Chapter 17

When he was at last alone, Michael flushed as he remembered what had really happened between him and Vanessa. Even now the truth about the scenario in the conservatory was painful to bring to mind.

How could he tell his friends, his very macho friends, that Vanessa was nothing like he had expected. Even now he shuddered to think of the raw truth of that night.

The dark huskiness of her voice had been ever more enticing than her looks.

When they first met they had talked mostly about him, which suited Michael fine.

It was almost as an afterthought that he had asked about her husband and why she had married a man some twenty or so years older than she was.

He remembered how she had fidgeted in her chair.

There had been a knowing look in her eyes that had unnerved him. Her red-lipped mouth had smiled and the red silk suit she was wearing had lisped in a very satisfactory way as she crossed and recrossed her black-stockinged legs.

‘You could say I regarded him as a father figure,’ she drawled. ‘He was a man I looked up to.’

Before he started going to dinner at her home, he used to visit her at the office. He was usually waved straight in.

Only on one particular occasion was he kept waiting in the outside office.

As he sat there patiently, wondering just how far things might go with her today and when exactly she would• proposition him, he was aware of sniggers and knowing glances coming from behind computer terminals and filing cabinets.

Because he had been sitting long enough, and also because he hated being laughed at, Michael got up and, started walking up and down in a rather purposeful manner.

He smiled at the receptionist and, hands in pockets, he shuffled up to her desk.

‘Been working here long?’ he asked.

She glanced up at him. Her smile had been almost nonexistent. ‘Long enough.’

A compact answer.

Michael would not be put off. Persistence was what got results, he told himself and, if he was to get on in this job, it was persistence that would do it for him.

‘She’s a great woman, isn’t she? Mrs Van der Boor, I mean. Incredible for her age.’

The woman’s mouth dropped open. At that moment the door to Vanessa’s office had opened and she came out with a dark-skinned young man who had beautifully aquiline features and an earring in one plump lobe.

Michael had the distinct impression that if they had not been interrupted, the receptionist would have burst out laughing, though he was not sure why.

It was only later, in the conservatory, that he found out the truth.

Everything had happened just as he had told his friends.

Vanessa had fallen to her knees, her eyes wide as she had taken in the superb erection she pulled out of his pants.

She had indeed kissed his penis, licked it long and lovingly as though its taste was nothing less than heavenly. Everything, exactly as he had outlined, had truly happened. He had received a most magnificent service from those bright red lips which had left a thick ring around this climaxing flesh. In no time at all he had recovered and was ready to explore Vanessa’s body.

Despite her age and the fact that she was a favoured client of his company, he would have done so.

Vanessa did indeed lie back over some piece of gym equipment and Michael had fondled her breasts. They didn’t feel like any other breasts he had ever touched. He put that down to her being older than any of the women he had previously had sex with.

It was only when she had rolled her skirt up that the dreadful truth became clear. ‘Vanessa’ was in fact Vince who had not only never been married but who was also a transvestite.

Michael immediately broke out in a cold sweat.

Horrified by his discovery, he had stood and stared. At the same time as he stared, his penis retreated into his pants.

His response was immediate. Loyalty to the company and personal ambition were suddenly of no consequence. No matter the valued client status, Michael had fled from the place. So speedy had been his exit, that it wasn’t until he was two miles away and about to fill the car up with fuel that he realised his flies were still undone.

Not that it mattered. There was no sign of that firm length he was so justly proud of. In fact, it took a fair while to recover its previous virility. For days after, he had been in a state of celibate shock.

How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so enthused with lust that he had failed to notice any sign that Vanessa was not what she purported to be.

During those days of shock, he made excuses at work for no longer handling her account. A replacement was easily found. ‘Hers’ was a good account.

Besides rearranging his working life, Michael also rearranged the story in his mind. There was no way he was ever going to tell the absolute truth about it. It was an episode in his life that deserved to be fictionalised, with him as the macho stud and Vanessa as the older woman who craved his body.

But not all of it was a lie. The bit about her marrying the other guy was strangely true. Apparently he was a traffic warden who had given Vanessa, or rather Vince, a parking ticket one day. In return, she had given him a lot more than a thirty pound fine to tear the ticket into confetti.

Her traffic warden had obviously been impressed by her/his performance. He had also been unconcerned that her credentials were not entirely bona fide.

Love had indeed found a way. They married in the Netherlands. Amsterdam, Michael thought to himself, is a pretty strange place.

