Читать книгу Fast And Loose - Justine Elyot - Страница 7

I won’t lie. I had considered the possibility that Tom might end up in my room and had set-dressed accordingly. My supermarket magazines were all in the recycling, replaced on the bedside table by a selection of intellectual heavyweights from my university reading list. All discarded, inside-out garments had made it into the laundry bin, and my perfumes and makeup were impeccably arranged on the dressing table, with no open eyeshadow trays or capless lipsticks.

The bed was not only made – it smelled of summer meadows. Or so the linen spray I’d used claimed. To be honest, it smelled more like the time I tried to boil up potpourri in a saucepan as a child, to see if you could make soup from it. (You couldn’t.)

Tom didn’t notice the order of things, though, having eyes only for the fringed shawls pinned to the wall and my unworn Victorian-style corset on its little dressmaker’s stand.

‘Whoa, you should’ve worn that tonight,’ he said, supporting my hobbling self over to the bed, where I collapsed gratefully.

‘I’m saving it for a special occasion,’ I said.

‘Isn’t a date with me special enough?’ He turned to me and pouted.

‘I couldn’t be sure at the time of dressing,’ I said, smiling crookedly at him. ‘But perhaps it might turn out to be corset-worthy, after all.’

‘Oh, the pressure,’ said Tom, swooping down to join me on the bed. ‘I have to be corset-worthy.’

‘You have to earn that lovely fob watch you’re wearing, anyway.’

He took it out and dangled it in front of me. The light from my cheap chandelier twinkled on the gold engravings.

‘Got it at the antiques mart,’ he said. ‘Of course, it doesn’t work. But I don’t need a watch to tell me the time.’ He winked and leaned forward to take off his boots.

‘Oh, don’t take the boots off yet,’ I said, my voice dying away in embarrassment as I realised how eager I sounded.

He raised his eyebrows.

‘No?’

‘Just…you’re so beautifully dressed. It seems a shame to undress in the wrong order.’

‘Wrong order? You mean there are rules for Victorian striptease?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said with a giggle. ‘But surely it should be frock coat first, then collar and cuffs, and…so on.’

‘So on?’

‘I’m sure you can work it out.’

‘OK,’ he said, rising to his feet and standing in a louche, dandyish pose in front of me. ‘I’ll undress the way you want. And then I’ll undress you the way I want.’

‘Seems fair,’ I said.

Oh, to have had the nerve to film him on my phone. I thought about doing it all the way through, but I couldn’t quite summon up the nerve.

I had to make do with trying to burn the memories into my brain instead, in order to rerun the way he shrugged off his coat, unscrewed his cufflinks, wrenched off the lace collar – and all with his eyes fixed uncompromisingly on me.

My throat was dry by the time the top button came undone, revealing the rest of his neck and his Adam’s apple. At this rate, I’d require intravenous rehydration by the time he got to his trousers.

The white linen parted slowly, revealing his taut bare chest, then lean but well-muscled arms. He stood with one hand on a hip, twirling the shirt seductively, his mouth curved upwards on one side.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m half-naked. How about you?’

Boots and tight black trousers advanced towards me, matador-like. He threw away the shirt and pounced, his palms flat on either side of my legs, his forehead touching mine.

‘I suppose you’ll need some help,’ he said.

I nodded, my brow bone pushing at his as I did so.

‘Those killer heels first, then,’ he said, positioning himself at the foot of the bed to remove them. I winced and mewled as he released my hurt ankle, then laid it gently back on the bed.

‘Looks like a sprain,’ he remarked, frowning. ‘Nasty. Perhaps we shouldn’t…’

‘It’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘There’s painkillers in my bedside drawer. I’ll take a couple.’

‘I like a broad who knows what she wants,’ he said in a cod-noir Noo Yoik drawl. ‘Especially when what she wants is me.’ He pulled off the other shoe, grinning broadly. ‘All right, Foxy. Arms up.’

The bra top was removed, leaving my fishnetted breasts exposed to his gaze. He made the most of it; in fact, his gaze wasn’t the only thing they were exposed to. His hands got their fair share too.

He pulled off my elbow-length, fingerless lace gloves, then got to work on my velvet skirt. I had to lie down while he pulled it along my legs, revealing the very pair of knickers Mia Culpa’s first blog post had inspired me to buy. Lace patterned hold-ups were the last item on the dressing-for-sex menu. He seemed to want to keep those on, running a hand along my thigh, tracing the curls and curves of the lace down to my knee and then back up to the garter.

