No Ordinary Love Story: Sequel to The Diary of a Submissive

by Morgan, Sophie

  Sophie Morgan

  NO ORDINARY LOVE STORY

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Epilogue

  For F, with all my love and thanks

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was late. I spend a lot of my life late, or if not actually late then in fear of being so. I’m a journalist, and workwise while it’s an occupational hazard there’s nothing less forgivable (OK, except maybe phone hacking, but I’m a local newspaper journalist so that’s not the kind of thing we get up to, whatever you might see in the soaps). In my non-work life I find lateness annoying in myself and in others. Wherever possible I’ll pitch up five minutes early and loiter just to minimise the risk of being late. I know I probably look a bit like a stalker, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

  No chance to do that this time, though. When I got to the bar my friends, Thomas and Charlotte, had already commandeered a booth and were waving at me like lunatics to get me to come over. Charlotte was even wearing an elf hat, which is not as odd as it sounds as it was four days before Christmas. The festive spirit had completely passed me by, though, partly because work was bedlam and partly because I was still licking my wounds over the longest break-up ever. The only reason I’d agreed to come for drinks was because I couldn’t cope with their lecturing if I declined. Plus, the bar was close to my office and Charlotte had assured me there would be lots of people – enough I hoped for me to be able to slip away unnoticed after a quick drink and some mingling to show willing and shut them up. Except as I walked over to the bar I realised that there was only one other person in the booth with them. I’d been ambushed.

  My first thought, testament to how he was still not really ever out of my mind, was that it was James, my ex, even though rationally I knew Thomas wasn’t ever going to be sharing drinks, small talk and mini cheesy biscuits with him. I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to share drinks with him either. The man with his back to me turned round, confirming what I knew, and then the annoyance began to burn in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t have told you who I was angry at – myself? Them? Him? I’d spent a lot of time angry lately. It was unlike me and I was beginning to bore myself with it. It was also exhausting, another reason I would have been happier sitting at home watching cooking shows on TV and not speaking to anyone.

  No chance of that tonight, though. I’d been completely stitched up by my so-called friends. Charlotte hesitated for a moment before she hugged me, able to see my rage, but Thomas showed no such fear. He launched himself at me and enveloped me in a massive bear hug that almost made me overbalance.

  ‘Soph! You made it. We didn’t think you were going to come, it’s not like you to be late.’

  I slipped out of his arms and began unbuttoning my coat. ‘Yeah, work was a pain and the tube was packed.’ I had no intention of apologising for my lateness. I bit back a wry smile, remembering an occasion when, upon turning up at Thomas’s twenty-three minutes late due to traffic trouble, he hit me twenty-three times with a crop. It felt like a long time ago, a different life. Things really had changed, although the memory still inspired a surge of affection which went some way to easing my fury.

  The-man-who-wasn’t-James had stood up as I arrived and was waiting for me to come closer to the table. As I leaned in to put my coat on the pile he put his hand out.

  ‘Hello, Sophie. I’m Adam. It’s lovely to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you.’ Dark hair, brown eyes, glasses. Strong handshake, nice hands – I notice these things; it’s a side effect of my extra-curricular love of spanking. I had to give them credit for knowing my tastes well. Shame they didn’t know me well enough to know I had no interest in any kind of relationship with anyone for the foreseeable future.

  ‘Have you really?’ I smiled at him, not entirely sure it was reaching my eyes. ‘Because I’ve heard nothing at all about you.’ I glanced over at Charlotte, who looked discomfited. The silence lengthened, and for a moment I let it hang there, before sighing, plonking myself down on the cushioned bench and picking up the menu. I hate confrontations and bad atmospheres, I always have. I could play nice; all I had to do was get through the next hour or so and cry off with an early work start. My eyes caught mulled wine on the menu and I smiled to myself. I could get a little bit into the festive spirit at least. ‘So what’s everyone drinking? I’ll get them.’

  I know I sound a bit churlish, and I know it wasn’t poor Adam’s fault. The fact is, and I appreciate this sounds all Mills & Boon, I’d had my heart broken not long before. Not on purpose – people who break your heart on purpose are the worst kind of bastards after all, and if I’d found myself in love with a bastard it’d have been much easier to disentangle my life, pull myself together and move on. But James had managed to pretty much settle his way into my life, both as a boyfriend and as a dominant foil to my submissive tendencies. Then he ended things abruptly and it had left me feeling uncharacteristically adrift.

  Not that things had ended completely, not in a way I had been able to start moving on from yet. If I was to describe this in a TV-style ‘previously on Sophie’s life’ segment then the admittedly HBO-friendly summary is as follows: Boy meets girl, boy dominates girl, girl gets off on the pain and degradation and falls for boy, boy becomes guilt-ridden at how he’s dominating the girl he’s decided he’s in love with, girl points out she enjoys the domination. You’d imagine the next step would be boy coming to terms with the two sides of his nature and thanking his lucky stars he had found a girl that complemented him so well but, alas, that hadn’t happened. After weeks of text messages – flurries of affection and emotional chat which made the silence immediately afterwards ever more distressing – I’d decided it was time to stop, for my own sanity. I asked one last time if anything could work between us and, taking his silence as a pretty strong answer, I changed my phone number and set a filter on my email account that automatically forwarded any messages he sent me to the trash. Hell, after the first week or two I stopped checking three times a day in case there had been any automatically deleted messages. That was progress, right?

