Indecent... Exposure Read online

  ‘Don’t be,’ he says, and there it is again, that tenderness. ‘It’s just you and me, Ellie. No one else has to know.’

  He coaxes me into it so easily. I touch myself again, more pressure this time, more friction, closing my eyes at the first glimpse of my climax. ‘I can’t do this,’ I tell him desperately, as I touch myself and he works me. ‘I can’t.’

  Warm breath caresses my breast. His tongue finds my nipple, the hard, sensitive tip.

  And he shows me that I can.

  I’m still not calm when we leave the office together, turn onto the street and start to walk into town, neither of us mentioning what we’ve just done. We talk about the weather and the ginger cat that runs across the pavement, and what happened in the episode of Game of Thrones that was on telly last night. It turns out he’s quite an expert on Game of Thrones. He’s read all the books.

  ‘That’s the problem with porn.’ He says it like it’s a perfectly normal thing. ‘No decent plot. What people want is Game of Thrones with real fucking.’

  I imagine Game of Thrones with real fucking. ‘Yeah,’ I say faintly. ‘That would work.’

  Tom stops outside the fancy delicatessen on Market Street, the one that does the most amazing sandwiches, but doesn’t go in. I stop, too. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I really like that I can say things like this to you, and you’re not appalled. You’re not shocked, or disgusted. I feel like I could tell you anything and you would understand.’

  Tell me, I think. Tell me all your filthy little secrets. I want to know what’s going on inside his head, how someone who always seemed so in control of himself could be such a mass of contradictions.

  I push open the door to the delicatessen and go inside. The smell of coffee and hot, fresh bread hits me instantly, pummelling my already overworked senses. Today has been so weird that I barely know which way is up, and it’s getting weirder by the minute. Because sitting at the table opposite ours is the couple I didn’t photograph yesterday. I catch her eye completely by accident, and look away as fast as I can, but that lands my gaze on the blackboard above the counter, the one that lists all the specials, and I don’t want to look there.OK, so Tom already deals with my horrendously messy book keeping, but I can put that down to artistic tendencies. I don’t want him to know that the menu scares me just as much.

  That just leaves me with Tom. Otherwise I’m gawking at the wall, and if I do that, there’s always the possibility of gaze slippage. I do what I have to do. I look straight at him.

  ‘Did you see anything you wanted on the board?’ he asks, and the words nail me to my chair.

  ‘I…er…it’s hard to know.’

  ‘Would it be wrong if I ordered for you? I’ve always wanted to order for a woman.’

  I almost do a double take, but I say it’s fine. Of course I say it’s fine, although my inner feminist has a total tantrum. I take a packet of sugar from the little china pot in the middle of the table and fiddle with it as he joins the queue at the counter. I hold my breath, wondering what on earth he’s going to choose. He doesn’t have the faintest clue what I like. It could be something really awful, like beetroot or, god forbid, egg.

  He comes back with a meatball sub.

  ‘I could kiss you,’ I say, as he pushes the plate towards me.

  His head jerks up, and his gaze locks on mine. The only thing I can tell from his expression is that I’ve said something very, very wrong. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he says.

  My heart almost stops beating. My mouth tastes suddenly horrid. Of course it’s not a good idea. Kissing is too intimate, too close. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing. But now I’ve opened the idea up in my head, I can’t get away from it. I stare at his mouth, and I think how it felt on my breast, and I start to melt on my chair.

  ‘Thing is,’ he whispers, ‘I’ve got an erection.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He blushes. Oh god, he’s blushing. ‘If I kiss you I’ll really need to fuck you, and I’ve got to be back at work in twenty minutes.’

  The waitress comes over with our coffees. She sets them down then gives Tom a curious look that lingers a touch too long. Something occurs to me then, something that I’d not bothered to think about until today. I mean, he isn’t stereotypically good looking. He’s quite tall, but what with the constant big-brain-heavy-head stooping thing, he makes himself look shorter. And then there are the awful clothes. Everything is dorky and nondescript and beige, like he went into Marks and Spencer’s and bought exactly what was on the mannequin. And his hair. Combed back and tidy. No one wears their hair like that. No one.

