Four Temptations

by PJ Adams

  I turned my phone so Brandon could see, and then he brought his bar stool closer to mine. “Tell him you’re touching me. If you just put your hand down on your knee it’s shielded by your body – he can’t see where your hand is. He’ll believe you. Go on.”

  I’m touching him now. He’s so damned hard!

  My hand was on my knee, and I looked down now. It was too dark to see if he really was hard. I looked up, suddenly self-conscious, but Brandon was staring into his drink, and hadn’t seen where I was looking. “What’s he say?” he asked, turning back to me.

  “Nothing yet,” I said. “He does look like he’s going to explode, though. He never did like not being the one in control.”

  “But he’s too arrogant to just walk out, isn’t he? He can’t take it that you’ve got one up on him. Leaving would be conceding that, wouldn’t it?”

  “This is nothing personal, okay?” I said. “But would you mind terribly if I kissed you?”

  “Believe me,” he said. “I really wouldn’t mind that at all. If it would help, of course.”

  I leaned forward – we really were so close now – put a hand to the side of his head and kissed him, chastely at first, our mouths closed, our lips pressing. It could have been such an innocent kiss but then I had lingered just a moment too long for that to be the case, I had allowed my lips to part, allowed the tip of his tongue to tease its way through, and then, flustered, I pulled back.

  Simon was glaring across at us. Heaven knows what was in his head, but I hoped that it was something close to humiliation with a strong undercurrent of jealousy.

  “For the record, you can tell him I really am hard now.”

  I looked back at Brandon and there was that twinkle, and suddenly we were both laughing, my hand resting on his arm, our heads close together. Our knees touched, and then stayed pressing, and then, an abrupt moment of stillness.

  His eyes were on me, his expression unreadable.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and I nodded.

  §

  We were out in the street hailing a cab before I even started to question what I was doing.

  This was madness.

  I’d never done anything like this before. This man was a virtual stranger!

  The journey only took a few minutes, and then we had pulled up outside a rather grand terrace of houses.

  “I’m not like this, you know,” I told him, as we tumbled out of the cab. “I’m not like this at all.”

  He led me by the hand to a dark door, then fumbled with a key in the lock. Inside, the door to his flat was on the ground floor, and then we were in each other’s arms, pushing through the door so that it banged against the wall and then rebounded to shut with a slam.

  His cologne had an almost peppery hit to it, and his mouth tasted of the brandy he’d been drinking. The hand he hooked under my thigh, pulling my leg up and around him, had a vice-like grip, and his body was hard and wiry as he pushed me back against a wall, kissing me hard and urgently.

  I reached down, and took two handfuls of my dress so that I could pull it up. Briefly, he stepped back, his breath ragged, and then my dress was somewhere on the floor and he was on me again as I stood there against the wall in only my Aubade lingerie and Kurt Geiger stilettos.

  It was angry, spur of the moment sex, and I knew exactly what I was doing and what it was.

  He held me by the wrists, pinning them above my head in one strong hand while his other hand slid down over my belly and inside my panties.

  His fingers raked down across my mound, pushing through that narrow strip of hair and across bare flesh. Then his middle finger pushed deeper, across the folds of skin covering my clit, slipping inside and sending a sharp thrill through my body before pushing on, further, deeper.

  One finger inside me, he started to roll and press his hand, squeezing and kneading me with delicious, precise movements. And that finger... pressing deep and hooking forward to find that sensitive spot, pressing against it and caressing in time with the movements of his hand.

  He had me. He totally had me. He was playing me like a fine instrument, sensitive to my every response, bringing me right to the edge and then slowing, barely moving at all, just pressing, squeezing, grinding with the heel of his hand until everything erupted inside me, stabs of pleasure racing out from my belly and through my body. Tightening, clenching, my heart racing, a dizzy rush threatening to overcome me.

  My God, I’d heard stories of women fainting from orgasm, but I’d never felt anything like it myself.

