Nailing Neely Jordan - Part 6b

The moment extended just long enough for the sexiness of his words to penetrate her mind, then he flipped onto his back and set about getting stripped. Neely watched, her scared reverie equal to that of the night before, as he slid his footwear off and swiftly divested himself of trousers and briefs. His cock slapped firmly against his stomach as he completed the slick manoeuvre and she could not help but ogle once more that great excited member. She was still looking when he rolled back and took her to him.

Neely caught her breath as their fully-naked selves closed together for the first time. Her upper body was pressed to his so that her nipples brushed his chest. His hand was light on her bare ass and his knee had inveigled its way between her thighs, the swollen head of his cock right there, pressed to her lower stomach. She shivered in fearful pleasure, those final inhibitions not as easily shed as her clothes. To have all her goose-bumping flesh in such proximity to his, the two of them not even covered by a quilt, luxuriating in their mutual exposure that warm July evening… She could hardly bear it.

Ray’s lips caressed her neck. His face nestled into her thick hair. She felt his hand follow the concave of her figure from her rump all the way to her shoulder and back, a touch so light it made every downy hair on her body prickle. “Isn’t this nice?” he breathed, his cock prodding into the taut flesh of her belly. “You and me together like this. You like it?”

“Mmm-hmmm…” she groaned, reaching her arm around his waist and embracing her lover’s hard body in response to his gentle attentions. “I love it, Ray…”

“Are you imagining what it’ll be like when we’re even closer?” There was a velvet caress to his voice that made her shudder, that engorged her with sexual longing.

“Yes… Yes, I am…” She let her fingers tease their way from his upper arm to his collar bone. He was continuing to mould his hand lightly to her curves, tantalising her neck and jaw with his mouth.

“Are you wet for me, Neely? Wet and ready to take me inside you?”

“Ohhh God… I… I…”

Before she could form an answer, Ray reached all the way down and slipped a finger between her legs, teasing it into her slit. She sucked in a sharp breath at the cheeky intrusion. “Question answered,” he whispered, withdrawing the finger from her slippery entrance and using it to trace her cheekbone. “I think we’re both ready.”

Competing reservations rushed upon Neely; as he pressed himself more firmly to her, she restrained him with her fingertips and voiced the most urgent one. “Ray, please, you’ll remember to…”

“Of course I will,” he reassured softly. “But it might be more sexy if you helped me put it on, what do you say?”

“I… I… You know I’ve never done that before. I don’t want to mess it up…”

“It’s okay. I’ll take you through it.” He released his tender hold on her and swung off the bed, so that he stood before her naked and proud, none of him more so than the great standing pole which bobbed in front. Neely’s eyes wandered all over the whole of his body from where she lay, stopping on that glorious erection. She was in awe once more of this man’s fleshly beauty. He reached to where he had set the condom packet on the dresser, then peeled off the cellophane wrapper and plucked free one of the sealed prophylactics. “Help me out, darling.”

Neely sat up on the bed, shyness overtaking her. She was being toyed with now, in all her flame-faced innocence. “It’s okay,” Ray cajoled, tearing away a plastic strip at the side of the individual package. “Come on, sweetheart, come play with me.” He made it sound fun and exciting, an invitation to join him in a sexy game, to be the type of naughty minx he so richly deserved. Trying to mask her nervousness with a show of compliant sexiness, she slid her naked form off the bed and dropped into a kneeling posture before him.

The huge mildly-curved length of his phallus hovered before her, robust and thick-veined, its tip glinting in the candlelight. She paused in a moment of frightened veneration before this miracle of Creation, then set about her task. When she reached for the condom, however, Ray drew it away, holding it just out of reach. She stretched further, the shaft of his cock hardly an inch from the tip of her nose, but still he held it just shy of her flexing fingers. “Taste me first. Just a little.” She balked at the instruction, feeling just a little too much like a plaything rather than a lover. Then she saw his face, eager and craving rather than dominant and demanding, as though the memory of her mouth on him was too much to resist. He was pleading, not instructing, because that was how much he wanted her. Maybe needed her. Tentatively she leaned in and planted her soft lips on his shaft. The result, as he twitched under her mouth’s touch, was her own thrill of excitement. Wouldn’t it be nice to be the naughty girlfriend who could make him feel good? Wasn’t he worth the secret Neely, the one beneath the church girl who thrilled to lusty erotic fiction in her room? And wasn’t that part of why she was here? It seemed appropriate, almost a blessing, when his hand lighted on her face encouraging her back to him.

She granted his wish, repeating the soft kiss all the way up the underside of his quivering length, then licking a little under the hooded summit. He groaned deliciously in response and when he guided further she could not resist capturing the spongy domed head between her lips and starting to suck. The act of wrapping her mouth around her boyfriend’s hot hard penis caused a shock within her, yet she embraced the task less ambiguously than during the massage. The time for moral squeamishness seemed long gone.

Gripping Ray’s upper thighs, she bobbed on him, so that the bulged salty head of his cock glided back and forth over her taste buds. She felt now like Odyssey of Lust’s heroine, minus the colourful sexual history, kneeling subserviently before her own Prince Sven and servicing him with her mouth. Yet when she gazed up at Ray’s taut body and his face straining with tense enjoyment, it made her wonder a little who was in control of whom. The thought produced a renewed thrill within her and she applied fuller more succulent oral attentions than before, taking him a little deeper, shaping her mouth more closely around his head and sliding her tongue about his shaft more lavishly. It produced a grating response in the back of his throat, suggesting intense physical pleasure

Neely recalled the reaction of Sapphire’s many lovers at such moments and vaguely feared that Ray’s would be similar – to abandon all control, grabbing her head and plunging his cock down her throat so that she choked. His touch upon her was soft, however, fingers weaving through her locks and stroking her as she sucked. “Just perfect, sweetheart, just fucking perfect…” His voice achieved perfection too in its combination of love and pornographic lust. It made her feel cared for and desired, so that she skated her tongue all the way down to the cleft between his balls and back again to recapture his head, all on her own initiative.

He groaned his appreciation and gripped her harder, his curling fingers tugging a little at the roots of her hair. “Look at yourself, babe… See how fucking hot you are…” The words drew her gaze sideways to the dresser mirror and her mind reeled at what she saw – the naked girl on her knees, red hair mussed, lips stretched into a wide pink O around her lover’s stout pole. This was a whole different Neely. The God-fearing church-girl had turned wanton cocksucker and the sight shocked her. “Such a sexy little angel.” Her cheeks burned, mouth still full with cock. The ‘little angel’ felt as much a slut and wondered to what extent the thought would haunt her next day. Right now the pulse of Ray’s sex-organ on her tongue and its connection with her wet swollen cunt overrode all guilt, but maybe that effect was only temporary…

“It’s time, sweetheart,” he said, drawing her away from him. A fluttering in her chest at the implication; the clock was ticking her virginity to its final moments. A strand of saliva linked her to his head and, self-conscious, she broke it with her tongue. He was reaching down now with the unwrapped condom, pinching at its tip and fitting it over the glans her mouth had just released. “Go on, you do the rest.” A hands-on sex-ed class. Her heart thumped as she carried out the practical, putting the fingertips of both hands to the prophylactic and starting to unroll. The lubricated rubber made a rustling sound as she guided it - from underneath the hood all the way down his thick standing inches to the shaved base. There she kneeled, wrapping up her boyfriend’s cock in that thin, tight-fitting sheath so he could stick it deep inside her.

