“I don’t like Kal flirting with me like that.” I liked Kal, but I was with Alfie and reminding us of the night I’d let Kal tie me up just threw fuel onto a fire we’d only recently managed to put out.
“I know. I’ve dealt with it. He won’t do it again.”
I let him hold me for a while, his hand rubbing calming circles on my back. “What does ‘summer’ mean?” I asked. He frowned, confused. “The mean girl in the bathroom, she asked me where I summer. The hell does that mean?”
He laughed. “It just means where does your family go for the summer. My family mainly summered in Switzerland and Monaco.”
“Of course. My mum used to take me camping in the garden when the weather was nice. Our tent was an old bedsheet. Does that count?”
“It counts. And I’m very jealous.” He kissed me softly. “Now, are you ready?”
“I don’t want to deal with any more of those people.”
“No more people. I didn’t come here to socialise anyway.” He took my hand to lead me away but I hesitated.
“Wait.” Over his shoulder I had just spotted Muffin coming out of the club. She squealed and threw her arms around a familiar blond woman who was just stepping out of a car. “That’s her. The girl from the bathroom…and I think that’s Julia.”
“Makes sense. Julia likes the bratty ones.” He looked at me, catching the deer-in-headlights expression on my face. “You really didn’t want to see her tonight.”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. She said she knew you?”
“Julia?”
“Muffin. The bratty girl.”
“Oh. She doesn’t look familiar but we’ve probably crossed paths if she’s with Julia. I haven’t fucked her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s collared which means she belongs to someone else. I don’t play with other people's toys.”
“So does that mean I need to wear a collar? I mean one like hers.” I was already wearing the whiteNTCcollar that I’d had to wear the last time I was a guest here.
“Would you like to?”
“I don’t know.” Alfie stood there, watching me imagine him collaring me. I couldn’t help it, I blushed. “So, where are we going if not back inside?” I asked, changing the subject.
“It’s a surprise. You’ll like it.”
We walked across the gardens, Alfie scooped me up into his arms when my sky-high heels began to sink into the dirt. Eventually, with the club almost out of sight, we came upon a huge, dome-shaped building. The glass was thickly frosted so I couldn’t see inside.
At the entrance, he entered a code and opened the door for me. I stepped in and gasped at the paradise surrounding me. It was hot in here, the air suffocatingly humid to mimic a tropical climate.
“This is incredible.” Most of these plants I’d never seen before in the flesh as they did so terribly in the English climate.
“Riley designed it. It was one of his first projects more than a decade ago.”
Dim orange lighting hung from the ceiling, allowing me to just see where I was going. I felt like I was in the jungle at night.
“Why didn’t you show me this place before?”
Alfie shrugged. “I was just waiting for the right moment.”
Climbing vines twisted around trees long established, purple passion fruit flowers broke up the dense greenery. I was lost in exploration when something caught my eye. The brown, coarse rope-like material hung from branches like loose vines but it seemed too flexible to be real. In my high shoes, I was tall enough to touch them.
“It feels like a coconut shell.”
“It is. I didn’t want to use anything artificial in here, so we had rope made from coconut husks.”
