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When we’d arrived in Glencoe, Glenn had carried both our bags up to our room and in comparison, when we got back to Edinburgh, he was perfectly polite, but distant. One might even have described his demeanour as he handed me my holdall from the boot as cool. But I took it, because I didn’t want to start a fight with him, at least on the street. He might have assumed that displayed rock-solid self-control on my part, but it was more a desire to preserve my dignity. There had been plenty of times I’d witnessed fights in the street; hell, Glenn had even been part of them sometimes, but I had no desire to participate in such a spectacle myself. Even in the old days when he’d gotten into it with someone, I’d edged away. Not out of cowardice, but a desire for self-preservation.
And so, I hung back, watched him jog up the steps to the tenement doors and let himself into the building with the spare keys he’d hung onto.
“Nice.” I paused at the top of the short, outdoor flight of steps and nodded, slowly. “Would have been good of you to hold the door open for me, but never mind,” I muttered, and let myself in.
At the top of the stairs, Glenn had at least left the front door propped open for me; I guessed slamming the door to my apartment back in my face was a step too far, even for him. But so much for him being polite; that cool distance now edged into the positively frosty.
I found him in the bedroom; as soon as I leaned against the door frame, he emerged from dumping his bag on the bed, edging past me as if he couldn’t get away quick enough.
“Oh-kay,” I sighed, dropping my holdall on the floor where I stood, not moving away from the bedroom door frame, staring into the empty room, not wanting to enter when Glenn wasn’t there.
Mind you, it would be a damned sight more difficult to walk into any room with him in it right now, I said to myself. But that was exactly what I’d have to do if we were going to thaw out this atmosphere. Obviously I’d done something to piss him off, but refused to live like this in my own home. Either we got this sorted, or he could pack his bags and find somewhere else to stay for the next few weeks.
Oh, who was I kidding? There was no way in hell I’d throw Glenn Peterson out of my life. Not again; it had nearly broken me the first time I’d done it. Things were different now, this was a more grown-up pairing (allegedly), and as such, we had to handle this breakdown in communications like mature, sensible adults.
Instead of slapping him silly, as I would have liked.
But no, no, violence was never the answer. Unless the question was “Please will you hurt me, and make the pain exquisite?”
I followed him through to the main room, expecting to find him slouched on the settee, angrily jabbing at the remote control and channel-surfing until he found something that distracted him from wanting to kill me, if the scowl he’d thrown at me in the bedroom doorway moments before was anything to go by.
Instead, he paced back and forth in the space between the living and kitchen areas, both hands raking through his hair, muttering to himself under his breath.
“Glenn?” I began, frowning in genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not bloody okay,” he snapped. “I don’t think you even know...” And he lowered his hands, neared me by a few steps and instinctively I backed off. Not scared, never that; more alarmed. Glenn had confessed to feeling edgy right before a show, or playing a venue for the first time ever, but had mastered his craft enough to cover it over. No-one would ever see how nervous he was...and I’d seen proof of that, on YouTube and ‘proper’ television. He’d long since learned to pretend to be perfectly cool under any circumstance.
The fact that he was nervous, jittery, even anxious, and he’d chosen to let me see that, set my senses tingling. Minuscule shocks of electricity hovered over the surface of my skin, and though it sounded like a cliche, it happened for real – the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Know what?”
“Back there..” He nodded towards the door and when I instinctively looked over, “No, not there, in this apartment. I mean, while we were away.”
Taking a deep breath, I backed away still farther and he followed. Though neither of us articulated the end result, we both knew what it would be. Me backed up against my living room wall, and Glenn standing close enough for me to feel his breath on my face.
“You don’t even know what I wanted to do to you.”
“Oh, I...” I gulped, not wanting to minimise the situation by making a joke, but humour, though inappropriate and badly-timed, was all my frazzled brain could produce in that moment. Damn it, Glenn Peterson standing that close to me, with that look in his eyes, did something to me. “I think I have an idea.” Especially given that we’d been as intimate as two bodies possibly could be, without going all the way for the first time in years.