Spurred on by the shock of his encounter with Vanessa, he had asked Josie to marry him. A wife, he decided, was an unassailable excuse to any woman who might want too much from him.

Josie had said yes very quickly. He had wondered at the time why she had responded so fast. It was almost as though she wanted to get it over with without having to think about it, as if she were trying to blot something else from her mind.

So they had married and from the start Josie had been a very understanding wife, and he had been a very supportive husband.

He had been quite willing to help her financially while she got her career as an artist off the ground.

She in turn had seemed quite willing to turn a blind eye to his sexual adventures, and sexual adventures is all they were - until he had met Crystal.

Soon he would have to come clean, though he would have preferred Josie to want a divorce. That way he could get out on more favourable terms. So he stalled, dithered, and fantasised about Crystal till all hours of the night and early morning. Even at work, he could not get her out of his mind.

Michael’s office was in a superb complex of old weathered stone buildings that had once been a collection of cow barns. Even now he could look across open fields to the housing estate beyond.

Grass and yellow flowers - probably dandelions waved in the breeze across the empty fields. The scene helped relieve his stress when the work load was overpowering or his need to daydream about Crystal was too great.

Big, fluffy clouds were floating across the sky on the morning he first saw the couple walking across the field.

At this distance it was hard to distinguish what age they were or whether they were fair or dark. Instinctively he guessed why they were in the empty field on such a brilliant day.

‘Who are you?’ he said quietly to himself, and narrowed his eyes.

It was no good. They were too far away to distinguish features.

Glancing briefly down at his desk, he opened a drawer and got out the binoculars that sat there.

They belonged to Cecil, the company bookkeeper who was also a keen naturalist. Cecil used them to scrutinise the skylarks that nestled in the middle of the field and the horde of grey rabbits that inhabited a multi-holed warren beneath a thicket hedge.

The binoculars were powerful enough for Michael to see that the woman had long black hair and a creamy white complexion. From this distance he could not possibly tell what colour her eyes were, but the dark hair was enough to make him catch his breath.

The man appeared to have a beard. He also wore dark glasses and a kerchief around his neck.

Michael frowned at his appearance. There was something familiar about him, yet also something strangely alien. It was almost as though he had come from another time and been put down in this one.

The couple embraced. He saw them kiss and could almost feel the way their bodies pressed against each other. He immediately imagined what Crystal’s body would feel like against his. He licked his lips then glanced briefly over his shoulder. There was no one else in the office. Everyone was out at lunch. He could safely go on watching.

He put the binoculars back to his eyes. It gave him a strange sensation to be watching what these two were doing. Peeping Tom, he thought to himself, and the thought that he was acting the part of voyeur made his penis harden.

He licked his lips and told himself to concentrate. With the aid of the high-powered lenses, he could see that the young woman’s hands were beneath the man’s shirt. He sucked in his breath. He could almost feel the man’s bare flesh as though it was his own. His stomach muscles tightened as he imagined what the man was feeling. The woman’s hands would be soft, gentle, but also demanding as they explored his flesh. Her fingers would be tracing the outline of his muscles. She would be doing it slowly, enticingly. Her touch would be soft, sensual. Each time her fingertips slid slowly over his flesh, shivers of desire would run over the man’s skin. Michael trembled as though he were sharing that same skin.

Michael licked his tongue slowly over his bottom lip.

His mouth was now extremely dry. Suddenly he had no wish to be alone. He had an urgent wish for a woman to be there in the office with him - preferably Crystal.

But there was no one with him and, in his mind, Michael himself was no longer in the office.

He was out there with them, the girl’s fingers following the line of chest hair as it ran down over his sternum, his stomach, and disappeared beneath his waistband. Her pelvis would be jerking against his so that his penis tapped diligently against her mound.

His heart thudded in his chest, in his head, and all over his body.

Lust was taking him over. His blood was boiling in his veins, turbulent as it rushed headlong throughout his body.

‘Get on with it,’ he demanded quietly.

Before his very eyes, they began doing the things he wanted them to do, the things he would want to do to her, the things he would want her to do to him.

He saw the woman peel the man’s shirt down over his brown arms and off over his hands. He saw her kiss his chest and lick the edge of his pectorals. To watch like this made him shiver. It also made him want that woman who looked so succulent and so familiar to him.

The man took hold of the nape of the woman’s neck.

