Addicted (28 page)

‘Why not? Don’t you like me using your cock like this?’

‘I don’t like it. I
love
it. Oh, God, I love it – especially when you use that word.’

‘Which one?’

‘“Use”. Yeah, yeah. Use my cock to get yourself off.’

‘Like this?’

‘Ah, yeah, like that.’

‘Mmmm, you feel so good. You’re so thick and solid inside me. I barely have to do anything to get myself close.’

He’s got his eyes shut again now, but in this really delicious way. It’s like he’s staring off to one side, sightlessly. Like he can see something that I can’t, just hidden from view. And I think I know what it is too.

It’s his orgasm. He’s going to come, I think, and is using every bit of effort he has to stop that happening – though in truth he really doesn’t have to any more. I almost pushed myself over with that last little speech, and seeing him straining like this just shoves me that last few inches. I rock against him once, twice, three more times, and that’s all it takes.

‘Oh, oh, I’m coming, oh, yeah, I’m coming,’ I moan, but only because I can’t manage any more. I really want to do justice to the sudden clenching burst of pleasure that goes through me, but all I can get out are those four simple words, stuttered and repeated in a rough sort of litany. The rest is all jammed up by the sheer tension of my orgasm, so fierce it feels like shoving more than anything else.

My pussy spasms around his cock, and I can feel how wet I’m making him. How hard I’m digging my nails into his sides, as I try to ride this out. I’ve never come so hard in my life, and it’s an ordeal just to get through it. To feel all of it, and not turn away. To keep working myself on him, even though I desperately want to stop.

I have to stop, I think.

But I’m glad I don’t. And I’m glad that I’m half-sane enough to see him, the second he gives in, too. Because giving in is really the term for it. He doesn’t ease into his orgasm in a polite sort of way – he struggles and strains until the very last second, then simply abandons himself. He lets go of everything that holds him back, and pours all of his energy into surrender.

And it’s a sight to see. His hands go to my hips, as though he can’t bear to be apart from me a moment longer – and his body, oh, God, his body. It practically
ripples
with pleasure. I can almost see his orgasm happening beneath his skin, and I can definitely hear it in his voice.

He doesn’t make a lowdown, bestial sort of noise, the way I expect. His cries go all breathless, and high, and sort of not like him at all. And yet this
is
like him. This is all of him, right down to the expression on his face.

It’s one I don’t recognise at first. I don’t think he’s ever quite given me one like it before. But once he has, I know it for what it is. I love it for being what it is:

Vulnerability.

I wake up just as dawn is creeping its way into his bedroom, to make its way over the folds of that ridiculous shower curtain. Only it doesn’t look so ridiculous when it’s bathed in that light. I can see the shapes and shadows of his furniture through the plastic, and each one is framed by golds and reds and other autumnal colours.

And when I turn toward his little narrow window, that light looks even lovelier. It winks like fireflies between the rooftops – the ones that stretch away from his apartment for ever and ever. I could almost believe I’m in some other city when I see it like this.

And I’m happy to see it like this for a long, long time. I don’t even want to get out of his bed, despite the smell of sex all over the sheets, and the evidence of last night’s meal hot on its heels. We had Chinese takeaway, and there’s something that looks suspiciously like a spring roll just peeking out from underneath his pillow. A carton of chow mein is still on his bedside table, its contents spilling over the sides in a noodly waterfall.

We’ve made a mess. A really big mess.

But I couldn’t care less. In fact, I can’t keep the grin off my face when I see the havoc we wrought. I’m no longer Kit Connor, cautious librarian. I’m Kit Connor, destroyer of worlds. I raised my mighty fists and clobbered my own reality into smithereens, and now I have to live amongst the remains.

And I’m so, so happy about that. I’ve been given a second chance, I think. A second chance to be better, to be more daring, to take all the things I never thought I could have. I’m the me I always wanted to be, now, and for a second I’m so grateful for this that the impact of it blindsides me.

I lie in his rubbish-filled bed, breathless with it.

