by Paula Hawkes
She muttered to herself and realised how drunk she really was as she heard her own words slurring. "Come on girl. You've had a good night, but it's time for bed now."
She knew Mimi would be waiting hungrily by the door for her return. She had only bought her a couple of weeks ago from an old lady in the downstairs flat, a present to herself to help her get over that scumbag Robert. How dare he leave her after five years! If anyone was going to leave anyone it should have been her leaving him. The wedding ring suddenly felt tight and hot on her finger and she thought it was time to sell that particular shackle. He'd been a pretty useless husband anyway. Mother would be disappointed of course. Robert had carried with him the promise of money and social prestige. But then mother didn't have to tolerate his constant cheating, or the belittling comments made to her in front of his posh friends.
She was angry when Robert had first told her that they were finished, but since meeting her new man she was beginning to accept that this was the best thing that could have happened to her. Her new lover may not be rich but he was so fit, and so very caring. He never slagged her off. Ok, it was true that she had to keep their relationship a secret. For now, he had said. But that was a small price to pay. And surely he wouldn't deny her a little Tweet, especially as she hadn't even mentioned his name. He'd never shown any anger towards her in the two weeks they’d been together, so she knew he'd be fine with it.
She jumped as she heard the abrupt sound of something loud skittering across the alleyway behind her.
"Who's there?" she shouted into the descending darkness. She was properly scared now. She wished she had chosen the long way home, around the housing estate, and not selected this shortcut just so that she could snuggle up sooner with Mimi on the sofa and tell her all about her wonderful evening.
The all-encompassing silence was good. She could tell herself that the sound had been a toppling bottle or a cat knocking an empty tin can over. In fact, a vocal response would have been just about the worst thing that could have happened. The only sound layered over the distant traffic was her breathing. Rapid now, almost panting, as if she had just been running. For a second time her heart started to slow down along with her breathing. There was nothing there. Lots of spooky shadows, but no movement that she could detect.
She decided that with no one about to see her embarrassment she would remove her far-too-high shoes, very sexy but almost impossible to walk in, and walk a little faster for the rest of the way. She might even jog for a bit. No harm in that. She didn't fancy going back the way she had come, despite the welcoming streetlight, which seemed rather a long way off now, apparently receding down the night lined tunnel of crouching, half-hidden boulder shapes.
Removing her shoes, wobbling then hopping, and eventually stuffing them into her bag, she turned to face the way she was originally heading and started to walk quicker than dignity would normally allow, but not as fast as self-preservation would prefer. When she heard another sound behind her, a faint tap that was just out of sync with the slap of her own bare footfalls on the cold concrete, she started to walk even faster. A sob escaped. She was being silly, she knew. It would be a cat, a fox, a carelessly placed rubbish sack that had finally toppled, but fear pressed hard into her stomach. A leaden block of ice filled her with an instinctive dread and right now she just needed to be drinking a glass of cool Sauvignon in front of some crap reality television program that Robert would never have let her watch.
She was almost at the point of running when she heard the heavy crash of glass smashing and the nightmare squeal of a cat. She stopped again. It was a cat after all. She bent over double, panting, one hand pressed to the painful burn of stitch in her side. Laughing out loud she gasped painful breaths as she tried to recover. That damned cat had scared the shit out of her.
She stood and looked back the way she had come. At first it didn't register and she just looked on in puzzlement as a dark shadow obscured the golden light from the distant road. An inconsequential grunt of shock left her mouth and then turned more to a groan as she felt the first stab of deathly pain in her stomach. She heard rather than felt the knife withdraw from her body, and then felt a flood of heat down the front of her jeans. Blood and urine soaked her crotch. It was too late to scream, even if she had been physically able to, when the second impact struck her between her ribs. It felt like she'd been hit by a truck. At first the pain wasn't sharp, it was more like a huge, blunt blow to her chest knocking all of the air out of her lungs. Shock protected her from the worst of the pain, but not from the darkness that was flowing into her vision, smearing shadows from the alley and leaching the light, washing into her sight like a contracting tunnel.
