With a finger, he found her nipple, hard like a little bullet tip. Unt had dreamt of this moment but now he was here, he didn’t know what to do with it. Pearson had been full of techniques for this situation but Unt stuck to the one basic that seemed to make sense. He drew circles around it, brushing as much as he could at any one time. Round he went, again and again.
Was it having an effect? She didn’t make any sound of pleasure. He tried between her legs again. Another half-inch, nothing more, and then those thighs went tight as ever. Growing impatient, he tried to edge and wriggle further up, hoping that the kissing and stroking would persuade her or at least distract her.
It was more of a fight than he’d hoped or expected. Every half-inch gained seemed to make further progress more difficult. He worried that his technique was monotonous, that the action was dry and chafing. As he stressed over that, he found it hard to keep his attention on the kissing: the front of least resistance.
At long last, his hand got to the top of her leg. It felt like a great mountaineering triumph. His relief was so great that he almost missed the new sensation his fingers were delivering. This was something he’d imagined from the day he’d first noticed girls and now he was lost as to what to do. He felt a confusing furrow of folds and trenches, like a ploughed field and he didn’t know where to go.
Pearson had promised it would be damp, moist and inviting but this new world was as dry and resistant as the legs that guarded it. Again, he put aside all of his friend’s advice except the one, most simple instruction: work your way to the front and begin from there. It was the only advice he had a chance of following in this baffling terrain.
Blindly, his fingers found the front and they started to probe for the area Pearson had described. Would he know it when he found it? Pearson said she’d let you know but doubt ate at Unt. Was Pearson playing a joke on him? It seemed so far from where he should be focusing.
But Pearson was right, when he found it, she let him know. Her fingers closed around his, stopping him.
“No, don’t,” she said.
“But I-”
“It’s all right,” she cut him off, “It’s fine.”
What had he done? Had he got it wrong? All of a sudden, she was retreating back in on herself, shutting the doors that had only just started to part. She rolled away from him; away from his hands and away from his kiss. All of a sudden, she was on her back, head turned to the wall away from him.
Unt just lay there, stunned. When his emotions started to return, they arrived all at once. Confusion, embarrassment, anger, guilt: these and more were all yelling in his head, each proclaiming their own answer to the single question: why?
She was reluctant, she’d made that clear from the start but confronted with such an attitude, so was he. She was the one who said she consented and then she’d left him to it, like she was the one who needed to be won over. So he’d tried to impress her but she’d blocked him at every turn. If she meant “no”, why did she ever say “yes”?
His hurt and confusion must have reached out across the bed because at last she turned her head to him - not her body - and said, “Look, Unt, I-”
“It’s fine,” he repeated her words from before, shrugging off her consoling hand.
“It’s just-”
“It’s fine,” he said again and rolled over onto his back. He blinked back tears. He wouldn’t be weak in front of her.
After a while, he felt a ripple in the sheets. The tips of her fingers closed around his.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “Can we just…get through this tonight and then we can see what happens after.”
Her voice had tears of her own behind it and Unt felt them but he also felt bitter disappointment. Come in, get back, come in, but I don’t want you. What did she want from him?
“Unt?” she pressed with her fingers and words.
Unt had lost the power of speech. There were so many things that he wanted to shout at her, love he wanted to declare to her and things he wanted to talk about with her. If he opened his mouth, he wasn’t sure what would come out.
He answered by squeezing her fingers. It conveyed as much as all those words together could and wrapped them up in a neat conclusion: ok.
This had stopped being a courtship, a romance or a piece of love-making. Now it was a trial that they both had to pass through together.
He rolled back to face her once more, raised himself with his elbow and rolled further over so he was holding himself above her. The sheets were warm and clingy and tried to smother him. He shook them loose but still they clung.
He could see nothing of her but her head and shoulders. Everything else was under the sheets and under his body. He could feel her knees on the outer side of his and knew his elbows were either side of her waist. His hands rested beneath her armpits. She lay there, expectant.
Gently as he could, he nudged her legs apart, little by little. They both knew what was happening but it still felt like it had to be disguised. It was even more absurd, given how undisguised the rest of him was about it. He might not know what he wanted but his body certainly did. It hung above her, ready to strike. Now he had only to use it.
He lowered himself like he was doing a press-up and tried to guide it in but it wasn’t easy. People talked about it like it was a gaping hole and maybe it was supposed to be but Unt felt like he was pushing against a sealed fissure.
He needed a third eye down there, or at least a hand to find the way and guide it but how could he do that and hold himself up at the same time?
Balancing his weight on one hand alone, he brought his other down. He probed for an opening, found several candidates but nothing seemed right. It was all so dry.
Then he felt her hand on his and for a moment, he forgot his confused emotions. But like the rest of her, this hand wasn’t trying to give pleasure tonight. It was just being functional, guiding him toward the target.
When she got him to the right spot he thought it no wonder he couldn’t find it. It was tight and unyielding. If she hadn’t shown him the way, he’d have thought he was in the wrong place.
