planet thinks that men are better than women and that what we are doing is something that I should have the right to do, regardless of whether you hate it or not. So it is not society. Deep down it is Leslie and the teenage years of programing that she did. We never talked about submission and sex or anything like that. But she, orders of magnitude more than any other source, is the reason I am the way I am. I would never want to disappoint her in the way I treat women and I think that is the core reason that I struggle with the spanking and stuff. And yes, I know that you have told her how you are, what you need, but it is too deeply programed for me to go against it now.”

He shrugged. Suzanne, still straddling his lap, looked thoughtful. Then her face broke into a mischievous smile.

“So all I need to do is get Leslie to tell you to spank me and all our problems are solved?”

Andrew was merciless in his tickling.

“All joking aside it is true. I can see exactly how it all makes sense. From my perspective I do think that you are becoming better at being dominant. I see it in the way we act here. Just simple things like getting sent to my room because of Vanessa. Fucking me in my less than pristine arse just now. There is a real vibe of ‘I am going to do what I want, because I am in control’ which is just perfect. And more than anything else, what is great is that you don’t treat me any differently outside the bedroom, or outside the flat. No it is not even that, because I loved the way you treated me in Amsterdam. The confines, the boundaries, are different but you know when to do it, and when not to. On Christmas Eve you had no interest in a discussion about the Scottish business environment but you were perfectly happy for me to be a part of it and you went through and made coffee and talked to Christine and Mary. Complete control to no control, in what? Two hours. It is the parameters of my life that you respect. But stop turning it back to me. What about you? Do you think you have become more dominant with me?”

He thought about Suzanne’s question.

“Complicated. I do things to you, with you, that I do with no other people.”

He stopped.

“Almost no other people. Let’s put that aside for the moment.”

Andrew had to stop again. Too many thoughts swirling in his head.

“There have been times recently when I have thought I wanted more, and where I conversely thought I went too far and needed to dial it back. I have come close to fucking other women with the intensity that I fuck you but have never quite matched what we have.”

He looked down, uncomfortable with where his thoughts were going. Andrew felt Suzanne’s hand on his chin forcing him to look at her.

“Tell me Andrew.”

“Because you can say ‘Paula’ I can let go with you. Sometimes I worry that you would not say ‘Paula’ even when you wanted to, or should. I worry much less about saying or doing the wrong thing with you. And there have been moments with other women when I have wanted more.”

He pursued his lips and sighed.

“So I think I have become more dominant. With you definitely and I think about it with other people.”

“You seem upset by that.”

“Leslie’s programming.”

Suzanne stood up and pulled his to his feet. She undressed first him then herself before lowering herself down onto him. They made love for a long time on the couch, revelling in the closeness, the kissing, the connection between them. When Andrew finally came Suzanne wouldn’t let him move, her jeans underneath them to catch the mess and save the couch.

“I forget that it is a sacrifice for you. I too often take advantage of you, knowing that you will do everything possible to make me feel wonderful. I don’t know how I would cope without you.”

As Andrew sat there kissing Suzanne all he heard were the three words that she didn’t say at the end of the sentence. Their third showers of the day were quick, a spray down of their groins and legs, and then they headed off into town. That night they watched Crocodile Dundee, exactly the right movie to make them laugh, and to distract Suzanne’s calm and Andrew’s overthinking minds. They made love, softly and gently when they returned to the flat and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The following morning Andrew slipped out of bed and didn’t even do his exercises. He was conscious that he had the rest of the rolls of film to develop and limited time so was in the darkroom before 6.30. But he was disciplined and focused and finally after four hours he was done. The last few minutes were waiting for the prints to dry, or be dry enough to remove from the darkroom. Suzanne was in the shower when he returned to the flat and so he laid out the final two packets of prints to let them properly dry. He used the desk in the boxroom, a room that no one ever was in. It had a desk, a chair and his double bass. It was the perfect place to leave the prints. He grabbed a quick shower and then they headed off. Suzanne took Leslie’s car and went for Sunday lunch with her parents while Andrew walked across the Meadows to go with his Grandma to church.

“The family all asked for you on Thursday, quietly of course so as not to cause a fight. The day went pretty well actually but it was still awful. You should have been there, even your parents realised that. Have you heard from them?”

“The only address they have now is the College Grandma. They don’t know the address or the phone number of the flat. So the only way they could be in touch is by letter to university. Unless they asked you to pass on a message.”

They were slowly walking up the hill to the church.

“I don’t know what to say to that Andrew. It is incomprehensible that you have lived on your own for three years and your parents don’t know where. They have never asked?”