She didn't remember falling but her next vision was a sideways one. The cold concrete was pressed into her face. Her cheek really hurt, she presumed as the result of slamming into the floor. The rest of her body was numb. The sodium orange glow sparkled in the distance as if seen through rain spattered plastic. A shadow loomed over her, she felt a light touch on her forehead, gentle, almost soothing, and then the soft shadow flitted fast through the Christmas-light sparkles, all blurred and twinkling, receding back into the hellish distance, a spectre of pure imagination.
As the amber light dimmed in her young eyes a tear ran coldly down her bruised cheek and her last thought was to hope that someone found and fed Mimi before she got too hungry or lonely.
Chapter 6
Over the course of the next few days China continued her daily routine of a pre-lunch coffee but she didn’t see the stranger again. Devak would always try and chat politely to her, but their conversations were limited to trite trivialities by her lack of attention. Eventually, even kind but persistent Devak decided to leave her in peace. Those hours were completely lost to her, as her mind wandered aimlessly through the confused pathways of desire and morality. Her book remained unread on the table beside her, and the Kindle would often go to sleep before she had devoured even a single page.
Every now and then she would check absent-mindedly in her bag. The crisp white card was always there, scribed with that simple, dangerous temptation. She would turn the card over in her fingers, sometimes pressing hard against the sharp edges to generate a stab of pain as the corners dug into her flesh, desperate to purge the threatening stranger who was so intrusive in her thoughts almost every hour of the waking day.
At night Philip would snuggle up to her, and she became vaguely aware of his increasing persistence in talking to her about his betrayal fantasy. Finally anger broke through the heavy curtain of her bewildered mind.
“Do you not love me any more, Philip?” she asked him pointedly.
He looked hurt and genuinely surprised. Sitting up in bed he placed a hand gently upon her shoulder. “Of course I do. I’ll always love you. Why would you ask that?”
“If you love me you wouldn’t be trying to get me to be unfaithful to you.”
“It’s because I love you that I want to see you happy.” His gaze shifted away from hers.
“I wouldn’t be happy with another man.” China’s thoughts stuttered at this even though her voice remained steady. Was she lying? She was beginning to doubt herself.
“You don’t know that. How can you be happy with just me for the rest of your life?”
“If that’s the case, then I could ask you the same thing.”
He looked worried now. “Ok, it’s not exactly that. I just love you so much, and you are the centre of my world, my fantasies. I don’t have a fantasy that doesn’t involve you. When I look at porn I always imagine you in the starring role. To see something that involved you, or even just to know that is was happening, would be so intense.”
“But you used to be so jealous, when we were first dating.”
“I know. And that was so destructive...”
“I kind of liked it.”
“Yes, but I hated being that possessive. It used to make me feel ill to see you talking to another man. Physically sick. Even if you just menti
oned another man’s name I would feel myself getting angry and wanting to hurt him, to entirely delete him from your life so you’d never say his name or think of him again.”
“So what changed, Philip? What you are talking about know is the polar opposite of this.”
“I know. It was part of a kind of self-improvement programme that I decided upon,” he only half joked. “I realised that the only way I would get over that intense jealousy would be to turn the emotion into something positive. So I started to deliberately visualise you talking to other men, chatting with them. The more I did that, the more I became used to those thoughts, the dark feelings of envy turned into something hotter.”
She could actually appreciate what he was getting at. In the same way that people with phobias went through a desensitising process by deliberate exposure to the object of their fears, Philip had been doing something similar to help him deal with his particular problem emotion. He wasn’t looking at her as he said this, his focus was far away, as if he were experiencing those same emotions again.
