"Tom," they both said as he was introduced to them. "Welcome."
"Thank you. I am just here at Samantha's request, to see the new hobby she is enjoying so much."
"Oh, a hobby?" Grant teased her and she smiled a brilliant smile at him, making Tom feel slightly jealous and insecure for a moment. "I see! Well, regardless, Tom, we do have some protocols in place here so I shall sweep you away for a few minutes, please, and explain them to you."
Samantha watched as he was led away, just as she had been by Valda that first night.
"So Tom is … your boyfriend?" Valda asked, curious all of a sudden at seeing Samantha with another man.
"Oh no! Scott is my boyfriend. Tom is a friend … my best friend really. We have known each other forever. I talk to him about so many things that I thought it might be nice to share this with him - let him see what I do when I come here with Scott."
"Ahh," the older woman said with a gleam of amusement in her eye.
~~~~~
Tom was in awe in so many ways due to what was happening before his eyes. He was still a virgin too but had peaked at porn on occasion, even though it never held his attention for very long.
But this was different. The openness of people astounded him most of all - the way that so many could be close to naked - some completely naked - and yet not have any qualms about their bodies being seen by others. That he found excessively intriguing, rather than arousing.
After a while Angelica approached him and Samantha.
"Samantha, who is this lovely young man with you?" she purred, making Samantha laugh and Tom cringe bashfully.
"Angelica, stop it! This is Tom, a very good friend of mine, so be nice."
Tom saw the woman relax and become more human as she greeted him in a friendly manner.
"I am only teasing, Tom. I am Angelica and this is my husband Tony."
Tom saw the man approach and was embarrassed to see he was not only wearing hardly anything at all, but was also very aroused. Tom kept his eyes up, not knowing what to do in such a situation, but Angelica and Tony laughed.
"Don't worry, Tom, we are all embarrassed by the near-nudity and full nudity at the start, but after a while everyone realises that really, no-one cares. Now, how about I take you through some moves?" Angelica asked and reluctantly Tom nodded and followed her, leaving Tony and Samantha standing together nearby, watching.
"What do you think you would be most likely attuned to, Tom? Delivering pain? Or receiving it?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't think I could hurt someone."
"Right then. How about we see if you like to receive it then."
He looked horrified for a moment but with a glance and nod from Samantha, nodded at Angelica.
"First hold out your hand, palm up," she said and he did so.
Before he had time to think about it, she had smacked him with the crop in her hand.
"Is that okay?" she asked him and he nodded.
"Get down on your knees," she said and he could hear the authority in her voice. "I'm going to use this while you are fully dressed, and if you feel okay with that, I'd like you to pull your jeans down and let me use it on you through your underwear."
Tom groaned at the thought. There was no way he wanted to do that in front of Samantha! But he did as he was instructed - he fully trusted Samantha and she had asked him here to try this out so he would, no matter how embarrassed he got from it.
On all fours, he felt the strike against his jeans but it wasn't painful at all, and he understood why Angelica had mentioned the no-jeans try.
"How was that?" she asked him and he looked at her.
"I couldn't really feel that," he said and saw her nod.
"Pull them down then," Samantha heard Angelica instruct him, and Samantha held her tongue as she watched her friend do as he was told, without any argument whatsoever.
"I'm going to hit you, Tom, softly at first, and then I am going to intensify it. You need to tell me when it is hurting you, and I will stop. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
He felt the first one and recognised straight away the difference between the jeans being there and them not being there. It hurt, but he allowed her to give him three more strikes - each more intense than the last - before he called for her to stop.
Samantha saw him look around him, as if to check it was alright for him to now get up, and he discretely pulled his jeans up and then stood up, giving Samantha a shy smile.
"How did you like that, Tom?" Angelica was asking him, but he knew that he would never gain pleasure from that.
"It was okay," he said and she understood then, from the tone of his voice, that this would not be his thing.
"Here, take this and use it on me," she said, handing the crop to him.
At first he looked uncertain, and looked at Samantha and then at Tony. On seeing Tony nod at him, he finally took the crop and followed Angelica's instruction about where to strike her with it - first her hand and then on her buttocks as she knelt on the ground.
"You can do it a bit harder, Tom," she said to him and he increased his strike strength a bit more, but could not be enticed to keep going in his increases.
"I think that is all for me," he said, offering a hand to Angelica to help her stand up. She wasn't wearing much, and she certainly wasn't flat-chested but being the gentleman he was, he managed successfully to not blatantly stare at her breasts or any other intimate part of her body, which didn't go unnoticed by her at all. "Thank you for making the time for me to … experiment … Angelica. It was lovely to meet you - and you, Tony."
Samantha said her goodbyes, equally happy to leave with him and feeling like the evening had been a success.
As they sat in Tom's car, he was silent, wondering what she would have expected to come from the evening. At first she seemed to not want to talk, but as he expected, once she found the courage, soon followed the talking.