“No.” He shook his head, scowling. When my back hit the wall, he laid his hands on my hips and looked down, studying us, the way our bodies fit together, even fully clothed and upright.
For a split second, I believed Glenn was about to kiss me. He leaned in, his eyes darting about, taking in my every feature, then brought his lips to my ear and whispered so quietly I had to strain to hear him, “I want to fuck you so deep you forget every other man who’s ever been inside you.”
My knees faltered and, to keep me upright, Glenn held himself up against me, his hard cock pressing against my thigh. It was almost too much for me to take, but if he hadn’t been there, my bones would have melted and I’d have collapsed on the floor. If he hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have felt like this in the first place.
But he was there. He was, and I didn’t have to contemplate a time when he wouldn’t be, because his presence was so overwhelming in the moment.
As soon as he kissed my neck, I gasped out a relieved “Oh God.” Relieved because the mood when he’d been in when I’d entered the room, had looked so much like anger I’d been worried that he’d never touch me again. I’d waited twenty years for this without even knowing I’d been waiting; another minute or two would have broken me.
It was pretty damn obvious the attraction hadn’t died away in the intervening years, it had merely been in abatement, or at least had been resurrected fairly quickly after we’d renewed our acquaintance, but to hear him say it made arousal flare in the pit of my stomach. A sickness born of utter, impossible-to-ignore desperation. If I didn’t get him inside me in the next few minutes, I didn’t know what I’d do. Cry, most likely.
“Wait.” I stiffened, and in a reassuring responsiveness to my body, he stopped. Said nothing, merely listened. “We can’t.” I wanted to. He definitely wanted to, judging by how hard he was, and that was through our collective layers of clothing.
“Ah.” He grinned, and while I probably should have been reassured, there had always been a devious side to Glenn Peterson that often amused, but now made me feel like I was three steps behind. “You know when we stopped for you to use the bathroom and I went into the shop for–” He broke contact with my waist to make air quotes with the first two fingers on each hand. “–snacks?”
“Yes...?”
“I guess you could say ‘snacks’ has just become a euphemism for something else.”
“Oh God, you didn’t.” Then I shook myself, wondering why the hell I protested. “Wait, tell me you did.”
“Uh-huh. I’ve got condoms.”
“Where?”
“In my bag.”
Giving up all pretence of ladylike behaviour, I tutted. “Fuck. Why couldn’t you have one in your jeans pocket?”
“Probably because when we first got back, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife after one of the most uncomfortable car journeys I’ve been on in living memory but...” Glenn ran his hands through his hair again, this time looking sheepish, rather than irritated, which was entirely a relief to me. “I guess that was just the tension.”
“The unresolved sexual tension?” I asked, though the question was, of course, rhetorical, the answer obvious.
“Definitely unresolved.” He cocked his head, then ran the tip of one finger down the side of my face. Just below my eye, over my cheek, to the corner of my mouth. “It’s strange, you know, that you still have this effect on me. That I could still want you this much, after...”
“After all these years? Maybe it’s not something that’s lain dormant all this time. We’re in the same room, we’re both single,” I sing-songed.
“No.” This time his scowl wasn’t one of concentration, but obvious anger. “Don’t minimise it. I’m not just fucking you because you’re there, Afton. Everything that happened in Glencoe wasn’t just because I had nothing better to do. Never think that. It just...surprised me, is all. That it could come back, so strongly. I thought at first...No, never mind.”
“Come on, you have to finish what you were going to say. You can’t leave me hanging.”
Glenn’s cheeks coloured and he averted his eyes for a few moments, even while he grinned. Then his expression cleared and he again looked straight at me. “I can’t remember the last time I wanted someone this much and getting off a couple of times did absolutely fuck all to lessen the feeling. I thought it would take the edge off. What an idiot I was. It just made me want you even more. You know what surprises me the most, Afton?”