“As I took the situation a little further each time in my imagination,” he continued, “I was actually becoming turned on by the thought of other men finding you attractive. I know you are mine, so it’s a huge compliment that other men might want you. That seems so right, and so hot. And then when I started to think how it would be if you responded, it started to blow my mind. The pain of jealousy was still there, but it became a masochistic pleasure.”
“That seems so weird. I would hate to see you with anyone else.”
“I know. But I’m not alone in having these fantasies. I’ve read up about it on the Internet. There are good scientific reasons for a man to be turned on by watching his wife or partner with another man. It increases a man’s libido, watching another person have sex with his wife.” He looked so serious that China wanted to laugh.
“Scientific? On the Internet? Are you serious?”
“Yes, honestly. So the fact that I get turned on by the thought of you having sex with another man isn’t so unusual.”
“It may not be unusual, but it’s not going to happen so I wish you would just stop going on about it.” Without thinking about it she added, “Maybe it’s really you who wants to be unfaithful.”
“Not at all.” Philip’s face turned red and his eyes flared as he now became angry. “I will never be unfaithful to you.”
“And neither will I to you, so let’s leave it. Ok?”
But whenever they touched now, China’s mind would imagine what it would be like if Mark was there, touching her, instead of her husband. It was too easy to tell herself that Philip had given her permission to entertain these thoughts of betrayal, allow them the headspace that those thoughts craved. The sane part of her knew that this was just an excuse for her to test the elasticity of her moral barriers, and she fought back. The thoughts were banished within seconds of arrival, but the mental Tourette’s that would inject these visions into every intimate moment was persistent.
00:05: Tarb4u : Are you there??
00:10: Tarb4u : Don’t ignore me
00:10: Tarb4u : This was your idea
00:12: HornEnvy : I’m not ignoring you
00:12: HornEnvy : I’m not sure if we’ll get away with it
00:12: HornEnvy : She won’t fall for it
00:12: Tarb4u : She will. She won’t get away from me now
00:14: HornEnvy : I don’t know, I really don’t know if it’s a good idea
00:15: HornEnvy : What if we’re caught
00:17: Tarb4u : Hey. I’ve got plenty of other women I can be working on
00:18: Tarb4u : Don’t fuck with me
00:18: Tarb4u : That’s my job
00:20: HornEnvy : If you think you can pull this off, then go for it
00:20: Tarb4u : A walk in the park, mate
Chapter 7
That Friday evening Philip and China shared a nice bottle of wine and talked about children. They hadn’t spoken about the subject since China had discovered her infertility almost two years ago but the wine loosened their tongues and they sank together into the large sofa and, with broken voices, discussed the unthinkable.
“You would have loved children wouldn’t you, though?” China said, looking deep into Philips sad eyes. “I’m so sorry that I can’t give them to you.”
“It’s true I would have liked children.” China knew he was playing down his desire. The word ‘like’ was a gross understatement. He’d been as keen as her in the early days, discussing all aspects of parenthood, how many children they would have had, what their names would have been, what colour they would have decorated the bedrooms. “But it’s not your fault, and your love to me is more important than children. I can accept that some things are just not meant to be.”
“You won’t leave me will you?” Tears were starting to blur her vision, stinging her eyes as the wine was messing with her self control.
“Of course not. Never. There is nothing that would make me leave you.” He looked earnestly into her eyes, willing the truth of his statement into her consciousness with fierce intensity.
She let a bitter laugh escape as her insecurity bit down harder. “I’m not sure that’s true. I bet there are a few things I could do that would make you leave me.”
“Seriously no. It would have to be you leaving me. I couldn’t think of a single thing that you could do that would make me leave you.”
“What about if I killed someone?” She was trying to take their minds off the earlier maudlin conversation, desperate to leave so much sadness and emptiness behind, but just ended up scuttling towards even darker subjects.
“I’d stand by you. They’d probably have deserved it anyway,” he laughed.
“Ok, what about if I emptied our bank account to buy designer bags?”
