All there is to it, really.
“Ohhh God, yeah like that, oh suck it, you little bitch—you like that? You like his cock in your mouth and my cock in your ass?”
He doesn’t answer—of course he doesn’t, he can’t—but it’s OK. He doesn’t have to. The guy behind clutches at his hips, suddenly, then moans all long and guttural, before gasping that he’s coming, he’s coming.
And then there’s just that hot wet rush inside him, and the guy jerking and jerking almost right over his prostate, it seems.
Still not quite enough though.
“Hurry up and do his ass,” he spits to the guy with a cock still in his mouth, and is it weird if Corin finds himself thinking the same?
Hurry, hurry, he thinks, because he’s slick and raw and right on the edge, and a couple more thrusts of something heavy and hard against that little bundle of nerves inside him will send him right over. It’s bound to.
Especially when he feels how big the third guy is. Bigger than he’d seemed in his mouth. Bigger than the other two and ohhhh he just slides in like a knife through honey. It’s glorious. It’s like nothing else he’s ever felt, and now it’s clear that the other two don’t need to hold him down.
He’s scrabbling at the table and panting for more before the guy’s even started thrusting.
“You want it,” the guy says, but Corin doesn’t deny it. He always wants it. He wants it in the middle of the day and the middle of the night, he wants it when he’s currying the horses and when he’s sewing rents in his slacks. He wants it even when he doesn’t want to want it, which is most of the time.
“Yes, God yes fuck my ass. Just fuck me, fill me up, come on,” he says, and then he jerks back against the guy’s cock because now that he’s free he can.
The guy grunts in surprise but he doesn’t stop, he keeps right on fucking into him while the other two hoot about how much Corin needs a man to fuck him. Which he supposes is true, even if they don’t know that the man he wants to fuck him is actually a woman.
Your Majesty, he thinks, and moans into the rough wood beneath him. God, she’d take him so hard, she’d fuck him just like this, and when she let her hand slide beneath his body to wrap around his cock, she wouldn’t do it the way this guy is doing it. Regretful, ashamed, like maybe she’d become sensible of doing something wrong.
No, she’d do it with a hint of triumph in her slick stroke. She’d be aware of how perfectly she’d broken him, and she’d use it against him even as she came apart over his sweat-streaked body.
And it’s this thought that pushes him those final few inches. He feels his cock jerk in the rough grip around it, and the thick cock in his ass swells just as the guy grunts that he’s coming, and then ohhhhh, bliss.
Hot waves of pleasure surge through his body, forcing every muscle to contract as they go. His teeth clench tight shut which keeps most of the noise in, but some escapes—his final protracted groan as he spurts onto the ground, and then the little stuttering gasps afterward.
Gasps of relief, he thinks, because even though this was the worst and most seedy thing possible, it’s given him a respite. A respite from having to dream about her, and never have her.
He feels them slapping him on the back and knows what they mean—yeah, we get it. It’s hard for us too, you know. But they don’t really understand. It’s only hard for them in a peripheral sort of way, needing a woman, any woman sort of way.
Not like this. It will never be like this for them.
Because every day he wakes up sure that the agony has gone, and every day it hasn’t.
***
It’s only when I’m done reading that I realize something bizarre. Corin hasn’t just become Cameron in my head. This story I wrote, over five years ago? It sounds like I wrote it about Cameron. It’s like a weird echo of the things he said to me in the bedroom, and the things I read about in his little tale.
With a heaping dose of man love, that is. God, there’s a helluva lot of man love in this thing. I don’t think I fully appreciated how it would all sound until I got halfway through, and now my face is burning and burning and I daren’t look up from the page to see their reactions.
Judging by the silence, their reactions range from flabbergasted to outraged.
“That was…” Wade starts, but Kitty cuts in. Kitty cuts in like a goddamn tornado.
“Holy shit—did you seriously write that, Allie? Did you—you know what? I have no words. Just bravo. Bravo,” she babbles, and then she applauds furiously.
Of course she does. I glance at her and she’s beaming like I just won the Nobel Prize for literature, over a story that would probably get me stoned in at least ten countries, then critically reviled in about seven hundred others.
Did I mention? She’s a peach.
“You’re stupid,” I tell her, and give her a shove, but she just throws her arms around me in response. Squeezes me so hard my ears pop.
“You’re a goddess,” she says. “I knew you had it in you.”
I don’t know what it is, exactly. The ability to write dirty, filthy sex? Well, whatever it gets close to it sure seems to have pleased Wade. Funny, because somehow I’d imagined he’d be awkward and uncomfortable about it but no, no. His grin has reached epic proportions, and he’s sprawled back in the armchair to Kitty’s right with his legs apart. As though to say Yeah, I want you all to know I have an erection. I have absolutely no problems with weird forced man love whatsoever.
I think I go even redder than I was before, though it doesn’t seem possible.
“Why did you waste all those years writing about walls that eat people?” he asks. “This is your true calling, clearly.”
I’ve got to admit, I bask in that a little bit. Who wouldn’t? The most he used to say about my stories was That part where her head came off was cool, so it’s not really a shocker that I’m gratified.