When the fitting was done, Ray touched his fingers to her armpits and guided her tremulous body upwards, so he could embrace her again, enfolding her within his arms as though in protection. “It’s okay,” he told her gently, his covered phallus flat against her stomach. “It’s all okay.” She stood, holding his muscled arms for a moment that seemed an aeon, waiting and yearning. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered, as he cradled her, and she had to look into his eyes to focus on his inquiry. “Tell me what you want, Neely. I want to hear you say it.”

Was he flattering his ego, or urging her to own the moment? She chose the latter interpretation, such was the tenderness in his eyes. “I want you to make love to me, Ray.” Oh God, she did. “I want you inside me.”

He walked her back, still holding her, till her calves bumped the bed. Then he was guiding her down onto the cover with his body still tight to hers, easing her fully onto the bed with him close on top, the trunk of his body between her parted legs. This was it - the roller coaster car had clack-clack-clacked its tortuous upward crawl, rising perilously, vertiginously high, till it hung as though suspended on the brink, ready to make that first almighty plunge. Ray’s body hovered inches above her, his gaze locked fast into hers, one hand reaching down, steering his ‘fearsome fuckstick’ to where her aching sex awaited him. So sinful, so wrong… wasn’t it? Or could Danny have been right in what he said? That how she expressed her sexuality was her own valid choice…

“This might hurt a little at first,” Ray told her, and from all her flustered thoughts she felt an impulse to reassure.

“It’s okay, I… I… There was a… a… thing… incident… with a tampon, when I was a… a teen…” Why the hell she felt the need to divulge that embarrassing little morsel, she was not sure. Broken hymen aside, there was the not inconsequential fact of him being so damn big, while she was so untried – the concrete fact of this huge, thick cock, now brushing the slick lips of her pussy, nestling at her wide-open entrance and exerting slow pressure. Oh God… Oh God, be gentle… Oh no, don’t bloody say that, it’s such a cliché… She reached up with one hand and clutched his arm.

“You’re beautiful, Neely Jordan…”

The lips of her sex yielded and the head of Ray’s cock popped inside her, making her gasp at the sheer sensation of being entered. He did not stop, guiding his thick pole on a slow but relentless exploration inside her. Neely released a stifled, breathy cry as Ray’s cock stretched her; his robust upper body descended onto her slimness as he penetrated, inch by mind-blowing, virginity-spearing inch. She could have given her pussy its first filling with her sex-toy weeks previously, but this was the proper way, the truly scary and delicious way, however painful, however sinful – with a strong, athletic man attached, capable of powering his way forcefully inside her should he choose. If you were going to defy your God and everything you had ever believed, you should at least do it honestly - like this, with a beautiful, blond-haired, robustly muscular guy sliding his ‘throbbing man-rod’ inside your tight gripping cunt to the base, making you cry out in pain and wonder.

“Ohhhhhhh, so good…” They were Ray’s words, his cock burying itself deep as his body sank onto hers. He was heavy on top and huge within her, his dick stretching out her poor vulnerable pussy like she could never have imagined whatever erotica she had read. His hands slid around her – one ending between her shoulder blades, the other on the small of her back - and held her to him, as they connected. “God, I’ve wanted this…” he groaned to her. She gripped his flexing shoulders in return, as though imploring help and succour from the same man whose erection was thrust so far inside her. He clutched her, pectorals pressing down on her breasts, cock at an embedded halt. His breath was warm on her face. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Mmhmm, mmhmm, yeah…” She wasn’t sure whether or not she really was. He was there between her legs, manhood fitted tight inside her most secret feminine place at last; both the thought and the sensation were overwhelming. Her breathless affirmation, however, seemed enough for him. His knees became a fulcrum – she could sense them digging into the bed – as he pushed himself onto her, commencing to ease his cock back and forth. She could feel him sliding in slow regular motion against her tight inner walls, this wet friction accentuating the sense of his cock’s massive presence, making her more aware of her pussy’s tender recesses than she had ever been in her life. It seemed like the soft, fleshy core of her girlhood was being ripped through, broken-hymen or no, by this great siege weapon she had allowed inside. Each time the head searched and probed, she whimpered and squeezed tears from her eyes, increasing her hold on him, taking comfort in the kisses with which he peppered the side of her face.

“So beautiful… So tight inside you, darling…” he growled into her ear, and she loved the sentiment, that and its delivery - a kind of animal tenderness. Loved it so much that excitement began to overtake both trepidation and discomfort. She welcomed him now and the gradual kinetic build of his cock’s work inside her, all pain be damned. Ray’s gentle thrusting grew steadily in momentum, pelvis working harder, cock driving into her with smooth insistence. She was opening up, her tight formerly-chaste chute taking him more easily, providing space to accommodate all his length and girth – another miracle of nature - even as it sealed him in an involuntary wet clutch. His chest was moving on hers, firm muscle skimming her hard nipples, while his face hung above her, a mask of erotic intensity. Ray’s concern for her was at war with his desire, or so it seemed, and she felt the same conflict within herself – wanted him to take the pleasure she had denied him, even though she feared the full expression of his manly lust. “You okay, sweetheart? You like it, me inside you like this?” His voice was fevered, playful and irresistible – tight with constricted passion.

“Mmhmm, mmhmm…” She closed her eyes as she responded and bit her lip, knowing that it would only urge him to greater efforts. Instantly he surged, forcing a scream from her lungs as his cock drove deeper, harder than before. He sustained the increased level of thrusting, whole body shunting above her, great man-rod stroking her into fluidly so that she cried out on each penetrating impact. Searing, sharp and masterful, a kind of glorious agony. This was it, virginity utterly torpedoed. Her boyfriend had claimed her maidenhood and was now driving the victory home in a most literal way. He’s fucking me, he’s fucking me, oh my, oh Lord, I’m sorry, I’m being so, so FUCKED…

As though to mitigate his more rigorous efforts, Ray prised his upper body off her, so he could brush back her hair and stroke her face, all the while maintaining his full thrusts. “Ohhhh God, Neely, that feels so good… You’re so amazing, so fucking hot…” Her hand shot up instinctively and clutched into his hair, as though she needed the additional intimate contact, some clear physical response to the intensity of all he was doing. He seemed to take it as a validation and fucked her even more stridently, filling up her cunt every time, making her cry out more with passion now than pain. “Look at me…” he told her, as her head lolled. “Look at me, Neely…” His words brought her back into focus and she stared at him even as she moaned, the azure blue of his eyes burning into her as he delivered her his powerful strokes.

