"I have this thing later," I told him quietly.

He looked up at me in interest so I went on.

"It's a dinner with some colleagues and a few people interested in donating to the University."

I wondered to myself why I had decided upon asking Tim to come with me. Especially knowing that at present it was quite socially unacceptable for a man to be my date for the evening. For such a young man. For a student. I'd made myself feel quite ill. His face had beamed at me when I had asked him and he talked animatedly to me about it over dinner. Gradually with more wine he became more amorous and in true twenty something fashion, clambering for sexual attention.

I had loved it. The prospect of showing Tim off was, admittedly, thrilling. His beautiful features would undoubtedly cause my female colleagues to descend into giggling mush and I relished the idea that he would flirt with his boyish charms, leaving the whole room vying for his attention and then I would drag him home before viciously claiming him as my own. The thought alone left me panting.

"When will you be home," he asked in a small voice that seemed woefully out of context. It was the same voice he used when asking where I was going after sex. It seemed dejected and vulnerable. I watched him as he re-organised things in his already sorted bag, not looking at me now.

"I said I was sorry," I reminded him childishly and he paused in his fidgeting for a moment, a book suspended halfway to the bag.

"I just don't get why you had to ask me in the first place," he muttered darkly, giving me a cursory glance.

I hated that I had. I had become so wrapped up in the moment that I lost my usual logical manner of thinking. Bringing Tim would have been a risky career move but not being able to do it made me want to more. I wanted to walk around proudly telling everyone that would listen that he was with me, that somehow that gorgeous creature chose to spend time with me.

It had astonished me in my office that day. I knew the look he was giving me but I had rarely seen it. The first night, god, the thought of it. The first night I had touched him gently, breathing on his neck, kissing his stomach and along his inner thigh. He had writhed wantonly beneath me in a manner that made my cheeks burn. I will never understand why I held so much appeal to that irresistible boy.

I sussed that it had something to do with his fetish for being controlled, told what to do and marginally abused while doing it. Something I seemed to be morphing towards. If that's what Tim needed I would be it, because I needed Tim.

"Tim, don't be like that," I said scornfully. "You know I want you to come but I can't exactly parade you around for everyone to quietly judge me."

"So," he snapped. "Why do you care what they think?"

"It's not like that."

"Then what is it," he demanded, standing taller and looking me square in the eye, more of a man than I had ever seen in him. It alarmed me.

"Go to your stupid dinner," he hissed, turning on his heel and marching to the bedroom.