Red Grow the Roses (7 page)

‘Richard! I'm off!'

Wrapping the black towel about my hips, I exit the bathroom. In the hallway Penny is making last-minute adjustments to her make-up in front of the narrow wall mirror. ‘How do I look?' she asks as I approach.

She looks great. She always looks great. Even in her winter clothes she's sexy: she's wearing burning red lipstick and a trenchcoat number that just screams of 40s repression and daring, and patterned stockings under that. Well, they might be tights but I can't help seeing them as stockings. I embrace her from behind, my cock pressing with incorrigible hope into her through layers of towel and clothing. ‘You look lovely.'

Penny sighs slightly. ‘Save it for later, tiger. I've got a train to catch.' It might be a weekend but she's got an exhibition to attend and a stall to run.

I'll be quick, I want to tell her, but I know better than to argue. It would just upset her schedule. I content myself with a goodbye grope and kiss before seeing her off and locking the front door. Then I look in the mirror, shaking my head at myself with blokish sympathy. I can see the bulge Mr Dick is making under the towel.

I need a wank. I mean I
really
need a wank. It makes me feel irritable and bold. I drop the towel on the laminate beech floorboards and strum my cock with slow, defiant strokes.

You going to show up then, ghost-girl?

Nothing stirs in the reflection behind me. Of course not. It's broad daylight and I'm safe in my own home. I begin to stroke in earnest. God, this is good. My cock is growing stiff and straight and tall, pointing at the glass. My balls are bunching to a fat mass like a fist. I put my hand on the wall and rise up on my toes a little, enjoying the clench of muscles that seems to focus my whole body's attention at my groin. My eyes are open but I'm not really seeing. Instead I picture Ruth, the grumpy clerical secretary at work. I imagine her walking around as we sit in a focus-group circle, circulating the handouts. She always wears her blonde hair in a chignon and a skirt that is tight on her big thighs: in my fantasy she's wearing seamed stockings too. She gets to my place, walking inside the circle of chairs, and as she turns from me I stick my foot out and trip her up. Down she goes on her hands and knees, files scattered everywhere, her head ending up nearly in my lap. She's so surprised she doesn't even get angry; she just stares at me with her eyes wide and her mouth set in a luscious O. I take advantage of the moment to whip out my thick cock and stuff it between her lips, so deep that for a moment she chokes. I grab her hair and use it to pump her head up and down on my huge length, and after a moment's resistance she crumbles and begins to suck obediently. Everyone else seated round the circle makes gasps of lecherous appreciation; it's such a fine sight and we've all fantasised about what that big surly mouth could do if put to proper use. They're getting out their own cocks too; they mean to follow my example and take their own turns once I've come. And I'm going to come right now. ‘Take it,' I grunt, spurting into Ruth's mouth, down her eager, gobbling throat.

All over the mirror.

Afterwards I go into the kitchen and find a J Cloth and some glass cleaner under the sink. But when I get back into the hall there's no spunk on the mirror at all. Not a drop. Just the mothprint of a pair of lips, halfway down the glass as if someone had knelt there and kissed the hard surface. It's almost invisible unless you're looking for something. I spray the smudge and rub hard with the cloth but it's no good: the kiss is on the other side of the glass.

* * *

Worse than the prohibition on beating off is the one that says No Blowjobs – not even as an opening move, because saliva inhibits sperm motility or something. Which is especially cruel as Penny used to give head so good that it'd make my brain melt. I miss that. I fantasise about oral all the time. Even when I'm on the job, I might be humping away on top but I'm imagining sinking my cock between her lips, smearing her high-gloss scarlet lipstick all the way up my shaft, feeling the lap of her agile tongue on all the right places. Or I'll be banging her from behind, those ass-cheeks which appear so neat when she stands looking huge now, uplifted under my hands with that black satin corset cinching her waist, and I'll be thinking about how good it would be to slip into her tight pucker instead and waste all my jizz in the wrong hole. Because that one's way off limits now too.