But it is a shocker that I can’t look at Cameron. I just can’t, and I don’t even know why. It should be Wade I’m embarrassed to look at. It should be Wade I don’t want to face. But instead all I can think about is Cameron’s steady gaze. How close the story seemed to things he’s told me and things I uncovered. Will he think I’m taunting him somehow? I felt as though I was taunting him, even though that’s ridiculous.
And then I do raise my eyes to him, and maybe it’s not so ridiculous after all. He looks…he looks as though I just set fire to his sleeve, and now he can’t move as the blaze slowly consumes him. His gaze has progressed from possibly wanting to kill me to actually wanting to kill me, even though I’m certain I’ve done nothing wrong.
I haven’t, have I?
“Don’t you think it’s a great story, Cam?” Kitty says, because she’s as sharp as a tack. She’s as cute as a button, my Kitty. Obviously she can see what I can see all over his face, and unlike me she’s not afraid to address it.
She wants him to give himself up. At gunpoint, if necessary.
“Marvelous,” he says, and he enunciates every last syllable as though each one tastes like poison. As though he has to gag and choke it down.
Clearly he doesn’t care if there’s a gun in his face or not. Kitty’s silvery little knowing tones do nothing to draw him out, and then once she realizes he’s not going to stop staring at me like he wishes he had a gun, she tries to lighten the mood by giggling with Wade over various elements of my apparent masterpiece.
I hear him say something like Well, if I knew a Queen as hot as the ruler of Hamin-Ra, I’d let three guys alleviate some of my tension too. And by alleviate my tension I of course mean ream my ass until I cry. And then Kitty squeals and kind of jumps on him, and there’s lots of reaming of asses talk going on. Lots of it. Probably way too much for my sanity, if I’m honest.
But it’s OK because my sanity is already being destroyed by Cameron’s furious gaze. So much so that when Kitt
y demands we all play a game, I think she’s said There’s a ghost coming out of the wall and almost jump right out of my skin. Though in truth I’m just not sure how else to explain my reaction. Seriously—I nearly throw the pages of “Hamin-Ra” across the room.
Kitty says: “Oooh, jumpy, huh?”
Then bumps my shoulder with her hip. I’m not even sure how she gets to my shoulder with her hip, in truth, but somehow she manages it. And then she stands in the middle of the room—oh Lord how I remember her announcements, made in just the place she’s in now—and tells me I should be jumpy, because now we’re going to play extreme sardines.
Oh God, no, not extreme sardines. Especially not when we’re all like this. Wade stands and I can see his erection making a tent of his pants, for God’s sake. I can see it. And then he says: “Yeah, but this is all just totally an excuse for us to get naked, right?”
To which Kitty replies: “Hee hee hee.”
Lord, I don’t want to be the one to find him in a cupboard somewhere and then demand an item of his clothing—because those are the stupid rules of extreme sardines. Kitty thought it up, of course. Maybe she just got bored of extreme Boggle, I don’t know. Either way, the sardines have to give up their pants or their tops or in the case of Cameron catching me, once, in the downstairs linen closet—one shoe. He always went with something innocuous like a shoe, whereas getting caught by Kitty meant you were a dead man.
One time she demanded my bra, even though I still had my top and trousers on. I felt naked long before we got down to the other stuff that time, I tell you.
And I’ve got a feeling I’m going to feel very naked long before we get to other stuff here too. For a start, she nominates herself as the hunter. Then she turns off all the lights, so that we’re all just sitting there in front of the flickering, demonic fire, while she informs us she’s going to go by torchlight alone in her quest for flesh.
She actually uses that term. Quest for flesh.
Cameron still looks pissed. I’m not surprised—I’d be pissed too, if someone did something that made me extremely angry for no apparent reason and then another person threatened to steal my shoes. But even so, I don’t expect him to interject. Not even when it’s clear this is going to be some sort of “get everybody to have sex with each other” game.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to participate,” he says, though he doesn’t mention why. Of course he doesn’t. The reason is probably “I fear I might murder Allie in the dark if we do.”
But Kitty just flashes the torch she’s produced from God knows where in his face, and waits until he feels good and interrogated. Then she tells him: “Don’t you try to get out of fun, Cameron Lindhurst. We’ll tie you down and make you have fun.”
I can hardly see him through the flickering darkness, but I know he flashes a look at me after she’s spoken. I know it. I can feel it, rubbing against my skin like something ever so slightly prickly. It gives me an idea of what his anger is about, but only a nebulous one—maybe…maybe he thinks I told Kitty something? Maybe he thinks the story I read out was some sort of coded signal to her, about him?
It’s possible. Oh God, what if he really does murder me in the dark?
“You’ve got thirty seconds,” Kitty says. And then we all make a run for it.
Chapter Eight
At first I’m sure Cameron isn’t going to play. But then I really start thinking about the rules of extreme sardines and realize—hell, why wouldn’t he want to play? Hiding is the thing he’s best at! He’s six foot five but somehow he’s always the last one to get clocked, so he can just find himself a nice, safe corner and wait the night out.
