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

came, I held him tighter than I’d ever held anyone, except perhaps Mary when she’d fallen out of a tree and hadn’t woken for two hours. When she had opened her eyes, I thought I’d never be able to let her go.

Gradually he stirred again, and started to kiss my neck. I wished I could cut the room out from the house and put it somewhere safe for the both of us.

“It’s much better when I don’t have to imagine you doing it.” He sounded delightfully husky.

I had a sudden thought. “Have you done this before?” I rolled him under me and kissed him long and slowly before I let him answer me. Maybe I was giving him time to lie.

“Mmm,” he said, his hands around my neck. “Once. With a school friend. We experimented a bit, but he got glandular fever and had to be pulled out of school. You don’t mind?” His eyes looked suddenly a little scared, as if he wished he hadn’t said anything at all. I shook my head and the worry was replaced with his sunny smile. “And you? You must have. You seem to know—you know.”

I gave a weak laugh. Him thinking I was confident and experienced was pretty amusing. “With a friend.” I didn’t want to say more than that, and I hoped he wouldn’t push it. He didn’t, but he looked thoughtful.

“Won’t you let me do you? I want to.”

I pushed his fringe back from his forehead. “No. I want you to. I do. More than I can say. But not here. I don’t think my old heart can stand the strain.” It wasn’t true, really. From the moment I’d touched him, I’d forgotten where we were.

He laughed, and wriggled delightfully against me. “My old man,” he said teasingly. “Respectable Edward. Middle-aged spread and pinstripes. I know better, though, don’t I?”

“You know better.” We kissed again and again, his slender naked legs tangling in mine. In between kisses, I told him about the flats over the station and his grin seemed to fill the room.

Then the dreaded phone began to ring, making my heart leap twenty feet in the air, and I was off the bed, putting myself back together. I watched him with greedy eyes as he pulled on his jeans; I found watching him dress as arousing as seeing him naked. The way his jeans slid over his backside, the way he took care to zip himself up with no underpants. Then he ran past me and down the stairs leaving me to follow more slowly as he spoke to his parents. I picked up my tools and, with a last look at him, I let myself out while he was still talking, and went straight upstairs for a bath, terrified that the scent of him lingered on my skin.

That night, Valerie turned to me in the night and I took her in a hardened passion. I closed my eyes and if I thought of her at all, it was only as a means to an end. I finished, sweat dripping from my chin and went to touch her cheek. She rolled away and the bed became a raft between two islands.

Chapter 13

“Did you ask Alec about tonight?” Valerie asked the next morning. “Mrs. Tudor has brought some old clothes over for the children to use.”

“That’s nice of you,” I said to Mrs. Tudor as she came out of the kitchen.

“George’s clothes were not doing anyone any good in the wardrobe,” Mrs. Tudor said. “I’d rather the children had some fun making a Guy with them than giving them to the charity shop and seeing some fellow walking down the high street in them.”

“Well, darling?” Valerie sighed and stared at me.

“Well what?”

“Honestly, you’ve been in a dream all morning. Did you ask Alec about coming to help the children?”

“Ah. No. I forgot.” The memory of what I had been doing had stayed with me, and I hoped would shore me up until the next day.

“Too busy with the trains.”

“As you say. And fixing their lights. I haven’t got time now, I’ll miss the train. You’ll have to do it.” I thought I was so clever.

She nodded and gave me a mock glare. I didn’t think she was really angry with me; when we’d woken earlier, she’d been affectionate in a way she hadn’t been for a few years, and I felt worse about that than anything. I knew what I had been thinking as I made love to her; now I was unfaithful in body and mind. I hadn’t even made love to her.

When I got home, Alex was already installed in my house. I attempted to remain normal and to do routine things. I had to greet my wife, greet my children and, while holding Mary like a shield between us, as she chattered about Guy Fawkes and what Alex had told them about him, I shook his hand and tried not to smile like a love struck fool.

“You’ll stay for dinner?” I said, hoping that this was a reasonable question. “You can either have supper with them or dinner with us.”

“Not a wonderful choice,” Valerie laughed.

The twins clamoured at him to have supper with them and they won, to my enormous disgust. But what could I do? I could hardly be jealous of my own children. We left them to it, stuffing rags into the clothes that Mrs. Tudor had brought them. Under the children’s noise, I heard Alex laugh from time to time and it warmed me deep inside, even though staying away from him, staying out of the room where they were working, was torture. However, the twins pushed us out, saying that they didn’t want us to see the Guy until Sunday night.

I realised at their words that I hadn’t started on the bonfire and hadn’t bought one firework. Saturday looked like it was going to be a busy day as I had golf with Phil in the morning.

+ + +

The