The Promise Pt. 02

The mock shy smile of a little boy trying to charm his way out of retribution came onto his face, the one that Steph used to find irresistible. He leaned over gently towards Christine, closing up the remaining gap between their bodies, and kissed her softly on the lips. He stared into her eyes. "I'm sorry for being a pig—and a prig."

"Are you hungover?"

"Well, maybe a little bit."

"Oh dear. I'll blame your bad temper on a sore head then. Is it very bad?"

"It's only a tiny one."

"So it's not going to stop you screwing the arse off me?"

He laughed. "No. I'm gonna fuck you till your bells ring, baby."

"Gracious, that sounds exciting. You're forgiven then, darling. For being a pig."

She reached into the box on her bedside unit and produced a Durex. As before, she bit it ostentatiously, before tearing it open. Then she lifted the cover and pumped his cock a few times before applying the condom. This time though, she did it as if there was all the time in the world, murmuring contentedly the while, with bits of nonsense like, "Ship ahoy, mate!" This unhurried confidence set the tone. She took his eye again, as she started to play with her cunt to make it wet.

"You woke me up, didn't you?" he said.

She nodded very slowly with a vacant look on her face, while her middle finger went back and forth over her clitoris.

He put his arms round her. This time, he knew what was going to happen: He was going to fuck her and enjoy coming inside her cunt. He'd done the conscience bit; he had no further use for it. That could wait till the morning. Now he wanted to cheat with the stuck up bitch in the office, the one who hid silk and satin and lace next to her skin, while showing the world the glacial front of the haughty bureaucrat.

"Make love to me, Rob. Please," she said at last.

Love? This wasn't about love was it...? But then a strange idea occurred to him. What if he pretended to himself that it was? What if he willed himself to believe it and acted it out—what would the sex be like?

"I love stuck up bitches," he murmured softly, and quickly but gently, snatched a kiss off her.

She said nothing, but took hold of his cock to lead it inside.

Christ. What if he did enjoy it? I mean enjoy it too much? Well if they did enjoy it again, then they'd have to have another one after that. That was a certainty. And that would leave him pondering the significance and consequences of having cheated three times.

But whatever else was or was not the case, one thing was true: he had been checking her out whenever he went into the office.

**********

"Can I use your phone?" Rob nuzzled Christine from behind, as she sat munching toast and marmalade at the table in the kitchen. She was wearing a black see through nightdress, which showed off her breasts nicely as they bobbed under the restraining fabric. He took advantage of the situation to fondle them.

She slapped him without bothering to look away from the issue of Cosmopolitan she had on the table. "Go ahead. By the way, I must say you've changed your tune since the dawn chorus. The last time you fucked me was practically rape."

He snorted. "I think you'll find that the first time was the one that was like rape, Mrs Cutler."

"Go on. Keep telling yourself that," she said and fed him some toast, smiling as if he were an indulged child. He was enjoying this post-coital breakfast. The act felt elegant even if the surroundings were not. He and Steph never did this apart from the fact that he gave her breakfast in bed on her birthday. She was more 'Up and at 'em' by nature. Unfortunately.

This thought about her birthday was actually more than a bit opportune. He had yet to arrange something for the said birthday which was on Thursday. This was because his reminder was in the work diary that lay in a waste paper bin at the college. "And can I ask you to keep quiet?" he said, his mouth full of toast.

"Pfff. You can ask."

"Look I've got to ring her or else she'll ring me... and I won't be home will I?"

"Go on then, Mr Bond... dial away."

Rob proceeded and waited for a reply.

"Hello. How's it going?... Is he? Oh that's good. Why don't you just go with them? Be easier really... Oh I just went to the staff do. It was my leaving do too, kind of thing... because I leave at the beginning of term... yeah I'll be going in... did I get off with anyone? Of course. I got off with Roy. Again. Oh. Where is it? I'll go and have a look..."

He took a few steps from the phone. He raised his forefinger to his lips and looked at Christine. There was a newspaper on the table. He made some rustling sounds with it, while looking at his watch. After a while he returned to the phone.

"I can't find it there... Thursday? No I haven't forgotten what day it is... Look I'll ring you back in a bit."

He hung up, and breathed out noisily.

"I've got to go home."

