Sneak Peek: Chapter 4 (Ending rewrite) (Patreon)

As mentioned in yesterday's post, though overall pleased with the chapter, I wasn't really happy with the way chapter 4 ends. I've gone and reworked it slightly, tweaking David's final thoughts as he lies in bed with Julia, and then using that to slide into a memory/dream from the past. I think it works better this way. I had to restrain myself from really stretching out the scene with Tom--there was just something really compelling about the idea of writing a short story about two guys sharing a beer. I may tweak it very slightly to suggest a little more about the character of Tom, but for now I think it gives the overall chapter a smoother finish. What do you think?

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Eight: Like a Foreign Country

And just like that, I’d bound her to me once more.

            Laying in the tangled mess of bedsheet in the dark, Julia’s languid body curling into mine, I marvelled at how great sex felt after months of deprivation.  I felt like a man trapped on a desert island, rediscovering food after rescue. 

            My body still thrummed with the intensity of our sex, the release, the fullness of giving and receiving pleasure.  And though I’d admit to being a little out of practice, I more than made up for it with effort, keeping up with Julia’s voracious appetite.  Damn those doctors for what they did to me, but an unexpected benefit of this whole-body reboot was that I could fuck like a twenty-year old again.

            Luxuriating in post-coital contentment, I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the quiet sound of her breathing and the distant murmur of the late-night city.  I felt both exhausted and exhilarated.  I lost count of how many times she’d panted, moaned, juddered and cried out her orgasm. I’d managed a hat-trick of my own, pacing myself according to the brief breaks she’d allowed: here, a few minutes for a piss and to scrub my face clean; there, a glass of water; we’d kept it going into the early hours of the next day. 

            The sliding door to her bedroom patio stood ajar—we’d fucked out there too, up against the balcony railings, our tits pale in the outside dark, her yips and cries cutting through the night—and now the breeze caressed my legs still ivory in stockings. She’d insisted I keep them on the whole time.  Goose pimples rose and fell across my thighs; nipples tightened in the cool air.  A crescent moon, its sliver of brightness hidden behind gauzy shreds of cloud, extended ivory tendrils into the room.

            And then, perhaps because of the quiet and calm and the woman resting in the crook of my arm, I remembered a girl called Molly.

            And before Molly, there was one final night on the streets, curled up in a doorway shivering through the long hours of cold loneliness.  The next night, a lumpy mattress in a tiny room over Tahir’s nightclub.  And then: a soft bed, the faint scent of perfume, cheap framed poster of sunflowers and a girl next to me, gently snoring through to morning.

            How did it happen, this transition?  I can’t clearly remember.  I purposely forgot what it was that drove me to cash in the favour that got me off the streets, only that one day I made the decision to bring that period of my life to an end.  There was a year of living death, of hollowed existence drifting through empty days, of cold and bitterness and hunger and anger and grief; though everything felt muted and distant. Time, obliterated; a year, gone.  Then suddenly a morning in which I walked up to one of Tahir’s clubs and asked for help.

            The guy owed me from a thing a few years back, and the only problem was convincing the staff to let me talk to him.  He took one look at me, nose and thin moustache wrinkling with disgust, and led me to the showers.  Brutally hot water hammered my emaciated body, carving rivulets through the thick dirt and caked grime.  The water ran brown and I stood there insensate, watching the past year slough off and circle the drain, until he cut the heating and the icy spray shocked me back to life.  He had fresh clothes for me: jeans, a t-shirt, underwear still wrapped in packaging, clear socks.  Food and a place to hole up until I found my feet. 

            I’d wondered at the time whether he knew what happened to me, about Persephone’s murder and my failure to prevent it. I didn’t ask; it didn’t do to pry.  Tahir wasn’t one for extended conversation anyway.  Tall and taciturn, with an odd predilection for velvet suits, once presentable he invited me to sit with him. 

            “You have come to me,” he said, over steepled fingers, long and precise.  “You have given me a problem to solve.”  He frowned.  “I do not like this problem.”

            I shrugged.  At the time, asking for anything beyond a shower and a free meal seemed presumptuous.  I’d saved his life, once; now, he offered the same in return. 

            “Your problem,” he continued, “is your past…,” and here, he called me by a name I no longer use.  “For one so young, you have a very troubled past.  Many skeletons in many closets.  Much darkness.”  He shook his head.  “And of course, a woman we both know.”  He opened his hands, revealing a single, pink petal.

            Sakura: I nearly spoke her name but he held an elegant finger to his lips.