It was scary, terrifying even, but hell it was amazing too. Fuck Space Mountain, this was the ride of her life. Yes it was a terrible, sinful betrayal, but at least it was bloody awesome. (Literally bloody, she suspected.) She was giving herself to her boy, offering herself up completely, letting him plunge that great masculine shaft inside her responsive wetness just like in the story. Only she was no Sapphire. She had a guy to whom it was worth giving yourself, opening yourself…

That was what Neely found herself doing now; her legs were raised and folded about Ray’s tight moving ass before she realised it. Whether she’d learnt this in Odyssey or made the move through sheer instinct was not clear to her. All she knew was that she had stretched wide for her lover, giving herself not just to him, but to the neglected desires of her own body. Ray gripped thick strands of her hair, even as she was gripping his, and took full advantage of her spread thighs, ramming himself to her depths. He was reckless, now, as though overtaken with raw sexual need. “God Neely, God Neely, fuck… Oh my God, don’t take your eyes off me…”

She didn’t, staring into his sweating visage, absorbing the rage of his lust, loving how it was fused with affection, however hard he fucked. “Oh God, Ray, oh God…” It was blasphemy, she knew it, but that only proved how insanely sweet this was. Taking all of him, rigid cock along with heart and soul. The pain giving way, as she accepted her shafting, to a sense of being erotically, emotionally overpowered. Ray hadn’t been the right guy for her, not by a stretch, but he had wrested her affection and her body to himself. This beautiful, sexy, wicked, loveable guy deserved her and he could have her any way he wanted. The clutch of her heels to his ass and the squelch of her soaking cunt around that manfully pumping shaft was testimony to her surrender.

Neely might have laughed and given vent to her inner hysteria, had not the breath been so persistently knocked from her body by the impact of Ray’s upon it. She finally did release a kind of crazed giggle when her lover scrabbled to the bottom of the bed hauling her along with him, never once losing the tight connection of their sexes. “Oh my, oh God, what are you doing?” she gasped as she was dragged to the edge; then his feet found the carpet and he hoisted her ass free of the bed, recommencing his hard fuck-action from standing.

“I want you to see it, Neely Jordan,” he told her, his face perspiration-drenched like it were dripping lust. “I want you to see my cock pumping in and out of you. Look, darling…” What else could she do but stare past her oscillating tits the whole length of her slim body, to where that thickness, that great hard man-length was sliding wet from inside her, only to vanish again, swallowed up to the hilt in her accepting sheath? Ohhhh God… To see it as she felt it, so big inside her - that huge greased rod pistoning into her tight little saved-up hole, on the end of such a prime sweating specimen of maleness… So wrong, so wicked, so extravagantly, gloriously lewd. Not two hours earlier she had been chatting chastity with the youth-group teens, playing up her role - Alton Bridge’s poster-girl for virtue. If they could see her now, stripped naked and spread apart, getting her pussy reamed out by her boyfriend’s big dick… The thought should have made her squirm with shame, so why did act as accelerant to her already blazing lust? Her hand was stretching up to frig herself even before Ray’s instruction came: “Go on, sweetheart, get yourself off. Let me see you do it…”

Neely’s sex was fully flowered inside and out, clitoris jutting like a wet fig, eager for the touch of her fingers. She worked herself frantically from the off, her hot little nub singing under her own touch. The brakes were off now. She was beyond shame, beyond the restraints of religion. This inner fire was no way holy – under its devilish influence her body was a sweat-slick expanse of taut sensitive flesh, nipples so spiked that she massaged them once more as though to relieve the pressure. Her pelvis was buffer to every furious smacking impact of Ray’s loins, her cunt absorbing every cramming stroke without reservation. And she needed release like it was soul salvation. Her fingertips spun in a frenzy on her pulsing button to speed her there.

“Come for me, Neely!” he urged. “Come all over my cock...” It was an easy step, the final seal of their intimacy. How marvellous that her inhibitions had melted to nothing, that sheer passion had blasted every mental barrier asunder, so that she could do this… come screaming, her cunt-muscles spasming fiercely around Ray’s protected cock and bathing him in her hot secretions. She was out of her head, orgasm exploding through her so that she thrashed on the bed like her lover were shaking her out. The babble of wailing noise from her throat was like an exorcism of desire. Fuck, ohhhh sweet fuck… She was incapable of forming the words, but they sure as hell echoed inside her head till she was done.

Her body was still sizzling in the aftermath, when Ray reached under her ass and scooped her to him, so she had to tighten trembling legs about his standing form. He clutched her back and she wrapped arms around the bulk of his shoulders, hanging still and sweating on him, his unspent cock huge within her. Her pussy, she realised, was leaking copiously, no doubt drenching his balls and upper thighs. She buried her face in his neck, as though for comfort. It was unexpected and beautiful, tender and totally hot, to be cradled like this in her post-coital state. She could sense it was just a brief hiatus before her partner fulfilled his own need, but she cherished every moment of sweet stillness. “So fucking sexy it’s insane,” Ray breathed, voice hoarse with unexpended lust. “I had no idea. No fucking idea…”

Neely had no time to dwell on his meaning, before he dropped her back onto his bed with himself still on top and tightly-slotted. She clung hard, bracing herself for all he had to give. Ray withdrew every inch but one and slammed back in with a near-possessed fury. It was prelude to a bout of urgent fucking, his face registering something she felt sure was beyond sheer sexual desire. Not that she could focus on his visage now - her head rolling on the covers, moans issuing freely from her mouth - as he thrust into her orgasm-raddled body. Vaguely she wondered how much abuse a condom could be expected to take. Through her haze she sensed his desperation, all thoughts of proving himself the stud displaced by craving for release. His panted words confirmed it: “Oh God, Neely, I want to come, I need to fucking come inside you…” He ploughed his way unceremoniously towards that happy conclusion.

“Oh God, oh fuck, Jesus…” Not the prayer to her Lord she might have hoped for earlier that summer, but she welcomed it in all its impropriety. “Ohhhhhhh God, Neely…” He gripped, fit to crush the air from her lungs, and exploded into orgasm. His straining body went rigid as he pumped his load inside her, all of it contained, she could only hope, by the rubber. But whatever her fears, she joyed to glimpse her love’s face transfixed into that protracted agonised ecstasy. His neck muscles were strung tight, eyes screwed shut, body expelling its air in a long strangled groan, as his balls emptied. The climax paralysed him some seconds more, then subsided, leaving him to do the same onto Neely.

