by Tilly Delane
I focus back on his lips as I slip two fingers past the edge of my soaked panties and dip into my creamy folds. My finger pads become his mouth, moving over my clit in teasing circles. In my head, I beg him to enter me, but he has other plans. A third finger becomes his tongue as it runs around my dripping hole, dipping in and out. At home in bed, I would try to draw this out for a while, but I need to get back to the table and I’ve been waiting for release all afternoon, so I move his imaginary mouth back to my nub and let him rub his tongue over it in earnest. Two fingers, long strokes, one rhythm. The way I like it. My orgasm builds in seconds and I welcome it with open arms.
But it runs through me like a pretty sparkler rather than a firework.
Everything that is supposed to happen happens.
My heart rate speeds up, my insides contract rapidly around nothing, my clit pulses under my fingertips and more cream seeps out of my pussy.
I feel mildly satisfied.
And I’m not sad.
But I’m not sated either.
Nowhere near.
I grunt in frustration and straighten up. I grab one of the hand towels, wet it through under the cold tap and wash myself between the legs. Classy, I know, but I’m not prepared to carry on running around with a mess between my legs. The cold terry cotton hits me and the sensation is both cooling yet still arousing. I can’t win.
Once I’m clean, I wash out the little towel with soap and wring it out properly before I toss it in the laundry bag. I waddle over to the sanitary goodies, my panties still pulled down, select a slimline pad and put it between myself and the irrevocably damp fabric.
I straighten myself out, go to wash my hands one last time.
My heart speeds up at the idea of going back and sitting down next to George again – and I resign myself to the conclusion that while I might just have taken the edge off it, the fever just won’t be doused. That the only way to douse it is to get George Diego Benson, no more quotes in my head now I know it’s his real middle name, to stick his dick in me and fuck me till we’re done.
I take a last glance at the woman in the mirror.
Maybe she can succeed where Kalina failed.
Diego
Kalina is different when she returns from her trip to the toilet.
Less flirtatious. More focused. Still sexy as hell but not every breath she takes goes straight to my dick anymore. Which is a good thing. Because I’d like to enjoy her company for a bit without constantly having thoughts of eating her out flashing before my mind’s eye.
During the meal, I notice that she isn’t drinking the wine. She is sticking to water and sobering up rapidly. When I offer to fill her wine glass during the main, she holds a hand over it and shakes her head.
“No, thank you. I want to stay clear in the head.”
I like that. A lot.
I like a woman who can pace herself, and I suddenly realise that I’ve never seen her properly drunk.
She has come to The Cockatoo, my cocktail bar, with Silas and Grace a fair few times in the last couple of months, often enough for the bouncers on the door not to try to ID her any longer, and for the bar staff to know her drinks are always on me, if I’m there or not. I’ve also been around Sheena’s house when alcohol was flowing in the kitchen, but I’ve never seen Kalina sway or slur her speech or become glassy-eyed. Not even close.
In a way, this nineteen-year-old girl has more maturity than most of the women in my life, present company excepted. Grace, too, ain’t a lush. She’s worked hotel bars since the day she was old enough and knows her limit. And Sheena is Sheena. She can drink for England one night, and then not touch the stuff for months. I pry my eyes away from Kalina for a second to look at the profile of the woman on my other side, who for so many years while I was growing up was the only viable mother figure in my life.
She notices me looking and grins without turning to catch my eye.
“What are you staring at George Benson?”
“You,” I say, raising my glass. “Thank you.”
She glances sideways at me, puts a fork of food in her mouth, chews, swallows, dabs her lips with the linen napkin, takes her glass and clinks it against mine.
“What for?” she asks with a suspicious undertone.
“Being his,” I pause to indicate Silas, who is absorbed in feeding Grace a titbit from his plate, “mum and probably the only maternal influence I’ve ever had.”
She laughs so hard at that, she never even gets to sip her drink before tears of laughter start rolling down her cheeks. Silas, Grace and Kalina all look across to us, puzzled, until Sheena’s halfway composed herself again and pats my back.
“George, if I was your only maternal influence you got problems, honey. You should go see a therapist,” she announces to the table at large then finally raises her glass. “To my boys, present and absent, and to the fact that I was a completely shite mother to the lot of you,” she says merrily.
“I’m not sure I should drink to that,” Silas says with a grin before he takes a sip.
“You should always drink to the truth, baby,” Sheena retorts, and follows suit.
Kalina looks somewhat bewildered around the table and sips her water. Then she turns to me with a frown.
“What do you mean?” she asks earnestly.
“What he means,” Sheena starts, before I can get a word in edgewise, “is that these two,” she pauses to indicate Silas and me, “have been raiding my fridge, wearing my carpets thin and watching illegal films in my living room since they were yay high.”
She indicates the height of a leprechaun.
“Oh!” Kalina exclaims. “I didn’t know that. I knew you were at school together, but I did not know you were that close!”
She claps her hands with joy and then suddenly she turns serious.
“Now I understand better, why you would not allow Rowan to kill him.”
