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Tristan turned and the intensity of his stare made me quail inside. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To tell me that this isn’t for you, that it’s against all your principles? Right? Aren’t you?” He spun away from me, and walked to the end of the kitchen and squatted down in front of a smaller refrigerator. He opened it, and extracted a bottle. “Here. Let’s end how we started. I need to use these up anyway.” And I watched as he tore off the foil, watched his wrist turn as he untwisted the wire basket, and listened to the small pop of the cork, as he opened the bottle expertly, the French way. No fanfare. No floods of champagne spilling everywhere. His hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, he reached up in the cupboard with the other and thrust the stems of two champagne glasses between his fingers. He poured while he was standing, and gestured to me to come and retrieve my glass. I stood next to him, the top of my head nearly level with his shoulder, and took my glass, careful not to touch him. We clinked glasses.

“What shall we toast to?” I asked.

“Why don’t you tell me?” he said simply, and I looked up at him. His eyes had a faraway look that reminded me of that first time I’d ever spoken to him. It seemed crazy, but I felt like he needed to know—especially if I wasn’t really going to talk to him anymore.

“Why don’t we sit down? I’ve got a story to tell you.” I clinked my glass against his again. I was going to need courage for this, and I took a long sip, and let all the bubbles burst against the roof of my mouth. I didn’t know how to begin, and I pulled out the chair across from him, and went to sit down, before he put his hand on my arm.

“Look, don’t sit over there. Sit next to me at least. And let me start, ok?”

“I don’t have to tell you a long story.”

“You can tell me whatever you want. But let me say what I need to say first.” He pulled out the chair next to him, and waited to sit down until I was seated. It was an oddly old-fashioned gesture, and I felt something twist inside me. I put my glass down, and wrapped my arms around my torso and pinched. I’d found that it helped.

He cleared his throat, and his voice seemed to go down a notch. “I’m going to apologize, because I tried to warn you, and stop myself, and I couldn’t and I didn’t.” He stopped for a moment. “Maybe I’m used to…” He looked away. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’re sensitive. I liked that about you. But I think I forgot what that meant.”

I started to speak, and he raised his hand to stop me. “Please. Let me finish. Remember what I said to you, about people’s expectations? Right? It becomes easier to play to what they want, knowing it’s not what you want, banking time against inevitable expectations, and unavoidable failure. I had a friend who used to say ‘the triumph of hope over experience.’ But he didn’t mean it. Anyway…” He grasped my hand. “I didn’t want to hurt you. But I wanted you enough to risk it, knowing it would happen. And whatever I say now will just make me look even more selfish, so I won’t.” He drank some of his champagne, delicately, then drained the glass, and refilled it, and mine. “But I’m not a bad person.” He laughed. “See how stupid that sounds? Justifying myself. When you’re the one I’ve hurt.” He held my hand to his lips. I pinched myself harder with the other hand. “I was hurt too though,” he whispered into my hand.

My throat tightened, and we sat there, unmoving, his hand still holding mine, both of us silent.

I drank some of the champagne to try and dissolve the lump in my throat that was making it hard to breathe, and he smiled at me, but didn’t let go of my hand. “But you had a story. Tell me. I’m sorry, I just wanted to say all that before anything else was said. Go on.”

I looked at him, at his multi-colored eyes, and turned away again. I’d never be able to figure out what I meant looking at him. I pinched myself, then stopped. It wasn’t working. I ran my hand through my hair, nervously, and thought of what I had been intending to say. My past. Why I’d started writing. Music. Listening to my radio as a child to drown out the noise of everything else that was going on. I turned back to him and tried to face him. My hand was shaking—I returned it to its duties pinching. He looked down and saw what I was doing.

His voice, when it came, was low, and steady. “You know, if you let me punish you, you wouldn’t have to do it yourself. You might find it freeing. Forgiveness.” He gestured for me to give him the offending hand, and he kissed it softly. I stared at him. “But you’d have to trust me.” He suddenly dropped both my hands. “And you’d have to stop pretending. I believed you were heartless, very easily. That’s not entirely my fault, you know.”

“I don’t know if I can.” My hands were cold, and I was tempted to sit on them to stop myself from grabbing his warm hands back.

