Seduction (19 page)

Unless it's all just the wine. Though I hardly think it is. I didn't think I'd ever hear Julian talk like this. I mean sure, sure – he told that fat story. But that was a pointed commentary on losers who like heifers. This . . . I don't even know what this is. His eyes are molten and hooded, and he seems to have sunk into some unholy wash of lust, and I swear if his lips part one more time to let out that little wicked pink tongue, I'm going to set this beanbag on fire.

And it gets worse! I don't know how he can go from robots
and computer manuals to this. How much has
he
had to drink? How much has he had to drink in the last ten years?

Too much. Even though he kind of looks like he's ripping off a plaster.

I bet the guilt over this is just burning up his staid robotic insides. I bet he just wants us to tell him how normal he is. Which he is, oh he is, oh if only he were always like this: near-readable and seductive and open.

Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid of his sultry handsomeness, then.

‘She had lots of hair made into streamers by the water, and she lifted it all up and pinned it away, and when she did it her glorious tits lifted – so soft and ripe and plump. I'd never seen breasts like it outside a
Playboy
, and they made the pit of my stomach take on that hot low hum, that total need for sex. So did her mouth, as she inexplicably slicked it with lip gloss. Only it was explicable – she did it just for me.

‘I know what you're thinking – that perverts make up any old bullshit to justify themselves – but so be it. I'm a perverted phantom-seduction lover. Even though I don't think it was entirely that. It wasn't that I had to pretend she was secretly doing it for me.

‘It was just as exciting thinking about her doing it for herself. Seducing herself, maybe.

‘Which she did. I watched her apply the gloss and then bite one of those gleaming lips, as though contemplating her own naughtiness. And then she glossed her tiny little pink nipples, too. Slowly, very slowly, until they were like the glistening insides of ripe cherries.

‘I think she was watching herself in the mirror as she did all of this, but I can never really know for sure. I've checked that bathroom since, and there
was
a full-length mirror propped in between the sink and the wash basket, but maybe her eyes were half-closed. Maybe she was looking at a picture of Alan Alda on top of the wash basket – who knows?

‘But I like to believe in the mirror. I like to, because then she lifted one leg and placed it on the edge of the bath, and the view she revealed to herself must have been glorious.

‘Those black-as-anything curls, the split of her sex, and all wet, as wet as her skin. She must have been wet – by that point, I was stiff enough to put pressure on my zipper and that was just from watching her play with her spiky nipples and caress herself and pout.

‘Watching her dip her hand between her legs was too much. I was ashamed of myself, then, but that only seemed to make it worse. Shame stroked right up and down my cock while she tried out that place between her legs as though she'd never heard of it before then. As though this – at what must have been twenty years of age – was her first time masturbating.

‘She looked vulnerable and like a good girl, only not, just stirring something beneath her fingertips – enough to make faint juicy sounds, but not enough to really put her over the edge. Her movements were lazy, which made me think she'd done this many times before, but then her sighs of pleasure were so fragile.

‘She didn't moan – just made these breathy little frustrated sounds while her cheeks grew pinker and pinker. One hand squeezed at her breasts hard, reflectively almost, as she rocked herself against her fingers, and then the languid pace gave way to something more obvious and frantic.

‘I remember thinking:
How can she stand up like that?
At that point I could barely stand, but she kept it up through trembling and watching and fucking herself.

‘She slid her fingers into her pussy only as she was about to come, and I would have given anything to have been in her place and touch that slick heat instead of her. I wanted to push her over that last little edge, push my cock into her while stroking her clit, but all my tricks – which are hardly any at all – were nothing next to her. My pretty face wouldn't work on
her. Her own hand and her reflection were enough. I had nothing to seduce her with.

‘So I walked away, with the sound of her coming pressing into my back.'

Immediately I want to ask:
How do you know your pretty face wouldn't be enough?
But that seems like a strange and shallow question, and I'm far too busy being turned on.

I feel as though I've been dipped in hot chocolate, and then poured into a volcano. I am molten and loose-limbed and angry at him for seducing me like this. Doesn't he know that I'm impervious to his charms? That a pretty face and a saucy story and a liquid voice aren't enough for me?

Why can't he just go back to being a charmless robot?

I actually say that to him, too. Later, when I'm in the kitchen substituting sex for ice cream. Ryan's freezer has
great
ice cream, like Bubbleyum Hopscotch and Toffee Dream Daze, because he's cool and sexy and he's the one who charms me. He's just as handsome as Julian, and he also buys great ice cream – probably because he knows I like it.

What have you done for me lately, Julian Walker?

‘You've always thought that about me, right?' he says. He doesn't look exactly hurt, however. He looks somewhat amused in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

I spoon almost-melted Double Chocolate Sex into my mouth while I pretend to consider the question. While I keep him hanging by his balls. Only not, because when did I ever have such power over handsome Julian?

And then I say: ‘Always.'

His eyes look dark, like before, when he was telling his story that should have embarrassed him but didn't.

‘I realise it wasn't as good as one of yours.'

One of my what?

‘But I'm glad it was better than usual.'

The story
, my brain supplies. His story.

‘I guess you have a sexier time in reality than you do on the page, Julian,' I say, but he skips right by that.

‘So you thought it was sexy?'

‘Sure. Why not.'

‘Now it sounds like you're lying.'

‘Why would I lie?'

‘To make me feel less embarrassed?'

‘Wouldn't me telling you that your story was hot make you
more
embarrassed?'

This conversation is going to a weird place that I don't like. Also, he's looking at me really weirdly, too. It's like his gaze is making me small, somehow, though not necessarily in a bad way. He's zeroing in on me. I'm a tiny little creature that he's caught in his headlights.

‘It never embarrassed me to hear the things you used to come up with.'

‘Because you're dead inside.'

