Temptation Close

by Scarlett Rush

  It was rather exciting to think that an unidentified man had come to you in total darkness and given you the best night of your life. Sure, she couldn’t imagine anyone nicer than him, but that wasn’t the point. By not breaking the spell he was allowing the fantasy to continue, and keeping her safe at the same time. If he only ever came to her like this then she could certainly live with that. If he never came to her again then at least she had that one night, which would grow ever more surreal as time went on and thus lessen her guilt. Sure, she would yearn for another taste as she already did. She would imagine other sublime things he would do to her. But she had to control that yearning, to make it a pleasurable memory rather than a nagging ache. She knew that however many times he came to her she would still want more. No amount would ever complete her, so she should just keep that one time and cherish it. Make it the single best moment to hold dear and to be enough, rather than just the first of a string of ever more dangerous and needy couplings that inevitably unravelled the happiness. Just take it and be glad. Use it not to rule your life but only to lighten it.

  She couldn’t say that it hadn’t already changed her. She surprised herself by how strong her defence against her husband had been when he came home from his time away and found her appearance so altered. It annoyed her that he clearly liked what he saw - just as she had always known he would - but wouldn’t back down immediately and admit it. Normally she would have caved and cried and been all apologies. He would have got his way, even if it was the wrong way. This time she had fire inside, along with the highest endorsement she could hope for. She had stood firm and not even allowed him to put his side across. It was a done deal and he simply had to get used to that.

  Of course, it helped that in the pub he was apparently greeted with comments from all and sundry about how good his wife now looked. Even the Italian was complimentary and he was usually the biggest advocate of the slutty look. Her husband was jokingly advised, apparently, to keep his wife under lock and key or face a procession of lusty neighbours all intent on cuckolding him. Sure, the language wasn’t perhaps this flowery but it was exactly the type of thing her husband wanted to hear. Well, he could do what he liked with this kind of backhanded compliment because those days were over. She wasn’t going to play the flirty plaything wife any more. These were going to be days of more respect, of greater equality, and some sophistication.

  Her transformation wasn’t yet complete. Physically there would be the breast reduction, which she had already told him she was going to get, not asked him or timidly mentioned it as something she, perhaps, might benefit from, if it was all right with him. In the bedroom there would have to be more patience, more attention to her needs. She was thriving off her new-found confidence, and he would surely soon come to realise the benefits of it. She would have her pleasure even if it meant tying him down! For so long she had been the mouse but now it was time to step out of his shadow.

  She was to be her from now on. She would love him as before but not at any price. She would honour him as best she could, feel the guilt of her sin - although never quite enough to regret it. She would always know it was the thing that catapulted her into this new tier of happiness. From now on Shelley would be content. She would bake her cakes, enjoy her friends and her freedom and love her husband. And she would privately look forward to the days when another training course took him away again, leaving her all alone and unguarded in bed, and with the kitchen door forgetfully unlocked.

  Opened Up

  Nesta was nervously running her fingers up and down the stem of the wine glass, her eyes fixed downward. For all her butterflies she knew she was going to start it, and that robbed her of the courage to look at him. She could sense he knew why she was there. They were close. He had sat her down and then purposefully pulled a chair around from the other side to place at the end so that he could sit diagonally across from her, nearer to her. Their knees were almost touching beneath the table top. They were close enough for her to be able to smell him: that fine fragrance; gentle hints of it picked up every now and then. It calmed her a little, the familiarity of it.

  He was looking gorgeous, as always. She almost thought to tell him, to get the flirting out there and obvious from the start. She could innocently remark, perhaps, about how nice the smart white shirt, with top button and cuffs undone, looked against his sun-browned skin. Then she lost her nerve. She should really have been petrified, sat there in the almost starkly quiet kitchen, contemplating the unthinkable, wondering how the situation could be engineered so that she had no way of not giving in to it. She couldn’t get up and run though. She already knew that every chair in this house, any seat that ever found itself within his vicinity, had already been fitted with his own patented Human Female Magnet.

  She took another large sip, vaguely noting that this wine was different from the last time but no less exquisite. The alcohol wasn’t going to wipe away her culpability. She knew it would be a conscious decision, a wilful overriding of her moral senses. He was quiet, not even contributing the small talk which might have defused her running emotions. But then again it was her that had knocked upon his door.

  ‘I must confess,’ she said, ‘I haven’t really any excuse for coming here other than wanting to see you.’

  ‘Well you came to the right place. If you had gone next door I wouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘I like being with you.’ It sounded lame and juvenile, but she didn’t know how else to broach the subject. Still she couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘And I like you being with me.’

  ‘Yes, but you like being with lots of girls, don’t you? You admitted as much yourself.’ It almost felt like backtracking, like a reason to duck out again.

