by Alison Tyler
“Not here,” Michael muttered.
In answer, Julia grabbed for his hand and walked him toward the exit. He was strong enough to reel her back in less than three paces.
“I can’t leave here. I have another bus to catch.”
“I get that.”
She yanked on his hand again, and this time, he let her lead him around the corner of the building to a narrow alleyway, which seemed uninhabited by either dossers or rats. Julia stopped and he was on her, pressing her back against the unforgiving wall, his mouth ravaging hers, his body even through all the layers of clothing a hard, persistent presence she wanted to wrap her legs around and climb.
His hand delved beneath her buttoned-up coat and found the hem of her long woolen skirt, dragged that up and was between her legs rubbing at her panties in a hard, unforgiving rhythm that made her squirm against him.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” he murmured against her mouth.
Fuck, yes, fuck me, Julia silently pleaded as he unzipped his jeans and shoved them down just enough to release his cock. And god, there he was, big and hard and shoving himself between her legs, impaling her in his hurry to make this as quick and fast as possible. She understood why, she knew what he was trying to tell her but it didn’t matter. Just a body, just a fuck. All that mattered was the feel of his flesh inside her making her even wetter, making her come all around him. Even as she climaxed, he kept going, each stroke a brutal invasion that kept her pinned against the wall like an insect speared on a pin.
Julia closed her eyes and held on as his thumb found her already swollen clit and rubbed it in time to his thrusts, sending her to a new plateau of sensations that made her want to cry. Had he always been this big, this rough, or was this what she’d done to him when she’d sent him away?
“Julia…” He whispered her name when he came, the heat of him inside her warming her from the inside out, defrosting the coldness she’d encased herself in ever since he’d left.
He held her close, his forehead resting on her shoulder, her whole body engulfed by the raging heat of his. “What are you going to tell him when you get home?”
Julia wanted to turn her head away but her hair was trapped behind her. “I won’t need to tell him anything.”
He pushed his hips against hers. “You don’t think he’ll notice that you’ve been fucked?” Inside her, his cock jerked and started to fill out again. “You don’t think he’ll notice my come is dripping out of you and that you smell of me? He knows what we smell like together. He fucking knows.” He started rocking against her again, each movement bringing his cock back to life and reigniting the overload of sensations. “Maybe I’d better fuck you again so that he can’t miss it, make you so sore that you can’t sit down tomorrow. Do you think he’ll notice that?”
His mouth claimed hers again, and he fucked her, this time shorter, but definitely not sweeter. She felt every grind of his hips against hers, every pulse of his shaft inside her. When his thumb circled her clit, she tensed.
“Don’t, I can’t, I’m too sore.”
“Too late, Julia, you should’ve stayed home with him if you wanted someone not to push you.”
This time when she climaxed, she screamed into his mouth and he came with her, each spurt of come forced out of him in long, lingering waves. She would be wet tomorrow; even if she showered, she’d still be showing the evidence of his fucking.
He nipped at her ear. “You’ll have to go home on the tube now, like this, every man on that train knowing you’ve been fucked, with my scent and my come all over you.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He caught hold of her chin and made her look at him. “You are going home. I’m not taking you with me.”
She met his gaze. “I didn’t ask you to.”
He slowly pulled out of her and zipped up his jeans, one hand steadying her against the wall. “Did you get what you wanted from me, Julia?”
She shook her head, and his expression tightened. “Well, that’s a damn shame, because that’s all I have to give you.”
He turned away and she closed her eyes, unwilling to watch him walk away from her again, unable to watch him at all. It took all her strength not to call out to him, not to beg him to stay, or let her go with him, but she wouldn’t do it.
When she finally opened her eyes, he was still there, blocking the exit to the passageway.
“I thought you were going.”
“I reckon I have time to buy you a coffee.”
She blinked at him. “But you have to go.”
He sighed. “I know, but I’m a fucking idiot.” He held out his hand. “There’s an all-night café on the corner.”
