The Things That Make Me Give In (13 page)

And then he rocks against her as though lulling her into pleasure. He doesn’t need to lull, however. His cock feels hot and solid inside her, and she can feel her pussy fluttering against it, tightening until it’s almost unbearable before leaving off.

When he touches her clit with a sneaky hand between their bodies, she almost screams. It’s then that she realises she had been holding her breath, and she tries to let it out without letting him know how much this is making her crazy.

It was bad enough having to seduce him every single time. But to have her moans make him think he’s some sort of super stud, too?
No,
she thinks,
no, no, no,
and then the line of
nos
in her head turn into high shrill things. She bites her own lip to stop them escaping, because there’s no cock to moan around now.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks, but of course she isn’t all right. He has two fingers on her slippery clit and great rolling waves of delight are beginning there and surging upwards. ‘Doesn’t it feel nice?’

She has no idea how he came up with the word ‘nice’. Urgent demands teeter on the tip of her tongue:
yes, fuck me harder. Fuck me like that, rub my clit, keep looking at me like that – like you’re fogged over with lust
.

‘I can’t really stop now,’ he says, as breathless as anything and bouncing her now with every thrust. ‘You feel too good, love.’

She can see his hand on the pillow by her head, clutching and clutching until his knuckles turn white, and she kisses him until he turns his face away and makes such long, long rough sounds of gratification she could swim in them. Instead she digs her nails into his shoulder and urges herself against his still stroking fingers.

And hears footsteps on the stairs, just as she climaxes in great wrenching spasms.

Of course there’s no time to pretend they were just reading. She feels floored by her orgasm and he obviously does too. Terror immediately spreads across his face but the terror is somewhat diluted by that glorious just-fucked flush on his cheeks.

He makes a play for her skirt, and the trousers that are still around his ankles, but in the end they just scramble for the blanket in an effort to hide the most incriminating items.

It’s her dad who fills the doorway. With the light from the hallway at his back, it’s impossible to read his expression. Still, Norm makes a stab at it anyway.

‘Look, Paul, it just happened,’ he says.

She wonders what translation of
just happened
would make this seem more palatable.

‘It just happened on my bed,’ her dad replies, and for a brief moment she really does entertain the idea that he’s about to kill Norm with a shotgun.

Until he shakes his head, and tuts at them, and finishes with: ‘Could it not have just happened somewhere else? Use your own beds, for God’s sake.’ He sighs, and gives them another disapproving shake. ‘Well, at least you’re finally screwing. Didn’t think I could take much more of all that blinkin’ sexual tension.’

I SHOULDN’T INDULGE
him, really. He’s a patient. I’m a professional.

And any moment Joe’s going to die. His heart is a mess, and he’s waiting for a new one. Though we both know he’s unlikely to get it before his time runs out. I’ve worked with patients like Joe before, and their time always runs out. Hospitals don’t often have the same happy endings that his ridiculous stories have. Or at least they don’t when your lungs are filling up with fluid or you’re going into cardiac arrest or other such grim things.

‘Why would I want to tell you a grim story?’ he asks me, but the real question is: why would I want to hear a story from him at all?

And yet I do. I keep coming back, and he keeps making me get closer and closer. At first I listened while I checked his vitals and fussed around him. But then he said he couldn’t talk while I was bustling and could I just sit down for a second?

So I did, and then he said that there was no way I could hear him from all the way over there. I must move closer, because his weakened state meant he couldn’t talk very loud.

And now here we are, me with my head practically on his pillow. He has his own room and not that many people come to see him besides me – mainly because he’s going to die and there’s nothing more to be done but wait. So I can put my head on his pillow without much fear of being caught.

Even though I shouldn’t.

It’s just that his stories, oh, his stories. They’re lovely and filthy and lovely all at the same time.

When they first started to veer into naughty territory, I warned him against it. I told him he didn’t need to go exciting himself. But then he laughed and told me that he can’t excite himself even when he tries and, besides, that’s not the point of the exciting part of the tales.

The point is this: that all tales come to love, in the end.