‘So you think they had no effect on me?'

‘I think –'

I pause. It would be very easy here to tell him the score. Too easy. He's probably trapping me.

‘I think you always felt I was trying to seduce you with those stories. That's what I think. Handsome boys always think every girl wants to screw them. Even mediocre boys think that every girl wants to screw them.'

His eyebrows meet his hairline.

‘Isn't that what you thought, Julian? That I wanted to screw you?'

For some reason I don't want to examine too closely, I feel aroused again. Though I'm sure it's just a side-effect of lip gloss on tits.

‘I . . .' he begins, and then he laughs. ‘I always thought you were oblivious to me, if I'm honest. Seeing as I'm a charmless robot.'

‘I was oblivious to you,' I say, though now that he's appeased my pride I'm not sure that's strictly true.

‘That's what I figured,' he replies, and now he looks . . . rueful, I suppose.

‘But if it's any consolation, your perverted fantasy was very
not
worthy of oblivion . . . wait. Is that the correct thing to turn oblivious into?'

He laughs.

‘No idea. But thanks, anyway. I prefer being a pervert to a charmless robot.'

‘It was a great perversion. Even though it's obvious that it never actually happened.'

He quirks just one eyebrow, this time.

‘Oh, you don't think so?'

‘Giving it an air of
actually happened
helped it, but you've got to cover up the holes.'

‘Such as?'

‘Such as – why would a woman shower and then wank with the door open, the morning after a huge party when there's bound to be people around?'

He glances away, squinching his mouth to the right in that
you got me
sort of way. I have to say, I never thought it would be Julian who would be so casual and friendly with me after all these years. I thought it would be Ryan and me that slipped back into each other. Maybe literally, this time.

But I guess charmless robots change.

‘OK,' he says. ‘OK. So what if . . . it wasn't the night after a party.'

‘Like, just when everyone's gone to Hoboken?'

‘Sure. Everyone's gone someplace. And it's not a house. It's a dorm.'

‘So . . . someone's dorm room?'

He snaps his fingers.

‘Ex-
actly.
'

‘But then, why would she leave her dorm door unlocked?'

‘Let's say I have a key.'

He looks full of laughter and knowing and it makes me feel even weirder than I did before. Sort of like I'm the butt of a joke, but not quite.

‘Why would you have a key?'

‘Because she's my friend. She's my best friend, even though she probably doesn't think of herself that way.'

‘So you regularly spy on your best friends naked?'

‘Is that worse than spying on a stranger?'

‘Yes. No. I don't know.'

‘Make up your mind, geez, Hobbs.'

‘So you – you spied on your friend.'

‘I did.'

‘And you never told her you spied on her and then you blabbed about it to everyone.'

‘But in my defence, I changed a few details. To protect the innocent.'

‘Naturally.'

‘Like: she wasn't out of the shower. I saw her through the glass door. And there wasn't a mirror, but I like to add that detail because it's sweeter that way.'

He's kind of leaning down towards me, and I can feel myself trying to lean away. Trying, but failing. When he puts one hand on the table next to me and gets real close, I feel offended and like a fool and turned on all at the same time. I can hardly look at him, but then I do and his eyes turn my hot chocolate insides to something even worse.

‘And then what?' I whisper. ‘And then what happened, in the story?'

His smile grows more teasing, and this time I can read his eyes perfectly: relief. Relief, and maybe a lick of triumph, too.

‘I guess I realised how much I wanted her.'

‘So you didn't before?'

Before you saw her naked. All of her, naked, utterly.

‘On some level, maybe. I just didn't understand what she was doing to me. She wasn't like the girls I usually dated . . . she was –'

‘Different. She was really different. And special.'

He chuckles.

‘It wasn't so clichéd.'

‘Really?'

‘I just didn't realise how much I fucking love a big ass until that moment. Does that sound different enough to you?'

This
all
sounds different to me.

‘You had a kind of fat-ass awakening, then.'

But he doesn't laugh.

‘Yes!' he cries. ‘Yes!'

Like he's singing hallelujah.

‘Before that moment, I was starting to think I was gay. Because the girls who I thought I should be dating got no reaction. But she did. She got a reaction.'

‘Because she was so special.'

‘Because she seduced me without knowing it. She'd just read her little stories as though reciting the phone book, and lather herself up in the shower and love herself and not even notice that anyone was there, and wear shirts too tight for her and play with her hair and it was all like this amazing secret that no one knew but me.'

‘Because
you're
so special,' I say, intending sarcasm, but my voice comes out worse than a whisper. It comes out hoarse and weak and I think I'm actually tilting my face up to meet him even as he's definitely coming down to meet me. And I don't want to think what we're meeting in the middle to do but I'm sure it's going to happen nonetheless.

I can see his lips parting, and his eyes smouldering, and all the things that are supposed to happen when someone you really want to screw is about to kiss you.

‘Just like you,' he replies, and I think: God. That was the
best
end to a story ever.

I attempt resistance. Really I do. But who am I fooling? A wet fish could probably seduce me. I have no chance against the Most Handsome Man in the Universe, who has possibly just admitted to spying on me naked in the shower. Which should make me disgusted, but only makes me brim with joy in some disgusting sort of way.

Still I try not to kiss him back. I try not to think about that dimple in his chin and his movie-star hair and his lean vulpine face like something out of all my fantasies about werewolves. I try not to think about how he knows about all my fantasies about werewolves and nineteenth-century husbands and harem slaves and so on.

Crap. Is he going to expect me to be that way? Maybe it's not my huge ass after all. Maybe it's my smutty mind. And what about –

Oh mother of God I don't care, he has his hands on my huge ass and I don't care. I don't care because I'm remembering now how he has a lot of tattoos – probably done in an effort to make himself less of a computer nerd – and I want to lick them all.