She took his hand and followed him to the café. Strip lighting beamed down on greasy Formica-topped tables and the air was heavy with the scent of stale cooking oil. The metal-legged chair shrieked a protest against the tiled floor when she pulled it out. The occupants of the café were mainly teenagers, night-shift workers and people like her who had no idea where else to go.
Michael went up to the counter and ordered something without consulting her, but at this point she didn’t care. Her legs were trembling and her body felt as if she’d run a hundred miles. She checked that her gloves were still in her pockets and took off her hat.
“Here you go.”
Michael slid a big mug of tea across the table to her.
“That’s not coffee.”
“Surely you’ve learned by now not to drink the stuff here? The Brits are right. Tea is the drink for all occasions.”
She clasped the mug between her cold hands and inhaled the steam. It didn’t matter what beverage she drank, only that it gave her something to do with her hands.
“Where are you off to now?” she asked, not looking at him.
Silence greeted her question. She quickly sipped at her tea, burning her already swollen lip.
“How did you know I was going to be here tonight, Julia?”
She gave him his silence back. Two could play at that game, and wasn’t that what this was? A big, stupid game?
“Did he tell you?” Michael cursed under his breath. “He must have done. Why the hell did he tell you? Does he just like to stir the shit, or is it worse than that?”
She glanced up at him and wished she hadn’t as he held her gaze, his blue eyes so weary, so weary of her that she wanted to cry.
“Is that what you do now, Julia? Play his fucking games, do his fucking will?” His harsh laughter bounced off the dirty glass window, but no one looked up. “He must have expected you to come and see me.”
“He didn’t tell me. I just saw a note on his calendar.”
“God, Julia, don’t be so naïve. If he wrote it down in public view, he wanted you to know.”
“I…” She tried to form the words to deny his claims, but they wouldn’t come. Michael had always been the one to decipher the lies from the truth for her. Without him, she was lost. But he’d known that, and he’d still left. Left her alone.
She rose to her feet, pushing the chair back with a screech of metal on tile that mirrored the sounds spiraling like a death lament inside her. “I have to go.”
He grabbed for her wrist. “Shit, Julia, I didn’t mean it, don’t…”
She shook him off and headed for the door. They’d both used her, they always had. Maybe it was time for her to accept that and either deal with it or run back home to the safety of California.
“Julia.” He spun her around by the shoulder. “Listen to me…”
She pressed her cold fingers to his warm lips. “It’s okay, I get it now. I thought it was about me, but it isn’t really, is it? It’s about you and Dan. I’m just your latest chew toy.” She took a deep steadying breath. “Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go home and tell him everything we did together. Show him the marks on my body, your sweat, and your come in me.”
Michael swallowed hard and she saw the truth in his eyes.
“That’s why you d
id it, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “For him? Not for me at all. You want him to see you in me, smell you, taste you.”
His hand dropped to his side, his fist clenched. “It’s not that simple, Julia. It never is.”
“Sure it is.” She looked him right in the eye. “And you know what? I’m okay with that. You go off and find yourself, and I’ll keep your best friend happy.” She fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone and handed it to him. “But you text me when you come through London again, okay?”
He took the phone, and after a moment’s hesitation punched his number in.
“Thank you.” Julia slipped the cell into her pocket. “Now you can go.”
TEN P.M. PORTRAITS
Preston Avery
She told him he wouldn’t regret it. And he didn’t, not one bit.
“Eight megapixels, Mal! Do you have any clue what I can do with eight megapixels on a smartphone?” He sure as hell did now.
After a few seconds of fumbling, a flash sparked bright and otherworldly in the dim sitting room, the place where people normally tossed their jackets. It was 10:00 p.m. exactly, and Mal pushed the rest of the way into the hot waiting center between his wife’s spread legs. The heaviness of their breath, their shared lust almost visibly charged the air around them in the burst of light. It made Mal think of lightning, and he pounded into her, his beautiful, loving and utterly fuckable Eve. All day he had been building to this, waiting for this. To be hard and hot inside her.
