‘That’s it,’ he says, encouraging me, as he sets one hand to my hip to hold me steady. ‘Do it, Ellie.’
‘Take off your shirt,’ I beg him, my voice coming out breathy and high. ‘Please take it off.’
There’s a moment of silence, a moment when his body goes still against mine, though the thick length of his cock is still buried inside me. He’s stopped. I don’t want him to stop. I won’t let him. I dig my fingers deeper into the sheets and push back against him, taking him inside me, all the way. Then I move forward, and then back again, until my bum slaps against the front of his thighs.
His face twists, and he closes his eyes. Then he eases his way out of his shirt, one sleeve at a time, and it’s my turn to stop. The first thing I notice is the breadth of his shoulders, the hard curve of his pecs, which are dusted with hair. The man is physically incredible. Dark lines of ink cascade over his left bicep, his shoulder. That would be the other tattoo.
The final thing that I notice, when I’ve finished drowning in all that male beauty, is the mangled, scarred skin that covers his other arm in a rough, swirling pattern. I catch my breath, unable to stop staring at it. ‘Tom,’ I say. ‘What happened to you?’
His mouth narrows, and he closes his eyes. I don’t get a chance to study it, to wonder, because he’s started to move again, and this time it’s desperate, and it’s fast and fierce and deep.
‘Tell me,’ I say softly. ‘Please.’
‘I got caught in a fire,’ he says. ‘When I was fourteen. But it’s nothing. Really.’ Then he strokes the length of my spine with one warm hand. ‘Look how beautiful you are,’ he says. ‘Look at yourself, Ellie.’
It’s not me, I want to tell him. It’s you and it’s us. It’s not me. Because when it’s me, it’s hidden and unsatisfying and shameful. This is something else. This is more. I know it now. But the words won’t come, because I’m coming. I feel the first delicious tingles of it starting in my scalp, and it creeps over my skin and explodes everywhere inside me all in the same, exquisite moment. I’m loud. I’m so loud I shock myself.
A hard hand meets my hips, holds me fast, then Tom Hunt fucks me. I mean really fucks me. His body slams into mine, harder, faster, deeper as his fingers dig into my flesh and he mutters words I can’t make out. All the fantasies I’ve had about him were nothing compared to this. They were never as visceral, as real. He fills me so much that every thrust is a shock. I curve my back, trying to accommodate him, holding on tight to the bed, gritting my teeth.
‘I need to come,’ he mutters. ‘Shit. I need to come.’
I brace myself, instinctively knowing that it’s necessary. He shoves his free hand back through his hair, leaving it sticking up and messy. He looks uncertain, beautiful, stunningly aroused, mouth-wateringly desperate as he fucks into me. I dig my fingers deeper into the bed and arch my hips, wanting to give him everything, wanting to give him all the pleasure I can. I want to be face to face with him, our mouths touching as we share this. I want to tell him my secrets. All of my secrets. And I want to know all of his.
And I will.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I ask him again. There is a moment of stillness, a moment of silence.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. And then he thrusts into me, once, twice and he is lost, but I am not. I am right there, with him, in the middle of the bed in his calm, tidy house, as a storm of lust rages between us.
Chapter Eight
We’re tangled together on my velvet sofa, which if I’m honest is completely uncomfortable, mostly because my limbs appear to have turned to jelly and what I really want to do is collapse unconscious in my bed for the next three days. But Tom is here, warm and close, and holding me so tight I can hardly breathe.
It’s been two days since that night at his house. Two days in which we’ve only stopped shagging long enough to eat and go to the loo. He called in sick to work, and I cancelled my appointments because whatever this is between us, it’s insatiable. It seems like the more we feed it, the hungrier it gets. I’ve touched every inch of his body, kissed him until I want to weep with longing, and had him inside me over and over again. I cannot get enough of him.