“I might be a bit peeved,” he responded. “But it wouldn’t be worth leaving you over. I’d wait until we had some more money and then buy myself a new BMW M5. I figure you would owe me.”
She slapped his arm, “A new BMW is a bit more expensive than a couple of designer bags. You’re escalating, not matching!”
“You started it.” He held her shoulders and pushed her back into the sofa. He kissed her damp cheeks and then gently on the lips.
She felt a flush of excitement, a stark contrast to the earlier sadness. “Ok then. What if I had an affair?”
He kissed her again, a little harder this time. He whispered to her. “I’d forgive you.”
A heat was growing low down in her belly as the tip of his tongue touched her lips, and then he kissed her again, parting her lips slightly so his tongue could find hers. “Even if he was better looking than you?” she teased when he stopped kissing her. He drew back a bit and looked into her eyes, startled. A smile grew on his face.
“I’d expect you to pick someone good looking anyway. You’d deserve the best.”
“And what if I have seen someone already?” she asked, for once enjoying his game. The earlier, miserable conversation was being forgotten, and the contrasting feelings of lustful play were intensified as she stoked her husband’s desire.
“Have you?” he asked breathlessly.
“I might have,” she responded and lifted her head to gently nip and tug at his lower lip. She released him and then stretched up to kiss him again. He looked adoringly into her eyes and pressed his mouth hard against hers. She could feel his lust through his jeans, pressing against her thigh.
“You can do whatever you want, my love.”
As he said that a strong vision of those multi-hued, jade eyes flashed across her mind and with that reality remorse hit. “I’m sorry, Philip, you know I’m just teasing. I couldn’t hurt you.”
But Philip wasn’t finished with the game. Maybe she had pushed too far this time, crashed through a barrier, for both herself and Philip. “If you thought you were hurting me, which you wouldn’t be by the way, you could have the affair and just not tell me about it.”
This t
hrew China. The one constant element throughout he talked about his fantasy had been that he always wanted to know in great detail about whatever China might get up to. In fact, not only had he always wanted to be told about any apparent goings on, but he would really prefer to be able to watch. “But that’s not what you’ve said before, Philip,” she pushed him back slightly so she could look into his eyes, watching them closely, checking his integrity. “You’ve always said you would want to know about anything that might happen.”
“Don’t you realize, China, just the simple thought that you might be having an affair is enough to turn me on? The very fact that you might cheat on me gets me hard.” As if to emphasize this he pressed firmer against her thigh and she could tell he wasn’t lying.
“You need to be careful what you wish for, Philip,” she whispered as she kissed him again. Was he really giving her the go ahead to have an actual affair, not just a fantasy one, just as she had started to think about another man for the first time? Effectively he was absolving her of the guilt of constantly thinking about Mark’s broad shoulders, his flat stomach, and those perfect buttocks. She pressed her thighs together and felt an electric shock of pleasure as Philip planted his next kiss just below her ear.
“My only wish is for you to be happy. Fully satisfied.”
“Then satisfy me, Philip.”
They had never made love on the sofa before, so this was a first. It somehow felt dirtier and more exciting. Having sex rather than making love, she corrected, downstairs rather than in the sanctity of their bedroom. Clothes were ripped off and thrown about the room with laughter and abandon, the foreplay was longer and more carefully executed than in their early dating days. China had to admit that Philip was trying his hardest to fulfil her latest demand. When she was looking down at the top of his head as he serviced her with languorous sweeps of his tongue, her mind couldn’t help but picture what it would be like if the hair she so tightly entangled her fingers into was curly and raven black instead of mousey blonde. For the first time she didn’t feel guilty about these sinful thoughts. She let those delicious images wash over her as each stroke of his tongue, each smearing kiss, massaged her pleasure. After all, he had given her permission to think about another man, and now she was starting to believe him. The nagging doubt that this was still just a fantasy for Philip, but that she was shamelessly utilising his desperation for her participation in his role-play games to justify her temptation, was a fading voice.