Then immediately want to thank him for this incredible bounty. It’s largely down to him, after all. He didn’t make my book more real – he made
me
more real. I was two-dimensional until I met him. I was a cliché of a librarian, frozen in my own fear for ever. And he actually held out a hand, and helped render all my facets. He filled in my form and popped out my corners, and let me run around on more planes than one.

He’s a miracle worker, and I need to tell him that. I need to tell him that I’m no longer afraid to tell him anything, which is in itself an achievement. I’ve never not been afraid to tell someone anything in my entire life, but somehow I’m OK to do this with him. I even call out his name excitedly – like a kid who’s just realised it’s Christmas morning, and could you come down now and let me open my presents?

Only he’s not there to answer. He’s not in the kitchen and he’s not in the bathroom, and when I suspect the wardrobe and quite suddenly wrench it open, he’s not in there either. I’m actually contemplating looking under the bed or maybe in a kitchen cupboard – such is his reputation in tomfoolery – when he calls down to me.

Because naturally he’s in the one place that’s practically designed to give me a heart attack. I actually jolt to hear his voice coming out of the ceiling, and shoot a darting look at the corners of his apartment – as though he’s going to be crouched up there, like Spiderman.

I wouldn’t put it past him, to be honest. He’s definitely the type to buy suckers for his fingers and toes off some dubious site on the internet, just so he can play an alarming game of sudden superhero with me.

And I can’t fault him for that. In truth, I’m almost disappointed that this isn’t the case. After a minute of nervous checking for webslingers, I find the source of him. There’s a little sort of … attic slot in his ceiling just over his rickety bookcase, and he’s on the other side of it. Only the other side of it isn’t an attic at all. I can see that as soon as I stand beneath him, looking at the actual sky on either side of his shoulders.

Suddenly, the draught I felt while in bed makes a lot of sense.

Even if nothing else does.

‘Are you allowed to be up there? I really don’t think you should be going through holes in your ceiling to the outside. Unless that’s the mystical portal to Narnia, in which case – give me a hand.’

‘It’s definitely not Narnia up here. I think a bird died inside this chimney.’

‘There’s a chimney?’

‘It may not be a chimney. I dunno. It’s some kind of steam-venting device.’

‘So really it’s more like
Bladerunner
up there.’

‘It’s definitely a lot like
Bladerunner.
Except … rubbish.’

‘Stop doing my accent.’

‘I’ll stop doing it when you come up. Are you coming up?’

‘Just answer me this one question before I do: are you sitting on something slanting or something flat?’

‘It’s like a cliff face up here. I’ve attached myself to the dead-bird chimney with a rope, otherwise I’d just glide right off.’

‘You liar.’

‘You’re the one asking me if the roof is flat! Of course it’s flat. You’ve seen my building from the outside, for God’s sake. Get up here!’

He says that last bit while reaching a hand down to me, which suddenly seems a bit punier than it did before. Usually I think of him in beefy, burly sorts of terms, but of course that all changes once he’s offering to haul me through a hole. I mean, he can’t
really
think that he’s going to get me up there like that. Not even after I’ve stood on the rickety bookshelf, and am a good deal closer to him and his minuscule arm.

I still can’t see him doing it.

And then he totally goes and does it anyway. Of course he does. I don’t even know why I doubted him. He could probably hurl me like a javelin if the need ever arose, so heaving me up through a hole poses no problems whatsoever. He just loops his arm around my waist and hoists me skyward, while I cling to him like a little monkey.

Though the most ridiculous thing about it is how much I enjoy being his little monkey. I like that he could possibly hurl me like a javelin. For a second I just sit where he’s plonked me – on the edge of the hole – imagining a whole Olympics where he might get to exhibit this talent. He could wear those little Lycra shorts and powder his palms before he handled me, and then –

‘Where’ve you wandered off to this time?’

I at least have the decency to look sheepish.

‘You hurling me at a fantasy Olympics.’

‘Interesting. Am I winning?’

‘I’m pretty sure you get the gold.’