             “But perhaps,” Tahir continued, “There is a solution to our problem.”  And he slid a large, thick envelope across the table to me.

            I opened the envelope, shaking out its contents.  There was a flutter of documents, a brief shower of hard plastic, a key.  I picked up one of the cards.  It was a drivers’ license, with an unfamiliar name: David Saunders.

            “This man,” Tahir said, “this David, he does not have a troubled past.  He is a young man with a fine past.  He is a young man with a bright future.  A fine future, with much potential.”

            The offer was clear.  Tahir would set me up with a new identity.  He’d put me up for a year in a little apartment above one of his clubs, and in return I’d work for him, first as a dishwasher and then we’d take it from there once I sorted out my life.  Waiter, maybe.  Or bouncer, he suggested, and his lips stretched in the dangerous toothless smile I remember. Beyond that? We’d see at the end of the year.  Afterwards I’d go my own way. David Saunders would be free to step away from the ruins of another man’s past. 

            “But you must agree,” he said, gently drumming the table with his fingers.  “To say farewell to that past.  Your past, it remains far away, yes?  Like a foreign country.  It is no longer yours to visit.”  The implications were clear: if I accepted his offer, the person I’d been was effectively dead—gone—twenty-two years of my life written off as a bad debt and forgotten.  What family I had: gone.  Friends: gone.  Sakura, Persephone…

            An easy choice to make.

            That first night, head swirling at how quickly everything had changed, I sat at the bar in borrowed clothes, drink untouched, feeling absolutely lost, watching as the first patrons arrived.  Nominally, I was there to learn something about the job but really it was just to experience normal—ha!—society again after so long out of it.  And this girl came up to the bar, ordered a drink, and after a pause turned to me.

            “Hey there.”  The girl seemed impossibly pretty, dark-skinned and curvy with a beautiful smile, her outfit glittering with a thousand sequins and I wondered why she’d speak to somebody like me.   “Haven’t seen you here before.”

            At a loss as to how to react, I tried copying her. My smile felt like an ill-fitting mask dragged over unwilling features.  Opening my mouth to speak, nothing came out.  Annoyance flashed across her face, but also disappointment; she began to turn away; and it seemed as though the mask I wore was no different from the one she wore, too.  Sadness simmered beneath the surface, loneliness and hurt, an echo of my own.  And though it seemed the hardest thing in the world, I answered her.

            “Hi,” I said.

            She smiled.  “I’m Molly.”

            Later, laying in her soft bed, her plump, beautiful body warm and comforting lying next to mine, I bid farewell to my old life.  Maybe he was still out there somewhere, cold and alone, sleeping rough, his existence coiled around an emptiness, a loss and a mistake that could never be fixed.  He could stay there, that sad, broken boy.  I looked down at the girl nestled up to me, the source of my newfound solace. 

            David. I savoured the unfamiliar name: a fricative bounded by two plosives. I swore then with a seriousness only possible at such times and with this strange woman pressed up against me, that I’d never be alone again.

            She stirred in my arms.  “Hey there,” she murmured, eyes still closed.

            “Hey.”

            The girl spread one hand flat across my chest, and she nestled deeper into the crook of my arm, sighing.  With her other hand, she patted my cock once as though congratulating an eager puppy.  “That was fun.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You never even told me your name.”

            My mouth formed itself around my new name.

            “David,” she said, and I was back in the present as Julia purred my name, her hand sleepily sliding its way back to my breast.  “I like this,” she said, squeezing the soft flesh.

            “I noticed.”

            “And this.”  Her knee gently prodded my exhausted and semi-flaccid penis.

            I grunted.

            “We’re going to have so much fun together,” she mumbled.

            I smiled, and lightly danced my fingers down her side.

            “I’ll help you,” she said.

            “Help me?”

            “Teach you.”

            “Teach… what?”  My fingers hesitate at her thigh.

            “To be a girl,” she said, and she stirred against me, turning onto her side and opening her eyes.  “To be my girl.”

            “Jules…,” I started, a warning tone entering my voice.

            “Oh, I just love you like this,” she continued.  “Small and soft. Submissive.  So much better than the arrogant prick you used to be.”

            I went to pull away from her, but her hand at my breast, her leg over mine, restrained me.  “And you, hating every minute of it!  It’s more, so much more and better than I ever dreamed.  The man who fucked me and ruined me and left me—trapped, living a life he despises. Living as a girl, experiencing everything he’s looked down on his whole life.”  Speaking like this, she slowly slid on top of me, her whole body pressing down on me, breast to breast, her hands seeking mine, fingers interlacing, holding me down.