"Oh? That was quick." She rose to her feet.

Once more, he exhaled exasperatedly. "Ah, it's really annoying, but her parents want the details of her bank account to pay something in and she doesn't have her chequebook with her. I know what you're thinking. The banks aren't open on Saturday but you don't know what they're like. They'll start ringing up if I don't get back to her. So I've got to go over there, find it and ring her back."

"Okay. See you then. Nice knowing you."

"There's stuff we need to... need to talk about. Shall I... come back?"

"You do whatever you want to, darling, but I don't promise to be in. I think we managed fairly well without talking. Anyway aren't you going to go out drinking with your pals and tell them you've been playing away with some old tart?" she said as he gathered his belongings.

"Give me a cuddle." She offered herself to him with arms outstretched. He fell into them and kissed her firmly: passionate but not rough. After a while, they lingered in each others arms and she murmured, "I knew I'd get to know you better before you escaped from us," then added, "a lot better I'd say," in a gloating voice.

"I guess so..."

His arms fastened so tightly that he squeezed the breath from her. Her head was right over his shoulder and their cheeks touched momentarily. He stared out the window for a few seconds as if he was waiting for something which never came. Then he moved off quickly and she heard the front door slam.

She sat down again and reached for the remains of his toast and marmalade.

"We shall see," she murmured.

**********

Rob sat by the phone at home, holding the receiver to his ear and listening to it ringing. He had decided to tell Steph a version of the story, adapted and abridged, of a drunken mistake of which he could only remember the haziest outline. Once he'd done it, that was that. Whatever it was with him and Christine, that would be the end of it. Most probably Steph would come home early. That would make sense.

Presently someone picked up at the other end and said nothing.

"Hello," he said, trying to sound relaxed and debonair, in case it was his Steph's mother or father.

"Hello!"

"Ah, Randal. How the devil are you?"

"My mum says there isn't a devil."

"Well that goes to show how much she knows."

"Is that Dad?"

"No. It's Inspector Gadget."

Randal made a raspberry noise down the phone.

"What have you been up to? Done anything good yet?"

"No—but guess what? Grandma and Grandpa are taking me to Alton Towers."

"You lucky devil..."

"Mum says there isn't a devil."

"The devil is in the detail."

"Really? Where's the deedale? Is that at Alton Towers? Does that mean I can go and see the devil?"

"Randal? Now listen. Don't put the phone down. Can you call Mum, tell her I'm on the phone and pass her the receiver when she comes by?"

"Mum? Inspector Gadget's on the phone."

Rob heard her footsteps coming down.

"Got them, then?" she asked referring to the bank details, which he read out. "You took your time."

"You know how something's right under your nose but you can't see it?"

"No Rob. I've heard of this idea, but if something is under my nose, that's precisely when I see it."

"Not even if you're a bit hungover?"

"So, I take it that means you've been sloshing it back at your leaving do?"

"I got really drunk—like really, really drunk."

"Well I hope you do have a hangover. It'll serve you right."

"I mean really drunk..."

"Are you trying to tell me something?"

This was the moment for it. He'd rehearsed it—went to a club with people who'd been in the pub where he was having his leaving do. Couldn't even remember where he'd been or how he got home, but he had the wrapper from a condom in his pocket.

"I did something stupid."

"Something stupid?" She remembered about her parents and lowered her voice, "Like go off with one of those women who cluster round you like the Brides of Dracula? 'Linda' and 'Ell' isn't it?"

Oh christ.

He had frozen and dried up. It wasn't going to work over the phone. And he couldn't predict how she would take it, but if she got upset, she might end up telling her parents about it, which would be a nightmare.

I can't, he thought. A colleague—and I stayed all night and fucked her three times.

Three times? They'd probably have made it four or five if he hadn't had to come back to dig out this bloody chequebook. He pictured himself, stiff for Christine and proud of it, lancing her repeatedly. He felt his real cock shifting in his pants as it hardened, and the stirrings of a new resentment.

Anyway, what was going to happen was he would wait until she'd came back. Either he told her then or he didn't tell her at all. But he could decide at leisure. For now, he wouldn't.

"Linda? Yes it was something to do with her. Linda told me I should walk an older member of staff and her friend home as it gets a bit rough round there at night. So I missed my train and I had to walk home."