I fantasise about coming on her breasts. She has fantastic breasts, neither flabby nor flat but a good handful each, still as firm and perky as a younger woman's, with the most beautiful big nipples that go hard as pink icing rosettes when I tease them. The areolae crinkle to the texture of cookies. Remember those Iced Gem biscuits you used to be able to buy? That's what I think of when I'm sucking Penny's nips. They're that sweet. Her skin is the colour of rich cream and there's a scatter of tiny moles or freckles from her left shoulder to her nipple, like the splatter flicked from a paintbrush, like droplets of dark cum already spilt in homage to her beauty. And her breasts are full enough that I can straddle her torso and slip my shaft into the valley between them as I cup and squeeze them together, making a sheath for my length. I remember leisurely tit-wanks that seemed to go on for ever, her tongue lapping the head of my knob as it popped out of the ravine to wink at her. I fantasise about doing that again. About taking myself in hand as my orgasm approaches. About feeling the cum gather in my balls and surge up and out to rain on the uplands of her breasts, obliterating the freckles, painting her creamy skin in my whiter shade of pale.

I want to come on the small of her back, and on her bottom and her thighs. I want to watch my spunk slowly dry on her hot skin and ease away the flakes between my fingers, feeding them between her lips to melt upon her tongue like communion wafers. I want to see her kneel before me one more time, the shiny brown swing of her bobbed hair framing her face, her mouth open like a baby bird begging to be fed, her tongue pink and eager to taste my spilt salt.

I miss her.

* * *

I wake in the middle of the night, or perhaps don't wake at all. The covers are thrown back and I'm sweating, I've been having restless dreams and perhaps this is just another of them. There's a glow emanating from the mirror over Penny's dressing table, the reflection of the bedroom light, but it takes me a moment to realise that our own bulb isn't on. And as I contemplate that, my head still full of sleep, the mirror-ghost appears and, stooping forward, steps out through the frame. Just like the girl in that Japanese horror movie, only without the jerky corpse/insect shuffle; she's consummately graceful in fact. She stands on the dressing table with her bare feet not stirring the myriad bottles of perfume and moisturiser and pigment. Naked.

Naked, except for a veil of gauze that wraps spiralwise about her body in that way fabric only ever does in paintings, hiding nothing. I can see the tremble of her breasts as she breathes. Then with a light step she lands on the footboard of our bed. There's no bump, no sensation of descending weight. I feel nothing. Thank God, I think: this is a dream.

She looks down at me with a slow, sweet smile. She's beautiful, my mirror-ghost. Almost girlishly delicate, with a hairless sex, but with curves to her hips and breasts that are far from childlike. And the eyes in her piquant face are ancient and knowing, her lips lush with promise. She is a fairy maiden, a nymph risen from some still and secret pool. If only she weren't so pale she'd be astoundingly beautiful, but she's the colour of the Portland Stone statues that grace the pediment of the mayor's residence; not a warm and creamy pallor like Penny's, but a delicate grey. I'm reminded of the allegorical figure of the City who sits with her scales and her portcullis in either hand. Even her eyes are colourless, and her erect nipples are white like quartz pebbles.

Down to her knees she slides, slow as oozing cement, eyes huge and fixed on my uncovered form. I think maybe I should protest. But this is only a dream, nothing to worry about – and if it isn't a dream then I'll have to wake Penny, who sleeps beside me, still muffled under the duvet.

I can't wake Penny. It's too much. She can't be expected to deal with this too.

With softly creeping movements the mirror-girl inches her way up my legs, her lips almost brushing the hair that stands erect on my spooked skin but her shining eyes fixed on me. Her own hair billows around her head like smoke: it's a grey like the rest of her but streaked with rust. I think she must have been a redhead once. The lips in that pointed face are incongruously full, almost swollen. The tongue that laps out between them is the palest shade of pink and as she kneels over my crotch and takes me in her mouth I catch a glimpse, the merest hint only, of teeth.

She's cold. Her mouth is cold. It's like being sucked by a cream dessert, yielding and smooth and sweet. My cock responds to the slick embrace with an instantaneous surge of heat, and I arch my back off the mattress as my whole body goes rigid with shock and pleasure. Then she drops me, letting me ease from between her lips as she withdraws her head – only it takes much longer coming out than going in because it's twice as long now and getting longer by the heartbeat. Her saliva gleams on the ruddy column, giving it a pearlescent sheen. She smiles at me questioningly and bats at the crown of my cock with teasing little licks. My hands are pinned by my sides, too heavy to lift from the sheet.

