Temptation Close

by Scarlett Rush

  ‘Do it,’ he was telling her. ‘Go and do it to yourself right now.’

  Maria ushered the kids inside and even allowed them custody of the TV remote control, just to keep them busy. She closed the lounge door on them and headed for the kitchen. She needed to calm down, it was ridiculous. She caught her face in the hall mirror, saw the flush on her olive skin. She actually stopped to appraise her reflection. Unbelievably she knew it was to compare herself to the other girls of the street, something that had never entered her head before. Yes, she had privately summed up their individual looks, but certainly not to rank them against her own - why would she? The only reason had been to see which of them her husband might want to leer all over. As married mums the girls would all consider themselves off-limits, but that didn’t mean her lecherous other half would.

  As it was, Maria knew the other girls weren’t the type to have her husband panting. He liked voluptuous, which is why she had originally caught his eye. That put Alicia out of the question for a start, and also Nesta, who was nowhere near as gangly and had a little more meat on her, but was just too pale-skinned for his liking. She was far too quiet and respectable for him anyway. He liked his females bronzed or at least heading that way, and with dark hair, which almost certainly ruled out Shelley, if her age hadn’t already done so. Otherwise she might have had a chance, for her husband liked nothing more than a girl who wasn’t scared of her sexuality, who liked to show herself off in short skirts or low-cut tops like Shelly’s. In short he liked tarts, the more vacuous and obvious the better.

  Maria wished she had known this before they had got married. He had been all slick romance back then. He was already known for having a roving eye and for flitting from girl to girl, but she had been flattered that he came for her and seemed to want to stick around. He couldn’t get enough of her in those days. When they had got engaged she thought she had landed the big one. Her reasonable intelligence and perfect English had triumphed. He struggled with the language, having come from Italy to work, rather than being born here as she had. He saw this as a boon to helping him settle and succeed and she was proud to provide this opportunity. She was also glad of her lapsed religious morals, which meant she was more amenable to his charms than many of the other girls in their predominately Italian immigrant community.

  He acted then like she was all he would ever need. Sure, there had been that incident at her cousin’s wedding, when he had been caught with his trousers down and a very pretty bridesmaid feasting upon his erection. He had argued as if it had been he who was the injured party, the girl coming onto him and making it happen as if her mouth was some kind of loaded gun and he just had to obey. He had almost made Maria feel guilty for thinking he would cheat on her. She even found herself trying to get closer to him, to donning the kind of short, tight clothes that hugged her curves, the type she knew he couldn’t resist. The trouble was, now he had her he didn’t want her in those clothes. He didn’t want the other guys leering over her in the way he did to other girls. She had to become respectable.

  So, although she had a very naughty streak and quite liked playing the tart, he didn’t want her to. He wanted her to be the mother of his children and to act like it. Sex between them was still regular, since he couldn’t seem to get enough of it, but the animal passion was not there as it had been before. There was no adventure. He wanted to fuck her and use her, but he didn’t want to use his dirty imagination on her. He didn’t want others to see her as vulgar at all. He wanted her to dress and act respectably and be anything other than the lusty firecracker who first caught his eye. It was as if he couldn’t bear the thought that others might believe he had a puttana for a wife.

  Then the late nights started, with him downstairs on the computer whilst she gave into exhaustion and went to bed. Normally he would be up there at the same time, climbing on to get inside her before she flaked out. But he started hanging back, instant messaging his friends and family back home, or so he said. One time Maria had snuck back down after an hour, just to get him to come upstairs. He had snapped the lid of the laptop shut but not quickly enough. She had seen the topless tart he had been messaging, in some anonymous bedroom somewhere, giving him his thrills via a webcam. He had slammed his hand down on the laptop as she had gone to lift the lid. He had shouted at her for sneaking up on him as if it was all her fault, but his prick was still out and defiantly erect, the head of it shining from the mix of pre-come and saliva that showed he had been masturbating.

