Life Sucks

I, Julie Mitchell, am going to say something that I would never normally say, "My life sucks! Not just run of the mill suck, but it fucking sucks big time."

Life up until a couple of months ago was great, I was in a long term relationship with a great guy, I, I mean we had our own apartment, we went out to restaurants and the theatre on a regular basis, we were comfortable financially, and then he got sent overseas, and he never came back, at least not alive. He was working with refugees and stood on a land mine. They said that he never stood a chance, he was dead before his body hit the ground.

I had a good job, I worked for an international finance company. I had a good boss, who was thoughtful, he gave me as much time as I needed to recover from Mike's death, he remembered my birthday and bought me presents for Christmas and stuff like that.

I am thirty three years old, I still have a pretty good figure, at least men still look at me as I walk by, my dark hair is usually pulled back and caught at the base of my skull by a bow that matches whatever outfit I wore. I have blue grey eyes that I inherited from my mother and a fair complexion that came from my father's side.

Like I said, life was pretty good until this morning. Jason, that's my boss, called me into his office as soon as he got in, there's nothing unusual about that, "Julie, I wanted to tell you before I tell the rest of the staff, but I have just had some bad news. Our parent company has folded and we are going down with it. It has been over-exposed to the Sub-Prime Mortgage market in the US and is unable to service its debt. I'm sorry but the company assets have been frozen, so at least until the dust settles there will be no pay or entitlements for staff."

I stood there open mouthed, just staring at him. This is the company that I had given a fair slab of my life to, and that I thought would look after me as it had promised, but no. If I couldn't get a job straight away, and that was going to be difficult in this industry with even the major banks running scared, how was I going to pay my mortgage when my savings ran out?

"I'm really sorry that this has happened so soon after your loss, and I understand that it is going to be tough for you financially if you can't find another position. I will do everything that I can to help you, you don't even have to ask." He stood up and came around his desk, taking me in his arms he kissed me, and that brought back memories of a recurring dream where he would do just that. Unfortunately the kiss that he gave me was nothing like the ones in my dreams. Life really does suck.

The rest of the day was spent fielding phone calls from clients asking about the monies that they had invested. I really felt sorry for some of them who had entrusted their life savings to us to be told that we could not guarantee that they would get it back. There were also calls to Jason from the media wanting to know what was happening. The responses to these calls were that all enquiries should be referred to the receivers who would be handling matters in the future.

Then the biggest bombshell. Jason, the man that I looked up to, the man that I had a secret crush on for as long as I can remember, the man that I thought was the most honest and trustworthy person in the industry, had betrayed me, had betrayed the staff and had betrayed the clients. It appeared that, as the financial crisis on the other side of the globe had been getting worse, he had begun to siphon money out of our trust accounts and transferring it to an overseas country that had no extradition treaty with ours. And to make matters worse, I was the person to discover this.

I felt gutted, not just for myself but for everyone who would suffer more hardship as a result of his actions.

Like I said life sucks big time.

On my journey home on the train I was pondering my next move. It was a toss up between going home and spending the next couple of days wallowing in self pity with the help of copious quantities of booze. This didn't excite me all that much because, from experience hangovers were self inflicted pain and I had a low threshold for self inflicted pain, and going somewhere that I could find an obliging man and get myself well and truly fucked, after all it had been some time since I had felt anything more animated than a vibrator between my legs. This also didn't excite me because the consequences could be disastrous.

I wondered what was on the idiot box tonight, a romcom might ease the pain, but the thought of watching some handsome man and beautiful woman bumble their way through formula situations and find each other at the very end depressed me even more.

A good book, now there was an idea. After getting off the train I walked purposefully into the shopping mall and headed for the bookshop that Mike and I used to spend literally hours browsing through before, fuck, before he died. That took some of the gloss of this prospect, but I was in the store and there was no turning back now.

I looked at the shelves of new releases and found them singularly depressing, I looked in the crime section to see if there was anything there that might take my mind off my troubles, but again inspiration was lacking.

