Telling Tales (4 page)

“Because he had no one else,” Cameron says, finally, and though Wade starts blathering on about Scooby-Doo and Kitty wants to know why he wanted us to stay here for a month first, then, if it was just about him being a lonely old bastard, I think Cameron’s right.

I think we were his family, once. And maybe he just wanted his family to come back together, in some sort of wildly eccentric and completely inadvisable fashion. One that makes Wade say: “There’s a curse on the house, and a month is what it takes to possess us all and make us kill each other.”

This time, Kitty manages to hurl a cushion at him. She even kicks one little leg out at him, and misses by a country mile.

“You dick! I’m already not going to sleep tonight, thinking about people watching us.”

“People
watching
us?” I say, and Kitty turns her head almost 360 degrees to shoot the weirdest look at me. It has nothing to do with the content of my words, though, I know, and everything to do with the fact that me and Cameron say said words at exactly the same time. We even use the same incredulous tone—or we would have, if I had a gun-metal voice like his.

“Well yeah. There must be people watching us. Checking that we’re staying for the month, you know? Making sure we’re doing the ‘renovations.’”

“The place doesn’t even need renovations,” Wade says, and he would know. But Cameron’s still stuck on this idea of being watched.

“No one is spying on us. The solicitor even said to me that a clause like that wouldn’t hold up—that we didn’t have to stay if we didn’t want to.”

We all go silent, then. Though I can practically hear what everyone’s thinking, anyway—
so
why
are
we
here?
What are we all doing here, if we don’t have to be? None of us have jobs that we need to rush back to, and there’s a nice healthy provision been made for us, but even so. Even so, what are we doing in this old house again, reliving old memories?

“So,” Wade says. “Back to my story?”

I can see he’s just raring to plunge right into it—which makes my palms inexplicably sweaty and puts my heart somewhere up around my throat—but Cameron pulls him up short. He points out that none of us have any candy, and I’m almost certain he does so for the same reasons I would, if I’d have thought about it.

To stall Wade from reading out the Story of Probable Depravity.

But then he comes back too quickly with a bag of actual red licorice, the staple story food of the Candy Club, and then I’m not so sure. Plus he kind of looks at me as he passes by to the kitchen, and there’s something about his expression, something hazy in his bottom-of-the-ocean eyes, as though summer heat has hit the water and everything is melting away.

And then Wade starts talking, and I don’t know whether it’s Cameron’s strange smoky stare or the words of this obviously filthy story that make me feel suddenly warm and liquid between my legs.

Though I think the latter has a running start.

“He thought about licking her cunt when he brought the pair of panties to his face, even though he didn’t want to. He wanted to think about nice things, cute things, because she was a real lovely girl. Her eyes only ever laughed at him kindly, and her sweet mouth seemed to have no edges. She did nice things, like slipping an arm around him when he felt down—despite the fact that no one else ever seemed to know if he was down or not.

“But she did. And now he was in her room, going through her things. All of her panties and bras and other stuff besides that he’d never suspected she’d have. She had something that looked like a see-through teddy, and when he rubbed it over his cheek it felt liquid-soft, like maybe it would melt if he kept doing dirty things to it.

“Even so, he ran it over the stiff ridge of his erection—plainly visible through the material of his jeans—and thought about doing that same thing with her inside it. She’d be all spread out on the bed with the silk clinging to her curvy body, and he could get on her and slide his cock over every inch.

“The thought alone made him sweat. He could feel his stiff cock pulsing against his zipper, and longed to take it out. But then the door sounded down below, and a new kind of feeling sprang through him’’

I know just what Wade’s perverted character means. A new sort of feeling is springing through me too. Wade pauses to snap off a bit of red liquorice, but other than that he seems completely unfazed by all of the cocks and cunts and, oh my word, I don’t think I can take the heat in here. I think I need to get out of the kitchen, even though I’m not actually in one.