That is why I had to call Amber and ask her to meet us at my studio this morning. I am getting myself tangled up in something I’m not sure I can get out of, my feelings running too hot, too strong. I’m getting too close to telling him the truth, to telling him everything, and I’m not sure I can handle the fallout if I do.
I have to stop this. I have to remember what is important. I didn’t tell Tom why we were here, just that I had work to do and would he like to come with me. I didn’t plan on sitting astride him on the velvet sofa, riding him like I hadn’t had sex in years, as something broke inside me. I didn’t plan on wanting to keep him for myself, wanting it so much that it hurts.
Someone hammers on the door. ‘Ellie! Are you in there?’
I jerk upright, as much as I can with Tom wrapped around me. ‘It’s Amber,’ I say. ‘I have to answer it.’
My voice sounds strange, tight and dry. The excuses I made to myself when I didn’t tell him why we had to come here all seemed valid at the time. Now, I’m not so sure. I push his arms away, grab my skirt and blouse and pull them on. Tom gets to his feet as I’m unlocking the door. His hair is sticking up all over the place, but at least he’s dressed, even if he does look flushed and only semi-conscious.
I skid over to the door, dodging the slippery crumple of the condom on the floor. ‘Just a second!’ I shout, as I bend and scoop it up, and then hurry to the bathroom at the back of the studio to take care of it.
‘What took you so long?’ asks Amber, when I finally open the door. I’m breathing like I’ve just run the London Marathon. I feel about as stable.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was in the bathroom.’
She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Where have you been for the past two days?’ she demands. And then her forehead creases. Her mouth goes into a pinched, upside down sort of smile. She blinks really, really fast. ‘Never mind. We’re going to sort my photo today, right?’ She pushes past me and into the studio. My throat goes tight, and I have to force myself to swallow. I want to scream at her to leave, but I can’t. I can’t. Amber is my best friend. She protected me when no one else would, when I felt like the walls were closing in, like I was the stupidest person on earth. I don’t know if I could have held it together without her, and that’s why I’ve got to hold it together for her now.
‘Hello,’ Amber says to Tom.
‘Hello, Amber,’ he replies, cautiously. ‘How are you?’
‘Not great,’ Amber says. She strides into the studio, flops down on the sofa. Resting her head against the back, she lifts one hand and curls her fingers in towards her palm, then inspects her nails. ‘I fucking hate men.’
‘Oh,’ says Tom. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes,’ Amber replies. ‘You and the rest of the male population.’ She slumps further back against the sofa, closes her eyes. ‘And I hate his fiancée too. Bitch.’
‘They both seemed quite keen on you,’ Tom says. ‘I imagine the three of you could have quite a lot of fun together.’ I glance up at him, and he gives me a lopsided smile. My stomach turns, and I suddenly hate myself for what I’ve done. I lied to him to get him here. I turn away, unable to meet his gaze any longer. I wish I could tell him the truth, tell him everything, but I can’t bear the thought of him knowing how stupid I am. Maybe it’s better this way. Because this will end it, I know it will, but at least I won’t have to see the look on his face when I tell him I’m not normal. That I can’t do the most basic things.
‘I don’t want fun,’ Amber says, sticking out her chin. Her hands curve into fists in her lap. I can feel the pain radiating from her now. It hits me low and hard, combining with my own. ‘I want my photo,’ she continues. ‘I want that smug bastard and his horny bimbo girlfriend to look at that picture of me with come all over my tongue and know that neither of them
will ever, ever get it.’ She fixes me with a tearful gaze, and I feel like my heart is being wrenched from my chest. But the pain isn’t for her any more. It’s only for me. ‘That’s why you got me and Tom here, isn’t it? It won’t take long. We only need one shot.’ Amber gets to her feet, the movement decisive. She takes off the bag that’s hung across her body, shrugs out of her jacket. She gestures at Tom. ‘Come on. Get your kit off.’