A shudder goes through me at the mention of the fight I so stupidly organised, which could easily have seen Silas snuffed out by his adopted brother. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his stupid brother loves him almost as much as I do. Almost.
Suddenly Kalina’s hand reaches out and cups my cheek. Her touch is gentle, loving, and I want to cup her hand in mine and press it down, but, of course, that is not the relationship we have.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she says softly and lets her hand sink away. “We all want to impress our parents. Want their, what is the word, approval. You were not to know they were going to pay Rowan to kill Silas. I mean, how could you? Who does a thing like that?”
My father and his best friend, that’s who.
But I don’t say it. I don’t want the memory of one of the darkest moments of my life to taint this evening. Silas has forgiven me. He and Rowan are good. And after years of this stupid master-and-servant relationship Silas and I developed once I became Diego, through all of what’s gone down in the last few months, I have finally, finally, got my friend back.
I look over at Silas and he shrugs.
“What she said, man. It’s water under the bridge. Your father and Cecil O’Brien are the cunts in town. You’re not,” he says before one of his rare smiles transforms his face into the handsome bastard that he really is. “You’re just a teeny tiny bit of an arsehole.”
“Language,” Grace says and slugs him on the arm.
He looks at her with feigned wounded pride, rubbing the spot.
“Ouw-a. She,” he says accusingly, jutting his chin out at his mother, “said shite earlier, but nobody hits her.”
Sheena swallows the mouthful of food she’s been chewing and smiles sarcastically.
“That’s ‘cause I’m the matriarch around here. Keep up, child!” she retorts.
Sheena and Grace clink glasses and drink to that, while Kalina concentrates on me again.
“Tell me more about yourself,” Kalina says.
“Like what?”
She shrugs.
“The usual
, I guess. What music do you like? What do you do to relax? What books do you read?”
I take a deep breath.
“Classic rock. You’re looking at it. I don’t,” I answer her questions in succession, and see Silas’ head snap up on the last answer.
He knows how significant a confession that is.
Kalina has just been let in on the best kept secret in Brighton and she doesn’t even know it, because she is frowning deeply at my answers in non-comprehension.
“I don’t read,” I clarify. “I listen to audio books.”
Her face lights up with understanding.
“Ah. I get it. Busy man, no time to read. But you can listen to audio book while you are working out, yes?”
I could chicken out here if it wasn’t for Silas looking at me intensely, daring me to show her the chink in my armour.
I shut my eyes.
“Yes but no.” I take another big breath. “I’m really badly dyslexic. Do you know what that is?”
She stares at me for a moment and then smiles a smile that I don’t quite understand, almost as if she was totally relieved about something.
“Yes,” she answers my question. “I know what that is. Does it bother you?” she enquires.
As if we were talking about a blister or something.
As if it weren’t important.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Of course it does.”
She lifts her eyebrows at me the way people do when they berate a silly child.
“It is no big thing, yes? Especially not today. You can use the dictate function on your phone. Like you say, you can listen to audio books. And it clearly does not stop you from being successful. You must be good with numbers, no?”
Yes, I am. And I’m happy that she recognizes that, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t peeved at how easily she dismisses the bane of my life.
“I don’t think you get it,” I say with an edge to my voice.
But she just smiles and makes a brushing off gesture.
“No, maybe not. But at least you can see stars at night.”
“Huh?”
She leans in until we are so close, I can feel her breath fanning over my face.
“I have minus three in both eyes. Without my contacts, I can’t see a thing,” she whispers.
Then she presses a kiss on my cheek, and all my blood goes south again.
Kalina
My accent is all over the show.
I’m messing up left right and centre here, but the strange thing is, nobody seems to notice.
It’s this man. He’s got me twisted in knots in ways nobody ever should be able to twist up anybody, but specifically not me and specifically not this criminal.
Because that’s what he is, no matter which way I look at it.
But in a sense, so am I.
Right or wrong, what I’m doing in the UK is not legal.
I’m operating without a licence, under a false name and I entered the country on a fake passport. All in all, that little package carries a sentence of around ten years.
Still, we are universes apart, George Diego Benson and Kristina Kaminski.
I carry on studying him as we get back into the limo after the restaurant, but this time I try to keep the heat on a low simmer and enjoy just watching a happy, insanely attractive, guy in the company of friends, while George, Silas and Grace laugh at Sheena’s stories.
The wine has loosened Sheena’s tongue and she’s regaling us all with anecdotes from the eighties. It was her decade, after all, she reminds us. And for a time then, she was hot property on the international model market. Which means she met quite a few of the stars the show we’re going to see pays homage to, and she has great fun telling us who used to be nice, who used to be nasty and who used to be downright stupid. If she is to be believed, brains were not the forte of many eighties pop stars.
The limo crawls through the West End until we arrive outside the theatre. The driver stops and comes around to open the door for us. George climbs out ahead of the rest of us, to help first Sheena and then me out of the limo, followed by Silas who holds his hand out for Grace. A small group of foreign students stops and gawks at us for a minute before their teachers usher them on, but other than them, nobody on the busy pavement looks at us, or our ride, twice. And I wouldn’t expect them to. Limousines are as common a sight around here as black cabs and buses.
