Surprise (4 page)

The clock flashed. 12:00
PM
. He started to whimper. “Oh, please, please just finish me. Oh god, I wanna come so bad!”

Later, Adam would thank his lucky stars that one worker decided to finish one last job with the jackhammer before tucking in to his corned beef on rye.

“Ahhhhhh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Fuck ME!” The words spewed out of him as she pumped his cream into her mouth with all the same unrelenting force as Adam's new favorite power tool echoing through the summer air beyond his back window. He came and came and she sucked and swallowed until his body and cock went limp. The drilling continued on even as his orgasm faded but all Adam could hear now was a faint ringing in his ears.

 

Shortly before his book was due to be released, Adam's editor called him and asked for a dedication for the front of the book. Adam sat down and looked out his window at Mrs. Landowski's charming new addition. He smiled.

 

“For Mrs. Stuart,” he wrote, “who showed me that some things are a matter of perspective.”

 

 

 

 

“No one should be alone for New Years,” he said. “We could meet up, if you wanted.”

So I've agreed to meet Bryn in a railway station. A neutral public place with plenty of people around, just like they tell you. I'm not stupid. I've traveled all over the world, including countries where women are presumed fair game if they don't have their hair covered or if they wear trousers. But in actuality this warrants more caution, here in my own country—where the rules are slack and the men more likely to break them.

I'm on a train, going to meet a man I've only known through the Internet. For a date, sort of. “Nothing heavy,” he promised. “No expectations. We might hate each other on sight, after all.”

I've known Bryn online for eight months now, while I've been working in all sorts of countries and he's been sitting at his desk back in England. He's an IT geek and he works from home. His life is lived in the virtual world, and that's where we met. That's where I go to find familiar friends for a couple of hours a night, after pitching up in yet another strange town and another wireless hotel.

Me? I'm more boring than you'd think from looking at my passport. I'm an auditor. I work for the Charity Commission, checking up that the money charities get is really being spent in the field on what they say it is. I enjoy the job and the traveling, but I like to have somewhere I can go to get away from it all. My haven is a virtual one.

I met Bryn in Second Life. He was busy building a functioning orrery when I saw him first—he's that sort of a guy—and he looked like a pitch-black hermaphrodite with a starscape mapped all over his body and spiral galaxies for eyes. His avatar name is Pelagic Walker. His real name, he eventually revealed, was Bryn Evans. I wonder if he'll have a Welsh accent.

He says he's single. He says a thousand things about himself which may or may not be true. It's far too easy to lie online, to want your real life to live up to the flawless virtual version. But I have been careful. I haven't told him my surname, and he doesn't know where I live when I'm in the UK. I did send him a photo—me sitting on a sun-bleached hillside, grinning into the distance—but I'm wearing opaque shades and a hat, and all you can really work out is that I'm blonde and tanned and rangy. I want to be able to walk anonymously away if I don't like what I see. He did send me some photos of himself and he's pretty good-looking in those. I've looked him up on Facebook and Googled him too. So far there haven't been any warning signs.

Well, except the time I suggested we talk using Voicechat, or Skype. He said he stuck to IMing. No further discussion. That was a little weird.

We've spent hours swapping messages and we're firm friends, in the virtual world. He's funny and acerbic and a bit cynical. His messages are almost always spelled out in full English, so I figure him for a bit anal. He takes my complaints about work in his stride, he asks smart questions about the places I've been to, and he doesn't pry into my personal life. Although he knows some stuff, of course. He knows I'm good at being on my own, he knows I love limes and the smell of rain on dust and having my back rubbed, that I hate cotton-wool and can't eat fish.

He knows I'm single and not looking for a serious relationship. I‘m not interested. I've had too many boyfriends flake under the pressure of having me away for weeks at a time. They all end up getting hysterically jealous or just so bored that they screw someone more attainable behind my back. Bollocks to the lot of them. A long-distance relationship is more trouble than it's worth. Which makes it ironic that I'm standing in the aisle of a train carriage, watching a city railway station slide into place around us. His train should have got into town this morning, according to his last message. We're supposed to meet under the big Victorian clock.

