The Promise Pt. 03

The Promise Pt. 03 of 4

Previously: When Rob Cumberland leaves his job at a Further Education college in inner London to take up a lectureship at a university, the last thing he is expecting is for any of his colleagues to make a move on him. Popular and politically correct Rob assumes his safe sex promise to be a measure that also guarantees his fidelity to girlfriend Stephanie, the mother of his child, who is at that moment, out of town. But domineering college administrator Christine Cutler spots a weakness in this assumption, and decides to personally add a carnal postscript to his leaving celebrations, by ensuring he has a supply of condoms, and treating him to a night of casual sex. The ageing, acid tongued social climber loathed by his friends, exploits the weakness to spring an ambush on her youthful colleague. When the scheming bureaucrat succeeds in initiating intercourse through her cunning advances and blackmail tricks, his initial reluctance goes AWOL as he finds that he enjoys sex with her: too much, in fact, to want to stop. So, rather than making good his escape, and owning up when he rings Stephanie, he returns instead to Christine with an erection, for more rubber coated action in her bed. But his sudden proposal of an affair takes both of them by surprise and Christine concocts an excuse for popping out, in order to give herself time to consider how to play this situation to her advantage, and to make a few private phone calls...

Note about Phones: in 1992 in the UK, Caller Display did not exist and cellphone ownership had yet to really take off.

**********

Earlier, on the way to and from her flat to his home, Rob had turned over the matters of the night and he now returned to these thoughts while he waited for Christine to return.

He had felt like the discoverer of a new continent, of something with life transforming nature and opportunities. It bloody might as well be new, it had been so long.

When he left Christine earlier, it was in a mood of high euphoria, full of himself, full of an imbecilic sense of his own virility and full of—

"Christine. Christine."

He kept repeating her name in a nearly noiseless whisper of wonderment, drowned by the din of the underground train. He'd been having sex with Christine. He felt a strong urge to shout this out to the other travellers. He caught a few of them by the eye for a little too long by the undocumented code of the Tube, but their faces spoke of amicable amusement at his breach of protocol.

He could barely believe how he felt about his woman who had stepped out of the dingy shadows of their workplace to take control of his cock, and to open the door to an irresistible torrent of pleasure. He felt warmly towards Christine and he felt that they had parted on good terms, almost tenderly. If two people could bring each other pleasure in this way, then that seemed to him to be, as an outcome, unreservedly good. Somehow, at this point in time, he seemed to be blind to any other assessment of their behaviour. If the world disagreed, it could go and fuck itself.

By the time he had got home however, the world he was seeing was not going to fuck itself: he was back in the real world. He was going to own up and put an end to it then and there and forget all the jollity.

But he hadn't. He hadn't put an end to it; not then and not there. When the moment came to come clean, he realised that it wasn't going to work over the phone. Fuckit. He would have to wait until Steph returned from her parents, so he could do it face to face. But...

But that meant he could now go back.

And he decided that that would be for the best; that it would be for the best if he did go back, to clear things up with Christine, in a grown up, civilised way. He had a kind of picture in his head of them discussing it like adults and agreeing rather nobly that it was best that they didn't see each other again. But in this picture he saw another matter that might crop up: She might want him for a few more of the precious, dwindling hours that remained to them before they had to draw a line under it forever. Like the singer of a song of star crossed love, she might beg him to spend one more night with her. And he might not have the heart to refuse her. But that, would then present another problem: he had arranged to meet his colleagues Linda, Ellen and Carol for Sunday lunch. If he ended up staying the night with Christine, it would mean he would have to go home to wash and change, and then come back into town.

Unless he made up an overnight bag and took it with him.

Of course, he had no expectation or intention of staying the night. but it would be very inconvenient if this contingency actually did arise.

The way things had happened, he had so far said nothing to Stephanie about the events of his weekend, and he was beginning to wonder if he should now. After all, she had said that she didn't want to know about a one night stand as long as he had practised safe sex. So be it, he thought. It would all be history by the time Steph came back from Up North. He didn't stop to consider how far this dispensation of hers was supposed to go. Would it include a night of repeated fornication with a work colleague? A night which spilled over into the next day, as he rushed back to see her and then moved on from it all in a deceitful silence?

But, he told himself, he was returning in good faith to finish whatever had been started with Christine, so he decided that it would be fair enough just to forget about it: let sleeping dogs lie: he would say nothing to her. Why would he do otherwise?

But there was another matter which troubled him: At the back of his mind, a narrative was building in which this cheating was somehow Stephanie's fault. He had been stupid to put his trust in these resolutions to reinforce his good intentions, and to have told all and sundry about them.

But the safe sex promise was Steph's idea, and because of it, he, Rob, had felt that he could guarantee his fidelity. Without these vows and the attendant assumptions, he wouldn't have fallen for Christine's advances. But all the while that she had been achieving his seduction, right up to the point where she was bringing him to the boil with her fingers round his cock, he'd been travelling into her territory and her power in the conviction that there was an emergency brake.