So reticent was I of spoiling the mood, I even worried about murmuring the words “Go on.”
“That my senses are so much sharper these days. I’m clear-headed, most of the time. I can think straight. I remember everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” He nodded. “And it really, really pisses me off that I could have been so much more aware of it all if only I’d been sober. If the wanting can be this strong, and I know it’s not the booze talking, or the...the coke.”
“Or the acid. Or the hash. Or the–”
“All right, all right. That’s something I’d rather forget. Exactly how much crap we consumed in those days. It’s a miracle we’re still alive.”
“For God’s sake, Glenn, are you just going to shut up and kiss me?”
“It’s–” And he stopped, realising what I’d said, and kissed me quickly on the lips. Without pulling back more than a hair’s breadth, he continued. “It’s just, this is what it could have felt like, if only we’d been clear-headed. We missed out on so much.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” I muttered, pulling him in for another kiss. Sick of him waiting to stop feeling tense and guilty and anxious, I curved my hands around his neck, letting the tips of my fingers play with the ends of his hair.
Glenn slipped his arms around my waist, pressed himself in close, touched his forehead to mine. “When we got back here, it...it just got too much.”
“How do you mean?” Silly of me to be nervous given everything we’d done to each other over the weekend, but then...fucking, sex, whatever one wanted to call it...that was taking the final step. I could fool myself that we hadn’t gone all the way if I concentrated hard enough on cultivating the lie.
“You’re going to laugh if I say it.”
“So say it. I think we need something to ease the tension.”
“I thought, I’m going to have to stay in that bloody apartment with her and she’s acting like she hates me.”
“I certainly don’t.” Sometimes I hated the way he made me feel. Vulnerable. I hated that I still wanted him.
“And I just wanted to throw you down on the bed and fuck the anger out of you.”
I gasped, hands automatically clawing into fists, the fabric of his shirt bunching together as they did so. “Hate sex,” I said. “Works for me.”
Glenn stiffened, drew back a few inches, almost but not quite scowling. His breath hitched, and he appeared to study me, as if trying to read my mind or figure out whether or not I was being serious. And an instant later he grabbed my wrist, pulled me along behind him as he returned to the bedroom. And even though it was mine, I felt like a guest in his territory. “You’ll be sleeping in here from now on,” he said, curving a hand across my throat. That old rule we had, blood and fire and breath, had made it plain there were three hard limits on which we both agreed. Nothing that drew blood, nothing that would leave a burn mark, and nothing that would risk the other’s air supply. But he still knew I liked his hands on my neck, or his breath. He remembered that.
“But...” I swallowed back the protest, and he glared down at me, kept his hand on my throat. “This is your room.”
“No.” Glenn shook his head before leaning in to kiss me again. “Ours.”
My heart thudded; that single word scared me more than anything vaguely proprietorial. If Glenn had called this room his...if he called me his...that would be bad enough. But to describe a room, a bed, as ours, spoke to me of sharing and togetherness.
My hands shook too much to pull his shirt off him, but he had less trouble with my vest, pulling it over my head and, as with his jacket, just dropping it. Who the hell cared about scattering clothes everywhere when I just wanted him inside me? The rights or wrongs of it, how good it would be for my emotional health, suddenly became irrelevant in the way he ran his fingertips over my collarbone. Skin-to-skin contact made me forget all of those good intentions and promises to myself of self-control and moving on and doing the right thing.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I blurted out, immediately biting my lip.
“Are you kidding me?” Glenn stopped, one hand on the zip of his sports holdall. “This is the best idea I’d had in a long time.”
You’re only going to end up hurt again, Afton, I told myself. You want him now but how’s it going to feel when it’s all over and–
“Oh shut up.” I screwed my eyes shut and muttered, so I supposed, to myself. “Shut up, shut up.”