  I was trying, slowly, to move on. But it hurt. And I felt stupid. So stupid. So for now I was happy to be on my own. If nothing else it meant as few people as possible got wind of my idiocy.

  I knew now more than ever that my love of sexual submission was something that I definitely wanted as part of any relationship – only part, admittedly, but for me a lack of that basic compatibility was a deal-breaker. But having realised that, and then being let down by James so badly when he turned out to be a bit emotionally stunted, I’d decided that it was time to take a step back for a bit. Because while sexual compatibility was an important aspect of the kind of relationship I wanted, it was part of a bigger whole – I wanted someone caring, clever, funny, who put up with my obsession with TV (and the associated stacks of DVD box sets), loved their job enough that they didn’t get annoyed at how hard I worked at mine, and had similar ideas on life in the long term, i.e. one day getting married and having kids.

  I know. I want the moon on a bloody stick. And the thing is, finding a bloke who ticked a lot of th
ose boxes (not ALL of them, I’m not that unreasonable), was a dominant and who wanted a woman like me, well that’s the equivalent of winning the relationship lottery. And right now, after my disappointment with James, I didn’t even want to buy a ticket and then suffer the disappointment. Not least because I was hardly ankle deep in dominant sorts – if there was such a thing as kinky radar then I most definitely didn’t have it, and even with my sexual proclivities I drew the line at randomly asking guys if they’d like to hurt me. Let’s face it, the sort of guys that would say yes were probably the kind you should be crossing the street to avoid anyway. I’d used online D/s sites before, to chat to folk and make friends, but I wasn’t ready to start the time-consuming and occasionally soul-destroying search for a date on them yet – even though one of my best friends, and ex-dom, Thomas had found his current squeeze by doing just that.

  Nope, I was getting my kicks through an erotica-packed Kindle and not much else lately and I was fine with that. I just didn’t feel I had the energy for anything more, especially through the always-manic festive season. I had it all planned. I’d been taking on as much overtime as work would give me, sitting through more out-of-hours council meetings than any sane person should ever want to. I’d booked time off to head home to my parents for the Christmas holidays. I was working New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I was filling my life with work and reading and sleep, and that was fine.

  Unfortunately bloody Charlotte and Tom didn’t seem to think it was fine.

  I drank my mulled wine as fast as I was able to without burning the roof of my mouth, and excused myself to go to the loo, rehearsing the explanation I’d give for having to leave early on my way back. But when I got back to the table Charlotte had bought me another glass in my absence. My ‘thank you’ for it was through gritted teeth and she couldn’t meet my eyes when I looked at her, but even in my most antisocial of modes I wouldn’t have buggered off and left then. I drank it – a bit slower this time – and resigned myself to listening to the conversation washing over me.

  Adam was interesting. Funny. Clever. Witty. Self-deprecating. He had quite a way with words and enjoyed using puns, presumably in part due to his career as a copywriter. He was exactly the kind of person I would have enjoyed spending time with normally. Not so tonight, though. I know this makes me stubborn, but, while I liked him, I had no intention of showing that to him or – more importantly – Charlotte and Thomas, who clearly thought they knew better than me what I needed, and seemed to be suffering from a small case of that irritating condition where couples insist on trying to pair off all their single friends. Even if Adam was happy to stand for that, I really wasn’t.

  He was good company, though. As a group we chatted about TV that we’d all been watching, recommending shows to each other, with him suggesting I pick up the DVDs of The Shield, a police show that had completely passed me by but which was made by one of the guys behind another show I had loved, Lie to Me. He told a great anecdote about a political campaign he’d worked on, which meant before I knew it I was sharing similar war stories from events I’d covered. I found myself leaning in to talk to him, catching myself and then deliberately moving back to feign indifference.

  I finally finished my drink and headed home. My fury had eased a little, but I was still slightly stand-offish with Charlotte and Thomas as I said goodbye. I waved at Adam as I left, not even wanting to encourage their meddling by kissing him on the cheek in farewell lest it was misconstrued.

  By the time I got home and was curled up in my current non-work default position – on the sofa in my PJs with a mug of tea and the late news – my phone had pinged several times.

  Charlotte and Thomas had both texted, ostensibly to check I’d got home OK, but both with variants of ‘Sorry if you felt slightly ambushed’. I wasn’t forgiving them easily. I also had a Facebook notification: Adam had tracked me down and sent me a message.

  I harrumphed slightly to myself as I opened it on my phone. This was exactly the kind of faff I could do without.