"It's hard to choose isn't it?" The voice beside me had a familiar sound to it. I turned and looked into the eyes of Derek, the store manager. Mike and I had spoken to him just about every time we came into the store and he could almost be considered a friend. "I haven't seen you in here for some time, since the news broke about Mike. I went to his memorial service but kept in the background, mainly because I didn't know what to say under the circumstance. When you don't talk to many people it's often hard to know what to say."

My first impulse when he interrupted my train of thought was to tell him to fuck off and leave me alone, but the soft, gentle tone of his voice halted that thought in its tracks. "Hi, yes it has been a while, I guess that I hadn't wanted to come in here to this place where Mike and I had found so much joy, the pain was something that I wasn't prepared to face at the time."

"If you don't mind me saying this, but if I were in your situation, I would go to those places where you found joy to remind myself of the good times. But everyone is different and I'm not you."

"You're probably right. I thought that by immersing myself in my work I could forget about my sadness at losing him, but that hasn't worked out." I burst into tears.

I heard a sound and then found a handful of tissues before my eyes, taking them I tried to stem the flow. I felt his hand on my shoulder and then I felt myself being drawn close to him. I buried my face in his chest and the tears flowed even harder. "Come with me, it's Julie, right?." I nodded and he led me to a small office at the rear of the store and motioned me into a chair. "I was just about to make myself a cup of coffee, would you like one?"

"Thank you, yes."

"How do you like it?"

"White, no sugar."

He took down two white mugs from a cupboard and placed them on a small bench on which stood a kettle and a jar of instant coffee, thankfully one of the better brands. While the kettle boiled he got milk from a small bar fridge under the bench.

As we sipped our coffee he asked me, "You're upset more than I would have expected given that its three months since Mike's death, is there something more?"

"I don't want to burden you with my problems."

"No, I don't mind, it's not a problem, truly."

'Well, if you must know, I lost my job today."

"How come, you didn't do anything wrong did you?"

"No, nothing like that. You've heard about the Sub-Prime Mortgage collapse in the States? Well the company I work, or worked for, its head office was over-exposed to it and went belly up and dragged us down with it."

"And there was nothing that your office could do to save the local operation?"

"I thought that we could have hung in there but my boss, the man that I trusted implicitly, had been investing money in an offshore shelf company that he owns. The particular country doesn't have a treaty with us so he can't be touched by the authorities."

"You really are in a bad way, there must be something we can do to lighten the mood."

"I had thought of going home and getting shit-faced but decided against that, and then I thought of going somewhere for a bit of casual fornication, but that didn't turn me on at all. I couldn't face the prospect of some dreary romcom on television, so I thought that I'd drop in here and pick up a good book and curl up in bed with it."

"What a waste, no forget that I just said that."

"You didn't harbour thoughts of sharing my misery did you? Or maybe you thought that I'd let your replace the book in bed with me."

"No, I was just being frivolous. Look, I'm going to close up in a minute, why don't I take you to dinner in one of the cafes in the mall, and then I'll take you to the multiplex and watch a movie, I had planned to see 'Ironman' soon so this could be the perfect opportunity. What do you say?"

"I say yes. I love Robert Downey Jr. I think he's a great actor, and I've read the reviews and it seems to be a good escapist action flick. Let's do it!"

Toasted foccacia, filled with chicken and salad, followed by cheesecake and coffee filled me totally and I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of popcorn and some sickly sweet soft drink, but when the credits rolled I found that I had somehow managed to consume all of it.

Derek took my hand as we left the cinema complex, and led me towards the car park. "Where are we going now?"

I looked at my watch and decided that it was time I went home. "I should be getting home, and thank you for this evening, I actually enjoyed it."

"I could drop you home, it will save you waiting for a bus or a cab."

"I don't want to trouble you any more."

"It's no trouble, really, I wouldn't have offered if it was. I enjoyed this evening probably as much as you did, and wasn't looking forward to it ending so soon."

