Testing
Tom by Lucy Felthouse
Blurb:
When Katrina’s ex, Tom, turns up on her
doorstep, he’s literally the last person she was expecting to see. After
dumping her and running off with a vanilla chick, Tom broke the Domme’s heart
and left her seriously hurting. So when he returns, begging for another chance,
Katrina is understandably very confused and protective of her bruised feelings.
She finds it very difficult to believe that he’s turned his back on a vanilla
lifestyle for good and wants to be with her, a professional dominatrix. Rather
than letting her head or her heart figure out what to do, whether to forgive
him, she decides to put Tom through a series of challenges that will prove his
devotion to her—or not. Testing Tom is not something she’d ever expected she’d
have to do, but to her, it’s the only way she can be sure whether he’s back for
good.
Available
from:
Excerpt:
Katrina was halfway through an episode of
her favorite drama series when her doorbell rang. She jumped, gasping as her
heart lurched painfully, then pressed ‘pause’ on the remote control. Wincing
slightly as she unfolded her legs from beneath her bottom—she’d been watching
the program back-to-back for a couple of hours and she was stiff—she moved to
the window and peered out through a gap in the curtains, careful not to let the
mystery visitor see her, should she need to ignore them. Cold callers were
common in her area, and drove her crazy. If she wanted to buy something, she’d
contact them, not the other way around.
As it happened, it wasn’t a salesperson.
She ducked back from the window, clenched her hands into fists.
“What the fuck is he doing here?”
He was literally the last person she’d
expected to see standing at her door. Prince William or George Clooney would
have been less of a shock.
For there, outside her house, stood the man
that had broken her heart several months ago. Thomas Black. She hadn’t seen
hide nor hair of him since, and now, totally out of the blue, he’d turned up.
Katrina contemplated ignoring him, going
back to her show and pretending she wasn’t in. But apparently that wasn’t an
option.
“I know you’re there, Katrina,” he yelled
through the letterbox, “your car is on the drive, and I can see the glow of the
telly through the curtains.”
Katrina decided it was time to get thicker
curtains. Not wanting to cause a scene, which her nosey neighbors would no
doubt adore, she moved to the front door, unlocked it and flung it open.
“Get in,” she said, quickly closing the door
behind him, then turning to face her unwanted visitor. “What the hell do you
want?”
He held his hands up in supplication, then
spoke. “Look, I know I’m probably the last person you expected to see—wanted to
see—but I have to talk to you. Please?”
He adopted the puppy-dog look he’d
long-since perfected. Katrina sighed.
“You’ve got five minutes. Sit down.”
They moved over to the sitting area, and
Katrina deliberately sat in the chair, so Tom couldn’t sit next to her.
Settling onto the end of the sofa nearest to her, he clasped his hands
together, presumably to summon his courage, and began.
“Kat, I’m here to say I’m sorry, all right?
I was wrong, so wrong, to finish with you the way I did and go off with
Alicia.”
“She dumped you, has she?” Katrina clenched
her teeth, and felt the rage beginning to build inside her. If Tom thought he
could come running back to her because his bimbo had ditched him, then he had
another think coming.
“No,” he said firmly, and, she suspected,
honestly. “I finished with her, actually. When I realized that I wasn’t happy
with her. She never made me feel the way you do, Kat. Not once. And I know, I
know it’s my fault. I wanted something… different from what we had, or at least
I thought I did. I couldn’t help thinking at the time that what we did was
wrong, was weird. Abnormal, even. So when Alicia started flirting with me at
work, I started thinking perhaps I should try for something normal. Like
everybody else out there.”
He fixed her with his soulful gaze, and
continued. “But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes, Alicia offered me
normality, a vanilla relationship, but I soon discovered it couldn’t satisfy
me. Sure, she could make me come in all the usual ways—”
“Ugh, I don’t want to hear this, Tom. I
don’t want to hear about your sex life with someone else!”
“Sorry, Kat. Please, just let me finish?”
When she gave a curt nod, he carried on
speaking.
“Alicia could make me come in all the usual
ways—I am just a man, after all—but it wasn’t the same. Wasn’t as good. It
wasn’t long before I started to miss you, miss what we had together, both in
and out of the bedroom. I ignored it for as long as I could, forced myself to
make the effort with Alicia, but it just got to the stage where I couldn’t do
it anymore. Couldn’t ignore what I was, what I enjoyed, what I needed. And
that’s you, Kat. I need you, and everything that goes with you.”
As a Domme, Katrina had become an expert in
hiding her feelings, whether she was aroused, angry, happy, sad… it was all
stuffed behind a stern facial expression. Now, though, she almost faltered.
When Tom had left her, she’d remained cool and silent until the door had
slammed. Then she’d broken down. She’d been deeply in love with him, and his
decision had left her devastated. Months down the line, her love for him hadn’t
faded, not one bit, and the fact that he was here, right now, apparently trying
to get her back, was something she’d never expected. She didn’t know whether to
laugh, cry or throw something at him.
She didn’t do any of those things. She kept
her face straight, her thoughts whizzing through her head at a hundred miles
per hour. Eventually, after letting him squirm in his seat for a minute or so,
she replied. “So what exactly are you saying, Tom? What do you want?” She knew
the answer, but she wanted to make him suffer, the way he had done to her after
ditching her for something, someone, that could never satisfy him.
About Lucy:
Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She
writes erotica and erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and
has over seventy publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline.
These include Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and 2013, and Best Women's Erotica
2013. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a
number of anthologies. She owns Erotica
For All, and is book editor for Cliterati.
Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk.
Join her on Facebook
and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9
