Title Page
COME BACK TO ME
A Novella
Scarlett Rush
Publisher Information
Come Back to Me
published in 2014 by House of Erotica
an imprint of Andrews UK Limited
www.houseoferoticabooks.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Scarlett Rush 2014
Cover Design by Nick Tiseo
The right of Scarlett Rush to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Calling
Come back to me. Why ever did you go to her? What could possibly be the pull over everything that we had? You could be lying here still, basking in the aftermath of our lovemaking. I certainly was. I was gazing at your wonderful face, wondering if anyone could look more peaceful, thinking how unbelievably lucky I was to have you. I was always thinking that. I had to pinch myself sometimes. But you - you always had others beyond me to think about. It was always your second nature, calling you. That call could have been ignored but you just wouldn’t. So you left me, even though I begged you to stay this time, running off into the darkness with nothing for me except a smile and a shrug. And now look what you’ve done.
‘She said she thinks I’ve got a perfect backside!’
Those were the first words you ever spoke to me. That was years ago, back before you were on the boats. You still had those red cheeks though, even then. I’d always had you down as the biggest and the boldest but for all your swagger, now I was up close, I’d swear you had a face on like I’d caught you out, even though I had no claim on you at all. A few looks had passed between us, mostly from afar, but nothing else. I was two years younger and shouldn’t even have been on your radar. I guess you couldn’t help but notice all the girls. Three of them milling about you there were that day, so I don’t know which had made the claim about how well you rated on the Bumfort Scale. They were like happy bees around a honey pot, and you always visible, always towering over a foot above them all.
‘So, is your backside perfect?’ I remember I said.
‘It used to be,’ you dead-panned, ‘but I accidentally dropped it and now it’s got a great big crack right down the middle!’
I snorted and stuff almost came out of my nose, which wasn’t the best impression I could have made. You were grinning like the Cheshire Cat that you’d made this happen. I had to remind you of this incident a few years later, when I finally got you. I guess they all rolled into one with you, all those first meetings with girls. You claimed you were surprised you’d managed any kind of witty answer. I always emptied your head, apparently, the only girl to ever have this effect. Many was the time you wanted to come out with a slaying salvo of wit and charm, or so you claimed, but when it came to it you could only stumble and mumble at me and never get anything meaningful out. You were worried I would think you were simple. I have to say I never saw this reticence. I must have been too wrapped up in you to notice, ever in awe. I only ever saw the bluster and the good nature, in any room, in any company.
There always was an element of the contradictory about you. Gentle giant, some said, wouldn’t hurt a fly. But that night they were scrapping outside the Galleon and you stepped in to help break it up, Mad Merrin had turned on you, and the next thing, down he went. Twenty years his junior and you laid him out flat. Most folks would have thought they’d get their comeuppance down some dark alley for laying a finger on him but you didn’t back down. He even bought you a drink the following week, said he was out of line and deserved what you gave him! Your father had a reputation but that wasn’t what kept you safe. It was all you, so big and full of life itself that even when you hurt people, when you knocked them down and made them bleed, they still thanked you for it.
Jacqueline called you The Angel. I’m sure it was often those angelic looks that so many of the girls found too captivating, those blue eyes and the ever-present slight blush, as if the whole world was all slightly too racy for you.
‘Cheeks of perpetual innocence,’ your mam once said, ruffling your thick hair, but I doubt she knew the half of it. Maybe it was your size that had them swooning - the towering stature, the fact you were as wide as a house and built of beef. No tattoos either, unlike all the other lads who went to sea. Unblemished you were, smooth and toned and without an ounce of badness under the surface either, so everyone reckoned.
‘There’s The Angel,’ Jacqueline said that night, just a week or so after I’d spoken to you for the first time. You were in that same place, which might have explained why we were hanging around there also. You were leaning on the iron railings of the thick concrete harbour wall, watching the spray coming up over the breakwater. It was the first rough night of the autumn but you’d still had a couple of girls milling about you: moths around the warmth of your flame. A proper pied piper you were! We’d had to stay lurking in the shadows until the chill finally drove them off.
‘I’m glad I’m not out there,’ you said. Not many boats were going out that night. You told us you were thinking of joining your dad’s crew, becoming a proper fisherman. Of course, you’d been out on his boat countless times to learn the ropes but never as a fully paid-up member. A place aboard was to become available. You were working in the boatyard and it simply wasn’t adventurous enough for you.
‘Why not get a proper job?’ I suggested. ‘No prospective wife or girlfriend wants to have to be always scraping barnacles off your bottom, trying to keep it perfect!’
You grinned at me, holding my gaze. I think I came close to melting on the spot, which was going some in those temperatures!
‘Yeah, but the sea is in my blood,’ you said. ‘There’ll be no need for a saline drip if I’m ever in an accident!’
None of the other lads used phrases like that.
‘Who were them girls you were kissing?’ said Jacqueline, as blunt and as arch as always.
‘I weren’t doing nothing,’ you said, looking at me rather than her. ‘They were trying to kiss me, in case I decide to go to sea and that’s the last they ever hear of me.’