“God…” he continued to sigh, arms pressed into the cover so he lay on her only lightly, the two of them panting and perspiring quietly together. “Ohhhh God…” Neely wondered about God’s precise opinion on her current state of affairs, but the continued presence of Ray’s cock inside her became a more pressing concern. He breathed his way to recovery and set about extricating himself, gripping the condom carefully at the base of his shaft before withdrawal. Neely moaned and ached a little more at the sensation of his slow departure from her pussy – she had never thought of it as empty until her lover’s cock had left it so. He rolled off her and she watched with bleared curiosity as he snapped the prophylactic from his flagging member, it’s end ballooning with the thick white fluid he had pumped inside it. “Let me just dispose of this, sweetheart…”

She watched his naked departure from the room, admiring his sculpted ass through the delirium induced by her deflowering. ‘Deflowered’ – what a quaint term, she thought in his absence. How pretty and medieval. Rather better than some of the other euphemisms church-types had the habit of using. ‘Defiled’, ‘soiled’, ‘impure’ – she was sure Jack Simmons had resorted to all of those in his various treatises on the subject. What have you done, Neely? How could you? You’ve sacrificed your purity… Even by Evangelical standards he was old-fashioned in his language and his thinking. He’d never use such a phrase to Jonas, however much the cavorting with Leona would appal him. But it wasn’t thoughts of the Pastor which worried her right now.

What did God think of his servant in her newly-fucked state? She hoped Danny was right, that getting it on with your boyfriend was a paltry matter in the grand scheme. Neely wanted to feel that right now, but she couldn’t. Shame was starting to creep back as euphoria departed and she suddenly needed Ray with her. She needed her man’s hard body and tender caress to distract her from that inevitable sense of treachery. Until that time she could not help but slip under the covers and hide there.

“Hey…” Mere moments had passed before he was standing in the doorway, naked and gorgeous, a filled champagne flute in each hand. “How are you doing, Neely J?”

“Good. Happy you’re here,” she smiled to him, her melancholy easing as he joined her beneath the covers. They sat up and sipped together, and she did not mind in his attentive presence that the sheet slipped free of her breasts. Little point in modesty anymore, was there? “Are we drinking to us again?” she asked, leaning her chin on his shoulder.

“Nothing I’d rather drink to,” he said, stroking her face as he studied her. “Not in this world.”

She beamed and blushed, imagining them both properly united, sharing everything from living-space to the deepest secrets of each other’s heart, in the sanctifying bonds of marriage of course. Ray would never be a regular churchman – that would be too weird anyway, she thought - but maybe he would find his path to a faith he could express in his own way, in keeping with his politics and his campaigning journalism. Because she knew this guy had principles, she’d known it from their first meeting, however much he condemned himself. And that would increase, she was sure of it. Her love would only strengthen his moral compass and then they could make a life together with her still able to be a Christian-worker and God would forgive her any sexual misdemeanour that had kicked things off. They would forge something special and have lots of sex like the sex they’d just had. The sex I’ve just had… Me, Neely Jordan, wow…

Freshly thrilled, she kissed Ray long and deep and he reciprocated with a sexy tenderness that made everything seem just so right. Then they just hugged and were silent together as he stroked her hair. Champagne and the aftermath of passion and the end of an emotionally wringing day combined in deep fatigue and she slumped against his chest, so that he laid her down into his bed. She was falling asleep in her lover’s bed. How unutterably delicious.

“That’s it, darling…” His voice caressed her along with the stroke of his palm. “Go to sleep. Because the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll wake up… and then I can make love to you all over again.”

Make love to me… That’s what he had done, gently then wildly, but all with love. Love that she’d shared with him. Love that she would continue to share, on and on for a long, long time…

* * * *

She awoke, she knew not how much later, from dreams of guilty lust and the love which might redeem it. Her pussy throbbed sore and the bed was empty. She ran her hand over the crumpled sheets beside her for a hazy moment, before remembering with relief that her lover was hardly likely to flee from her when she was in his bed. The candles about the room had been blown out, but the bedside lamp still cast its golden-yellow glow across her. She was lying with the bedclothes about her waist, breasts uncovered still. For a moment she wondered whether Ray’s eyes had lingered on her naked skin while she lay sleeping. She hoped they had, but wondered also whether he had not thought to cover her up before leaving the room.

To use the bathroom? She assumed so, but when he had not returned some minutes later she began to doubt it. When several more lonely minutes passed, she guessed at the kitchen and a late-night snack; his sexual exertions had been strenuous after all. She waited a couple minutes more and could bear it no longer. An innocent girl freshly fucked needed the owner of her virginity there beside her. She would find out where he was and what might have drawn him from his girlfriend’s warmth…

But she would do it with a little sexy cunning, a little allure, so as not to betray her need for reassurance. However great that was, however justified, ‘needy’ was not something she wanted him to see. So standing up, she tugged the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around herself above her breasts. Despite the dull pain between her thighs, Neely slipped silently from the room to seek out her man.

The only light in the hallway leaked palely out from under the door on her left – Ray’s study, she recalled, where he wrote up all his copy. That was the answer, it occurred to her. She’d sprung her visit on him and he must have had insufficient time to write up that article – the one on Bristol locals serving in Afghanistan. Rather than make her feel uncomfortable, he’d waited till she was asleep, then slipped discreetly out of bed to meet his deadline. How sweet of him. She almost tip-toed back to bed so as not to disturb, but could not resist looking in on her lover-man, draped as she was in her sheet. Maybe she could let it slip a few inches, give him the merest flash of nipple before leaving him to struggle with his words, that naughty image in his mind. The door was lying slightly ajar and she pushed it open in a slow smooth motion, so as not to alert him. Hoping to spring her sexy surprise.

Ray was sitting at his desk, back turned, at the opposite side of the room, illumined by the computer screen, intent at his work. A tall angled lamp cast further light on his task. Neely padded up behind him as lightly as she could, arms folded across her front, gleeful that he was unaware. She hoped he wouldn’t be too startled when she jumped him, but surely he would forgive her, his gorgeous, sensual flaming-redhead… Like the redhead she could see over his shoulder gracing the screen. A recumbent naked redhead, hair splayed all over a dark-navy pillow, with the sheet crumpled around her middle so that her pale smooth breasts were on display as she slept. Neely’s brain was seized with a shock which seemed to shiver its way outwards, possessing her whole anatomy.

She was staring at an image of herself.

