Free NoEasyWayOut by Tara Tennyson

Look it’s not like he just hurts me. I’m not
battered and beaten. It’s just he likes rough sex. Well not even rough, more
like…” She wasn’t sure how to describe it, what to call the things he liked
doing, the things he made her enjoy too.
    “A bit of hanky spanky?” Katie spoke far too loudly. “He
ties you up? Whips you? Bondage?”
    The man at the next table had gone really pink now. If he
carried on eavesdropping he might have an aneurysm.
    Ruthanne nodded.
    “Has he got his own dungeon full of chains and whips and
torture things?” Katie was grinning.
    “No. But a bit.” Ruthanne thought of his flight bag and the
things he kept in it. “We were at the Chelsea last night so it wasn’t exactly a
dungeon.”
    “Oh I’d love to go there.” Katie was distracted immediately.
“Was it lovely? Did you steal the toiletries?”
    “I did actually. Look, I brought you a bubble bath and a
body lotion.” She took them out of her handbag and gave them to Katie.
    “Ooh, thanks.” Katie smelled them. “They are lovely.
Toiletries from the Chelsea and diamonds. And I got one wilted red rose and a
waiter. Not fair.”
    Ruthanne pulled down her top again, showing the red marks. “Fair.”
    “Okay, I suppose so. So he’s into bondage. Daniel the
dungeon master. And you’re doing it? I’d always thought you were so vanilla.”
    “Thanks a lot,” said Ruthanne.
    “I didn’t mean it as an insult—just that, well, you’re quite
conventional, aren’t you?”
    Ruthanne smiled. “I suppose. I was anyway.” She knew Katie
was surprised that it was Ruthanne and not her doing something outrageous and
getting showered with diamonds too.
    “So you’re into it?”
    Ruthanne shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all quite new. Some
bits are good, really good but I don’t know. I don’t really trust him.”
    “You can’t let someone you don’t trust tie you up and come
at you with a whip,” said Katie loudly.
    Two more heads turned in their direction.
    “Sssh. Keep it down.”
    “But I’m right, aren’t I?” said Katie. “If there’s one time
when you need to know you can trust someone, it’s when you’re all tied up and
they can do whatever they want with you.”
    “Yeah. And I’m not sure I do.”
    “Have you got safe words and things?”
    “What? “
    “You know so he knows when you’re saying ‘no, Daniel, no’
you mean ‘yes, Daniel, yes.’” Katie was putting on a silly breathy voice and
heads were turning again. “And when you say ‘no, Daniel, no’ and you actually
mean no.”
    The man at the next table coughed and choked on his coffee.
    Ruthanne shook her head.
    Katie shook hers too. “Not good. Not good at all. So is it
like a relationship, you’re dating, he’s falling for you, you’re going to get
married and have lots of rich little Rollestons?”
    Ruthanne smiled, wondering what it would be like to marry
money even if it meant a lifetime of Daniel. “I don’t know. I don’t really know
where I stand with him. One minute he’s all red roses and diamonds and dinners
at Reynard’s and La Maison and the next—”
    “You have to marry him. I’d marry anyone if I could have
dinner at La Maison and Reynard’s. Have you really been there?”
    “Yes, a few times now.“
    “Oh my. Now tell me everything.” She made Ruthanne describe
her visits to the restaurants, the food, the waiters, the famous people she’d
seen there.
    “Ruthanne. You’ve hit the jackpot. So what if he’s a bit
crazy in the bedroom?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know if he actually likes me or if it’s
just sex.”
    “For that lifestyle and those diamonds, who cares? Just
enjoy it!”
    They both laughed but then Katie was serious again. “So how
do you feel about him?”
    She shook her head. “He’s fun to be with sometimes. I like
being a part of the lifestyle.”
    “You like the diamonds.”
    “Yes, I like those but I don’t know. Is it enough?” Ruthanne
still wasn’t sure.