Kirsty Dickins fidgeted with her bag. 'What are you doing?' she asked herself. Traveling over two hours outside of London to meet a stranger, whom she had been emailing for three months, was so unlike the sedate young professional. But after a disastrous break-up with her boyfriend of six years, the twenty-eight year old had decided to make drastic changes to her life.
Well, probably not drastic to most people. She had no plans to change her career, her work as an Occupational Therapist for children with autism was emotionally and financially rewarding. She was not going to move from her relatively well-to-do neighborhood in north London either. The flat that she had shared with two girlfriends since she completed university was perfect.
She had not even made drastic changes to her physical appearance, at five foot ten in bare feet she would have stood out in a crowd, even without the flaming red hair that fell half way down her back or the freckles that covered almost every single inch of her body. Of course, the break-up had motivated her to join the gym and six months later her curvy figure had never been in better shape. She might not make Vogue, but she could have done well moonlighting as a plus size model.
No, most people would consider the changes she made rather sedate. But they were radical to someone, who had spent the whole of her life in the same area of city, who had the same few friends since primary school, and who wanted nothing more than to please her doctor parents in her choice of careers and men. While they might have been a tad disappointed that their only child had chosen not to follow in their footsteps by becoming consultants, her role as a therapist fell within the realm of respectable for their upper middle class friends.
And Raj, the up and coming young pediatrician, more than met their standards. In fact, they had been more hurt by the betrayal than Kirsty when after so many years invested in their relationship he had succumbed to his family's demands and entered an arranged marriage with a second cousin from India.
Kirsty had been almost relieved at the turn of events. Her feelings for the man had long since cooled to professional respect and friendship, but she simply did not have the will to end their comfortable arrangement. It was not like she and Raj had ever really shared a great passion, certainly not like the attractions that she read about in her multitude of racy erotic romances on the e-reader that had been his final gift to her for Valentine's Day.
Of course, Kirsty had never really experienced that type of passion or even witnessed it first hand. Her parents, their friends and even her own were all in relationships based upon shared values, interests and companionship. Certainly not the wild and tumultuous sexual attractions portrayed in her books about mΓ©nages and BDSM. The very idea of that level of need and surrender was both intensely attractive and petrifying to Kirsty.
But over the past six months since her split with Raj, her repressed desires had increasingly overtaken her sensible side. She found herself spending hundreds of pounds each month on her erotic romances, devouring them at the pace of two a day sometimes. On the weekends, she could easily read ten or more.
That might be bad enough, but she had even created a profile on one of the fetish sites listed in the acknowledgements of her favorite author. Of course, she had not been so stupid as to post recognizable pictures of herself. She had merely cropped some to highlight her best features, her long legs in the mini-skirt that her friends had convinced her to wear for her one clubbing excursion with them after the breakup and another of the swell of her D-cup breasts spilling out of her favorite jumper as she leaned over to speak with someone. She had gotten dozens of private messages and friends' requests, but most had been so blatantly offensive that she had not bothered to respond.
Sven was different. Though he made no bones about being a Dom or even his desire to dominate her, he was both respectful and friendly. Their hundreds of emails had ranged from long tomes about the nature of Domination and submission to some rather racy descriptions of the things he would do to her that left her breathless and bothered.
Even when he was busy, he always found time for one line updates about his latest travels as an artic fisherman. While her parents had taken annual excursions to exotic locales around the globe, their summer holidays were always the same, two weeks at an all inclusive family resort on Spain's Costa del Sol. So places like St. Petersburg, Lubek, Germany and his adopted homeland in Finland intrigued her as much as his deep blue eyes had enthralled her from the moment she saw the picture on his profile.
No, there was no denying that this man fascinated and excited her in a way that Kirsty had never experienced. Something about his eyes and the polite, tersely worded emails belied something deeper, something as wild as the Artic seas that he fished and the rugged land which he called home. Sven had become her personal fantasy, every Dom she had ever read about rolled into one luscious package of deep blue eyes, shortly cropped dark blond hair, broad shoulders and towering strength. And she needed to get the man out of her system. Every night for the past three months, it had been his face that haunted her dreams. His large, calloused hands that had tormented her body with soft caresses and sharp blows to her bare bottom. His soft, full lips that crushed hers, stole her very breath and moved slowly and softly along every single inch of her body.
"Stop it, Kirsty," she reminded herself aloud as she packed her e-reader back into her over-sized bag. The very proper automated recording called her station as she readied herself to disembark.
She tugged at the hem of the mini-skirt in that picture. This was only the second time she had worn it, but this time she had donned a pair of thick, warm winter tights against the biting winds that she knew would blow off the English Channel. She wiggled into her thick winter coat, thankful that it would cover the generous amount of tits that popped out of her new corset. What had she been thinking, ordering such an outlandish, almost slutty thing from the Internet? She could not be sure if it was her excitement and fear at this clandestine meeting or the tightly tied ribbons and bone stays that made her breathing rapid and shallow.
But it was too late to consider that or any of the dozens of other questions that had plagued her for the past two hours, actually the past two days since agreeing to this crazy met. She inhaled deeply and stood slowly. She forced each foot in front of the other, watching her knee-high leather boots move across the worn floor of the train, willing her knees not to give out now.
A brief coffee with this mystery man, who had captured her imagination, that was all this was. Then she would be able to put him out of her mind, move on with her life, find another suitable boyfriend to please her parents even if he never made her pulse race the way it was now, the way it always did when she saw another of his emails in her inbox.
It was just her active imagination, too many erotic books and too long without even the sedate love makings of a man. There was nothing special about this one. Certainly nothing that would warrant this type of reaction. She had merely built him up in her mind, something larger than life. That was why this date, if you could call it that, was so important. She was certain that the reality of rough and weathered fisherman would dispel all her childish fantasies, she assured herself as she filed with the rest of people out of the car of the train. She squared her shoulders and ran through the speech that she had rehearsed for this moment as she fed her ticket through the automated turnstile.
The moment Kirsty looked up her breath froze in her lungs. Her heart threatened to pound out of her tight chest. Those knees that had been wobbly to begin with would have given way if not for the gigantic hand that reached across the stile to grip her elbow and draw her through the mechanism.
"Kirsten," his deep, heavily accented voice caressed her face as he bent over to brush a chaste kiss on her cheek. Few men needed to bend to kiss her, but this one would. "These are for you," he said as he handed her a bouquet of colorful flowers.