nowhere for me to go except back against the front door. I grab for the handle again, but I can’t seem to find it. My fingers stumble over the gloss painted wood. ‘What do you think you’re going to do? I laugh again. It sounds dry and nervous. ‘Persuade me to go to bed with you and then show me it wasn’t me, it was him?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
He lifts up a hand, brushes the back of his knuckles over my cheek. The contact feels like an electric shock. My heart is pounding, and I make that sound again, the one I made back at his house when I saw those three people on the sofa. ‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t,’ I whisper. ‘Not with him, not with you, not with anyone.’
‘Did Will tell you that?’
This is all getting to be too much for me now. He’s too near, and I am way too close to being persuaded. I want to be persuaded. And I want Cal to persuade me. But the thought of failing with him is more than I can bear. My hand finds the door handle behind me, and I pull it. ‘Never going to happen,’ I tell him. ‘So don’t even bother trying.’
I shove the door open, spin my way inside my house, and shut the door in his face. I stand there inside my little hallway, in the darkness, with a rock in my stomach and an ache between my thighs. I close my eyes. I want to scream, or cry, or break something, preferably against a delicate part of Will’s anatomy.
I’m so tired of hating myself. I’m so tired of feeling inadequate. And I’m frustrated. And I’m horny. And I think Cal Bailey just offered to have sex with me. I open the door. He is at the bottom of the steps, hands tucked in his pockets, moonlight glinting off his hair. ‘Persuade me,’ I say.
He turns, and my knees wobble just a bit. ‘What?’
‘Persuade me,’ I say again, before I lose my nerve for the second time. ‘Do whatever it is that you do to get women to go to bed with you.’
‘Usually I just show up,’ he says.
‘You’re going to have to try a bit harder than that, I’m afraid.’
‘How much harder?’
I think about closing the door. ‘A lot harder.’
‘What do you want, Verity?’
‘I want sex,’ I blurt out.
‘Is that all?’
I nod vigorously. Because suddenly, it is. I don’t want to be romanced, to be seduced. I don’t want to be fooled into thinking that someone cares when they don’t. I don’t want to think it’s anything more than it is. I just want to get rid of this hot ache between my thighs. I want some new memories, ones to paint over the ugly, heavy, sore ones that Will left behind.
‘OK then,’ he says. And then he’s climbing the steps to my front door, stepping into my hallway, closing the door behind him. ‘Where’s your bedroom?’
I point to the stairs without thinking, but I don’t move towards them. ‘Not there,’ I say. Not in my bed, with the lace and the scatter cushions and the pretty brass bedstead. It’s not the sort of room you have casual sex in. Plus I can’t remember if I left my underwear to dry on the radiator or not.
‘Then where?’
‘In here,’ I say. I grab his hand, pull him into the living room, towards the huge overstuffed armchair that I got cheap after someone got biro on it.
‘Slow down,’ he says.
But I can’t, I can’t. The ache between my thighs is too much, and I have to do this before I lose my nerve completely, before I collapse into a sobbing heap and cry all over his cashmere jumper. You see, the problem isn’t that Will rated me a two. It’s that I think he might be right. And if I think about that too much, I’ll never have sex with anyone ever again.
I push Cal back into the armchair. He collapses into it, sprawling back with his thighs wide and his big hands resting on the padded arms of the chair. My dress is loose and lets me straddle him without difficulty. His thighs are hard, warm, the white leather of the chair cold against my bare knees. I pull my bag off my body, toss it to the floor, then shove my hands between us and start tugging at his flies.
He catches my wrists. ‘Verity,’ he says softly. ‘What’s the rush?’
I tug my hands free, pull off my jacket, throw it in the general direction of my bag. I’m hot, so hot. ‘I just want this, that’s all,’ I say.
And then my fingers find his erection, and the room seems to tilt slightly on its axis. Surely that can’t be right. I open my hand over it, grope around the general area. I lean back, fumble open the zip, unfasten the waistband of his jeans and tug them out of the way.
Oh. Apparently it is right.
I sit there dumbstruck for what seems like an age, until Cal leans to the side and switches on the lamp on the table next to us. The glow from the bulb is gentle, perfect mood lighting, casting shadows across his face and highlighting his stomach and his massive cock. ‘Something wrong?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I squeak. ‘Everything is fine.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Good.’ Then he eases his thumbs under the waistband of his boxers, and sort of pulls them up and over, and I see his erection in all its glory. In all its long, hard, I didn’t know they came that size glory.
‘God, that’s a big cock.’ Those words must have come from me. They can’t have come from anyone else, because there isn’t anyone else here. I can’t stop looking at it. ‘It’s very long.’
‘Is it?’
‘It must be at least eight inches.’
‘At least,’ he says. I can hear the laughter in his voice, and that makes me realise what an idiot I’m making of myself. ‘Are you going to take your dress off?’
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re not having that sort of sex,’ I tell him. I’m still staring at his erection, at the thick vein that runs along the underside, at the shape of the end part, and the dark hair at the base. It looks so soft, and it’s the colour of mocha, and before I can stop myself, I touch it.
‘Then what sort of sex are we having?’
I jerk my hand away. ‘Do you have a condom?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then shut up and put it on.’
He puts a hand on my thigh and holds on to me as he lifts his hips, reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, which is made from battered black leather. He flips it open, then tugs out a foil square, a gold one. ‘Do you want to do it?’
‘No,’ I say, and I sort of snort. As if I could.
‘Fine,’ he says. He sounds suddenly resigned, and the temperature of the air seems to drop a good ten degrees. Suddenly I realise how unsexy this is, how forced, but his hand is sliding down my thigh and moving under the hem of my skirt, and I can feel it, strong and warm against my thigh. He fingers swirl a gentle pattern against my skin, over and over, not touching my pussy but close enough for me to want him to.
My body goes all tight and strange. I watch as he bites into the corner of the foil, rips it away, then rolls on the condom one-handed. There’s something unexpectedly erotic about watching him cover himself so shamelessly, as if he’s saying I’m going to fuck you, and more than that, I want to fuck you.
And just like that, I’m persuaded. I can’t stop myself from putting my hands on his shoulders, which are like a pair of wooden ceiling beams. He’s a member of the rowing club, and I’ve seen him down on the river a few times, sitting in a skinny boat and