by Sophie Lark
“He’s ambitious then,” Black said.
“Extremely. I know everybody thinks this about young politicians, but I’m sure he’ll be Prime Minister someday.”
“And you want to help him get there?” Black asked.
“Sure,” Holly said, “of course. He’s intelligent, compassionate, idealistic. I think he could do a lot of good for the country.”
“It’s so hard to tell with politicians,” Black said. “What they’re really like. Their personality always seems like a product.”
“If it is just an image, then he’s a great actor, because I’ve never seen him break character.”
“So, you think he’s sincere?”
“Well, he’s a lot better than most of the other MPs. He’s better to the staff—no yelling or haranguing or making them pick up his dry cleaning. And he just seems more genuine. He’s not from money, like the most of them. He’s humble—he brings his lunch from home every day. He doesn’t abuse the living allowance.”
“You must have gotten pretty close,” Black said, thinking of all those late-night work sessions in Tom’s private office.
Holly shook her head at him, grinning. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
“There’s nothing romantic between us,” she said. “Tom’s too single-minded. It’s almost inhuman. I’ve never seen him get distracted by anything, especially not a staffer.”
Black flushed a little, embarrassed at being caught out in his suspicious.
Holly didn’t seem to mind though.
“I’m completely single,” she assured him with a mischievous smile.
Black couldn’t help smiling back at her.
Hearing that Holly was single made him extremely happy.
“What about the other staffers?” Black asked, quickly switching topics.
“What about them?” Holly asked.
“How long have they all worked there?”
“Well, Davis has only been there six months, Cara for a year and a half. Daniel has been there longer than me. He’s worked for Tom since the beginning.”
“He’s a bit old for a staffer, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Holly nodded. “Some of the lower-level positions are basically glorified internships. He’s a researcher, which is a little more prestigious, but none of us are rolling in money.”
“What did he do before he worked for Morris?”
“He was an activist, and he ran an independent newspaper,” Holly said. “The Voice. Fairly militantly left-wing.”
“Hmm,” Black said. He was thinking that Daniel Clark was the only person old enough to have been involved in the Citizen’s group at the time of the bombing sixteen years earlier.
“You think the package bomb might have been an inside job?” Holly asked. She was uncannily good at perceiving his thoughts.
“I hope not,” Black said, “but I’m trying to look at every possibility. It was placed directly at the receptionist’s desk, wasn’t it? Not mailed?”
“That’s right,” Holly admitted. She shivered slightly. “It’s hard to imagine someone I work with all day every day hiding a secret like that.”
“Every person who does something horrible has people they work with every day, not to mention friends, family, and neighbors. All evil wears a day-to-day mask.”
Holly looked somber, considering this.
“I always knew you were a deep one,” she said at last, looking at Black with her head slightly tilted to the side.
Black colored and dropped his eyes to his plate, which was almost untouched. He’d been too distracted to eat much.
He had recalled a rather embarrassing memory involving Holly. He wondered if she remembered it, too.
His mother had a series of boyfriends, many of whom lived in their council flat for a few months or a year at a time. Some of them had been decent men, but most had not.
One in particular, Bill Rowe, was nothing short of awful to Black and his sisters. He’d been unemployed at the time, and Black had hated coming home to find him sprawled out on the couch, a beer or two always close at hand, his huge, hairy body stinking up their apartment in the heat of the summer, or the mildewey damp of the rest of the year.
He wasn’t above taking a pop at Black when he was in a bad mood. Black was only thirteen then, almost six feet tall already, but willowy and weak. Black had tried to spend as much time outside the flat as possible, especially playing football with his friends. It was difficult for him to get cleats, however, since his feet were growing half a size every couple of months.
Once he made the school team, his coach tried to help him out. He’d gotten Black a pair of Adidas cleats from a discount sports shop, but brand new. It was one of the first times Black had actually had new shoes.
He took such good care of those cleats, carefully cleaning them with a toothbrush after every practice and match, to remove every speck of mud or grass.
Then one day, he came home from school and he found his cleats in shreds on his bedroom floor. Cut into hundreds of pieces.
He knew that Bill had done it.
The worst part was there was no reason for it. They hadn’t had a row or anything the day before. He had done it for pure cruelty, as casually as you might step on an ant on the sidewalk.
Black had been so furious, he’d wanted to leap on Bill and rip him to pieces, just as Bill had done to the shoes. But he knew that’s exactly what Bill intended. It would give him a reason to do what he really wanted to do to Black, which was beat him to a bloody pulp.
So, Black had run past Bill and his smug, grinning face, and ran down the stairwell to the bottom floor. There he’d sunk down against the wall, crying shamefully like a child.
He hadn’t even heard the footsteps as Holly came down the stairs. She’d paused on the landing, and Black had buried his face in the crook of his arm, embarrassed to be seen blubbing like a baby.
He had hoped she would just pass him by, but instead she’d sat down beside him on the step. He felt her skinny little hand slip into his and hold it.