  He said in the days that followed that it was just a release of stress, that it was far, far better than him going out to do it with prostitutes or with other girls like some of his married friends did. In truth it was, and she might have seen it his way if she wasn’t upstairs waiting for him to do the things to her he no doubt messaged the webcam girl about. He stopped this, or at least went about it more discretely, but then the texts started. There were just a few, coming in when he couldn’t hide them properly. She had no reason to suspect they were anything other than just his friends as he claimed, but he got that defensive, aggressive way about him when she enquired about them, which was a fair indication of guilt.

  There wouldn’t seem to be much opportunity for cheating, except during working hours, and since he was self-employed these could be erratic - taking him off on Sunday afternoons for instance, when everyone else in the street was meeting their new neighbour. This time it had to be legit though, since he would never leave her alone with a handsome newcomer if he could help it. Maria was glad he had. It had allowed her to lavish her attention on someone else instead. If her husband had been there he would have been loud and garish as always. He was comical and friendly enough but there was an underlying nastiness. Jokes were always funnier if they weren’t on him. He liked to undermine and throw his weight around, especially as he saw himself as tougher than the rest, raised from the streets. He would have been all over her at times, his way of making sure she was talking to the right people about the right things. He would have given her a playful smack on the behind as she went off to get him his food, just to let everyone there know that she was his possession - although once the two of them were behind closed doors this apparent inability to keep his hands off her would suddenly abate.

  Maria studied her face. She could feel the heat in the cheeks, see the colour rising the more she could hear Hunter’s voice in her head telling her to go do it to herself. She put her hands out onto the wall, almost as if to cement herself to the spot and avoid giving into the urge. Had he liked her? She had strong looks, not to everyone’s taste. Her eyes were large and very dark brown. Her lips were full, the top one going up to meet the downward sweep of her prominent nose. She could not be described as classically pretty, as Roni could, but she was still very attractive, she knew this. She was sexy. Roni was very pretty but was so naive when it came to sexual matters, it almost made her unsexy. Certainly her tart-loving husband would think so, which was why Roni was safe from him.

  Bethan at Number Six was also pretty, but a little too plump now in Maria’s opinion - certainly for her husband’s tastes. Curves he liked, but Bethan was too short to be considered voluptuous. Her shape was hidden under excess weight and loose clothes, so no matter that she was actually very good-looking, with gorgeous large blue eyes, she was off the list. She was also too, well, insipid, a touch one-dimensional. She didn’t have the fire to attract a Lothario. It was all about children for her, and her three seemed welded to her side. Maria couldn’t remember ever having seen her without at least one of them in tow.

  Of course Eva was the obvious danger. She was curvy, wore lots of tight or revealing clothes, had a dirty-bitch tattoo all down her arm and wore tarty make-up. She was brash and brazen and almost compulsively flirty. She was the absolute epitome of what got her husband excited. If not for the fact she was a lesbian, Maria would have been very worried about her. She didn’t doubt her husband had tried it on, probably at every avail
able opportunity. It was actually rather gratifying to know he would get so het up and frustrated trying, but not get anywhere with her.

  Maria knew she wasn’t now just evaluating her neighbours in regards to what her husband thought of them. She was weighing up what Hunter might have thought. She was weighing up the competition. What would his type be? The gathering had given no clues. He didn’t single anyone out, or smile more at one over another. He held your gaze when he spoke to you or, as was more common, when you spoke to him. He gave you complete attention at these times, which might have been why she, along with the other girls, had all been so keen to bring up new topics of conversation, even if it did mean they were all guilty of prattling.

  Maria went to the kitchen, hoping her tasks might blot out the still insistent itch that was crying out for attention. She opened the fridge and stared blankly into it for a good half minute before remembering what she was after and rummaged in the freezer instead. He was certainly her type. She liked them dark and broody. She liked the toughness, the suggestion of meanness, because his would not be sniping or vindictive like her husband’s. She wanted tough and self-assured because it equalled someone who could look after you, protect you. It meant someone who would tell you what to do and who had to be obeyed, although they only ever did this for your benefit, because they knew what you wanted and needed and deserved.