“Are you all right?” Glenn threw his bag onto the floor, clearing space on the bed. Not that we needed it for the both of us to fit; it was a king size after all, but whenever we’d been together and horizontal and at least partially naked, Glenn and I had utterly failed to restrict ourselves to tender and gentle lovemaking in one designated spot.
Oh God. This massive mistake stood every chance of leading to the best night of my adult life.
“You’ll have to stop wearing jeans around me, you know,” Glenn said, half-turning away to roll on a condom. Almost as if he didn’t want to look at me draped over the edge of the bed.
“Oh?”
“It would be so much easier to get in aboot ye if you had a skirt on.”
“Christ.” I let myself fall back onto the bed, laughing despite the fact I was half-naked – yet again – in the presence of this man who was...dare I even think it...the one who got away. If nothing else, Glenn had always been able to make me laugh.
Actually, laugh and come a lot. Those two options still held true.
“I knew I should have cracked one off in the bathroom at that service station first,” he muttered, kneeling on the edge of the bed between my thighs.
“What? Uh...” I raised my palms and indicated the air between us, as if to say now is not the time, Glenn, but that was just the way of it. Something I had to put up with and if I read him correctly, it was just humour used to cover over how nervous he was.
“Woulda made me last longer this time around,” he said, holding the head of his cock at my entrance while he held himself up with his other arm.
God, even that turned me on. Knowing he was just one sharp thrust away from being inside me. I didn’t care if it hurt. Hell, I wanted it to hurt. Way back when, I’d counted it a blessing to be marked or sore for hours afterwards.
He’d always been careful not to mark me where it would show on camera if I had any work coming up, but the intent had always been there – this is to make sure you think of me even when I’m not around.
“You ready?” he asked, smirking.
“Yes. For fuck’s sake.”
“Patience, patience–”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to fuck me so deep I forget every other man– Jesus.”
In one swift movement, Glenn was inside me and I couldn’t speak. My lips parted as if to say something, anything, but I had trouble even drawing breath.
And the way his eyes widened as he pushed deeper, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “You okay?” he asked, and it took a split second for his words to register. “Is this all right?”
The only word I could utter at that point was a whispered profanity while I tried to wrap my head around the fact Glenn Peterson was inside me and asking if that was all right. All the sensation, all the heat in my body centred on where we were joined and yes, yes, yes, it was definitely all right.
Maybe I nodded. Maybe I managed to speak.
“Good.” And he leaned in closer, this time holding himself up on both forearms, on either side of my head. And the change in angle meant he pressed against my clit while moving deeper still. At one point his hips jerked forward and he grunted out a single word, “There.” Like he’d been searching for something or waiting for it to happen, and his ‘there’ told me he’d found it. “And yeah, I do want you to forget everyone else,” he murmured against my lips, moving slowly.
I grabbed his ass and pulled him against me but for the most part he moved at his own speed, a gentle rocking back and forth at first.
Only at first.
“You get so wet you make it impossible not to just...” and he groaned, fell against the side of my neck. “See, this is why I should have taken care of myself earlier. Would’ve made me last longer.”
“You know the reason I’m so wet?” I asked, shocking myself by saying it out loud. I’d said worse, far worse, with others, but had never imagined I’d ever have the chance to say that to Glenn ever again, with him actually being inside me at the time.
“Huh?” He managed to lift his head.
I took his face in both my hands, as I hooked my ankles together behind his back. And there it was, that widening of his eyes again.
“Because if you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”
“Oh, Christ.” He dipped his head again, touched his forehead to mine this time. “You’re going to come? Go on, let me see it. Let me feel it.” And he moved from the hips, pressing against my clit at just the right angle to push me over the edge and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come that hard; it just seemed to go on and on.
“Fucking hell, Afton,” he groaned; every muscle in his body tightened at the same time and he collapsed on top of me, panting. “Fuck. You...” But he couldn’t say any more.
