Indecent…Nights

Indecent…Exposure

Indecent…Proposal

Indecent…Desires

Jane O’Reilly

Copyright

HQ

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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Jane O’Reilly 2014

Jane O’Reilly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781474032766

Version date: 2018-07-23

JANE O’REILLY started writing as an antidote to kids’ TV when her youngest child was a baby. Her first novel was set in her old school and involved a ghost and lots of death. It’s unpublished, which is probably for the best. Then she wrote a romance, and that, as they say, was that. She lives near London with her husband and two children. Find her at www.janeoreilly.com, on Twitter as @janeoreilly and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/janeoreillyauthor

I would like to thank the lovely Julie Cohen, for her Writing Sex course and her encouragement and suggestions, without which Indecent Exposure might have stayed hidden in the computer file of shame forever.

For Patrick.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Indecent…Exposure

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Indecent…Proposal

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Indecent… Desires

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Endpages

About the Publisher

Indecent…Exposure

Jane O’Reilly

Setting up the money shot…

Quiet, sensible Ellie Smithson is a highly respectable photographer by day – but there are only so many wedding photo-shoots you can take without your mind wandering to what happens when the blissfully happy bride is swept off her feet and straight to the honeymoon suite’s sumptuous four-poster bed…

So after dark, Ellie takes pictures of a more…intimate nature – a dirty little secret she’s kept from her accountant Tom. Until now. It seems Tom is the subject of her next racy shoot!

It isn’t just the blurring of work and personal boundaries that’s the problem; secretly Ellie has always had fantasies of a most unprofessional nature about the almost illegally gorgeous Tom. With such temptation on display, how will she ever stay behind the camera?!

Chapter One

It’s not every day that your best friend crashes into your place of work and asks you to take photos of her sucking off someone you’d really rather she didn’t, and who absolutely shouldn’t know that you’re the sort of person who takes photos of that sort of thing.

So I guess today isn’t an everyday kind of day. Apart from the taking photographs part of it. That’s normal, for me anyway. Usually I take lovely, glossy, clean shots of children and weddings, but that’s not what Amber wants. She wants the other kind. The dirty and hot and downright rude kind that I do on the side and process in secret in my little dark room, like some sort of 1950s mac-wearing pornographer, only without the mac.

I’d gone for a white Marks and Sparks blouse and a knee-length skirt that morning, my routine Tuesday outfit. Everything was following the routine. Everything was normal. I wasn’t prepared for this at all. I can hear Tom’s breathing speeding up. Amber plants her hands firmly on his bare thighs, wiggles her arse up in the air, and gives him a slow, loud suck. She’s completely into this, into being photographed. It happens more often than you’d think. And it always, always gets the best pictures. When the client is getting off on the fact that I’m here, that I’m taking a set of erotic 8x10s for their husband or their boyfriend or just for their own pleasure. A lot of couples like looking at pictures of themselves. You wouldn’t believe the letters I get. Better than relationship counselling, apparently.

‘OK,’ I say, as her head plunges forwards and she opens her mouth wide and takes another long pull on him. She lets out a moan, sucks him deep into her throat again. I’d rather not say anything, but if I don’t, I won’t get good shots. ‘Move your head back a bit. That’s it. Keep the end in your mouth.’ She does as I ask, with some guidance from Tom Hunt’s big hands on the sides of her neat blonde bob. ‘Perfect.’ I take the shot, focusing all my attention on her, despite the fact that it keeps getting away from me, keeps switching to him.

I’ve got to ignore him. He isn’t here. This isn’t happening. I am not taking photos of my best friend giving my accountant a blowjob.

‘Now I’d like to take some shots of you licking the end.’ Her wet, pink tongue slips between her lips, and she swirls it round the fat, swollen head of his cock. I move in closer and adjust the focus, making sure I get the shot exactly right. I lower the camera; check the image in the screen on the back. Dammit, the lighting isn’t right. ‘Hold on a second,’ I tell the two of them, or more specifically Amber, as I lean across and adjust the angle of the light. I’ve got to get the contrast just right. She wants everything to be all black and white and arty, so that when she slips the pictures through the letterbox of her cheating scumbag boyfriend, she’s not just saying two can play at that game, she’s saying and I do it with class. If I didn’t know that was what she wanted the pictures for, I’d have refused to take them.

Amber isn’t listening. Her head keeps on bobbing up and down, one strap of her black lace bra slipping down over her shoulder as she works him. She’s got seriously impressive boobs. I mean seriously. She’s one of those skinny women who is no hips and all tits, the kind that make you feel a little bit sick with jealousy, and normally I wouldn’t torture myself by looking at them, but it’s either that, or look at Tom Hunt’s astonishingly muscled stomach and big, stiff penis, and I really can’t look at that, no matter how much I want to.

I’ve kept my crush on him to myself, mostly because it’s so inappropriate. He’s my accountant, for god’s sake. I take him my pile of account books once a month, and he does stuff with them and then I collect them. And we don’t make eye contact, and I pretend that I’m not staring at his hands, and he doesn’t ask me to explain the difference between ‘portrait’ and ‘personal portrait’, and when I get home I deal with the hot, acute ache I get between my thighs every time I see him and it’s all fine. It’s been all fine for the past three years. I can’t see how it will be fine after this, though.

I adjust the angle of the light. It catches the bottom of his stomach, highlighting the tattoo of a bird swooping down past his belly button. ‘OK,’ I say, not looking at that bird. I am not looking at that bird. If I look at that bird, I won’t be able to stop myself from looking at his cock. ‘I’m going to get some close-up shots now.’

I guess you might think it’s a bit weird, watching your friend suck off a guy and taking pictures of it and directing them like they’re posing for a formal portrait. To be honest, I think it’s a bit weird, when I let myself think about it at all.

Amber lifts her head, wipes her mouth with the back of one hand, the other holding him in a tight fist. His cock is so thick that her fingers don’t even meet. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Cool.’ She’s got absolutely no shame. If I didn’t know it before, I definitely know it now. And Tom Hunt, FFS. Couldn’t she find someone else? Did it have to be him?

No time to worry about that now though. I set my finger to the button, take the shot. Move a little to the left, take another. The lighting is pretty much perfect. The contrast between her crimson nails and his tanned belly and the dark fur around the base of his cock is stunning, and it turns out, after three years of wondering, that Tom Hunt is hung.

The lick of jealousy I feel turns into a bite. But I have to keep my distance. There’s stuff I can’t risk him knowing, and anyway, it’s not like he’s ever shown any sign of being interested in me, not in three years of handing over account books once a month. If he fancied me, there would be a glimmer of something. But there isn’t. And I tell myself I’m glad about that.

‘Ah,’ Tom says, and something in his voice lets me know what he’s going to say, even before he gets the words out. I’ve heard it before. Lots of times before. Though obviously, I’ve never heard it from him, and something about that rough catch in his voice grabs at me and refuses to let go. It sinks down into my pussy and makes it ache even more. ‘I need to come,’ he says. So do I, I think to myself, and right then I know that this is the last set of dirty pictures I am ever going to take. This has to stop. I cannot keep living vicariously through the sex lives of other people. I need this to stop being my sex life, and I need to get one of my own.

‘Right,’ I say, bossy voice in place. I have to use my bossy voice, or I just can’t get the word out, I’m that desperate to see Tom Hunt finish. I really want to shove Amber aside and get down on my knees in front of him and say come on my face, baby. As if this isn’t already wrong enough. I want to be one of those people who are totally comfortable with their desires, but as I’m not totally comfortable with anything, it’s probably asking a bit much of myself.

Amber pulls back slowly and turns her head, just enough to be able to see me. One possessive hand stays on him, stroking him. I don’t look at that hand. Instead, I adjust the settings on the camera, even though they don’t need adjusting. ‘Ellie,’ she says, ‘I want a pop shot.’ I suspect that Amber watches porn. Usually only blokes ask for that.

I nod vigorously, pretending that I’m not on the verge of cracking up. ‘OK.’ It’s fine that she gets to sit there while he finishes himself off, I tell myself. I can tell from the way he’s breathing, ragged and hard, that if he doesn’t do it soon, he’ll probably ask to disappear into the tiny bathroom at the back of the studio so he can do it himself, and that would be cruel, wouldn’t it? I mean, it would be pretty humiliating. And it’s not like I can help him out, no matter how much I want to.

‘Do want me to jerk myself off on your face? Or do you want to do it?’ he asks, and I nearly drop my camera. I didn’t think Tom Hunt had those words inside him. This is a man who wears a beige suit. His office has a map of the Tube network on one wall and a framed photo of a guy climbing a rock face on the other. It smells of Febreze. There isn’t a stray piece of paper anywhere in it.

Amber glances up at him. ‘You do it. Blow that load all over me, big boy.’

I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m friends with someone who can say those words. But this probably isn’t a good time to get all philosophical. ‘Right,’ I say again, bossy voice still intact. ‘Do you want him to ejaculate on your face? Or your breasts? Or somewhere else?’ It always stuns me that I can ask this like I’m asking someone if they want sugar in their tea. At least this will all be over soon, and then that’s it. I’ll only be taking pictures of people with their clothes on.

‘Can he…’ she hesitates, and then she looks up at Tom, wiggles her skinny hips. ‘Can you shoot it in my mouth?’

