Four Temptations Page 6

  He raised his head, held me close until I’d subsided, then eased me back onto the table, so that I was lying out flat and he was undoing my trousers and then sliding them down over my hips, my thighs, my calves.

  As he moved up to my breasts again, I curled my legs around his waist, pincering him, pulling him hard against me, and suddenly that stiffness was against me, just his chinos and the flimsy lace of my knickers as a barrier.

  I cried out, I think. I don’t know. Everything was a mad rush, just then. The sensations in my body: tightening, spasms, pulsing, my whole body alive to his hardness against me and his mouth and hands on my breasts.

  “I...” I gasped. “I think I just...”

  I don’t know why I said that. There was no think about it.

  That hardness against me had just made me come like a locomotive.

  §

  Normally, I’m a pretty straightforward kind of a girl. I need to be seduced. I need more than just the physical. But then I need the physical to be considered and skilled. If I’m lucky I hit the big ‘O’ and then, in a very blokeish way, I’m content just to roll over and sleep.

  Normally... there was no normal about this, about Jimmy Abel.

  Even as the heavings and tightening of that climax started to ebb, I could feel that there was more to follow. Somewhere deep inside, a heat, a tension building once more.

  He sensed it too, and his fingers hooked into the waistline of my knickers and pulled them down. His mouth worked down my belly, and his lips started to tug on my neatly trimmed pubes, pulling at my mound, teasing it.

  We shimmied, we wriggled, and then my legs were over his shoulders, controlling and guiding him, pulling him to me, his face, his mouth, his tongue, sliding along my labia, over and over. His lips closed on me, pulling at me as he gently sucked on me, and then the tip of his tongue stole up and in, probing under that hood of flesh that covered my clitoris. He circled that hard nub once, twice, and then slide down and in, deep, so damned deep!

  As his tongue curled up, pressing against the front wall of my vagina, his upper lip and nose pressed against my clit and he rocked his head from side to side, pressing and sliding against all the most sensitive spots.

  I raised myself on my elbows, then, so that I could look down my body, taking in a sight that I still didn’t quite believe was real. That head, those dark curls, buried between my legs. Then his tongue swept upwards again, hard across my clit – almost too hard – and a bolt of intense pleasure raced up into my belly.

  I was close again, so close. It hadn’t happened this quickly, this close together, since I was a teenager, and even then it was something I’d done to myself, my fingers and hands pressing and squeezing. That moment of surprise when the after-shocks of an intense orgasm start to shift, start to become something else, to become the build-up to another climax.

  I reached down, took a handful of his hair, and pulled him up towards me.

  “I need you,” I gasped, my throat hoarse – had I really been that vocal? “I need you now.”

  He stood and undid his chinos, as I pulled impatiently at the buttons of his shirt, desperate not to lose that deep throbbing.

  Frustrated, I lay back and buried my hand between my legs. Pressing against myself, pressing my palm against my mound, my fingers curling down, dipping inside.

  All the time, his eyes never left me, roaming my body, flitting from my face to my breasts, running down across my belly to where my fingers played.

  His shoulders were square, well-defined. Dark hair covered his chest, not too long or thick. He slid his chinos down over those narrow hips, hooking his thumbs into his shorts to pull them down at the same time.

  The swollen head of his cock was shiny with his juices, and as I watched more clear fluid pulsed out of that dark opening and hung like a silver thread from the head of a shaft that was... oh my... long and broad and–

  I reached for him, took him in my hand, felt that hardness, that throbbing and pulsing.

  It was his turn to moan, as my hand, lubricated by his juices and mine, started to pull on his manhood. Sliding along his length, turning my fist with a twist of the wrist.

  His head was tipped back, his breathing ragged. I tightened my grip, pulling him towards me, pressing that swollen head of his cock against myself. I slipped it between my labia and rubbed it against me, barely dipping inside and then up to my clit and back down again, hard and fast.