Neither of us had lasted that long but I didn’t think either of us cared; I certainly didn’t. Sometimes you didn’t need to make sex last for hours and hours – even though that was Glenn’s occasional kink, getting himself so turned on it hurt, so that when he eventually did come, he nearly cried. No, sometimes it was like this. Just taking the edge off.
“I’d forgotten that.” He slurred his speech, as if he was on the point of falling asleep, but if I knew him as I thought I did, he’d just be getting started.
“Forgotten what?”
“How tight your pussy gets when you come. No wonder you finished me off. Felt like...tight grip.” He lifted his head. “Sorry, but I’m gonna have to...”
I’d always hated it when he pulled out.
“I’ll be right back.” He kissed me on the forehead and eased himself off the bed. “Just going to the bathroom. Don’t move.”
I had no idea where he thought I was going to go; this was my house, after all. My bedroom. Our bedroom. And fuck if he hadn’t just marked his territory in my divorce apartment, too. Now there would be nowhere I could go that wouldn’t remind me of him.
~*~
I managed to sit up while Glenn was out of the room. My legs trembled, so I didn’t try to stand, but my knickers and jeans and all my lower body clothing had ended up scattered on the carpet, out of reach. So I’d just have to sit here for a bit, naked from the waist down, until I got the use of my legs back.
And Glenn, the bastard, was fully dressed when he returned. Of course he’d pulled up his trousers, done up the belt, righted his shirt again. Me, I was the one with her clothes off, left feeling vulnerable.
“Could you pass me my, uh...?” And I pointed, but he ignored my request, threw himself onto the bed beside me and pulled me back against the pillows, curved against him.
“Don’t know what you think you’ll need your clothes for,” he said.
“Because I’m naked,” I pointed out.
“I noticed that.”
“And I’d like to...you know...”
“Yes, I agree, there’s definitely something amiss in this situation. It’s much better when we’re both naked.”
“I mean–”
“Yes, I know what you meant, but here’s the thing, Afton; you seem to have forgotten what I said when we were in Glencoe.”
I didn’t think I’d ever forget any of it.
“I hope you don’t think we’re done yet,” Glenn said. “When has once ever been enough?”
I bit my lip, unsure of how to respond. I didn’t know what I’d expected to feel afterwards, but then, hadn’t I thought the first fuck was only ever to take the edge off? When had Glenn only ever made me come once? He’d always been one of the most unselfish lovers I’d ever had. Always.
I screwed my eyes closed and when I opened them again, tried just to appreciate the sight of him undressing. It was pointless trying to ignore the past given that it was in my home. No, scratch that. In my bedroom. Nope, still not right. In my bed.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed about all of this, you know,” he commented, throwing the remark over his shoulder while he pulled off his socks and went for his belt.
“Me, embarrassed? Why would I be?”
“Don’t lie to me, Collier. You were looking to get dressed again when I walked back into the room.” He snorted with laughter. “That’ll be right. As if I’d let you get dressed and fuck off to another room after you’d only come once. What kind of a waster do you think I am?”
Now that, I couldn’t help laughing at. “Do you realise how Scottish you’re beginning to sound? You must be spending too much time with me.”
“Unpossible.” He half turned his head, and I saw the half-smile bringing out the dimple he had on one side of his face. “Now bring me a flagon of Irn Bru, for this night I have been in the midst of Scotland.”
“You’re definitely not right in the head.”
“Well I don’t know what that says about you, then, love; you just let me pump you.”
Shrieking with laughter, no doubt brought about by nerves or the release of tension or the slow, creeping realisation that we weren’t done yet, I just let it happen, the laughter, and the feeling at ease with him, both of us now naked.
“God, have you got any idea what a relief that was? Not the sex part, although yeah, that was okay, I guess. Needs some practice; we’ll have to do that again as soon as possible. I mean hearing you laugh. I’m just grateful you didn’t go into hysterics when I was mid-stroke; that would really have bruised my ego.” Despite half his face being masked by sinking into the pillow, when he grinned, the sight still made my heart skip. And other parts. “The ride back from Glencoe...that was fucking awkward.”
