The Promise Pt. 03

"Oh yeah? And who's the guy who spent months hanging around the office eyeing up my legs? Huh? Guys who like that kind of look? I call them perverts. You'd have liked to fuck me in my office gear wouldn't you? You're not going to try to deny it, are you? Pervert."

"Not if it's on offer. Is it?"

"Well... it could be. I need a bit of honesty from you though..."

"What sort of honesty?"

"Admit you don't respect her, admit you propositioned me, admit you've lied to her. At least be honest to me. If you don't respect her, why should I?"

"It's not about disrespect, it's more 'what you don't know can't hurt you'."

"Is that what it is?" she sniffed in that matter of fact way of hers. "I thought it was cheating."

"Well if it's cheating, it's you that made me."

"Bosh," she said and he felt her pelvis rocking back and forth. "Do you admit it?"

It was true that he had asked her something about rear entry. Maybe he had gone a bit far in that setting and those circumstances... But he said nothing. He felt the tidal motions of Christine's rear. She was bucking now and he felt his semi-erect penis bouncing against her panties.

"Look. I'm going to make it easy for you. Who do you like more, her or me?"

"You know."

"Well say it."

"I like you more... I... don't love her anymore."

"You don't? That's why you talked like that—disrespectfully."

"I don't think I did. I dunno. Maybe I did.."

"So you don't respect her?"

He paused.

"I guess not. I'm not proud of it though," he said after a while. "Does it matter?"

"Not to me."

"That's what I meant."

He felt her arms move as she wiggled her way backwards. She stood and then crouched and took hold of his cock, and he felt her breath on it. Then he felt the tip of her tongue teasing his balls. He gasped slightly as she took one of them into her mouth.

"Take the scarf off," she said.

"Why?"

She made snarling sounds as she continued to lick his balls, looking up at him with derision while he removed the blindfold. Then she stood to show her back to him.

"Undo me," she said.

His hands fell on her shoulders. When he had undone the clasp, her hands crossed over above her head. They drew her bra off her and flung it to one side in a smooth, smart movement which signalled that sex was imminent. He kissed her between her shoulder blades and massaged her back gently with his thumbs.

His hands roamed round her and fastened on her breasts, stirring them round. They seemed to burst into life under his hands, as the nipples started to harden.

"Oh that's right, Rob. That's so right, "she breathed. "You're making me wet, you wicked man."

"Better help me off with these then," she added, tugging at her knickers and jigging her hips from side to side so that her bottom pushed against him and his penis bobbed around.

He slid her knickers down and crouched to bring them to the floor, kissing her bottom as he passed. She stepped out of them. There was a slight sense of urgency, as if they were crew on an airliner, who have just got a slot for a much delayed takeoff.

She turned and dropped onto her knees to face him and pumped his cock a few times, gesturing at him with the tip of her tongue. She stared up at him with dull fish eyes and a contemptuous expression as her wrist flexed dismissively. She pushed her head between his knees.

"Can't be lovey dovey all the time," she said harshly, as her lips swivelled back and forth over the head of his penis to an accompaniment of snarling and slurping noises. Then, in a red blur, her lips slid down it like a monkey on a stick and she went to work on him, eyes blazing with the triumph of conquest, and her cheeks hollowed by suction.

"She doesn't do this, does she?" she hissed after a while, licking his cock in her fist like an ice cream cone.

"Well, not much lately..."

"'Not much lately'?," she said with contempt. "What does she do? Scrabble? But speaking of her..."

She tore open a Durex and started to masturbate him to make him hard. He gazed at the withered skin on those world worn hands as they worked his cock, the swift, nimble fingers unrolling the rubber. She was chuckling at something.

"What's so funny?"

"You, when I was doing this last night, and you knew it was really going to happen. Half of you was gagging for it and the other half was horrified because you knew you were going to cheat on that stupid bitch. I ought to feel grateful to her for making it so fucking easy."

"You didn't just happen to have a load of Durex 'lying around', did you?"

