name. There’s a clue, right there.
‘Have a seat,’ he tells me, but here’s the thing: there’s not a seat to have. The whole horseshoe shape of the booth has been filled with people I don’t know at all, right down to my once-were-best-friends, Brandon and Tyler. They’re just as unfamiliar as anything else in this place, now that the former’s got a beer and the latter’s got a Scotch, and they’re both just staring at me in equally uncomfortable ways.
Tyler looks as though he’d like to hunt me down, on the Serengeti. Brandon looks as though I just sprouted a third arm, and am about to batter him with it.
‘Oh no, really – there’s not room,’ I manage, but it’s hard to, with those dark eyes trained resolutely on the side of my face. I can tell without glancing at him that he wants to check out what Tyler’s obviously checking out, but Brandon was never like that. He’d never just go for anything.
Tyler had to do it for him, always.
‘Sure there is,’ Tyler says, before adding the very worst thing he possibly could. Worse than Suck my cock, worse than Get those clothes off – because of course, I could get out of orders like those. I’d be completely justified in slapping his handsome face, the moment he said them to me.
But I can’t get out of: ‘Just sit in Brandon’s lap.’
It’s just too innocent, out there on its own, devoid of consequences. All of these staring, giggling girls would think I was an absolute maniac if I acted offended over so slight a thing. One of them is practically in Brandon’s lap, as it is, and she has to vacate when I fumble my way over to him.
And, oh, she gives me such a look as I sit down. Clearly, she was happy where she was, with one leg hooked over Brandon’s and one boob almost in his face. I want to tell her that we can trade back if she wants. I’ll sit where she is, next to a guy whose name turns out to be Patrick, and she can make Brandon incredibly uncomfortable to her heart’s content.
Because he obviously is – uncomfortable, I mean. I try to perch on the very edges of his knees, but I can feel how rigid he’s gone, even so. And though he seems determined to put his hands somewhere normal – like maybe on my waist or my thighs – he can’t bring himself to do it. Those hands hover around one place and then another, never quite settling, before they finally find their place somewhere weird.
Like behind his head.
Without even glancing back, I know how he’ll look. He’s turned himself into a tourist, relaxing on an imaginary beach. All he needs is a parasol and a book and none of this will seem insane at all.
‘You OK?’ he asks, which probably means he’s sensed the tension I’m using to keep myself like this. I’m almost holding myself in a sitting position, without anything under me to sit on. It’s like doing a series of really, really awful squats, only I don’t get to relax at the end of each one. I just have to keep going and going, until I faint.
‘Great,’ I tell him, though my treacherous voice belies that one word. It comes out all wavering and near to exhaustion, until he simply has to say. He has to. He wouldn’t be the gentleman I remember, if he didn’t.
‘You know, you can sit back a little, if you want,’ he offers, but he doesn’t shout the words over the thrum of all this noise. He slides them underneath, low and furtive, and when I shove myself back into the welcoming curve of his body I understand why.
He’s hard.
He’s so hard that he actually makes a little sound when I push into him, and tries to shove me forwards again. Like if he does it fast enough, I won’t notice his hugely stiff cock. I won’t remember exactly how it felt, rubbing up against me. I’ll just continue not listening to the conversation around the table, oblivious and innocent.
Though I think he knows, on some level, that this won’t wash. I can feel how tense he’s gone, and those hands are now iron in the hollows of my hips. Any move on my part and they clamp down tight, like a warning: Do not take this any further. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds, do not turn around and look at me in that way.
But he’s out of luck on the third thing. I have to turn around and look, I have to. What expression goes with sudden erection? And how different is it from the ones he levelled at me earlier, which mostly seemed to be about getting away from me, as fast as possible?
The answer is: not that different at all. He’s still got that touch of pain around his ever-square and too-tight mouth, and he won’t meet my gaze. He just does what I did earlier – fixes his eyes on some point just north of my shoulder, and hopes for the best.
But I can’t give him what he wants. I can’t be the way I was before, passive and silent and sort of unsure. That girl hadn’t lived through five years of boyfriends falling asleep on top of her, and endless nights with nothing but a vibrator for company. She didn’t understand what it’s like to regret a missed opportunity, but I do.
And I want to rub myself against the thick, stiff shape of his cock, until I hear him moan. Oh God, he moans – and not even in a quiet sort of way, either. It just blurts out of him like a short sharp shock, and once it’s done I think we both know we’re in trouble.
I glance up and, sure enough, Tyler is looking our way. And though his expression is mainly amused, there’s something else there, too, buried deep down in that foggy gaze of his. It’s a look I recognise – a look I’ve seen a million times before, without fully understanding what it meant.
But I understand now.
Ohhhh, yeah. I understand now. He wants to fuck me I think, blindly, and once the idea is there I can’t shake it off. It gets a hold of me between my legs, and forces me to do things I wouldn’t usually. I’m sure I’d just leave it at a little light rubbing if I were left to my own devices.
But once Tyler’s got his lust-fucked gaze on me I find myself doing much worse. I actually ease myself back and forth over Brandon’s solid prick and, when he protests – when he gasps and digs his fingers into the hollows of my hips – I put an arm around his shoulder.
So that my breasts are almost pressed against his face.
‘Maisie,’ he says, but he sends the word high and wild. And his efforts at following it with something saner – something like please stop, maybe – don’t quite pan out for him. Instead he ends up turning until his mouth is very close to my mouth and his hands are very close to holding me, and, after a moment of this delicious tension, I think: We’re going to kiss. That’s what this is: the leaning into one another, and his hand suddenly on the nape of my neck. He wants to kiss me, but something’s holding him back – perhaps Tyler’s gaze burning across the table at us, too intense for me to fully process.
I can’t even look at him directly without assuming what Brandon probably does – that it’s anger, or jealousy, or something else similarly crazy that he’s levelling at us. And I think this until the point where I actually do meet his eyes and see for myself what he’s saying.
It’s not stop. It’s go. Go on, he says to me with his smouldering stare. Go on, kiss him. Touch him. Fuck him right here on this table until you’re wrung out and slippery with your own come and his spunk … Oh God, how can one look be so filthy? How can it make me so crazy?
Because it does. The feel of Brandon’s stiff cock – now almost in the groove between