I leave my hand in George’s after he helps me out and take a moment to breathe in the atmosphere, while Silas and Grace are still peeling themselves out onto the street.
I’ve been to the West End in London a few times in my life and it’s a strange place. Almost like the world’s earliest theme park, but for nightlife and entertainment.
Every building is a theatre, or a club, or a bar. And it’s always super busy. If you time it right, you can see many of the grand names in British acting shuffle around the district in their day clothes, as they go from work to lunch, back to work.
“Shall we?” George asks after we have all assembled, and nods at the theatre.
He looks down at our still entwined hands and then meets my eyes with the question if he has permission to keep them like this. I nod, once.
My hand feels right in his.
Electricity sings between us, but it also feels safe. I’ve never had that before. I’ve felt the chemistry with people and I’ve felt protected. But I’ve never before felt both with the same person.
He smiles a soft smile when I acquiesce, and leads me to the VIP entrance, trusting the others to follow us.
As we pass the steady stream of people that is already streaming into the building, I check out the crowd’s costume efforts and rate the competition. I spot at least five other Madonnas, and one who clearly couldn’t decide between Madonna, Cindy Lauper or Pat Benatar.
George follows my gaze and stops for a second to bend down and whisper into my ear.
“Not a patch,” he says, his breath on my earlobe giving me goose bumps.
We are let in by a sour looking woman who leads us first into a cordoned off area and then upstairs to a VIP bar. There aren’t that many people here. It’s a Friday evening performance of a generally sold out London show, but I guess it’s not the premiere. I’m a little disappointed because half the people up here did not make the effort to dress up and I was really enjoying people watching downstairs and grading individual effort in my head.
George asks us what we want to drink and then orders this round plus another couple of bottles of champagne and sparkling water for our box for later. Predictably, the bartender looks me up and down, because even dressed as Madonna I’m apparently not convincing as of age. Before he can say something, I rummage around my handbag and pull out a passport.
“Here,” I say, with a smile, and hand it to him, already opened on the picture page.
He smiles gratefully because I spared him an awkward moment and his eyes light up when he sees the birth date.
“Oh, happy birthday,” he says with genuine warmth and hands me my drink first. “Hope you enjoy the show tonight.”
I thank him, tug the passport away and wait for the others to be served.
George looks over my shoulder, down my cleavage and into my handbag.
“Is it annoying that you have to carry your passport everywhere, little lady?”
I grin up at him.
“Not as annoying as people calling me little lady, no,” I retort, and then laugh at his crestfallen face. “I’m playing with you. I don’t mind.” And because I clearly like living on a knife edge when it comes to him, I add in a lecturing tone, “It makes sense anyway. Never know when you have to leave the country suddenly, you know.”
I say it with enough humour that he doesn’t blink. But his eyebrows go up anyway as he nods approvingly.
“Noted. Wise woman.”
“See?” I tease. “That is so much better than little lady.”
Then I turn around and cock my head for him to follow.
&nbs
p; We collectively go to stand around a high table, sip our drinks and watch the most interesting thing here, which is a backstage door opening and closing from time to time with technicians and the occasional cast member in varying degrees of makeup dashing in and out.
“We should have stayed downstairs,” Grace voices what we are all thinking after a while. “There was more to see there.”
“You want to go hang out with the riff raff?” George asks me, and I nod.
“Let’s go, then,” he decides, picking up his drink.
We all follow suit and are about to carry our beverages back to the staircase when the stage door opens again, and a photographer steps out into the bar. From the way he carries himself, it’s clear he’s a regular feature here. He does something with the lens of his camera, scans the room for a photo op and then looks straight at us. He lets the camera sink and zeros in on Sheena. I can practically see the cogs turning in his head, before he crosses the room like a man possessed and heads straight for her.
“Excuse me, are you...?”
“Annie Lennox?” She laughs. “Only for tonight, ducky. But I appreciate the compliment.”
He stares at her a moment longer.
“Sheena Smith. You are Sheena Smith.”
Diego
I can tell Sheena is taken aback.
She didn’t expect that.
But she plasters on a big smile and nods.
“Yes, I am,” she admits. “Though you are showing your age, young man, by recognizing me, I tell you.”
The guy chuckles at ‘young man’.
He’s around the same age as her, aged equally well, with a bold, nicely shaped head, a beard to compensate for it, and the trim figure of someone who is naturally active but not ashamed of the aging process. I wouldn’t mind that figure when I’m twice my age. My dad has got seriously thick around the middle in the last few years.
The guy also has sparkling blue eyes and full, smiling lips going on underneath the beard, which makes me instantly like him. He’s kitted out in the standard aging photographer uniform of jeans, white shirt open at the collar, a very good quality silk waist coat that tells me he earns a decent living, and equally expensive black shoes you can run in.
