The Red Collection (24 page)

She placed her other hand over Steve’s, then winked, and nodded in the direction of the bedroom.

Grinning again, Steve was on his feet fast, reaching for her hand, his fingers warm and sure around hers.

There was still one condom left, so tonight was turning out to be perfect, after all. As might other nights, Lucy hoped. She really hoped …

A Stroll Down Adultery Alley

RUNNING FOOTSTEPS BEHIND
me. ‘Katie! Wait! Are you going for a walk? May I join you?’

I turn around and think, Thank you, God, what on earth did I do to deserve this? I’ve been fancying this guy since almost the first instant he moved in with us and here he is chasing me, not the other way around. ‘Of course … why not?’ With my best smile on my face, I hope to do the best I can to impress my mother’s latest lodger, Doctor Peregrine Nash, noted academic and all-round tasty morsel of hot quirky male pulchritude.

I wait for him to catch up with me, still hardly believing my luck. With my mum on guard duty there’s not really been a chance to show the good doctor I’ve had the voracious hots for him.

The desire to ogle him is intense, but I manage to restrain myself to sneaky glances as we fall into step along the path to the common, Kissley Copse, and what the locals all call Adultery Alley.

I’m pretty nervous too. This man is brilliant. A real brainbox as well as a cutie, an eminent mathematician newly arrived at the local university. I’m not exactly thick, in fact I’m fairly sharp in my own way and I have a damn good job.
But
I’m not in his league where grey matter is concerned.

‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ he says.

He’s nervous. I can tell. A shy guy, despite his academic eminence. And that
is
sexy. I’ve always had this thing for tutoring a less-experienced man. It’s like a major fantasy of mine. And to tutor a gorgeous bloke like this, who’s so used to tutoring other people, will be something of a twist. Of course, I could be imagining things and he’s got available women coming out of his ears … but somehow, my hottie-sex-radar tells me I’m right on the money. And, with any luck, we’ll both learn something down the Alley.

‘Smashing … fantastic day for a walk. I like to get out of the house, you know … I mean, my mum is great, but she watches me like the proverbial hawk. She thinks that, just because I’m not married now, I need to be kept under constant surveillance.’

Why, oh why, am I babbling and telling him all my intimate troubles? If I’m not careful I’ll be telling him that I’m dying to get laid next. And also that he’s the one I’d like to do the honours.

‘Yes, quite,’ he says, flashing me another cautious little smile, as if he’s not quite sure whether he hasn’t stumbled into something he really hadn’t bargained for. What if he really does only want a perfectly innocent walk in the fresh air with his landlady’s divorced daughter?

We reach the edge of Kissley Copse and I’m still trying to weigh him up. It’s a warm evening and he slips off his denim jacket revealing a white T-shirt laundered lovingly by my mum. I must admit that he’s not really a classic Adonis. He’s short, for one thing. No taller than I am. And he’s also ever so, ever so slightly chubby, with a rounded face and a stocky little body. But he has got ‘it’. The X factor or whatever. Or,
in
his case, Pi factor or some other esoteric number. He’s sort of dark and swarthy with a slightly hooked nose and the maddest mop of black curls. He looks like a delicious combination of sex animal and innocent naif. I could eat him alive.

We don’t say anything, but I catch him sneaking the same sort of glances at me as I’m sneaking at him. Sly, discreetly assessing, but also cautious. I’m convinced he wants me but is calculating the precise theorem of a successful seduction pounce. I wish I could tell him that I’m a dead cert. Disgracefully easy in his case, although not as a rule. Well, at least not since …

‘What are all those cars doing lined up in the lane?’

We’ve reached the footpath that runs parallel to the Alley, our track separated from it by a sparse and scrubby hedge that looks as if it’s been deliberately pushed through in places. Which, of course, it has. This is a prime spot for both sexual exhibitionists and doggers, and voyeurs who lurk on this side of the shrubbery watching the performers both in their cars and out of them. How to explain this to the good doctor though?

‘Well … um … this is a sort of hang-out for people who are having a bit on the side. They come here to … er … do it in their cars.’