No! I hear the word inside my head, screamingly loud. He’s mine! But I don’t say it. I can’t. Because no matter how many secrets I’ve given up over the past few days, there are still some that I can’t bring myself to share. I’m barely able to admit them to myself, let alone to anyone else. This is Tom Hunt. My accountant. The man who has spent the best part of the last two days buried inside me, the man who knows all my most wicked desires. I am desperately, deeply in love with him. Just the thought of the two of them together is killing me.
But I don’t know if he feels the same way about me. I don’t see how he can, especially not after this. If he knew the truth about me, all of it… And I cannot let go of Amber. She’s been so much to me for so long. I owe her. And even though I think what she’s doing is wrong, and foolish, and has you will regret this written all over it, I won’t refuse. I grab my camera, nausea flooding through me. I try to make myself clear the pictures loaded into the memory, pictures that Tom took of us, but I can’t do it. I want to lock them away, to keep them to remind myself that once, just once, I had a moment of something perfect. That I was wanted and desired, and I wanted and desired right back. I stumble towards the screen, lift my hand to turn it on.
‘What the hell are you doing, Ellie?’ Tom asks me.
I twist round, see him standing stiff and still. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets, and his face is twisted with confusion. His cheeks are flushed.
‘I’m setting up.’
‘Why? Why would you do that?’
‘Because…’ I say, and then all the reasons I had seem to fly apart, like little pieces of burned paper. Because I’m scared. Because you saw me, but I don’t know if you liked what you saw, and I’m too frightened to ask. I clutch my camera so tightly I’m amazed it doesn’t break apart in my hands.
‘I’m not doing this,’ he says. ‘Amber, get over yourself and go screw the pair of them. It’s what you want. This broken-hearted act isn’t fooling anyone.’ Then he turns to me. ‘I can’t believe you want me to do this. I can’t believe that you think I would.’ He smoothes down his hair and looks at me as if he wants to say more. But he doesn’t.
He walks out the door instead.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Amber asks, her voice too loud, too sharp, too harsh. It scrapes over my skin. It makes me sore. I don’t want to be protected any more, I think to myself. I don’t want to hide. I want to just be.
I set my camera down. I turn to Amber. ‘I was trying to give you what you wanted,’ I say. ‘I was trying to fix my mistake.’
She bites her lip. She’s shaking. She grabs her jacket and her bag. A solitary tear makes its way down her cheek, splash lands on the sofa. It sits there on top of the velvet, a diamond bright reminder of how much she’s hurting right now, and that she has protected me forever, and that I’m not protecting her now.
But I can’t.
‘All you had to do,’ she says, ‘was be honest. That’s all anyone had to do.’
‘I…’ I stop. ‘It’s not like it matters now.’
‘Oh, Ellie,’ Amber says, shaking back her hair, ‘it’s the only thing that matters.’
Then she too walks out the door.
It takes me too long to get myself together. I know it’s too long, even as I sit on the floor in a heap, knees bent, hugging my legs like a broken child. I’m more alone than I’ve ever been. I’ve seen a glimpse of who I am, of what I can be, of what my life could be like if I was that person all the time. But it was nothing more than a snapshot. A moment in time, captured on camera, and then gone. Lost.
The floor is hard under me, and my bones dig into it, but I don’t move. I sit there until I’m numb, until I’m so overcome with my own patheticness that I make up stories about the police breaking in three months from now and finding my dried-out corpse on the floor. And then, of course, they’d find my camera, and they’d see what’s on it.
That realisation gets me off the floor. It gets me up and moving. It’s not easy, because my legs don’t quite want to work as they should, but I do it. The people who come to me, who ask me to photograph them, have invited me into their world. They’ve shared their intimacy with me, and it belongs to me as much as it does to them. But the photos I took of Tom are different.
They belong only to him.
I grab my camera, hook it up to the printer and set it going. It whirs, flashes, as image after image is sprayed onto thick, glossy paper. I print all of them, including the ones he took of the two of us. I’m about to bundle them into an envelope when one of the pictures catches my eye. Actually, it does more than that. It pulls me in, holds me, throws its arms around me and refuses to let go. I didn’t see this image in the mirror, when he took me to his house and fucked me. I was in this moment, but I didn’t see it. I was too deep inside it for that.
