Almost immediately, there’s a return message: “I knew you would be. And that you would answer.”

After almost ten years he can still raise my blood pressure. I ought to just ignore him. How can he still be as arrogant as that with me, assuming that I would still care, even a tiny bit? Maybe I’m just curious. It’s true, I am. But I’m irritated in equal part now.

“What do you want?”

I flick back to my document, add a few words, then a few more. All of them awful. There it is: the bing of the email on my phone:

“You. Be my love slave.”

The laptop screen is close to wearing my coffee. I drink it, eventually, but it does no good; my mouth is completely dry. What the hell am I supposed to do? If I’d just ignored it… My chest is banging, and there’s a feeling that’s travelling repeatedly from my navel and down between my thighs, gathering there. It’s beginning to hurt, to throb. I slide my hand into the waistband of my jeans, put my hand on it, tease it gently with my finger through my panties, just to ease the feeling a bit. It feels nice, a bit like having an ally against this message, and I type with one hand as I open my legs a bit wider and slip my finger under the lace edge to touch my skin. It’s wet, and my clit is hardening against my fingertip. It takes me all my willpower to get my hand back on the keyboard. I’m about to reply, not really knowing what to type, when another one comes through.

“I mean it. I haven’t mastered you yet. And I want to.”

I send one back, an instinctive response: “Cheeky! Don’t be bloody ridiculous.”

Return: “I’m deadly serious.”