He was so glad he had bought her that damn phone. Mal was unusually non-gadgety for an engineer and had always preferred stars, planets and galaxies to technology, so when Evelyn had asked him for the $600 phone with its multitude of megapixels, he hadn’t understood the need. He mainly used his phone for the antiquated practice of calling people, so megapixels didn’t mean a lot to him. In the end, though, eight megapixels made Evelyn happy, so Evelyn got eight megapixels. At this exact moment, he was keen on his own generosity, pleased as he licked her neck and tasted salt, glad as she clutched at him with more than hands. He held his thumb to her clit and waited, pushed, prayed for her to break. When she did, he did too, and it was glorious. Somewhere he was sure a star had just collapsed into itself the way he collapsed into her. The entire day had proven to be an education in exactly what Evelyn could do with those eight megapixels. Later they would look at the picture they had made together, artless, probably fuzzy and off center, but spectacularly obscene. They would see just how sweet a sight their joining could be. Right now, though, he kissed her clavicle and thought about the first photograph she had sent him.
It had come at eleven a.m.
Sitting in the conference room, he discreetly slipped his vibrating mobile out of his pocket while feigning interest in the latest stupidity-induced safety incident at the East Plant. It took him a second to realize the photo on his screen was not exactly fit for present company. The curve of his wife’s neck from right below her chin to her collarbone, a smooth expanse of creamy white skin, was such an unexpected image and so suddenly intimate his cock stirred. Instantly uncomfortable, he shoved the cell into his pocket, cleared his throat and forced his attention back to idiot contractors and the painful amount of paperwork piled on top of him.
Once alone and in his office, Mal found himself smiling, fantasizing a little. He realized he had been daydreaming long enough for his desktop computer to hibernate. He pulled up the photo for a more thorough examination. There was no accompanying text, but the vulnerability of her offered throat whispered sweet private things. She was distracting him, but it felt good. He tried to call her so he could tell her, but she didn’t answer.
In his department’s small kitchenette, he made two open-faced sandwiches and was about to crack his new book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy when his phone vibrated a second time. Eve’s feet were displayed prettily, positioned on a pillow from their bed. She had painted her toenails red. Not red, but red red. He had a real thing for red red. Redial. Voice mail. A few moments later, she sent him the same image but in black and white.
The time was 12:02 p.m.
At one o’clock, she sent an image of her mouth. Glossy. Red red. She was biting her bottom lip.
At two, the inside of her right elbow where she had a tiny heart tattooed.
At three, her belly button.
The four o’clock picture took some deciphering, but when he finally realized where her hand rested with its short red nails, the twitch he had come to expect became more insistent. The inside of her thigh. He had a thing for the inside of her thigh too. Just like her feet and belly button, her mouth, elbow and red red. He scrolled through the other images and suffered a brief moment of insanity when he considered rubbing one out in the bathroom. He wasn’t used to being so preoccupied at work, but he did like where she was taking him.
Mal’s boss walked into his office at three minutes to five. “I need you to stick around.”
Of course he did.
“Some insulated pipe coming out of the second catalytic reactor at the SRU is smoking.”
Of course it was.
“You’re gonna have to coordinate the emergency response team with the in-unit personnel in case they can’t mitigate it.”
When Eve’s five p.m. photo came, he took a second to admire the close-up shot of her cleavage and even less imagining his face there. The SRU wasn’t the only unit on fire today. He texted to say he would be late for her father’s birthday dinner, that he would probably just have to meet them there. What he got in return was a picture of her lips in an exaggerated pout. Even through these years together and everything that came with them, she could still make him laugh, and he still wanted her. So much.
Six o’clock came, and Mal was so intent on his H2S monitor that his phone’s buzz startled him. The human body is flexuous, with bends and dips and curves. It has seams too—places where skeletons might have been snapped together if bodies were made in factories, if skin and muscle, joints and bone were assembled robotically. What Eve showed him now was far less mundane than a joint or a hinge, though. That inside place where her leg met torso, that slight little dip displaying on one side a span of thigh, and on the other, secret, mounded flesh seemed a hallowed place. He was compelled to touch the screen even though that felt foolish.