This is where, I think, I find out whether he's the guy in his picture or a fat balding bloke in his fifties with corduroy trousers and clammy hands. Which'll be bloody awkward, frankly, because we've had sex already. Cybering, you know. Avatars bumping pixels. Me and him in our own rooms, each with one hand down the pants, typing frantically with the other and getting increasingly more incoherent as self-control breaks down:

I'm wriggling on your lap Bryn, rubbing up against your cock.

I'm so hard, Ellie, hard like rock.

Big too.

Huge. And getting bigger every second. You're going to need to be wet for what I've got to give you.

then it's a good thing my panties are soaked thru already. i'm so wet it's running out of me.

I pull your panties down. They're tight around your thighs and I'm so impatient I have to rip them.

OMG yes!

I want you, Ellie. I want your tight wet pussy around my big cock. It's so hard now it's throbbing.

i want you too. i need you inside me, bryn. i need your cock in my pussy.

I'm sticking it deep into you now. Now.

oh god I'm nearly ready to come already. it feels so good!

Slowly to start with...

fuck me!!

Yes I'm fucking you. Fucking you hard.

Yeah, not exactly Shakespeare, but fun. We do it quite a lot. It certainly helps pass the time in a hotel room with nothing but foreign pop channels to watch.

Oh hell, I hope he's not lied to me.

It's not a date, not really. But there is a possibility, all our protests notwithstanding. A question hanging over us:
Will we?
I brought condoms just in case. The online sex has been so good and I can't help the anticipation that makes my heart thump as I step down onto the platform. I can't help the clench and flutter of my pussy, or the way my awareness keeps being drawn to the rub of my nipples against my clothes. I heft my little knapsack and wet my lips, pushing my shoulders back as I walk slowly toward the clock tower.

And there he is. Holy shit. Just like his photos—but tall. I wasn't expecting tall. Dark hair on his scalp and jaw cropped to a uniform fuzz, like on an Action Man doll. Big, dark, warm eyes looking a bit anxious. Oh, yes—it's the eyes that draw you to that face. He's hot, no argument. I catch his gaze and the word pops out of my mouth before I have time to consider any further, my mind made up without bothering to tell me, it seems. “Bryn?”

His expression lights up and he comes forward and takes both my hands, stooping to kiss my cheek. The prickle of his stubble seems to wake me from an inner dream.

“Wow—it's so strange to see you for real,” I gush. We're both grinning at each other. Gently he takes my arm and leads me toward the clock, and I'm still in the first shock of wondering what I should be saying and just starting to wonder why he hasn't said anything himself, when I see there's a second man. A man who's been waiting there with Bryn. He's shorter and slighter with sandy hair that stands up in tufts, and sharp twinkly eyes. He makes me think of hobbits.

“Ellie?” he says. “Hi. I'm Hugh.”

“Uh. Hi.” My eyes cut to Bryn. What's going on?

Bryn has let go of my arm, now his hands lift and move, dancing through a series of gestures. Hugh watches before speaking to me.

“I'm his interpreter,” he says, “I'm sorry, I hope it's not too much of a surprise.”

Some hope. My jaw drops. “Oh,” I manage to mew.

“How was your journey?”

“Fine. Just fine. No problem. Um.” My brain is freewheeling, the gears slack no matter how hard I pedal.

“Our train was packed. People coming in for the Sales, I guess.”

“Why didn't he tell me?” I blurt.

Hugh frowns slightly. “You should look at Bryn if you're talking to him. Keep eye contact. It helps him lip-read.”

The realization of just how rude my last utterance was crashes in on me and I go scarlet as I turn back to Bryn. “Oh. Oh. Right. I'm sorry! But—why didn't you tell me?”

He shrugs ruefully, then signs. He has long, dark hands I notice, remembering some of the places the virtual versions of those fingers have been, and the things they've done to me.

“He says that he would have, but he thought you might not come. Some people say they aren't bothered, but then they lose their nerve and don't turn up.”

“Oh…” I'm not sure whether I'm ashamed for him or for me. “Of course I'd have come, Bryn.”

He smiles.