There’s a difference, I told him. Between love and what he claimed went on between the lady boss and her employee in the copy room. And he grinned that all-white and once handsome grin at me.

‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘Not to me.’

I don’t think there really is to me, either. Not the way he talks about it, at least. He says, ‘He wrapped the rope of her hair around his fist and watched her back bend in the flickering light. Skin as soft and golden as butter, but tasting like honey on his tongue. She was more lovely in ecstasy than at any other time, giving herself over to him while still herself in thought and deed, still herself in her eyes that lay on him so heavy and deep he couldn’t breathe for them.’

I suppose it’s all very flowery and purple and silly, really. But I won’t lie and say I don’t want to hear a man tell me things like that every day of my life.

The next story he tells revisits similar themes to his others. The women always seem to have the upper hand in some ways, though in others they don’t.

And here I am as usual, waiting with breath that is bated.

‘Imagine it’s the past,’ he says.

‘What, like a hundred years ago?’

‘Perhaps it’s . . . the 1930s.’

‘Fair enough,’ I say. I have my chin in my hands, and my hands are on his little bed table. His uneaten meal lies not very far from me.

He looks very pale today. Pale, and his dark hair is growing too long and thick to manage. It sprawls about his head haphazardly. Two days of beard growth dirty his face.

‘And the action all takes place in a gorgeous country mansion – of the kind you usually see in episodes of
Poirot
.’

‘The action? Is a boat going to crash through a window?’

He smiles, slow and easy.

‘Maybe. Wait and see, Miss Impatient.’

‘Have I earned that reputation so quickly?’

‘I saw you leaving poor Mrs Waites without any ice chips so you could come and hear the end of the last story.’

I roll my eyes at him. There’s no Mrs Waites, and no ice chips. But I did bus a few jobs over to Marisa, so that I could end my work day listening to him talk.

‘But this one. This one you’re going to like even more than the last one. In this one, there is a letter, a very important letter. And our impassioned hero needs to deliver it immediately to his true heart’s desire, or he will die. He will die of lovesickness.’

I pfffft at him. We’re in a hospital. Lovesickness is a stupid thing, when people around you are dying of cancer.

He raises an eyebrow, says, ‘Wait, wait wait,’ while his expression matches the words.

‘It’s not what you think. You see, his true heart’s desire happens to be a maid in this great house. A lovely, lithe creature, with the sweetest face you can imagine. Walter – because that was his name – thought of nothing but her, day and night. He couldn’t tell which part of him ached more for her – his heart or his . . . well, I’m sure you can imagine.’

I can. But I don’t expect him to fill it in for me.

‘His cock. His huge, juicy cock ached for her. It ached so much, and so consistently, that he could no longer sleep on his belly. He could hardly keep his hands off himself – tugged it day and night. His table settings became crooked, he was reprimanded for tasks not completed. All because of the heat in his loins.’

I stop him there, and ask him if he’s sure he wants to continue.

He curls an arm around his head. It makes him look languid. Sure of himself.

‘And so he wrote her a letter. In it, he told of the luscious wetness he imagined between her thighs. How he thought of those pale thighs spreading for him, her bosom surrounded by his hands. He had to have her. He must have her, though she was cold towards him. It was a very stirring letter.’

‘It sounds it,’ I say, but really I mean: I know, because it stirs me too. I imagine what he would look like as the butler, stiff and starched with his thick hair side-parted. Eyes burning bright with passion. The encounter they would finally have, somewhere hidden.

The juicy cock and the luscious wetness, like the title of something someone thinks is literary. I see her thighs spread in front of me as though I am him, revealing the red and pink between. She looks hungry, I think, and her slit glistens.

And then Joe comes in, big strapping Joe who is probably strapping everywhere, just like the hero in his story. He has that look about his face, too, that look that is both masculine and vulnerable, sultry mouth slightly open, pink tongue flicking.

‘But he made a fatal error. He asked the little serving girl to deliver his letter for him, and, quite by accident, it ended up in the wrong hands.’

