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

tell me that you want me, and that this isn’t something…something and nothing, something stupid. Not some game.”

My stomach tied itself in knots. “It’s no game.” I spoke slowly and very quietly. “Kisses—and this—aren’t enough. I want to be with you, Alex. Alexander. Really be with you.”

“Tell me.” He was vicious in his demands. Callous boy. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I want…” Back then, I didn’t have the words he later taught me, slang and fashion, but he had to have an answer. “You. I want you. Skin. Skin to skin. All of it. I want to be part of you.”

He cut his way through, a razor of crude wisdom. “You want to fuck me. Say it.” His hand moved to the front of my trousers, which were getting cold, and my cock answered his call. “Say it.”

“I want to fuck you.” The words were filthy, dirty, wrong. Words I’d not said since I was a child myself—but, once spoken, they couldn’t be taken back. And I did. I did. I did. God help me, I did. I still do, Alexander. I still do.

“Good,” he said, with a tender squeeze, his mouth against my ear. “I want you to fuck me. Fuck. Me. Find us somewhere. And you can.”

Chapter 11

There are secrets and secrets. Some you can push down and the guilt travels with you; you might catch a glimpse of them here and there, but they’re buried deep under ice, where they remain. But some secrets tattoo themselves on your skin, and Alex was that kind of secret. I felt my guilt showed in my eyes, in my face. In the way my heart raced, in the way I was sure I paled every time Alex’s name was mentioned. I checked the mirror a dozen times a day to make sure his name wasn’t stamped on my forehead, as stupid as that sounds.

Why hadn’t I felt that way with Phil? I could give you theories, excuses, nothing more.

Perhaps men who are unfaithful to their wives with other women feel the same way. I don’t know. For them, I suppose, there are more outward traps that can give them away. Traces of strange perfume, the cliché of lipstick stains, a handkerchief with strange initials, a receipt to a restaurant, a hotel invoice. Little things that were hardly likely to trip up someone in my position.

The next few hours after the disastrous car journey (and for many days after that) I found myself vacillating between desire and terror. When I’d composed myself enough to enter the house after asserting to Alex that yes, I wanted to fuck him, I ate a solitary dinner, as Valerie was at some committee meeting or other. Mrs. Tudor had stayed on to see to the children and she’d made me toad-in-the-hole, just as I liked it. But I could hardly eat it, and I only escaped her watchful eyes when she took my half-eaten meal away, grim disapproval on her face.

I glared at the television for a while, but it was a new quiz programme about university graduates and everyone on it reminded me of Alex. Not that they were blond and beautiful, far from it, but they were young men and they were students. It was enough.

I didn’t know how people could stand the emotion. Was this what love was really like? Was this what I should have felt for Valerie? This madness in my mind that made me want to walk out of the house and knock on the front door of Alex’s house just so I could see his face, his smile? I had visions of sitting in the car outside his house so I could watch his light go off like some love-struck fool…but apart from being idiotic, I didn’t know which was his room, anyway.

On impulse, I stuck my head round the kitchen door, told Mrs. Tudor I was going out and drove to Phil’s. I wasn’t really expecting him to be in. As I drove, I imagined that Alex was there in the dark with me, his body pressed up against mine, his hair against my cheek. It was all too easy to do, and heady, like thick red wine. I had stepped into Wonderland and I was drunk on delights I could only imagine, for realising them seemed impossible. My arm trailed along the back of the car seat as if he were there, as if I were pulling his body closer. Even at that early stage, I felt like he should be there. I was addicted. I had no idea how bad the craving would get.

I was so steeped in my fantasy that by the time I pulled up on Phil’s drive, I had to wait a few moments to recover. I suddenly realised that I had no memory of the drive itself or the mechanics of it. All I could remember was my own invention, the warmth and the feel and the scent of Alex, invisible and intangible, in the dark. It took Phil opening the front door and flooding my car with light from the hallway before I came to my senses and slid out, leaving the shade of Alex behind me.

Phil looked a little more together than he had, and genuinely pleased to see me. “Come in,” he said.

I lurked in the shadowed drive. “Come to the pub,” I said. I didn’t want to go in; the light was too bright. I didn’t want him to look me in the eyes, to see my secret ingrained into every line on my face.

“All right.” He turned away to get his jacket, and I went back to the car and waited for him. “Where to?” he said when he got in.

“I don’t care,” I answered, turning the car toward the town. We drove in a purring silence. A tension built up in my mind, tighter and tighter the further we went without a word between us. Perhaps he was expecting me to ask