Where has he
gotten
this stuff from? Is this real? Something about it sounds it, but I can’t imagine Wade sneaking into some chick’s bedroom to sniff her panties—and especially not this new Wade, all smooth and creamy-voiced and too-slick.

In truth I can’t imagine anything at all, because the bottom half of me has been dipped in warm honey and I can’t seem to breathe out. I keep breathing in, but nothing’s going back out again.

And he continues! Kitty is kind of squirming on my lap and I dare not even look at Cameron, but Wade only goes and carries on.

“Fear. She’d come back early from the poetry recital. Any second, and she was going to climb the stairs and find him here, lurking in her most private space.

“He did the only thing he could: he opened the door to her adjoining bathroom and slipped inside.

“However, this action presented a slight problem. Once in there, he had the urge to shut the door tight and lock it—maybe he could tell her he’d desperately needed to go, or something like it—but by the time he’d thought of it, he realized two things. One—an excuse like that wasn’t going to fly. And two—he couldn’t safely shut the door right to without her hearing and knowing he’d gone in there only a moment before she arrived home.

“It just wasn’t watertight. Which was how he found himself in her bathroom, staring at her through a crack in the door, willing her to leave before anything worse happened.”

I don’t want anything worse to happen. Kitty has a hand inside her blouse—I know she does, without even looking down. But I don’t blame her because my own nipples feel like two great big glaring points, sticking right through my jersey for everyone to see. I wish I’d worn a thicker bra, but really, who could have predicted this?

Does he somehow psychically know I’m this horny? Can anyone else feel it, vibrating off me in waves? I’m sure I can sense some kind of strange heat emanating from Cameron, but maybe that’s just because he’s so massive and I’m so turned on.

God, I’m
this
turned on before he’s even gotten to the good stuff.

“It was almost a slap in the face when she stripped out of her clothes before doing anything else. Of course he tried to look away, but it was useless. Here was the object of his lust in just her bra and panties, and both items barely hid a thing.

“When she turned he could see the groove between the rounded, glorious cheeks of her ass, just visible beneath her plain white of her underwear. His mind went automatically to the most lurid thing he could imagine—stroking a finger over that shadowed crease, or even filthier—sticking his tongue there and licking and licking until she begged him not to stop.

“And then she turned around, and that warm pulse of arousal he’d felt while stroking her silky things over his body became a sharp kick. A warning—if he didn’t do something soon, he was going to spurt in his jeans just like that.

“She looked more amazing than he’d ever imagined. He could see it now—the clothes she wore were too shapeless. They hid the full, perfect curve of her hips and the neat way they nipped in at her waist. The slight swell of her belly looked smooth and warm and infinitely caress-able, and though her legs didn’t have a lot of length, there was something about them—something sweet and inviting.

“She’d barely be able to get those things around his big body, and the thought was exciting. As though she was both solid and real, easily grope-able and always promising a soft sensuality, but also small and quite fragile.

“The contrast made him want to groan, and he put a fist to his lips. She’d started taking off her bra and any moment he was going to get to see her breasts—the object of many of his fantasies. He’d often imagined covering her in something slick, then easing his swollen cock between those two soft mounds, but the image was so much clearer, here. It was so close he could almost taste it, but he resisted.

“He didn’t move, or make a sound. Not even when she suddenly slipped a hand beneath the material of her panties, and rubbed slowly over her almost visible pussy.”

He looks up from the story, then, but I can’t look back. Mainly because I’ve covered my face with my hands and am only watching through the cracks between my fingers. Of course, I still know he’s grinning. He’s grinning underneath his stupid designer stubble and, when he continues, he sticks his tongue, lewdly, into the hollow cup of his cheek.

Then Cameron interrupts in a suddenly heated tone, and I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m starting to lose my ability to make sense of things.

“Maybe you should tell a different story, Wade,” he says, almost like a warning, but Wade just kind of winks at him and carries right on.