This has to be a dream.

With a tilt of her head she crouches lower, her mouth opening wide to suck my scrotum. Into that cool cave goes first one bollock and then the other, bathed in her wetness. I am shaking now where I lie, every fibre quivering, and my erect cock points up at my face and nods against my belly with every jerk. But as she releases my balls and licks her way back up its length it rises clear of my supine form, twitching. It doesn't give a stuff about dreams or reality, cold or hot. It just wants her mouth. So she engulfs me, a cool ocean in which my body swims, my mind trailing helplessly behind like a plastic float. I surrender all control of my limbs and give myself up to her moon-cold kisses until I'm leaping wave after wave of arousal and surging toward the light. When she bites, I barely feel the pain. I feel the pelagic upswell that follows in its wake though: the perfect wave. It drags me down into the deep and everything turns to black.

It was certainly a dream. I wake in the morning with a monumental hard-on and mount Penny almost before she's awake. And she doesn't object, of course, even though it takes me – despite my breathless horniness – nearly for ever to come.

* * *

I've been having these lurid fantasies, sleeping and waking, for months now. It's a case of what you can't have, that's what you want. And what I want is sex that hasn't a thing to do with procreation. It's become an obsession. I used to be so pedestrian in my fantasies, I'd imagine what it would be like to fuck newspaper models and pretty Australian soap starlets and that girl in the canteen I never spoke to. Now I catch myself in crazy musings. There's a big Catholic church with a convent attached to it down the end of our road: I've screwed Penny while picturing myself standing on the altar, cock in hand, jerking off an impossible spunk-shower over the upturned, outraged faces of the nuns kneeling before me. There's a public garden where, if it's a quiet day at work, I take my packed lunch to eat; there are often students there sketching the statues and the plants because there's an art college on the boundary road, and for some reason a lot of them seem to be Italian or Spanish. I find myself eyeing them up, fantasising about having three or four of those cool, aloof girls on their knees before me, their sleek hair swept behind their shoulders as they take it in turns to suck my cock, squabbling delightfully when one gets too greedy and holds centre-stage too long.

Christ. I'm turning into a real horn-dog.

Maybe the more sex you get, the more you want.

* * *

I come out of the rather fancy town house and stand on the top step with the computer printout in my hand, feeling sick. When I look down at the paper the figures blur and dance, meaningless. It's a good thing the doctor explained the results to me.

A good thing … Oh, God.

I went to a private clinic for the semen analysis, keeping it quiet, not telling Penny. I just wanted to be sure it wasn't me that was holding us back. Well, now I know. Low sperm count, and those that are there have something wrong with them. Stunted tails, I gather from the doctor's sympathetic words, that cause them to swim in fitful spirals instead of straight ahead.

Fuck fuck fuck. What's going to happen when Penny finds out? Because she will: eventually she'll have us both down our local GP, demanding medical check-ups and assistance. It only counts as infertility if you've been trying for two years, but she's going to lose patience sooner rather than later.

How's she going to react when she finds out it's me, that I'm the one letting her down?

I stumble to the car and drive all the way home without the slightest awareness of my surroundings. It's only when I'm in the big basement car park under Mavin Wood Towers, reversing into my parking space, that I register anything outside my own head, and then I nearly accelerate into the bloody wall because the mirror-girl is back, sitting behind me, bisecting the rear window and visible in my rear-view mirror. ‘Ah God
fuck
!' I shriek, slamming the horn by mistake. The cacophony in the concrete undercroft is horrible. I'm out of the car in a flat second, staring in at the back seat – but no one's visible, of course. She was only there in the reflection.

I feel sort of foolish then, and ashamed of my cowardice, and pissed off. I look round to see if anyone's witnessed my panic, but the parking area is deserted.

I make myself take the elevator up to the twelfth floor, not the stairs. The interior of that little box is lined with smoked mirror-glass, but I grit my teeth and step inside. I refuse to be afraid of her. What has she done, after all, but crawl out of my dreams and bestow her cool kiss? Does she even exist outside my head? Should I be afraid of that? Resolutely I turn my back on the mirrored wall and stare at the numbers over the door.