Our Little Secret Read online

  Our

  Little

  Secret

  JENNA ELLIS

  PAN BOOKS

  For Em

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

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  25

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  28

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  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

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  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  1

  The DJ’s doing this retro-beat set and Scott, who loves his techno, is entranced. The guy’s a pro, Scott shouts above the music. Fucking awesome. He nods appreciatively and sips his beer. In another life, Scott would be a DJ himself, instead of a computer sales rep. His foot is tapping, his neck turkeying, but this is as close as he’s ever going to get to dancing. He’s standing by the pillar, away from the sweating, dancing throng, looking like he always does – cool. He has this air about him, that he’s just a bit aloof and superior. It drives girls crazy, but I know it’s just because he’s shy.

  I listen too, my pulse throbbing, staring out across the club, lit in violet laser-light. My torso is slick with sweat. Tonight has been better than any workout at the gym. I dig into the pocket of my jeans shorts and grab a hairband, hoisting my long hair up into a high ponytail. The air on my neck is delicious. I want Scott to notice, to kiss me, but he doesn’t; but then, he’s not one for public displays of affection. I lean up and force a kiss on him and he stiffens, not letting me snog him. I laugh and stick my tongue out at him and he squeezes my bum, blushing that I’m teasing him. Even so, I’m not going to hang around being a wallflower when the music is this good. When I hear someone shout my name, I turn. Lisa is waving me towards her from the dance-floor, and in a moment I’m swallowed back into our gang.

  There’s a definite tango beat to the next track and, maybe because I’m pissed and hot and horny, when I see the Spanish-looking guy across the club on the metal stairway and our eyes meet, I find myself strutting through the slightly parted crowd towards him in time to the music, my intention blazing in my eyes.

  I’m showing off and hamming it up, I know. Lisa, Tiff and everyone else we’re here with tonight are watching. This is our favourite club night in Manchester, and a blowout we’ve been planning for months. And now, right now, this is part game-play – a laugh, to prove I can create a ‘happening’ this late on. But the other part of me is deadly serious, being carried along by the momentum of my own daring and the beat of the music that finds a home in my limbs, making them move as if of their own accord. I haven’t danced properly for years. I certainly haven’t performed a tango with a stranger. But somehow, this seems like the right moment.

  He sees me in the crowd and, when he stops still, I know straight away that he knows what I’m thinking. He stiffens, his torso puffing out, blanking his friends, who stare curiously in my direction, but I don’t see them. My eyes are locked with his. He’s wearing smart jeans and a loose shirt. He’s not good-looking in the traditional sense. Not like my Scott. He has a wolfish quality to him. Thin fingers, dead-straight hair, but as he gets closer to me there’s a sexual proudness to him that sends a hot flush through me.

  Wordlessly, he holds his arm out, barely looking at me, expecting the contact that he knows will come.

  I’m in sneakers and short shorts with a cropped vest top, my glitter make-up smeared, no doubt, but I feel like I’m in a swirling black dress and heels, as my slow steps scrape towards him. I hear Tiff squeal with laughter behind me – this is, after all, hilarious – but I keep a straight face, tuning them all out as I get closer and closer.

  And then he’s got me. My dance partner. He grabs me, forcefully, pulling me around into his embrace. It’s sensual, loose, but firm, and I feel the pressure of his hand on my back. Man, this guy knows how to move. He’s all hips and grip and perfect arms, but I know straight away that he’s danced properly – professionally even – and all my earlier chutzpah melts. This is serious.

  In seconds, we’re instinctively mirroring each other, which is why I’m ready when he flings me backwards over his arm, so that my long ponytail flips over and touches the sticky floor. The lights temporarily blind me.

  Almost immediately I’m back up against him, pressed thigh-to-thigh and we’re off together in perfect unison – slow, slow, quick, quick, slow – the thumping base-beat booming in my chest. I notice the sheen on his forehead, the black marble-like glint in his eye, even though he’s not looking at me, his head rigid, his eyes front. I don’t know him at all. I’ve never set eyes on him, and yet I feel like he’s seeing me in a way my friends don’t. In this very public space everything has suddenly become personal and I feel a pulsing, hot connection to this stranger that pins me in his arms like a magnet.

  For a split second I consider breaking away. I should back out now. It’s not normal to dance a tango in a club like this, but I don’t have a chance, because we’re doing it. We’re getting the tango on.

  I feel his hand in the back of my hair, pulling it – violently almost, as he twirls me around and around, like I weigh nothing. Then, unexpectedly, it’s a hoist and he’s got my waist, lifting me, his knee suddenly between my legs. I can see the pulse in his pale neck, but he doesn’t utter a word.

  I’m vaguely aware that the crowd has parted and we have a space of our own on the dance-floor, but my eyes don’t leave his black stare. Soon I have my knee up in a passionate embrace, my hand running down the side of his face. His skin is smooth, hardly stubbly at all. He has a mole by his left ear. I feel a kind of Latino passion throbbing through me, as he stretches me out and runs his hand up my leg.

