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with three words, and didn’t think anything more needed to be added…
     
    Why would I?
     
    But he responded with many things, most of which made her shiver harder than any of the strange domination games they’d been playing.
     
    I confess, I thought he was what you wanted. But if he isn’t, then perhaps we should try something different. If you trust me, that is, which I think you do.
    So this is what I want from you. It may be the last thing I ask you to do for me, but that largely depends on you—and I’m sure you’ll see why, in time.
    I want you to go home, tonight, and do everything as you normally would. Shower, get ready for bed. I’d prefer you to be naked, but if you’d rather wear something slight, like a nightgown, I won’t object.
    On two points I won’t be moved, however. I want you to leave your front door unlocked, and I want you to put on a blindfold. You can sit anywhere you want in your apartment, and take any safety precaution you feel necessary—though I hope you know by now that I would never do anything to hurt you.
    I think you do. I think you also know the depth of my feelings for you, though I hardly understand it myself. Whether you choose to do this or not, that feeling remains. I think it always will.
    I’ll be there at eleven p.m.
    Yours always,
    E
     
    It was the strangest thing. She didn’t think of games, or guessing at who he was, or any of the other things that had defined this odd relationship. She thought, instead, of girls with boyfriends and husbands who came home after a day’s work or a night out, and did things that boyfriends or husbands do, like kiss their girlfriend’s cheek or make love to them. She thought about how much his email had a flavour of that, as if some weary guy was just waiting to come to home to her—only with extra weird kink piled on top of it.
    It made two feelings inside her want to go to war. One side wanted to reply that she had feelings, too, the other side didn’t know what the fuck those feelings were about. The other side said— you don’t even know what he looks like! He could be anybody, you massive dumbass!
    Her hands hovered over the keyboard and didn’t have a clue what to type. She wanted to go with something neutral, but neutral wasn’t agreeing to what he wanted. Neutral was much more like— go home, eat a microwave dinner, watch TV until you fall asleep. Wait for someone nicer and safer to come along, and stare into the middle distance throughout your entire life. Have nice, safe children and live in a nice, safe place, and never want for anything more because your husband who tells you he’ll be home at eleven p.m. means it in an entirely different way. He means it with all the sweetness of—I’ll be there and love you if you want me to—but without the added deliciousness of blindfolds.
    The always and ever deliciousness of not knowing.
    She thought of those two words, when she replied. They seemed like too much, too silly, too big for every dirty thing they’d done, but she put them in anyway. If someone as cool and aloof as him could manage feelings , she could manage this.
     
    Yes. Always and ever—yes.

Chapter Three
     
     
     
    He’d asked for naked, and that’s what he was going to get. Any qualms she’d had about any of this had long since been stripped away—she didn’t mind accepting that. If he were going to be a maniac, he’d have been one, way before this. If he were going to push her past her limits, he would’ve prior to her wrapping a scarf around her eyes.
    It was just a woolly wintery sort of thing, not anything fancy, like silk or rubber or some other stupid material they always used in movies about women embarking on sexual journeys that never seemed real. Until they happened to you.
    She knelt in the middle of her bed and thought… that’s what I’ve done. I’ve embarked on an actual sexual journey. Like Kim Basinger , only not hot and not cool and not any of the things that women