The Swap

And maybe they do. Maybe they do. Some people do, some of the time.

‘No,’ I say, even though I can feel my heart fluttering against its cage.

I don’t know why it’s doing that. There weren’t any heartbroken arguments, no awkward goodbyes. We jiggled the puzzle around – all four of us, even Sean.

In the morning, Ryan had just said to me: You going with him, then?

And I had replied: Sure.

And then all of our things in swapped-around cars, Kay giggling: This is crazy! This is crazy! I love it!

What’s in all of that to make me nervous? I’ve always wondered if Sean felt odd about leaving Kay just like that, but even the thought of him secretly continuing to love her all this time doesn’t make me nervous. I don’t think he did, anyhow. He told me once that he had never felt the need to say it to her, and if you don’t say it …

Ryan used to say it all the time. It never lost its meaning, either, which I guess is pretty odd.

When I see him at our usual camping spot on the hill, I think about him saying: You really like Sean, huh? You like that whole weird repressed scientist schtick he’s got going on. Yeah, I can see it in your eyes. I can see it when you look at me.

And I had said: no, no. No, never when I look at you.

Just as we pulled into the campsite, where Sean and Kay were waiting.

***

He’s almost the same. Wearing the same clothes – goofy T-shirt, smart trousers, hair at odd angles, unshaven.

Kay’s not the same. She’s all creased up and pissed as hell, and the first words he says to me are: I cracked wise. And then he shrugs – yeah, that’s Ryan. He’ll say something and offend the shit out of someone and then shrug.

Only later, I think at her. Later, he’ll come to you with hot chocolate or a Kinder egg or something else suitably ridiculous, and tell you how much he didn’t mean it.

It’s just the way he is. It’s a defence mechanism, a shield for his tender insides. A test, to see if you honestly and really do love him and can put up with his craziness.

But she doesn’t stop being pissed all through putting up the tent and all through dinner, and he doesn’t bring her a present. Maybe that was just for me. Something completely different to how he acts with any other person, just for me.

I bet with other people he never said sorry.

***

I wake up in the middle of the night with Sean’s mouth pressed to the turn of my throat. I guess he’s come a long way since we started this whole thing, because that may just be his erection rutting against my thigh.

I smile at him through the darkness, and he looks at me all sweet and eager – so much more open now. Cheeky, even. A little more sure of himself, too. He even talks to me when we fuck, halting words that don’t quite reach sexy.

But they’re good just the same.

I let him tug my pyjama bottoms down, and climb over me. I’m already wet, of course, though he doesn’t seem surprised to find me so. Sometimes he is, as though he can’t imagine why I’ve been thinking about sex.

But I think he knows why I’ve been thinking about it now.

He gets on over me, even so. He slides into me, slow and easy. And I try to only watch him, I really do. I press my hands against his ass and work my hips up at his, chasing the syrupy pleasure until my tight nipples are fizzing with it and I’m so slippery that it trails down between my ass cheeks.

Though I know it’s not enough.

‘Talk to me,’ I say to him, but the words he manages are not enough either.

It’s a good thing, really, that Ryan’s there to provide them for him.

‘All this time,’ he says. ‘And you never told him how hard you like it?’

I glance across at him and he’s just lying there, head on his pillow, expression soft and innocent. He’s a little amused, I think, though not cruelly so.

‘Go on,’ he says to Sean. ‘Give it to her hard. Really fuck her – she loves getting fucked.’

I bite my lip and try to turn away from him. I try to pretend that Sean jolts hard against me because he wants to, and not because Ryan has put something in the suggestion box. But he has, and oh there’s plenty more where that came from.

‘You know what else she likes? When you gasp for her, nice and high. As though her pussy is the sweetest, hottest, wettest bliss you’ve ever felt around your cock. As though she caught you j-u-ust right, and now you’re thinking of every boring thing you can to hold off that almighty orgasm.’

I can’t stop looking at him. I don’t think Sean can stop himself, either.

‘And you’re the authority,’ he says, in his best man-of-science voice, but Ryan seems unfazed. He doesn’t even look away from me to meet what I’m sure is Sean’s accusatory stare.

‘No, not the authority. It’d take years and years to puzzle someone like Tia out. But I’ll give you one more free tip.’ He leans in close, so close that he almost puts Sean off his stride. ‘If you get her as she’s about to come, and she’s shaking in just that way she is now, and you cover her mouth with yours – she’ll give it up, just like that. Right … into … your mouth.’

And then he kisses me, he kisses me, he kisses me.

Of course, he’s right. I come so hard that my body arches up off the bed, and he has to hold me down. Not Sean – Ryan. Ryan puts his big hands over my shoulders and I buck against them, long waves of sensation rolling up my body and out of my mouth, to pour into him.

Always into him.

And I think: you knew. You always knew. You let me fly away to far and different distant shores, just so that I could turn around again, and fly right back to you.

Dirty Reunion

Scarlet Rush

You asked me if I remembered that night at Tabitha’s party. The one where I caught Michael kissing and groping our flirty hostess. Where I ran off to the toilet for a cry, but instead somehow ended up with your stiff cock in my hand. I replied that I could barely remember twenty minutes ago, let alone twenty years, but that was a lie. Actually, I do still clearly remember the illicit exhilaration of holding your erection for the first time, even though the episode is now half my life away. It was the sheer size of you that sent the cold tingle pouring from my belly and into my veins. It was only the second one I had ever seen in the flesh, and I had never considered Michael small in that department. I couldn’t tell you but it felt huge in my palm, like a thick slab of warm fillet steak. I tried to imagine it inside me and the thought almost made my legs give way.

You sat me on the side of the bath because I was trembling so much. You had me hold it and stroke it for you, slowly up and down. You had to place your hand on mine to guide me, such was my silent awe for your thickness. Of course, you had pressed it against me many times back when we were girlfriend and boyfriend, but I had never once let it out. It was always safely behind your zip. I had no clue such a monster was concealed. To suddenly grip its full dimensions, with my fingers not even able to meet around it at the middle, was to grasp a reality surely impossible to have ever been unaware of. It was like suddenly discovering that your ex-lover had all the while been a Mafia boss, or a Bourne-style secret agent!