"What do you think?" she said, tilting her head and rolling her eyes. "But anyway, she said it was okay to have a one nighter. Didn't she? That was jolly decent of her to let you play away and find out how much better you like it, doing it with her enemy."

"Enemy? You're not—"

"I'm not her enemy? Get real, Einstein. I'm not likely to go clubbing with her am I? Shall I ring her up and tell her you need permission to wear a blindfold in a sex game?"

There were two new ideas to which Rob was becoming increasingly susceptible. Firstly, he had started to believe that Stephanie was to blame for his exposure to a temptation that he proved to be unable to resist; secondly, that anything or anyone who got in the way of his affair with Christine was simply evil—and that included Steph. After the previous night, he had lost patience with the idea that the decline of their sex life into an arid desert was in part his responsibility.

"So is she?"

"Is she what?"

"Duh. Frigid, of course."

"Does that actually mean anything?

Christine poked him "Is she?"

"Well you could say things haven't been too great between us lately."

"You don't say..."

Presently, she picked up the scarf and drew it over his torso and his arms. It seemed to him to trail over his body like cirrus clouds over an empty sky. She trailed it across his face and looped it round his neck and pulled him forward and dropped a kiss on his lips. "Feel that—smooth as silk," she whispered. "Smooth as silk."

He took it from her and began tying it round his head.

"Let me," she said as he struggled with the knot. She went behind him and pulled it tight and her hands started to roam.

"I told you you wouldn't refuse me again. But trust me. You'll like it. "

He relaxed under the play of her hands on his body and pictured the creased, withered skin. That might have put him off at one time but now he had given in to a different way of looking and it excited him to think of them; because it excited him to be excited by them, to have travelled so far in such a short time in this adjustment of loyalties.

He pictured her eyes, fierce with her mastery of his cock and her triumph over her unseen adversary. For some reason, he found this idea enormously exciting, the fact that he and Christine were together in a conspiracy against Stephanie. He was in a sleazebag world of vice and unrighteous pleasure, from which he could not easily turn back.

But he didn't want to.

The truth was that there was no real significance to this playing blindfold, but he was now powerfully aroused by a sense of having crossed another line. When her arms enfolded him like some carnivorous plant, he felt a desire to give himself more and more completely to her. With Christine, tumescence was a certainty, like the movement of an invincible army. He exulted in his seduction, resenting the sterile grip which had held him trapped for so long.

He felt her come forward from behind him.

"Put your hands round my waist."

As he did so he felt her thrusting back and grinding, her generous arse filling his groin while his cock felt as stiff as a steel bar. He heard the frame of her bed creaking. She must be bent over with her arms on the footboard. She took him in hand, literally, guiding him in, into the soft wet warmth of her..

"How does that feel?"

"Good," he said as she pushed back against him. "Very good."

"Fuck me hard, Rob. Fuck me hard," she whispered breathlessly. "Go deep."

The improper words had born fruit: He was mounting Christine, entering her from behind.

"It can't be lovey dovey all the time, darling," she whispered.

She was right—he had come to her. He had come to cheat on Steph and to betray her, and he knew that the closer he got to orgasm, and the harder he got, the more he would revel in the betrayal that was going to be committed with every stroke of his cock.

**********

"Worst job I've ever had? Let me see now... No, I don't think I'm going to let you in on that. You'll have to make do with this one: playing housewife for a fly-pitcher on Oxford Street."

"For a what?" Rob said. Most of the time, he would have considered the Bear to be a little bit quiet for a night out. It was not exactly roaring when Christine and he went there on Saturday evening, after several hours in bed and an improvised dinner based around some fish suppers from the local chip shop. There were quite a few other couples dispersed at tables as well as drinkers at the bar, but not exactly a crowd and all of them too far away to overhear their conversation.