            “You’ll be my little doll for me, won’t you, David, wearing what I choose for you; my little puppet, mincing and prancing when I pull your strings?  I’ll pick the prettiest outfits for you, David, the sexiest clothes, and show you off at all kinds of fun places.”

            I tried to push her off but she had me pinned to the bed.  “Fuck you, Jules, I’m not going to—”

            But she cut me off with a deep and passionate kiss, stifling my protest.  Then she kissed my cheek, lightly licked the edge of my ear, and whispered: “But of course you will,” she said.  “Or I’ll tell your secret.”

            Going limp beneath her, I hissed, “you wouldn’t.”

            Kissing lightly down the neck, across my collarbone: “Wouldn’t I?”

            “You’d be responsible for my death. You don’t want that.”

            She paused, and when she spoke her voice quavered with momentary weakness.  “No, I don’t,” she said.  “Even after what you’ve done to me, I don’t want you dead.”  Then she resumed her tender ministrations, small wet kisses and darting tongue, as she worked her way towards my tits, her whole body sliding down my length.  “I’d much rather have you like this,” she said.  Her tongue flicked across my erect nipple; my whole body tensed; I released a sharp intake of breath.  “You could enjoy it too.”

            “I hate this,” I snarled, or tried, voice inadvertently squeaking as her tongue flitted out again.  Throughout our night of frantic screwing, she’d largely abandoned her early fixation on my tits, other than the occasional, almost haphazard grope.  Now, she was awakening sensations in my breasts that were new and, because unfamiliar, distinctly uncomfortable; on the threshold of painful, despite this new tenderness; and yet somehow also intensely pleasurable. 

            Pleasure this feminine, I didn’t want to indulge; but shit, it felt so good, like something hot and fluttery cocooning in my belly, working its way free.

            “Good,” she said, her breath hot against my skin as she slowly circled the nipple with the tip of her tongue.  “And here’s the thing, David.  I’m still angry with you.  I want to hurt you the way you hurt me. 

            “And you’re right: I probably wouldn’t give away your secret.  Purposefully.  But in anger?  Or when I’m drunk and bitter?  I’m a very bitter woman, David. And I do like to drink.”

Cat-like, she grinned at me over the swell of my tits. “What then?  I can’t promise I wouldn’t… slip, wouldn’t forget, just for a moment.”  Her hand walked up my flank, her thumb flicking across my other nipple; and my whole body twitched in response.  “Like you did on Friday.”

            Intended as an angry grunt, the sound that escape my parted lips was a moan: softly sighed, distinctly feminine, intensely embarrassing; and in hearing myself, it suddenly seemed as though I could see myself, or rather Cindy, imagine her pinned beneath this larger, supple woman playing with her tits.  A switch flicked: the cocoon split; heat blossomed; and warm pleasure suddenly coursed through me as I submitted to Julia’s touch.

            “Don’t you think,” she said, “It’d be better if you kept an eye on me?” and her lips gently closed around the nipple, and softly suckled, her tongue still indolently circling; her other hand picked and plucked and pulled at the other nipple; and my whole body quivered, back arching.  I was instantly hard, again.  Her mouth was at my teat; one hand at the other breast; and the other now curled around my shaft as she slowly began to pump.

            “Julia….” I bit back an unmanly whimper, squirming beneath her.

            “Will you be my Cindy?”

            “I—”

            Her hand slowed, even as I ached for release.  “We could have so much fun together,” she said.  “Imagine going out together, dressing up sexy, high heels and tight dresses.”  She slowly resumed stroking, and continued the nipple play, and darted down for quick, sharp kisses between words.  “We could drive the boys crazy and tease them all night long. Each time we touched, knees beneath the table, a finger caressing a bare shoulder, or fixing each other’s makeup, we’d know, wouldn’t we, we’d know what’s waiting when we get home?”

            And again, she slowed, stopped, bringing me painfully close to climax, but this time to rise over me, her wet pussy hovering over my erection.  And in the moonlit darkness of the room, I could make out Julia’s hungry, fierce grin, her eyes sparkling in the ivory glow.  “We come home and fuck,” she said, and she grabbed my tits, hard as she dropped and impaled herself.

            I gasped, and she cried out in exultant pleasure, her cunt clenching tight around my cock.