Her hair tumbled to her waist as she tipped her head back. The man’s mouth covered hers. Michael sucked in his bottom lip, then bit it. He could almost taste what that man was tasting. He could almost feel the tip of her tongue entering his own mouth.

As his own lust mounted, Michael’s breathing became heavier.

He patted his chest. ‘Keep calm, you fool. You’re sounding like an obscene phone caller.’

Or a voyeur, he thought again. A dirty old man in a mac who likes to watch couples doing it in parks - and fields.

But he was past caring.

‘Get on with it,’ he grunted through gritted teeth.

The man made swift movements that told him the woman’s blouse buttons were being undone.

The thudding of his heart was echoing in his ears.

Michael was shocked at his own responses. He wanted to be out there with them! He was out there with them!

Something reminiscent of jealousy came to him.

Everything about what they did seemed incredibly familiar. Michael groaned as the woman’s breasts bounced free. Even now, as he licked his lips, he could almost taste the hardness of her nipples and the soft pulpiness of her; surrounding areolae.

He suddenly wanted this woman himself and again he wondered where he had seen her before. That dark hair reminded him of...

Crystal! No! It couldn’t be.

He snatched the binoculars away from his eyes and’ stared wildly at the couple in the field as if he were seeing them for the first time.

It couldn’t be! Not Crystal. His lover with another man! No! She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t!

He put the binoculars on the desk and told himself not to panic. But that did no good at all. His heart was still pounding in his chest as though it were trying to escape.

Was it really Crystal? And if so, who was the man with her?

Even though Michael was looking at them now without the field glasses, he could easily see that they were sinking to their knees. It was as though they were melting into the grass. Soon they would be lying out among the greenness. Their clothes would be off and the man’s penis would be invading the woman’s body. Dandelions would be squashed beneath them, and their juice would smear across their naked backs and limbs.

The thought of it made Michael tremble and swallow hard. He had a terrible urge to get his penis out from his pants and pull on it until the couple in the grass had finally got up and gone home.

But he couldn’t do that - could he?

Again he glanced over his shoulder. No one was around yet.

‘Damn it. I’ve got to get rid of this!’ he exclaimed, then started to unzip his fly.

Binoculars in one hand, penis in the other, he went close up to the window so that the tip of his naked penis grazed gently against the rough stone wall.

A pair of buttocks rose up and down among the grass.

Michael caught his breath. The man was on top of the woman. He just knew it! He could write down what they were doing word for word. Her muscles would be clamped around the man’s penis, her back would be arched, her pelvis thudding up and down off the ground in order to meet his incessant thrusts.

Michael was lost in his own lust. The grey stone walls of the office faded around him. He was alone with his penis in his hand - or rather, he was at one with the couple out there in the field and his penis would not be put away until both he and they had come.

Imbued by the essence of sheer lust, the end was not far away. No longer could he keep in either his semen or the sounds in his throat.

‘Oh, I’m coming,’ he groaned and yet it was not him saying it but the man in the field. Even at this distance and with his eyes narrowed, Michael could tell that the man had finished. His buttocks were tense, his body still, the no-nonsense sign of a climax come and gone.

Michael swallowed when he at last came too. He dropped the field glasses from his eyes and stared down at his hand. It was still clenched around his penis and semen was oozing out from between his fingers.

As quickly as he could, he wiped the stickiness from his hands and tidied himself up.

He took a deep breath, then told himself not to worry about it. What he had just done was perfectly normal. Isn’t that what porn videos were all about - people watching other people having sex?

But he knew this was not quite the same. The truth had to be admitted.

It was hard not to stare at the middle of the field even without the binoculars. Even so, he could not resist looking through the field glasses one last time.

The couple were walking back. The girl’s dark hair was again blowing in the wind and, once more Michael was reminded of Crystal.

‘Crystal?’ He said it quizzically, but there was also fear in his voice now. Much as he still coveted other women, he wanted Crystal most of all. And, anyway, she insisted on him wanting her. It irked him to think she might be dallying with someone else in the same way he dallied with other women.

‘Don’t do that to me, Crystal,’ he said in a cold, thoughtful voice. ‘If you cheat on me, I promise I’ll kill you.’

His eyes never left the field as he spoke, but because he was using his naked gaze and not the more precise picture provided by the binoculars, he did not see the sly grin that the two people exchanged.

He also did not see the wisp of red hair that blew out from beneath the dark wig. Neither had he seen the scattering of dark moles across the man’s back.