‘Mm, nice,’ he said, bending and kissing the bare flesh between hold-up and knicker edge. ‘You should have come out dressed like this.’

‘Er, I’m not sure that would have been a good idea,’ I said, but my breath was jerking the words around. He had his hands on my bum while his mouth and tongue moved ever closer to the inner sanctum inside the knickers.

‘Why not?’ he said, raising his face for a moment. ‘I’d have laid you on the table in that booth and given you what-for right there and then.’

‘Yeah, that’s why,’ I said, but the image was tantalising enough to make me cringe with lust.

He shimmied up my body until his face hovered over mine, his hands on my breasts, the hardness inside his trousers parked between my thighs.

‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have loved it,’ he crooned, dropping lascivious, licking little kisses on my lips. ‘You could have pretended to be a Victorian whore in a dark alley, at the mercy of a vampire lord. Or something. That’s the sort of thing that turns you on, isn’t it?’

I pushed my tongue into his mouth and grabbed a fistful of his hair. We kissed savagely, our bodies writhing against each other. God, I needed that painkiller, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to stop this in order to get it.

‘You have no idea what turns me on,’ I whispered harshly, pushing his face away from mine.

‘Oh, haven’t I?’ he said, his eyes shining. He shoved one hand inside my knickers and put his long fingers to work, parting my pussy lips and tracing circles around my clit. ‘You’re very wet, Foxy. How do you account for that, if I don’t know what turns you on?’

I couldn’t answer, I was all lost and drowning in the way his fingers worked me.

‘Mm,’ was about all that sprang to mind.

Tom laughed, rubbing more persistently, getting the tip of a finger inside me.

‘Soaking,’ he said. ‘Getting these naughty knickers in a right state.’

I squirmed, the lace of my knickers chafing my bottom, getting bunched in between my cheeks. I peered down to look at the outline of Tom’s hand, a busy mound inside the gossamer fabric. Seeing it like that turned me on even more. I jerked my hips upwards, wanting more of his fingers deeper inside.

He took the hint and sank two of them in, then three. I was exquisitely full, and his thumb still tended to my clit, drawing wave after wave of wetness out of me. I couldn’t have believed I had that much juice in me, if I hadn’t felt it pooling in the crack of my bottom and spreading a damp patch all over the back of my knickers.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ I gasped, my heart hammering. I was going to come like this, under the hand of my bare-chested, booted master. Yes, he was the master and I was at his mercy…My mind filled in the details it needed to bring my orgasm closer.

I shut my eyes and clutched at his arm, needing to steady myself before the wave crashed.

He pulled his fingers out! All the way out of my knickers.

My eyes flew open and I stared at him stupidly.

‘Wha? Whassup?’

He leant right over me, his nose touching mine, his eyes demonic, and said, ‘Tell me about your secret computer stalker, Ella.’

I wailed out my frustration.

‘You’re evil.’

‘I’m evil,’ he agreed, ‘and I’m relentless. And I want to keep you coming until you can’t see or move any more. But not until you tell me your little secret.’

‘This isn’t fair,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said, and he kissed me hard, flicking the tip of his tongue over mine, pushing it down as if to show me he would do the same to my resistance.

‘Don’t make me,’ I said, reaching down for the bulge in his trousers, in the hope that I might be able to distract him. ‘I want this.’

He batted my hand away and held my wrist tight.

God, it was turning me on even more. I didn’t remember him being this masterful the first time. Then again, we were both much drunker on that occasion.

‘You’ll get it,’ he promised. He kissed my neck, sucking on it, but not hard enough to leave a mark. Just enough to make me want to howl with need. ‘As much of it as you can handle. When you’ve told me what I want to know.’

He flexed his hips, pushing his hard mound into the junction of my spread legs so that my clit tingled madly.

‘Please!’ I said, having to contend with his tongue on my nipples now, its tip probing past the fishnet. He was winning. I wasn’t going to be able to last much longer.

‘You know what you have to do,’ he said. He rotated his hips, achingly slowly, then withdrew a fraction so that my clit was left to throb untended.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s a blogger whose blog has disappeared. I want to find out what’s happened to her, OK?’

He grinned roguishly and kissed the tip of my nose.

‘There, you see. Not so difficult, was it? Now you’re going to show me everything you’ve got on this blogger…’

I clenched my fists and beat them on the duvet, my teeth gritted with frustration.

