Dirty Seduction

JULIAN

I was used to keeping up a public facade when my shame bells were tolling inside me. I’d spent many, many Sunday afternoons placing down dinner plates in front of Grace’s friends alongside hers, and making conversation with them as though it was normal. How are you this week? How was college? The questions meant nothing. The look in their eyes said it all. They were thinking of how I’d been roping them, bound and used like sluts, posing for me like they were porn stars, but nobody else knew it.

Crenham Drive was no different. They had no sense of the shame bells under my public facade, either. My confidence was robust as I walked along with Rosie’s hand in mine, riding on the innocent rush of nervous pride she was feeling alongside me. The beautiful girl was still enamoured enough she wanted the world to know about me and her together. Giving her that pleasure would be an honour. My guts were strong enough to take the etheric punches.

Trisha and Martha looked like they wanted to skin me alive. I could only imagine Beverly’s hate would dwarf theirs thousandfold. I could virtually hear the whispers in our wake as we walked. Raised eyebrows and snide glances. It was a relief to know I didn’t actually care all that much about any of them. They could all burn in hell along with me for their condemnation of Rosie.

We were out of Crenham Drive before I knew it. Rosie’s hand tightened as she looked up at me.

“Where do you want to go now?”

I glanced behind us. “We could do another parade of the block for extra measure, or keep on walking. Which would you prefer? Fillet steak at home, or in town?”

We stopped at a pedestrian crossing, and I awaited her decision. She stepped out when the light turned green, and we were set. Town it was.

“I’m really not dressed for this,” she said. “I should have done my hair and stuff.”

No, she shouldn’t. I loved the bobbing cuteness of her hair in a pony, and the simplicity of her college outfit and sneakers. She flashed me a grin when we were on the other side.

“Can we get something like a burger this once, please? I can get dressed up another time for fillet steak, so I look more suited to it.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” I said, but my words would be redundant. She wouldn’t believe me. “If you want a burger, we’ll have a burger. That wasn’t quite where I’d have expected to take you on our first ever date, so we’ll have to compensate for it on the next one.”

“The next one? You’re ok with this, then? Taking me out?”

“Being public?” I happily ignored my shame bells for once in my life. “Yes. Absolutely.”

It felt as though she was dancing on the spot as we stepped into the park. Families were around, kids on swings, mums chatting and laughing. We got glances, and some elbow nudges between friends, but it was nothing as evil as I’d have expected. This wasn’t Oxford, after all. People had no illusions of me being a respectable head of the household, professionally lecturing college pupils in a high-end career. Here I was just a freak in an apartment block. Worth nothing but rumours.

Except for Rosie.

If I was worthy of Rosie, I must be blessed.

She knew the burger bar she wanted. I didn’t protest as she pointed it out once we reached the city, and it was a chain store slum of an eatery.

“They do great milkshakes. Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla.”

Her tone tickled me.

“Do I look like a vanilla man to you?”

“No.” She had a rush of childish humour. “But maybe you do to a load of other people.”

“I look stoic, you mean?”

“Suited, booted, posh.”

“Often the least vanilla of all.”

She grinned. “True. That’s what a load of books sing loudest about, isn’t it? Dirty, hot posh guys. They make addictive reads for a reason.”

I found I was laughing, easily. “Maybe I should be in one of them? Julian Lockley, the dirty, filthy posh guy. Can you imagine the movie version? I wonder who they’d cast for it.”

The doors were automatic. I felt her eyes on me as we stepped up to one of the self-service order machines.

“You could write a story like that, you know,” she said. “Seriously.”

I scoffed in good humour. “An autobiography of my seedy kinks? I can’t see it topping the bestseller lists. I hardly topped the thriller charts. They didn’t even see the light of day.”

I was waiting for her to select a burger choice onscreen, but she didn’t. Her eyes were still on me.

“You really could do it, you know,” she said. “I mean, your writing is amazing, and you know what you’re talking about, and you’re a knight in shining armour, and all of the things that could make a great story.”

“Rosie,” I laughed. “I’m not an author. It was a distant dream.”

“No, but you wanted to be. You could be.”

“Hardly.” I gestured to the screen again. “Come on, recommend me the most incredible burger on the menu. Make your choice and I’ll have the same.”

I could sense her brain whirring on more than food as she clicked through the options and added two to the virtual order, with fries, and sides, and two large vanilla milkshakes, most likely to take the piss. I swiped my card in an instant, not even giving her the chance to fumble in her bag.

She was quiet as we took our seats at a booth with the table number placard showing boldly between us. I looked at her freshly in these surroundings, with youngsters bustling and people grabbing takeouts after work.

“Why don’t you do it?” she kept pushing. “You could at least try, right? And I love those books. I could read it.”

“You could be my advisor.” I laughed, but she didn’t.

“Yeah, why not? I’ve read enough of them.”

I looked across the table at her as though we were in some kind of surreal dimension. Not only was I out in public with a girl who should be avoiding me at all costs, showing her off on my arm to anyone who’d be watching, but she was now suggesting I turned my seediness into print form.

But my heart wasn’t scoffing along with my brain.

I hadn’t felt creative urges in years. The manuscripts she’d had me dig out of my old laptop files had consumed me totally and utterly in the flow of words when I’d been writing them, but that was before my cock took hold of my mind. But what if the two energies could share it…Content rights belong to NôvelDrama.Org.

No. It was absurd. Absurd.

“Why won’t you do it?” she asked, reading me. “You could write it for fun, even if nobody ever sees it. I’d like to see it.” “You’d like to read my filth as well as experience it?”

She nodded, her face like a dirty little angel.

“Maybe you could do me a scene a day? A reward for my college attendance.”

“Like a gold star? Good day at college, sweetheart, well done you. Here. Have an obscene chapter I wrote about you.”

“Yeah. That would be amazing.”

She was serious. She was genuinely serious.

“I love reading your stuff,” she said. “And I love romance. I love it all. What a hybrid.”

“I’ll quite willingly write filth for you, if you’d like that,” I told her, my heat taking hold. “I’ll write about all the seedy disgusting games I’d like to play with you, handing them over as an instruction manual when you walk in through the door. How about that? Here’s the chapter for the day, sweetheart. Spread your legs so I can stretch your tight little cunt wide and take photos of you gagged like a whore, here’s the screen play.”

My voice was low, or so I thought, but typically that was at the point the server arrived with our burgers on a tray, approaching from behind me. He nearly toppled the milkshakes onto the table, and Rosie was in hysterics, giggling her sweet little head off as he stumbled out some apologies and rushed away.

“Shit,” I said, but she was waving her hands, still finding it hilarious.

Her laugh was so beautiful it was intoxicating. It gave me more escapism than a whisky bottle. For once, I let pure humour embrace me, grateful that such a girl was lightening up the self-hate in my soul.

“Go on, then,” I said, as she sucked on her milkshake straw. “I’ll write you a scene to test it out, how about that?”

She nodded, still sucking. She swallowed with a smile.

“Thank you.”

Another thank you I didn’t need credit for.