“Sexual tension, I guess.”
“Yeah, I felt sexy and you felt tense. I needed to get my leg over to loosen you up a bit.”
“It’s pointless telling you how classy you are, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much. I already know you can’t resist me anyway, so it’s a waste of energy telling me off.”
He may well have been joking but as the saying went, there’s many a true word spoken in jest and his remark about me being unable to resist him? How close to the truth that was. I could lie to myself all I liked, but the truth was, I wouldn’t be lying in bed with a very naked Glenn Peterson if I had self-control.
And that was all we did for the longest time – just lay on top of the covers, occasionally speaking, in low whispers, about this and that. Nothing important. Nothing deep and meaningful, like any form of acknowledgement we’d crossed the Rubicon and changed the very nature of this ‘all grown-ups together’ flat share arrangement.
“I want you on top this time,” he said at one point, jumping from a casual remark about work to the fact he’d grown hard again, thanks to our occasional kisses and my wandering hands. No point in trying to keep my hands off him when I wanted to touch him so much. Neither of us could deny the attraction of skin-to-skin contact. There was something comforting about Glenn being around, too. Almost as if I’d trust him to look after me if I needed him to.
Strange, as I’d looked after myself most of my adult life. Even throughout other relationships, including my broken marriage.
I propped myself up on one elbow, watching as he rolled on the condom. I didn’t mind my mussed-up hair, and the smirk was an affectation, which I hoped he translated into nonchalant desire, rather than tension and a more truthful I can’t help but wonder if we should be doing this, but I can’t not.
We’d fooled around plenty in Glencoe and now we’d actually gone all the way, it seemed petty, even foolish, to be reticent about doing it all again.
Glenn bit his lip as I eased myself onto him, slowly. The way his hips jerked up told me he wanted to get inside me in one thrust, but if I had one iota of self-control left, it would be used in making him wait. He had this way of moaning, a low, helpless sound from the back of his throat, that turned me on so much because I knew he wanted me as much as I wanted him.
It lasted longer the second time around, but when I came it was more intense than before, as if my entire body reasoned, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. If I were going to really play with fire, I might as well enjoy it while I burned.
Glenn held me up, forced me to rock back and forth in the way he liked, but told me to kiss him right before he came, and when he did, clawed at me like his life depended on it. Pulling away, breathless, all he could utter was a string of breathless expletives.
And it still wasn’t enough for him. This time, when he came back from the bathroom, he told me not to fall asleep just yet; he wanted to make me come again, always keen to go down on me. Not something he’d ever held back from. In fact, sometimes I would even have said he enjoyed it more than I did.
But I pushed him away, said no to him for one of the few times in my life, muttering, “Bit sore.”
He grinned. “I wasn’t that rough with you, surely?”
“No.” And the smile on his face inspired one of my own, despite myself. “Maybe sensitive would be a better word.” After two orgasms in quick succession, I was hardly wrung out, but my clit still felt swollen and tender, and I needed time to get my breath back. It was as if Glenn wanted to keep going to prove something to himself. Like the more he made me come, the more I would be...what? Locked into this affair? Less able to resist him?
Ha. Too late for that. Far too late.
“Need a bit of a rest,” I murmured, closing my eyes but not solely because of tiredness. Looking into Glenn’s eyes hurt. The difference between him as a thirty-year-old and now at nearly fifty wasn’t just physical. He’d always been a generous lover, but now...now with his head clear, and years of experience behind him, I couldn’t help but think of what might have been. I’d have been inhuman otherwise. It was only natural to think of the past.
But even so, relief washed over me when Glenn said nothing in reply, merely stroked my hair while I drifted off. Sleep was a more comfortable alternative to the ‘where do we go from here’ conversation I definitely did not want to have.