  ‘I might have said something along those lines but it’s not strictly true,’ he replied, his calmness at odds with her jitters. ‘I certainly find women generally beautiful, inside and out. These days they certainly do tend to inspire some pretty strong, shall we say, urges, but I think that’s because I’ve been so short of female company over the years. In truth, only a fraction of my adult life has been shared with women. I missed that interaction. I never had the chance to converse about things other than guns and poker and fighting. My soul needs to make up for being deprived of the fairer sex, to listen and to learn about them, to just enjoy being with them. However, in terms of actual action, there isn’t that much to speak of. It’s rather counter-productive, but I think I tend to give that impression to help put women off me.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ she said with a grin, feeling a little stronger now. ‘And why would a minger like you need to put us off?’

  ‘Well, because I’m utter rubbish when it comes to mixing with people. You might have noticed. Sure, I’ve adapted a good range of composed expressions to use during conversations, but I certainly need them because my mind is often either spinning around or blocking. Sometimes I just stand there unable to say a single thing at all. I’m hoping it makes me look understanding or wise but I have a strong suspicion it just makes me look either rude or stupid. I still all too often get het up when I’m not alone - irrational yes, but an unwanted symptom of my days of confinement - and this can take me over and render me rather useless. I’m prone to a rushing need for space and light and absolute freedom. Anything else can make me panic, which is a feeling I haven’t been used to and so don’t yet know how to cope with. A need for escape and solitude isn’t going to make for good relationships. I’m reluctant to seek the company of others, particularly lovely womenfolk, for fear they will all too soon realise that I’m actually rather crap.’

  ‘What’s this?’ she giggled, ‘Mr Perfect admitting to some flaws?’

  ‘Nestling, my sweet, I am without doubt the most flawed person I know.’

  ‘So says the man with the tidiest kitchen in the Northern Hemisphere!’

  ‘My tidiness is just a habit, courtesy of the army
life. Back then you got upward of a thousand lashes if just one single sock was left under your bed. It’s a discipline thing that I’m yet to shake off. Plus my book on meditation taught me that tidy surroundings help with an uncluttered mind.’

  ‘Well, what about your nails? They aren’t exactly normal for a man. You must get them done at least once a week. That’s got to be at the very least verging on obsessive?’

  ‘The painting ruins them. Shortly after I came back from Africa, a woman told me I had rough hands. She was a manicurist by trade, so perhaps the hands were her primary way of judging people. She told me I’d never please any female if I didn’t have smooth hands and well-kept nails.’

  ‘I see. So your sole aim in life is to do things to please women?’

  ‘Well,’ he smiled, ‘perhaps that can be the point of me.’

  There was a little internal lurch at this reminder of her misjudged words last time she was here. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. I hadn’t meant that to sound like it did.’

  ‘I think perhaps I use the excuse of my wife a little too much - Lord knows she wouldn’t want me to go through life festering alone. She would want me to be with someone. Unfortunately, I know I’m not ready for it yet. I’m not ready to share and commit. I wouldn’t be able to handle being so close to someone. It’s not how I want to be but my body’s internal defence mechanism just isn’t listening. If I tried to be with someone now, however much I liked them, I would still end up feeling claustrophobic. I would panic and run and ruin everything, and I don’t want to hurt anyone again. If I can ease myself back into the real world then maybe relationships will come easier, but it is difficult whilst remaining so insular. Sadly, right now, the more I mix, the more people will see the damage and the flaws.’

  ‘Nonsense! Just get in there and be yourself!’

  ‘That’s the problem. I cannot just be myself because there is no such thing as me. From the moment I left my studies I joined the business of conflict, horror and killing. After that I continued it, but without even the moral standpoint of belonging to a national army. Thereafter I was holed up in a cess-pit prison where degradation and mental cruelty were the daily prerequisites. Over those twenty years I lost my ability to have faith, to love, to trust and even to interact.

  ‘There was not a shred of goodness to my adult life other than my wife, which is possibly why I cling to her so deeply, because otherwise I had no worth whatsoever, no reason to be, except it seems to add to the world’s darkness. I have no history I want to share with other people. I have no internal well of wisdom and grace to draw upon, so I have to begin again. Everything about me starts here. If I am to make any headway I need to learn from now on and lose the past. But people will always want to know this history. It’s human nature because we are creatures of instinct. We learn and survive through experience gained. How you acted in the past can give an insight into how you will act in the present, and people close to you will always want these insights. I think that’s why I can’t handle the thought of someone getting close to me again.’

  She had taken him by the hands as he was saying this, trying to show some solidarity and understanding. Just this meagre contact was heart-swelling. It was good that he felt he could share these intimacies with her. She wanted to know more but was very aware how that had turned out before.

  ‘Last time I was here,’ she said, ‘I thought for one crazy moment that you might scoop me up and place me upon your chaise longue and seduce me. I think I managed to put you off by insisting you talk about your past, which almost certainly killed the romance. It’s been on my mind a lot recently that I rather wish I hadn’t made you do this. If I had the chance again then I think I would just shut up and let you be who you wanted to be.’

  ‘We all deserve a second chance,’ he said with a little smile, and then leant forward to plant a kiss on each of her hands in turn. ‘I’m not sure about the scooping up bit. Can’t I just lead you?’