Beautiful brown eyes widen. Brighten. And also darken at the same time as his pupils dilate. His lush mouth curves into a smile that would grace the image of the wickedest-ever sex pixie. And I like that – ‘Sex Pixie’ – it sums him up perfectly. My mother would go ballistic if she saw the way his eyes glint, and suddenly he licks his lips. She thinks he’s a gentleman and above all that sins of the flesh lark. She thinks he’s too good for me. But curiously, and conversely, that no
man
is actually quite good enough for me. Which means that me finding a bloke at the moment is pretty much a lose-lose situation.

She blames me squarely for my divorce and current lack of grandchild-producing potential. And she’s right in some ways. It was an error of judgement on my part. But that’s by the by. This is not the time to be worrying about what my old mum is thinking and how she perceives I’ve let her down. ‘Everyone round here calls it “Adultery Alley”. Because most of the people in the cars are married, but
not
to the people who are in the car with them.’ This ought to bug me and make me uneasy, but it just makes me hornier than ever. I’m so screwed up.

‘Indeed.’ His eyes twinkle again. He’s definitely up for something, I hope. ‘A sort of “Liaison Lane”, I presume.’

Liaison Lane. I like that too. Although it does rather over-dignify the grubbiness of these gropers and cheaters and adulterers. ‘If you say so.’

Is he closer now? I never saw him move. But somehow he’s in my personal space, smelling sumptuously of a rather expensive cologne. ‘And …’ He hesitates and a cheeky grin spreads across his impish features. Being so dark and saturnine, he always seems to need a shave. ‘Do you come here often, Katie? Do you like to observe the fornicators in their natural habitat?’

I’m gobsmacked. I never realised he was so full-on. I suspected he had a frisky rampant satyr’s heart beating in his mathematician’s chest, but I didn’t expect the switch from polite respectful lodger to total horn-dog to be quite so sudden. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound. I take a deep breath that unconsciously, or perhaps consciously makes my breasts lift and displays them to their best advantage. I’m
wearing
a white T-shirt too, and my frontage is one of my most attractive features.

‘Yes, I do. Is that a crime?’ My chin comes up and it’s like there’s a clash of two sabres as our eyes meet and hold. I match his grin with one of my own. ‘I like to watch. I can’t deny that. And this lot are fair game if they shag in a public place.’ I gesture vaguely towards the scrappy hedge and the vehicles parked beyond.

‘No crime. None at all. I find your honesty refreshing and healthy. And I must confess to snatching the opportunity to observe a fuck in progress whenever I can too.’

He chuckles. I snigger. We both simmer and gurgle and boil and then nearly collapse, trying not to howl at our own absurdity and alert the shaggers in the nearest cars to our presence just yards away.

Oh, I love his grin. His sparkling eyes. His aura of total naughtiness. He might not be a Greek god, but he makes up for any deficiencies in this newly revealed and scrumptiously open horniness. Whoever would have guessed? I was quite wrong about him. The demure Doctor Peregrine is a rampant, sexy pervert.

‘Perhaps we should partake of the show that’s on offer then?’

‘Way to go … um, Peregrine?’ I’ve never called him by his first name. At home, because my mum had me in her 40s and is in her seventh decade now, we observe the proprieties and he’s ‘Doctor Nash’ at mealtimes.

‘Perry,’ he says softly. ‘I’d love it if you call me Perry. All my close friends do.’

And, boy, do I want to be a close friend. The closest of close kind of friend. The kind of close friend who gets to touch and fuck that cute chunky little body. The one I got
a
glimpse of the other day when he came rushing down to the door to collect a courier parcel, draped in a bath towel. There’s a lovely little mat of dark hair on the chest that’s hidden behind the snowy T-shirt.

‘Righto, Perry. I’m game if you are.’

The conspiratorial smile he gives me lets me know we are in agreement.

We pad forwards, sneaking right up against the hedge. Again, more by design than accident, I trip on a root and he catches me by the arm to stop me falling. And it feels like he’s just goosed me with five thousand volts; all the current goes straight to my pussy. I cling on to him, more wrong-footed by his touch than by anything else.

And he’s strong too, far more powerful than his modest stature and slightly soft build suggest. He’s like a rock I could hold on to forever. ‘Thanks,’ I whisper, reluctantly releasing my limpet-grip. He gives me an odd, sweet, complicit little smile as we edge forwards again and take up our position.