  She used to think her husband had elements of this but Hunter made him seem like a slimy amateur. Of course, this image of their new neighbour was assumed, since he had done nothing at the gathering to really suggest it, coming across merely as polite and a touch reserved, perhaps even a little emotionally damaged. However, she could feel it about him, as clearly as she could see his face in her mind’s eye. It was like he transferred his personality invisibly. It wasn’t just wishful thinking on her behalf, an imagined persona. She knew somehow that this was what he was really like.

  And such thoughts only intensified the itch. Still the vision was in her mind. It wasn’t a re-enactment of any of the afternoon’s proceedings. It wasn’t a montage of his finest expressions or movements, although she had committed them all to memory. It was just his face: stern, his fixed gaze apparently boring into her eyes, telling her without opening his mouth to go do it herself, right now. It was her own body telling her, obviously, but it was in his voice, which made it so infinitely harder to resist. Suddenly it was making her quiver.

  Her legs weakening, she stood with both hands out against the fridge door for support, her head bowed and her eyes closed. She squeezed her thighs together as if trying to drive the need from between them. She couldn’t shift the image of his face and that compelling voice. She dragged her trembling legs back across the kitchen, trying to get a grip. The chips for the kids went in the oven without her realising she hadn’t yet turned it on. She started to arrange the fish fingers out on the grill tray but then got sidetracked and thought it best to make the pesto for her husband’s meal, even though she would never usually do this until the last minute. She sprinkled some salt flakes into the large marble mortar and poured in some oil, already getting the sequence wrong. In her mind Hunter was still saying go do it to yourself, over and over. How she wanted to, but she couldn’t.

  She completely forgot the garlic. She tore at basil leaves and threw them into the mortar. She took the large heavy pestle and began to bash the leaves. She knew his cock would be wonderful. She had already pictured it before this day. It would be as hard and as smooth as the stone tool she was using to grind her mixture. It would be thicker though, all the way from tip to base. It would stand rigid from his body as if so full of hot blood it was almost fit to burst. It would look relentlessly hard; a cock to reflect his nature. The stiffness of it would make it seem much bigger than it was. He would be uncircumcised but the head would be partially exposed, glistening to show how smooth and full it was. The image was so clear and precise it could not have come from her imagination. It was like he had beamed it into her head.

  She almost took herself out of the kitchen but grabbed hold of the sink to stop her exit. She couldn’t think or see straight. Her blood was fizzing through her body. The itch was driving her mad, the need almost making her whimper. She had felt horny so often before but rarely like this. She was beside herself. In her head he kept insisting she take matters into her own hands. The thought was sublime but it was simply impossible. She was not alone. The kids needed their tea and her husband would be home at any minute. She went back to her basil and pounded it some more with her pestle. His cock would be just as heavy as this tool. In her head he finally lost patience. She could feel it, a surge in his blood pressure. His teeth were gritted now. He fixed her mind’s eye with even more steel than before and he spelled it out slowly, so there could be no refusal:

  ‘Lock yourself away somewhere right now,’ the voice in her head said, ‘and think about how hard my cock is going to feel inside you. Do it until you come all over your fingers.’

  It didn’t matter that the voice she gave him was so unlike the one she had heard that afternoon. For her it was a direct command that couldn’t now be contravened. She was out of the kitchen and rushing towards the downstairs loo. Her jeans were already undone before the door was open, as if she were desperate to relieve herself, which of course she was. Her knickers had joined her jeans around her ankles before the lock had even been engaged. She sat down heavily and flung her thighs apart. The fingers of her left hand pressed hard and immediately to the throb. She had to screw her face up to prevent the shriek of relief.