Tom makes a weird, strangled noise. His face is flushed and there’s a stray lock of hair sticking to his forehead, and the white cotton of his shirt is clinging to his back, and he is absolutely the most beautiful aroused man I have ever seen. Thick with muscle, hairy in all the right places. He’s even got a tan line a couple of inches below his belly button. ‘Yes,’ he manages. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is,’ she says, and then she sort of smiles and sticks out her tongue, which has a small, silver stud in the centre of it, and is glossy with moisture. I get myself in position, check the focus, and wait. Tom wraps one big hand around his erection and starts to pump. I have to be on my game here, can’t let my attention drop for a second. It’s fine when they just want the face-dripping-with-come shot, but that’s not good enough for Amber. Oh, no. She wants the full glory of the action shot. Just the thought of it has me so wet I can feel it, and I know that I’ll be the one rushing off to the bathroom to finish myself off as soon as they’ve gone.

I have no idea how I’m going to speak to him after this. I’m going to have to find myself another accountant. I might have to move town. Leave the country. But I have to act professional. I can’t let either of them know how much this turns me on. I never let clients know how much this turns me on.

Focus, Ellie. Focus.

Finger on the shutter. Eyes on the prize. He’s pumping hard and fast. He’s gone quiet. Everything has gone quiet. The softness of it descends on me, the only sound the slick slip of palm against flesh. No one even seems to be breathing.

I’m definitely not, at any rate. But my heart is kicking like a bitch and I have this weird taste in the back of my throat. I tell myself it’s just panic, because I don’t want to miss the shot. I can’t miss the shot. My hands are slippery with sweat, but there isn’t time to wipe them off. It seems to be taking forever. I’m sure it doesn’t normally take this long.

Tom gives the slightest of pauses. Amber, for all her posing prowess, is fiddling with one of her bra straps. She’s still got her mouth open and her tongue out, but she’s starting to look a bit, well, bored, for want of a better word.

I’m not bored. I swallow, hard, and then I dart the quickest of glances at Tom. His head is tipped back, a trickle of sweat streaking down towards his jaw. It’s hot in here, under the lights. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, and I can see the movement of his shoulder as he jerks himself off as I tell myself that this is the last time.

Please come. Oh god, please come. I grip the camera tightly, though my hands are slippery, and I force myself to watch through the lens, finger at the ready. All I have to do is press the button at the right moment. The technology will take care of the rest.

And then he turns his head slightly to one side, opens his eyes, and looks straight at me. He groans, jerks, goes still. Jerks, goes still again, then the sharp, musky smell of his climax fills the room. He’s coming all over Amber, but he’s looking at me.

Why is he looking at me?

Chapter Two

My fingers barely keep a grip on the camera. The silence is really, really loud now. Something weird has just happened between Tom Hunt and me, something that can’t be taken away, even as he turns his back and starts fixing his clothes. Trousers and underwear are pulled up over thighs that are thicker, stronger, hairier than I’d imagined. You can rock yourself to orgasm on thighs like that. I’ve seen women do it.

And then, in that awkward space between sex finishing and real life starting up again, that moment when everyone catches their breath, all the reasons why this was a bad idea come rushing to the front of my mind. I mean, it’s not like this aspect of my job is ever a good idea, but this has taken bad to a whole new level. My secret is out. It’s gone beyond me, and the strangers I’ve photographed, and the best friend I trusted implicitly. It’s out there, now, and there’s no bringing it back.

‘Did you get the shot?’ Amber asks from her position on the floor.

‘Absolutely,’ I say. I’m such a liar. I didn’t get the shot, I didn’t even get close. I don’t need to check the image on the little screen on the back of my Canon to know that. Amber is my friend, my best friend, and I don’t have enough of those to risk losing the one I have. So what if he looked at me? He can look at a copy of flaming Knitting Weekly if it gets him off at the appropriate time. I should have got the shot. I’ve got no excuses. But suddenly all sorts of weird questions start fighting for room in my head, like does this mean he gets off looking at me, and do people really get off to Knitting Weekly?

‘Excellent,’ Amber continues. But Tom, he doesn’t say anything. He just grabs his jacket from the top of the velvet sofa that sits to the left of shot, and disappears into the bathroom at the back of the studio. Leaving me alone with Amber and her black lace lingerie and little silver tongue stud and the glob of Tom’s spunk that is slowly making its way down towards her left nipple. She doesn’t seem to have noticed it. ‘When will I be able to see the shots?’

‘Wednesday,’ I say. Another lie. Everything is digital. She could have a look at them right now. But usually I give myself a couple of days’ leave, time to delete any pictures that might give the impression that I don’t know one end of a camera from the other. I don’t want my clients to think I’m the sort of person who makes mistakes. It’s just that sometimes, I lose my focus a little.

‘Brilliant!’ she says, getting to her feet. The glance she darts towards the back of the studio doesn’t escape my notice. ‘He’s hot,’ she says. ‘And did you see the size of it?’

‘I was working,’ I say quickly. ‘Not letching on Tom Hunt.’ I need to get both of them out of here so I can think.

‘It’s always the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for,’ she continues. ‘I mean, look at you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes! Who would think quiet, sensible Ellie Smithson is a pornographer?’

‘Photographer,’ I say automatically. ‘I’m a photographer.’ From now on, that’s exactly what I am. Nothing more, nothing less. I only wish I’d made that decision before Amber dragged Tom Hunt in here and sucked him off in front of me.

‘I’ll get dressed then,’ she says, with another glance at the bathroom door, which sends my mind into a frenzy. Obviously she wants to get him out of here. She’s probably going to take him home and they’re going to fuck each other silly, which they’re entitled to do.

But that doesn’t stop a nasty little seed of jealousy settling down inside me. I want the man my best friend has just had. I want him so badly. I turn away; pack my camera away into its silk lined case, start turning off the lights. My blouse is sticking under my arms. So now I’m not just a jealous bitch, I’m a sweaty jealous bitch. What’s really bugging me is that the fact that it’s him hurts more than the fact that she told someone I know that I take erotic photographs.

‘Use the screen,’ I say, waving my arm in its general direction. That’s why I invested in it, not just because I like the Chinese dragons weaving their way over the faded red silk. This post-sex bit is always tricky, and the screen gives people somewhere to hide. They usually avoid eye contact too, though Amber is having no problems making it with me. ‘Thanks!’ she says cheerily. Then she moves towards me and gives me a hug. ‘Thanks for doing this, Ellie. You’re the best.’

Five minutes later she’s gone, and she hasn’t taken him with her. Two minutes later, he emerges from the bathroom. His tie is straight, his shirt tucked neatly into his trousers, and he’s tamed his hair. He’s also shivering.

‘Fuck me,’ he says, ‘it’s cold in there.’

Tom Hunt just said fuck. The man who does my accounts and lectures me about my awful handwriting just said fuck. I don’t know why this shocks me so much, given what I’ve just watched him do, but something about that little word sends an electric tremor through my insides. The same thing happened when he opened his shirt and I first saw that tattoo, and when he opened his pants and pulled out his enormous cock.

It occurs to me that Tom Hunt isn’t the person I thought he was, which is terrifying to say the least. ‘Oh,’ I say, my mouth fumbling for the words. ‘Right. Yes. I probably should have told you about that. You have to flick the switch on the wall to turn on the heater. It takes ages. I wasn’t expecting you to come, so I didn’t turn it on earlier. Sorry about that.’

He raises an eyebrow, and I realise what I’ve just said, and the inevitable blush is fast and fierce. Tom Hunt is too much and too here for me to deal with right now, but there are so many questions banging round inside my head. The inevitable happens. One of them spills out. ‘Why did you do it?’

He fastens his jacket. ‘Why did I do what?’

Why did you look at me when you came? ‘Why did you agree to have those photos done with Amber?’

He shrugs. ‘Because she asked me to.’

‘Because she asked you to? Seriously?’

‘She was stood behind me in the queue at the bank,’ he says. ‘We got chatting, and she was telling me about her boyfriend getting engaged to someone else. She seemed pretty cut up about it. I suggested she fuck one of his friends, but she said no, she had a better idea.’ He straightens his tie. ‘She told me about your little sideline, and asked if I fancied a blowjob. You know the rest.’

I’m blinking too fast. I’m breathing too fast. ‘Please don’t say things like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the…the word with f in it.’ He’s so casual about it. I can’t even say it. ‘And the other thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘It…’ I fumble for an excuse. ‘It’s not appropriate, that’s all.’

He stares at me for a long moment, as if he’s trying to figure something out. The weight of those blue eyes on me is too much. I turn away, start fiddling with a light, but it’s worse, somehow. I give in and turn back to face him. ‘Aren’t you worried that people will know it’s you?’

‘No,’ he says, his forehead creasing as if it’s only just occurred to him that this is a possibility. ‘No one is going to recognise me from my dick.’

He said dick. My insides go all sort of squirmy. ‘What about that tattoo?’ I blurt out, pointing in the general direction of his lower stomach. ‘It’s pretty distinctive.’

Tom rubs a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Yeah, I guess there is that.’

I pick up my camera and take it over to the desk where I keep my laptop. I turn it on, then go over to the windows and open the blinds. I’d like to have a big place, the kind with separate rooms and permanent sets, and an office. Who am I kidding? I’d like to be Annie Leibovitz. But at the moment I’ve just got this place, and it’s pretty cool. It used to be a jeweller’s, a seriously high-end classy place, until one day the police raided it. The place was empty for so long after that that the rent is dirt cheap, which is how I can afford it.