"Good turns to old ladies? Whatever next, Blob? That's about five miles."

"More like six."

"Well it is if you're staggering all over the pavement like a model of gaseous diffusion. Hope it hurts. But it was good of you to see them home, although I don't see why women should have to have bodyguards to walk the streets."

"It's an imperfect world."

So that was it: he had psyched himself up for nothing. Fuckit. Well, he'd just have to psyche himself up again when she came back. He'd been looking forward to a weekend basically doing nothing, now a weekend doing nothing seemed pretty empty. Oh yes. There was Sunday lunch with Linda, Ell and Carol. That's going to be a barrel of laughs, he thought.

"What's all this about Randal going to Alton Towers?" he said to change the subject.

**********

"Oh. It's you again," Christine observed in a matter-of-fact monotone.

Rob said nothing, but pushed her back into the flat, with his hand inside her skirt, feeling her up all the way to her cunt. He began rubbing it through her panties with his palm, then slid his finger inside them and into her vagina. Her skirt was obscenely and ridiculously tented by this intrusion. It was quite a sober knee length number with box pleats complemented by a v-neck pullover she'd thrown on. But there was nothing underneath the sweater and her nipples were disgracefully visible, bobbing around like buoys in a windy harbour.

"Do close the door," she said. "If we're putting on a show, I want to charge."

Two minutes later she was on top of him. He could feel his buttocks rising from the bed, as their bodies moved with an instinctive sympathy and her rhythm dominated him once more. Her breasts hung like ripe fruit, swaying above him. He brought his hands up to palm them, rubbing the nipples, which stood up like raspberries and felt like little rubber pillars when he brushed them with his forearm. At that moment this ability to fuck instantly seemed to Rob to be worth any amount of other virtues, and they would have been at it even quicker if it wasn't for the Durex.

"God, Rob," she breathed after they had finished, between panting great gulps of air. "If those slags could see me taking your cock and satisfying you like they never will..."

He couldn't think what she was talking about. He was working up to saying something, although he didn't know what.

Not four hours ago he had been lying in the very same bed shooting his load into Christine, but even before he had got home, he was desperate for more. He wasn't sure whether he returned in anger or in desire. But he knew he wanted to use her recklessly. If she was going to turn him into a cheat, then he was going to have his money's worth. What she'd done to him the night before was far from being 'only a game'. It was hooker in a hotel room stuff—entrapment. And he'd fallen for it. Her effortless accommodation of his sleazy antics just now—as if they were perfectly normal—it defeated him. He'd fallen for that too. And whether or not he knew it, he'd been falling for her ever since she started laughing in his face in the grey light of dawn. His gaze passed down her body. Her sweater had joined her skirt on the floor. Christine's breasts were a good handful, not huge, but shapely and without sag. The nipples pointed outwards and upwards like a gun emplacement. It was a disgraceful exhibition, and therefore a glorious one. Rob stared at them. She still had her ankle strapped shoes on, the kind of thing that Steph would dismiss harshly on the grounds of a patriarchal symbolism of restraint—and also just plain tarty. Rob knew that he was delighted to have used a woman who wore such fuck-me shoes. He could already feel that erection was just round the corner.

"I love the way your knickers are dangling round your ankle."

"That's just the way they came."

"Well you still look like a ten bob whore trading your virtue in an alleyway—ow!"

"You deserved that," she observed of the slap she'd just dealt him on the chest. "Anyway, you don't even remember old money, do you?"

"I like old things."

"What sort of old things?"

"You know what sort," he murmured, drawing her head to him in the crook of his elbow. He stared at her in wonder before planting a kiss on her lips. Their tongues slithered gently over one another. The punitive energy seemed to have drained out of him. All he wanted to do was to cuddle her and gaze at her in amazement.

"That was... fucking great."

Did you like my black knickers?"

"Yes. Black is always exciting."

"Is it? Why's that?"

"It suggests danger, transgression, even a touch of evil."

"Evil?"

"Well, white suggests things like wholesomeness, family values, matrimony, fidelity."

"So what do I suggest?"

"Sex, danger, glamour, transgression..."

She exploded into snorts of laughter.

