Best of 2017

“I’d need to make some calls…”

“I’ll be waiting,” I tell her.

She calls me back in fifteen, and by then I’ve already confirmed a venue. An intimate little gig in Charing Cross road. The venue also cost me a pretty penny, but I don’t care about that either.

I’m used to Brenda organising my entire life for me, but not this time. I’m glad I’m handling this one for myself. The thrill is exhilarating.

I’m surprised I haven’t done this before, but Claire hated this band. She hated pretty much everything I loved.

“I’ve pulled some strings,” the woman on the phone tells me.

Her words make me smile.

I give her the venue details and she writes them down. I ask her for their bank details and she reads them out twice.

I ask for an official invoice which she assures will arrive in my inbox in less than five minutes.

It takes four exactly.

I wire the funds with a smile on my face, and it takes all of my reserve not to head right on over to Amy’s house to spill the crazy fucking news.

But I don’t.

The surprise will be the sweetest.

MELISSA

MY HEART FEELS full to bursting as I lift Joe into the baby swing. His sweet laughter tickles me, his little bobble hat swaying in the breeze.

Dean has a quiet smile on his face as he watches us, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets against the chill.

I try not to stare at him, but I can’t help it. I try not to wonder what will happen if he agrees to my crazy scheme, but I can’t help myself.

I try not to imagine him taking Alexander’s beautiful cock in his ass. The idea makes me lurch like a rollercoaster.

I don’t know whether I can ask him. I don’t know whether doing something like that would be too weird to ever come back from.

But he wants Alexander. I know he does. I know he thinks about it.

I know he’d be the perfect set-up. I know he’d enjoy it like I enjoy it. I know he’d know what to expect and not go screaming for the hills as soon as that grip landed firm around his throat.

“You’re quiet,” he says as we head away from the park.

“Am I?”

He smiles. “Yeah, Lissa, you really are. All Henley’d up, I guess.”

“Something like that.”

We buy a pot of bubbles on the walk back, and Joe claps his hands as they float all around.

He’s happy. He’s really happy.

And I am too.

“You out again tonight?” Dean asks as he pours us a coffee back home.

I nod. “It’s Saturday. My usual night.”

“What about Wednesday? Is that a usual night now as well?”

I don’t know, I tell him. Because I don’t.

“And Fridays?”

I don’t know that, either.

“It’s great money,” I say. “Crazy money.”

“So quit the day job.”

I feel the niggle in my belly. “Maybe soon.”

“Maybe right now, before he puts two and two together and this whole mess puts you on your ass.”

He’s got a point and I know it.

“Soon,” I repeat. “Maybe.”

He lets it drop.

The pressure to confess my crazy scheme is right behind my eyes. But I can’t. Not with Joe chomping happily on apple slices in the room next door.

I feel guilty all over again, but this time it’s not for Alexander. It’s for the shit I’m going to try to drag Dean into.

It’s for the crazy way I’ve been thinking about him.

“Do whatever you have to do,” he tells me when I’m all dressed up and ready to go. “Whatever it is, just go all in and get it done. You’ve got to, Lissa. You’ve got to make this real or walk away, for all of us, not least for you.”

My heart thumps.

“I know,” I tell him, and I do know.

I’m close enough to taste it. Close enough to feel my dreams at my fingertips.

I just need him to help me with the last final hurdle.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I say. “We’ll have an us night tomorrow. Wine, takeout…”

“Sounds good to me.”

“We need to talk,” I tell him, and his eyes are so suspicious.

They should be. He knows me too well.

“Talk about what?”

“Alexander Henley stuff,” I say as I head for the door. “And stuff about us, too. I’ll tell you all tomorrow, I promise.”

I kiss Joe on the way out, and dash off for Kensington before Dean can grill me for details.

ALEXANDER

MY ATTEMPT at homemade paella is quite abysmal, but Amy doesn’t seem to mind.

Her eyes sparkle across the dining table as I top up her wine, and I’m itching to tell her about my grandiose gesture for next weekend.

I keep a poker face regardless.

A full stomach does nothing to quell her libido. She’s tearing my shirt from my chest before we’ve even cleared the plates.

I fuck her all the way through my house.

I push her to her knees in my hallway and ram my cock right down her pretty throat.

Her lips are still glistening with my cum as I finger fuck her asshole over my kitchen island.

She’s perfectly ready for my cock as I take her tight cunt over my coffee table.

I fuck her again as we’re washing up for bed. She braces herself on the wash basin as I choke her until her legs are weak. Her eyes are stark in the medicine cabinet reflection. Her skin looks so pale as I take her to edge.

I have to support her weight as she comes with my thumb against her clit.

She’s still loose and limp as I carry her through to the bedroom like a perfect little doll.

And there she rests – her head snug in the crook of my shoulder as she drifts off to sleep.

I browse gay hook-up sites on my phone until sleep finds me too.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ALEXANDER

THE USUAL UNDERTONE of desolation is absent as I make the drive across to Hampshire on Sunday afternoon. Even Brutus seems to grin at me, his overbite looking especially slobbery as he pants in the passenger seat.

I think he liked having Amy in our house again last night.

Having a new cleaner in the house first thing this morning, not so much.

“You’ve got to stop doing that shit,” I tell him, as though he stands a hope in hell of understanding. “You’ll get us into trouble one day, boy.”

Having to rescue a damsel in distress from behind your kitchen doorway at seven a.m. – dressed in nothing but your bathrobe – raises the heartrate somewhat.

Br

utus still looks thoroughly pleased with himself.

At least our sweet Amy slept through the fracas.

My sweet Amy slept like an angel. An angel with a sore fucking asshole. I can’t fight the smirk.

I’m enjoying the sensation of waking up in my own bed with her tight little body next to mine. I’m enjoying her gentle laughter. I’m enjoying the way she wants me.

I’m enjoying everything.

And I’m going to enjoy seeing my boys, too.

They’re already waiting when I pull up on Claire’s driveway. They rush though the front door as their mother paces out after them, but even the scowl on her miserable face can’t dent my mood.

I give the boys a hug and tell them to pile on in to see Brutus, and Claire waits until they’re safely in the Merc before she launches into her monologue about state school being the right option for the boys, and have I thought any more about my silly position on the whole thing.

I tell her no – in no uncertain terms – and she shakes her head.

“You’re unbelievable, Alex. You need to think of the boys.”

My response is instant. I am thinking of the fucking boys.

“They are moving schools!” she blusters.

I hold my ground. They’re not moving fucking schools without my say so and she fucking knows it.

I’d strip her of her lavish lifestyle in a heartbeat, fight her through the courts with a legal prowess far more intimidating than she’ll ever have access to.

She’d be a fool to fight me head-on and she knows that, too.

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” she says, and I nod.

“Think what you want, Claire. The boys need a decent education.”

“Like you had? So they can turn out like you?!”

I don’t grace her with an answer to that one. I’m already heading back to the car, fighting to keep hold of my sunny disposition long enough to smile through crappy burgers and too much football lingo.

“Ask them what they want!” she calls after me. “At least ask the boys what they want!”

So I do.

I ask them as soon as we’ve taken a seat with our offal-based meat products.

“Your mother tells me you want to change schools,” I say. “Is that true?”