The back of my neck starts to prickle, and it occurs to me that he isn’t picking up his briefcase and leaving. Why isn’t he leaving? I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t want to beat about the bush, either. We’re not strangers but neither are we best buddies. Just because once a month I sit in his office and listen to him tut, and because sometimes when he walks past me in the street, I think about what it would be like to shag his brains out, doesn’t mean that I feel OK being here alone with him.

Because I most definitely do not feelOK. Not scared, more nervous. ‘Do you want something?’ I ask him. I know how rude I sound. I can feel the squeeze of it right in the pit of my stomach.

‘Ah,’ he says, sitting down on the arm of my battered velvet sofa, ‘yeah. Sort of. I guess.’

‘What?’

There’s a slapping sound as he drops his hands onto his knees. ‘Today was unexpected,’ he says. ‘For me, anyway.’

‘Believe me,’ I tell him, ‘it was unexpected for me too.’

‘Seriously? Because Amber told me you do this sort of thing all the time.’

Oh, god. ‘Not all the time. I do plenty of regular photography.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘You did my sister’s wedding.’

I blink. I can’t believe he even noticed I was there, and ‘oh’ is about all I can think of to say.

‘So do you do a lot of…’ He glances up at me. ‘What do you call this?’

‘Erotic photography.’

‘I was going to say porn, but that works.’

‘Hmm,’ I say, not daring to tell him his version is closer to the truth than mine. ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell anyone about it, though. It wouldn’t be good for business.’ I shift my weight from one foot to the other, shamefully aware of the deep, unsatisfied ache between my legs.

‘It might be,’ he says. ‘I can think of a few people who’d beg you to take photos of them with their dick out if it meant getting a little action from Amber Jones.’

I blurt out a laugh. ‘It’s her…’ I wave my hands in the general area of my chest.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There’s no denying they’re impressive.’

I laugh some more, but I feel a strange kind of pain, and the next words I say tumble out of me without me being able to stop them. ‘Why did you look at me?’

He glances down at the floor, rubbing his thighs again. I wish he wouldn’t do that. It’s…distracting. I mean, as if the blue eyes and the mouth weren’t bad enough, he’s got these bloody thick legs. And big hands. And thick forearms. And the mouth. Did I mention the mouth? All of which were fine before, when I thought he was distant and controlled and safe. He’s not safe now.

He shakes his head a little, pulls in a breath. His hands still. Then he looks up at me. ‘Because Amber didn’t make me hard.’

Chapter Three

Fortunately, I’m saved from having to think of a response to that by the early arrival of my 2 p.m. portrait session, Victoria and Paul. Seriously, has the world got it in for me today? They’re newly engaged, and they’ve got that smug, cuddly look about them. I make them wait in the doorway while I light some vanilla-scented candles in a desperate attempt to get rid of the smell of sex, and Victoria eyes me with an I know that smell look on her face and fiddles with her solitaire.

I fluster and flap and plump cushions and make inane comments about how busy things are, and by the time I’ve finished, Tom Hunt has nodded a polite hello to the pair of them and left. I get the two of them in position, the typical lovey-dovey pose, she spends about five hours arranging her hair, then we’re all set.

Only I got so distracted by Tom and his mouth and his hands and what he meant when he said that Amber didn’t make him hard that I’ve forgotten to transfer those photos to my laptop and clear the memory on the camera. So when I turn the camera on, the screen that I use to show clients each photo as I take it flashes up my last shot in all its artistic glory. Victoria is too busy adjusting the position of her left hand on her fiancés shoulder, so she doesn’t notice, but he does.

For a second we both stare at the screen, then my brain remembers how this works, and I press the button on the camera that sends the screen to blue. Paul stares at me with an avid curiosity that I do my very best to ignore, hoping to god that he doesn’t ask me if he just saw what he thinks he just saw, and if I do what he’s now thinking I might do.

‘OKthen,’ I say brightly, before he can speak. ‘Shall we get started?’ I start to move around them, directing the position of their hands, their heads, desperately hoping that his fiancée is as oblivious as she seems to be, and that he’s just well padded in the groin area and doesn’t really have a hard on.

‘Paul,’ she says after a minute or two of frantic snapping, ‘do you seriously have an erection right now?’

‘Of course not, darling,’ he says, watching me over the top of her head as I hold my breath and will this to be over. I’m too horny, too wired, too fricking terrified and confused to handle this. I have got to talk to Tom Hunt. I have got to make him promise not to talk.

‘Don’t lie,’ she snaps at him, and the atmosphere in the room becomes suddenly, shockingly frigid. ‘You’ve got a hard on. It’s obvious.’

And then I do something I’ve never, ever done before. ‘It’s my fault,’ I tell her. I actually say the words out loud. ‘I take erotic photographs. I accidentally put one up on the screen when I turned on the camera. I’m sorry.’ And for the second time today, my secret slips out, only this time I’m the one letting it go.

She turns to me then, all glossy hair and big sparkly ring, and I steel myself, waiting for her to tell me that it’s disgusting, that they’re taking their business elsewhere. Immediately. But she doesn’t. ‘Show me.’

‘Um,’ I reply, ‘I’m not sure I can do that. Client confidentiality.’

‘You showed him.’ There’s enough ice in her voice to reverse global warming. ‘Now show me.’

I don’t know how to handle this. I’m useless at confrontation. When someone tells me to do something, doing it is a reflex reaction. It happens before I’ve even had chance to think it through. It’s how I ended up in this position in the first place. I pull in some air, let it out again, and then flick back to the image. It pops up on the screen, in all its visually stunning, pornographic glory.

For a moment, the three of us just stare at it. Then we all sort of sigh. It really is a beautiful shot. The black and white creates that gorgeous arty look, and most of Amber’s face is in shadow. And she is so stunningly curved, and Tom…

I can’t think about what Tom is. I don’t know what Tom is.

‘Fuck,’ says the woman, and for the second time today, I’m shocked by that word. It’s not nearly as shocking as what she says next, though. ‘God, I’d like to suck on those tits.’

Not Tom’s cock, all eight inches of which are displayed in their full, hard glory, but Amber’s tits. She looks at her fiancé, and some sort of silent message passes between them.

‘Sorry about this,’ he says, as he takes her hand and pulls her towards the door, ‘but we’re going to have to cut this short.’

She stumbles along behind him, not saying anything, her heeled boots loud on my polished floorboards. The door slams shut behind them. I stand there like an idiot, trying to wrap my head around it.

I’ve just had two clients walk out on me. Two clients who now know exactly what sort of photographic services I offer, because I told them. In fact, I went a whole step further than that and showed them. But that’s not my biggest problem. Not by a mile. I press my hands to my cheeks, unable to tear my gaze away from the image. Tom Hunt knows about me, I think to myself. What the hell am I going to do about that?

I’m still trying to figure that out at 5 as I’m pushing the hoover round the studio with what can only be described as a microscopic amount of enthusiasm. And I’ve got another problem.

I didn’t get the shot.

I could call Amber and get her to drag Tom back in here and redo the shoot. I’d get to see Tom’s cock and Amber’s tits all over again. Thinking about it makes gets me excited, and that makes me feel just a little bit sick. I can’t seem to stop myself from getting aroused, which is bad enough when strangers are involved. But getting turned on at the thought of Tom and Amber – what is wrong with me? Because it is a turn on, even though it makes me jealous, too. I stop myself a second before my dirty mind starts conjuring up images of all three of us going at it together.

I should be at home. I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and it’s way past normal locking-up time. Instead I’m cleaning the bleeping studio. It’s a definite avoidance tactic. If I go home, I will have my hand in my underwear and I’ll be rubbing myself into a frenzy before I’ve closed the front door and I won’t even try to stop myself. I’m only managing to avoid it now because I’ve left the blinds open and the bathroom is sub-zero.

Bloody hell. I yank the hoover out from under the sofa, kick the switch then drop the hose on the floor. I make my way to the bathroom at the back of the studio and tug on the light. I grab the bleach, tell myself to stop being such a ninny and go home, and am about to blast a shot into the bowl when something on the floor grabs my attention.

I set the bleach down and reach down for it.

It’s a black leather wallet, soft and good quality. I flip it open, although I already know who it belongs to before I check out the cards in the slots.

Tom Hunt has left his wallet in my bathroom.

I lift it to my face and inhale deeply. It smells like him. Leather, citrus and filth. A weird sort of giddy excitement fills me, from the tip of my toes, rushing up through my legs, turning my breasts heavy before escaping from my mouth in a sneaky little sigh.

There’s no avoiding it any longer.

I’m horny.

I don’t want to feel this way, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Watching other people does something to me. I can still remember the first time someone came in and asked me if I did bedroom shots. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but the studio had been open for three weeks and I was low on clients and even lower on funds. So I said sure, and proceeded to photograph her as she stripped off and then pleasured herself with a massive glass dildo. She ordered thirteen 8x10s and sent them to her boss.

A couple of weeks after that, I had a phone call and another client. And then another, and another, until I was doing three or four boudoir shoots a month and I’d seen pretty much everything it was possible to see, including a few things I didn’t even know were possible. I’d broken up with my boyfriend who went a very strange shade of puce after I asked if I could take some photos of him pleasuring himself, but I’d made enough money to pay my parents back the loan they’d reluctantly given me when I started up.

