“Put your hand in an ice bucket, dahling,” Maisy said. “Toby?”
“I should probably call. I’m just not sure what to say. I left the ball in her court. I was a dick about it too.”
“You were assertive, dahling, and from the sounds of things, that’s just what this girl likes. You should wait forty-eight hours and then ring and ask her out to dinner.”
“After you send her to a hairdresser,” Suzannah chipped in. “You can call my salon and make a booking, Toby. It’s upsetting for such a pretty girl to have such horrible regrowth…”
“After you pay for her to have a little makeover experience,” Maisy agreed. “Take her to dinner somewhere fabulous and tell her that you’ve had enough messing about, you’d like to make a life with her, and that’s all there is to it.”
A lump formed in Toby’s throat at the thought of saying something like that to Tabby. “You think that’ll work?”
“Well, you might have to fuck her first, dahling, but I’m sure that’s well within your wheelhouse.”
All the women at the table snorted, and Toby found himself smiling too. As Maisy resumed staring at the open restaurant window, he wondered again what she wasn’t saying. The conversation turned to Victoria’s daughter Suki, who was dating some dude who owned a million racehorses. Toby was grateful. As much as he wanted to talk about Tabby, the reminder that she wasn’t talking to him was fucking with his head. Yet, as he tried to follow the conversation, his thoughts kept swinging back to her and how she felt pressed against him. The way her gaze had flicked to his as she drilled the still-stinging ink in his bicep. Most of all, he thought about how she’d scratched him, marking him in a way that all the women at the table had instantly noticed.
He wasn’t into receiving pain so much as inflicting it, but it was something, being with a girl so pissed off and frustrated. Like a red rag to a bull, stoking him. Firing him up. He’d heard about tops who got whipped so they knew how to do it to other people. Maybe this could be like that? He showed her he could take pain so he could give it back.
As everyone talked, ate, and ordered more drinks, he couldn’t help but fantasise about Tabby in a little maid costume, brushing a feather duster up and along his cabinets. She’d sometimes dressed like that at Silver Daughters, not in a maid costume but in tiny skirts and long socks. He’d love to have her bend over in stockings, her perfect ass framed by a frilly little skirt. He pictured himself eating her ass as she pretended to ignore him and keep dusting, her breathing getting louder and faster.
“I’m almost finished, Mr Tennant,” she’d pant. “Is there something else you need me for?”
He’d tell her yes, then sit on his couch with Tabby’s face in his lap, one hand on the back of her head, a glass of whiskey in the other…
“Are we done?” Maisy asked, jolting him out of his fantasy. The girls agreed they were, and Toby excused himself to secretly pay the bill. He felt guilty for being so distracted, and besides, he could afford it.
“You’re such a good boy,” Victoria sighed as she gave him a one-armed hug. “You make sure that girl treats you well, okay?”
“Sure,” Toby said as she pressed her big tits into his side. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose or had no idea.
“God, she’s relentless,” Maisy said once everyone else had left. “Join me for one more, dahling?”
“Sure, why not?”
As she ordered a vodka rocks from a passing waiter, Toby’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket, his pulse spiking. Sure enough, it was a text from Tabby. In the moment it took him to open the message, crazy thoughts ran through his head: She was telling him to fuck off and find someone else to finish his tattoo; she was going to the cops because of what he did to her last night; she’d gone and fucked the bar guy, and it was the best sex she’d ever had. Then he read what she’d written.
What have you done to me that I’m actually *considering* this sugar daddy thing?
He stared at the words for a minute, then laughed aloud, turning heads around the still-packed restaurant.
“What?” Maisy said sharply. “Good news?”
“Great news,” he said, tucking his phone away again. “Tabby. She’s, uh, it seems like she’ll be keen to meet me again.”
“Wonderful! You’ll have to call her to arrange a date, dahling. If you want to proceed with some obscene power exchange, that’s the kind of arrangement you lay out in person.”
Toby winced at her frank understanding of what he and Tabby might get up to, but at the same time, he was glad to have a woman’s opinion on the issue. “I agree. Anyway, what’s up?”
Maisy tore the corner off a paper napkin. “Who says anything is up?”
“Don’t give me that. You’ve got something on your mind.”
She sighed. “Wait for the vodka, dahling. I need reinforcement.”
Toby obliged, still grinning like an idiot. So, Tabby was thinking of him, too, and she was interested in the little arrangement he’d floated. Maybe his French maid fantasy wasn’t out of the question….
“Bless you,” Maisy said to the waiter as he handed her the vodka rocks. Toby, who’d gotten a Coke so he wouldn’t be plastered on a Friday afternoon, took a sip and tasted nothing. He wasn’t sure he’d care about tasting anything that wasn’t Tabby DaSilva ever again.
“Dahling, are you happy here?”