  Ask me then what I liked most about his body. His strength... he was a man who could easily overpower me. His slim physique, the tightly-packed muscles of his abdomen, his chest, his shoulders. The precision of his movements. That wonderfully impressive cock of his.

  Ask me then and I’d tell you it was his eyes.

  Those dark eyes, beneath thick eyebrows. Eyes that expressed so much when contact was made and held, when that shy awkwardness had gone, and been taken over by the intensity of his passion.

  Those dark eyes, locked on mine, communicating his every response.

  The slight widening as he approached his peak.

  The muscles in his jaw tightening, his lips parting just a little.

  Just before climax, his eyes rolled up, and then back down, fixing me again, and that was the trigger that took me over the edge, too.

  The eye contact, the sudden wet heat between us as he came, the throbbing in his shaft as I held it. The hardness suddenly easing, but not going altogether, so that as his climax tailed off I was able to change position a little, press him against my wet opening, and let him push inside.

  That pulsing, deep inside me now, filling me... it was as if it caught onto the dying pulses of my own climax and dragged them out, making me clamp around him again and again, until finally we slumped, our breathing ragged, our hearts pounding in unison as we held each other tight.

  §

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that.

  I don’t know what little signal it was that made us untangle ourselves, stand, and walk hand in hand upstairs to my bedroom where we would lose ourselves again in the nervous, beautiful magic of discovering and exploring each other for the first time.

  I don’t know how we’d reached this point, or how it had taken us so long to get there.

  You’d think I would understand this kind of thing a little better. Unexpected passion, hidden love, the twists and tangles of relationships, temptations that really should be ignored.

  Tell me about it.

  I’ve been there, seen it all. Written the book and sold the movie.

  And maybe that’s the problem.

  The Other Woman

  Ellie

  I never saw myself as the other woman. I always wanted to be the woman.

  The other woman made secret trips away. She arranged discreet rendezvous. She had seen the insides of far too many of those shabby little hotels in towns nobody would ever really want to visit, which is exactly why they were perfect. All too well, she knew those parties where they couldn’t be seen together, where all she could hope for was a glance across the room, maybe a discreet touch as they brushed past each other.

  My old friend Maggie Nolan’s book launch was the first time we’d been out together, fully in the public eye: me and Porter Swaine. The first time I had been the woman, and not just the other woman. It should have been more significant. It should have been a rite of passage. It should have felt as if I was growing up.

  But, if anything, it felt even more seedy than how things had been up until then.

  §

  Allow me to backtrack a little...

  Porter Swaine. Always the flash guy, the boy with the toys, the self-made man who liked to ruffle feathers. He was full of himself, distracted by his success, and when it came to women he had the willpower of a gnat. He was also – aren’t they always? – married.

  I knew all that before I’d even met him.

  He sounded like exactly my kind of man.

  §

  I didn’t set out to seduce him.


  But then I rarely do. Things just happen.

  Can I backtrack again? That makes me sound such a slut. But then, perhaps I am. In her eyes, at least. The wife. Mrs Rebecca Swaine.

  She must hate me, of course.

  She must have hated me even before she knew who I was, when I was still just a fragment of doubt in her mind; when I was no more than a few clues that finally gave substance to her fears.

  A blonde hair on the jacket (she’s blonde too, but more mousey, more drab).

  A smear of lipstick, perhaps; a trace of a scent she never used.

  A Porter-lie that didn’t quite tally with all the previous Porter-lies.

  Unexplained items on the credit card bill, or on the mobile phone bill (although Porter handled both of these online so there was no paper trail, no envelopes to open in his absence; he knew the ropes).

  Taken singly: none of these were conclusive.

  Taken together: me. Ellie Jordan. In my early twenties. Slim, blonde, perfect cheekbones, big blue eyes, perfect shape, legs to die for.

  I was Rebecca’s worst nightmare and her husband’s wet dream. Does that make me a slut?

  Oh well...

  §

  “You really think it makes everything so easy?” I protested.