‘…but don’t worry. You’re going to get what you’ve been begging for first. Painkillers?’

‘In the drawer…top drawer…there’s a bottle of water on the side.’

He got the necessaries and gave them to me to take. He’d also managed to find a pack of condoms, and he shed his boots and trousers while I downed a brace of Nurofen, getting himself rubbered up in double-quick time.

‘Right,’ he said, once I’d put down the water bottle. ‘What’s the best position for getting fucked with a sprained ankle, Foxy? Any ideas?’

I scooted back and put a pillow under the offending joint.

‘This is probably the easiest,’ I said, eating him up with my eyes. Long legs, long arms, long…everything.

He put one knee on the edge of the mattress, striking a manly pose with his chest out and shoulders back.

‘Are you ready for it?’ he said, thrusting his hips forward.

‘I think so.’

He placed himself on his knees between my thighs and fixed his lips to my ear.

‘I bet you are,’ he whispered. One finger descended on the lace strip that covered my pussy and began to stroke it, from bottom to top, slowly. His fingernail tickled my fattening clit. The material was soaked already. Surely it couldn’t take much more.

I knew I couldn’t. I threw back my head and whimpered.

Harder, please.

But I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to give orders. I wanted him to be in charge.

The next thing I felt, through my delirious haze, was something soft and wet, lapping at the sodden fabric. He pushed his tongue into every crevice, getting the lace barrier wetter and wetter, taking it all into his mouth in a bunch then releasing it to tease me some more. I was beginning to hate these knickers. But I was pretty sure he didn’t feel the same way.

‘All right,’ he said at last, hoarse but determined. ‘Tell me if it hurts, OK?’

I caught a breath and stared at him. But he meant my ankle.

He didn’t even take the knickers off to fuck me.

He pushed the gusset aside and slid his cock inside, fast and smooth, and exactly the way I needed it. My unsprained ankle found its way to his shoulder and I lay in a slightly twisted position, my bottom half off the bed, giving him the best angle of penetration I possibly could.

He used that angle to the fullest, thrusting hard, using his fingers to work at my nipples or my clit whenever he wanted to see my face change. He watched me all the way through, so intently that I shut my eyes in the end. I gave myself up to the feeling of helpless ravishment. I was his to take, and he took me.

I don’t know if my ankle hurt or not. I only knew that furtive, needy creep towards climax, letting him build it inside me, helping him stoke my fire with little movements and silent hints. He read me perfectly. He knew what turned me on.

I’d been wrong about him.

When I was so close there was no chance of turning back, I opened my eyes for a peek at him. His sweat-sheened determination helped me over the edge. His utter focus on what he was doing to me would stay with me, helping me through the dark and lonely nights to come.

I fell helplessly into his ownership. That was how it felt, to come with him inside me. Like being owned and known in a way I could never take back.

‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he whispered with a ferocity matched by his thrusts. ‘Got you now.’

Then he came too, his face at once so wild and so vulnerable that it pierced my heart.

He stayed inside me for a while and we just held on to each other, waiting for our bodies to stop falling and our heads to clear.

‘Mm,’ he said, his eyes dazed and half-closed, as he pulled out and flopped beside me. ‘That hit the spot.’ He kissed my ear. ‘How’s your ankle?’

‘Ankle? Oh, yeah.’ I was suddenly aware again of the pain, though it was muted now, and seemed far away.

He was amused. ‘You’d forgotten about it?’

‘I think I had. They should prescribe you on the National Health.’

He smiled, running his hand over my fishnetted curves again.

‘You too,’ he said. ‘Take three times daily after meals.’

‘I think I could handle that,’ I said.

He sat up and put his hand around my ankle.

‘It needs bandaging,’ he said. ‘Have you got anything?’

‘Not bandages per se,’ I said. ‘A dressing-gown cord is as close as it gets.’

‘That’d do.’

The robe was hanging on the door. He took the satin belt from its loops and wrapped it slowly and carefully around the swollen area, down to my heel.

I shut my eyes and imagined he was tying me up for real, about to hobble me or bind me to the bedpost. He would keep me spreadeagled here, ready for sex whenever he felt the urge.

‘Is that all right?’ he asked. ‘Too tight?’

‘A little tighter would be fine,’ I said.

I opened my eyes to watch him pull it taut and let out a shuddering breath, excited again, despite my post-coital limpness.

