A bead of sweat trickled lazily down the back of my neck as the taxi swept me closer and closer to my destination. I was so nervous, my heart pounded in my chest, my stomach had taken up residence in my throat and that butterfly feeling was threatening to invade my entire body.
In my head, I'd already conjured up a hundred ways to wriggle out of this situation, a thousand different escape plans and if anyone else had been waiting at the other end of my journey, I probably would have used one of them. But I couldn't do that. Not to him.
I lay my head back against the seat, closed my eyes and drew strength from my memories. I thought of his voice, the way it melted and debilitated my mind. I loved the way he said my name, although often, he just called me baby. I thought now about the way the low silky texture of his voice caressed the word and the smile on his face as his eyes flashed to my camera on his screen when he said it. I felt a shiver tingle down my spine and I squirmed in my seat feeling the anticipation, the nerves and excitement climb.
Both members of an online community, we'd met a year ago. Quickly becoming friends we'd started to flirt shamelessly with one another until that playful banter had become something deeper, something more. I thought back to that first time he'd told me he loved me and felt the same warm glow fill my body as it had then.
Now, I've had online friends, boyfriends, Doms before. It's not a new concept to me. But I'd never met anyone that encompassed all of these things and so much more. He was never someone I could simply forget the moment my computer powered down. He stayed in every thought, every action, every emotion and when I reached for my toy and felt its sweet vibrations pulse through my clit, it was his face, his voice, his body that drove me into that impossible abyss.
But when he'd mentioned, oh so casually, about the idea of us finally meeting up in the real world, I'd been worried, afraid. There's a big difference between seeing someone on cam, talking to them on skype and actually having them right in front of you. Now people tell me I'm pretty and its not that I don't believe it exactly but there's such a thing as spark, as chemistry. I knew that I would feel the same about him the second I saw him, but what if that chemistry was lacking on his side. Sometimes it's better to just not know.
Too late now though. The taxi pulled to a smooth stop out side of an ordinary looking house, in a typical suburban street. The dark silhouette of the trees outlined the neighbourhood and gave it a reassuring atmosphere. The driver told me what I owed him and I pulled the unfamiliar currency out of my purse. In my nervousness, I almost threw the dollars at him. I smiled my apology and climbed out of the cab, to find myself suddenly frozen in front of his house.
This was the hard part. As arranged he had not picked me up from the airport. Also as arranged he would not answer the front door and would instead, leave it unlocked. He was testing me, pushing me just a little. He wanted to see how far my bravery would take me, how much of this I could do alone and here I was, staring at the wood of his front door.
"Ok," I mumbled aloud for my own benefit, "It's now or never, get a grip."
I squared my shoulders and made my way up his drive way. Pausing at his front door I took a deep breath and took a firm hold of the handle. I pushed the door open just far enough to squeeze my head through.
"Hello?" I didn't say it loud enough but then, I already knew I wasn't going to get a response.
I took another deep breath, pushed the door open and stepped through. I looked down at the floor and chuckled. If there had been anything else on the floor, clichΓ©d rose petals perhaps, I would have facepalmed. Instead, spaced about two feet apart on the floor were small rectangular flash cards. Each one had a bold, black arrow in its centre with a smilee face under it.
The faces were the kind you use in IMs and emails and I knew that he was giving a nod to our origins while at the same time trying to make me feel more comfortable and I loved him all the more for it.
I took a second to look around. The dΓ©cor was light, airy, warm and homey. I could easily picture him here. I followed the direction the cards pointed me in, turned a corner and froze. There he was. He was sitting, in his chair at his desk just like I'd seen him every day for a year. The image was reversed though as I was no longer seeing him through the screen.
My heart stopped and all I could do was stare. Then he made my favourite gesture. Something he did subconsciously. He brought his hand up; his finger curled and rested his chin on it stroking it back and forth across the stubble there. I waited, unable to speak, unable to breathe. My pulse raced and a lump formed in my throat. A happy smile spread lazily across his face before he greeted me as if this were all entirely normal.
"Heeeey baby, there you are. I was getting worried."
Let's face it. I was an idiot. How could I doubt that he and I would do anything other than immediately click as if we were made for each other? I took a happy step towards him, intending to go straight up to him and kiss him when the blinking red light from the web cam sat atop his monitor froze me where I stood. Shit.
I had been so worked up about the man himself, I'd totally forgotten the other part of this day. Right now, right at this moment there was an online theatre full of people watching this. We'd planned this. Figuring we would start things off with a BANG but somewhere over the ocean thousands of feet up in the air, I'd forgotten all about it.
He cocked his head to the side and I knew that look. It meant, "fight, or flight?" He knew me so well. He knew that look would stop me turning tail and running. So, looking far more confident then I felt, I walked slowly toward him.
We'd had this meticulously planned so I knew what I was supposed to do first but the temptation to get a little payback for all the teasing, the testing and the nerves won out so I was going to have a little fun before we started. I walked straight up to his chair. I planted my palms on the arm rests and leaned down low so my face was mere millimetres from his. His eyes locked with mine and I had to stop myself from closing that gap and going straight for the kiss. Instead, my tongue flicked out and I laid little laps all over the tip of his finger.