  But the bad posture can’t hide those hands. The clothes can’t hide the thick neck. The hair can’t hide the fact that everything about him screams I’m a dirty fuck. And clearly, I am not the only female on the planet to have noticed. I’m trying to get my head around this realisation, trying not to melt so much that I leave a wet patch on my chair, when I sense movement next to our table.

  ‘Hello,’ Tom says.

  ‘Hello,’ says the voice, familiar and strained and female. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well. Are you all set for our appointment on Thursday?’

  ‘Paul assures me he’s kept all the invoices this time.’

  ‘Excellent. There’s nothing more frustrating than a lost invoice.’

  These two know each other? That explains the friendly greeting at the studio yesterday. Tom’s hand finds mine under the table, pulls it towards him and places it firmly between his legs. I choke down my mouthful of sandwich.

  ‘Hello,’ she says to me.

  ‘Hi,’ I manage, still not looking directly at her. This woman has seen a photo of Tom’s cock.OK, so he’s seen photos he shouldn’t have too, but in this particular scenario, she’s ahead, points-wise. Or maybe I am. He is hot and hard against my palm. ‘How is everything?’ I ask, my enthusiasm completely over the top.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, far too brightly. Her eyes are huge, rimmed with lashings of black eyeliner. She’s wearing a smart black suit, the same kind that Amber wears to work at the estate agent’s. In fact, now I’m looking more closely, she’s wearing the same badge on her lapel.

  ‘Look, I hope this isn’t out of order,’ she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, ‘but I was wondering if I could have a word with you. In private.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ What did I say that for? Why didn’t I make some excuse? Whatever it is that she wants to say, it can’t be good. I try to remove my hand from Tom’s crotch without making it obvious that that’s where it is, get up from the table and follow her outside.

  She pounces on me instantly. ‘I want to know who that woman was in the photo we saw yesterday.’

  Wow. Shit. Wow. ‘I…er…’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask,’ she continues, her voice dry and squeaky, ‘but I’m sure Paul knows the woman. He won’t tell me who she is. That has to mean that he’s fucked her at some point. Probably fucked her quite a lot, actually, knowing him.’

  I start some waffle about client confidentiality, though it seems a bit late for that now, and I am clearly going to be awarded hypocrite of the century. She folds her arms, tosses her perfectly straight hair over her shoulders. Then she gives me a wobbly smile. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I should have thought about that before I asked. I let my emotions get the better of me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say. ‘Are you really sure he knows her, anyway?

  I can see Tom through the glass, watching us. He’s sitting inside with a hard on under the table. I know what it feels like to be fingered by him. God, I want him to finger me now. I’m trying to focus on what she’s saying, to feel some sympathy for her, but all I can think about is him being all controlled and polite and dorky, only now I know that isn’t him. It isn’t him at all. Tom Hunt, quiet accountant by day, porn star by night.

  I force myself to focus. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I should never have shown you that picture in the
first place. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘No.’ She lifts her head. ‘I’m glad you did. I don’t want to cause any trouble. I want to make that clear. I just…’ She blinks, rapidly, and then says ‘I don’t mind Paul sleeping with other women. Provided he doesn’t do it without me.’

  Certain things start to fall into place. I don’t know why it took me this long to figure it out. I’ve been doing what I do for too long to still think that everyone wants or needs a conventional sex life. But I don’t know where the line of right and wrong is in this situation. ‘And you’re sure that Paul knows the woman in the photo?’

  She nods. ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt. She was…’ She smiles then. ‘Pretty unforgettable.’

  Something else slots into place in my mind. Paul is Amber’s boyfriend. Victoria is the woman he proposed to, pissing Amber off so much that she dragged Tom Hunt into my studio, dropped his pants and sucked him off. And I took pictures of it. Pictures she intends to use to get back at Paul, only Paul has already seen one of them, as has Victoria. Who is standing in front of me, begging me to tell her who the woman is.