He tried to push it in but it was difficult. Was she fighting or was it meant to be like this? Little by little, he tried to wedge his way in. It felt wrong, like each push was tearing her a little. She hissed with every small thrust. Pearson had told him that the cries that sounded like pain were really cries of delight but this felt like it was genuinely difficult.
All the while he was fighting his way in, he was fighting to stay upright and struggling against the weight of the sheets. Pressing close to her made pushing less difficult but the trapped warmth of their bodies was making things very hot. The sweat was wringing off his back, sucking the sheets against his skin so they clung like a shroud. He’d thought he’d be enjoying her body right now - the look and smell and feel of her - but instead it was just a press of flesh beneath him.
With a grunt from both of them, he finally broke in. He felt the moistness that Pearson had spoken of, high up inside her, but down at the bottom, it was still tight and barren.
He realised that somewhere along the line he’d closed his eyes and now he opened them. Her face was just inches away and her eyes were clenched shut: sealed tight against a great endurance. Those eyes told the battle her whole body was fighting.
Determined to secure his hard-won ground, he pressed in tight against her. Her mouth, beside his ear, shunted hot, steaming breaths over one side of his head. His face was buried in the corner between her neck and shoulder. The smell of sweat and mingled perfume peppered his nostrils.
Now he just had to end this. He started to thrust, putting his whole body into it. His hands, slick with perspiration, slipped on the base sheets that had already been worked loose. His knees and feet struggled for grip, like they were skating on melted butter.
He reached up and grabbed the end of the mattress, hands digging like talons for purchase but by doing that, he could no longer hold himself up. Gravity dr
opped him like a dead weight on top of her. He feared he would crush the life out of her, her breathing was so rapid and shallow.
He wanted her to do something to help him in any small way. He wanted her to show she understood this was a shared suffering, that this wasn’t something he was doing to her. If she could hold him, assist him, it would maybe stop this awful feeling he was raping dead meat. Maybe he’d been caught up in his own desires before but now he wanted it over as much as she did.
Furiously, he willed himself to finish it. When he was on his own, it took minutes - often with Crystal in mind. Now, faced with the real thing, nothing was coming. He’d worried that he’d climax too quickly and Pearson had given pointers on how to hold things off but he’d never even considered that he might want to hurry it up.
The sheets grew wetter and heavier. He wanted to throw them off but he couldn’t. They were like a last layer of protection, a sort of division they could keep between themselves and what was happening. If the sheets went, they’d be exposed. Their misery would be out in the open.
He tried to think of the beautiful figure that was trapped under him or all her other perfections. That silky skin was nothing; the memory of her eyes were shut out by the clenched lids in front of him. That sheet of gleaming hair was spilled out on the pillow, streaked and bedraggled in sweat. There was nothing of the enchantress he could focus on. He tried to grasp at what he knew was there but his mind slipped and skidded the way his feet did on the mattress cover.
His desperation grew with his tiredness and that made it all the more difficult. He couldn’t give up. He mustn’t give up. If he gave in to his body and collapsed, this whole nightmare experience was for nothing.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of something sexy. The girls in the clerks’ office - Vecta and Orla - had been in his thoughts a lot recently. They were maybe older but a week spent with Pearson and the way he was had really made them grow on him. He thought of them singly, together, in all the ways he’d imagined before, but still nothing would happen.
And then he thought of Mélie, lovely Mélie. The girl who’d held his hand while she cheekily swiped his drink. He remembered the excitement he’d felt at her touch, at her closeness. He remembered the anticipation as they’d gone off toward the darkened back-streets. His mind had concocted a dozen fantasies about what would have happened if Rob and Crystal hadn’t blundered in and made Olissa run her stupid mouth off.
Suddenly, Olissa was there in his thoughts. No! He didn’t want her there. There was nothing about her that he liked. But it was working. His mind was rebelling, his body was rebelling and at the limits of his endurance, he was willing to accept whatever worked.
He focused on the smug, sardonic smirk she always wore and her horrible bushy hair. She was broad, shapeless, completely unfeminine. Yes! There was something coming. Desperately, he put aside all worry of how this was possible and just stayed with it, stayed with it.
Thank Fate! With a heave, he was spent. There had been no pleasure in it. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was collapse and go to sleep, but he couldn’t. Crystal was still underneath him. Her eyes were still closed, her imagination locked in whatever fortress she’d constructed. He saw tears in among the sweat on her cheeks.
He didn’t know how to get out of her. Would it hurt? With his last reserve of strength, he shuffled out, moving like a fish out of water. He felt something gloopy come out with him. He immediately felt bad when he realised she’d have to sleep in that. The sheets beneath her were saturated in their combined sweat. A double-guilt filled him but he couldn’t say anything. It was all he could manage to roll over onto his back.
The second he was off her, he saw her roll back to face the wall. It was the first move she’d made since she’d guided him into her. Silently, he watched as she moved her fingers gingerly about herself. She would be sore, he was sure. Unt was sore too, but this was a different kind of probe, like she was defying the reality of it.