But there was no emergency brake, and he'd shot irresistibly into Christine's cunt and into involvement with her, an involvement whose scope was not yet clear. The fact was, if there was anyone was to blame for this, it was not himself but Steph. He and Christine had only done what comes naturally.

He could hardly not think about Stephanie, but he managed to treat her simply as a problem. He found himself thinking of Steph's legs and he resented them both for their form and their presentation. Steph's legs were made for hiking holidays in outdoor sports trousers, while Christine's elegant stocking clad limbs were made for the dance floor and the bedroom. There had been a time when he couldn't get enough of Steph. Now he was sick of the sight of her. Suddenly, within the space of one day, it was all about Christine.

The orgasmic eruption of the last night and morning seemed to have come out of nowhere. He was in complete denial of the fact that Christine was something that had been happening to him over a period of months. Somehow, he would find that they would coincide in confined spaces like the alcove in the office, where the creaky old photocopier was kept. When Christine joined him to offer her wisdom on clearing out jams and so forth, her cheek would nearly touch his and he would blush furiously. He could often feel and smell her breath, as she spoke in a soft, low, confidential voice. But Rob resisted the impulse to withdraw like a startled rabbit. He was quite sure that it was she who had invaded his space and not vice versa.

Since the beginning of the year, when Christine arrived, he had given up trying to involve Steph in the social life of his workplace and he never mentioned Christine in any of the anecdotes and moans he swapped with her about the nine to five. If he'd thought about it, he might have realised that the very idea of being in the same room with both of them made him feel uncomfortable. Normally loquacious in the staff room, he became uncharacteristically quiet when her name came up in conversation. His feelings for Mrs Cutler had spawned a conspiracy long before he could see it, and it was too far gone to stop now.

For her, it had been entertainment, a hobby to pass the time, through the dull days in that decrepit office, listening to Linda and Ellen chattering about Rob as if he was their exclusive property.

I'm going to have him, she thought one day. Just to piss you off, and redoubled her efforts to get under his skin.

Now she was under it like an obsession. She was everywhere. He tried to recall the feel of her back from memory. It defeated him. He needed to feel the real thing again. Like a man under the spell of a mediaeval enchantress, he was able to overlook wrinkles and a jelly like wobbling of the flesh, and even enjoy them as this spell redefined female beauty for him.

He couldn't exactly say what it was but sex with her was much more exciting than it had ever been with Steph—and something he could not ignore was that part of that was that there was something cruel about Christine.

He found it inexpressibly exciting to be with someone who had simply taken him and used him for her pleasure. With Stephanie, sex had always seemed to be some health promoting mens sana kind of thing like doing yoga, rather than the expression of an uncontrollable urge. It wasn't something that could be analysed as movements of bodily parts. With Christine, he felt as if they were up to something unspeakable, something that merited punishment, something risky and exciting.

While he was returning on the train, images of her flooded his head. His reasons for making this journey, to straighten things out and part from her on good terms—he started to forget all about that, and a mixture of desire and resentment started to grow in him as he approached his destination.

As it built to a crescendo, he pictured her physically leading him by his rubber coated cock and introducing it into her vagina, the labia parting as she forced herself onto him, and crammed his buttocks towards her. And then he was moving inside her and he didn't want to stop. All the while the voice in his head kept saying, I can fuck her, I can fuck her, and the images played, round and round, obsessively on repeat, until he raced up the stairs to her flat, and burst through the front door and started manhandling her.

**********

Suddenly, it opened again and there was bustle in the hall, the sound of voices, real rather than remembered, coming in from the stairwell. He heard her talking to a neighbour, and then the sound of the door closing.

"I've paid my debts. I'm all yours now," Christine announced, as she came through the door. How's the wife? Did you say?"

"I told you It's not good."

"I know. I always knew that. That's why, come your leaving do, I said to myself, 'He's up for it. He just doesn't know it yet. One little push and he's going to fall like a sack of shit straight into someone's bed: mine'." She said this nastily with a cold, distant look on her face. "So she's still away? And you need some more action, eh? No one asked you, did they?"

"I had to come back. I can't just leave it like that—"

"Why not? I have."

"I keep thinking about you and what we did. All the time—all the bloody time. I don't think I have a choice about it."

She smiled. "Well that really is remarkably candid. But after all, it was you that came to me, so you ought to be. Remember that. This time, you came to me."

"It's not not the same since you... since last night. I'm not the same."

"You think that was what did it? The sex?" she said.

"It wasn't only that, was it?"

"Why? Do you think that was the real you when you were making love to me?" There was a look of cold amusement on her face. "And the real me? Maybe it was... But listen, have you said anything about it to your wife?"

"Like what?"

"Like about us—duh?"

"Us?" As he heard himself say this word, he felt his heart race.

Us. There was an 'us'?

Christine suddenly walked over to him and sat down in a swift, flowing movement. She gave him a long kiss on the lips with plenty of tongue action and dragged her finger over his chest. When she pulled away, her hands clasped his head and her blue eyes seemed to sparkle. "Yes. Us, Rob. Did you say anything about us?"

"No... not yet..."

"What do you mean 'not yet'?"

"Well, do you think I ought to?"