“She was wet. He could tell she was, because even from all the way over in the bathroom, he could hear the slick sounds her fingers made as they parted things he wanted to part, and did things he wanted to do. The urge to open the door and just go to her went through him, but he held it in check. She’d never forgive him, if he revealed himself now.

“Not now that she’d spread herself out over her bed, fingers busy beneath the thin material, free hand on one plump, gorgeous breast. From this vantage point, he had a complete view of the place between her spread legs, and when she frigged herself a little more vigorously or slid two fingers inside her tight pussy, the strip of material covering her mound slid to one side to reveal little tantalizing glimpses.

“He couldn’t help sliding a hand over the pulsing ridge of his erection. At first he went with something small and unassuming—the heel of his palm pressing down hard and almost cruelly. But once she started moaning and squirming on the bed, those little glimpses of glistening flesh getting clearer and clearer, he couldn’t stop himself.

“He’d never particularly thought of himself as a sexual person—he rarely felt anything above a mild arousal and masturbation wasn’t top of his list of fun things to do—but the heat coursing through his body was undeniable, irresistible. It was as though a strange force had gripped him, and was inciting him to slide a hand inside his jeans and stroke over his stiff and swollen cock.”

I swear to God, I jump right out of my skin when Cameron interrupts this time. Even Kitty jolts a little, in the middle of doing whatever it is she’s doing—that’s how loud he suddenly is.

“I really think you should stop now, Wade,” he says. But Wade doesn’t.

“It took only the slightest touch—just his thumb on the slippery tip—to bring him off. He felt it like an avalanche, like something breaking inside him, uncheckable pleasure jerking upward from his straining cock to some place low and deep in his gut. Great spurts of come covered the insubstantial cup of his hand and then flowed messily outward, to stain the inside of his jeans. He could feel his body straining, strung too taut, while all of her cries of pleasure echoed every sound he wanted to make.

“It was only afterward he realized these sounds had made him bite down hard enough to draw blood, on his still-clenched fist.”

He puts the pages aside, but nobody says anything. It’s as though he hasn’t finished, as though there has to be more, despite the buzz of relief that seems to be going through all of us, to have heard it come to an end.

And yet when Kitty sits up quite suddenly—blouse partially unbuttoned and blonde hair a mussy halo around her head—and says: “So did she catch him?”

I’m echoing the sentiment inside. It’s the first thing I want to know, and it feels weird to understand that this is the only time I’ve ever been so desperate to get to the end of something Wade has written. As though all of his other stories somehow pale in comparison to this—whatever
this
is.

“Tune in next week to find out,” he says, though I’m sure he’s lying. There are no more words left on the page. He’s drained them all dry and left us wanting more, even though I’m clenching my nails into my palms with the weird awkwardness of all of this and Cameron is bristling to the right of me, somewhere.

I glance at him and he looks…I don’t even know what he looks like. Pissed on Cameron isn’t the same as pissed on anyone else. He doesn’t frown or grind his teeth, though I can see he’s pulled his lower lip right into his mouth in this mean sort of way. And I think his cheeks are a little flushed, even though that seems impossible.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him blush—so I guess that’s it. He must be embarrassed, in some fashion. I’ve never heard him talk about sex frankly, and he certainly doesn’t seem to want to talk about it now. In fact, before Kitty’s even done pressing Wade for more, Cam has gotten up out of his seat and left the room entirely.

And I can’t help glancing after him, as he goes.

Of course I can’t sleep. I try, but it’s impossible with Wade’s story on my brain, and then in the kitchen, later on, him hugging me from behind. Him whispering in my ear:
Did
you
like
the
story?

I felt like saying
Nooooo, I hated it. I wish it would die a horrible, untimely death, and then I could just stop thinking about it forever and ever, amen.