I tug off the light and go back into the studio and lock away all my equipment apart from my laptop and the memory card from my camera. I’m going to look at the shots I did get for Amber, see if I can rescue the situation, and then I’m going to return Tom Hunt’s wallet. I’m a professional. I can handle it.

Only before I can turn the laptop on, there’s a knock at the door. A big, dark shape fills it. I freeze. Then I swear really, really loud. ‘Fuck!’ I don’t know why my brain picks that word. It’s not one I ever say out loud, and certainly not when there’s a chance anyone might hear it. Shaking, I get to my feet and open the door.

Tom Hunt is standing there. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I, uh…’

I pull myself together, sort of; try to tell myself that this is a good thing. Really, it is. He’s saved me a job. ‘You want your wallet,’ I say, even though it’s stating the obvious.

‘Yeah.’

I hold it out and he reaches for it, taking it from me with those big, thick fingers. He’s wearing the same awful beige suit he had on earlier. It’s beyond hideous, but he gets away with it. Probably something to do with the vast quantity of muscle I now know is hidden inside it. ‘Is that everything?’ I ask, hoping it is and then he’ll leave and I can get on with pretending that today never happened.

‘How was your afternoon?’ he asks. ‘Did the shoot goOK?’

My resolve is flimsy. That iota of concern breaks it. ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Not exactly.’

‘What went wrong?’

He steps forward, into the studio, and my feet move me out of his way. ‘What didn’t?’

He closes the door behind him. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

‘Maybe.’ It feels strange talking to him about it, but I’ve got to talk to someone. And I can’t exactly talk to Amber right now. ‘That couple that arrived earlier?’

He nods. ‘Looked like they washed before and after sex. And probably during, just to be on the safe side.’

The description nails them so perfectly that I can’t help but laugh, and I dig my nails into my palm when it comes out as more of a snort. ‘Yes. Anyway, we’re all ready to go. He’s looking smug, she’s flicking her hair and flashing the diamond, and I turn on the camera and a shot of you and Amber comes up on the screen.’

‘Oh,’ says Tom. ‘Shit.’

‘You could say that. He sees it, gets…excited, and then she starts giving him the third degree.’ I sink down on to the sofa; drop my head into my hands. Tom plants himself on the arm. This is the second time I’ve been alone and in touching distance of him today, and it’s obviously starting to screw with my head, because I’m finding this conversation almost comforting, and I’m starting to think things I shouldn’t be thinking.

‘Poor bloke,’ he says. ‘She could have been a little more understanding.’

‘Why? Because no man can be expected to control himself when Amber’s you know whats are on display?’

Tom laughs, but he doesn’t answer the question. ‘So what happened then?’

I shuffle a little in my seat. He’s not who I thought he was, not even close. I don’t seem to be me, either. I’m still talking. And I’m saying things that don’t sound like me. ‘She asks him what the hell that’s all about, I tell her I accidentally put up an erotic photo, and she tells me to show it to her, so I do. The pair of them take one look at it and leave.’

He laughs harder then, louder, slapping his big hands down on his thighs.

‘It’s not funny! Seriously. I can’t have my normal clients knowing I take pictures like that. It will ruin everything!’ There’s more than a touch of hysteria in my voice, and I know it. I try to make myself sound reasonable and not unhinged. ‘And I didn’t take a single shot of them, which means they aren’t going to buy any photos, which means I don’t get paid.’ There. He’s an accountant. He’ll understand that.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He’s holding in the laugh, but it shows in his shoulders, which refuse to be still. ‘If I’d known my dick would cause you all these problems, I’d have kept it in my pants.’

‘Actually,’ I point out, ‘the problem wasn’t your…it wasn’t you. It was Amber.’

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘She didn’t like the fact that looking at Amber gave him a hard on.’

‘Not quite.’ I hesitate then, but if I’ve learned anything today it’s that Tom Hunt is pretty open-minded when it comes to sex. And by pretty open-minded, I mean has absolutely no shame and quite possibly no limits. I wish I had no limits. ‘I think her exact words were “god, I’d like to suck on her tits”.’ My ears go all buzzy after I say those words out loud. ‘God.’ I cover my face with my hands. ‘I can’t believe I just said that.’

There’s a moment of something then, something silent and hot and scary. He doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at him, but I’m so aware of him that it’s almost like he’s touching me all over. My skin is tight and I’ve never been more aware of my nipples. ‘Anyway,’ I say, stretching the word out as long as I can, ‘I’ve got to get home, and I’m sure you’ve got numbers to crunch. Calculators to dust. Stuff to do.’

He’s still looking at me. I can feel it. ‘Yeah,’ he says, after what seems like forever. ‘Stuff. Why do you think it would ruin everything?’

‘What?’

‘Why do you think it would ruin everything if people knew?’

‘Because…because they’ll think it’s inappropriate. They won’t want me to take their normal photos. They’ll think I’m dirty and messed up.’

‘I see,’ he says. ‘Can I see the pictures?’

‘What pictures?’ I ask, like I don’t know. Like my brain hasn’t been hopping between Tom Hunt sat six inches away, all big and warm and fully clothed, and Tom Hunt in my camera, all naked and hard and coming.

‘Be serious.’ He gets to his feet, pokes one of the overhead lights with the tip of his finger. ‘You know exactly which pictures I mean.’

‘Why do you want to see them, anyway?’ I’m stalling and I know it. The idea of the two of us looking at those pictures is too intimate. Too weird. Too much. But I’m not outright refusing. I don’t seem to be able to.

‘Curious, I guess. So come on. Let’s see them.’

‘You know what they say about curiosity.’ I push myself up from the sofa. Still stalling. Still thinking about him naked and hard and coming. It’s all strange and wrong. He is all strange and wrong. Clearly I am too, because my mind has started to veer off in a whole new direction, one which involves me and Tom Hunt looking at those pictures and then having wild, banging sex on my velvet sofa.

Tom Hunt would let me take pictures of him pleasuring himself. He’d do it without batting an eye. He’d probably like it.

‘Yeah,’ he says, flashing me a grin. ‘If men weren’t curious, women would be bored. Show me the bloody pictures already.’

Curiosity is crawling all over me now, making me hot and sweaty, like one of those viruses that comes on from nowhere and turns you into a wreck. Now I want to see the pictures, too. More than that, I really really want to be in the room with Tom Hunt when he looks at them. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Have it your way.’

I try to pretend that I’m not breathing a bit too fast as I turn on the screen and hook up my camera, then take the memory card out of my pocket and slot it in. I press a couple of buttons. The screen flicks from blue to black and white.

‘Do you want me to set it to slideshow?’ The words come out a little breathy, a little strange.

‘Sounds good,’ he says, so I scroll though the menu on the little screen on the back of the camera and set it up, then I take up position behind the sofa. Tom is still sat on the arm. We get ten seconds to look at each one before the next one appears. Ten long, luscious seconds. By the third picture, I’m throbbing. By the fifth, I’m wet and aching. I rub a hand over the back of my neck, though that’s not really where I want to rub.

Tom is hunched over, rocking slightly forward every time the picture changes. His big shoulders are rigid with tension. The slideshow ends, and I can hardly breathe.

‘Got any more?’ he asks, his gaze fixed firmly on the screen. His chest heaves.

‘Of you and Amber? No. That’s it.’

‘No.’ He hesitates, then sort of coughs. ‘Of anyone.’

I shouldn’t do this. I mustn’t. I should say things about client confidentiality, blah blah blah, and send him on his way. ‘Uh, yes,’ I fluster. I sort of stagger towards the door, where I left my bag, my legs wobbly. I pull out my laptop, and then collapse on the sofa with it. His face is flushed, in total contrast to his neat haircut, but I’m beginning to understand that some things are real. And some things are just the mask he wears so he can sit in his office and tut over bad maths.

I open the laptop, turn it on. We get a dozen folders to look at. Each one is a different colour. Colours are much easier to work than numbers, or letters. They don’t somersault all over the page.

Tom slides down next to me on the sofa. ‘You colour-code them?’

I sort of nod, and my throat makes a tight, hoarse noise.

‘Interesting,’ he says, and then points to one of them. ‘Show me these.’ The red folder. My hand shakes as I click on it. He’s got no idea what’s in here, but I do. And I’m about to show it to my accountant. MY ACCOUNTANT. I don’t need to hold my breath, because I can’t breathe anyway. My hand is shaking so much that I keep misclicking on the icon. ‘Stupid laptop,’ I mutter, as I go in for another attempt. This time, Tom bats my hand away and does it himself.

An image pops up on the screen. We have black and white, we have lingerie, we have tasteful lighting and we have the very velvet sofa that the two of us are sat on. We also have a woman leaning over the arm, dark hair cascading forwards and obscuring her face, as her husband does her in the arse.

‘Oh’ Tom says. That’s it. Just ‘oh’. He shifts a little in his seat. We both sit there and stare at the picture, and I wonder what on earth happens now, because I’m so hot and so tense and so turned on that I think I might faint.

‘Do you want to see the rest?’ I blurt out.

‘Yes,’ he says, and there’s something very definite about his tone. It’s the same one he uses when he’s going through my record books and asking me if that’s a 5 or a 3. It’s familiar, and it makes me just brave enough to say what I say next.

‘I didn’t know,’ I continue, as I awkwardly try and set the thing going.

‘Know what?’

‘That you’re…that you’re a bit of a pervert.’