"That was amazing, watching you, Tom," she said and he blushed, not sure how he should respond. In his mind all he kept visualising was him with his jeans down, and Samantha there, seeing that. It felt like another level of their friendship had definitely be defined in that moment!
"Did you enjoy yourself?" she asked and he smiled at her and nodded, not daring to speak. "Enough to do it again?"
"Hmm … well I don't feel the same enthusiasm about it as you obviously do, so I would not rush to do that again, no. But I am glad that we went and I got to see what has had you so intrigued and engaged lately."
"But if I want to take you again?"
She saw him look at her with a look of somewhat disbelief, as if exasperated by her.
"Samantha, you need to be doing that with Scott, not me. He is the one who is into it - really into it - and that is the kind of person you need to go with, to something like that."
Samantha fell quiet and said nothing more until they pulled up outside her home.
She turned to Tom to judge whether she may have upset him in any way.
"Are you okay?" she asked but he only smiled at her in his usual friendly way.
"Absolutely. I liked going with you tonight. Thank you for taking me."
With that he saw her smile, kiss him on the cheek and climb out of the car.
As he made his way back to his house he found himself very thoughtful about the evening. He had not seen Samantha do anything over the time they were in the club, so hadn't been able to make any judgement on how enthusiastic she really was about it, but the fact that she took him there must mean that she was honestly into it, he figured.
But for him personally, he believed that he had no desire whatsoever to ever go into that world.
~~~~~
The next day Samantha received a phone call from Scott, his voice demonstrating the level of anger he felt.
"Everyone is talking about you being at the club with another guy! What were you thinking?" he seemed to be screaming at her down the phone line, stunning her.
"I don't unders
tand what you are upset about. I told you I wanted to take Tom…"
"No you didn't!"
"Yes I did! We talked about it on the way home from the club the last time I went with you. How could you have forgotten that conversation?"
"I haven't forgotten it because it never took place!"
Samantha could not understand what he was talking about, or why he was pretending they hadn't discussed it, when she remembered the whole conversation so vividly.
"Well, whatever. So what if I took a friend to the club? What is the big deal?"
"It is a big deal because you are my girlfriend!"
"And? You said lots of married people go there with people other than their spouses."
She heard him sigh in frustration.
"That isn't the point."
"Well what is the point? I have no idea what you are so angry about. You know that Tom and I are friends. You have gone right through school with us from when we were at kindergarten, so don't act as if you only just found out that he and I spend a lot of time together…"
"This is different."
"Why?"
"It just is."
Samantha reached a point of frustration that she knew she had to defuse … somehow. She took a deep breath and a moment to think before she spoke again.
"You are making no sense, Scott. You are angry about something that does not deserve your anger. He is my best friend. He always has been and he always will be. Just accept it, as that aspect of my life is not going to change."
To that remark she was presented with the sound of the dial tone - he had hung up on her. No goodbye, no see you later, and no advance warning that he was going to end the call at all.
She stood with the phone in her hand, looking at it in disbelief. When she had met him he hadn't been moody at all but over time his moods had started to become more and more intense and more and more frequent. In one way it concerned her. In another she found that she just didn't care. She didn't care about the moods. And perhaps the reason she didn't care about the moods was because she didn't really care about him.
~~~~~
Later that day she received another phone call from him, his voice deep with apology.
"Look, I'm sorry. I know you and Tom have been best friends … forever. I had no right to say anything about your friendship, so I'm sorry."
"Is that what it was about? My friendship? Because you said it was about me taking him to the club. Which is it?"
She wasn't talking to him with a friendly tone and she knew it, but he had riled her up and when she got like that she needed to be given time to sort through her feelings and thoughts before being approached again. That was just one of the many things that Tom knew about her, that Scott still didn't and possibly never would.
"I was embarrassed when people told me you were there with another guy…"
"What people?" Samantha asked, wondering if he even had a real point of argument.
"I don't know … just people."
"You don't know who you spoke to, that told you this?"
Now she started to hear his voice become frustrated and annoyed all over again, and wished she had just hung up on him … or something.
"What does it matter? The point is…"
"The point is that you hate that I have a best friend who is a man. You are jealous of him when you have absolutely no reason to be…"
"No reason to be? Are you kidding me? He is Mr Perfect. Everybody likes him. Women look at him when he walks down the street. Even people at the club are still talking about him going there, and he was only there for one short time!"
Suddenly Samantha heard a different situation entirely.
"So that is what this is about? You are jealous of Tom?"
There was silence for a while until finally he spoke.
"Of course I am jealous of him. He knows you better than I do. Hell, he knows you better than anyone else does. How could I not be jealous of him?"
"Umm … maybe because I am involved with you, and not him? Maybe because I am dating you and not him. Maybe because I am kissing you, and not him."
