Dirty Seduction

I loved how he spoke to me like I was a valuable worker, not just a girl at a pizza place, working shifts around college. He was right, though. I’d taken on more and more since I worked there. I was the one who was always dashing around, with more and more responsibility piled on top of me.

I chanced a probing question.

“What did you do before? I somehow doubt you’ve been an insurance clerk all your life.”

“Really?” He laughed. “I thought I might be fitting into Worcester life quite comfortably by now.”

I laughed with him, enjoying his company.

“Actually,” he went on, “I was a professor of English, from Oxford.”

“Wow,” I said, and I could imagine him there for real, standing before university students giving lectures. “You must have studied hard. I know Oxford is tough to get into, let alone teach at.”

“I always loved English. I wanted to be Hemingway when I was younger. As it turns out, I spent most of my time trying to help other people walk in his footsteps. Ironic. Some of them have been very successful. I can only imagine I’m a much better teacher than the author.”

He looked so proud of his students. I wished someone would be that proud of my achievements one day.

“Are you a writer? Do you still want to be?”

“No, no. I haven’t written for a long, long time. I have had more pressing pursuits. Some not all that honorable.” He laughed a sad laugh, masking it with sarcasm. “Maybe I should take it up again, now I’m just an insurance clerk. Who knows? Maybe I could surprise fate and become a fresh incarnation of Shakespeare.”

He didn’t look convinced in the slightest. He looked depressed as hell. Like he’d been cast into the pits of his past life. My next question seemed obvious.

“What made you change your career? Why leave Oxford?”

He took another bite of pizza before he answered me.

“Plenty of things, all of my own doing.” He sighed and looked me in the eye as if he was weighing me up. “A sinner has to pay for his crimes. Some people spend their penance in prison. I chose to spend it on Crenham Drive. It’s worse here, I suspect.”

I laughed at that. “Is Crenham Drive worse than prison?”

He sighed. “No, of course it’s not. It’s just where I chose to up and leave to.”

“What did you leave behind?”

I knew I’d overstepped the mark at that. His eyes dropped, and he cleared his throat.

“A great many things.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No need,” he replied. “But that’s a rabbit hole we don’t want to explore.”

I did want to explore it. I wanted to dive right in like Alice and get to the depths. Get to him. There was only one way to do that right now… I stayed silent, and it worked. He spoke again after another bite of pizza.

“When I first arrived here, I was a little loose-tongued. I got drunk in the Brewery and stupidly told people more than I should have done. I know there are whispers still circling.”

I looked at him.

“People say a lot of things around here. The rumors are rarely true.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of rumors about me that are true. No smoke without fire, as they say.”

I couldn’t hold back, grinning to lighten it.

“Are you a sicko, then?”

He didn’t take it humorously.

“Ouch. That’s harsh.” He looked up at the ceiling and my cheeks burned all over again. “Maybe not all that untrue, though. I know plenty of people who’d agree with that statement. It depends on your view.” It only made me more intrigued.

“Why don’t you try out mine? I’m quite open-minded.”

“Like I said,” he told me. “It’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to explore. And neither should you. I think you have more sense in your head than that. You’re a wise girl.”

Girl.

I wasn’t a girl, I was eighteen. He seemed to read my mind when I flinched.

“I’m forty-eight years old,” he said. “You’re a girl to me, Rosie. Or you should be.”

“Should be?”

“Yes. Should be.” He brushed the crumbs from his shirt onto the empty pizza plate. “And you should be getting to bed now, you must be exhausted.”

He didn’t give me the chance to argue with him, just got up and walked away. I didn’t want to follow him. I didn’t want to move, I just wanted to hear his story. I wanted to hear about his life in Oxford, and what made him a sicko, and what led him to Crenham Drive.

“Rosie, come on, please,” he said, from the hallway. I knew he’d be standing at the bedroom door, and I knew he wanted me out of sight. He didn’t want to venture down any rabbit holes.

Who was I to argue? I was just a rescue puppy in a stranger’s flat.

“Sure, coming,” I replied, and picked up my bag from the floor.

The bedroom door was open when I got there. His bed was a double, but his wardrobe was a single. He had a solitary lamp on a bedside table. It was as barren as the rest of the place.

“My apologies again,” he said. “But I have only one set of bedding. You’ll have to make do with mine. And if you would like a makeshift night dress, I have some shirts hanging up. Help yourself.”

If anything, the thought of wearing his shirt and sleeping in his sheets was thrilling.

He walked on in, sat down on his bed, and tried to fluff the flat pillows up for me. The bedsprings creaked underneath him. They gave me a zip up my spine, imagining how much noise they’d make if he was on top of me, fucking me. I leaned against the doorframe, transfixed by the sight of him. Something had changed. His breaths were shallower, and he wouldn’t look at me, just busied himself by settling the pillows and switching on the bedside lamp. He was still avoiding my gaze as he took a towel from his wardrobe and placed it on the bed.

“I have one terrible bar of soap and a bit of shampoo if you want to use it,” he said. “The bathroom is to your right.”

I flashed it a glance.Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I moved aside on instinct as he left the room, but there was a moment of closeness. I wished I had the confidence to pull him back, and to ask him again, what made him a sicko. What had he done to end up here? And did he mean what he’d said that night when he’d pushed me away?

It’s not your mother I’m going to be wanting, Rosie, it’s you.

I couldn’t let it go. For once, I wanted to push forward with what I wanted. I didn’t want Jayden, the boys from block seven, or any of the guys in college. I didn’t like the pizza house manager, Marvin, and I didn’t want Kieran, the guy in the kitchen who’d been asking me out for months.

I wanted him. The man upstairs.

No matter how much I tried to deny it, I wanted him. And my fantasies had been getting filthier and filthier along with my books.

He was in the living room doorway when he finally looked back at me, and his breaths were still fast. His eyes were hard and dark.

“You should get to bed,” he said. “I’ll just get you some water.”

“Thank you.”

Even now, at the height of underlying tension, he was still trying to take care of me. He disappeared for a short while, then came back and presented me with a glass. He kept at arm’s length, aiming for a casual smile that didn’t match up with his stare.

“Goodnight, Rosie.”

I didn’t want to say goodnight to him, but the words came automatically.

“Goodnight, Julian. Thanks for rescuing me. Again.”