Maybe with a good book and a cup of cocoa, to while away the hours.
But unluckily for him, I’m on his trail. He’s pushed it too far now—inventing imaginary reasons to be pissed at me! I can’t have that. What if the reasons aren’t imaginary at all?
So I follow him down the corridor of stepping stones—so eerie and gleaming in the darkness—to the door that doesn’t exist. The one underneath the stairs, the one he doesn’t think Kitty knows about, which in all honesty she probably doesn’t. And she’s the hunter, so why should he care whether I know about it or not?
Because I do know. I found it back when the boat room turned out to be a stupid place to hide, and I thought I was so clever pressing against the place where there should have been a door to a cupboard. Only to find that there was an actual door to a cupboard.
Then throwing up my hands on realizing Cameron had already come to the same conclusion, about ten games of sardines ago. It had made me imagine him creeping about in the dead of night, exploring the house without us and rootling out its little nooks and crannies, and the same idea comes to me now as I press the door he’s closed behind himself.
The shape of it springs out of the wood, too small for a real door and almost creepy. In fact, it’s all the way creepy and always was, and when you stand in there beneath the slanted ceiling, it smells like every weird thing you’ve always imagined. It smells like forbidden rooms and creatures hiding in the walls.
And the side of me that still thrills at the idea of such things gives a little shudder, before I plunge into the darkness behind the door that isn’t there.
“No, don’t, Allie,” he says, and weirdly the first thing I feel isn’t hurt. It’s surprise—that he knows it’s me so quickly. Everything is black as tar and impossible to see through. How can he tell I’m not Kitty?
“Allie, don’t,” he says again, but I close the door behind myself anyway, and shut us into utter darkness.
I can feel cool air against my back, immediately, as though a draught seeps in from the direction of the stairs, for no reason at all. Always makes me think there’s something back there, in that ever-slanting-down corner, but I don’t let myself think about it. I focus on Cameron in front of me, all solid and obvious even when I can’t see him.
I can hear his harsh breathing. I can smell his expensive man-perfume scent. I can feel him bristling, like a cat with its hackles up.
“Don’t what?” I ask. It comes out as a whisper I don’t intend.
“Talk,” he says, and I kind of hate him for that. So much so I simply have to call him on it.
“So you’re just going to be this asshole, then?”
I think I feel him flinch. The air definitely stirs around me.
“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he says.
“Yeah, but you’re definitely succeeding at being one.”
“Please don’t say that. You just don’t get—”
“I don’t get what? Look—none of what happened was a big deal. And it would be less of one if you’d just stop for five seconds and have a conversation with me. You know a conversation—that thing where you open your mouth and sounds come out, then I open mine and sounds come out?”
“Allie …”
“What? What’s so bad? Is it really so horrible of me to want to know what’s going on with you?”
He snaps then. I feel it happen before he gives voice to it—a shift in the temperature of this little room. A rush of air coming at me, as though his big body rammed right against everything it could.
“No, it’s really horrible of you to use it against me in front of everyone.”
I have to say that’s not what I was expecting—even after kind of thinking it earlier on. And if he could see my face I’m sure it would show.
“I … what? What?”
“You wanted a laugh, and I guess you got one.”
“You think…laugh…what?”
He does something loud and air shuffling. Claps his hands together, maybe. I feel something almost brush the front of my jersey.
“Come on, Allie! You knew the kinds of things that turn me on so you thought you’d get me riled up and have a laugh at my expense. What do you think I am, stu
pid?”
At this point I really, really want to say: Yeah, I think you’re stupid. But instead I go with the most mind-boggling part of his little declaration there.
“Did the story I just read out really turn you on?”
Of course, I knew it was a possibility. Or at least, I thought he might react to it somehow, and then talk to me about it. But him reacting with that kind of thing really turns me on is just a little beyond what I was expecting. As is the other stuff about laughing.
I mean, seriously. He thinks I find this funny? Does funny mean horny, in his language?
“What?” he says, irritated—I think—that he’s been caught out somehow. “No, no.”
“You bi, Cam?” I ask, and I swear to God I do it in all seriousness. But he just gets even more irritated and hand-wavy about it.
“Yeah, keep it coming, Allie. Keep tearing one off me—it’s real funny. It’s a great joke, I’m gonna start laughing any second—”
“Cam!”
I shout it much, much louder than I intend. And I do something worse too—I reach out through the darkness and grab his arms. They’re easy enough to find because he’s waving them about like nothing else, and he lets me too. He lets me get a hold of him.
“Cam, knock it off. Hey—I’m not trying to make fun of you. I don’t even know why you’d think something like that. Have I really been so cruel to you, so unfeeling, that you’d think I’d read a story to torment and then laugh at you?”
Silence.
“Cam—is that what you think? Why would you—”
“No—no it’s just Wade did it first and then I thought—”
He shuts himself off before the rest of that little sentence can come out. But oh ho ho it’s too late for that, Cameron. Far, far too late.
“Wade did what first?” I ask, and though I try to sound normal my voice comes out low and strange.
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing.”
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