"Fly-pitcher—unlicensed street trader. If you see guys flogging goods on Oxford Street, they're illegal and the Old Bill will be down on them like a ton of bricks. "So they've got look outs posted down the block either side and—Feep!" She put her fingers in her mouth to signal a raucous whistle. They 'll be out of it like that, if the constabulary are on their way. You get the goods off there as quick as you can—off the pavement, even into a doorway that's not in use."

Christine was wearing a white blouse with frills on it and a navy coloured blazer, from her work wardrobe with tailored navy trousers. She had flat shoes on, one of them nonchalantly tucked over a knee. This meant she wasn't towering over Rob quite so much.

"What's this about being a housewife?"

"I was a plant. So you've got a guy who's selling perfume—knock off stuff or counterfeit goods—on the street. But no one's stopping, because no one's going to be the first one. But after a couple of minutes this nice middle aged housewife comes along—"

"You don't look middle aged now, let alone whenever it was."

"You'd be surprised what having a scarf tied under your chin does—like the Queen... hides your face—hides your age, a frumpy suit from a Women's Institute jumble sale, so you look like some old dear who's come up to London from Croydon or some dump like that. She comes along and she's drinking in everything he's saying, as if he's John the Baptist, and doing her bit to drum up a crowd, talking to people who slow down, giving the men the eye and repeating what he's saying and then after they've had his pitch for a few minutes, she buys one or two. Get the picture?"

"Like a shill in a Raymond Chandler story?"

"Probably. Jackie Collins is mostly my kind of bedtime reading, I'll have to confess."

"Did you ever wonder about the rights and wrongs of it?"

"If people smell the goods and they can't tell the difference between Chanel and pee water—what was it you said? 'What you don't know can't hurt you'?"

"I presume some of these bottles ended up gifted to ladies who could?"

"Not really. Most of it was genuine stolen goods. Don't look so shocked"—she patted his hand—"I didn't kill anybody. My only crime was looking like a hag."

"Did you wear stockings?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact I did."

"So you were the honey in the trap?"

"I think you're letting yourself get a bit excited with this one. It wasn't the 'Thomas Crown Affair'—''Dixon of Dock Green', more like."

Rob smiled. His head was full of images of their bodies heaving over her bed, as he tussled with her, his hands on her hips, steering her like a piece of livestock while her breasts swung back and forth like great heavy bells and she goaded him to push harder.

"So what do you think of it so far?"

"Of what?"

"Our date? How would you say it's going?"

"I think it's going very well."

"I'm as keen on being romanced as the next girl... but Rob?"

"Yes?"

"Can you move your hand away from my groin when we're out in public, darling? That's better. I mean, you don't want to get us thrown out of this high class establishment, do you?"

Rob was keen to talk past this rebuff. "You know something? You needed a bit of help in this Romance."

"How's that?"

"Well, it was Linda who nominated me to be gentleman protector for you and Sam last Friday."

"Did she? Huh. Probably so you could spy on me."

"Yes. But what would have happened if she hadn't?"

Christine gave him a look of rather superior amusement. "What would have happened is that you'd have ended up in my bed, screwing the arse off me. I'd have thought of something. I'm certainly not going to feel indebted to that great lump, Rob. Do you?"

"Fat bitch Linda? I can't stand her. I've gone off her since you told me about her trying to squeeze you out of your livelihood. I can see through the jolly auntie act now. And there ought to be a law preventing a grown woman from wearing Kickers."

"Yes there should be, shouldn't there?" she giggled as if they were both terribly clever to see how ridiculous she was, this tubby colleague of theirs. They seemed both to be terribly clever now, as they towered above pathetic specimens like Linda. Rob moved closer to her, the bearer of a cunning plan.

" Wait... you'll like this one. You know this staff party? So I'm going to blank them, yes?"

"You' better had do."

"But I'm going to do something else—I'm going to walk you home."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll walk you home from the Mitre—like I did at the last one."

"Oh... I'm not sure about that..."

"Oh, you will be. At the end, I'll say to Linda 'I've got to see Christine home.' And then I'll say: 'Remember, it was you that fixed her up with me before?'" in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of smile."