  “And you’re really going to tell me it’s tough being totally drop-dead gorgeous?”

  And yes, when you put it like that... Make me out to be a spoilt, ungrateful slut who doesn’t appreciate the cards she’s been dealt, and you’ve got me nailed.

  We were in a little wine bar, ironically drinking coffee and not wine. Me and Maggie Nolan. I work for Ellison and Coles, in marketing. We’d published Maggie’s first novel, Leaving Lulu, to huge success a couple of years ago, when I’d been a junior in Marketing. As a former copywriter, Maggie had taken an interest in what we did, and she’d kind of taken me under her wing. I don’t know if she saw something of herself in me or if she just saw me as an amusing diversion. I don’t like to over-analyze: she was fun, and she was friendly, and that was enough for me.

  Most important of all, she saw past the obvious with me, and I appreciated that more than anything.

  She was laughing now, not hiding at all that she was laughing at me. I’m cool with that. I’m vain enough, and self-aware enough, to recognize that I like to be the focus of attention.

  “Okay, change of subject,” I said. “Lucy Sterne – have you come across her?”

  “Sure,” said Maggie. “American – from Boston, I think – writes for the Guardian, has fabulous parties at her place in Islington. Has a book with Ellison and Coles, I think.”

  “And have you come across Ellie Jordan?”

  Maggie laughed. “A trap...”

  “Shall I answer for you? What was the first thing that came into your head, or anyone else’s head? Blonde? Long legs? Blowjob lips?”

  Maggie was shaking her head. “I’m only interested in your mind, darling.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. That’s what they all say. And do you know what? When they say that they’re never looking me in the eye.”

  Maggie leaned forward now, squeezing her generous breasts together between her arms. “We’ve all been there, darling,” she said. “It’s just like any other asset, though: dazzling wit, brilliant mind, a suck like a thirsty camel... If you’re smart you learn to use it, not resent it.”

  §

  She was right, and she knew it. And she knew I’d learned to use my assets a long, long time ago.

  The first time was with Harry, a journalism lecturer who taught a course in my first year at university.

  At high school I’d always felt awkward, always skinny and clumsy, as if I hadn’t quite grown into my body yet. I hadn’t realized that was my ugly duckling phase; I’d just thought that was going to be it.

  So when I ran along that corridor in the bowels of the humanities block, half an hour past the deadline for my first essay, I really was slow to pick up on what was going on. The look on Harry’s face as he stood at his office door, fumbling with the key and an armful of essays.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasped. “I... Well, I...”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Take a breath and start again.” Then he saw the essay I was clutching. “We have strict guidelines,” he said. “No late submissions. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can–”

  I don’t know what possessed me. I don’t know why it was that everything suddenly clicked for me at that instant, but it did.

  I was eighteen, he was well into his thirties, a wedding ring on his finger. He was trying to be nice about telling me I’d screwed up, telling me he couldn’t make exceptions. He was a decent guy. I knew that, all in that instant.

  A decent guy, a married man, trying to explain the situation to me, but... His eyes were all over the place: looking into mine, straying across my face, down my neck. My chest was still heaving, breathing heavily from running after him, and that was where his eyes kept coming to rest, on the rise and fall of my breasts.

  He was a genuine, decent guy and he was talking to my breasts.

  It was an instant, a split second, and all of that registered in a rush. And so, as he stood there at his office door, his hands otherwise occupied, I reached forward, took the zipper of his trousers and slid it down.

  “I...”

  My hand was inside before he could say anything more, my palm lying against his long, soft member, my fingers on its head.

  “I...”

  He started to grow hard.

  “I’m very sorry I was late. It won’t happen again.” I began to press rhythmically against that stiffening shaft.

  He managed to turn the key and push the door open. As he backed into his office, I followed, not once losing my grip.

  Hamming it up even more, I went on: “Really, I’m a good student. I promise I won’t let you down.”