‘Did that hurt?’ he asked, all concern.

‘No,’ I said unevenly. ‘’Sfine.’

One side of his mouth twitched up, but his brow was furrowed, as if trying to solve me like a riddle.

‘Good,’ he said.

I knew I was blushing. I felt I’d given something away.

‘Right, well, I’m going to get you a bag of frozen peas or something, to put against it, and then you’re going to turn on your computer and tell me all about this blogger of yours.’

Oh, bugger! He was supposed to have forgotten about that. The mind-blowing sex had failed to blow enough of his mind.

He helped me up from the bed, supported me over to my desk and sat me in the chair. My knickers felt cold and slimy and the fuzzy upholstery of the cushion prickled my sensitive skin. My hold-ups were clinging damply to my legs and I didn’t dare turn my head far enough to catch my reflection in the dressing-table mirror.

He dealt with the condom and wrapped himself in my beltless robe, then disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

What was I going to do? Could I make something up? But what? Couldn’t I just say it was a news blog or a fashion blog or a…

He came back in with a bag of Bird’s Eye’s finest and rubbed them against my ankle.

‘Christ!’ I yelped, kicking away as fast as I could. ‘It’s freezing!’

‘You seem surprised,’ he said, laughing at me.

‘I’m not – it’s just…wouldn’t a bit of coldish water do?’

He rolled his eyes and left the room again, giving me a bit more time to play with.

A fashion blog? But then it would seem weird to be so concerned about its disappearance. And if I spun some yarn about a news blogger disappearing, he’d jump all over it and want to investigate.

Would it be so difficult to tell him the truth?

He returned half a minute later with a basin of cool water. I put my foot in it and he pulled up my dressing-table stool and sat on it, hands on his knees, leaning towards me with clear and eager expectation.

‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘You promised me something.’

‘It’s nothing really,’ I said, fidgeting with the keyboard.

He shook his head sternly.

‘I don’t think so, missy,’ he said. ‘Spill, or there’ll be trouble.’

Trouble, eh? Despite my nerves, a spark ignited between my tired legs.

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ he said. ‘You’re not too grown-up to go across my knee, young lady.’

Oh, my God! Did he actually just say that?

All I could do was stare foolishly at him, my jaw apparently frozen.

‘You think I’m joking?’ he said, his voice now low and seductive. ‘Come on, Foxy. Out with it.’

He was joking. He must have been.

I held my breath for the time it took to log on, a torrent of possible things to say rushing through my mind, all of them inappropriate and embarrassing.

‘So there was this blogger,’ I said, much too fast, my words pouring out with the long-held breath. ‘She seemed to be getting into some kind of weird stuff. And she was about to go on this maybe quite risky, uh, journey, and then she never updated and her blog has been taken down.’

‘And you think something’s happened to her?’

I nodded.

He put a hand on mine.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said, so gently I wanted to cry. ‘You’re shaking. You’re really that worried about her?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ I said, running a fishnetted forearm across my eyes. ‘Dunno. It’s probably nothing. Anyway.’ I made a dive for the off switch, but Tom was having none of it.

‘You’re worried,’ he said firmly. ‘So it isn’t nothing. And you can’t leave it there. You haven’t told me anything yet.’

‘I…it’s difficult,’ I muttered.

‘Why is it difficult? What’s the weird, risky stuff you were talking about? Is she an undercover journalist or something? Getting in deep with criminals? Terrorists? The government? MI5? Old TV personalities of the 1970s?’

I snorted despite my anxieties.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re miles off track. It’s nothing like that.’

My ears burned. They must have been bright red. I could always put it down to the vigorous activities we’d recently engaged in, but somehow I didn’t think he’d fall for it.

‘Oh!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Online dating. Meeting strange men off the internet? I’m right, aren’t I?’

I stared at my Ripper Street wallpaper. The lawmen of Whitechapel stared accusingly back out at me. They would have guessed it by now, I bet.

‘I’m right,’ said Tom, sitting back with a self-congratulatory grin. ‘Oh, Foxy. You haven’t resorted to Plenty of Fish, have you? You only had to call me.’

‘No,’ I said crossly. ‘Wrong again. It’s not online dating…not exactly, anyway.’

‘Wife swapping? Sex dungeons? A cam girl! Is it a cam girl?’

‘No, but you weren’t far off with one of those.’