Minutes later, she broke the silence, “Can I borrow some clothes?” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”
His immediate reaction was a thrill at the thought of her naked in his house. It was absurd, given what they’d just been through, but there it was.
“Uh, of course,” he said and pointed her toward a drawer.
He watched her get out of bed, clasping one meagre corner of the sheets around her. Clearly, she felt her nakedness as keenly as him.
Finding a shirt, she quickly wrapped it around herself and buttoned it up. It was too big for her: long enough to hide her modesty but the hidden parts had suddenly become more enticing.
“The bathroom’s this way?” she asked. He made a noise of approval and she disappeared. Unt just lay there and stared at the empty doorway. His body was calling on him to sleep but he wanted to stay awake until she came back. It was like he was scared she’d run away or vanish like a dream.
There was the sound of splashing for a long time, then there was an equal period of silence. At last, he heard the pad of her feet on the wooden floor and then she was there, standing at the edge of the room.
He couldn’t see her clearly. The moon’s light didn't stretch beyond the bed. She was just standing there, a framed shadow.
“I didn’t sleep with him, you know,” her voice came out of the darkness like it was divorced from her body, “Rob, I mean. I waited for you, like I was supposed to.”
Unt didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t just nod either, she’d never see it. “Ok,” he said, “Thank you.” It sounded awful.
She stalked across to the bed and wrapped herself up in the saturated sheets. She curled up away from him in a foetal kind of way.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight,” she replied without moving.
Soon, a muffled heaving filled the dead air around them. She was crying. Unt turned toward the window and let his own tears flow in silence.
9. Intervention
It was amazing how quickly the new became routine. One week later, Unt was no longer daunted by his new workplace. Two weeks more, he was getting to know his way around and four weeks after that, it felt like he’d been there years. Pearson was offloading more of his duties onto Unt’s desk and he was surprised to find he was good at it.
Right now, he was labouring on a table to review the priority of communal repairs. Roof repairs hadn’t been done for the past three seasons and Brooker wanted to see a twenty percent increase in the probability of them appearing in the next works schedule.
Unt had to find room for that increase by giving other jobs a lower probability. The easiest place to make room was by making cuts from some of the jobs that had been done more recently. The trouble was that some of those jobs were more essential or had to be done regularly. It was a complex bit of work and Unt was working through a matrix that told him when and where to make the cuts.
The sun had passed into the middle pane of his office window and that told him it was nearly lunch. He was looking forward to the packed meal Crystal had prepared for him. Unt might have been cooking for himself all his life but it turned out that Crystal was better at it, so she made the meals.
On the other hand, Unt had a better grip on the other housework, especially cleaning, washing and ironing. Those things were his domain. The rest of the household chores, they were still finding their way with.
The domestic part of his life was finding its way into a kind of rhythm and things were getting better after that first horrible night. They were getting used to being inside each others’ skin and for Crystal, things were getting easier as his house became her home. It was like breaking in a pair of boots: the toughness got worn down through use.
They were doing their duty and having sex every night, often in the morning as well. That too had got much better after their dreadful first time. He didn’t get any sign that she enjoyed it yet but she no longer made him feel like he was fo
rcing himself on her.
She was even letting him try some of Pearson’s techniques. They might not send her to the heights of ecstasy but it made things easier. The key, he thought, was that they’d taken the emotional element out of it. They’d turned it into a mechanical thing like a ram tupping sheep in a field. It wasn’t ideal but it was an improvement.
Pearson was out on an errand that morning and Unt was working alone. He took a moment to sit back and think of taking an early break. Most days, he was still having liquid lunch with Pearson but before that, he always had the food that Crystal had made for him.
The midday sun, punching through the window, was having an odd effect today. It filled the room with a flickering orange light so that the walls and floorboards all seemed aflame.
Unt felt a shadow on his shoulders, despite the abundant light. He turned his chair toward the door. Brooker was there and Councillor Kelly was with him. A third man was there, a man called Pollock whom Unt recognised as Councillor Erk’s Acolyte.
Brooker’s face was dark with unreadable emotions, Pollock’s square jaw projected like a battering ram and Kelly was an empty canvas. The Leader’s hands were joined and hidden beneath his robes. Unt knew at once that something was wrong.
“Unt, may we enter?” asked Brooker. It was an odd thing to ask in his own chambers.
“Uh, of course,” Unt replied. He sensed it wasn’t an answer he wanted to give but refusal was out of the question.
The three men entered the room. Kelly stood in the middle, Brooker stood nearest to Unt and Pollock stood over by Pearson’s desk. It was an odd arrangement. This was Brooker’s office but he was literally on the edge of things. It was Kelly and Pollock who dominated the room.
Unt’s sense of dread sank further still when he looked beyond Kelly to where a further shadow lurked. It was the unmistakeable figure of Lasper. ‘Vulture’ was the word that came to mind.
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