  On the outside I was all brazen hussy, I was the slut I’d never known I was. On the inside my thoughts were racing madly. I’d never done anything like this. Never even kissed a boy, would you believe? It was all a process of discovery for me.

  Harry stopped when he had backed up against his desk, and that was when I released the button on his trousers.

  The essays... they went somewhere. On the desk, on the floor, I don’t know. I didn’t care.

  His shorts were white, stretched tight. I reached inside and God he was hard, as I pulled his shaft up straight, stretching well above his waistband. His cock was fascinating to me. I’d forgotten about essays, about life, about everything right then.

  I dropped to my knees, more than anything simply to get a better look.

  The head of his cock was swollen and colored a deep, flushed purple. Veins stood out on its hard shaft, and the whole thing pulsed and twitched in my grip, as I used my free hand to ease his shorts down to give me better access. The opening at the end was a vertical slit leading down to a ridge of skin stretched tight and then, as I watched, a bead of clear, thick liquid squeezed out. I put a finger to it and his cock lurched at my touch just there. It was slippery, like baby oil, and I spread it over that swollen purple head, marveling at the way his whole body stiffened at that touch. The skin was so smooth to my fingers! Then, as I traced that ridge of skin just below the head, he gave a long, drawn-out groan. I started to flick across that ridge with the tip of my finger, a light, delicate touch, insistent and fast, and he moaned again.

  Then I dragged that finger the length of his cock, along the underside, tracing its contours until I reached the hairy swelling of his balls. They twitched at my touch, retracting, the whole ballbag tightening, and then as I watched the sac relaxed and the balls dropped again. I cupped them, squeezing gently, feeling their smooth, plum-shape, ribbed at the back where the tubes emerged from them, deep in his scrotum.

  “Suck it,” he gasped. “Are you going to suck it for me, Ellie? You said you were a good student...”

  I looked up, past his hard cock. There was a pleading in his ey
es.

  I really had only been getting a close look up to then. I was that naïve.

  I looked at that purple head again, only inches from my face. It was shiny and wet with his juices. I ran a finger across it, and then put that finger to my lips. It tasted salty, with a little sweetness.

  I looked at his cock again, and then I moved towards it, met it with my lips, let it slide between them.

  Although I would meet much better endowed men, I didn’t know that then, and I was surprised at how far I had to open my mouth to accommodate even just the swollen head of his manhood. But then his hands were on my head, guiding me, forcing me to take him deeper and deeper, until I’d taken him right to the base of his shaft and I had to keep swallowing against the head of his cock so that I wouldn’t gag.

  I pulled away, marveling again at the smoothness of his cock, this time as it slid against my tongue; at how hard his shaft was, and the heat of it...

  As I bobbed my head back and forward, my lips tight around him, I cupped his balls, fascinated by the way they responded to my touch. My other hand was on his thigh, partway down where his shorts were stretched tight. I pulled at them, and inadvertently my nails scraped against him. He groaned even louder now, and so I abandoned pulling his shorts down and just raked my nails up the back of his leg.

  His ass was up against the desk, but I could reach his hip and scratch down the side of his ass and the top of his thigh. And as I pushed down on his cock again, my face up hard against the coarse mat of his pubes, I slid the hand that was cupping his balls further back, my fingers pressing against the skin between balls and ass. Remembering his earlier response, I scraped him there with my nails, and his hands tightened on my head, fingers twisted in my hair, holding me against him, his dick deep in my throat.

  “Oh God,” he moaned. “Oh yes...”

  I was naïve, inexperienced. I didn’t know what to do when...

  I didn’t have time to think about it, to make any choices. No time to decide if I was a swallow or spit kind of a girl.

  There was a sudden heat, a rushing sensation, and then all I could do was swallow as pulse after pulse of his juices erupted in my throat, and then it was over, and I was still sucking, more gently now. As his cock started to grow soft, the saltiness of his juices spread through my mouth, a taste that was new and yet somehow familiar.