  I started to come to my senses slumped against him, that hand still cupping me, holding me. Had I actually lost a second or two then? I think maybe I did.

  I felt spent, used up, drained. My legs were like jelly.

  And then I became aware again of that slight rolling and twisting of his hand, of the pressure of him holding me, cupping me, that finger still lodged deep inside. Barely moving... so barely moving at all, and yet...

  He’d released my wrists, and now I could start to explore him. My fingers in his hair. So smooth and soft. Running down his body, finding that hardness, finding those buttons, freeing him so that I could reach inside and coil my fingers around his hard shaft and pull it upright so that it stood proud of his shorts.

  The swollen head was wet from his juices, and I slid my thumb across it, and then underneath to the sensitive ridge of skin just below.

  I put a hand flat on his chest and pushed him away from me, so I had room to bend right over in front of him. The head of his cock slid into my mouth and I clamped my lips around the engorged ridge where it joined his shaft. As my tongue started to swirl around that swollen head, I felt his hands working down my back, finding my ass. Fingers running down my crack, a hand cupping one buttock, squeezing it tight.

  I started to bob my head up and down, fast and rhythmically, easing his shorts down so that I could take him deeper with each dip of my head.

  His grip on my ass was so tight it was almost painful, and I wanted him to squeeze even harder, make it hurt... hurt in that way that starts to slide back into pleasure.

  He was against a wall now, his knees slightly bent.

  I straightened, and our eyes locked. There was such a need in his look, an urgency. I took his face in my hands and kissed him hard, our teeth clashing, our tongues dancing and twisting and writhing together.

  His hands were on my ass, his hard cock sliding wetly against my belly, its base against my pubic mound, grinding against me. Fingers sliding down my crack again, and then there was pressure against that dark, tight opening, and a wet finger slid inside, impaling me, holding me in position as his knees bent more and his cock slid down.

  I groaned aloud as the swollen head of his cock pressed against my clit, and then slid further back and up, sliding into me, slowly and steadily until he was up to his balls in me and his pubic bone was hard against my clit.

  He started to thrust, and I rolled my hips to match his rhythm, meeting each upwards pumping of his body.

  “Oh yes!” he moaned, the words almost unintelligible.

  He was doing it to me again. That whole building of layer up on layer of sensation; that tightness in my belly, the heat, the stabs of intense pleasure, muted at first and then intensifying.

  I buried my head in the space between his neck and shoulder, our skin slick with sweat, my legs burning painfully as I somehow managed to stay standing, to keep rolling and thrusting, and that symphony of sensations grew and grew inside me.

  I shifted position slightly, holding him deep inside me and grinding down on him and that was all it took. My belly heaved and tightened, and suddenly all of my senses, all of me, was focused in my abdomen and pussy, in my clit and in that finger still lodged deep in my ass, as everything contracted around him, around this man I’d barely even met.

  Just as my pussy tightened on his cock Brandon Tyne’s body stiffened, driving sharply upwards and then I felt a pulsing deep inside me, and there was a sudden rushi
ng sensation as he filled me with his juices.

  We stayed like that for some time, barely able to support ourselves but even less able to move, to untangle our exhausted bodies. Slowly, his cock retracted and softened, and then slipped out of me.

  I looked into his eyes, then, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

  He seemed to sense what I was feeling. There was that spark in his eyes, that gentle smile, and then he leaned forward and kissed me, tenderly, softly.

  I looked around, taking in the living room we’d stumbled into. Bookshelves on two walls, a widescreen TV suspended from another wall, a pair of strange, angular floor lamps.

  “So,” he said, “you want I show you around?”

  §

  “I’m sorry, Rebecca. I really am.”

  I don’t know what I’d expected from Simon, but it certainly wasn’t an apology.

  “You really tried to make me jealous with Brandon Tyne?” he went on.