  From: Adam

  To: Sophie

  I wanted to send you a brief note to apologise for tonight. Not for meeting you (that was fun) but for the fact that clearly you weren’t expecting me to be there when you arrived.

  I broke up with my long-term girlfriend fairly recently and I think Charlotte was trying to encourage me to find someone new in her usual sledgehammer-like fashion. Please rest assured I’m not the sort of person to get dates under false pretences – apologies for any awkwardness.

  Best,

  Adam

  Suddenly it all made sense. I could kick Charlotte. In her head this must have felt brilliant – two of her single friends hooking up – but now I felt even more awkward. ‘Best’? Ouch. I smiled wryly to myself for being such an egotist – so much for me being such a big catch!

  From: Sophie

  To: Adam

  Bloody Charlotte! I’m so sorry. I didn’t stop to think that it might be as awkward for you too – I fear you handled it better. I might have come across a smidgen grumpy. Sorry. It definitely wasn’t personal.

  I hope Charlotte’s attempts at ‘helping’ haven’t made your break-up feel any more rotten than they tend to.

  Sophie

  PS Fear not, you don’t look like the sort to need to get dates under duress.

  His reply was quick, intriguing and made it obvious that he wasn’t any more interested in me than I was in him.

  From: Adam

  To: Sophie

  Break-up was a long time coming and as painless as these things can be. We dated for a year pretty much to the day and had a lot of fun but fundamentally wanted different things – she loves travelling and wanted to work her way around America. I like holidays, but wanted to stay closer to home long term for marriage, kids etc. One of those things. She sent me a mail tonight actually. She’s currently working as a receptionist in a tattoo parlour in San Francisco somewhere. We’re both OK. It’s just the thing with break-ups – everyone assumes you want to be straight back in a relationship again. Sometimes it’s nice to have a break.

  A

  PS You were a little grumpy. It was oddly endearing though. I didn’t take it personally.

  I chuckled to myself.

  From: Sophie

  To: Adam

  I hear you on the ‘break from relationships’ front. Sometimes life is simpler being single.

  Soph.

  I shut down my laptop, fairly sure that would be the last I heard of him and happy that I’d made it clear I wasn’t interested in any overtures, even if any were forthcoming. Little did I know.

  The next morning he sent me a message linking me to a news story about the politician we’d been discussing the night before. Before I knew it I’d tapped a brief message back. He replied, asking at the same time if I’d heard from a more-apologetic Charlotte (I had). I replied asking if he’d had anything to do with her new-found regret (he did). Suddenly we were emailing at least a couple of times a day.

  It was safe. It was simple. We talked about non-contentious things: my mum’s internet-fuelled holiday planning (military invasions have taken less work), his trip to Yorkshire for a family wedding. I tracked down and watched (although admittedly from behind my hands at points) a couple of episodes of The Shield at his behest and was blown away by it, but had no one else to wax lyrical about it with, so we enthused about that. I recommended a couple of political biographies which had passed him by. All in all it was surprisingly fun to chat.

  I also (don’t judge me) took advantage of the fact that his Facebook privacy settings were much less locked down than mine and checked out his profile. I looked at some of his pictures (mostly holidays, family trips and parties) and skim read his most recent updates – mostly links to news stories with associated rants, comments about TV shows and films he’d just seen and geeky internet memes, all of which I found very interesting, although I didn’t dare so much as ‘like’ anything lest Charlotte or Thomas see an
d get the wrong idea. That first step of modern interaction – friending him on Facebook – was also a definite no-no.

  Then one night the tone of things changed a little. By this point we were chatting on Messenger some evenings if we were both around – OK, if he was in, because I was still under voluntary non-work house arrest. We’d been discussing another attempt by some of his friends to set him up – this time with a secondary school physics teacher. I’d been laughing quietly to myself at his obvious horror at the awkward small talk, when suddenly a line of what he’d written caught my eye.

  Adam says: The thing is there’s no good way to have that discussion about compatibility is there? At least Charlotte put US together knowing we had complementary personalities on that front!

  I sat up straighter, my heart beginning to pound a bit. My fingers were a flurry, and then stopped. Did he mean what I thought he meant or was I being over-sensitive? Obviously Charlotte knew I was submissive, by first-hand experience in fact. But would she really have told some guy I’d never met? I was torn between asking for clarification and accidentally outing myself when in fact she hadn’t done any such thing. In the end curiosity won out.

  Sophie says: Complementary personalities how?

  His reply confirmed my fears.

  Adam says: Sexually I mean. It’s not a prerequisite for a relationship, but it’s definitely something when it feels right to start dating again that I’d like to factor into things.

  I have a tendency to set off on occasional flights of fancy. I can’t help it. Eventually my rational brain does kick in but for now my thoughts were whirring. He knew I was a sub. Had known from the beginning. Was this some kind of ridiculous long-game thing? Did he think I was playing hard to get? How could Charlotte have told him that without telling me? I was incandescent with rage.

  The sudden silence at my end seemingly spoke volumes.