His jaw goes tight, and I know I’ve gone too far. ‘I could say the same thing about you,’ he points out. ‘I’ve been doing your accounts for the past three years and I had no idea you did this sort of thing.’ One big hand gestures at the screen, as we flick on to the next shot. A close-up. The guy has pulled his cock almost all the way out. A whimper slips out of me as I look at it.

‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ I beg him, half my nerves screaming with arousal, the other half screaming with fear.

Tom glances across at me, his blue eyes heavy lidded, his mouth soft and loose. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he takes the laptop from me and sets it on his knee, angling it so I still get a clear view of the screen. Then he reaches for the hem of my skirt and lifts it up. The movement is clumsy, with his arm bent at this awkward angle, but I’m too busy being shocked to worry about it. The picture moves on, just as Tom Hunt curves his fingers over the swell of flesh pushing out against my sensible no VPL knickers. He covers me with his hand, but he doesn’t rub. He squeezes.

Oh. My. God.

I can feel the pressure of that contact all the way to the ends of my hair. I lift out of the seat slightly, my shoulders digging back, my hips surging against his hand. I grab the arm of the sofa, the feel of the velvet the only thing that helps me fight off the whopper of an orgasm I’m on the brink of. I cannot come all over his hand. He’s my accountant, for goodness’ sake. He has a good job, a proper job, the sort of job I would have been doing if I was someone else, someone not completely blind to letters and numbers.

‘Don’t you like it?’ he asks me, and his voice is strained. ‘Am I not doing it right?’

There’s no way I can answer that without incriminating myself, so I clamp my lips tight together and say nothing, as he continues to squeeze and the picture flicks on and the throb between my thighs becomes a roar. I swear he must be able to feel my clit pressing into his palm. It’s so hard it’s like a little girly erection, right there between my legs. I want to fuck him with it, right in his mouth, like he did with Amber.

He’s turned around in his seat now, and he’s watching me so intently that I can feel his gaze on my skin like an extra pair of hands. He stops squeezing, and I nearly die. The picture flicks on again, showing my favourite image, the one where he’s spreading her arse cheeks wide and is buried all the way inside her. I turn my face away, biting down into my lip, wanting to scream with frustration, wanting to look, too afraid to do anything but fight this.

‘Don’t you want to look?’ Tom sounds confused. I know how he feels.

‘I…er…’

‘It’sOK,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t mind. Do you want me to touch you some more?’

I’m nodding before I even know I’m doing it. Nodding so much my teeth clack together and it’s a miracle my head doesn’t fall off.

He lifts his hand, angles it in, slides the tips of his fingers under the elastic of my knickers, and then stops. ‘On one condition.’

‘What?’ I huff out. I’m hardly in a condition to speak, and now he wants to negotiate?

‘You have to look at the pictures while I’m touching you.’

I shouldn’t do this. I should pull his hand out of my underwear, and close the laptop and send him away. I’ll find myself someone else to do my taxes and we’ll never speak of this again, probably because I’ve moved to a remote island and am reduced to foraging and taking photos of sheep for Sheep Lovers Weekly.

But my hands won’t seem to work, and the picture keeps changing, and his fingers dip down into the slick, slippery wetness that’s been building all day, and then he drags that hot moisture up to my clit and draws little circles around it with his index finger.

His hand feels strange, so different to mine, sort of hard and stiff as he rubs and rubs and the picture keeps changing. The two of them have stopped fucking now, and instead she’s on her knees, with one hand on his thigh and the other on his cock, which is heavy and veined and swollen. Even in black and white it’s obvious how much the guy needs to come.

The more I try to fight how much this turns me on, the closer my climax gets. It’s rumbling towards me now, like a freight train at speed, loud and unstoppable. I can feel it in my bum, in my vagina, in my breasts, in Tom’s hand and in my clit. I grab the edge of the sofa, the velvet rough against my palms as my hips lift. Tom keeps drawing the same slow, wet circle over me. He doesn’t change the pace, or the pressure. He won’t let me miss, even though I’m trying to.

And then it hits me. Or more accurately, he shoves me into it, lungs burning, mouth dry, muscles cramping. It is blissful, delicious agony, the storm taking over as I come and then I come some more, all over his hand and the gusset of my nude no-VPL knickers.

The last picture flashes onto the screen. One beautiful, perfect popshot. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve taken this picture, but I’ve never let myself fully surrender to the tug of arousal it creates in me before.

And I don’t know what to do now.

Chapter Four

Tom eases his hand out of my underwear and I tug down my skirt, then grab the laptop and close it with more force than necessary. I can’t even bring myself to look at him. What do you say in this situation? Thanks, I needed that hardly seems appropriate, even if it is true.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘That was interesting. Did you know that you…’

‘Look,’ I cut him off before he can finish whatever it is that he’s about to say. I’m not sure I want to know. I’ve already learned more about myself than I can handle. ‘About this.’ I flap my hand in the direction of the laptop. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

‘Not your mates down the pub, not the people you work with, not anyone.’

‘I’m a junior accountant,’ he says. ‘I work in a little office on my own twelve hours a day. Who am I going to tell?’

‘I…’ An image of Tom Hunt sat behind his desk flicks into my mind. His office is so plain, so bare, and so very grey, designed to be completely inoffensive. I can’t imagine being trapped in there all day, every day. ‘Please don’t tell,’ I say again.

‘I won’t tell anyone you take these pictures,’ he says, ‘if you don’t tell anyone you took pictures of me.’

We stare at each other, and there’s a moment of understanding. Of realisation. He knows my dirty secret, but I know his, too. If either of us tells, destruction is mutually assured.

‘You’re right,’ I say, picking at imaginary lint on my skirt. ‘Of course you’re not going to tell anyone.’

And right there and then, I realise what this means. I sneak a look at the front of his trousers. He’s hard. He’s so hard that the seams of his trousers seem to be struggling to hold it in. I’ve learned three things about Tom Hunt so far today. First, there was that tattoo of a bird on his stomach, which seemed so completely out of kilter with the rest of him when I first saw it. That was before I discovered that he can look at pornographic photographs without so much as batting an eye. And then there’s the fact that he’s got an absolutely massive cock.

‘Tom,’ I say, ‘can I ask you something?’

‘If you want.’

Curiosity gets the better of me. ‘Why did you get that tattoo?’

‘Which one?’

‘The bird.’ Which one? Wait a minute. Does this mean there are more?

‘Sometimes I just…’ He pauses, takes a breath then lets it out slowly. ‘Sometimes I just need to do something outrageous. I don’t know why.’

I do. I think about his sterile, joyless office. About my plain, joyless clothes. ‘To stop yourself from going completely mad.’

He glances across at me. ‘Yes. Can I ask you something?’

‘OK.’ I sit perfectly still, as if I’m preparing myself for the killer question on Mastermind. I’ve got no idea what he’s going to ask. I clasp my hands together, and then lock them safely between my thighs.

‘If I hadn’t come back for my wallet, would you have looked at those photos on your own?’

I swallow. Hard. Mutually assured destruction, I remind myself. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Would you have touched yourself when you looked at them?’ His hand is creeping closer to his groin. His fingertips are close to the top of his thigh now, where the fabric of his trousers pulls tight.

‘Yes,’ I say, reaching for my camera, unable to take my eyes away from his hands and the bulge in his pants.

‘Tell me.’ His breathing is heavy again, his shoulders hunched in that way I now know means he’s aroused. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘I like to look at the pictures.’ I’m trembling. ‘I look at the pictures, and then I touch myself.’

His hand moves to his zipper and eases it down, revealing the plain white cotton of his underwear. The fabric stretched over the head of his cock is wet, and my pussy clenches at the sight of that dark little patch.

‘Where?’ he asks.

I lift my camera, switch it on, and take the first shot. Too close. I get to my feet, step away from the sofa, focus. ‘Between my legs.’

He eases the elastic of his boxers up over the head of his swollen cock, tucks it down under his balls, then takes himself in hand. ‘Say “pussy”,’ he orders me. ‘Or cunt, if you prefer.’

‘I…I can’t,’ I say, hating myself for it. I lift the camera, take another picture, hide behind the lens. God, he looks so incredible, sat there stroking himself. I zoom out, and this time I include all of him in the shot.

‘Why not?’ His hand glides over the head of his cock, which is slick with pre-come now. Then he lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks them, before putting that hand right back where it was before.

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I just can’t.’ I step further away, but I keep taking pictures. So many pictures. Lewd, pornographic, beautiful pictures. If he thought the pictures with Amber were dangerous, they have nothing on these. These shots are career-ending.

And suddenly I realise that’s the point. He’s giving me something, here. Something I can use to destroy him if I want to. If I need to. We both fall into tense, erotic silence as he sits there and strokes himself, his gaze never leaving me as I take shot after shot.

I see him swallow, see his cock harden and swell even more. ‘Tell me what you want,’ he says. ‘What do you want, Ellie?’

So many things. ‘I want to…’ I want to fuck you, I think, but I don’t say it out loud, and then it’s too late.

Tom tenses in his seat, cups his balls in one hand as he wraps the other around the head of his cock and gives a sharp twist, and spills himself all over the floor.

Chapter Five

‘So,’ Amber says. ‘Am I forgiven?’

I grip the phone a little tighter, stretch out my free hand and examine my cuticles. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her truthfully. ‘Tom Hunt, of all people. Honestly, Amber. Why him?’