"I know!" he yelled down the phone, once again frustrated. "I know it is illogical and stupid, but it is how I feel."
"Well if you want this relationship to continue, you are going to have to get over that. Because Tom isn't going anywhere. He is my friend and he will always be a priority to me."
"I don't expect him to go anywhere! I just don't think you should have taken him to a club where you and I go as partners!"
Samantha groaned inwardly as now the conversation seemed to be taking another turn. She was weary of it, not knowing what was at the heart of his being so angry, with all the different angles and objections he had made to her during not one but two phone calls now.
"Scott, I have to go. I will talk to you later."
"We haven't finished talking…"
"Yes we have."
And with that, she hung up on him.
4 ~ THE BREAK-UP
"Samantha, be more aggressive with me! I want you to tell me what you want me to do, and what you want to do to me!" Scott was yelling at her, as was his way more and more now.
"I am trying to tell you what I want you to do, and what I want to do to you, but you keep contradicting what I say. Which is it? Do you want me to have the control or not? Because you keep saying you do, but then you get angry at what I say I want!"
"Ugh! I'm tired of this conversation," he said and walked away from her. They were in his apartment but more and more it wasn't an enjoyable experience for either of them.
~~~~~
"He just drives me nuts with all this 'you be the dominant' crap. He wants me to take charge, but when I take charge, he doesn't want me to take charge like that - he wants me to take charge how he wants me to take charge. So you tell me, how can I be in charge if he keeps telling me what I have to do to be in charge?!" she was telling Tom as they sat on the swings in their local park, as they had done for so many years as friends.
"It does sound a bit strange," Tom replied noncommittally.
"Strange? Strange?! He drives me bonkers!"
Tom sat quietly, not sure if she really expected him to say anything, or whether this was one of those times where she really just needed him to be a sounding board for her frustrations.
"What do you think?" she asked, forcing him to respond.
"What do I think … about what exactly?"
"You know, about me breaking up with Scott!"
Samantha saw him look sharply at her with a shocked look on his face.
"I didn't know we were talking about you breaking up with Scott! Do you not think you could have led with that instead of your issues with the BDSM club thingy?!"
"Yeah, well, anyway, what do you think about me breaking up with him?"
Tom looked at her. This was definitely one of the many days they of their lifelong friendship, where she was on one track of conversation and he was on another, and even though she was indicating she wanted his opinion on something, it was likely she really did not want to hear what he really thought about the subject at hand.
"Samantha, what do you want me to say? Apart from this issue, I don't know how things are with you. Are you unhappy? Does he treat you badly?"
She took a few minutes to think about the questions presented to her.
"No."
"No - you aren't unhappy? No - he doesn't treat you badly?"
"Both."
"Are you being intentionally vague today? Because I feel like you are baiting me by asking me questions but not telling me anything."
Tom watched as she suddenly stopped her swing from moving, and she stood up, turning to face him front on.
"I just wanted you to give me your opinion on what I should do…"
"How can I give you an opinion when I don't know what is going on in your relationship, that is making you question if you should break up?"
At that point she found herself frustrated with him so wa
lked off. He was well used to such action so let her go. When she was ready to talk to him, she would come and see him and do so. He knew from many years of being her friend, that trying to talk to her when she was in this stubborn place, never did any good.
~~~~~
Over the following month Samantha concentrated on her dressmaking course. She knew she was losing enthusiasm for spending time with Scott, but they still saw each other a couple of times over weekends, and she still went to the club with him. But even in that something was starting to feel out of kilter. She enjoyed the action itself but was enjoying it less and less in his presence.
One evening when Tom was at the supermarket, about to leave work, he saw her approach his checkout counter.
"I need a good friend to talk to," she said to him, feeling shy as she had pulled back from him in recent weeks too, full well knowing she wasn't treating him well … again.
But as always, she needn't have worried.
"Then you have come to the right place, Miss Young, for I do believe that for you I am a very good listener!"
She smiled at him and relaxed instantly.
"Thank you."
He was well used to her drifting away and then coming back to him when she needed a friend. He knew some people would not endure such a friendship, but he was only happy to have her back.
"I just need another ten minutes to close up. Can you wait by the front door for me?" he asked her and saw her nod before moving away.
After completing his final chores of the day - cleaning down the checkout, doing his till reconciliation and handing the float to his supervisor for locking up in the safe, he walked down and met her outside.
"Right. What's up?" she heard him ask but rather than answer the question with words, she pushed herself close to him, a move that he recognised as her needing him to put his arms around her and hold her tightly.
They stood close together, hugging, until he felt her pull away from him.
"Oh, Tom, I don't know what to do!"
He saw her confusion, and slight tear begin to form in her eye, and put his arm around her shoulder to lead her away.
Friendship of Desire (Painful Deliverance Book 3) Page 6