Here among this section of the scrubby bushes, tucked up against a drystone wall, we’re higher than Liaison Lane, and we have a perfect view into the light-blue Japanese saloon car below. Where a middle-aged couple are already going at it.

And they’re really bold. They’ve stripped off completely. She’s sitting astride him in the back seat, her heavy breasts bouncing as she pounds up and down upon him. I can’t see as much of his body as hers, but the tangly mat of dark hair on his chest reminds me of Perry’s delightful pelt. Unable to stop myself, I glance to the side instead of at the raunchy goings-on in the car.

Perry’s looking at me. As if my reaction, and my response to the illicit shaggers, is far more interesting and arousing to him than they are. He gives me that devil–cherub smile of
his
again and waggles his dark brows before nodding towards the car.

Oh, God, I barely care what they’re doing now. I just want to grab him, roll down into the dip behind us, and climb on board him just the way the bouncing woman in the Honda is astride her bloke. But Perry gives me a strangely commanding look and nods again to the cavorting couple in the car.

The woman is really putting on a show, lifting and grinding and shimmying. The man’s holding her hips, but she’s in charge, and she’s all about her own pleasure, not his. She’s tweaking one of her nipples as she jogs up and down, and her other hand is down between her body and his, obviously rubbing at her clitoris in the nest of her pubic hair.

I want to touch myself down there. Oh, hell, I really, really do. And I want to do it with delicious Doctor Perry watching me do it. My mind more or less blanks out the Honda adulterers or whatever they are and presents a picture, in high definition, of me and him in the back of that car. We’re both naked, as they are, but to me we’re a much more attractive proposition, our physical shortcomings notwithstanding.

If it were us, I’d be looking down into his chocolatey brown eyes as I twist and gallop, getting off on the wicked smile in them just as much as his cock in my pussy. And instead of holding my hips and just using me as some kind of masturbation aid, as the guy in the car is, he’d be touching me in lovely ways as I fuck him.

Talking of touching, as the woman ups her pace to a frantic thrash and the man shouts ‘Oh fuck’ so loud it echoes out into the copse we’re lurking in, I feel a warm sure hand settle on my back, urging me forwards to lean against the wall.

The touch is light, but there’s a definite sense of command
about
it. I comply, spreading my arms out across the uneven surface of the top layer of stones. My breasts press against the hard lumpy blocks and I nearly yelp because they’re so tender and sensitised, the nipples like swollen foci of sensation. Perry’s fingers slide slowly up and down my back, stroking me gently through the cotton of my T-shirt, in a way that’s as reassuring as it is intensely arousing. I shimmy – my appreciation expressing itself automatically – and, before I can bite my lip, a little moan escapes from my mouth.

I’m lost. I’m burning. If a simple, almost-chaste caress through the fabric of my T-shirt can send me soaring, how the hell am I going to be if he
really
touches me?

In the car, the man suddenly seems to take control too. He says something harsh that I can’t quite make out, and his fingers gouge the hips of his paramour. He holds her hard and he holds her still. She’s obviously rushing towards her climax, but he wants her to go slow so he can hold out a bit longer, make it last.

My ex was a bit that way. It was all ‘do that’, ‘do this’, ‘slow down’, ‘speed up’ with him. All about his experience, rather than mine – the selfish git.

But, without knowing why, I know it wouldn’t be like that with Perry. With him, it would be all about my pleasure. As I acknowledge that, it’s like he’s heard my thoughts, and the stroking of my back takes on a different quality. His fingers dip lower, and slide beneath the waistband of my jeans. They just probe and flutter, working in the confined space then, a moment later, he reaches around the front, undoes the button and eases down the zip.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

All that fantasising and now something’s really going to happen. My pussy flutters wildly, even though he’s nowhere
actually
near it yet. A gush of lubrication oozes out and anoints my panties. I literally sob I’m so turned on, so full of desire. My eyes close but, as they do, Perry whispers in my ear, ‘Watch them, Katie. There’s a good girl.’

I moan again, my clit throbbing as if his words had actually touched it.

The woman in the car is still now, her face tense where I can see it from this angle. I bet my face is tense too, but it’s the tension of yearning and excitement and a sudden inexplicable adoration of the man who’s standing behind me.