No Strings Attached

Chapter Five

Basking in the early summer heat, Shannon sat down gracefully on the black sun lounger in the quiet country garden, quietly sipping on her fruit juice while Tori fussed with the sunhat on Ava’s little head. Of course, she’d inherited her mother’s porcelain skin tone, so she would probably burn in the sun.

Tor didn’t seem as concerned about her own skin though, slender and gorgeous in a tiny teal bikini – the huge straw hat holding up her fall of long blonde hair the only concession to the dangers of the sun.

Shannon chuckled lightly, shaking her head as she settled back her head. “You should be worrying about your own skin just as much as hers!”

Tori blushed quietly, until Shannon opened one eye to look over at her – confused by the silence.

“If I get sunburn, I might also get ... my Jayden back.”

Sitting up slowly, Shannon looked over at her in concern, trouble in paradise? “What do you mean?”

“He, uh,” Tori chuckled without humour, taking a sip of water for her suddenly dry mouth, “God, you know I don’t talk about this stuff ...”

Shannon never said a word, she just watched the blush cloud over Tori’s pale skin.

“It’s just ... when we met, he said he was into ... stuff, and yet since we’ve been ... well together properly, he’s kind of ... not done any of it. And I don’t know how to bring it up again.”

Confusion etched over Shannon’s features, all of the vague non-answers in Tori’s voice baffling her. “Stuff like ... what?”

The blush deepened on Tori’s skin ... if that was possible, and she shifted Ava over to the Moses Basket, cloaking a pale pink muslin over her to shade her from the sun, before taking a deep and visible breath, “He likes ... control. And other stuff.”

“And ...?”

Tori’s eyebrows lifted simultaneously, “Oh,” she muttered in a low voice, before realisation drifted down over her features, “Oh! ... Ew ... Nate?”

Slowly, a frown drifted over Shannon’s face, was it Nate? Had she always gone for that because it was what he wanted ... or was it her?

She’d never tried it with anyone else, always hoping that they would maybe ... take over ... just like Nate had. But what if that was what she needed? Sex had always been completely unfulfilling since she’d been in London – with the few men that she had actually let into her bedroom, what with trust being such a big issue for her when it came to these things. Yes, she loved male attention, but taking a man into her body was entirely different altogether, after what her father had put her through.

She’d always assumed that Nate had set the bar, because she’d been in love with him. Maybe it was all a lot more basic than that. Maybe she just needed to be dominated, completely.

God, she was warped!

“Getting yourself sunburnt won’t get you spanked honey, it’ll get you held under lock and key until Christmas!” she joked lightly, trying to change the subject away from the topic of her and Nathaniel bloody Casey. Really not ready to talk about him, and all the variant levels of headfuck that she’d faced since his little bombshell seven months ago.