It seemed so unlikely, so fundamentally wrong, that for an instant she had failed to register the truth. As though Ray were bizarrely searching out Neely lookalikes on the internet to distract himself from late-night work. But it was most certainly her, however exotic and unlike herself she appeared in this sensual disarray - with her tangled bed-hair and her smudged make-up. All rumpled and just-fucked. Captured so candidly in her slumber. Her boyfriend’s digital camera lay on the table, plugged into the USB port. Having been snapped and uploaded, Neely now watched in hollow-stomached silence as he saved her in a photo file, still oblivious to the real girl’s hovering presence. He opened up his email account and she looked on in cold disbelief as he typed: Carlotta – Here’s your evidence. Satisfied? Ray.

“Who’s Carlotta?” The words escaped her lips as from an automaton, before he could carry out the attachment.

Rather more passionate was Ray’s response. “Shit!” He leaped from his cushioned office chair with such force that it skated a foot across the carpet. “Neely…” She could see it in his face, a rapid panicked assessment of how much damage had been done. “You scared the crap out of me…”

“Who’s Carlotta?” Along with the numbing sense of horror was a need to know.

“She works for the Tribune. She’s been doing some research for me on a story. I had to get some facts and figures to her for morning.” Wow, he was cool. And he could lie so easily. So instantly.

“Then why are you sending her my photograph?”

A moment’s pause. “I’m not sending her your…”

“Yes you are, Ray. Ray, why have you taken that picture of me? What’s going on?” Hard on the heels of her shock and her confusion was coming anger.

“Neely, I… I… I…”

“What’s going on, Ray? Why the hell are you taking pictures of me naked in your bed? Sending them to some stranger?” The sense of violation was making her sick. She clutched the sheet tight to her chest and tried to reign in the trembling which threatened to overtake her. “What is this, Ray? Tell me!” The sudden rage in her voice was enough visibly to startle him.

“It’s… It’s…” Not as bad as it looks? Not what it seems? Even Ray didn’t have the nerve to attempt such lines in this circumstance. The normally unflappable male seemed utterly confounded. “I shouldn’t have done it… I shouldn’t have done this, Neely. It was a game. It started as a game…”

“A game?” The word didn’t make sense to Neely, not in this context. “What do you mean? What are you talking about, Ray? I’m your girlfriend! You’ve… You’ve been playing a game with me? With… With her? With me as…” She couldn’t get her head around this. It made her head spin. It made her feel physically sick.

“I should have stopped it. I meant… tried to… I’ll… I’ll delete the picture. I’ll do it now.” She watched him in mortified silence, as his fingers stumbled about the keyboard, bringing up the offending picture and erasing it.

“Give me the camera…” He stared around at her, looking rattled and off-balance. “Give me the damn camera, Ray!”

“Yes, of course…” He reached as though to unplug, but she beat him to it in a moment’s panic, grabbing the digital device in one hand and yanking it violently free of the USB cable. “Neely…” He turned to her, hands outstretched in an attempt to appease. “I was just finishing something, ending it. A stupid arrangement. Something that should never have happened in the first place, but it meant nothing. It means nothing…”

He reached to her, but she recoiled in disgust at the touch of his hand, backing off from the total stranger who had fucked her. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me Ray… Get away from me!” Gripping camera and sheet, she fled to the bedroom and began frantically to search for discarded clothes. No time to break down, no time to rage – not with him there. She just had to get out, get away from this lying sick bastard and whatever he was trying to do to her. Underwear she grabbed from the floor, struggling into the sodden scrap of her knickers and her pretty bra while still endeavouring to keep the sheet wrapped about her. Nakedness she could no longer bear. She struggled into the dress and grabbed her shoes one-handed. Then she hurried, past Ray who stood dumbstruck on the landing, downstairs to the living-room, to put the light on, find her bag and her phone, arrange getting away from this backdrop to her betrayal and shame.

“Hello? Hello, I need a cab. Forty-four Alma Parade, Clifton. Now. Right away, please. Jordan. Neely Jordan.” She snapped the phone shut and shoved it into her bag along with the digital camera. As she wriggled her feet into her sandals, she prayed that the taxi would be no more than the few minutes the operator had promised and hoped that her prayers still got listened to. After the thing she had done. The terrible, stupid mistake she had made with this seducing devil.

“Neely…” He was standing hesitantly in the doorway to the room, angling to find a way back into her attention.

“Leave me alone,” she said, perched on an armchair, clutching her knees and her bag to stop herself from shaking. “Just go back upstairs until I’m gone. Do that much for me.”

He persisted in his attempt, venturing in and crouching down before her in an attitude of penitence. “Neely, I can’t even explain, it’s so fucking ridiculous.” She curled up tighter, horrified by his proximity, resistant to any appeal. “She’s someone I met years back – Carlotta - she doesn’t even live in the UK. I haven’t seen her in forever. It’s a game, I know how horrible that sounds, it is horrible, just some stupid, fucked-up game we had, long before you. And… And I should have stopped it as soon as I started to get to know you, but I didn’t. And now it’s backfired, it’s fucking blown up in my face. Because you and I… you and I, we’re not a game. Whatever you think right now, we’re not that, I swear to you. I started off that way, I was playing you, I admit it. But not now. Not anymore. Not for… a… a while now. You’ve got to believe me. Okay, you don’t have to believe me, you’ve absolutely no reason to now, but it’s still true.” Words, words, words, pouring out of his mouth like spew…

“You had sex with me…” Neely could scarcely squeeze out the words, emotion was constricting her speech so much. “…Then you took a photo and tried to send it to… to… to this person. You were ready to put a naked picture of me… out there. For God knows who to see. Because I was a… a…” Her voice shook with her contempt. “…A big prize, I suppose. A Christian, right? Let’s see if I can bed the Christian girl. Get her to… Ohhhhh God, I’m such a fool!” She welled up and bit her lip, looking away. “That’s why you had me there, in your bed. You played me right to the last, don’t even try to deny it!”

“I know how it looks, Neely, I know that, but…”

He sounded genuinely wretched, but she did not care a damn. When he reached for her again, she shied away from him, clambering her way from the armchair. “Just keep away from me, Ray… You make me sick!” The taxi honked from outside, its arrival more prompt than she had dared hope, and she ran for the door.

“Neely…” Ray was in pursuit, unrecognisable in his desperation from the suave guy she had known. Had thought she’d known. “Neely, I don’t want you to go. I want to talk about this…”

“There’s nothing to talk about…” She did not even look back, just wrenched open the front door.

“Neely...” He caught her, dragging almost frantically on her arm. “Neely, please don’t do this. Please… Neely, I think I’m in love with you!”

