On Demand

by Justine Elyot

  He came on to every female customer. I had never found this irritating before – had always considered it part of his job description, just as part of mine was to flirt with the men and compliment the women. But now an obscure threadworm of resentment burrowed beneath my skin. It's me you should be looking at, me whose pants you should be trying to charm off, me who is letting you win a final victory in your three-year campaign. Look at me.

  I tapped the foot of my glass smartly against the counter top.

  'Is a bit of service here out of the question?'

  Lloyd smiled a tender apology at the woman he had been chatting up, removed his odious eyes from her cleavage and directed them at me. You could have sewn a patchwork quilt of emotions from the look he shot across my bows. One square of challenge, one square of annoyance, one square of knowing smugness, one square of menace, and one gigantic huge fuck-off square of lust dead centre.

  'Madam?' he drawled, sliding down the bar as if on castors.

  'Don't madam me,' I snipped. 'If I'm going to go through with this I need another Whisky Sour. A large one.'

  'A Whisky Sour? Sure I can't tempt you with . . .'

  'If you say Sloe Comfortable Screw, I will deck you,' I warned him.

  'No, I was going to say a gangbang,' hissed Lloyd, grinning. I swear there were fangs in there somewhere. 'Except we've got that to come, haven't we? So to speak. And I'm very much looking forward to it. Aren't you?'

  'I'll be straight with you, Lloyd. You weren't my first choice of orgy partner. You weren't even my thousand-and-first choice. But I suppose we should just try to . . . pretend we aren't each other. Pretend we're complete strangers.'

  'Well, that is what you go for, after all, isn't it, Sophie?'

  'Shut the fuck up. I mean, you won't be having me. You won't be having Sophie the person. It'll be pure, neat sex. No mixers, no fizz, no olive on a stick. You are cock and I am cunt. That's all.'

  'You put it so nicely.' He bared his teeth, but you couldn't have called it a smile. 'Don't worry, sweetheart, I know I'll never be good enough for you. Unlike every other man in town. It's strictly a pole in a hole for me too. Whisky Sour, you said? The sourer the better.'

  I drained my glass recklessly, wanting to get into the mood, but my encounter with Lloyd had sent my libido wildly out of kilter. I would have been happy just to leave with Jake and have a little friendly festivity of our own, just me and him and a gallon of Baileys. Or Chase . . . where was Chase? With family, he said. Surrey, he said. I wasn't so sure.

  But the clock struck twelve and Jake gave the signal, watching as first Jade and Maria, then Lincoln, then Lloyd made discreet exits.

  'Are you ready for this?' Jake asked me, taking my hand and drawing me out of the messy revel.

  'I don't know how to be ready for it,' I confessed. 'But . . . it'll be all right, won't it?'

  'Still worried about Lloyd?'

  'Let's say there's no love lost. But we're going to try and put that to one side.'

  Jake kissed my brow.

  'It'll be amazing, you'll see,' he told me.

  Our four co-conspirators milled by the pool entrance, waiting for Jake to unlock the promised land.

  'Just a sec,' he said, organising lights and the switching on of filters and jacuzzis and the like. The rest of us looked sideways at each other, smirking, sheepish, fidgety.

  'How are we going to do this?' Lincoln opened. 'I mean, you know. There's logistics to consider. Three straight guys, one straight girl, one bi girl, one dyke. Should we do a rota or something?'

  The girls snorted and I rolled my eyes. 'A rota?'

  'OK. Not a rota. What then?'

  'Lincoln, I believe you're meant to just . . . go with the flow.' I put a hand on his chest in its expensive black mesh vest. Some luxury sports brand or other. A flicker-flutter, like what you might feel in the breast of a captured bird, against my palm. I melted. Lincoln, of all people, was nervous.

  'The flow?' he said.

  'Yeah. Shall we get into the water? Just you and me?'

  'The water, yeah. The water's good.' Lincoln brightened and began stripping off. It occurred to me that it was the presence of other men that was bothering him – being watched and assessed and judged. The pool was a hiding place.

  'Last one in gets a spanking!' I challenged, kicking off my high heels and knowing perfectly well that Lincoln would beat me to it, unless he had stockings and suspenders on underneath those baggy trousers.

  'Bad idea, babe,' he chuckled, already down to his jockstrap while I was still fumbling with my skirt zipper. He ridded himself of the surplus covering and stood, a magnificent block of man, with his arms folded, obstructing my path to the pool steps. 'I'm ready to slap some ass.'

  Rolling down my stockings, I noticed that the others had drifted off to the jacuzzi. Maria and Jade were sitting in it, kissing, while Jake stood behind them, his hands cupping Maria's breasts, nibbling at her neck. Lloyd, still clothed, simply watched them, his eyes slipping between the snogging sapphists and my striptease. I kept my eyes on Lloyd, grinning and giggling with pleasurable fear, until the knickers were off. Lincoln made a lunge for me and I skipped sideways and threw myself into the pool, as always relishing the moment that its perfect static calm ruptures into froth and wavelets.