  We were in a pub across the road from my office. Huddled together at a corner table we’d somehow secured in the lunchtime rush. Simon had a pint of dark beer, almost untouched; I had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, almost empty.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but stopped myself. He was trying to be reasonable, and I didn’t want to fight any more. Telling him about my encounter with Brandon wasn’t going to help anybody right now.

  “I still don’t know what you’re so angry about.”

  I looked at him. He really did seem to think he could talk his way out of this.

  “Angry?” I said. “No, not angry. Embarrassed, perhaps. Embarrassed that I was so stupid. Embarrassed that I allowed myself to be smooth-talked by a man who’d told everyone I only needed – what was it? – oh yes, ‘a good seeing to’. That really was low of you, Simon. I thought you were a friend, someone I could trust. And yet you took advantage of my weakness. Please don’t pretend you ever cared, Simon. I’ve had enough embarrassment already.”

  He sat back, running a hand through his strawberry-blond hair. “Wow,” he said, finally. “I really am sorry, Rebecca. I hate that I’ve hurt you by being such an unthinking idiot. Yes, I said things I shouldn’t have. To Porter and Ellie, at least. I guess I was just trying to fit in. Porter’s always been the loud one, you know? I’ve always looked up to him. When he and Ellie started slagging you off... well, I’d had a drink or two, I didn’t want a fight, so yes, I agreed with them, and I said things I should never have said, things I didn’t believe.”

  He leaned forward now and reached for my hand, but I pulled away.

  “It was a shitty thing to do,” he said. “A weak thing. Maybe I didn’t want to fight with Porter by defending you, but I didn’t have to go along with them and say the things I said.”

  “You’d rather say shallow and hateful things about me than stand up for yourself?” I said. “You were the one person standing by me, and yet you were ashamed of that? Of me?”

  “No,” he said, looking down at his hands. “No, not ashamed. Just shallow and weak. Just lost. I’m not used to something like this. I don’t know how to respond. It’s all new territory for me, Rebecca.”

  For a moment he had me. That vulnerable look, the waver in his voice, the way he’d turned the subject from his shabby behavior to ‘something like this’.

  Then: “No,” I said. “No, Simon. You’re playing with me. I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. Please don’t say you love me, or that you’ve never felt this way before. That would be really taking it to new levels of low, okay?”

  “I–”

  “It’s done. Over. With me, at least. You’re a good man, Simon. Or at least you can be, and I hope you will be. Or maybe you’ll just go on and find some other vulnerable woman you can charm into bed. I don’t know. It’s none of my business any more. Goodbye, Simon. Have a good life. Just don’t involve me in it, okay?”

  §

  I found one of his books, and flicked through it in the bookshop. Lost in the Low Countries by Brandon Tyne. The dustjacket billed it as one man’s campaign to find the finest and most interesting foods in the Low Countries of northern Europe.

  He had a quirky style, very personable and self-effacing, and not at all shy of taking a position. On Belgium, he said:

  Since that first disappointing visit, I’ve returned to Belgium on three occasions, but nothing has persuaded me to revise my original conclusion. As a nation, Belgium has but a single redeeming virtue: that is that the unfortunate visitor is never more than fifty miles from somewhere that is not Belgium. That the place has only a single positive is, I believe, why they brew so much beer.

  There he was on the back flap, a black and white portrait. From the book’s publication date this photo must have been taken at least ten years ago, but he looked just the same. According to the short biography posted below the photo, he had been born in Galveston, majored in politics at Harvard, opened a restaurant in Greenwich Village while he was still in his early twenties, and... Well, the man had lived.

  And me? A layout artist in a provincial design and marketing agency. The kind of woman you might meet at a party and walk right past in the street the next day.

  Did I say I had my confidence back? Well, like always, it was easily knocked.

  I put Brandon’s book back on the shelf, not sure that I could handle reading about someone else so much more interesting than me.

  §

  He didn’t call. He’d taken my number, but he didn’t call.