‘Ooh. Come on. You might as well tell me or I’ll carry on making wilder and wilder guesses. You won’t shock me, I promise. You probably won’t even surprise me.’

He winked and I squirmed in my seat.

‘You think?’ I said.

He took hold of my hands and held them tight, looking seriously into my eyes.

‘I think,’ he said quietly. ‘So, here’s my theory. Would you say that you might perhaps be a little bit…kinky?’

I held myself still, not daring to breathe. The only things that might have moved were my pupils, which, I’m pretty sure, were dilated as fuck. If they were, they’d have matched his. He looked positively brimful of lascivious curiosity.

‘What makes you say that?’ I whispered.

‘I’m a journalist. I pick up on clues,’ he said. ‘The corset, the Victoriana, the subtle hints in the way you kiss…’

‘Really? It’s that obvious? It can’t be!’ I was horrified. I might just as well have been walking around town with a billboard marked SUBMISSIVE, if he was right.

His grave expression dissolved into something more puckish.

‘Nah, I’m kidding you. There’s, uh, a book in your bedside drawer, underneath the thesaurus. I spotted it when I was getting the painkillers.’

‘Oh.’ I smote my brow, cringing. How could I have forgotten? ‘Right.’

‘Right.’ His eyes danced with amusement. ‘And don’t tell me it was a present, or came free with a magazine, because you’ve admitted it now. Just tell me one thing. Are you top or bottom? Or do you switch?’

Interesting that he was so free with the terminology, but perhaps he’d just read one too many Fifty Shades articles.

‘I’m not a Miss Whiplash type,’ I said, unable to say the words ‘I’m a bottom’ to the most attractive man I’d ever got near.

‘No? You prefer a Mr Whiplash then? Sorry. I don’t mean to be flippant. Honestly, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Like I said, it hardly comes as a shock. More a…pleasant surprise.’

Pleasant? Was I dreaming? And he had said that thing about putting me over his knee. It had been bait! He’d been fishing for a confession, not just larking about.

‘Really? Why’s that?’

He cupped my cheek with one hand, stroking it, lowering his face to mine.

‘Why do you think?’

‘You…?’ The sentence remained unfinished. I could only ask the question with my eyes.

‘Let’s just say I enjoyed binding your ankle a little bit too much,’ he said. ‘I found myself looking for a bedpost to tie it to.’

I laughed nervously. ‘Perhaps I should invest in a four-poster then.’

‘Perhaps you should.’ He kissed me and the tearful feeling came back. Could this be real? I felt as if I were tottering on the brink of something potentially life-changing, for good or ill. There was danger inherent in letting him so far inside me, but also the potential for a new level of fulfilment.

He laughed, breaking the kiss and rumpling my already rumpled hair with two long fingers.

‘You should look at yourself,’ he said. ‘What a picture. Is my eyeliner as smudged as yours?’

I smiled. ‘Pretty much.’

A beat of silence followed, into which too many questions swarmed, each eager to get to the front of the queue. He got his in first.

‘So…have you done much of this kind of thing then?’

I shook my head.

‘No,’ I admitted, screwing up my face apologetically. Perhaps he was after an experienced player and this would be goodbye. ‘Just never seemed to…come up…You know?’

His eyes shone like blue crystals.

‘But you always wanted to?’ he said.

‘Yes. Always. What about you?’

‘I’ve smacked a few arses in my time,’ he said. ‘But it’s never been serious. Just part of the rough sex fun. I’ve always been interested in taking things further, but never wanted to freak anybody out by showing them the extent of my perversions.’

I blanched a little at that. ‘The extent of my perversions.’ It sounded a bit sinister.

‘So, uh, what is their extent?’ I asked, trying to sound casual while my brain begged him not to mention knives or suffocation.

‘You look scared,’ he noted with a self-conscious chuckle. ‘Don’t worry. Your book takes it a little further than I’d go. I’m pretty much a chapters-one-to-five kind of guy.’

I covered my sigh of relief with a laugh.

‘Right. Chapter six is where it starts getting into the piercing party scene. You wouldn’t go that far?’

‘Well, probably not. Though I never say never.’

‘Pony play? Adult baby?’

He was laughing now. ‘Enough, enough, now. I’ve told you. Chapters one to five. Read it again if you’ve forgotten what they cover.’

But I didn’t need to. I remembered well enough, and the memory made me glow.

‘So. This blog then.’

