Weight

Sitting on the sofa next to me, she sipped her tea thoughtfully. "So what's this toy you brought, then?"

I put my cup down. "Close your eyes and stick your hand out."

She waited like this, obligingly, while I rummaged in my bag. I pulled out the heavy steel buttplug, pausing for a moment to admire the heft of the thick, tapered head, and the elegance of the narrow tail, flaring out into a circle, designed for ease of grasping.

I dropped it into her outstretched palm, and she smiled at the pleasant shock of the cool mass of metal.

"Open your eyes."

Blinking, she weighed it in her palm. "It's beautiful."

I nodded. "Shall we move to the bedroom?"

Bruise

The bruise on my right shoulder is small, colourful, and it barely hurts now. Tomorrow it will probably be gone, but today it has given me the pleasure of an erotic buzz every time my hand has wandered up to my shoulder to press it lightly. When I discovered it this morning, stepping into the shower, I ran my fingers across the purplish patch, and could suddenly taste sweat and the salty musk of Abigail's pussy.

I can't know, but the bruise is probably from the way the heavy steel clips of her leather wristcuffs banged against my back as we fucked. After spanking her ass, pale skin reddening beneath my hands and a heavy leather paddle, her wrists clipped to a chest-harness of red rope, I wanted to enjoy looking at her limbs spread out beneath me. The taste of her pussy and the sight of her spread legs made me careless.

Next time I'm bringing a lot more rope, I think.

Short, sweet

The apple was a small, crisp Worchester. She had dropped by the market on the way to meet me, and when I finally bit into it, after kissing her goodbye, I could taste both her and the apple at the same time.

August, the louche month

I love London in August. Not that I don't love it at other times of the year, but August is a louche, irresponsible month in my city. It's a time for long lunches, coffee drinking on park benches and reasons to start cocktail hour delightfully early in the afternoon. The streets are full of tourists, they block the train doors when you try to get off the tube, they crowd the galleries and the sightseeing spots. Standing around the statue of Eros, they look like a lost biblical tribe of all the world's ethnicities, identifiable only by the cameras.

I'm not dissing tourists here. Sometimes I am one, and it's great fun. In fact, they perform a valuable service to those Londoners who, like myself, try to avoid traveling in the peak season. In August they displace the dour faces of the commuters; instead of the businesslike rush of the city streets we get the appreciative ambling of the visitors enjoying the sight of the things we who live here no longer notice through bland familiarity. When the tourists take over I start noticing my city again.

And it makes me lazy and relaxed. I've learned to kiss deadlines goodbye, and not to worry about making plans - they'll probably get shot because someone's on holiday, or the trains aren't working, or there's a spontaneous traffic jam because half the roads have been dug up.

And that is just fine. I've given up on getting anything done in August - now I merely try to make plans that give me the option of going to a nice park when they fall apart.