‘Then I think you should kiss us too,’ Jacqueline announced. I’m not sure you had much choice. For all your size she somehow managed to drag you down so that she could land her lips upon yours. She gave you a proper smooch. You looked a bit overcome, still clinging to the railings. Being the first out of us to kiss you always made Jacqui believe she owned a part of you. She never really did see you as belonging to me. I’m surprised she let you come up for air. I was trembling, not just with the cold. This kind of game wasn’t exactly my thing. I had never wanted to be a link somewhere along a chain of kisses, but my best friend had fashioned this chance out of nowhere, too quickly for me to consider the rights and wrongs.
‘You next, Miss Miniver?’ you said, rather softly. I’m not sure if you felt sheepish. It’s always hard to tell on someone with an ever-present blush. You were still stooping from your last embrace so it wasn’t much to get on my tiptoes and touch my lips to yours. I remember my hand had to go to your arm for support and yours slipped off the railings to alight on my hip. I also remember that as I leant into you my bag, on a
strap over my shoulder, fell forward and caught you square in the whatsits. And who said romance was dead? It forced a bit of a wince from you and some sniggers. It could and should have ended it there but when Jacqui piped up that I should let the expert have another go that was it, I planted my lips back onto yours and suckered us together again.
It went on a long time, long enough for the shock to pass, for us to relax and soften up, long enough for tentative tongues to meet. I was surprised Jacqui wasn’t trying to intervene. The wind was in my hair and the sea was buffeting the walls behind us. It was wild. It felt like something out of an old film. I wanted to hold you, to throw my arms around your neck. It felt weird kissing with something close to passion with only one hand in light contact with you. But the other was at my side, desperately clutching my bag there to prevent another pendulum swing straight into your goolies. You didn’t seem to want to let me go and it was me in the end that split us, coming down off my tiptoes.
‘Well, hello sailor!’ trilled Jacqueline immediately, looking blatantly down at your crotch. ‘Permission to come aboard!’
You turned away but I had seen the bulge. It shocked me. It sent the fizzle shooting out of my belly and through my whole body. It was surprise, puzzlement and pride all in one. You always struck me as beyond getting stiffies in public from a little kissing. I didn’t know whether to feel honour or disappointment. I felt embarrassed and embarrassed for you, which is why I dragged my giggling friend away to let you calm down in peace. It was a whole year before she told me. I knew it was odd that she hadn’t broken us apart sooner. With our eyes tight shut, whilst I was busy grasping my handbag, she had reached in and got her hand down there on your crotch. She had squeezed you and made it come to life, made it swell and grow. She had clutched it and felt it hard, pinched it and stroked it, felt the pulse of blood, and all the time you thought it was me doing it. What you must have thought of me then!
In the meantime I had seen you again on a good few occasions, always approaching you none the wiser so that I must have seemed like the most brazen girl you had ever encountered.
‘So, are we going to be an item then?’ you finally asked me. I thought it would have taken more than just a kiss to bag you but then I wasn’t aware of all the facts. How I managed to summon a poker face at that time, with my insides all a maelstrom, remains a mystery to this day.
‘You have enough girlfriends,’ I said, acting cool, ‘I’ve seen them all over you all the time. Plus I’m already seeing someone.’
I wasn’t, but that was part of the plan. I was no thickie. I’d done my history lessons, seen how Anne Boleyn refused to give in to Henry and become just another notch in his bedpost. I wanted exclusivity. I wanted the big prize. I wanted everything, for all time. I found out much later that it was my words here that helped make your mind up about going to sea. You said you would have stayed off the boats if we had got together that day. Instead you went away to forget your defeat. I went off to study, to discover if there was indeed more to life than lobster pots and catching crabs. I don’t think there was a single day that I didn’t think of you, wondering where you were and who you were with. It would be three years before I came home and even during my holidays I hardly even caught sight of you because of your work. By the time I was back for good you had graduated to hero status.
I remember burning up some nights with the jealousy, although my room was cold. Even the fact that I couldn’t afford to put the heating on in my student digs used to be aimed against you. It’s all right for some, I used to think, waltzing off to sea to earn their fortune whilst I’m here trying to get the education that might take us away from that dead place. I’m here eating tinned ravioli so lukewarm I might as well have heated it over a candle and you’re there aimlessly chucking away your wages on all those flighty floozies as soon as you step onto dry land. I’d have bet my last pound on you buying some flash car like all the other fishermen your age did - some bashed up, pimped up Imprezza in rally livery, a way-too powerful beast for you to roar around the black narrow country lanes, impressing the ladies and anyone else who didn’t think that what you did for a living was already perilous enough.
Of course, as it turned out you didn’t buy any car. You saved instead, knowing that the fishing grounds were drying up and that your dad was struggling to keep the crew on the boat. You would be first off, being last on. It didn’t matter that you were his son. The other crew had families to feed. You wouldn’t even have tried to argue your case; that was just the way it was. In nearly three years you had saved enough to convince the bank to lend you enough to buy a boat, just a small one, for taking out bass fishing parties. It was no pot of gold but it meant you were running your own business, and not many round here of your age could say that.
