Since he and I had split up I’d been window-shopping on some of the mainstream dating websites as well as the BDSM ones, but I hadn’t felt inspired to post a profile – as I said, Max was going to be a hard act to follow. So instead I hunkered down and got on with the business of being single, not feeling quite ready or emotionally robust enough to launch myself back out onto the dating scene, not really having the energy or the inclination to start over – until now, that is. Because the day after dreaming of Max was the day I’d arranged to have my first date with another potential Dom. I couldn’t help wondering if that was what had sparked the dream in the first place.
Finding any new relationship is tough enough without the added pressure of finding a man you would trust enough to tie you up. I had been persuading myself that maybe Max was a one-off, a mad fling, a crazy notion. The problem was: what came next? Where did I go from there? Was there a way back to normal?
When we first started seeing each other, Max had warned me even before we started our relationship that going back to straight sex and a vanilla relationship after tasting the delights of BDSM and the intensely intimate connection between Master and submissive was close to impossible.
So there I’d been, still smarting from splitting up with Max, unable or more accurately unwilling to go back to him and not quite ready to go forward, when the phone rang.
I’d been working in my office on a new book. The caller display read ‘number withheld’. I wondered if it might be Gabbie, one of my best and oldest friends, and also regularly single. I’d left her a voicemail suggesting that it was high time we got together and had a girls’ night in or out, and I promised not to cry as long as she promised not to give every man in the bar a score out of ten, so I was surprised when a male voice said, ‘Hi, is that Sarah?’
I hesitated. ‘Yes, it is. Who’s speaking?’
‘I don’t know if you remember me. My name’s Alex. We spoke a while back about your ad.’
‘We did? What ad?’ I was racking my brains. It had been a long time since I’d put an ad on any of the straight or BDSM dating websites, and I’d never advertised anything anywhere else.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve got the wrong number. It was a while ago now. You were looking for a Dom.’
‘And we spoke?’ I said cautiously. I had taken down my personal ad when I’d started seeing Max regularly and, as I said, I hadn’t felt anywhere near ready to put it back up on the site since we split up, so if Alex was right we’d spoken a long, long time ago.
‘Only very briefly,’ Alex said. ‘You were just off to meet someone and said you didn’t think it was fair to talk to me until you’d met him. Anyway, I was going through my inbox just now, saw your name and thought I’d give you a ring.’ He laughed. ‘Nothing ventured …’
While he was talking I opened my email and typed ‘Alex’ into the search engine to see if I could find his original mail.
‘To be perfectly honest I’m not really looking at the moment,’ I said, eyes working down the list of names. His name wasn’t there, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything; after meeting Max I had deleted most if not all of the other contenders, so it wasn’t all that surprising.
‘Bad experience?’ asked Alex. It was interesting that he didn’t assume I was living happily ever after in nipple clamps and handcuffs.
‘No, not at all. Just –’ I felt around for the right words. How did you explain a fragile, needy ex-girlfriend with a child and a good man with a big heart desperately trying to do the right thing by everyone involved? It was a long story and certainly not one I intended to go into during the first phone call with someone I didn’t know.
‘Complicated?’ Alex suggested.
‘Kind of, yes,’ I said, wondering why I didn’t just hang up.
‘Me too. I was chatting to this woman online for a couple of months, Annabel. She sounded perfect. Anyway, we arranged to meet, and it turned out she was a bloke, Archie – fourteen stone, five feet two, buck teeth and –’
He caught me completely off-guard and I laughed. ‘You’re joking.’
Alex laughed too. ‘Yes, actually, I am, but not completely. I started seeing someone and I discovered pretty quickly that she was married and just looking for a bit of kinky fun on the side, which is not what I’m looking for. I was wondering, how about we meet up for lunch and swap horror stories?’
Now it was my turn to laugh again. ‘That’s a bit of a leap.’
‘True, but not that much, and I’m not a stalker or a loony. I’ve been divorced four years and I’ve spent a lifetime thinking about this. And I’m a newbie too, so it would be good to talk to someone who is looking for the same thing, wouldn’t it?’
‘Which is what?’
‘True love, world peace and to be able to play the guitar like Ry Cooder?’
‘I’m not sure about world peace,’ I said, amused and charmed and almost convinced.
‘Okay. So how about you tell me some more about yourself,’ Alex said.
‘Haven’t we already done this?’ I asked.
‘Probably, but it was a long time ago now. I’ve probably forgotten all the interesting bits. How about we do it again. Do you like fish?’
‘What?’ I’m sure if he had asked me that before I would have remembered. ‘Is this one of your standard getting-to-know-you questions?’
‘No.’ He laughed. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a friend who runs this great little seafood restaurant down on the coast. I was thinking that we could maybe meet there, have a nice lunch, interview each other, decide it was all a horrible mistake and head home older but wiser. What do you think?’ He told me the place he meant and I Googled it as we spoke. It wasn’t that far from me and maybe, I reasoned, getting out and about would do me good, help me heal the big painful scar that splitting up with Max had left. If nothing else, once I had decided he was a total no-no, I could always take a walk on the beach.
‘We could road test the new season’s menu,’ Alex was saying. ‘They do a really good sharing platter.’
‘And you need someone to share with?’ I suggested.
‘Got it in one.’ I liked the sound of his voice. But there was a part of me that had been thinking that the last thing I needed right now was another man in my life. I was still feeling mangled. I’d already thought maybe it was time to kick back, take time out, give up on men and get some cats. It seemed a lot more appealing than getting my heart broken all over again.
‘I’m not sure –’ I began.
Alex laughed. ‘No, me neither. How about we just give it a go? I promise not to be weird,’ he said.
I hesitated. Oh, what the hell. It was ages since I had been out with a man, ages since I’d been anywhere actually. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But the first hint of weirdness and I’m out of there.’
‘Good call,’ said Alex. ‘When do you fancy meeting up? Are you free this weekend?’
‘This weekend?’
‘Too soon?’
‘No, no, I’m happy to meet up.’ What I meant was that I was happy to meet up and get it over with. First time around it had taken me dozens of coffees, dates and lunches with would-be Doms before I met Max.
For me, as with any relationship, there has to be some kind of attraction there, some kind of chemistry between a Dom and a sub, and you don’t know if it’s there until you actually meet someone face to face. Even getting along well on the phone is really