“No. You talked in the summer and again when I was up this term that things were thawing slightly. Did they ask about me?”

“Let’s talk about it after church.”

Later over lunch she continued the story.

“It all comes down to you, Gavin and money. He thinks, and Vera doesn’t contradict him, you believe you are better than the rest of the family because you made all that money. You bought the flat before you even left Edinburgh and moved out before you started at Cambridge.”

Andrew had had to stop himself interrupting at least twice as he listened to his Grandma but he tried to listen to what she said.

“It is a fight I cannot win Grandma. You see me all the time, you have had dinner here in the flat with Suzanne and I, a fish supper out of newspaper. You know as well as I do that I don’t believe the money makes me better somehow. That is a fig leaf that he is clinging on to because neither of them want to look at their own behaviour. I would eat more than my share of the shit if I thought that everyone was taking some of the blame.”

Andrew could feel himself getting worked up about his parents.

“I am going to say some cruel and blunt things. My father did not believe that I was his son. When he saw the picture of his own father at a young age he calmed down for a couple of years. But once I made a little money while at school he started to treat me differently again. But going on about the money is just an excuse to not have to deal with me. I didn’t understand Mum’s lack of reaction. The best I can come up with is that although she believes Dad is biologically my father she doesn’t know for sure. And since Scott came along she can love him, and know that Dad loves him, unconditionally and for sure. I think my parents are embarrassed by me, as it reminds them of their own behaviour in the run up to their wedding. I was born nine months and a few days after their wedding.

His Grandma was speechless and looked horrified.

“Now I have no way of knowing or proving any of that. But Grandma, I made an awful lot more money than Dad thinks I did. He wants to be upset at me, he wants to be upset at Mum and he is probably trying not to be upset at himself. My parents knew where I was for six months last year and three months this year and there wasn’t anything from them. Not even a birthday card. They are treating me like I am no longer their son, so I am treating them like they are no longer my parents.”

Andrew left his Grandma in tears that afternoon. As he trudged back across the Meadows he didn’t feel down. He was sorry that his Grandma was upset but it needed to be said. And he felt better for saying it. He was being parented by Jim and Freya. Jim, Brian and Tony in concert acted as father figures for him but Andrew was mothered by Freya, totally. A psychologist’s dream. He wasn’t close to Rowan and didn’t really know Scott. He wondered if he ever would.

He packed for a couple of nights and Suzanne was back not long after him. She too packed a few things but a lot of her clothes were at Nikki and Fran’s flat anyway so she didn’t need much. Suzanne was driving and Andrew was relaxing in the passenger seat on the hour long journey through to Glasgow.

“Will you talk to me about the other people?”

“Other people?”

“Yesterday you mentioned that you are only dominant with me, but then you qualified it.”

That is what he got for upsetting his grandmother.

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything. Tell me as much as you are willing to share.”

“It was two people, Meredith and Helena. Meredith was the woman that I had regular sex with last year, 3^rd year. We were friendly but not close friends at the start of the year. Rather than deal with crowded bars, all the hassles of finding someone, getting to know them, all that crap, we decided to not go out with anyone else during term time. We would stay over two or three times a week and it was.”

Andrew stopped and thought.

“We never did figure out the right word. Recreational maybe? Who the hell knows. It was physical release, a way of getting what we both needed but without any unnecessary complications or emotions. We became better friends over the course of the year. She graduated in June and is working in South America at the moment. But two or three times, roughly once a term, one or other of us just needed to fuck the other person. And while I was not as energetic with her as I am with you there were a couple of times where I just pounded her hard. And she was the same. The very first night she used me as a human dildo. Fucked me, came a lot, then impatiently waited for me to recover then repeat. So that was one.

“The other was Helena and it was much more nuanced. We talked about the two of us, our sex life. She loved that she set the pace, we were relentless and endless most of the time. But she also talked about the maddening inconsistency of loving that while at the same time wanting just to be taken every now and again. I think she talked about it in a ratio of eight out of ten were great as they were but the other two out of ten she wanted me to just take her. But we talked and never really got an answer to the whole question of knowing when. There were two or three occasions over the years with her when I did that. The first time I fucked her in the arse was like that for example. But we talked about how you need to get close to people, start to understand the body language, the words, the way they are looking at you. So we never got close to solving it. But those are the two people where I feel I have been able to let go, at least slightly. But nothing like with you.”

Suzanne looked very happy.

“I am so pleased that you chose to share some of that with me. You are this veritable black hole when it comes to stuff like that. Helena and I did not really talk about stuff like that when we met. But I really liked her and it would have been fascinating to compare notes.”