She swung around, arrested by the words, and stared into his face. He looked impassioned, distraught. He’d looked a lot of things that summer, all of them convincing. “You think? You think you’re in love with me? Last night you knew for sure! You said it! You couldn’t imagine yourself with anyone else, you were planning our future together… Anything to get yourself inside my knickers…and now you think?” Grief derailed her and she had to dig her nails into her palms to stop crying in front of him. “Screw you, Raymond Archer! Screw you…” Starting to dissolve, she spun around and marched under sodium street-light to the waiting taxi, hoping she would never lay eyes on him again. “Nineteen, Stapleton Road,” she managed to blurt out to the driver through her tears. The cab pulled away from the kerb, and she did not look to see if Ray was still watching.

In the back of the cab she choked back any further tears, tried to hold it in for the journey’s duration. She just had to get back, that was all. Get home, shut herself away from everything. From the dawn light that would soon shine on stupid sluts who got taken in by… by… She threw her head back on the car seat and breathed steadily and deep to keep herself calm, the sensation in her pussy a throbbing rebuke to her now.

“Whoever he is, love, he’s not worth it,” said the driver, as the taxi pulled up at her door and she thrust a note into his hand.

She couldn’t respond. She just fled the car and went rushing to her door, scrabbling in her bag for the door-key. I know he’s not. I know. But I thought he was. I thought he was… The thought pursued her as she shut the door and ran down the hallway, starting to weep uncontrollably. She made it to her room and collapsed on the bed. Sorrow overtook her completely, fierce sobs racking her body.

Somewhere in her mind had been the thought not to wake Jasmin; she had jammed her face into her pillow to stifle the anguished cries, but to no avail. Perhaps her friend had already been awake. “Neely?” She looked up to see the little brunette clearly alarmed in the doorway. “Neely what’s happened?” If ever Neely had needed her roommate’s concern it was now. She stared at her in wordless, tearful appeal. As Jasmin rushed across the room to embrace her, she flung her arms around her friend, burying her face in the girl’s neck to continue weeping there.

“There, babe, there…” Jasmin stroked her hair, cooed into her ear, let her cry it out. “You poor, poor dear… It’s okay, it’s okay… What happened? What went wrong?”

Neely could hardly catch her breath amidst her rib-aching sobs to tell. When she finally managed, it was through a mess of tears and snot she didn’t care about. “I caught him… with a photograph. A photograph of me, naked in his bed. He took it after we’d… we’d…He was sending it to some… some girl. I don’t know who. It was a game. It was a joke, all of it. He just wanted to prove he’d… he’d shagged me I suppose. He left the bed we were in to do it…”

Jasmin looked stricken, utterly appalled. “God, Neely, that’s horrible. I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe he’d do that…”

“Neither can I… He said… He said it had been a game but that it had changed. That it wasn’t any more. Tried to make out that he had real feelings for me, despite it all, as if he hadn’t spent weeks on end lying to me. Lying to me with every word he spoke and then trying to tell me he’d started to care after all.” She paused, remembering the horrified look on Ray’s face when she had discovered him. When he had pleaded with her. “What do you think?” she asked, looking up at Jasmin, wondering if she could salvage some scrap of consolation from the mess. “You think that’s possible? He’d maybe stayed caught up in whatever stupid game he was playing, but he’d started to care even so?” Even if it were true, it left Ray a pathetic shadow of what she’d thought him to be, but it would be something to ease her pain. The thought that he might have seen her as something more than just sport. “What do you think? Jasmin?”

Her friend cast her eyes down, suddenly unable to meet Neely’s stare. Tears were starting to drip silently from Jasmin’s eyes as well. She slowly disengaged her hands from Neely’s and clutched them together, sitting on the bed’s edge with her shoulders hunched and her head bowed, as though she were calming herself in preparation. Something about her demeanour cast Neely’s mind back to the way the little brunette had behaved the evening just past and it made her shudder.

“Neely, there’s something I need to tell you.” Jasmin’s voice was full as with a great pent-up sorrow. “Something I should have told you sooner.” Terrible unbearable sadness crowded in once more on Neely. She knew it before another word was spoken - that her shattered heart was about to be ground a little finer.

* * * *

When Neely was fifteen, her Nanna passed away – her dad’s mother, the grandparent she had loved the most, with whom she had baked and done needle-work and laughed at old movies. She had ached those first few days, been inconsolable until she realised her dad needed her to be strong. So she had shored herself up and taken consolation in the rest of her family. Been the one he leaned on and learnt the benefit of sharing sorrow.

But this grief was all her own, and a multiple one at that. Her vision of Ray, her self-respect as a Christian and as a woman, her trust in the people around her… The last of those was shot to pieces now, for sure - boyfriend, then roommate… All these burdens she alone must carry. So she cried off work at Lemongrass, quite literally, and retreated under her duvet into an embryonic curl.

Jamsin’s revelation had induced in Neely a kind of temporary catatonia. She recalled saying only two things to her disconsolate, blubbering roommate, on hearing of the late-night coupling on the kitchen table: “Why couldn’t you have told me this last night?” (cue further blubbering and inarticulate apologies) and “Get out of here. And don’t come back.” Whatever way she had said the final three words, Jasmin had not argued. She had simply slunk from the room and thence from the house, having packed, Neely thought, a few things to take with her. Further crying had ensued - the drawn-out, sick-making, physically-shattering type, which had eventually reduced her to a silent huddle of misery beneath the covers.

Any one of Neely’s troubles would have sufficed to plague her. Her boyfriend had cheated on her in her own place with her close friend. He had been lying all along, making stuff up, improvising his way into her affections and her pants for his own twisted fun. She had given away her virginity to him, compromised a vital part of herself, laid it out for the shittiest player who had ever darkened her life. All these thoughts combined in a turmoil, which boiled relentlessly inside her as she lay.

When she finally dragged herself into daylight it was to get the camera and delete the offensive image. But then she found all else in the camera – the dates they had been on, to Clifton Downs and Wales and dinner in town, pristine memories shat all over by his treachery. She started to sob again, then flung the camera across her room in a rage, before picking it up again and erasing every image, not just the nude one.

Grief and horror were driving her frantic and early afternoon, after that long dark morning of her soul, she cast around for anyone she could talk to. Love her mum though she did, there was too much Anglican primness about Mary Jordan to make that type of mother-daughter chat an option. As for her dad, he could never countenance the idea of his princess being popped in such a tawdry fashion. She called her sister, but found her away from both landline and mobile. Who knew when juggling of work and family would allow Layla to check her voicemail? Neely left a brief and sorrowful “Call me when you can” message and hoped it wouldn’t be too long till the response.

When half an hour brought none and the taunting thoughts came rolling in once more – most of them involving her nakedness and Ray’s dick – she cast around for other options. Her Alton Bridge friends? Not likely. Jonas… Maybe in the past, now way too embarrassing. Leo – incommunicado on a Cornish holiday with Graham, she remembered. Eventually in desperation she phoned Danny, twice, but terminated both calls after a few rings, despairing of what she would say. Hi Danny… Remember that guy I was hot for? Well he shagged me and sent out pictures. She sat instead at the kitchen table, mournful with a Camomile tea, staring at her phone.