"You mean," she said in a voice like treacle, "she'll know you ended up in my bed, and that she's the stupid bitch who sent you there to pleasure me?"

"I think you've captured the essence of it there."

"Thirsty?" she said picking up his empty beer glass.

"I'll get them in," he protested.

"Because I'm a mere female? It's my turn. I think I can deal with buying a couple of drinks, Rob."

She stood and walked up to the bar, with a sway in her gait. He gazed at her receding back with the fondness of possession, and a disbelieving smile grew on his face, as he pictured her in bed with him afterwards.

"What are you doing?" he had said as they lay there and she started writing on his forearm with a pen she'd picked up. He had wanted to kiss her and feel her arse again, but he watched as the word Christine appeared there. Then it turned into I fucked Christine. He took the pen off her and added And I'd like to do it again.

She chuckled gently and drew a heart shape on his upper arm, pierced through by an arrow, and they wrote 'Rob' and 'Christine' inside it.

"And if there was another name there, I'd rub it out and write over it." She spat this out with vicious emphasis.

"Rob? If she hadn't made you swear that ridiculous vow, you wouldn't have put yourself about in the same way, would you? I mean you might have thought twice about coming up here, to drink gin with a divorcee at midnight, might you not?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I haven't thought about it."

"She said it was okay to have a one nighter. So. It's actually her fault—Frigid Brigid—it's her own fault that you cheated on her."

He suppressed a slight intake of breath. "Frigid Brigid?"

"Don't feel bad about her," she said. "We haven't done anything wrong darling. We've observed safe sex procedures scrupulously, haven't we?"

"That was such a stupid vow—"

"From a stupid cow," she said finishing his sentence for him.

"Frigid Brigid—the stupid cow with the stupid vow." A characteristic smirk began to form on his face. They started to giggle, like kids smoking behind the bike sheds, sharing the delights of the stolen moment.

Whatever he felt for Christine had grown into something like love: only stronger. He was crazy about her. There was no one party to this, to warn him and put a check on his fancies. So he wasn't going to let a minor detail like her being a complete bitch get in the way of his enjoying sex with her as much as possible for however long it could last. The fact that she was a hate figure to quite a large number of his ex-colleagues, only made her seem sexy and dangerous.

While Christine was up at the bar, someone came in from outside, a bestubbled red headed figure, who scanned the room briefly before suddenly exploding into recognition.

"Well, well, Rob," he said, padding over quite quickly. "It's been a fucking age. Didn't expect to bump into you down here. Actually... didn't expect to bump into you ever, more's the pity."

"I was visiting Christine," said Rob as she returned with the drinks.

"You are of these parts then Christine?"

"Well I tried to get away. But the pull was too strong," she said, resuming her seat.

"Still play tennis Rob? Should have a game some time for old time's sake. Keep me out of here for a bit?"

"I'd like to. Got a lot on though. I've got a lecturing job, I mean a proper lecturing job."

"Yes. Well I'm still trying to qualify."

"As a quantity surveyor?"

He nodded gravely.

"How is Stephanie these days? I haven't seen her since that regrettable incident in your back garden."

"You mean when she caught you pissing in her heliotropes?"

"Mr uhh?" said Christine in the high discord of the office despot.

"Rod."

"Yes, Mr Rod. If you did that in mine, I'd cut your balls off with a Sabatier; not that I've got a garden anymore, but it's the principle of the thing. And Mr Rod?"

"Yes milady?"

"I may not have a garden anymore but I've still got my knives."

Rod offered her his hand: "Now that I can respect, Christine. That is clean play, not all that guilt tripping, and hissing about 'inappropriate behaviour' and making out that I might be a pervert because the kid saw me taking a slash. Are you his mistress?"

"Yes," said Rob with some force. "She's my mistress. So show her some respect."

"I just did," said Rod and lifted her hand to kiss it. "Fair lady, I swear fealty to thee and ever in unending service, the shelter of Sir Rod and his lance."