"You do talk some piffle, Rob. You should get out a bit more. I'm a sodding college administrator...What does the wife wear to bed? Some sleazy little number to get you going? Anything err suggesting transgression?"

"Uh, Winceyette pyjamas, ha." Soon, Rob was going to have to think and talk about Steph. He was trying not to for as long as possible. "You're a terrific fuck and... I love that... look you give."

"Winceyette pyjamas? That's a bit of a statement of intent. Or lack of it."

"Yeah. Lack of it, mostly."

"Oh. How was the wife by the way? All lovey dovey?"

"It's not good with us."

"Yes I knew that."

"How?"

"Well why do you think you're here?"

"I don't know. Since last night I don't seem to make sense of anything."

She pinched his cheeks together, squidging his lips and shutting him up.

"Oh fiddle dee dee. You know exactly why you're here. You came here to fuck me and cheat on your wife. Anyway, what's this look I give?"

"In the office, as if you're having to talk to subhumans."

"Quite often I am. I have to protect Roy from... the fools."

"It's utter condescension standing firm in the face of utter mediocrity."

"Ha. I like that."

So did Rob, but there was no point putting off what he needed to say, even if he wasn't sure what it was.

"Christine? She's supposed—Steph's supposed to be coming back tomorrow..."

"So? What's that got to do with me?" she asked, quite matter-of-fact.

"Well I'd-I'd hoped..."

"What does supposed mean?"

At the precise point when he needed all of her to help him draw out his innermost thoughts and feelings, she was casually crushing his hopes with indifferent, uninvolved words.

"Her parents may be going to take my son to a theme park so they may stay longer. But look... we need to talk."

"What about? You weren't doing much talking ten minutes ago. Why do we 'need to talk'? You come bursting in here like Genghis Khan on the rampage, shove your hand up my fanny like the pervert doctor of the gynae ward and now you want counselling? Well just remember you came to me. So I get to ask the questions. What's it about?"

"About last night. I mean, what happened?"

"Well. We're two adults who're quite attractive and we've fancied each other for ages—and it was a very natural thing. And it felt very good. And when you're a professor and you get wheeled onto some TV programme as an expert commentator in a suit and tie, I'll look at you fondly and think about how I shared a night of hot love with you when you were just a boy with long curly hair. Happy?"

He sighed. "No. No I'm not. I was happy for a bit—"

"What's that?" she said abruptly, pointing out into the hall.

She reached for her sweater.

"Which 'that' are you talking about?" He was struggling to hide the desperation that gnawed at his entrails. He felt her drifting away from him, just as he was beginning to realise how deeply attracted to her he was, drifting away from the words he needed to say and hear: passionate words of attachment, even just some nothing that implied that he could see her at least one more time.

She stood up with nothing on but her sweater and briefly went out of the room, her pubic hair showing at the bottom of it.

"I mean this, " she said, returning with a large well packed rucksack and a plastic ruler which was so flexible that its end wobbled. "Have I missed something? Are we having a relationship, and I don't know?"

She pointed at the bag with the ruler. "Well, say something. You planning to move in?"

"Uh, I was hoping to stay tonight."

"Listen, scholar, that was a one night stand. That night has been and gone, and I thought you had too."

"Didn't you think I'd come back?"

"I didn't think about it. I don't think. I've never been paid to."

"Look. I didn't think I was going to get kidnapped and seduced by a scheming nymphomaniac but I did. We can't exactly undo that, so we may as well have our money's worth. I have to go about eleven o'clock tomorrow, but till then I'm all yours."

"Not so fast, buster. I may have company tonight," she returned, effortlessly improvising.

"You mean a man?"

"Yeah. What of it? I'm over sixteen."

"You mean you'd do that with me? And then... some other guy... like within the same twenty four hours?"

"You're catching on, Alphonse. I'm a divorced woman. I've currently got no vows." She shot him a malicious look as she said this word. "So you want me to change my plan for this evening, so you can squeeze in a few more knee tremblers before tomorrow morning?"

"Well not just tomorrow..."

"'Not just tomorrow'? Seriously, what is this all about?" she snorted. "Are you—are you about to make some proposal?"

She stared at him for a moment and then a smile that was not altogether pleasant spread over her face. "Are you about to ask me if I want to have an affair?"