            And as she rode me, she told me what we could do together, how she’d take care of me, teach me to be the best Cindy possible, her Cindy, a girl nobody could ever possibly recognize as that wicked, nasty, piece-of-shit man from her past.  I’d be hers, she’d be in charge, but she’d keep me safe and protect me.  She’d check in on me at work, take me out for dinner, watch me blush as the boys hit on me, watch me squirm, watch me blush, and smile as I was forced to play the part of the girl I’d once have fucked.  Another notch on the bedpost, used and discarded, but this time, this time, oh this time I was the fluff, the flirt, the little bitch, her bitch, her slut, and—

            If we hadn’t woken up the neighbours earlier, she must’ve gotten them this time.  Gasping and grunting her filth into my ear, her whole body went rigid as her voice rose through its bitter hiss into a triumphant, shuddering wail, eyes rolling back into her head as she rode my cock to climax.

            She collapsed onto me, gasping for breath, utterly spent.  A few minutes later her breathing eased, softened – and Julia fell asleep, snoring slightly.  I sighed, still skewering her sopping wet pussy, ignominiously pinned to the bed beneath her weight.  My erection wilted and after a half-hearted effort to shift her, I gave up and resigned myself to an uncomfortable night.

            I grinned.

            Like I said: just like that. Bound to me.

            Julia wouldn’t turn me in now. She wanted me too much; needed me. To humiliate me, yes, and extract her revenge for the past, but her need went even deeper than that. The same desires that drew her to me all those years ago remained.

            The man in the café, and the one at the restaurant: two different men, of course, but it was a stroke of luck they’d been wearing something passably similar.  It’d been enough to convince Julia of danger, trick her into bringing me home. And once we’d crossed the threshold into her apartment, sex had been an inevitability.  Fourteen yeas ago I led her into a threesome she didn’t want. Tonight, I convinced her to bring me home, and I fucked her until she decided to keep my secret. Best of all, she thought she was in control, that it’d been her decision.

            Just like the old days. Sakura could always count on me to get in close with people, the people she chose, and convince them to do things they didn’t know they wanted to do.

            And so it was with Julia.  I hope she enjoyed the fantasy while it lasts.

            Mind, she was a bit more… dominant, than I remembered but fuck me if I hadn’t enjoyed it, too. 

            She wanted me; Goddamn, she wanted me so badly!  There was a fierceness and purity to her desire that bordered on the manic. Her need paired up perfectly with my own. Because reflecting back over the past few days—or week, or months—I could now recognize how lonely I’d been.  Admitting this was more difficult than expected.  But it was true, and it was affecting me in odd ways. 

            More than once I’d stepped off the bus home from work early and walked the final kilometers home. By doing this, I indulged in a fleeting experience of being part of a human crowd.  Staring through windows, imagining myself sat at the tables within.  Even working late, arriving early, simply to be around others—even if being around others reminded me, intensely, of the role I was forced to play.

            I’d kissed Dan—another man!—willingly!—and in my drunkenness might’ve gone even further out of a desperate yearning for physical contact.  I’d followed him to the bar that night out of need of companionship, for the sounds and lights of the city, for a beer and a chat, out of a profound desire for society, in a desperate bid to recapture, even if from the female perspective, the simple pleasure of going out on a Friday night. 

            I’d long considered myself above such petty needs.  But as days rolled over into weeks into months, trapped in Cindy’s little life, it became clear these needs couldn’t be ignored.  Cindy was a social creature; apparently, so was I.

            I’d lied to myself for too long.  Looking back over the years I could see that scorning other people’s company had always driven me to find solace in the arms of whatever slut—bitch—woman—of whatever Molly I could find that night.

            Six months since this whole goddamn ordeal has started, six months without physical intimacy, without social contact—without a good, solid fuck.  No wonder I’d slipped up so badly last Friday.  No surprise, really, that I’d let slip my secret and told Julia who I was.  At some level, I must’ve been desperate to share, to reach out to someone; to maybe find an ally.

            Frankly, it was a miracle I hadn’t snapped earlier.  And if something didn’t change, I’d mess up again, probably worst than before, and end up dead.

            With Julia’s face buried between my tits, her quiet snores whispered their secret across the hills and valley of my chest.  Our hair mingled in a dappled wave across the pillows.  I needed her just as badly as she wanted me.  She’d keep my head clear, keep me focused as I figured my way out of this pantomime. 

            Her promise to teach me wasn’t an idle threat. But galling as it was, having someone to share the burden of pretending to be Cindy would be… helpful. Even better, having someone with which I could drop the façade, even if only briefly and be myself—be David—would make it that much easier to hold on to what remained of my masculinity.