She tilted her head to quite an angle, rolled her eyes, and gave him a look as if he was slightly batty. "Why are you asking me that?"

"I want to know what you think."

"Yeah? Well what I think is this: If you want to tell her, don't ask to use my phone. And if you go out to make the call, don't bother coming back."

"Oh..."

"'Oh'? Oh listen, Einstein." She was speaking quite fast and staccato. "You can't confess to your crimes and then go and start an affair. I'd have thought someone with your brains would be able to work that out. Secondly, she says she'll turn a blind eye to a drunk fuck in a club, if you use a Durex. So how does that work if you repeatedly screw a work colleague, deliberately lie to her—your 'partner'—about it, and come back next day to carry on where you left off?"

"Uh, I-I don't know."

"I do. She'll think you've been having an affair with that 'work colleague' for months and lying to her for months. She'll never trust you again and she might come and cause trouble for me at the college. You may be getting away from that dump but I've got to grin and bear it because, sad to say, it's the best job I've had in my life so far, and I'm not planning to spoil it just when I've got feet on solid ground."

"I, err, sorry... I hadn't thought about that."

"Yes. Well she won't cause trouble for you at the university, but you know what? That might actually be worse."

"Why would it be worse?"

"Because she has to support you in your career by keeping her mouth shut and she's the one who thought she was going to get the lecturer's job, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"She—will—hate you... Listen, I'm going to make this very simple for you: You don't want to tell her do you? So don't tell her. It's as simple ans straightforward as that."

"Wow."

"That's what you want me to say isn't it? Plus she told you you could do it didn't she? As long as you used protection and kept it to yourself?"

"Well sort of... I don't think she had four times in mind, mind you. But I wouldn't have done it without a condom."

"Of course you wouldn't. Lucky I happened to have some, eh?"

She started to slide down the couch and her mouth hovered near his.

"Rob, Rob, Rob... we're not terrorists. We haven't done anything wrong, have we?" She said this planting some little moist kisses on his lips. At the same time her hand infiltrated his shirt undoing the buttons again and probing his resolution with her caresses.

"I... guess not. Like you said, she said I could."

"Plus the four times bit might be another reason not to tell her," she said, laughing softly in his ear. "I've got a lot more than four times in mind, though."

"Right. Well as far as Steph's concerned, I was at home last night."

A huge wave of relief seemed to surge over his body as he committed himself to the the decision.

"Good, good. Let's keep it that way," said Christine. "I don't want you to tell that woman anything. Careless talk costs lives, as my mum used to say."

There was a wordless moment where Rob was looking at the landscape of a changed world and taking stock of it. He had just let Christine decide something that was potentially enormous and life changing. They were in something together now, in a conspiracy, thrown into sudden intimacy. It was she, and not Steph, who was the trustee of his confidences now.

She seemed amazingly beautiful to him in this moment, and her eyes seemed to gleam with the promise of unlimited sex in unending affection. He had a sense of renewed virility in the swelling in his lap and a giddy feeling that love might be on its way.

**********

The telephone started jingling loudly in the hall.

Oh dear..." She shot up and tripped out to it, all light footed. "Oh hi," she breathed languorously. "Yes... Well. I'll probably be lying around here... Yes... A friend from work... I said probably... he wants some advice... ha ha."

She laughed unpleasantly. "Well lying around in my negligee like Joan Collins, but you know who rang earlier and I may have to go out. I'll ring you in a bit."

She came back into the living room with a smug smile.

"Are you going somewhere?" He couldn't contain himself.

"Maybe, but it's not really any of your business. Which brings me neatly to whatever it is that is your business," she inclined her head with a question. "You came to me. What are you bringing me?"

"What do you want?"

"Robert, I'm not saying I won't take you seriously, but... if you really want an affair, you've got to make me a good offer. You need to add something to my life, a bit of sparkle, a bit of romance. Then I want you to make time for me. I want a regular slot in your life. I want regular sex. I don't want to be the old bag you sneak off to fuck for an hour every couple of months when your balls are aching. I want you to take me out. I want you to buy me things—not big things. I want to meet other people with you—even if you have to find people who aren't going to meet your wife or who'll keep quiet about it. You're a cheat now. You'd better start thinking like one. I'm sure a little scholar like you can sort that one out once you decide to apply yourself. I suppose you could say I want turf."

"You mean like... 'territory'?"

"Yes."

"Well, look, would going out to the pub somewhere round here be a start?"

"Yes. As it happens, it would—not my local though. I'm not ready for that. We'll go to the Bear, that's an occasional for me. And when you go to the university, you can sneak me into some of their functions and introduce me to some of your colleagues—you're looking absolutely horrified. I'm an old colleague—not a lie. And she won't go for the same reason that you wouldn't—too boring for the great intellectuals. But I'm so shallow, I won't get bored. Don't be so horrified. You're going to have to learn to juggle and think on your feet now if you're having an affair."

"You're the first, Christine. You know that?"

"Oh don't exaggerate. Your lad? He should be your numero uno, after all you've told me. But as regards your wife, you better had put me first. I've got no interest in her. To me, she's just some woman who can't keep you satisfied in bed."