  She didn’t really give an answer, certainly no more than a vague nod of the head, but he was standing and lifting her gently from the seat, and then taking her out of the kitchen and across to his studio. The picture was there on the easel, covered to hide its secrets, but she was far less jealous now, since this moment definitely belonged to her alone. He sat next to her, looking into her eyes. It didn’t matter what he claimed about his feelings of insecurity when with people; the blank minds and the tied tongue. He looked as assured and controlled as ever, this perfect man. It was she who felt naive and ungrounded, standing on the precipice, about to become a new type of person forever, wanting it but still too guilt-ridden to ask. If he was waiting for consent she couldn’t give it. She wasn’t sure she was capable of anything sensible now at all.

  ‘Have you called it anything?’ she asked, her mind everywhere, the nerves clearly audible in her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The lovely mural of the boats - have you given it a name?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought to.’

  ‘You should call it Muriel.’

  He laughed quietly and squeezed her hand. ‘It shall be known thus from now on.’

  ‘This thing you are going to do to me - that I want you to do to me - you know you can’t do it if I say no.’

  ‘If...’

  ‘The thing is, I still don’t know that I can say yes.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to say anything at all,’ he said.

  Silence being golden, he held her gaze, his expression serious. She could see that he wanted her. He would see the same from her. It was wrong, of course - the contact would make it so. You could wish for someone as much as you liked without the sin being made real, as long as it was only in your head. You could yearn for them and dream the scenarios and hope it could be true, but until you laid your hands upon them the actual betrayal would not be realised. Unfortunately, there was no other way to absolutely encapsulate your desire except through physicality. You can speak it, sing it, paint it, but the only way to truly show how much someone means to you is through touch. It is the only meaningful outlet for those emotions - which is why people do it, even when they know they shouldn’t. He leant forward and kissed her, and then there was no going back.

  There was passion, but it was measured. Their obvious need for each other was checked by his patience. They kissed for a long time and his hands limited their exploration and gave her time to overcome her nerves. His lips went to her neck, and then her T-shirt was coming up and off. She closed her eyes and stretched her head back as her bra was unclipped and removed to leave her chest bare and at the mercy of his mouth. Her hands reached behind her, her wedding ring clinking against the spiral staircase behind them. She curled her fingers around the twisted iron balusters and held them as her flesh grew and tingled under the attention of his lips and his tongue and his teeth. She imagined herself tied there by the wrists, at his mercy, unable to do anything about this ravishment.

  His kisses were back at her neck and ears now, and his shirt was open. The chest felt smooth and firm against hers, just as she always imagined. The temptation to run her fingertips over it was strong, but she kept her grip on the stair rail, as if that meant she was tied and guiltless in all of this. She opened her eyes and glimpsed his body, saw the darkness of the even tan and the lighter smooth lines of two prominent scars - one running down his right side from ribcage to back; the other, some six inches in length, right across the left pectoral muscle. This released her grip. She stroked along the length of this second scar, the one above his heart. ‘Did they cut it out?’ she asked, quietly, although in truth she was glad of the feel of the beat beneath her fingers, which told her he was real for sure. She couldn’t bear to think how many internal scars there must have been.

  ‘Maybe one day it will grow back,’ he replied. Then he was rising and taking her by the hand once more, leading her up the spiral stairs to h
is bed. There were moments to take some details in, although they wouldn’t be properly processed until much later when she was alone. The room was neat and smelled fresh, and just slightly of him. The sunlight was coming in through the blinds but they were tilted so as not to need adjustment to prevent prying eyes. The bed was neatly made: satin modern covers in predominantly chocolate brown tucked inside a low-slung dark ash wood frame. The sloping-back headboard was high but not one inelegant solid piece, broken up as it was by a large cut-out divided into long empty rectangles by thin square wooden rails running vertically.

  The furniture was sleek and modern. There were low wide chests all in matching dark ash, and a run of mirrored robes. It was precisely the kind of furniture she thought he would own. These surroundings did give one instant impression, one she felt just fleetingly, although it was enough to send a sweep of elation through her. The room was chic but functional, the surfaces clear of clutter. The art on the wall was smart but understated: Rothko-like abstracts of merging colours in dark frames. Everything was square as opposed to flowing or brash or macho. It was quiet, somehow lonely. It was clearly not a room where seductions took place regularly, if at all. It was a room just for him - and now, thankfully, for her.

  They made love on top of the bed. He took his time and again she found herself closing her eyes and stretching back, grasping the thin rails of the headboard this time, imagining being tied. Mind-reading was ever his forte it seemed, and he took the hint, finding his discarded shirt beside them and threading it through the gaps in the headboard rails, bringing the sleeves back through to loosely wrap around and secure her wrists. It was just a taste of a kink she always knew she might like but had never tried; she and her husband didn’t reveal such personal foibles to each other, for some strange reason. It gave her an instant hit of added anticipation. Her restraints would not have withstood any serious attempt at freedom but they were enough to give her the buzz of feeling under his control.