He has photographed my reflection as I’m coming. I am on all fours, with him buried deeply inside me, the two of us captured in that tall mirror that stands at the end of his bed. It’s not even that explicit, not compared to some of the other pictures that I’ve taken. There’s hardly anything on show. The only nipples in the picture are his, and although I get a powerfully erotic kick out of looking at them, by current standards it’s all very tame.
It is also the most sexually charged picture I have ever seen. It steals my breath, making me sit down on my velvet sofa and fight for air, fight to stay upright, fight not to cry.
Because this picture is more. I thought I had seen more, before, and maybe I had. But not like this. I don’t simply see the more; I feel it too, right to the very centre of my being. The way his hand rests so possessively on my hip, fingers digging into my flesh, the rest of his body tight with tension. The way he’s holding the camera at chest height, taking the weight of it with one big hand.
The way he’s looking at me in the mirror.
Smiling at me.
Happy.
Shit, what have I done?
I slide that final picture halfway into the envelope, and then I take it out again. That one is for me. Whatever happens after this, I want to have that moment. I want to know that it existed. I want to be able to remind myself that I made him happy, once. I wipe the memory disk. Then I turn off the lights, lock up my studio, and make my way outside.
The darkness takes me by surprise. I didn’t know it was possible to cry for that long. Even as a child, when I was failing at school and enduring my parents’ disappointment and wrath on a daily basis, I didn’t cry for that long. I became numb instead. I pull my jacket tighter around me, but the corduroy is thin, and it doesn’t do a fat lot. I like the touch of cold though. It makes me feel. I can sense every inch of skin, every inch of myself and who I am.
First stop is Amber’s house. There’s a light on, and the upstairs window is open. I’m about to knock, when I hear something. A low, male voice, softly talking, followed by something else.
A tight, female gasp.
It’s not Amber, I don’t think. Every sense goes on high alert, my ears straining to hear more, to catch more. I bite my lip and hold perfectly still until the sound comes again, more desperately this time, sending a bolt of sharp electricity right through me.
Definitely not Amber.
Then I walk to Tom’s house.
He isn’t there. I knock until the neighbours come out and tell me to leave. I don’t know where else he can be. I don’t know where to look, but I know I can’t stay here, even though I want to. I wrack my brains, trying to think of where he might be.
Not at the office. I instinctively know that he wouldn’t g
o there. Working late is encouraged, so he has a key and the alarm codes, but I can’t imagine he would go there, not with all the memories of us that fill his office. I know I wouldn’t. The boxing gym?
It’s not far from his house. I start to walk, fast, breaking into a run when the walking stops being enough, for once in my life grateful for my sensible shoes. It’s hidden round the back of the train station, down a little cobbled alleyway. The cars parked outside are flashy, expensive, roaring penis compensators, and I wonder what on earth I’m going to see inside this place, with its basic, hand-painted sign. There are bars on the windows, and strange, male sounds coming from inside. Not sex sounds, but something equally as base and pleasure-filled.
If it was designed to intimidate, it’s working.
But I can’t turn back. I have to know if he is in there. I have to see him. I grit my teeth and walk to the door, then push it open. It opens with surprising ease, and I am instantly bathed in bright, artificial light.
There is too much to take in all at once, but I try, and god, I wish I had my camera. Punch bags swing from ropes. Men of all ages swing fists and grunt, the whole place reeking of angry sweat. The wooden floor is dipped in places, where years of feet have worn it down, and the lighting is stark and harsh.
But it’s the central ring that captures my attention. The raised platform, the ropes, the brutal reality of seeing Tom Hunt, gloved fists raised, mouth distorted by a gum shield. He’s wearing black shorts and a black T-shirt with a red eagle on the back, and there is nothing neat or anxious or tamed about him now.
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