"Oh?"

"Would it be too forward of me to invite you to my place for a cup of coffee and to listen to some music, you see, apart from my passion for books, I also have a passion for classic vinyl albums, and my form of relaxation is to sit back and crank up the HiFi and listen to music. With the sounds washing over and around you it is easy to forget the fact that the world has just finished kicking the crap out of you."

"Sounds nice." What am I doing? Why am I letting this man, who I hardly know, lure me into his den? I don't suppose it is any worse than picking up some stray male for casual sex.

His Living Room was full of books, I don't mean that there were books piled everywhere, there were floor to ceiling bookshelves on three walls and the fourth was where his HiFi and shelves of albums, mostly boxed sets, were located. On closer inspection his books were all hardcover and mostly first editions, probably worth a fortune. As I walked around the room I heard a coffee machine gurgling away in the kitchen and a couple of minutes later he returned bearing a tray on which sat two mugs of steaming coffee and a plate of cookies. He placed the tray on a coffee table and walked over to the records. "What would you like to listen too?"

"You choose."

He selected an album and minutes later Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet filled the room, and I had visions of the Montagues and Capulets doing battle. The coffee was great, and I sat on his couch with my legs tucked up under me and leant back and closed my eyes. I could feel the cares of the world slowly receding to the background.

I felt a finger gently brushing the hair from my face. "Mmmmm, that's nice, you can keep doing that."

"Just sit back and relax, you look bushed." I was vaguely aware of him getting up to flip the record and returning to caressing my face. When the album was finished, and as he got up to take it off, he leaned towards me and kissed me lightly on the lips.

"Don't go." I whispered to him. He sat back down and kissed me again. I returned the kiss. He had the softest lips and the softest hands, and both of them felt so nice that I didn't want him to stop.

He undid the bow in my hair and removed it. "You really shouldn't tie your hair back like that, it makes you look severe when that is not you at all." I think I smiled, just before his lips found mine again. My hand was at his face now, and I could feel the roughness of his stubble against my finger tips, and somehow the manliness of his one day beard growth was something of a turn-on for me. I held his face to mine and I felt the tip of his tongue exploring my lips. I wasn't yet ready to allow access. "Would you like to hear something else?"

"No, I should be getting home, but somehow the prospect doesn't thrill me at all."

"You could always stay here for the night, I do have a spare room you know."

"The bed in which probably isn't made up."

"That won't take long to fix," there was a decided pause here, "if necessary."

"I don't much feel like moving from here for the moment, let's see." We didn't move from the sofa for some time, and by then things had progressed, his hand was inside my blouse and was fondling my breast, albeit with my bra in place. I was about to undo it for him because I hadn't, up until then, wanted to rush things.

I could feel his stubble on the soft upper slopes of my breast as I reached behind my back and unfastened the clasp and my breasts sprang free. His lips quickly found a nipple and he hungrily suckled on it, massaging the other breast with a free hand.

Oh God, I miss this so much! Mike and I had an active sex life but when I lost him I wasn't prepared to enter into another relationship, and, until tonight I had never contemplated casual sex. There was nothing casual about Derek, he was serious about what he was doing. His hand was between my legs and I tell you what, pantyhose can be a real bastard, spontaneity disappears when his hand hits pantyhose, it is something of a major task to get them off and it can't be achieved with any dignity.

This task was achieved by him kneeling between my legs and me lifting my hips off the couch, so it seem perfectly natural that, seeing that his head was in close proximity to my pussy, that his tongue should end up in there probing inside me and licking my clit. Memories of how good that felt came flooding back. I unzipped my skirt and dragged it down so that he could get a better position to attend to my needs. This man between my legs was good and in a matter of minutes I had lost control and was coming, and coming, and coming. I wanted him to stop, but then I didn't want him to stop. It felt so good that I didn't want him to stop, but if he was to fuck me he would have to stop. Oh well, let him do it his way.