An hour later when Mal pulled into the parking lot of Luciano Ristorante, his cell went off again. Alabaster roundness crowned with light brown areola, and tight, darker, crinkled nipple. He glanced to where Eve was handing her keys to the valet. There must be some type of text scheduler on her phone. While he had been kept on pins and needles all day, slowly tortured hour by hour, his dearest had probably taken the pictures in a matter of minutes. He thought about her taking them, turning herself on as she made plans and painted her nails. Flash. Twisting her nipple. Flash. Thrusting three fingers into that pink place where she would be saturated, thinking of him. Flash. Getting off before she had sent her first picture. Flash.
From here, she seemed to be throwing something off, energy, hot like the sun or a pulsar. Mal realized that somewhere along the way he had forgotten she could shine with such fundamental sexuality, glow with desire. He stared at her. His wife.
By the time eight o’clock came around and Mal had looked at the photo, they had devoured wine, apps and salad. They had also balanced the national budget. He swallowed a sound but Eve refused to look at him. Her nipple was still the focal point but framed within a red-nailed thumb and forefinger. Pinching. Twisting. Killing him.
“Work?” his father-in-law asked. “They’ve sure had you up against a wall today.” Mal concurred, all the while refusing to picture the man’s only daughter up against a wall. Well, mostly refusing.
Mal’s gaze constantly strayed to her, his mind too. It had been a while since they had taken time for more than a quickie in the missionary position. Ironically, though, he was so ready to go right now, he wasn’t sure he could last much longer than that anyway. He felt like
he was falling in new love, the enormity of his entire world, the whole galaxy orbiting a single point, single person. Eve. She was eating dessert, wrapping her mouth around the spoon, licking the traces of chocolate from her lips. Buzz. Fortunately Jack and Madeline were asking the server about post-dinner port. Mal had barely survived dessert. He leaned over to her. “Never knew I had such restraint.” He quickly bit her earlobe and noticed pink creep up her neck. He thumbed on his phone as Eve excused herself.
“Jesus,” he breathed, then watched her walk away, but all he actually saw was a high-contrast image of her wide-spread legs with a finger pressing her little clit nice and tight. That finger might as well have been a flashing neon arrow to her slit: Enter here, open all night. Then she sent him an actual text message: I’m in no mood for Port. He had to bite back a hallelujah.
They drove home separately. It made him crazy. Each image flashed through his mind now, a seductive flipbook that stirred anticipation inside him to such a degree he swore he might go supernova. It felt good to be so close to snapping, though, to losing it, to showing her all the skill and stamina of a fourteen-year-old with his first Playboy. He vowed against that, though. He would make this good for her. That would be his gift just as the pictures had been hers.
She beat him to the house but waited outside the front door. She had found the time to reapply her lipstick. He pushed her against the doorbell, not meaning to set it off, but ignored the incessant dinging as he shoved his tongue into her mouth and ran rough, urgent hands over as much of her as he could get at. He was pressing his hips into hers, loving the pressure, the building moans in her throat, the wildness.
When she broke away, they were both giddy and breathless. He unlocked and opened the door.
“I want it all off, Evelyn. And you on the couch.” He pointed toward the sitting room. She nodded and reached down to pull the flowered T-shirt over her head, stepping slowly backward. Mal watched, mirroring her actions—shirt, pants, then underwear. There wasn’t much light, just a few lamps left on, but it was perfect illumination, dusky and warm, like all the edges of life were blurred. By the time they were completely naked, the backs of her knees had met the smooth velour sofa. That couch had been their first major purchase as a couple and had seen a lot of action. It was about to see some more. They stood apart, two partners, two lovers, separated and wanting, but neither moved closer. Mal reached down and deliberately fisted his dick. His own touch felt gratifying, especially as Eve’s eyes followed the motion of his hand and her white teeth dug into that red red bottom lip.