“I know.”

Neither of us spoke. Then I said, “Do you want to hear part of my story?”

“Not the whole thing?”

“No, but an important part.”

He inclined his head slightly.

I took a sip of champagne, let the bubbles pop, and swallowed, hard. “Do you remember the Brit Awards? In London. Several years ago now. You played with your old band and Mick Jones—a tribute.” I said it all quickly, before I could take it back.

“Yes, I remember that—vaguely. It was a rough time actually. I won’t bore you with why right now. He was great though. What about it?”

Christ, I’d have to drag his memory back through the whole thing. I’d been hoping he would remember me. I started again. “Remember at the end? The two of you were having your pictures taken backstage. Then you were interrupted—you were about to leave, and suddenly this woman ran up to you and fell over on her face right in front of you. Mick laughed. You picked her up, and asked if she was ok. She told you she was there to write a story, and how it had all been going wrong, until she’d seen the two of you play, and it all made sense. And you talked about how you had to search…” I tried to remember exactly what he said, and the scene came back to me, how he’d picked me up, and that look we’d exchanged. “You said, ‘Knowing it means something. Now there’s a quest.’ Then the two of you left.” I stopped. “But I wrote about it. That was the real start for me.” Boldly, I refilled both our glasses, and then raised my glass to him, holding his gaze. “That woman—that was me. What you did, what you said—made all the difference. It made me try.” I drank some more, and looked at him. He was still silent. I shrugged. “That’s my story, some of it anyway. A big piece.” I made myself breathe. “Now you know.”

We sat there. He still wasn’t speaking, but he didn’t look unhappy either. I felt like he was studying me, his eyes searching me for clues that I was telling the truth.

Then he spoke. “So that was you. I do remember. I’d often wondered what had happened…to you.” A grimace crossed his face. “You seemed so fragile, on the verge of disaster. I asked Mick to turn the limo around…he laughed.” He picked up his glass and examined it closely. “Crystal. Delicate—yet strong.” He let the glass slip from his hand and I gasped, and reached out to grab it, just as he caught it with his other hand. “See—you have the natural instinct to stop something from being broken, or hurt.” He replaced the glass on the table, refilled it, and emptied it in one long swallow. “In this business, they teach you to let people go. They train you to believe that nothing is more important than your ‘art’, or ‘calling’, or ‘talent’, or whatever pretty name they have for pure selfishness and ego at the moment. I didn’t have the best reputation, going from one excuse to another. I probably still don’t.” He looked at me for confirmation. “Honestly, it’s incredible that you’ve made it. It proves maybe you are as tough as you claim.” He got up, and walked to the refrigerator, and pulled out another bottle. “Maybe we need to do this—pretend we’re starting there—and go back in time, when you were more trusting, and I was more—or less—crazy.” He opened the bottle with the same finesse, gestured to me to finish what was in my glass, and poured another one.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what effect I’d hoped my story would have on him. Maybe it was this, after all. Starting over. Going back into his past, and mine. Tying a little knot, a little anchor, that would give us a reference point. He reached out and took my hand again, and kissed it.

“Please. For everything that might have been, that could be. Can we go back in time?” His eyes had that intense light again. I looked back, and I felt the full weight of what he meant.

“I’m scared,” I confessed, but I didn’t look away.

He got up, grasping the bottle and his glass in one hand, keeping mine in the other. He walked us to where we had stood the other night, and stopped there, keeping his gaze steady on me while he laced his fingers with mine. “Should I count out loud?”

The same question came to mind– was this what I wanted? His eyes burned into mine, and he mouthed a one at me, then a two. Three. Four. I didn’t waver.

“Five. Last chance. Good.”

Still holding my hand, he guided me to the bedroom. We stood by the bed and he put down the bottle and the glasses. Then he untied the belt to my dress and it opened. He pushed it over my shoulders, letting it pool to the floor. Then he unclasped my bra, and let it follow the dress to the ground. I stood there, vulnerable, nearly naked. His eyes followed my body down and came back up. He gazed at me levelly. And without warning, he turned my body with his huge hands and pushed me face down on the bed. The shock of it frightened me and I started to say something.

