Bad Guys

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  He cries a little against my arm, pushing his eyes into me, trying to seal the wound.

  After a while, I whisper in his ear, “I know exactly what that’s like, honey. I know exactly how that feels. Grief takes a part of us away. And you’re allowed to grieve, Adam. I want you to know I don’t hate you for that or resent it. You need to let yourself feel it. She was part of your life for three or four years. She took things from you, including time, during which you might have been happy instead of miserable.”

  “Yes,” he groans, still pressing his face against my arm.

  “Nothing will ever bring that missing part of me back. Sometimes, I used to be naughty after she went, just to feel like her, just to have the smack of my mother’s hand fall on my backside in the same way it used to fall on Sasha’s… just to feel alive. There’s a part of me I don’t even have contact with anymore… it’s like a part of me that’s so buried, or so far removed, like a piece of my soul that already got filed away and sent to the next world, but it is still a piece of me that I live in knowledge of, every single day. And now we’re scarred.”

  “Yes,” he submits, shivering.

  “It wasn’t your fault but it happened to you, honey. I’m not going to let it happen ever again. I promise.”

  I hold him much tighter and eventually the shivering stops and we just lie together in the water, thinking… until the water gets cold and his tummy rumbles.

  We eat room service in our robes, scoffing down pie, chips and marrowfat peas, lathered in gravy, all washed down with a Chianti and followed by chocolate pudding.

  Once our plates are empty, Adam gathers everything up off the little dining table in the living area and takes it all outside the door, ready for the staff to collect later and so that we don’t have to smell stale gravy all night.

  When he’s back at my side, pouring more wine, he grins down at me. “Dance, milady?”

  “Okay…”

  He takes me in his arms, swaying me to the music we put on earlier in the background… just some classical music or something.

  “Do I have beef in my teeth?” he asks, smiling and rubbing his tongue across his grinning mouth.

  “No. Do you have a complex about it?”

  “No, my dentist is always saying I should floss. Apparently, my teeth are too close together.”

  “Men are weird,” I throw back at him, and he catches my insult with another toothy grin.

  I sigh and lay my head on his chest, allowing myself to be lulled by the music and by the strength of his hold and the warmth of his body.

  “I want to tell you something and I don’t want you to get mad.” He says it so quick, I’m surprised I actually understood what he was saying.

  My heart thuds instantly. “What?”

  “I told Theo.”

  “Told him what?” I pull my head out of his chest, worried like hell.

  “About us.”

  I step back, mouth covered. “Why?”

  “Couldn’t stop myself,” he says, shaking his head. “He promised on his life not to tell Lily. I made him swear before I told him. He was all worried about me, asking questions about my divorce, checking if I was eating and all this other stuff… and I ended up just saying, ‘Look, I’m in love with someone else and I know this time it’s the real deal.’”

  I gulp, still worried, but also wondering if I’m imagining this. “How can you be sure?”

  “When you’ve been with someone for a few years and then you’re with someone else for two minutes and it feels more right than anything else ever has in your whole entire life, you kind of know the score. It unmistakable.”

  “But you made me wait six months?” I gasp, having to rub my chest, my heart going ten to the dozen.

  “Because I had to know it was real for both of us, that I wasn’t kidding myself, and I also meant what I said… she is dangerous. We know that. I will protect you, no matter what. Including from her. She means nothing to me anymore but for all I know, she still thinks of me as her possession, and perhaps one she might let go of in the eyes of the law – thanks to Chloe – but not in her own unique, sick way, the same way she kept stuff in her lock-up. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I take a deep breath, gathering myself, my head gradually going from pounding to not.

  “What did Theo say?”

  “He was surprised… shocked… but he was happy for me. He warned me Lily and Chloe aren’t going to be onboard—”

  “Well, we knew that.”

  “Anyway, he understands… he’s been there himself. Waiting around and all that. That when the right thing comes along, you just have to grab it. And I just want you to know that the only reason I told him was because I couldn’t keep it to myself.”

  My lip wobbles. “Even my boss suspects I’ve got a boyfriend. He must see something different about me. But I haven’t got anyone to tell. My best friend is your ex.”

  Adam shakes his head. “It wasn’t anything like that, Chloe just got it muddled up.”

  “I know.”

  “Hey, listen,” he says, moving towards me, “she will have to know eventually. We’ll just… pick that time carefully. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He lifts his eyebrows and smiles. “Wanna get dressed and go for a pint?”

  “You can take the boy out of Yorkshire…”

  He shrugs, laughing. “Got vital salts and stuff to replenish, I’ll have you know.”

  I tip my head back laughing. “I hope they have a roaring fire.”

  “If not, I’ll make one for you when we get back.”

  “Promise?”

  He wiggles his cock against me. “You know it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  We walk down to the bar which is quiet, and because of this, we’re able to sit right by a roaring fire. Adam partakes of a Belgian beer while I opt for a whisky, which seems right, given we are staying in an old castle in winter and it seems to match my current warm mood.