‘I was in the bank and he was there,’ she says. ‘I was feeling thoroughly hacked off and sorry for myself, and we got to talking, and I started wondering what he hides under that suit. He’s quite gorgeous, you know.’

Yes, I know. ‘I don’t see why you had to drag me in-to it,’ I say. ‘You know how important it is to me to keep that side of the business private.’

‘Oh, get real,’ she says. ‘You’ve photographed half the town doing things that would make a whore blush. Everyone knows.’

‘No, they don’t,’ I tell her sharply. ‘I’m extremely discreet.’

‘You told me.’

‘That’s different,’ I say. ‘I told you in confidence. It was supposed to be a secret.’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘now three people know it instead of two. Big deal. It’s hardly the end of the world. And I’m sick of people keeping secrets. Why can’t everyone just be honest?’

She’s pissed off with me now, I can tell. She thinks I’m dragging this out unnecessarily, and maybe I am, but the bottom line is that I told her something in confidence and she betrayed my trust and she did it so easily. And between showing Tom and Victoria that photo and then Tom making me come and then making himself come, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Yesterday morning, my life was calm and predictable. Today, it seems like anything is possible, and I don’t know how on earth to handle that. That’s why I’m on the phone to Amber, instead of printing out the three million shots of bridesmaids dressed in aubergine that I need to have ready by this afternoon. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think Tom Hunt is… Do you think he’s a bit odd?

‘Extremely,’ she says. ‘He’s also extremely fucking sexy. Are my pictures done yet? I know you said Wednesday, but I need them now. Apparently they’re having an engagement party next week. Catering, the works. I can’t bear it, Ellie. I just can’t.’ Her voice breaks. ‘I need those pictures.’

‘They’re not ready,’ I say, my heart giving an anxious little thump. ‘Look, I’ll have them ready for you tomorrow. I promise.’

‘Can I at least come round and look at them?’ She’s sobbing now. Her voice is rough and broken, and it claws at me. ‘Please? You can take a break for lunch, can’t you?’

I should come clean, I should tell her that I don’t have the picture, but I can’t. It’s ridiculous, I know. There are plenty of other good shots. But they’re good, not amazing, and she specifically asked for that one and I’m too embarrassed to tell her I don’t have it. Because she’ll ask me why not, and I’m not ready to answer that question. And I’ve let her down. She’d be disappointed in me, and I don’t think I’m ready to deal with that either. ‘It’s…it’s not a good time.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m up to my armpits in work,’ I tell her, which is sort of the truth. I am up to my armpits in work. I’m just not doing it. ‘I’m sorry, Amber. Really, I am.’

‘Shit.’ She chokes back another sob. Whoever this guy was, she was obviously into him more than she’d let on. I’ve never seen her like this before, so angry and desperate.

‘I’ll make sure they’re done for Wednesday, OK?’

‘You promise,’ she says.

‘I promise.’

That gives me three days to sort this out. I tell myself it’s long enough. I’ll think of something.

‘I have to admit,’ she says then, with a pained sort of laugh, ‘Tom Hunt surprised me. I mean, I always wondered, you know?’

I can tell that for the moment at least, her attention has shifted away from her ex, and I’m determined to keep it that way. ‘You did?’

‘Oh, yeah. When I’ve seen him in town, he always looks like he’d faint if he saw a bra strap. But it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for. They’re the filthy fuckers.’

‘I’m quiet,’ I say, remembering that I said that before, the last time we had this conversation.

‘Exactly,’ she replies. ‘Which is why you’re our resident pornographer.’

I cringe when she says that word. It makes me think of creepy men buying copies of Razzle. ‘Erotic photographer,’ I correct her. ‘There’s a difference.’

‘Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Easy for you to say. You have no shame.’

‘No.’ She laughs, but there is no humour in it. ‘And look where it got me. Dumped for some other woman. And he isn’t just shagging someone else, oh no. It’s love. He’s getting married.’

I don’t want Amber to be miserable. I want her to do what she needs to do to get over the boyfriend-who-got-engaged-to-someone-else and go back to being happy Amber.

And there is only one person who can help me with that.

I’ve never turned up at the Accountancy office without an appointment before. It’s not procedure. The receptionist stares at me for a full minute, her forehead creased as if she’s trying to work out what she’s supposed to do in this situation. I stare at her too. She’s new here, but she’s got the same neat look that they all do. Smooth hair, French manicure, nude heels.

‘I need to see Mr Hunt,’ I say for the second time, adjusting the strap of my bag, which I’ve loaded up with my camera and iPad. ‘It’s an emergency.’

‘What sort of emergency?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What sort of emergency?’ she asks again. She’s managed to fix her smile in place, though her eyes are hard. There’s a slight gap between her front teeth, and she’s wearing a very pretty necklace, a slender gold chain with a twisted knot that sits against her throat. Her back is poker straight, a dancer’s posture.

She’s a guard dog in heels, and I’m tired of being barked at. I’m tired of running away, of being afraid. I came here to see Tom, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. ‘I need to see Mr Hunt,’ I say slowly. ‘It’s important’ My gaze travels over the front of her blouse, which is cream and covered with tiny black hearts.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she says, setting down her pen and not sounding sorry at all. ‘But it’s company policy. All visitors must have an appointment. I can make one for you, if you like.’

I feel suddenly very hot. My spine is tingling. I need to see Tom and I need to see him now. I adjust the position of my bag, then I lean in. ‘I don’t want an appointment.’ I say quietly. ‘I pay a lot of money for the services this company provides.’ That’s not quite true. One of the reasons I chose this firm was because my brother works here and he got me a discount. But she doesn’t need to know that. ‘I have a problem, and I need to see Mr Hunt, and I need to see him now.’ My voice gets louder with every word. I’m almost shouting. I’m definitely being difficult.

Her long, dark eyelashes flutter, and she drops her pen. ‘I’ll let Mr Hunt know you’re here,’ she mutters. ‘You can go through. He’s not with anyone at the moment.’

I straighten up, nod my thanks. ‘Thank you.’

‘Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with,’ she says, as I turn to walk away.

‘I will,’ I say. The rush of power is overwhelming. What is it they say? With great power comes great responsibility? I’ve felt the responsibility before, but I’ve never felt the power. As I move away from the desk and make my way down the corridor towards Tom’s office, that rush stays with me, and I like it.

I knock on his door, wait for a response. The air in the corridor is perfectly chilled, but it’s stifling. I knock again, harder, wanting to be on the other side of that door.

My heart is beating faster now, too fast. All I can think about is Tom. I have only been standing here for a few seconds, but it seems like hours, and I suddenly realise that I’m not here for Amber.

I’m here for me.

To hell with it all. I grab the door handle, twist it and push the door open, putting myself on the other side of it as quickly as I can. I kick it shut behind me, then lean back against it, breathing hard. I close my eyes. The room smells like him. It makes my knees buckle.

‘Ellie.’ His voice wanders over me, slow and sensual.

‘Tom,’ I say quickly, breathlessly. ‘I…’

‘I didn’t know you had an appointment today.’ A second voice interrupts me before I can finish. I jerk up, away from the door, open my eyes and want to throw up. ‘Scott!’ My twin brother. Born five minutes before me, born perfect. Letters don’t spin and flip when he looks at them.

‘And do you always walk into an office without waiting to be invited in?’ he asks, getting out of his chair and moving towards the door. His face is red, and he’s got his hands tucked in his trouser pockets, a sure sign that an explosion is imminent.

I should be afraid, but instead, I’m defiant. I’m tired of being ashamed, of being scared. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got private business to discuss with Mr Hunt.’

Scott stares at me. This is new territory for him, I know. It’s new territory for me, too. I wait for him to argue, to make a scene. ‘Fine,’ he says. He walks to the door and I step neatly to one side. The door closes with an audible click.

I put my bag on the floor and then I put my gaze on Tom. He is sat behind his desk, looking exactly as he always does. Beige suit, neatly combed hair, perfectly knotted tie. Except that his eyes are hot, and the hands he puts on top of the desk aren’t quite steady. ‘Scott’s having a hard time at the moment,’ he says. ‘He massively underestimated a tax bill. The client isn’t happy. Neither is the boss.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Scott? Really?’ I can’t imagine my perfect brother doing anything so messy, so wrong.

‘Things are difficult for him right now,’ Tom adds. He leans back in his chair and unfastens his jacket. ‘So what can I do for you, Ellie?’

I stare at him and fidget. Then I go ahead and blurt it out. ‘Have you ever had sex in your office?’

He makes me wait for his answer, my imagination running riot. And then it’s not even an answer. ‘Lock the door,’ he says, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

Chapter Six

The weird awkwardness is right there between us, only this time it’s tempered with an almost instant arousal. I want you, I think as I look at him. You’re weird and strange and you dress like a pervert and god, I want you. But I don’t say it out loud. ‘So have you?’

‘Not yet,’ he says, as he shrugs out of his jacket. ‘The opportunity has never presented itself.’

‘It hasn’t?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve wanked myself off in here a few times though.’

Oh, god. I walk quickly towards the chair nearest to me and collapse into it, setting my bag down on the floor by my feet. Mutually assured destruction, I remind myself, as I glance around his office. It looks exactly the same as it always has, and yet something is different. ‘I want to have sex with you in your office,’ I say, rushing the words out. ‘I want to have lots of sex with you. I want to do all the things that everyone else is doing.’