‘Oh, that old tale,’ I say. He laughs for me.

‘She delivered it to the daughter of the lord of the manor, who found it addressed to no one and so imagined it was addressed to her.’

He shifts on the bed, looking momentarily uncomfortable. I get up to help him, but he waves me away. I’m glad he does. I’m hooked now.

‘When Joe discovered what he had done, he was of course terrified and disgusted and didn’t know what to do. He thought
and thought of all the words he had written in the letter: “cunt” and “prick” and “fuck”. He thought until he was sure he’d go mad. Any moment the lord of the manor was going to shoot him. He’d be driven from the house. His position terminated. Everything gone for the sake of lust-fogged madness.

‘But it was not the lord who approached him. It was the young lady.’

I picture him in the servants’ quarters. Somewhere glassy and dark, lit only by a single candle. He turns, and she is there. Prim and proper, in tweed. She isn’t as beautiful as the maid he so wanted. Her position in life has made her stiff and restrained, ever careful of what she says and does. She can hardly believe that a man like him has written a thing like this to her.

‘Of course, he tried to explain his mistake. He tried, but too quickly he realised the effect that the letter had had on her. It affected her in a way that it never could have affected the maid – a woman who was used to men being plain with their desires. It stirred her deeply, because no man had ever tried to stir her so before.

‘And when she strode forward and kissed him, oh, when she kissed him . . .

‘He found himself all at once overpowered by this kiss, all thoughts of his darling once-was-truest-love lost. It was as though a new world opened before him suddenly, full of experiences he had not previously imagined. Love he had not dared strive for, for who was he but a lowly and wretched butler?

‘And yet when she pulled away, she whispered in his ear, “How dare you. How dare you. Now do it again.”

‘But the butler knew he would not.’

I’m forced to jump in here. The word ‘not’ makes me.

‘Of course he will!’ I say, but then feel absolutely ridiculous. I’m like one of those people who shouts out at the cinema in contempt. ‘Of course he’s in love with you, you idiot!’

He just smiles, faint and sly. All his expressions are faint, really. He’s looking very tired now, and I should really be going.

‘Are you so sure?’ he asks, and, while I’m thinking
no, no,
he says, ‘Tune in tomorrow to find out.’

All of the next day I itch. Of course I do. I mean, I don’t think his story is particularly compelling. It isn’t compelling at all, really. It’s just that I want to hear how it all works out. If I’m honest, I think I want the maid to win his heart back away from the lady, but then again she doesn’t seem like your typical scheming rich bitch.

I think my sympathies are with her. I wonder if he knows that.

He makes me wait until I’ve done everything but dust the skirting boards in his room. I think
he
might be the schemer.

‘Are you ready to hear the next part?’ he asks, and I sit down like an obedient little automaton. I used to pretend, but there doesn’t seem any point, now.

‘So, where was I? The butler knew he would not. Right?’

‘Do you write this stuff down?’

He taps his temple.

‘All up here. Now can I continue?’

‘Please do.’

‘The butler knew he would not, and yet it seemed that, when he next sat down at his desk to pen a letter to his truest love, he found an image of the lady before him. The deep darkness of her eyes, and their fathomless yearning. He imagined them together again and again, intertwined, pale skin against pale skin. He saw her arm cutting across his back like a stripe, holding tight to him as he fucked against her. Her legs spread, silken stockings still on, suspenders chopping her thighs into thick milky sections.

‘He saw her throat curving away as her head fell back. He heard her say his name as he plundered what was never meant to be his.

‘The ache in him was different from any other he had ever felt. He was helpless, waiting, relying totally on her . . . and perhaps on his ability to write the most beautiful letter of his life. She would be literate, hard to sway. He had to think of words he’d never use for –’

‘That ignoramus, the maid,’ I say. I raise an eyebrow at him while I’m doing it.

‘You think I’m giving her short shrift? She’s just a plot device.’

A little laugh blurts out of me. I try to make it disapproving, however.

‘So back to the important part: the impassioned letters he writes to his lady.’