The change of tone and subject was so abrupt I had to force my mind back to Mia Culpa and her disappearance. She had been all but forgotten in the excitement of shared deviance and all the delightful implications.

‘Oh. Yeah. Well, it’s a BDSM blog. And, like I said, the blogger has disappeared and so has her blog.’

‘Show me.’

I typed in the URL and the mysterious ‘page not found’ message appeared on screen.

‘Not much to show,’ I said. ‘It was here, and then it wasn’t.’

Tom leant over me, peering at the screen as if he expected the generic deletion message to yield him some unique insight.

‘Not much to go on,’ he said.

‘No, but I saved all the posts,’ I told him.

‘Really? Well, come on, then. Let’s see them.’

I opened the folder and left it open without comment.

‘There’s a lot of them,’ he remarked. ‘What do you know about her? Off the top of your head.’

‘She is – or was – a student here. No idea which college or even if it is a college. Could have been the Open University for all I know.’

‘She lives here?’

‘Well, I think so. Some of the places she’s been to are highly recognisable from her descriptions. If you take a look, I think you’ll agree.’

‘What makes you think there’s something dodgy about it? Sex blogs get taken down all the time. People move on in their lives, or the web host deletes them because of complaints. All kinds of reasons.’

‘Her last post was about a trip she was making to some kind of training school for submissives. She was excited about it, and couldn’t wait to update us about what happened. Then she left and never came back. There’s just something…off about it. Why would she do that?’

‘You think something happened to her there?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t think Mia was the type who would just leave us hanging like that. She really enjoyed sharing all these new experiences with her readers. It was like…it was part of the thrill for her.’

‘A bit of an exhibitionist, maybe?’

‘Maybe. It was such a big part of her life. I can’t believe she’d willingly end it like this.’

‘And did she have a Dom?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do we know about him?’

‘Not much. Refers to him as “J” and says he works in some kind of respected profession.’

‘Not a journalist, then?’ said Tom, with a twinkle. ‘I guess…doctor, lawyer…oh! University lecturer?’

‘They hooked up through some kind of private chat group, I think.’

‘OK, well, that’s what we’ll try to do, then.’

‘What? You have a plan?’

‘Follow in their footsteps,’ he said briskly. ‘Get on to some of these sites and make profiles and meet some other local kinksters. What? Don’t you think so?’

I was staring at him, I realised. I blinked and looked back at the screen.

‘You want to do this?’ I said, referring both to the investigation of Mia’s disappearance and to the continuation of our mutual interest in her kink.

‘Why not? We’re ideally placed, aren’t we? If anyone can find her, it’s us.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not a detective,’ I said.

‘No, but I think we’d make a good team,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the attention to detail and I’ve got the understanding of people. You’re good at research and I’m good at persuasion. Come on. This could work.’

‘I don’t have the understanding of people?’

He laughed.

‘No, Foxy, you don’t. You never picked up on Tilda and Miles? Seriously?’

I bit my lip. Perhaps he was right. I tended to take people at face value and found it difficult to see anything beyond that. If you gave me something written down, though, I could read it every which way there was.

‘But you think we could work as a detective duo?’

‘Sure, why not?’ he said. ‘Holmes and Watson. Jeeves and Wooster.’

‘Jeeves and Wooster aren’t detectives.’

He clapped his hands. ‘Like I said! Attention to detail. Flanagan and Allen. Porgy and Bess. The Master and Margarita.’

‘Fast and loose,’ I said. ‘A bit like you.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Perfect. Fast and Loose. We can have a little brass plaque on your bedroom door. OK, then. Email me over that document, will you? I’d better get going.’

My dismay must have been palpable. He was going? Now?

Apparently so, judging by the purposeful way he embarked on the search for all his discarded garments.

‘Sorry, kid,’ he said. ‘I want to stay. But I’ve got a breakfast meeting and I can’t turn up in a top hat and cravat.’

‘I could set the alarm for…’

He shook his head, buttoning his shirt with fingers that must have smelled of me.

‘I’ve got stuff I need to look at first,’ he said. ‘Bit of business after pleasure. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? In the meantime, come up with a fake profile for some of the kinky social networks. See if you can hook any professional types with a J initial.’

‘All right,’ I said, still feeling somewhat bleak at his sudden withdrawal. ‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘Tomorrow.’ He shrugged on his coat and grabbed the top hat and cravat. His kiss goodbye was sweet but too fleeting. ‘I promise.’

And away he went.