When it rang, she assumed her sister, then recoiled as from a rattlesnake when she saw Ray’s name flashing on the read-out. Neely grabbed the phone and cut the call dead, slapping her mobile back on the table and rushing to the sink. She stood, clutching the cold metal and weeping her rage. Shortly after a text message buzzed its arrival and she rushed back to delete it. She felt like dismantling the phone violently, but restrained herself; the possibility of some other human contact was too urgent a need. So she retreated to bed and hugged herself tight, wary eyes fixed upon the phone where it lay beside her.

It sounded minutes later and set her heart pumping. Not content with his debauching, was Ray going to torment her all damn day? She seized the device that plagued her, ready now to switch it off. Then she saw Danny’s name and answered like she was grabbing a lifeline. “Hello?”

“Hi – I’ve been left several non-messages here by a certain Neely Jordan…”

“Yeah… That’d be me…” She felt relief wash through her at the sound of his dry but gentle voice.

“What’s up with you, girl? Everything okay?”

“No, Danny, no, it’s not…” She hadn’t tried calling so she could pretend. “Not okay at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s… the guy, right? You one you told me about. Things haven’t worked out?”

“No, no they haven’t…” Just having a sympathetic listener was making her cave. “It’s all gone wrong, Danny, it’s all gone really, really wrong.” She seized up with emotion for a moment and could sense him waiting patiently for her till she recovered enough to go on. “I went around to his place last night and… and…” A repeat-attack of grief silenced her once more.

“Neely, did he hurt you?” The suspicion in Danny’s voice halted her sobs. “Did he lay a finger on you that you didn’t want? Because if he did, I’ll…”

“No, no, no,” she rushed to assure him. His anger on her behalf was quite gratifying, made her feel slightly better if only for a moment. “No, nothing I didn’t want. Nothing I didn’t ask for...” How cheap and used did that confession make her feel? “I just thought he really liked me and… and I was wrong. Way off. Sorry, Danny, I just didn’t know who else to talk to.”

“Am I always the last person on your list?” he asked, with low-key irony.

“No, no, I don’t mean it like that!” She knew he was joking, but went all apologetic nonetheless. “It’s just… you hardly know me and I hate that I keep dumping all my crap on you.”

“Dump away,” he said. “I’m flattered you feel you can. Look – I’m up to my armpits in work right now, but I can come around after. You stick the kettle on and I’ll bring the Chocolate Hobnobs. That’s if you’d like.”

Now her tears were of gratitude. She felt like a whole day alone would have killed her. She needed someone able to understand. “Yes, yes – I’d like. I’d really like. Let me give you my address…”

It made the next few hours more manageable. Of course there was the pacing, the fretting, the intermittent tears – all with lots of self-condemnation. Then she stared beyond a flickering TV screen for a while. At least now she could cling to the promise of some company. She managed to shower and freshen up, though thoughts of primping for Ray overtook her at the bathroom mirror. Then another mirror-related flashback rocked her – that of her cock-hungry, spurping reflection in Ray’s dresser - and she disintegrated. When Danny buzzed at the arranged time, she was trying vainly to dam up her leaking reservoir of tears.

Not the brave face she had planned. There was no disguising her distress as she opened the door to him. He was scarcely over the threshold before she found herself clinging to his tall dark mildly-dishevelled form, crying into his denim shirt in a protracted bout of misery. Danny held her, apparently unphased, letting her weep herself empty and adding subdued noises of comfort here and there. Lord, it was a wonder she had any trust left inside her, following the previous night’s revelation, for a guy she still scarcely knew.

“Okay,” she said, mopping her eyes and breathing a little more easily, “now that I’ve made a total show of myself…”

“…We can go have that cup of tea,” Danny concluded, and she gratefully led him to the kitchen. He hadn’t been joking about the biscuits, she saw – he’d arrived packet in hand. Did that make him a man of his word through and through? “Actually you look like you could do with something more substantial than Hobnobs,” he said.

“That bad?” She always looked a right state when she’d been crying.

“Not at all,” he said. “Just tired. And a tad stressed. Mind if I check the fridge?”

“Be my guest.” It was a nice to have someone look after her a little, even if eating seemed out of the question. She sat at the table and let Danny’s calm spread to her, feeling distanced from an impending panic attack for the first time in hours.

“How about BLTs?” he asked, producing a plastic packet from the fridge.

“Ehhh…” She tried to get a focus on the rest of her life. “I think we’re out of salad.”

“Okay, without the L and the T.”

“You mean a bacon sandwich?”

“Yup.”

“Emmmm…” He seemed to have coaxed in her a glimmer of appetite. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.” She watched him fry up the bacon, butter bread thickly and strain tea-leaves in two mugs, chatting away amiably as he prepared. It was comforting, like something her dad would have done years past, when his little girl had come home after a tough day at school. Nice to watch Danny carrying out these simple tasks, his words good-humoured and inconsequential, as though he knew she needed diversion and nothing more. There was a lack of pretention in everything about him, right down to his minimal grooming, as though his broad dark good-looks were an afterthought to him. They sat at the table together, sauce and bacon-dripping oozing from between slices of wholemeal bread and mugs of English Breakfast tea steaming on the table. Finally Neely felt something approximating to human again. “Thanks for this,” she said, having made it through her first sandwich. “Just been a rotten, horrible day. You’ve no idea.”

“Then tell me.” Something about him invited confidence. Neely wondered if he’d been this approachable as a preacher.

“Okay…” She told all, minus the intimate sex-details. The agonising prelude – how she had wrestled with her conscience to the last. The tender seduction which had served to ease away every fear and restraint. The explosive shattering of all her deluded hopes. And while putting words to it hurt like hell and gave her tear ducts a whole fresh workout, something about his quiet presence helped her through the telling. “So there you are,” she concluded, having pressed the whole messy story, multi-level betrayal included. “Quite the eye-opener, right?”

Danny had listened without a word, chin resting on his hands, giving her all the space she needed to recount the dreadful events. He paused before replying, as though weighing up a measured response. “So… shall I go round to his place and thump the bastard?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” She backtracked just in case he’d been serious. “No, don’t. I wouldn’t want you to waste a good punch on his stupid face.” She envisioned the face in question – remembered how it had looked when Ray was talking about their future together and when he was floating above her mid-fuck. Her eyes swam once more, as emotion swelled and overtook her. “I thought I was in love with him, Danny! I thought he was this smart, fascinating guy who couldn’t help falling for me, however different we were, and I just threw myself at him. I’m such a… such a stupid slut…”

“You’re neither of those,” said Danny firmly, squeezing her arm. “And maybe he fell for you more than you know.”