  There are not enough degrees of separation in this scenario for me. ‘OK,’ I say to her. ‘Look, give me a chance to talk to her. I’ll pass on what you said. And I’ll give her your number. But I can’t promise anything.’

  Then I turn on my heel. I don’t want to say that I run back inside, but that’s the dictionary definition of what I do. I feel like the walls are closing in, like the part of my life I have kept quietly secret for so long has suddenly become as exposed as the people I’ve photographed.

  And then I see Amber.

  Sat at my table.

  With Tom.

  And Paul.

  I blink a million times, as if that will somehow clear the picture, but it doesn’t. My heart beats so hard I feel sick, the whole place swamped with noise but at the same time shockingly, terrifyingly silent.

  Amber waves and calls me over. She’s placed herself between Tom and Paul. Both of them are gawking at her cleavage. To be fair, I’m gawking at it too. It’s difficult not to, what with it resting on the table like that, right next to a half-drunk cup of coffee.

  ‘Fuck me. Amber is the woman in the photo?’

  I’d forgotten Victoria was right behind me. I open and close my mouth a couple of times as I try to figure out whether or not I should lie. I mean, clearly I should lie. Amber is my friend, my best friend, and the last thing I want is for Victoria to go all bat shit crazy on her arse.

  But then Amber looks up. I know the instant she puts her gaze on Victoria. A fire seems to flick on in her eyes as Paul sits bolt upright and goes completely stiff. Tom, well. He’s still slouching in his chair, exactly the way he was when I left him. I see the movement of Paul’s throat as he swallows, and then I see something else. Amber’s right hand is out of sight.

  And Paul keeps on swallowing and blinking, and suddenly it hits me.

  She’s fondling him under the table. And he’s letting her do it. And his fiancée is breathing down my neck, and Tom is right there, on the other side of Amber, and I’m involved in a five-way love triangle without even realising it. How did I end up here? I’m just a photographer. I haven’t even had an exciting two-way love triangle yet, so a five-way one is completely out of my area. This is all going to end badly. Horribly, messily badly, right here in the delicatessen. And I don’t know how on earth to get out of it.

  Tom gets up from the table and walks towards me as Victoria whips around the outside, marches to the table, and takes his seat next to Paul. OMG. Any minute now, the world is going to end, and it’s all going to be my fault, and I’ll never have known what it was like to be banged into the middle of next week by Tom Hunt.

  And now I’ve made that thought real inside my head, I can’t escape from it. It’s still there, shouting at me, when Tom stands in front of me, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, looking at me in that awkward way of his.

  It completely undoes me.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘This day just keeps getting stranger.’

  ‘You think?’

  He nods. ‘It could only get stranger if aliens landed.’ He glances down at the floor. ‘Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to work.’

  No. No! We were talking, and he was letting me touch him, and I haven’t touched him nearly enough. ‘Already?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Could we…’ I stutter over the next word. No matter how hard I try, it won’t come. ‘When will we be able to…that is, I’d like to…’

  ‘Fuck?’ He supplies helpfully. The woman at the nearest table glares up at us, but Tom is seemingly oblivious.

  It’s no good. I can’t say that word. ‘I’d like to see you again. If that’s OKwith you.’

  ‘Of course.’ He smiles at me, a big, happy smile. Then he reaches out and takes my hand. The gesture is sweet, charming, boyish, and his hand is warm. I shiver at the thought of that hand sliding over my flesh. ‘It is more than OKwith me. Tomorrow?’

  Yes. Oh, yes. Please. Yes. But before I can get the word out, a shout comes from behind us. Amber. I dodge around Tom in time to see her storm out, arms folded, high heels loud on the tiled floor. Victoria and Paul are still at the table, and from the corner of my eye I see Victoria lean in, see their mouths touch. Oh, no. This was the last thing Amber wanted. The very last thing. Victoria, you lying bitch, I think to myself. You didn’t want Amber to be part of it. You wanted to know who she was so you could hurt her.