But instead I had just gone all hot and cold like an idiot, feeling his much-bigger-than-they-used-to-be arms around me, and smelling his rainy days smell as though no time had gone by at all. Only the thing is, back then he wouldn’t have whispered something like that in my ear. No—I don’t think he would have.

Because…and here’s the kicker…it was definitely suggestive. There was something suggestive about it—I can’t deny that fact. His breath had been all hot and moist against the side of my face and my throat, and his voice had held a little burr of something delicious right down low, right from the deepest darkest place inside him.

My clit had jerked to that sound before I’d even had chance to process it. His hand had spread over my chest—so achingly close to my right breast—and he’d pulled me so tight against him, so tight I could have rubbed my ass into the curve of his body and maybe felt something else that possibly maybe could have been there.

It was there on Cameron, I think. I don’t want to face it too head-on because there’s this weird barrier in my mind, this weird urge not to embarrass him any further even though he’s never going to know I saw something just as he passed me by. But he’s a big guy, and, well, it’s not as though sweatpants hide a lot. And neither does kind of bending over and moving fast.

Christ. Why the fuck am I thinking about Cameron’s possible erection in the first place? I’ve got sex on the brain. I’ve got sex on top of me and all over me and in the tiny grooves between my higher thought processes. Wade has poisoned me with his stupid, ridiculous story and now all I can think about are cocks and sweatpants and maybe getting up and going to Wade’s room.

A blush storms my entire body whenever I let myself entertain the notion, but the notion is there nonetheless. I mean—that’s what he was saying, right? He was being suggestive. He was suggesting I get up and go to his room in the middle of the night—or maybe slightly earlier than that, because I’m sure he didn’t imagine it would take me three hours to stew over all of this—and maybe talk for a little while. You know, about old times.

And then after all the talking: fuck his brains out. Just fuck and fuck and fuck his brains out. Hell, if he wants me to masturbate on a bed while he spies on me from the bathroom, we can do that too. I’m feeling loose-limbed and lax and up for anything, even as the neurotic side of me tries desperately to cling to my teetering mind.

He
doesn’t want you that way
, the teetering side says.
He
was
just
being
friendly.

Only I know there’s something new here, now, and it isn’t exactly holding hands and sharing tales of happy pigs. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s almost as though I can feel it charging through the walls of this house—between his room and my room and probably Kitty and Cam’s rooms too—when I put my hand on the smooth, cool surface above my bed. Like we’re all connected down this great red hallway we’ve picked as our living space, every buzzing molecule in our bodies breathing life into the Professor’s weird old place.

It’s even something weird—like the thought of the lush crimson carpet out there, gathering between my bare toes—that urges me up, and out of bed, and down toward Wade’s room. His is the fourth door on the right—mine is first, then there’s a bathroom, then comes Cam’s room, and Kitty’s picked one of the rooms opposite—and I know before I even get to it that it’s open. I can see a slither of blue through the crack, because Wade’s room is all navy curtains and swirling sky-colored rugs, though it’s not those things I’m paying attention to.

No, God, no.

I’m paying attention to the sounds of people fucking. Obviously, vigorously fucking. And for a long, long, frankly pain-stricken moment, I’m not sure what to do. I could keep going toward the door, clearly, and uncover exactly who’s doing the fucking in question. But that just seems like asking for heartache, because really there are only two options.

Either that weird tension between him and Cam was actually intense sexual attraction and they’re both in there doing each other in the ass, or else it’s the far more likely option. Kitty snuck across the hallway well before I ever even considered it, and now she’s in the middle of a marathon sex session with the object of all my hopes and dreams.

God, I hate that he’s the object of my hopes and dreams. I hate Kitty for one bright, burning, selfish second, because she’s brave and I’m not, and she’s lovely and I’m not, and she doesn’t have to be a eunuch for the rest of her life, and I somehow do.

