Junction X by Erastes (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

trousers,and he wouldn’t care. The way he clung, the way his breath was hot and thready against my cheek, I knew that he wanted me to touch him just as desperately as I wanted to do so. The thought of his naked backside being mere inches from my hands was enough to make me feel my heart would stop.

I lost all sensation of time. I know now, for I looked dazedly at the grandmother clock in the hall when I finally went in, that I was only in that garage for five minutes at the most, but it could have been a year.

Finally our lips separated, and I rested my mouth on his forehead, kissing and tasting him, salt and delight. I still couldn’t find the words—my mind was too full of now to consider the future—but he put his hands on my chest, finding my nipples through the proper shields of vest and shirt and touching them, almost too gently while I held him, trapped between my senses.

“I should go,” he said.

For a second, I gripped him around the waist. “Yes.” I paused, and then added a vital word. “Alex.”

I heard him chuckle. “Yes,” he echoed.

I took his face in my hands, moving my fingers over his chin and lips, and I kissed him again and again. We gradually parted, each movement taking us further away, our eyes never leaving each other’s.

“I don’t know,” I said, answering a question he hadn’t asked, except with his eyes. “I’ll…I’ll let you know.” It was Sunday, and I had little chance of seeing him. “Your after-school club. On Wednesday. I’ll pick you up.”

We shared the secret then; his eyes lit with a wicked fire. He darted forward to steal another kiss as brief as the first and then unlocked the doors. I watched him run down the drive.

+ + +

Valerie was running on about something to do with Claire when I stumbled up the side steps and into the house. She paused as she passed. She was rubbing her hands together and I could smell lily of the valley. One whiff of that scent still takes me back to that moment and that numbed delirium.

“Your hair is a mess,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

My insides went momentarily cold until I realised it was almost a rhetorical question. I spun around to the hall mirror; I’d locked the garage in a daze and hadn’t even thought to check my appearance. Where Alex’s fingers had curled into my hair they’d left it standing up at the sides, giving me the appearance of a man who’s had a mild electric shock.

I forced a laugh, hoping she hadn’t seen the nerve rash which was springing up on my neck. “It was hot and we had the windows wide open.” It was a pretty feeble lie, but she just rolled her eyes and continued up the stairs.

I want to write about how I felt that afternoon, because even if I can’t translate that breathless euphoria, I can at least recall it. I want to, but it’s almost impossible to put into words. To say that my belly was full of fluttering insects sounds stupid and trite, but there was a tightness that had my heart thumping hard for a long while that afternoon and evening. I was so on edge that I jumped at every little noise, and unable to eat, I pushed my cutlet around on my plate until it was cold.

“The children are full of ‘Alec this’ and ‘Alec that,’ and yet you’ve not mentioned the day once,” Valerie said as we undressed that night.

“It was a day out with the children,” I said glibly, having practised many lines during the hours since Alex’s lips had left mine. “Not exactly thrilling conversation.”

In bed, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling instead of reading, my thoughts full of Alex and the way he had tasted, the way his skin had been hot under my hands. My cock hardened and, to disguise it, I bent my legs. If Valerie wondered what I was thinking, she didn’t say. After she turned the light out, she curled up against me. For the first time in my married life, I was glad that she was not the sort of wife who would initiate sex. Eventually her breathing slowed, and she rolled away as normal to sleep on her left side. I was left alone in the dark with even darker thoughts.

+ + +

I never particularly understood the concept of time dragging before that week. I’d had flashes of it. Waiting at the church, waiting for exam results, that sort of thing. But, I’d never waited for a day to come with such desperate longing. It was beyond anticipation. My blood pressure went through the roof, I’m sure of it; every time I thought of the tiny sliver of time that I would spend with him on Wednesday, I’d get restless, unable to sit in my office seat. I won’t go into details, it’s pointless—but three days felt like three weeks.

That Wednesday, as I cruised slowly down the last stretch of the dual carriageway and turned towards St. Peter’s, it seemed I hadn’t seen Alex for so long that it felt like a reunion. Ridiculous, I know, especially as I had caught glimpses of him in his garden from my bedroom window, but that’s how it felt.

It wasn’t until I parked the car a short distance from the school that I realised the idiocy of what I was up to. Anyone could wander past; anyone might see me and wonder what I was doing. But I didn’t move. I was already immured in lies and was planning for further deceits. Although I didn’t have a cover story in case anyone saw me, I was confident that I could come up with one if needed.

I was, at least, a little protected, because the main school had already finished and only a very few students were leaving. They