  I hadn’t really expected him to. It was an angry, drunken revenge fuck, a way of taking out my pent-up passions on someone without taking a baseball bat to somebody else.

  Okay, a bit melodramatic, but I think that can be allowed, occasionally.

  I didn’t really know the man much beyond that spark in his eye, the tenderness of his kiss, the taste of his skin, the way he pulled his head back and opened his mouth wide but silently in orgasm...

  §

  “You want his number?”

  “Oh no. No, that’s not what I want.”

  “His email address? There’s a contact form on his website.”

  “Thanks, Maggie, but no. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I was just curious, I guess.” I might not know what I wanted, but I’d called Maggie Nolan even so.

  “He’s complex and he’s difficult,” said Maggie. “He surrounds himself by protective layers. He has the public persona of a grumpy old man who knows he’s better than almost everyone he meets, and he uses that to hide the fact that he’s a grumpy man who’s still quite young who probably is better than most of the people around him. Certainly smarter and better read. He won’t let anyone get close, in case they find out that he doesn’t really believe all that and is constantly seeking approval to feed his fragile ego. He can be sweet and funny, and he can be incredibly blind to the feelings of others. And he doesn’t do one-night stands.”

  I hadn’t mentioned that. The sex thing, the anger-fuck. Had he been talking to Maggie about me? And if he had, what did it mean?

  §

  I went back and bought the book.

  That night I lay in bed reading until past three. I learned that the Belgians had as many ways of describing rain as the Eskimos had for snow. I learned that Belgian bars often stocked several hundred different kinds of beer, and one in Brussels was reputed to have over two thousand. All for good reason, as Brandon never held back from pointing out. Belgium was a country for which alcohol could have been invented.

  And also, in his curmudgeonly, tangential way, it was a country he had visited four times over a period of ten years, a country which, in his own words, he “loved to hate, and hated that he hated to leave”.

  His voice came through strongly in the way he wrote, and that night I don’t know what I dreamed but I woke in a hot sweat, my breathing rapid, my heart pounding.

  §

  “He’s been asking after you. Says he’s concerned, that you were an emotional wreck and he feels bad for taking advantage, and so
he bloody well should. I paraphrase, of course, and some of that’s my own added commentary, but you get the gist, I’m sure.”

  Maggie had called me at work. On the pair of screens in front of me I had a full-page fashion ad I was working on for one of our largest clients. I’d been staring at it for ages when my phone buzzed in my bag. Maggie. We went through phases like this: only exchanging a few sillies on Facebook for months on end, and then we’d meet for drinks and end up phoning every other day for the next month.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “That he’s been asking, I mean. I hope he’s not beating himself up too much. We’re both adults.”

  “Oh, let him beat himself up, honey. He can handle it. Unless you want to talk to him, of course? Clear the air a little?”

  She was being obvious, of course. Like the time she’d introduced me to Brandon at her book launch with the words He’s single.

  But sometimes, just sometimes, we all need a bit of obvious.

  §

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am sorry. I’ve been tearing myself apart about it.”

  “It’s all about you, I know.” At least he smiled at that.

  We were sitting at an alcove table in a chain restaurant. Somewhere anonymous, safe, generic. An interesting choice for a self-professed food snob, I had thought, when Maggie relayed the message.

  “So remind me,” I went on. “What is it that you’ve been tearing yourself up about, and why are you so sorry?”

  “The way I treated you that night.”

  I laughed. “Oh, please don’t apologize for that,” I told him. And bless him, but he looked embarrassed. He was so not the brusque, pushy man portrayed in his books.

  The waiter came and I ordered a twice-baked cheese soufflé; Brandon had a Bavette steak, rare. Both accompanied by mineral water and an awkward silence.

  “I kind of thought you might call,” I said, finally.

  “I kind of thought I wasn’t worthy to call,” he said.

  That shocked me. Reading his book I had felt so inadequate, setting my drab, very ordinary life against his. “Not worthy?” I said. “My God, but why? And why so sorry?”