His way was to allow me to undo his trousers and take his cock out, it was quite magnificent, and I spent some time familiarising myself with this weapon of mass pleasure. I kissed it on the tip before opening my mouth and attempting, unsuccessfully but at least I tried, to swallow its entire length. I had an instant vision of me suffocating, and being found dead with this cock still jammed in my throat, it caused me to chuckle which must have sent tremors through his cock, "What's so funny?"

I released him, it is after all impolite to talk with your mouth full, "I was just thinking, 'what a way to die', choking to death on a cock."

He smiled a smile of relief. I was no longer the morose, miserable, and blubbering person who entered his bookshop looking to brighten up my shitty day. I was now a woman who desired to be loved, who was willing to allow a man into a world that had been inhabited by men who caused me, one at least unintentionally, pain. He stood up and took me in his arms, kissing me with a passion that, until now, he had kept under close control.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, knowing full well where we were headed.

"I thought I would toss you out the back door for the garbage collection."

"You're one of those men are you? Have your wicked way and when you've finished, you just throw me away like some unwanted piece of trash, I'm disposable sex to you."

By this time we had reached his bed and he tossed me onto it and threw himself on top of me. "You're scared aren't you? You're afraid of what will happen to you after tonight when you have to think about your future? I intend to take your mind off the immediate future, and tomorrow you and I are going to sit down together, and we are going to solve the problems of the world, or at least your part of it. But now, I fully intend to give you the pleasure that has been denied you. So just lay there and enjoy it and if you feel so inclined, you may participate."

Participate I did. At first I was content to allow his exploration of my body, enjoying his running, and wholly flattering, commentary. He admire out loud the fullness of my breasts and the hardness of my nipples, the perfection of my navel, but his most lavish praise was reserved for what he found between my legs. In between kisses and licking he admired my pussy, its swollen lips, the taste of the juices seeping from within, the clitoris poking its head from under its protective hood, and the feel of it on his probing finger.

I too had been exploring. I urged him to straddle me so that I could get a close look at Sir Richard, the mighty dick, standing stiffly proud right there in front of my face. I kissed him and enclosed him in my mouth, pressing him between my tongue and palate, sliding my tongue back and forth on his underside. This gave both of us pleasure, the pleasure that I gave him was relayed to his proud owner who expressed that pleasure by moaning into my pussy, sending vibrations right through my body. Be still my aching heart. How much pleasure can a girl stand?

I was getting close to coming. His tongue was working wonders on my clit, licking its head and this was sending shivers up my spine. I could feel the build up of juices waiting to flood his mouth. I removed his cock from my mouth, "I'm going to come."

"I'm close too."

I surprised myself by putting him back into my mouth, if he came, he came. I was a little apprehensive, it would be the first time a man had come in my mouth, but this seemed to be a night of firsts, so what the hell. "Oh my God!" The flood gates opened and I could hear him slurping up my juices. Then with a grunt he came, my mouth was filled with his cock and his warm, thick and salty tasting come. It wasn't as bad as I had thought, but then my only point of reference were some of my friends who stated quite categorically that there was no way they would ever allow a man to come in their mouth. I swallowed.

I slid out from under Derek and he turned around and lay beside me. "Thank you for that. I guess that you could say that I needed it more than I realised." I put my arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Do I take you home or do I tuck you into the spare bed, or.."

"You can forget both of those, I'm getting under the covers of this bed and you are going to join me. I am going to hold you close, and if the mood takes us I'm going to make love to you again, and then I might think about going to sleep, here, in this bed of yours." I think that I might have beaten him under the covers, but it was a close run race.

"When you said that you were going to help me solve my problems, what did you have in mind?"

"Shhh, there'll be time for that in the morning, we can't do anything about it tonight, in any event, I thought that you and I were going to be making love."

"But I thought that once you'd come that was it for a while."

"The actual sexual intercourse is the final act in a play that can go on for hours, have you never heard of foreplay?"