  “Where are all the Christmas parties?” I whisper to Adam.

  He gestures he doesn’t know. “I think they have a golf club here, perhaps that’s where all the action happens.”

  “I prefer this,” I whisper, rubbing his knee. “Much more intimate.”

  We’re in a tiny couch by the fire, squashed together. Adam’s back in his sexy blue polo neck while I’m wearing significantly more clothing than I was earlier – now dressed in a dramatic red sweater dress with cowl neck and over-the-knee suede boots, which Adam can’t stop grinning at.

  “Do you think I dress slutty?”

  “Yes,” he says giggling, like it was on the tip of his tongue anyway.

  He covers his mouth, unable to stop himself grinning with glee – like a teenager whose fantasies have all come true.

  “Would you rather I dress in neat little pencil skirts and cute kitten heels, have all-over boob coverage and wear baggy, wrinkly old tights?”

  He bites his lip, still grinning. “I’m doomed whatever you wear, so do as you please. It’s always gonna be sexy if you’re in it.”

  He says all the right things, doesn’t he?

  “My mother says I dress like a hooker,” I remark, tipping my head back and scowling as thoughts of her come into my mind’s eye. “I told her she looked like a washer woman. I think the insults continued until I was a trampy hooker’s ugliest friend who couldn’t even get a client and she was the washer woman’s great grandma’s grandma or something. Russian humour.”

  “Really?” he says. “That’s how you speak to one another?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  I press my lips together, trying not to laugh.

  “Yes, well.”

  “It’s not like British humour, then? Where there is affection buried within the put-downs?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “We do have a difficult relationship but I guess she loves me really. She just cannot stand to see me happy, though. Unless I’m all mea culp
a and say ‘take me back, I’ll stay in Leeds and shrivel alongside you forever’… blah blah blah.”

  Adam looks thoughtful and still gorgeous, maybe even more so by the fire. In fact, he appears more gorgeous to me with each passing second. The little ticks of his facial features, endearing mannerisms… little signals I’m beginning to be able to read so easily.

  “It’s better if feelings are out,” he says, “even if they are feelings of hurt or contempt or whatever. Keeping things inside, that’s what’s dangerous.”

  We’re back to her again, then.

  I thought I was okay with us going over and over this if it means he can move on, but…

  “Now you have hindsight,” I prompt, “when was the first time you noticed she was mad?”

  Adam takes a deep breath, shaking his head like he can’t think, then suddenly his eyes spring to life and it’s clear he can now recall exactly when.

  “In the run-up to her wedding,” he says.

  “Her wedding?” I exclaim, suppressing my amusement.

  “Yeah, it was her wedding,” he says, the words blasting out of him, “nobody else’s, hers. It was all hers and she was taking no shit, let me tell you.”

  “What happened?” I ask, intrigued now we’re going down this path.

  And to think that as Susan and Adam got married, I had no idea that one day we’d end up together – nor that she was an even bigger psycho than I could have imagined.

  “One of her friends from school, I can’t remember her name… she wanted to bring her baby daughter with her to the wedding—”

  “As I recall, there was a distinct lack of children.” Now I think about it…

  “Exactly,” he exclaims. “Her friend couldn’t get childcare and it became this huge, horrendous drama and Susan was ringing her father and saying couldn’t they organise a creche or something for all these kids of her friends she didn’t want at the wedding but were going to have to be looked after somehow because it was the summer holidays and grandparents were all on their cruises and well, people weren’t too pleased about being told to leave their kids at home.”

  “Oh, dear,” I whisper, knowing that must have wound Susan up.

  “So, she fucking got what she wanted, didn’t she?”

  I put my hands to my cheeks. “NO!”

  “Yes,” he murmurs, “the hotel agreed to organise a creche and everything looked like it was working out, except this one mum who I mentioned before… didn’t want her kid being looked after by people she hadn’t vetted and had been drafted in last-minute.”

  “Oh my god.” I cover my eyes, not sure I want to hear what happened next.

  “She banned the woman from our wedding. Yep. Because of that. As far as I know, they’re still not friends again.”

  “That’s ludicrous. How petty people can be.”

  He sighs in a laboured way. “Well, now it makes perfect sense. Susan already knew she’d probably never have kids and she wasn’t going to have a surrogate carry her baby, no way. She’s too controlling to ever trust another human being with something like that. And adopting? She’d be too scared of getting an ugly kid. That’s how her mind works. She was shallow, vain and horrible, through and through. And don’t get me started on the personal trainer she tried to get for her father so he might lose weight for the big day.”

  “Absolute insanity!” I throw my arms up.

  “She went away for like four or five days right before the wedding on an intensive spa retreat to get herself ready. And she went on her own. No hen party or anything. When she got back and found the flat was a pig sty – her words not mine, even though all I’d really not done was put bleach down the loo or put the dishwasher on – she hit the roof and slashed one of my wedding shirts with scissors. Thankfully we had two because, well, it’s me we’re talking about here, but I was pretty freaked out by that. I put it down to wedding stress, obviously… but…”

  “Mother trucking madness,” I gasp, shaking my head. “I’d rather not get married if that’s what people turn into.”