  My heart sinks, but Tom is still holding my hand, holding on tight. He is still warm and next to me. He is still here, with me. And I know, now, that I have to be with him. Watching a life fall apart in front of you will have that effect, I’m discovering. I move closer to him, so close I can feel his breath warm my cheek. Everything is so screwed up.

  ‘I have to go after her,’ I tell him, trying to tug my hand free.

  ‘I know,’ he says, smoothing a stray strand of hair back behind my ear. The gesture is just a little thing, nothing at all really, and yet my entire body reacts to it. He’s so crude, and then so tender. I don’t know what to make of it at all. ‘But promise me you’ll meet me tomorrow. We need to fuck, Ellie.’

  I find that word less shocking, now. But its power to excite me is increasing every time he says it. ‘Where?’

  ‘Where would you like?’

  ‘My studio?’ It’s the first place I think of.

  His mouth widens into a lopsided smile. ‘Perfect.’

  Then he lets me go. But by the time I make it outside, Amber has gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I fumble in my bag for my phone and call Amber, but it goes straight to voice mail. I leave a message, a confused mess of a thing, then head back to my studio. I’ve got a ton of work to do before this afternoon and I’ve got no idea how I’m going to get it done in time. The last couple of days have been an endless rush. The whole world seems to be spinning around me, and what’s worrying me most of all is that I’m enjoying it.

  I take a minute to let that sink in, as I fish my keys from my bag. It feels like I’ve spent far too long living on the periphery of everyone else’s life, and for the first time, I’m living my own. I don’t like to admit it to myself, but my life has been boring for a very, very long time.

  I go to unlock the door. It’s already open. Please tell me I didn’t leave it unlocked. It’s not the equipment I’m worried about, that’s insured. But if someone has taken my laptop…

  It doesn’t bear thinking about. So I refuse to think about it. I rush inside, trying to steel myself for what I’m going to find, imagining the worst. Everything looks exactly as it did when I left. Nothing seems out of place. I hear the sound of the toilet flushing in the little bathroom at the back, and I grab the nearest thing, arming myself.

  The bathroom door opens. ‘Hey,’ says Amber, flicking the light off as she leaves the small room. ‘I was wondering when you’d get here. I
f you’d get here.’

  ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ Relief comes out of me as anger. I throw the umbrella down by the door.

  ‘You gave me a key, remember?’ She flops down on the velvet sofa. ‘Anyway, I was hardly going to go back to work, was I? Not now I know it’s her.’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘I can’t believe he was banging both of us and neither of us knew. All that crap he spouted about workplace relationships, about how we had to be discreet, and absolutely no one could know.’ With a furious twist of her arm, she punches the seat next to her. ‘Lying bastard. What he really meant was that he didn’t want either of us to find out. Until he went and fell in love with Victoria and decided he didn’t need me any more.’ She turns to me then. ‘Do you know what she said to me earlier?’

  I’m not sure I want to know, but it’s clear that she wants me to ask, so I do. ‘What?’

  ‘She said that I’d got the most incredible tits she’d ever seen, and that she’d quite like to screw me! And then Paul said he’d like to watch!’

  I wait for her pain to hit me. But it doesn’t. And then I say something that I’d never have said before. ‘You should go for it.’

  Amber sits bolt upright on the sofa and stares at me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I want him to suffer, Ellie. I want him to know exactly what he’s missing and exactly how much of a prick he’s being.’

  ‘I know you do.’ But still, I don’t feel it.

  Amber gets to her feet. ‘Show me the photos.’ It’s not a request. It’s a demand. And I know that my time is up. I have to tell her the truth.

  I sit down at my desk, open my laptop and click through to the file that contains the photos of her and Tom. The slideshow starts up, and Amber slips in beside me, pushing her hip against mine until we’re sharing the chair. She smells of Coco Mademoiselle and optimism. I get out of the chair and move to the other side of the studio. I can’t bring myself to look at the pictures, not today.

  There is silence for a long moment. The pictures I did get are good, I know they are. But they aren’t what she wanted. And I know the second she finds that out.