They must have sat there for half an hour or more, until slowly, inexplicably, Black had started to feel better. The way Holly had sat so quietly next to him, not speaking, but with sympathy radiating out of her, had calmed him. She was probably only ten or eleven at the time.
“What are you thinking about?” Holly asked him.
“Oh…” Black shook his head, bringing himself back to the present. “I was just thinking how kind you were. When you were little.”
Holly laughed.
“I can’t pretend I was completely disinterested.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had the worst crush on you, all through secondary school.”
“You did?” Black laughed, too. “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course you didn’t! I don’t think you even knew I existed.”
“I knew you existed,” Black insisted.
“Too bad we’re working together now,” Holly said, still smiling at him and biting her full bottom lip.
“It is too bad,” Black agreed. “Because you’re a professional, and I’m a professional…”
“Extremely professional.”
“We’d never let something like a long-simmering attraction influence us…”
“Absolutely not.”
“It would be a distraction…”
“Maybe even dangerous…”
“Which is why nothing can happen.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Holly said, laughing softly.
Black paid the check as quickly as possible.
As soon as they were outside the restaurant, he grabbed Holly around the waist and pulled her toward him.
He kissed her on those full red lips. She seemed to fit perfectly in his arms, only having to tilt her face up a little to kiss him, thanks to her height and her heels. He felt her slender, soft hands on either side of his face as her lips parted, and her warm, wet tongue met his.
He cru
shed her all the tighter against his body. He could smell the clean, fresh scent of her hair, and feel her long, slim legs pressing between his.
As he kissed her, a little sleet began to fall from the sky. It pattered down on their heads, dampening their hair and every inch of skin not covered by clothing.
As Black pulled back slightly from Holly, he saw the minute drops of moisture beading on her skin and catching in her hair and eyelashes. It brought out the dewy flush of her cheeks beneath the translucence of her fair skin. It made her hair look brighter than ever against the gloom.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” Black asked her.
“Yes,” Holly gasped, still short of breath from their kiss.
Black hailed a cab.
5
Black and Holly couldn’t keep their hands off each other the whole cab ride back to his place. He could barely get his keys out to open the door, and they hardly bothered to shut it behind them before tearing off each other's jackets.
With anyone else, he would have been embarrassed to show the ridiculously spartan decor inside his apartment, but Holly had seen him living in much worse circumstances than this. He knew she wouldn’t be put off by a couple of milk crates as chairs.
Neither of them were looking around anyway. All they could see, and touch, and feel, was each other.
Black stripped off Holly’s blouse, damp from the sleet. Her skin was burning hot underneath. He kissed her again and again, fascinated by sumptuous softness of her full lips, and the taste of her hot, eager mouth.
She was pulling off his clothing just as fast, intent on touching every part of him that she could reach. She ran her hands over the broad, flat planes of his chest, and down his back.
He pushed her up against the wall, kissing her and stripping off her thin mesh bra. She had lovely little tits that fit perfectly inside his hands. He loved their creamy color and the responsive nipples that stiffened at his slightest touch.
She had such a slim, boyish figure, which perfectly suited her air of elegance and confidence. He could imagine her as a 1920s flapper, or in a pantsuit and fedora like Marlene Dietrich.
He pressed her against the wall, licking and kissing every square inch of her skin. He breathed in her intoxicating perfume. He took those gorgeous breasts into his mouth, and Holly moaned and thrust her hands into his hair, pulling his lips closer against her.
He had planned to give her more foreplay, but Holly was just as impatient as he was. She was already pulling off his trousers, releasing his throbbing cock into her warm hand. She ground her body against his, squeezing him with her hand and panting into his open mouth.
Black pushed her skirt up around her waist and pulled her panties to the side. He thrust himself inside of her.
His legs almost gave way beneath him at that initial sensation. His desire for her was so intense that his every nerve had been strung to a fever pitch. Sinking inside of her was like jumping into a deep pool with no bottom. He fell down, down, down into her.
It sent a jolt through Holly’s entire body, too. She let out a long moan, wrapping her legs around his waist. With her arms around his neck, she gyrated her hips, squeezing up and down the length of his shaft.
If felt utterly phenomenal. She was so warm and wet and eager. Her skin smelled incredible, like molten honey, and she had never stopped kissing him, even for a moment.
Black tried to slow down, to make it last, but he couldn’t stop himself from thrusting into her harder and harder. Holly was doing the same, riding him as frantically as she could, clinging to him with her whole body.
They wanted to tear each other apart. They wanted to go so deep inside of each other that they might actually become one person, fused to the core.
Everything he was feeling, she was feeling too, at the exact same moment. Her waves of pleasure were rolling all the way through her body into his.
With his hands squeezing Holly’s tight little ass, Black lifted her up and swung her around, laying her down on his rickety kitchen table. Gripping her waist, he kept pounding her, loving the way her beautiful little breasts bounced on her chest.