            So I’d let her play out her little revenge fantasy for a couple of months.  I’d fuck her on demand, drain my balls in her eager cunt, and prance around in whatever pretty dresses she bought me. And when the time finally came: goodbye, thanks and fuck you Julia, I’m outta here.  Get yourself back into therapy, you crazy bitch. 

            A couple more months; that’s what Scooter said. Then I’d go back to being a man and forget all about her once again. And meanwhile? Smiling, I slid my hands down the length of her body and cupped her ass.  She sighed in her sleep and nuzzled a little closer. Her breasts and mine pressed together and her weight was almost comforting as I closed my eyes and slid into sleep.

Nine: The Shadow of His Touch

The door clicked shut behind me.

            Sneaking out of the girl’s bedroom, I wore nothing but my boxers. The student apartment was quiet and dark. There were a few lights on in rooms across the plaza beyond the window but otherwise all was silent and dark. I padded into the kitchen and found a beer in the fridge. Returning to the sofa, I sat with elbows on knees, dangling the bottle between my legs, and enjoyed the solitude.

            It wasn’t long before I heard another subtle click. Tom, sneaking out of the other bedroom. His efforts at being quiet were almost a parody a stealth. He was a big man taking exaggerated steps as he crept from his girl’s room, clothes in a bundle over his crotch, ass bare and pale as he crept backwards.

            He saw me, and grinned, semi-flaccid cock flopping as he hopped into his trousers. He was a big boy, Tom. Kept himself in great shape, too. He settled next to me on the sofa. I offered him the bottle. He took it and drank. We shared the beer in silence, passing it back and forth, watching as one, then another of the windows opposite went dark.

            His teeth gleamed in the little light remaining.  “That was fun,” he said.

            “What was her name?”

            “Niamh?” His brow furrowed. “Eve?” He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

            Another drink, and I held the bottle up. It was empty.

            “Holly,” I said.

            He looked at me.

            “My girl,” I added. “Sisters.”

            “I got the pretty one,” he said.

            “The one with big tits, you mean.”

            Tom pulled on his shirt and tucked it into his trousers. “Same thing.”

            I watched him get dressed. “Taking off?”

            “You’re not?”

            I stretched my arms across the back of the sofa. “No hurry.”

            He shook his head. “I still don’t know how you did it.”

            I closed my eyes. “Did what?”

            “Get those girls to—bring us home. To—do what they did. Together.”

            “Two hot college girls,” I said, eyes still shut. “Two corporate hotshots. Fun times.”

            I listened to him finish dressing. He sat next to me again, the sofa wheezing under his weight. “Hey.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

            And in memory, I said, yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be? And he left, and I sat there for another hour in darkness before returning to the girl of the night, fucking her one more time before leaving.

            But in the dream the memory became, I wanted to say to him: no. And I wanted to tell him: this is as good as it gets. And I wanted to relive the moment with him in which two guys hit a bar and score with two sexy, young women and bring them home and fuck them side by side on a sofa, their tits swaying in syncopation with the thrusts of our cocks and their asses in the air and soft moans muffled by cushions.

            And most of all I wanted to tell Tom: keep away from me, you’ll get hurt or worse, because someday I’ll see something and because of this night, and others like it before and after, I’ll face down a bad man to distract him from your presence and—

            And I said none of this, of course, but then his hand shifted, its tenor changing as rather than a comforting weight he caressed the soft, bare skin of my shoulder.  I shivered, as his thumb brushed my collarbone, and then he stroked my hair and cupped my breast. “Nice,” he said. “Could be bigger, though.”

            His touch was at first tender, then rougher. I felt his size over me. I opened my eyes to see him looking at me. He grinned his thousand-dollar smile. Those beautiful blue eyes glimmered with humour.  He took me by both shoulder and pushed me back into the sofa. His legs worked their way between mine and with an easy motion he spread my knees. His cock stood tall and ready.

            “I’ve always wanted to fuck you,” he said, and thrust into me.

            With a gasp I woke in a room painted pink by the first light of dawn. Julia lay curled up asleep under the duvet. I shuddered and felt my heart pound. Laying there for the length of several long breaths, I felt the waking reality of breasts and long hair and slender shoulders. I could still feel the shadow of his touch on my skin and the impossible sense of him—penetrating me. But eventually, even the final traces of the dream faded too, and I slipped back into a fitful and short sleep.

To be continued…