And then I get to the door with my mind this boiling cauldron of stupid ideas—like how I’m going to barge in and accuse Wade of cheating on a girlfriend he doesn’t actually have, or accuse Kitty of betraying a friend over something she doesn’t even know about, or have some kind of ridiculous meltdown where I say words that aren’t even really English, just the blind tumbling result of my stupid heartache—and I just can’t do any of it. I can see them through the crack in the door, and I have to simply stand there and watch my hero twisting into some pretty incredible shapes with a person who is not me.

I have to watch him lift both of her legs over his shoulders until she’s almost bent double on the bed, and then pound into her as though sex is going to disappear tomorrow. Whoever invented fucking is going to revoke everybody’s license, and from then on we have to spend our days shaking hands or violently waving.

I wish I’d done more than that in the short window of sex we all had. For one far too long and not-quite-agonizing second, I find myself gazing at them with my mouth actually open. Heartache falls by the wayside in the face of this, because by God I’ve never seen a man flip a woman like that. He just gets hold of her hips and somehow she’s on her front, even though I’m sure such a move should have dislocated her hip.

Of course, I’ve seen things like this in porn. I’m aware that most people have more athletic sex than I’ve ever had. But even so, it’s different when it’s close up. It’s different when it’s only inches away from me, and I can see the look on Kitty’s face when she turns it to one side and bites at her own arm.

She looks like someone who
realizes
there’s going to be no more sex tomorrow. She looks desperate and blissed out and she’s making this noise—this
ah
ah
ah
noise—that I can hardly stand to hear. It forces unwanted feelings through my body, and I know they’re there because I just have to squeeze my legs together against them.

God, what must it be like to feel that way? To have someone pounding into you over and over again, so hard I can see her little cupcake breasts bouncing beneath the curve of her body, and when I dare to flick my attention to Wade I can make out every muscle in his tensing stomach, all ab-tacular and hard as anything and fuck, fuck.

This is too much. Did he look this way, before? He had a good, strong swimmer’s body, I know that much. But I can’t recall him being so hairy or having those ropey, muscular arms or those actual high, firm pecs. He looks so
rippling
, so hard-bodied—though I suppose the overall effect is added to by the sheen of sweat all over him. It’s as though he slid out of the pages of
Men’s Health
only five seconds earlier, and I’m not ashamed to admit I can’t take my eyes off it.

Though maybe it’s partly because I don’t want to look at the two most obvious eye-magnets: his cock, and his face. If I look at his cock or his face, I swear I’ll die. He’s saying some pretty dirty things—
Take
it, take it, you little slut
, among others—and that’s enough all on its own. It’s enough to make me press my legs together tighter, tighter, and I can feel I’m sweating through my pajamas, I know I am, I know any second I’m going to touch myself like the guy in Wade’s story.

And then I look up at his face—just as Kitty says something disgusting like
Ohhhh
yeah, fuck my slick cunt
—and of course he’s staring right at me. Of course he is. He’s staring right at me as he fucks her, this look on his face like something the Devil would do on realizing he’s corrupted another innocent soul, and I back right up in a hurry until I crack my shoulder blades against the wall.

I realize I’m breathing hard. Probably hard enough for Kitty to hear, if she takes a second in between ordering him to
Fuck
her
pussy
harder, goddammit
. I almost laugh hearing my little pixie girl being such a bossy-boots in bed, but then my mind flashes on Wade’s grinning, mischief-lit face again and I’m too shocked to get the sound out. I think I’ll be too shocked to make a sound tomorrow, actually. In fact, I think I’m too shocked to ever make another sound from now until the end of time, because God I don’t know how I feel about any of this.

I can’t even find bitterness, anymore, which seems very odd indeed. Instead I just seem all juiced up with too much sex, and when I try to walk back toward my room all I can manage is a kind of vague slide along the wall.

Of course it’s only once I’m tucked back in my bed, staring at the ceiling like a ghost of myself, that I actually dare to admit what I wasn’t sure I’d seen before.