He gets out of his seat and walks around to my side of the desk. ‘You’ll have to be more specific,’ he says. ‘What sort of sex are you talking about?’

‘The indecent kind.’ I’m so hot now even my hair is sweating. ‘Please, just…I want to have sex with you.’ It takes everything I have to get those words out, and my heart races. I bite into my lip. What if he asks for those other words, like he did yesterday? I don’t know if I can say them.

But he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he reaches out and grabs my right breast. He doesn’t stroke, or fondle. He grabs, his big hand covering that curve of flesh. My nipple pushes itself against his palm, like a hard little nut, straining to get into his fingers. He moves his hand away, but he does it slowly, his fingers pressing together to form a tight pinch that holds my nipple in that place between pleasure and pain for a second that’s not nearly long enough.

‘Show me your tits,’ he says then, his voice rough. ‘I didn’t see them yesterday. I want to see them.’

I’m wearing a white cotton vest today, with a pale blue sweater over the top. It’s hardly easy access. And then there’s my bra. Not to mention my nerves, which are horrific. ‘I’m not Amber,’ I say, as I set shaking hands to the hem of my sweater.

‘Like I told you yesterday,’ he says, ‘Amber doesn’t make me hard.’ And then his hands are under my clothes. He touches my stomach, touches my breast through my bra and then works his hand underneath it until his hand is covering my soft, sensitive flesh.

‘Tell me what you want,’ he says, searching my face as he plays with my breast. He isn’t gentle, he’s rough, and I like it. I like it so much.

‘I can’t,’ I say, closing my eyes as he locks his thumb and forefinger around my nipple and tortures it. ‘Please, Tom. Don’t make me say it.’ I open my eyes and glance down at my bag.

‘In here?’ he says, unfastening the zip with his free hand. He touches the camera case, and I shake my head. His fingers settle on my iPad. Then he takes it out and turns it on.

‘Password?’

‘No.’

He clicks into the folder, just as I did yesterday. ‘Purple,’ I say, digging my teeth into my lip. ‘Pick the purple.’

But he doesn’t pick the purple. He picks the green. A shot fills the screen, and he looks at it for a moment, then he pulls my clothes out of the way and fills his mouth with my breast.

I’m swamped by the sensation, as his mouth seems to pour heat into me. My breast swells against his mouth, and I arch my back and dig my fingers into his hair to hold him there. He bites, licks, sucks at me and I feel it everywhere. The faint scratch of his beard is rough against my skin when he moves his head so that he can take another look at the photo on the screen.

I can’t blame him for that. This picture is beautiful, probably one of the best I have ever taken. The colour is soft, shades of pink and peach, contrasting sharply with the black pinstriped suit and dark cropped hair of the woman in the forefront. She is on her knees, her face hidden between the creamy thighs of her naked girlfriend. Her back is arched, her eyes closed, their fingers entwined as she rides out her orgasm.

But there is more to this picture than the sex. There is love, and that makes it all the more erotic, somehow.

Tom moves his hands to my waist and lifts me out of the chair. He actually lifts me. I’ve never been manhandled like this before, and god, I like it. My sweater is pushed up, exposing both my breasts now, and he somehow manages to get my skirt up around my waist when he sets me down on the desk.

‘Touch yourself,’ he says. ‘Show me how you touch yourself.’

The request seems so lewd, so wicked. I grip the edge of the desk and shake my head, but I’m desperate to do as he asked. Then he opens his mouth over my breast again and works the already sensitive flesh. I can’t hold in the sound of pleasure, and he bites me when I let it out, forcing me to make it again, louder this time.

He puts a hand between my knees, pushes them apart, and I let him. He’s going to touch me, I think. He was so good at it yesterday. Anticipation surges through me. I need this. I need it to be here, and I need it to be now. I hook my fingers into my knickers and drag them down to my knees, then kick them off, sending my shoes flying. They hit the door with a rapid thump, and then fall to the floor.

The desktop is cold under my feet when I prop them on it. I’m fully exposed to him now. If he looks – and he does – he’ll see everything.

‘Ellie,’ he says roughly. ‘Fuck, Ellie. Do you know what you do to me?’

I don’t say anything. I sit there on top of his desk, panting, waiting for him to give me relief from the ache centred right there between my legs. ‘Touch me,’ I beg him. ‘Please.’

‘Where?’ he asks. His voice is still harsh but those blue eyes are shining.

The bastard. He is going to make me say it. And he has me so hot that I don’t have any choice. ‘My pussy,’ I say. ‘Touch my pussy.’

He rests one hand on top of my thigh, moves his other hand between my legs, then slowly slides two fingers deep inside me. I clench tight around him, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough.

Slowly, he begins to move those fingers back and forth inside me, and I think about his cock and how that would feel. Bigger, yes, harder, but I can’t imagine anything feeling better than this. His mouth on my breast was rough, desperate, but his fingers inside me are gentle, tender almost.

I don’t understand. I glance at him, but he’s not looking at my face any more, he’s looking down at his hand, so I look down at it too. I grip the edge of the desk more tightly, curl my body forwards to get a better view, and he groans as I tighten around him.

He’s wearing a white shirt, the kind with the proper cuffs, held together with plain silver cufflinks, and he’s pulled his sleeve up a little, exposing his wrist. His watch is masculine and chunky, and his fingers, when he pulls them out of me, are glossy. ‘You’re so wet,’ he says, his voice full of longing.

I don’t think I’ve ever sat in this office with him and not been wet, and I tell him that now. He closes his eyes for a moment, and I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing. But then he opens them and starts to work me harder, twisting his fingers, curving them round to touch somewhere inside me that almost makes me scream. I bite down on my lip to hold it in.

Everything is so hot and swollen and aching, but I can’t come like this. I need more. ‘Touch my clit,’ I beg him. I’m beyond caring about what I’m saying now. The words don’t feel embarrassing, they feel right. ‘Please, Tom. Touch my clit.’

He smiles at me then. ‘Touch it yourself. Show me how you make yourself come.’

My first few strokes are tentative, uncertain, not because I don’t know how to do this, but because I’m almost afraid to let him see. ‘I’m scared,’ I admit, as he continues to torment me with the pressure of those thick fingers. He experimentally adds a third, and I almost implode, such is the pleasure.

‘Don’t be,’ he says, and there it is again, that tenderness. ‘It’s just you and me, Ellie. No one else has to know.’

He coaxes me into it so easily. I touch myself again, more pressure this time, more friction, closing my eyes at the first glimpse of my climax. ‘I can’t do this,’ I tell him desperately, as I touch myself and he works me. ‘I can’t.’

Warm breath caresses my breast. His tongue finds my nipple, the hard, sensitive tip.

And he shows me that I can.

I’m still not calm when we leave the office together, turn onto the street and start to walk into town, neither of us mentioning what we’ve just done. We talk about the weather and the ginger cat that runs across the pavement, and what happened in the episode of Game of Thrones that was on telly last night. It turns out he’s quite an expert on Game of Thrones. He’s read all the books.

‘That’s the problem with porn.’ He says it like it’s a perfectly normal thing. ‘No decent plot. What people want is Game of Thrones with real fucking.’

I imagine Game of Thrones with real fucking. ‘Yeah,’ I say faintly. ‘That would work.’

Tom stops outside the fancy delicatessen on Market Street, the one that does the most amazing sandwiches, but doesn’t go in. I stop, too. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I really like that I can say things like this to you, and you’re not appalled. You’re not shocked, or disgusted. I feel like I could tell you anything and you would understand.’

Tell me, I think. Tell me all your filthy little secrets. I want to know what’s going on inside his head, how someone who always seemed so in control of himself could be such a mass of contradictions.

I push open the door to the delicatessen and go inside. The smell of coffee and hot, fresh bread hits me instantly, pummelling my already overworked senses. Today has been so weird that I barely know which way is up, and it’s getting weirder by the minute. Because sitting at the table opposite ours is the couple I didn’t photograph yesterday. I catch her eye completely by accident, and look away as fast as I can, but that lands my gaze on the blackboard above the counter, the one that lists all the specials, and I don’t want to look there.OK, so Tom already deals with my horrendously messy book keeping, but I can put that down to artistic tendencies. I don’t want him to know that the menu scares me just as much.

That just leaves me with Tom. Otherwise I’m gawking at the wall, and if I do that, there’s always the possibility of gaze slippage. I do what I have to do. I look straight at him.

‘Did you see anything you wanted on the board?’ he asks, and the words nail me to my chair.

‘I…er…it’s hard to know.’

‘Would it be wrong if I ordered for you? I’ve always wanted to order for a woman.’

I almost do a double take, but I say it’s fine. Of course I say it’s fine, although my inner feminist has a total tantrum. I take a packet of sugar from the little china pot in the middle of the table and fiddle with it as he joins the queue at the counter. I hold my breath, wondering what on earth he’s going to choose. He doesn’t have the faintest clue what I like. It could be something really awful, like beetroot or, god forbid, egg.

He comes back with a meatball sub.

‘I could kiss you,’ I say, as he pushes the plate towards me.

His head jerks up, and his gaze locks on mine. The only thing I can tell from his expression is that I’ve said something very, very wrong. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he says.

My heart almost stops beating. My mouth tastes suddenly horrid. Of course it’s not a good idea. Kissing is too intimate, too close. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing. But now I’ve opened the idea up in my head, I can’t get away from it. I stare at his mouth, and I think how it felt on my breast, and I start to melt on my chair.