  “Tell me about it. And recently, I found out something else that really made me wonder if I should’ve walked away so, so long ago.”

  I put my hand over his. “Go on…”

  “Well, I was having a clear-out of some of the drawers in the kitchen and I found an insurance policy for an engagement ring that was valued at £15,000. Susan was the one who proposed to me and she held out this ring she said had been her grandmother’s… with a ruby and diamonds and everything… and I just thought it looked like new because she’d had it polished… but then I found this insurance policy and the receipt for the ring was attached. She’d bought herself her own engagement ring.”

  I cover my cheeks, my jaw well and truly dropped. “No, man. No!”

  He nods slowly.

  “Well, that makes me feel a bit better,” I admit. “I’m ashamed but it makes me feel like I might actually be the first girl you propose to, you never know.”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and kisses my temple. “Oh my god, I was such a fool.”

  “You were taken for a ride.” I hug him around his waist and we watch the fire together. “Better, wiser and even richer people might still have been taken in by her. I just think she knew exactly what she was doing but covered it so cleverly with lies… telling you she loved you… making you feel she was so soft and gentle, when she was a wildcat, beneath.”

  “I was such a fool,” he says, and I look up to study his profile, his mouth set in a hard line, cheeks drawn back.

  “Yes,” I tell him, “but we all can be at times. We’re human. Did I used to wish my mother would love me more? Yes. Did she ever? No. Did I still wish for it anyway? Do I still wish it now? Yes. And yet, she never will. She will tolerate me, if I go back to Leeds, but she will never, ever truly love me. She can’t. And you know why?”

  He turns and gazes into my eyes, his expression soft and gentle and kind. “Why?”

  “Because she doesn’t love herself.”

  Adam purses his lips, then whispers, “I really like you, you know? Have I mentioned that lately?”

  “Once or twice.”

  He grins, pulling me in for a quick kiss.

  I rest my head on his shoulder and whisper, “I’m wearing no underwear, you know.”

  “I know, I can smell you,” he says in a chastising tone, his eyes avoiding mine, “it’s driving me insane.”

  “Are you wearing your David Gandy’s?”

  Adam laughs loudly. “Of course.”

  “No fun,” I whisper, “I might have ridden you in here if not.”

  Adam’s eyes are blazing as he turns to stare at me. “Whoa, woman. There are people around.”

  “No there aren’t. The barman has been gassing with the cleaning woman for half an hour now, talking about everything that’s wrong with the changes in the village. There’s nobody else in here.”

  Adam puts his hand on my waist and squeezes me ever so slightly. “Saskia, behave. I said you could wear what you like, but don’t expect me to indulge your exhibitionism any more than that.”

  I pout and throw my back against the couch. “Boring.”

  “Have you done it before?” he asks, sipping from his pint, his nerves clearly frayed.

  “No, well… I don’t know… a couple of the guys I was with in New York… I mean, nobody shuts their curtains there… everyone can see everyone. I might have become a stranger’s sex show once or twice, I don’t know… it was kind of hot thinking about it… thinking people might be watching us. Don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” he says, “but not in a place like this. The most gossip they get here is probably two pence added to the price of crisps.”

  “Come on,” I goad him, spreading my legs, checking nobody is near, “come on, just touch me, a little. You can keep an eye out while you stroke me.”

  There’s a small glass partition just behind us and the barman and cleaning woman are beyond that, still
engaged in some kind of pseudo flirting, I think.

  Adam can’t resist after he’s peered down to check I am knickerless, then he snaps his teeth and brushes his fingers across my sex.

  I bite my lip and he starts rubbing my clit in circles, fast and a bit ragged, impatient and nervous. I look around for cameras, glad there aren’t any, then slip down the side of my dress to reveal one tit. I let him stare at it for a moment before I cover it with my hand, gently tweaking my own nipple. Adam gasps and checks around wildly, making sure nobody is watching.

  I reach orgasm fast, grinning into his tormented eyes and rubbing my thighs together. Adam takes his hand away and my dress is put back in place.

  “We’re going to the room,” he says, wiping his fingers on his sweater and downing the last of his beer. “Now.”

  He takes my hand and ushers me out of the bar and upstairs quickly. We get to the door of our room and he lets us inside, urging me ahead of him.

  Safe back inside our room, he pushes me against a wall, forces my hands behind my back and pushes his hips, his erection, his body weight right into my centre.

  “As thrilling as that was,” he pants, his heart pounding through his sweater, “I don’t ever want that again, you are…” He catches his breath. “Mine. Nobody else’s.”

  He captures my mouth with his and trembles as he kisses me, more with anxiety than exhilaration I decide. He’s more careful with his kisses, too. More concerted.