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.
‘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?’