  ‘Hey!’ Scott shouts above the music. ‘Hey. Enough.’

  Suddenly I’m aware of the club. Scott sounds so cross that he breaks the spell immediately. I turn to look at him, sliding down my partner’s torso until my feet finally touch the ground.

  Then I disengage, my knees shaking. I spring away towards Scott and grin manically, brushing away a strand of my hair from across my lips. I’m out of breath from dancing, but I breezily grab Scott’s hand as if it’s really no big deal. I don’t turn back, I don’t look back. If I do, there’ll be a fight. I know it. Instead, too scared of the feeling I can’t put my finger on
, I quickly pull Scott away.

  ‘Do you know that guy?’ Scott asks. ‘What the fuck—?’

  He’s stopped, ready to wade in. Blood up, hands clenched.

  Still I don’t turn round. I tug at my crop top. My pulse is racing. It takes everything I’ve got not to turn back and give the guy I’ve danced with some token of acknowledgment. I feel his energy burning into the back of my head.

  ‘Course not. I just fancied a dance, and he was just there. I was having a laugh, that’s all. It wasn’t serious.’

  I tug Scott away into the safety of the crowd, which has already filled our private dance-floor, like our performance never happened. A wave washing over a heart in the sand.

  ‘You can dance with me,’ Scott says in a petulant tone.

  ‘Then you’d better learn to dance properly,’ I say, half-teasing, but also sort of rubbing it in. I’m bluffing my way out of this, by turning this on him. He’s refused ever to even try dancing. Even at his sister’s wedding at the barn dance, he refused to lose his cool and do the doh-si-doh.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, Soph, that was awesome,’ Lisa says, breaking the tension between me and Scott, jumping towards me, like the Labrador puppy she is. ‘I thought you were going to fucking devour that guy. Everyone was watching. Didn’t you see?’

  I laugh, but I glance at Scott and his look is dark. He’s furious. Despite everything, I feel a deep stab of satisfaction that I’ve made him so jealous. He announces that we’re all going to the bar for a final round of shots.

  The moment passes, the dance forgotten, but when I get a chance I turn back to look for my dancing partner in the crowd. I can’t see him anywhere. I feel strangely bereft that I didn’t say something. I wish I’d thanked him. Although maybe it was better that it ended like it did, before I got completely carried away. Because I can still feel him. The way he held me. The beat of his heart close to mine. His leg against my crotch and, despite Scott’s arm being around me, I feel dangerously aroused.

  2

  I don’t have to open my eyes to know that it’s early. Too early. Still dark. My head is fuzzy against the warm, vaguely armpit-scented pillow. It can’t be that many hours since we left the club. Rain patters softly on the window. There’s no heavy traffic outside yet, but a siren wails towards the town centre in the distance.

  Scott’s familiar body is partially spooned against me, his head up at an angle on the other pillow, a wedge of coolness between my back and his chest. I don’t move, yet, making him wait, knowing he’s not fully awake either.

  But his cock is. Its fat length twitches against my buttocks. Like he’s knocking on a door. Let me in.

  My breathing doesn’t change, but I wriggle backwards a millimetre, just the faintest motion to let him know I’ve responded. For a second, I remember my dance partner from last night, but quickly push him out of my mind. I’m not going to think about him, or how I felt dancing with him. That was then, and this is now. And I’m with Scott. Good-looking, gorgeous Scott, and this is a make-up shag. He claimed he was too exhausted and pissed to go for it (despite my best efforts to entice him) when we got back from the club a few hours ago, but now he’s apparently changed his mind. I sigh with relief. He’s not going to sulk for days, after all.

  I move now a little more, his length sliding stiffly down the crease between my buttocks, and I tilt my pelvis further until I feel his moist tip graze against the soft folds that are guarding me.

  I’m not wet yet. Not like we’re both used to, and as he pushes more insistently, my body resists. I’m still sleepy. Wanting to be teased out.

  There’s a faint whoosh of air as Scott moves to close the gap between us, his smooth, waxed chest against my shoulder, his hand snaking up around my waist to find my breasts.

  From above, he runs the side of his hand down between the intimate sweaty crevasse where my boobs have been pressed together in the night, then underneath my right breast to cup the ample handful of flesh, squeezing ever so gently, pushing my breast up into an impressive mound, like I have an eighteenth-century décolletage. Oh, if only Scott’s hands could be my permanent bra.

  His thumb and finger lazily reach up to find my nipple and we both know he’s got me. He knows this is the ignition key to my sexual motor and, already anticipating that he’ll gently pinch – and later (hopefully) maybe tug them with his teeth – my nipples stiffen. He rolls the right nub in between his thumb and fingertip. Below, his cock pulls away then twitches back, slapping me harder now. See you want it, really. Come on. It’s time now.

  I rock my pelvis back, arching my back, uncomfortably contorted now, then reach between my legs to open myself. Scott is already there. I can feel the moisture on his tip as I guide the fat end between my lips. I’m ready now too, my body one step ahead of me, as usual.