“No. You don’t know what you want or what you need. We are going to fix that. Shut your eyes.” And his voice was angry and rough, but I obeyed him. “Hold your arms out over your head.”

I did it. My mind was completely involved in this game. Nothing else was breaking through, and the peace of that was overwhelming. I closed my eyes, and felt him tie my wrists together with a silk scarf, and pull the knot tight. He made sure I couldn’t move my hands. Next, he took another scarf and tied it so that it covered my eyes. I could only see shadows and light through it, nothing else, and I closed my eyes again, feeling slightly panicked. His knee pushed in between my feet and roughly shoved one of them over to the side, opening me up. My heart beat faster.

“Nice.” I felt his hands run over my back, over my ass, and down my legs. He must be kneeling down, I thought. I felt completely powerless, and I trembled thinking of his mouth on me. Traitorous body. I wanted to fight him, and I wriggled, moving higher up on the bed.

“No,” his voice said, and I could feel his breath against me, god, so warm. The pain in my lower belly grew stronger; the pulse was deeper and I hated him, hated him for this. He blew against me, and I groaned.

“Yes, this time make noise. I want to hear you give in, every fucking painful step.” And his mouth was on me, and I felt his long tongue lapping at my clit through the silk pants. Oh god, he was good at this, and I wanted more, the pants gone, his wet, my wet. God. He bit at one of my lips and I shrieked, half in pleasure, half in pain.

He hummed against me, mumbling something. All I could feel was vibration, all I could hear was my pulse beating in my ears. Then his mouth moved away, and I felt his fingers, pulling the fabric to one side. And he buried his tongue in me. I pushed my hips up against him, trying to get more of him in, gasping as his tongue pulsed inside me. My face was pressed into the bed, my upper body unable to move properly with my arms tied. His tongue pulled out and his mouth pressed against my sex, kissing it, wet, his lips rubbing against my clit. I could feel the pressure building, his tongue back inside me, then on me, biting, kissing me like a lover. He was talking again, but I couldn’t hear him, my moans escaping me even when I tried to stop them. More, god, more.

His mouth moved away and I felt his hands lifting my hips and grabbing hold of my underwear, ripping half of it away, so I was totally exposed. He ran one finger over my clit, making me buck up, and thrust in, deep, making me cry out. He pulled it out, slowly, and I could hear his mouth, his tongue wetly licking at it, the image from before of his fingers in his mouth in my mind. Fuck. Never, I’d never wanted anything like this before.

I heard him stand up, and I lay there, trembling. I wanted to pull off the scarf and face him, but I didn’t, not wanting to disobey, not wanting him to stop. His footsteps took him further away, and it was silent. I lay there, wet, wanton, legs spread, underwear torn, waiting.

It wasn’t very obvious anymore who was in charge. If I got up, that would be the end of it.

I jumped when the music started. Droning, strangely tuned instruments, slowly building, layers, repeating, hypnotic lyrics, dreamy and weird. The Velvet Underground. What else? And I waited. I wanted to come so badly I wondered how little it would take. And how he would do it. The music filled the silence, and I let myself be taken away by it. Waiting. Ten minutes must have passed, I thought. I wondered how long I would wait. All fucking night. Whatever it took.

And I lay there, listening. Every inch of my skin felt like it was alight, sensitive, cold and hot, heavy, and painfully alive. I breathed in and out, working through the growing discomfort in my legs.

And then I heard his footsteps coming back. My senses were on full alert, as I struggled to sense where he was in the room and what he was doing.

I heard a deep sigh. And I felt him nearer somehow. Then he spoke. He was right next to me, bending down by my ear. “Little girl, you need this. And I need you. So much. Just remember that.” And he moved away again. I heard creaking.

And then he was lying on top of me, his arms holding mine down. But he was dressed. But what was he wearing? I could feel his leather jacket against my back, the snaps cold on my skin. He moved his hips against me and I could feel his huge cock through the leather pants, smooth and strange on my naked skin. It reminded me of the very first night, in the limo, his face thrown back, eyes closed as he let go. The memory made me thrust up against him, trying to feel the leather against my sex. He moaned in my ear. I rubbed against him and he pulled me up towards him, controlling my movements.