‘Thing is,’ he whispers, ‘I’ve got an erection.’

‘Oh.’

He blushes. Oh god, he’s blushing. ‘If I kiss you I’ll really need to fuck you, and I’ve got to be back at work in twenty minutes.’

The waitress comes over with our coffees. She sets them down then gives Tom a curious look that lingers a touch too long. Something occurs to me then, something that I’d not bothered to think about until today. I mean, he isn’t stereotypically good looking. He’s quite tall, but what with the constant big-brain-heavy-head stooping thing, he makes himself look shorter. And then there are the awful clothes. Everything is dorky and nondescript and beige, like he went into Marks and Spencer’s and bought exactly what was on the mannequin. And his hair. Combed back and tidy. No one wears their hair like that. No one.

But the bad posture can’t hide those hands. The clothes can’t hide the thick neck. The hair can’t hide the fact that everything about him screams I’m a dirty fuck. And clearly, I am not the only female on the planet to have noticed. I’m trying to get my head around this realisation, trying not to melt so much that I leave a wet patch on my chair, when I sense movement next to our table.

‘Hello,’ Tom says.

‘Hello,’ says the voice, familiar and strained and female. ‘How are you?’

‘Very well. Are you all set for our appointment on Thursday?’

‘Paul assures me he’s kept all the invoices this time.’

‘Excellent. There’s nothing more frustrating than a lost invoice.’

These two know each other? That explains the friendly greeting at the studio yesterday. Tom’s hand finds mine under the table, pulls it towards him and places it firmly between his legs. I choke down my mouthful of sandwich.

‘Hello,’ she says to me.

‘Hi,’ I manage, still not looking directly at her. This woman has seen a photo of Tom’s cock.OK, so he’s seen photos he shouldn’t have too, but in this particular scenario, she’s ahead, points-wise. Or maybe I am. He is hot and hard against my palm. ‘How is everything?’ I ask, my enthusiasm completely over the top.

‘Fine,’ she says, far too brightly. Her eyes are huge, rimmed with lashings of black eyeliner. She’s wearing a smart black suit, the same kind that Amber wears to work at the estate agent’s. In fact, now I’m looking more closely, she’s wearing the same badge on her lapel.

‘Look, I hope this isn’t out of order,’ she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, ‘but I was wondering if I could have a word with you. In private.’

‘Absolutely!’ What did I say that for? Why didn’t I make some excuse? Whatever it is that she wants to say, it can’t be good. I try to remove my hand from Tom’s crotch without making it obvious that that’s where it is, get up from the table and follow her outside.

She pounces on me instantly. ‘I want to know who that woman was in the photo we saw yesterday.’

Wow. Shit. Wow. ‘I…er…’

‘I wouldn’t ask,’ she continues, her voice dry and squeaky, ‘but I’m sure Paul knows the woman. He won’t tell me who she is. That has to mean that he’s fucked her at some point. Probably fucked her quite a lot, actually, knowing him.’

I start some waffle about client confidentiality, though it seems a bit late for that now, and I am clearly going to be awarded hypocrite of the century. She folds her arms, tosses her perfectly straight hair over her shoulders. Then she gives me a wobbly smile. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I should have thought about that before I asked. I let my emotions get the better of me.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say. ‘Are you really sure he knows her, anyway?

I can see Tom through the glass, watching us. He’s sitting inside with a hard on under the table. I know what it feels like to be fingered by him. God, I want him to finger me now. I’m trying to focus on what she’s saying, to feel some sympathy for her, but all I can think about is him being all controlled and polite and dorky, only now I know that isn’t him. It isn’t him at all. Tom Hunt, quiet accountant by day, porn star by night.

I force myself to focus. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I should never have shown you that picture in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘No.’ She lifts her head. ‘I’m glad you did. I don’t want to cause any trouble. I want to make that clear. I just…’ She blinks, rapidly, and then says ‘I don’t mind Paul sleeping with other women. Provided he doesn’t do it without me.’

Certain things start to fall into place. I don’t know why it took me this long to figure it out. I’ve been doing what I do for too long to still think that everyone wants or needs a conventional sex life. But I don’t know where the line of right and wrong is in this situation. ‘And you’re sure that Paul knows the woman in the photo?’

She nods. ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt. She was…’ She smiles then. ‘Pretty unforgettable.’

Something else slots into place in my mind. Paul is Amber’s boyfriend. Victoria is the woman he proposed to, pissing Amber off so much that she dragged Tom Hunt into my studio, dropped his pants and sucked him off. And I took pictures of it. Pictures she intends to use to get back at Paul, only Paul has already seen one of them, as has Victoria. Who is standing in front of me, begging me to tell her who the woman is.

There are not enough degrees of separation in this scenario for me. ‘OK,’ I say to her. ‘Look, give me a chance to talk to her. I’ll pass on what you said. And I’ll give her your number. But I can’t promise anything.’

Then I turn on my heel. I don’t want to say that I run back inside, but that’s the dictionary definition of what I do. I feel like the walls are closing in, like the part of my life I have kept quietly secret for so long has suddenly become as exposed as the people I’ve photographed.

And then I see Amber.

Sat at my table.

With Tom.

And Paul.

I blink a million times, as if that will somehow clear the picture, but it doesn’t. My heart beats so hard I feel sick, the whole place swamped with noise but at the same time shockingly, terrifyingly silent.

Amber waves and calls me over. She’s placed herself between Tom and Paul. Both of them are gawking at her cleavage. To be fair, I’m gawking at it too. It’s difficult not to, what with it resting on the table like that, right next to a half-drunk cup of coffee.

‘Fuck me. Amber is the woman in the photo?’

I’d forgotten Victoria was right behind me. I open and close my mouth a couple of times as I try to figure out whether or not I should lie. I mean, clearly I should lie. Amber is my friend, my best friend, and the last thing I want is for Victoria to go all bat shit crazy on her arse.

But then Amber looks up. I know the instant she puts her gaze on Victoria. A fire seems to flick on in her eyes as Paul sits bolt upright and goes completely stiff. Tom, well. He’s still slouching in his chair, exactly the way he was when I left him. I see the movement of Paul’s throat as he swallows, and then I see something else. Amber’s right hand is out of sight.

And Paul keeps on swallowing and blinking, and suddenly it hits me.

She’s fondling him under the table. And he’s letting her do it. And his fiancée is breathing down my neck, and Tom is right there, on the other side of Amber, and I’m involved in a five-way love triangle without even realising it. How did I end up here? I’m just a photographer. I haven’t even had an exciting two-way love triangle yet, so a five-way one is completely out of my area. This is all going to end badly. Horribly, messily badly, right here in the delicatessen. And I don’t know how on earth to get out of it.

Tom gets up from the table and walks towards me as Victoria whips around the outside, marches to the table, and takes his seat next to Paul. OMG. Any minute now, the world is going to end, and it’s all going to be my fault, and I’ll never have known what it was like to be banged into the middle of next week by Tom Hunt.

And now I’ve made that thought real inside my head, I can’t escape from it. It’s still there, shouting at me, when Tom stands in front of me, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, looking at me in that awkward way of his.

It completely undoes me.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘This day just keeps getting stranger.’

‘You think?’

He nods. ‘It could only get stranger if aliens landed.’ He glances down at the floor. ‘Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to work.’

No. No! We were talking, and he was letting me touch him, and I haven’t touched him nearly enough. ‘Already?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Could we…’ I stutter over the next word. No matter how hard I try, it won’t come. ‘When will we be able to…that is, I’d like to…’

‘Fuck?’ He supplies helpfully. The woman at the nearest table glares up at us, but Tom is seemingly oblivious.

It’s no good. I can’t say that word. ‘I’d like to see you again. If that’s OKwith you.’

‘Of course.’ He smiles at me, a big, happy smile. Then he reaches out and takes my hand. The gesture is sweet, charming, boyish, and his hand is warm. I shiver at the thought of that hand sliding over my flesh. ‘It is more than OKwith me. Tomorrow?’

Yes. Oh, yes. Please. Yes. But before I can get the word out, a shout comes from behind us. Amber. I dodge around Tom in time to see her storm out, arms folded, high heels loud on the tiled floor. Victoria and Paul are still at the table, and from the corner of my eye I see Victoria lean in, see their mouths touch. Oh, no. This was the last thing Amber wanted. The very last thing. Victoria, you lying bitch, I think to myself. You didn’t want Amber to be part of it. You wanted to know who she was so you could hurt her.

My heart sinks, but Tom is still holding my hand, holding on tight. He is still warm and next to me. He is still here, with me. And I know, now, that I have to be with him. Watching a life fall apart in front of you will have that effect, I’m discovering. I move closer to him, so close I can feel his breath warm my cheek. Everything is so screwed up.

‘I have to go after her,’ I tell him, trying to tug my hand free.

‘I know,’ he says, smoothing a stray strand of hair back behind my ear. The gesture is just a little thing, nothing at all really, and yet my entire body reacts to it. He’s so crude, and then so tender. I don’t know what to make of it at all. ‘But promise me you’ll meet me tomorrow. We need to fuck, Ellie.’

I find that word less shocking, now. But its power to excite me is increasing every time he says it. ‘Where?’

‘Where would you like?’

‘My studio?’ It’s the first place I think of.

His mouth widens into a lopsided smile. ‘Perfect.’

Then he lets me go. But by the time I make it outside, Amber has gone.

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