  He takes a gasp of air in, as he eases inside me a little way.

  ‘Morning,’ I say, an amused accusation in my voice, but he’s silent. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know that his eyes are shut. This is no time for conversation.

  Instead, I clench my internal muscles around his tip, wanting him now to ease in further, letting him know that I’m surrendering myself to the inevitable. That I’m up for it.

  Like I ever refuse.

  His hand slides onto my hip and presses down as he slides a little deeper inside me. My nipples ache for him to return, but I already know he won’t. That this will be quick, the way he likes it in the morning. Urgent. No face-to-face. No morning breath. Just carnal. Focused.

  For a minute, he slides in only so far, then withdraws and I know what’s coming, even before he’s moved and I’m turning, moving onto my knees. I can feel his cock quivering behind me, waiting for me to be in position. I know the drill.

  On all fours now, he pushes easily – deliciously – into me and I can’t deny that it’s satisfying, both intimate and yet reassuringly familiar. This is, after all, what Scott and I do best.

  We move together in a synchronized rhythm and, after a while, I pivot my elbows to slide my hands beneath me to seek out my nipples, which bump against the pillow.

  I’m secretly fascinated by the graceful movement of my swaying orbs and, for a second, I imagine that they belong to someone else, that I’m beneath them, that it’s someone else’s hot, ripe nipples dangling above me. To whom they belong, I don’t know. They’re not attached to a body, a face, a person even, just a feeling. I stroke my soft skin and let the silver fish of disembodied fantasy slither through my mind as I raise myself to Scott.

  He grips my hips, but I wish he would grip my buttocks, to splay them open and gaze at my bum. Touch it. Explore it. Something we’ve never done – never will do. I’m shocked by how filthy the thought is for this hour of the morning, and almost chuckle to myself at how unlikely it would be for me ever to tell Scott what I’m thinking. For all the frequency of sex we have, it’s still pretty conventional. Not that I’m complaining.

  Through the curtain of my long brown hair, I glance sideways and catch sight of us in the mirror that is propped up against the wall. I can just make out Scott’s lithe and agile body in a sliver of street light through the gap in the curtain. His bum is firm and pert from playing football, the muscles on his thighs standing out where he’s kneeling on the crumpled sheet.

  It’s hard to make out in the dark, but I know that all around us is the detritus of his bedsit – or ‘studio’ as he likes to call it. His crumpled jeans, boots and pants upright on the floor where he stepped out of them, next to two mugs, some sideways beer cans and an empty Pot Noodle. I close my eyes, too. Shut it out. This is why we have sex so much, perhaps. To pretend we live in a different kind of reality.

  I do, anyway. Because, with my eyes closed, I can begin to believe we’re in a sun-drenched villa, like in a movie. Or on a plush four-poster bed in a five-star hotel. Not here, in a rain-soaked, recession-ravaged suburb of Manchester, where life is all mapped out.

  I can feel Scott deep inside me now. Really
deep. I’ve stretched to fit him, as I always do, but it still astonishes me how far he can push into me. There’s something triumphant in his thrust. Like he’s claimed me. I make a sound to let him know as much.

  But it’s not true. He can’t claim me. Not all of me.

  And before I can help it, the door has opened to the secret place. Just like that door opened on the last day of school five years ago on that hot, overwhelming summer’s day.

  In my mind’s eye I see myself step inside into the library area and, just like then, my pulse is racing. I know he is waiting for me like we’ve planned. I sense his aura, like the huge presence he is, even before I see him. He’s standing, pretending to read by the corner shelf. He’s next to the window, which has its blind drawn down, casting him in a glow of sinner’s orange.

  In the muffled silence of the romance section, I hear his breath as I walk towards him. He says my name. ‘Sophie.’ Like it’s a surprise. A delight. Like he feels like a child, too. But he’s not.

  His hand reaches mine. We’re both shaking. We both know it’s too illicit. Too naughty. It could ruin us both. He’s older, married. My A-level teacher. But this is a roller-coaster thrill like never before, and I know when I look into his deep-blue eyes that we’ve tipped over the edge and neither of us can stop.

  He pulls me to him suddenly, like time has just run out, like it’s the last moment on Earth. He kisses me, gasping with desire, like he’s never known desire before. His lips, his smell engulfs me, and the power. It’s a whole new kind of aphrodisiac. It hits my veins like a drug. I made this happen, I think, my senses screaming. It’s single-handedly the most exciting moment of my life.

  Behind me, Scott speeds up and cries out as he comes.

  3

  Leticia lolls against the counter in the reception area, one long, elaborately decorated claw of a fingernail scratching against the corner of her TV magazine.

  ‘If there was a hell, do you think this would be it?’ I ask her.

  Her dull brown eyes flick up at me and then lazily over to where the fifty or so under-fives are screaming around the shabby play area in the FunPlex Dome where we both work. Why doesn’t the noise bother her? How can she shut it out?