“No, his whole plan was to seduce me! It was a ‘game’, that’s his word. And I just let him play me. Let him talk me out of beliefs I’ve held since I was a kid.”

“Don’t give him so much credit,” Danny told her with gentle insistence. “Seriously, don’t give this guy that much power, like he’s the great seducer and you’re the poor quivering virginal flower he plucked. You were ready, Neely, all by yourself. You’d come to the point in your life where this was something you wanted to do! You had plenty of desires before this bloke showed up, right? Which you didn’t act on. But because you had genuine feelings for him, you made a decision to cross that line. Okay, he’s turned out a scumbag, but clearly he was a plausible one. You weren’t to know. You made your own choice in good faith. You’re not the one who’s done wrong here.”

“But don’t you see, Danny?” she appealed to him. “I should have waited. I let myself go and… and now I’m… I’m being…”

“Ohhh God, Neely, if you say ‘punished’ I’m walking out and I’m taking the rest of the bacon with me. You don’t believe in a God who pulls that sort of shit. Maybe you made a bad call on this guy’s motives, but that is the only mistake you made. Now as… as far as the heartbreak and the disenchantment go, you just have to tough that out and hold on to your nearest and dearest while you do it. But I’m damned if you’re going to pull a guilt-trip on yourself at the same time. Not going to happen. Because if there’s any kind of God in this Universe, he’s hurting for you, not beating on you. So cut out the self-loathing right now and… and finish that sandwich.”

Neely sat a little stunned, Danny’s outburst having stalled her grief. “Wow. Were you that good in the pulpit?”

“Damn straight. I was shit-hot.”

She laughed with him in spite of everything. “I’ll bet you were.”

“Eat,” he told her when melancholy threatened once more, and she did, the two of them sitting in companionable silence. “Neely, I’m so sorry it all worked out that way,” Danny eventually said, and she teared up anew at the sentiment. “If I could hop in a Tardis and travel back to warn you, I truly would. Of course… that would probably cause some kind of temporal paradox, which would cause the Universe to explode, so… you know, not a good idea.”

Neely stared at him and laughed a little. “You’re a Doctor Who fan?”

“Yes, but don’t spread it about. I keep my geek-streak hidden.”

She was pleased, somehow, smiling through her sadness. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about. I’ve got all the box-sets.”

“Well in that case maybe we should have a Who evening sometime. I’d suggest tonight, but I doubt you’re up to it.”

“I…” She wasn’t sure she had the heart or the physical strength to concentrate on anything. Then again the idea of company was nice. “You know, Danny, I could do with the distraction, at least till I’m able to sleep. Cybermen double-episode from David Tennent’s first season?”

“Oh, good choice. Why don’t you go set it up while I’ll make another cuppa? We can crack open the biscuits.”

“Sure, I’m on it. If my sister calls, just ignore me a while.” She prised herself from her chair as he left his, surprised that someone could motivate her to do anything.

“Hey Neely,” Danny called, and she turned to see him wearing a wry smile. Somehow she just knew that he was recalling their first conversation – the prickly one in the bookshop. “Are we becoming friends here?”

“I hope so,” she said, and it helped her stave off the misery of one fucked-up day. “I could really do with a friend right now.”

* * * *

05/07/10 10:48 PST

So, Raymondo, where’s my photo then? Did it even get taken? I’m waiting.

Carlotta.

05/07/10 18:06 GMT

How to explain this - there was a photo, but I deleted it. Spur of the moment. Call it clumsy, but I was so intent on fulfilling our pact that I got caught out. By the recently-bedded object of my designs. I’m sure you’d have found it quite the comedy moment. In the circumstances it just seemed too harsh to go ahead and mail the offending item, so I made show of erasing all evidence. I’m not totally callous after all. I know you wanted your little trophy of this tawdry affair, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept my word that I completed my triumph. That’s if you want the best fuck of your life in five days’ time. Your call.



05/07/10 17:30 PST

Dear Raymond,

You really do make me smile. How can I possibly receive the best fuck of my life from a dickless failure? Either you never took the photograph and you’re trying to lie your way into the sack with me, or you just didn’t have the balls in light of her shocking discovery. I hope it was the latter… Did our little piece of subterfuge go so badly awry? Were you moved by the tear-stained face of the little angel you’d just had your cock inside? Poor Ray, did it worry you that you’d broken her brittle little Christian heart?

Stop trying to pretend you’re the same man I watched in the hotel bar that night. The man who could bed a young-married woman from a cold start and come down from her room an hour later ready to stalk different prey. That was the man I gave my card to. And if I’d thought for a second that he could ever get sentimental about some Jesus-bitch I wouldn’t have wasted my goddam time.

Don’t ever try to get in contact with me again, Ray – I’ll only block you or delete you. And this weekend I’ll be in London fucking someone with a spine. Hey, go join a fucking Bible Study group. Then maybe you’ll be able to win back your holy-rolling princess.

Good luck,

Carlotta

07/07/10 20:38 GMT

Dear Neely,

I don’t know what to say here, truly I don’t. There’s nothing that sounds right in my head, but I have to try and say something. I’m used to crafting things with words, all my training is with words and using them to manipulate and you’ve been on the receiving end of that, I know. I lied from the start, I told you what I thought you wanted to hear, I cheated you with words and now when I need them to say something real I don’t know how to use them anymore.

I’m sorry. So damned sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you and I know that’s so fucking hollow, because I didn’t act on it. At the start I was being what I’ve been all my life, and then I got to know you. I should have done it all so differently. I should have severed my links with that poisonous bitch. I should have tried to be real. With you and with myself. Neely, I’ve never felt like this before. I began to mean the words. I’ve said them so many times to so many people and with you they finally stopped being lies. I don’t even know when it started, but you got to me. You saw things in me I wanted to believe were there. You believed in me when I didn’t deserve it and I repaid you with shit and now it’s killing me. I had you in my life and I didn’t appreciate it till I fucked it up. I didn’t even realise how much I was falling in love with you. I don’t say that, Neely. I don’t use those words. I’ve lost you and I don’t know how to deal with it.

I want to think you have it in you to talk to me or see me, to let me try and undo some of the pain I’ve caused. I know what I’ve done here, I understand the magnitude, I know that I deserve nothing from you but contempt. If you don’t want to come near me or even talk, then I’ve brought it on myself. But I hope that you will.

Ray.

08/07/10 19:13 GMT

You’re right, it’s just more words. Saying you love someone only means something before you’ve fucked their close friend and betrayed their trust. I was full of rage until I realised that you’re not some kind of monster. Just weak and pathetic.

Leave me alone, Ray. I don’t want to hear from you again. Ever.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN: CHAPTER 7 - FALLEN ANGEL