He beckoned me in. He jerked his head in the universally accepted gesture for “come on in, the water’s fine.” And then he winked, and I broke my back against the hallway wall, before slithering back to my room like the proper little eunuch I am.

Of course, the sleeping situation is even worse now. I catch myself staring at the alarm clock I brought with me—the one I’ve perched, incongruously, on the ornate dresser in the corner of the room—watching the neon numbers flick by, one at a time. 4:36 a.m. 4:37 a.m.

Jesus, what a nightmare. So typical, too—of course he’s fucking Kitty! Of course he is. I come here hoping for one thing, and get a face full of that instead. With possible weird threesomes thrown into the bargain. And then in the insane aftermath I get my body humming like an overheated tractor, everything between my legs all swollen and heavy and obviously soaked.

In fact, I think I’ve soaked through my pajama bottoms. Whenever I move everything feels wet down there, though I don’t want to move because when I do my clit sparks and my pulse beats slow and heavy all the way through my sex and the urge to masturbate is just incredible.

But I won’t, I won’t, because I’m heartbroken. And because it’s weird. And because I’m going to keep telling myself those two things until I utterly believe them.

God I wish I wasn’t so horny. And so thirsty too. A night of pacing in my head has left me dry-mouthed, and while horny’s worse, thirsty means I’ll have to get up and pass the dreaded room of sex again. No doubt they’re still going at it, only this time the door will be wi-i-ide open and I’ll have to see him perpetrating other insane things too, like doing her in the butt with a dildo while he fucks her pussy with his cock.

Oh, there’s no end to the depravity my mind can conjure up. It conjures it as I’m passing Wade’s closed door, by telling me that it’s only closed so he can nail her up against it. And then when I get to the bottom of the stairs and hear sounds from the living room, it tells me they’re doing it on the sideboard.

The faint noise I can hear? Plates rattling.

Even though it sounds much more like papers being shuffled. And then someone gives what sounds like a little muffled cough and I almost jump right back up five steps all at once, because apparently I’ve turned into this nervous nelly and every little thing makes me want to jerk right out of my own skin.

It’s the house, I think. It’s not just the sex and the weird feelings and the meeting up with old friends. It’s the house, which seems so dark and coated in shadows even with the upstairs hallway light on, and the faint glow coming from the living room.

There’s no door to it—just an archway—so really that glow should be more than enough to comfort me. But instead I find myself peering around the arc of the stairs to the passageway that reaches down, down toward the boat room and the stepping stones, as though any second a sex-ghost is going to leap out at me and drag me into the walls.

It did that in my story. Dragged people into walls, I mean. And now I have to think about it while creeping through the house that doom built, too afraid to go forward and too afraid to go back and just desperate for a fucking drink. I’m dying of thirst here, while Kitty and Wade go at it in every available room as though fear is just a wacky concept some nerd invented one time.

Of course I get to the very edges of the archway and then realize I’m not going to be able to get to the kitchen. If I do anything but press against this wall—if I do something mad like cross the hallway to the kitchen’s arch—whoever’s in there is going to see me. And seeing me once was quite enough, thanks all the same.

Especially as it’s not actually Wade and Kitty. Though for some mad reason, I’m holding my breath anyway. In fact, I hold it so tightly and so quickly that for a moment I’m sure I’m going to burst. I clench all over like a giant fist, everything in me rushing to some core I didn’t know I had, because he’s not just sitting on the couch, casually coughing and reading
Boring
Things
About
Computers
while sipping tea.

Oh, of course he’s not. Why would he be? This is the night of insane shenanigans, like we actually are in some episode of
Scooby-Doo
, only it’s a version that’s really inappropriate for kids.

Because he’s…well. He’s gone through my stuff, for a start. I left my bag full of writing down here, and Cameron—strange, closed-off, always polite Cameron—has actually rummaged through the thing and is reading some nonsense load of old bollocks I wrote about a thousand years ago.