I didn’t know all this at the time. I was far away and Jacqui was at college too, meaning I had no primary sources to keep me up to date with your movements. Actually, I was relieved at the time that my best friend was safely out of the way and unable to make a move on you in my absence. Funny isn’t it - I would have done anything to keep her away from you back then. I used to spend so many days there under dark clouds and then trying to find silver linings. Jacqui at college: not there to give me news on you; Jacqui at college: not there to get her claws into you. I used to have so many turbulent days, pitching and rolling with the emotion. You really have no concept of how much I hurt back then. It was like having my insides pulled out on a daily basis. I’d be wracked with jealousy on the one hand that you were forging ahead, making money that you would doubtless spend on others, yet glad on the other hand that your work kept you away from dry land and possible suitors for so long.
I missed you, I really did. I can’t tell you. I used to picture your ever smiling, jokey, handsome face, impervious to my agony of longing. So many times I wanted to pack up and run for you but I knew that to give in with my studies would condemn me to the supermarket jobs that all the other girls waited in line to do. I made a vow to never, ever, miss you again like I missed you those years, but that has all gone now. I had no clue, not the slightest inkling, that if I had just said yes to you that time by the harbour wall, if I had not followed the strategy of that misguided twerp Anne Boleyn, then I might have saved myself those years of extreme torment. You would have been mine. You would have saved yourself. You would have waited, not gone to sea, found a way to be near me, found a place for us both when I came back. I had no idea that if I had just said yes then you would have changed your life for me.
You could say the wait was worth it but I’m just not sure. My darkest times came during those years. Hormones, they say, but I can’t honestly say I would have been more able to cope if you hadn’t constantly been on my mind. I’m not blaming you, I’m just saying. Along with Jacqui you were the one thing that kept me buoyant. Now she was elsewhere and you were at sea and I was far from home and sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from plummeting. It would have been nice if you’d have picked up on those yearning thoughts of mine, beamed to you across all the miles, and found a way to come to me. I know it’s unreasonable, since it was my stupid games that made you think we couldn’t be together, but then a reasonable mind doesn’t always go hand in hand with my affliction. You never did blame me for it.
The First Time
It was a glorious summer day. You didn’t really get them quite like it where I had been to study. The breeze was strong but warm and the clouds minimal. The greedy gulls were hanging on the air, beady eyes all on the fish and chip parcels in the hands of the tourists. You once said that anyone who had lived by the sea could never live inland, not by choice. I wasn’t so sure. I’d just been living inland for three years and I saw the potential of it. I saw the desolation of those seaside communities; the granite and the batter of the wind; the tumultuous buzz followed by the deathly fade as the days grew colder and shorter; the weather-leathered skin and drunken, brooding desperation of those trying t
o make a living here; the stink of petrol and fish innards. I never did get the poetry of the sea like you did.
You were on the harbour wall, looking down at all the pleasure boats jostling for room. You had your back to me but were instantly recognisable. You looked at peace. I had caught you in one of those rare moments when the bees weren’t at the honey pot. I stealthily buzzed up to your side. There was a faint trace of work odour about you but thankfully you didn’t smell of mackerel entrails. Your hair was lighter, even thicker than when I had last seen you. Your tan was deeper than before, a beautiful golden brown that hid your blush just a little but made your sapphire eyes stand out even more. I saw it in them, that tell-tale sign of joy. It’s hard to light up something already well lit, but your eyes still managed it. Such a tiny reaction, but one that said a thousand words, that hinted at a thousand future joys.
‘So, you’re back,’ you said quietly, the smile spreading.
‘I’m surprised you even knew I’d been away, but yes, I’m back. I’m all qualified and everything now. I’ve got myself a B.A. - which doesn’t stand for “Big Arse” before you enquire. I understand you’re a hero now.’
You looked a little bemused but soon cottoned on. You even looked a little sheepish, what with me stood there, eyebrows arched upwards. Now, I’m not saying you volunteered for the lifeboats just for the adoration. Lord knows you fishermen are keenly aware of the perils of your trade, but it didn’t hurt your reputation signing on to be a man who would risk life and limb for others, even if you were just a reservist at the time. You must have known it would only add to that flock of adoring females you had following around behind you, as if you needed more!
There we were, watching those tourists pootling about the harbour and barely avoiding banging into each other. Ten to one there would be a call out for one of them silly buggers, you reckoned. And it was these that brought you that hero worship. Middle-aged portly dads and show-off teenagers from the cities were the ones you had to rescue on such benign days, with broken rudders or simply run out of petrol, towing them back away from the rocks. It didn’t seem to me like walking into the fire. I had you down as a hero for other things - your humility, for instance, and your humour and kindness. These were the things I thought made you stand above all the rest. I didn’t need you signing up for anything to prove your worthiness.
Come Back to Me Page 1