“Great,” says Hugh, fishing a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and adding, “I can't light up in here, can I?” Signing one-handed, he asks us both, “So, what's the plan? Where are we going?”

“You're coming with us?” This time I am talking to him. Hugh looks nonplussed.

“D'you know British Sign Language?”

“No.”

“Then you probably need me.”

“On a date?”

He looks slightly startled. “He didn't say it was a date.” Then he flashes me a look of approval that's not the least bit platonic. “The lucky bugger.”

As he turns to Bryn and they exchange a flurry of gestures I mumble, “No, well, it's not really, not a proper date.” But there's no way of telling if either man has noticed.

“I'm happy playing gooseberry,” is Hugh's verdict, “but he asks if it's okay with you. I mean, I'll bugger off anytime you guys want me to.”

“Uh...it's okay.” God knows I need an interpreter. The alternative is the two of us finding an internet cafe and IMing each until we've broken the ice. Which seems a little too cowardly, really. I catch Bryn's eye and ask, “Where shall we go first?”

 

Bryn takes us to a restaurant—Italian, nice but not fancy—for an early dinner. By the time we're onto our coffees I've got the hang of the three-way conversation. I feel self-conscious, it's horribly easy for me to look away or cover my mouth or to interrupt without thinking. What's most difficult is reconciling the Bryn in my head, the one I know online, with the man sitting in front of me. Online Bryn is quick and confident and cerebral, his personality defined by words. This Bryn is wholly physical, and distractingly so. There's a fuzz of dark hair on his forearms and I find myself wondering, in the pauses, whether he'll have a mat of hair on his chest too, whether his thighs and belly will be furred. He's good-looking enough for my curiosity to be more than idle, but my horniness embarrasses me and makes me more awkward. Conversation through our intermediary is so much slower and Bryn comes across as almost shy, not the man I know at all. I wonder if I'm missing nuances and details because I can't sign. In fact I'm sure I am. There are expressive gestures that come out sounding flat as Hugh interprets, jokes that Hugh laughs at but doesn't pass on to me. I ache to communicate with Bryn as we do online. We can't even really discuss Second Life because Hugh isn't a participant, and I feel bad about excluding him because it turns out that he and Bryn are old friends. The two of them met at their local Deaf Club. Hugh's family all sign because his younger sister is deaf.

It's only when we go out into the dark evening, and it turns out that my date has booked tickets for the ice-skating rink that's been set up in the park, that I learn to let go of my mental Bryn and enjoy the company of the one here. It's been years since I've worn skates and I'm all over the place, wobbling and falling. It's a good job I've got both men there to catch me. There's no particular need for conversation as we laugh and yelp and collide with each other, and all my concentration goes on keeping my feet under me. By the time our hour is up I'm really enjoying myself. Enjoying the company of both men, in fact. Hugh, except for his habit of disappearing off for a smoke at intervals, is entertaining and easy going. He tells terrible jokes that make both of us shake our heads and he definitely gets the best of both worlds because he can talk to us both simultaneously. The two men sign casually and constantly and at one point go into a mock fight for no reason I'm privy to, tussling as we walk under the floodlit trees.

I wonder if they're talking about me.

While the rest of the world is cramming into restaurants we settle into a bar in the canal quarter and relax, first over mugs of hot chocolate and then over more serious drinks. Alcohol takes the last tension out of me. Quite suddenly I find I'm really,
really
enjoying this, in a way that is not at all innocent—having two men all to myself, both of them cute and both of them clearly into me, even if only in a light-hearted way. It makes me feel giddy. Hugh wears a tight T-shirt over wiry muscles and by now I'm wondering what he'd look like undressed, too. The hours melt away unnoticed like the ice in my drinks.

Let's go to a club
, Bryn suggests as the last day of the year approaches its end. He knows the route, he's researched everything meticulously online. I'm privately surprised that he's able to appreciate the music, but it turns out he can feel the beat bodily and we dance the new year in together, crammed onto the floor with a hundred others, arms aloft, showered with streamers and shaving foam, before we collapse onto a couch in a corner. And I note with envy how even under the loudest of music the two guys can carry on talking, whereas I have to touch my lips to Hugh's ear just to tell him what I want to drink.