He could see the light sheen of sweat across her skin, and her eyes glazed with lust. Her full red lips were half-open as she moaned and begged for more.
Black leaned over her, his elbows on the table, her legs around his waist. Their combined weight was much too much for the cheap table. It collapsed beneath them, sending them crashing to the floor.
“Jesus, are you alright?” Black asked.
Holly was laughing wildly.
“I’m fine! Just don’t stop,” she pleaded.
Black laughed too, sweating and euphoric. He didn’t care if they brought the whole building crashing down from their fucking.
He scooped Holly up off the floor and carried her into the bedroom. Throwing her down on the bed, he jumped on her again and gave it to her as hard and rough as she wanted.
He had never seen anything more beautiful than her face, illuminated by pleasure. Holly was always animated, her features showing each and every emotion as it passed. In sex, her expression became of map of her frenzy, her exhilaration, her ecstasy.
He could see when the climax began to build, when she started to ride that wave of pleasure. He saw it swell up inside of her, and then he watched her tip over and lose herself in the absolute elation of it.
Holly was shrieking his name, scratching his back and biting into his shoulder. Black couldn’t hold back a moment longer.
He began to cum as well, a torrential outpouring so fierce and primal that he was almost afraid he would hurt her, because he had lost every semblance of control.
But Holly wasn’t small and fragile. She could take everything he wanted to give her. He didn’t have to hold back in the slightest.
He let go.
He erupted, in the most intense and uninhibited climax of his life.
And then he held her in his arms, feeling the most incredible sense of completion.
He had never felt so connected to someone in their first time together.
There had been no awkwardness, as they fumbled around in the dark apartment, tearing off each other's clothes, or even when they broke his table to bits. She seemed to know exactly how he liked to be touched, and he felt that he could intuit the same about her.
Now they lay entwined on the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms like two puzzle pieces fit together. Their bodies lined up perfectly, her head snuggled up against his chest. Black breathed in the clean, sleet-washed scent of Holly’s hair.
Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep with Holly in his arms.
Late in the night, he woke with her head in his lap, her warm mouth wrapped around his cock. Still half asleep, he groaned and arched his back, the intense pleasure radiating outward through his body. His aching cock had never experienced anything as soft and erotic as that mouth. He thrust his hands into Holly’s thick, bright hair, hoping she would never stop.
She brought him right up to the brink, then she climbed on top of him and replaced her mouth with her pussy. If he had thought he was already at the peak of pleasure, he was wrong, because the sensation of her slowly riding him felt ten times as good.
He only wished he could see her lovely, pale body better. He could only perceive her outline in the shadowy illumination from the streetlights outside his window. As he ran his hands down her waist, he thought that Holly would be even a blind man’s fantasy, because of the exquisite silkiness of her skin.
He didn’t have to see her to know when she began to cum again, longer and slower this time. Her convulsions were so strong that Black couldn’t hold back either—he couldn’t feel her climax without it tipping him over the edge.
He followed her into that euphoric state, still fractionally asleep, so that the whole encounter felt like a fever dream. That dream-like state allowed him to relax, with no self-consciousness, no fear. No bad memories. Just the essential core of himself, and of Holly, wrapped up i
n each other so tight that nothing else could intrude.
Black usually woke early, but the next morning he slept until eight, only stirring when he heard Holly making coffee in his kitchen. He did have two mugs at least, and probably a spoon or two.
She brought it in to him, still wearing only her knickers. She sat on the edge of his bed without any shyness. She seemed cheerful and full of energy.
“Sleep well?” she asked.
“Really well, actually,” Black said in surprise.
She handed him his mug and took a sip from her own.
Black sat up to drink, the sheets puddled around his waist.
He took a sip and looked up at Holly, eyebrows raised.
“Why does this taste so much better when you make it?” he asked.
Holly laughed.
“Shit government coffee is what keeps me alive,” she said. “I know how to make even that taste decent.”
“Last night was…incredible,” Black said.
Holly grinned at him.
“My teenage self would have been so proud of me,” she said. “That was a long-time fantasy.”
“How did it compare?”
“Well, in the fantasy, we went out for breakfast with Oprah after, and she gave me a Nobel Peace Prize, but other than that, it was bang on.”
Black laughed. He admired Holly’s irrepressible spirits. He knew that her upbringing had been about as crap as his had been, yet she didn’t seem to hold on to any bitterness about it. She was bright and ambitious, and nothing was going to hold her back.
“What’s your plan for today?” Holly asked.
“I’d like to meet up with Morris, one-on-one,” Black said.
“I can make that happen,” Holly said, “if you don’t mind it being over lunch or some other squeezed-in slot.”
“That’s fine,” Black said. “And I’ve got some other people I want to speak to as well.”
There was a slightly awkward pause. Black felt that he ought to say something else, about what had happened between them. They were working together, more or less, so he thought he should say that they should keep it casual and professional. Or mention how he wasn’t in a fit to be in any kind of relationship at the moment. As if the state of his apartment didn’t declare that clearly enough.