He does a little fist pump, the second I say it. A slow one, though, this time. A really considered and gracious one – as though he actually did just triumph at some imaginary sporting event. And I’ll admit, I kind of love him more for that. I love him for having seventeen different types of fist pump, and for employing them so liberally that I’m kind of starting to understand them all now.

I can read him by his jockish gestures.

And by other things too.

He’s got a beer, for a start – which probably isn’t that good a sign, at six o’clock on a Saturday morning. It’s probably not a good sign that he’s even up here, or that he has a folding chair on this tiny expanse of roof for the express purpose of sitting and staring moodily off at the rising sun.

Because that’s what it kind of looks like from where I’m sitting. And it doesn’t look any different when I stand up, gingerly, and make my way over to him. I sit down next to him on the little ledge around the probably dead-pigeon-holding heating device, but once I’m up close he kind of … bristles. He’s not laughing any more and he’s not fist pumping, and it’d be clear to just about anyone that he’s unsettled.

Except for me, in all the places that I don’t want it to be. I don’t want him to be unsettled, because unsettled only means one thing. He regrets the ‘I love you’. He’s now deeply unsure about the time we’re spending together. Last night we grew too close, and this is going to be his speech on how and why we should separate for a while.

It’s about the vulnerability, I think, though the weird thing is … he looks even
more
vulnerable right now. He’s sort of fiddling and peeling off the label on his bottle of beer, instead of drinking it. And he’s not really talking. He’s not even joking about the tent I make of his massive T-shirt around my knees – even though the move is designed to pull a comment out of him.

He should be saying something like
I can’t wait to wear that thing again. You’ve given it a set of knee-boobs!
Only he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t talk for so long that I get nervous, and start making small talk about the most excruciating things.

‘Did you see that thing on the news about monkeys?’ I ask, even though there must be twenty different topics of more importance floating around between us. And I think I can say with some confidence that none of them are about monkeys. They’re not even about his place of work – though that’s what I try next.

‘I bet the penguins never steal your shoes, huh?’

‘Is that what the monkeys did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And I’m guessing you like that.’

‘You know I like anything to do with feet.’

‘I do know that.’

‘And animals grabbing things.’

‘I knew that too. Sadly, however, penguins lack the opposable thumbs to complete the task.’ He pauses to take a drink, which sounds like a casual sort of thing. In practice, however, it’s much grimmer. It looks a lot like Dutch courage for the big gut punch, I reckon, so it’s kind of an anticlimax when he just finishes it off with this: ‘Plenty of dumb stuff happens, though.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ I tell him, though I swear I only do it because it seems like the most casual, non-committal, encouraging sort of thing I could say. I really don’t expect it to have the effect it does, which is to simply sink him further into this weirdly depressed mire.

‘Yeah, it’s fun all right. Stupid, useless fun.’

‘Are you sure? Because working at Ocean World sounds awfully cool to me.’

‘As cool as being a millionaire playboy?’

I’m kind of getting the drift of what he’s driving at here, though he doesn’t sound half as bitter as his words might suggest. There’s something quite dark about them, but his tone remains almost light … like he’s half-amused by whatever predicament he imagines he’s in, and half sort of despairing about it.

Either way, however, I’m not about to let him continue with this line of thought.

‘Is that what you think I want?’

‘That’s what I know you want.’

‘Yeah. Because millionaire playboys are so awesome in reality. They absolutely don’t murder the nanny or gamble away their company’s wealth or accidentally crash their yachts into someone’s house.’

He laughs at that, but I can see he’s still uncomfortable. He keeps making a weird circle with his left shoulder, like he’s gearing up to punch something that isn’t there. Some imaginary playboy perhaps, despite how little I actually care about that sort of thing.

He needs to know how little I care about that sort of thing.

‘You know, when I came up here I was kind of worried you’d changed your mind about loving me. Not that you were stupidly worried about whether or not you’re a millionaire playboy. So really, I’ve got to ask: when are you going to stop panicking about whether or not you’re what I want? When are you going to realise that I’m just massively grateful that you’re
you
? I don’t care if you’re rich or not, or don’t want to be some perfect Master all the time.’