  Whenever she had been this horny before, the fantasy images never formed properly, her need being too great to concentrate. Here he fed her mind with absolute clarity. She was sat upon a seat in a pure white room, alongside her husband, although there was a partition between them, coming up to just above head height. Her husband was jabbering away in his broken English to an unseen person next to him. She was just staring down at Hunter as he came for her. He was on the floor but wasn’t crawling, or sliding, just sort of drifting at her from low down, presumably to avoid being seen by her husband.

  He came at her feet and then she was naked, her legs already as open in her fantasy as they were in reality. He had a slight snarl on his face but she wanted him. Up he came, unhurriedly, drifting like a ghost, his tongue coming out to run languidly and deliciously up the full length of her slit. It didn’t stop there. The wet, tantalising trail was laid on her goose bumped skin as he rose up, snaking over her belly, up between her breasts, up her neck and the underside of her chin. As he slid up her body he was naked too. She could feel the rigid heat of his erection against her softness. She couldn’t wait for their lips to meet but before they could his hand slipped between them and pressed down hard to her mouth.

  Fractions after she had expected his tongue to invade her body his prick slid deep and hard all the way inside her, filling her in an instant. The hit was huge, his palm barely able to muffle her cries at all. As she had pictured his entry, in reality her right hand had gone into action, pushing the cold bluntness against her ready puss. She had only been vaguely aware that she had kept the pestle in her grasp as she fled to the toilet, still smeared with oil and crushed herb. Part of her must have known it was deliberate. Into her it went: the blunt smoothness of the oiled stone and the slickness of her saturated insides allowing it to be shoved all the way in until only her fingertips were in contact at all, taking the weight to hold it in place.

  The marble was so cold on her fevered insides that it felt more like a burn, but that matched with her image of his cock, which she thought of as being as hot as a devil’s. His face was so close, their eyes just far enough apart to let them focus on one another. Keeping his hand over her mouth he began to fuck her. The pace was deep and relentless, providing a glorious slide ending with an electric pulse against her sensitive spot. Each thrust mirrored the fevered rubbing and harsh pinches of her fingers upon her tingling clit
. Although she came very quickly he would not stop. Her imagination kept him there as clear as ever despite her wracking body, as if from afar he was forcing himself into her mind and wouldn’t leave until he was ready.

  The image was so vivid she couldn’t separate the real from the dream. His pace kept up, steady as before. She could feel his breath, smell his exquisite aftershave. She could see the rugged detail of his features closer than she had seen them that afternoon. Her imagination was surely not capable of such complexity. His hand stifled her gasps but she was so turned on all you could hear was the sound of his groin and heavy balls slapping lewdly against her wetness.

  Her husband was still jabbering away beside her. It seemed impossible that he could not hear her being fucked. He might even have been talking louder now, as if her rude sounds had caused him to speak up. All he had to do was raise himself up in his seat and peer over and he would catch her. It made the electricity of their coupling so much greater knowing that discovery was so close, so surely imminent. Despite this she couldn’t make Hunter go any faster. He didn’t care about being caught. On he went with his steady pace, driving the pleasure through her with every thrust. Suddenly she realised that her husband was afraid to peek over and see the truth, for there he would see something he could do nothing about. For all his toughness and street-fighter mentality, the man he would see cuckolding him, even though a decade older, would wipe the floor with him in an instant. There was no power you could raise against him, no move to outflank him, no weapon he could not trump. Her husband has always seemed untouchable but compared to Hunter he was nothing.

  The second orgasm was even bigger, and more prolonged. She was just about able to keep the pestle inside her and not have it shoot out to crack and possibly fracture the toilet bowl. That would not have been easy to explain. She was still shaking and ruddy-faced when she emerged, still unable to focus properly. The force of the climax had given her a headache but at least the image of him had been driven away to let her take control again. She surveyed the kitchen: the freezer door not closed properly; the chips in an oven that wasn’t on; the grill on but the fish fingers thankfully not burning away beneath the elements, still sat as they were upon their tray on top of the hob. The pesto was a mess, with bits of pulped basil and oil everywhere, as if a child had been having a go at making it.