  He roared and dived after me. I plunged beneath the surface, zigzagging and doubling back, enjoying the feeling of the water rushing up around every part of me without the barrier of Lycra. I lasted mere seconds before King Triton captured his absconding mermaid, our two heads cresting the wave together. We spluttered and coughed and laughed and squealed, then he hauled me over the edge of the pool and gave me three hard smacks to my wet behind before pulling me back in against his chest and starting a game of octopus-hands.

  I was so busy twisting and slapping and splashing that I did not see Lloyd break away from the jacuzzi group until he was sitting on the poolside, dipping his bare feet in the water, still wearing his white shirt and boxers.

  'Lincoln!' he called. 'Oi, Lincoln!' Lincoln tucked me under one arm and looked up in annoyance.

  'What, man? I'm getting down to business here.'

  'She can wait. Jade's got a challenge for you.'

  'Jade?'

  'She wants to know if a man can hit the same spots with his tongue as a woman. She thinks not.'

  'Can't you do the honours?'

  'She's asking for you. Besides, I've got other things on my mind.'

  We looked over at the jacuzzi. I could see the back of Maria's dark head, bobbing up and down Jake's abdomen in an unmistakable way. Jade lay back, looking bored, soaking up the froth. Lincoln looked at me, then over at Jade.

  'Think I could turn her?' he asked with a low chuckle.

  'No chance,' I said. He dropped me like a stone and I fell briefly underneath the water's surface, seeing his blurred legs striding off out of the pool and knowing that now I would be alone at the tender mercies of Lloyd. I resurfaced, shaking my head until my ears were clear. Lloyd was still sitting there, watching me, leaning back on the palms of his hands.

  'Come here,' he said. 'There's something I want to do to you.'

  'Just one thing?' I asked, swimming over but keeping my distance, beyond range of his hands or feet.

  'No,' he admitted. 'Not just one thing. But this is the thing I want to do right now.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Come here and I'll show you.'

  'You'll have to catch me first.' I pushed off with my feet against the side of the pool, swinging on to my back and waving at him while my legs kicked up mountains of foam.

  'You bitch! I've chased you long enough. You're not getting away this time.'

  Without removing his clothes, Lloyd launched himself off the edge and into the water. His build was bulky, so I did not expect him to catch up with my streamlined stroke too quickly, but it seemed there was a shade more muscle than fat on those bones, because he gained pace alarmingly once he embarked on his pursuit. I did not know
which way to turn, and it was looking less and less likely that I would make it to the steps to effect a dripping escape across the tiles. Less than a foot from the poolside, he make a lunge for me and grabbed an ankle. Kick and scream as I might, I could not shake him off; he reeled me in and flipped me around so that I faced him, holding me to his heaving wet shirt by my hips. The water lapped over my breasts and the soaked cloth of his boxers covered my pubic triangle. I tried to push against him with my legs, but he stood firm, grinning victoriously before switching into a more sinister gear.

  'I've got you at last,' he said, reminding me of Snidely Whiplash. I had the strongest presentiment that I was about to be tied to a metaphorical railway track. 'I've waited so long for this.'

  'Make the most of it,' I advised him. 'It won't be happening again.'

  'We'll see,' he rasped, and then he bent and put his lips to the side of my neck, kissing the droplets at first, then licking up and down a little, then suddenly clamping down fiercely, sucking and nipping with full force.

  'What are you doing? Don't make a mark!' I fretted, but he continued his vampiric claiming of my skin, pulling me tighter against him, encircling me with steel. His erection unfurled between my thighs, the cloth of his boxers pushing between my lower lips, while the upper part of me withdrew into glorious reminiscence. Oh yes. This was why we did this as teenagers. Because it feels good, it feels so good, so primal, so vicious and yet so delicate. I was being marked, in a place I would not be able to hide it, and I should have been angry, but it felt so good, it drained the anger out of me. There was something behind it, something I had not felt in so long, in all those years of seeking my pleasure and taking it where I found it . . . a feeling of being ravished. Ravishment, delirium, captivation, possession. I gave myself up to it, yielded to its seduction and strength, bowed my head and laid it against his shoulder, giving up my neck for more.

  He gave me a final leeching suck, then surveyed his work with satisfaction, pressing against it with a wet finger.

  'I'm going to tell everyone in the hotel I did that to you,' he whispered. 'Including Chase.'

  'Don't you fucking dare!' I exclaimed, tumbling immediately back into struggle and rebellion. He laughed, hanging on to my upper arms while I tried to trip him up.

  'Have I said something I shouldn't? You seemed to be having fun before.'

