Crave

I’m ridiculously late when I finally make it home after the worst work day of my professional career. I've been teaching for ten years and yet today's shit-show made me feel like a baby teacher all over again - there were tears (mostly mine), verbal abuse (aimed at me of course) and the obligatory dressing down from a member of the senior team (in front of a gaggle of students). With numb feet from being on them all day, a full bladder and a perma-frown that is rapidly just becoming how my face looks, I stumble through the door with a pile of books to mark over the weekend and a really bad attitude.

As a child, I dreamed of being Miss Honey one day, but I’m rapidly on my way to becoming a younger, even angrier version of Miss Trunchbull.

“Finally,” Sean says from somewhere upstairs, not even bothering to say hello as I dump the books at the foot of the stairs and start yanking off my boots.

“Hello to you too," I holler, launching my boots in the general direction of the front door in an effort to expel some of my irritation.

“Joanie, you’re almost an hour late. We were supposed to be going for dinner!”

I wince at both the nickname I despise and the tone in his voice. The ‘I can’t believe this is happening again’ tone. To be fair to him, this happens a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. I’ve flaked on more date nights than I think we’ve been on during our entire relationship. To be fair, usually it's because I'm having to sort out some crisis or another - apparently when I came out the womb I was born with a complex that requires me to help everyone with every single thing.

“Yeah, well after being called a fucking bitch for the fiftieth time, my brain wasn't exactly focused!" I shout up the stairs. "And I ended up on the phone to a parent for fucking ever,” I grumble to myself, tugging off my coat and raising my eyes to look upstairs before I raise my voice again. “What time was the table?”

“Forget it,” he says, appearing at the top of the stairs, suited and booted, “dinner is off.”

He vanishes from sight, stomping along the upstairs hallway, and I sigh heavily as I hurry to the bathroom. Sean is tempestuous at the best of times. In fact, he’s a downright drama queen when he doesn’t get his own way. We’ve been together for so long I mostly ignore it, choosing to see it as endearing, but every now and again I wonder why the hell I’m still with him. Like right now when I'm about to piss myself while he has a hissy fit over a fucking meal.

“Sean, shit, look I’m sorry, okay?” I say, attempting to sound contrite as I head straight for the toilet and plonk myself down for the first time since I got up this morning at six am.

“I reminded you three times this week,” he moans from the bedroom as I finish up and wash my hands while making faces in the bathroom mirror, trying to find the most apologetic.

“I know, I’m really sorry,” I insist, walking through to the bedroom where I’m accosted by a pink dress that whizzes past my nose.

“No time for that,” he says, continuing to fling clothes on the bed chaotically. “Pick a dress, any dress.”

I stare at him because he appears to have lost his fucking mind.

“What the fuck?” I ask as a sky blue halterneck is flung at me.

“Date night, remember?” He stands with his hands on his hips. “Come on, the night is still young.”

“Aw, Sean, come on, I’m really fucking tired. Can we not?”

“I’m going with or without you and you really don’t want me to go alone.”

I frown at his mysterious threat and the way he's standing like a fucking teenager.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask indignantly, placing my hands on my hips in a perfect imitation of my boyfriend and scowling at him.

He pulls a card from his back pocket and flings it on the bed.

“The cab will be here in thirty minutes - be ready, or don’t, at this point I don’t care, but if I go alone, we’re done.”

He storms out of the bedroom and slams the door for good measure. It's a threat I've heard a million times in not so many words, but I frown at his snarkier than usual tantrum and pick up the small card. It’s jet black and has a single word embossed in silver on one side.

Crave.

A tiny, curling tendril of excitement takes hold in my lower belly.

Crave is a members only club that opened about a year ago not far from where we live. It’s exclusive and they rarely have membership opportunities unless you’re extremely wealthy or very famous.

We, unfortunately, are neither.

I’m a secondary school history teacher and Sean works in sales for some tech company. Neither of us comes from money and we don’t exactly rub shoulders with anyone outside of our immediate social circle, which is mostly uni friends and our respective families.

I have no idea how Sean scored us an invitation, but I don’t have time to work it out, nor do I plan to waste a second of the time I ‌have.

I shower in record time and pin my hair up quickly. I’m not much for makeup but I can do the basics, plus I opt to coat some mascara that makes my somewhat underwhelming lashes long and thick, and pop some pink gloss over my lips before dressing in a strapless black dress. I don’t bother with underwear for good reason.

Crave isn’t just a club. It’s a bonafide sex club.

I’ve been fantasising about what goes on behind closed doors for the best part of a year and tonight I’m actually going to find out.

Not that Sean knows this of course. In fact, when he brought up Crave I was extremely nonchalant about the entire thing. Because despite his intrigue about the club, Sean is, for want of a better word…vanilla.

Extremely, exceedingly, mind numbingly vanilla.

We’ve known each other since we were kids and he’s always been the same. At school he was the boy who followed the rules, at uni he was the only one not hungover and once we were adults he was the only dude saying no to a blow job and viewing anal as yucky.

Our relationship has continued to exist because it’s comfortable and we share the rent and bills, but in all honesty we’re more like roommates who share a bed at different hours. Most of the time he’s downstairs gaming while I’m upstairs watching porn and using my rampant rabbit until the batteries are dead.

I’m not sure either of us actually came the last time we had sex - that is how pitiful we are.

I don’t know what Sean is hoping for, or what he thinks is going to happen tonight, but I sure as hell know what I’ll be on the lookout for.

If my vanilla relationship with an melodramatic whinger has taught me anything - I’m ready to be dominated.

And the great thing about a place like Crave is there will be plenty of willing doms looking to put a five-foot nothing teacher in her place.

Fuck. Yes.