  I sank my teeth into his shoulder. He cried out, let go of me for an instant. I lashed towards his face but he caught my wrist and twisted it. We fought like that, in a kind of slow-motion forced by the water's weight, until he succeeded in getting me to the side of the pool, where he jammed me up against the side, snatched my wrists in one hand and the back of my head with the other and proceeded to kiss me to death.

  The kissing was harder and more bruising than the fighting, a conflict of tongues and teeth, a war of lips. My initial impulse to knee him in the groin, blocked by his solid bulk, gave way to pinching and hair-pulling and then eventually surrender, once he had kissed every martial spark out of me. He tongued and probed me into a final accord. Lloyd had won the battle. I would reconsider my war strategy once I had had a chance to estimate casualties.

  'You're a bastard,' I whispered, once he was sure enough of his conquest to release my lips, but there was no fire in the words.

  'Yes,' he acknowledged. 'I'm just what you need.'

  I didn't want to want him, but I did. I had exposed a vulnerable corner and he had swarmed into it, enforced an occupation and would be the devil himself to shift now. I broke our eye contact and glanced briefly over to the jacuzzi. Maria appeared to be straddling Lincoln on the ledge, but Jake and Jade were both staring over at us, jaws on the floor. Jake, naked, dishevelled and semi-erect again after Maria's oral ministrations, strolled over.

  'Room for one more?' he asked hoarsely.

  Lloyd looked him up and down with a measure of contempt. He wanted it to be clear that he was the alpha alpha in this scenario.

  'Give me a few minutes, Jakey,' he requested. 'I'll let you know when we're ready for you.'

  'Sure. I'll just . . . watch for a minute, then?'

  Lloyd shrugged. 'Unless you want to give Maria one.'

  'No, I'll watch. Thanks.'

  I sensed a competitive edge, a locking of antlers. I would never have put money on Lloyd against Jake or Lincoln, but now it seemed all bets were off.

  Lloyd returned his full attention to me, taking my breasts in reverent hands and swishing the water over and around them. His tongue returned to my overwhelmed mouth and his rampant cock – championship material indeed – continued a bruising assault on my pubic bone. Once he was sure that no atom of my oral cavity remained unexamined, he turned to the spot behind my ear, then began sucking at my neck again until my eyes rolled backwards, moving ravenously down until his chin met the water. He lifted me a little, keeping me steady against the cold tiles at my back, so that my breasts were above the licking waters, which he replaced with his licking tongue. He nipped the nipples until they bulged and throbbed, then sucked at the surrounding flesh, leaving dusky red patches on its whiteness.

  Then he lifted me higher, until I sat on the edge of the pool, spread my knees and pounced. He gorged on my slippery wet core, burying himself nose-deep, and his tongue was everywhere at once – circling my lips, pressing my clit, poking my opening urgently and hungrily. He feasted on me until I could bear no more and I kicked up a lather, trying to hoist myself back from the brink of an orgasm I didn't want from him. But he was not having it, and he held fast to my thighs, retreating a fraction to bite and suck and leave marks on their soft insides before returning to his cruel pleasuring of me. We both knew that if he made me come, he had won, won, won and he kept up the pressure until I had nowhere to go but orgasm. I came, I swore, he conquered.

  He laughed up at me, his whiskers flattened down by damp, his face shiny slick.

  'Jakey,' he called over to our avid voyeur, 'fetch us a couple of those floats, would you?'

  'What for?' I gasped, still recovering from his oral onslaught.

  'Shuffle back, lie down and you'll see,' he said, finally removing his trunks, inside the pouch of which he had cunningly hidden a condom wrapper. He levered himself out of the water and stood at the poolside, dripping down all over my supine body, eating it up with his eyes while his teeth tore a corner in the foil package.

  I strained my neck to look over at the jacuzzi again. Maria was fucking Jade from behind with a strap-on dildo, while Lincoln seemed to have persuaded the lesbian member of the party that she really ought to at least taste a man's cock before she rejected the idea outright.

  Jake returned with the oval polystyrene floats. Lloyd skinned on the condom, crouched down and parted my legs, placing the floats between my thighs.

  'These tiles are hard on the knees,' he explained, kneeling down and spreading my lips with a finger and thumb. 'I don't want to be thinking about my knees while I'm giving you the fucking of your life, Soph, do I?'

  'Don't set your bar too high,' I cautioned him sulkily. I still could not quite find it in myself to give in to him gracefully.

  'Never mind all of the others who were here before me,' he said, dipping his tip into my juices and swirling them around. 'If this is going to be my first and last time with you, I'm going to see that you remember it.'

  'I think I probably will,' I squeaked, raising my bottom from the tiles when I felt his crown begin to open and spread me.

  'But the thing is,' he said, his voice strained as he pushed and stretched, easing in and up, 'I don't think it will be the last time.'