Melissa

I lose all sense of time in that hotel room. I lose all sense of myself as Alexander goes in for round two and rubs his cum-slick dick against Dean’s until they’re both hard again.

I’m like a ghost of my old self as Alexander pins Dean on his back, hoists his legs up high and slides his cock right back inside Dean’s poor ass.

Dean doesn’t grimace this time. His grunts are full of want, not pain.

He kisses Alexander right back, like I’m not even there, and this is it, right here in front of me.

The Alexander Henley effect.

I play with myself because I want to this time, not because Alexander tells me to. It’s all for me as I rub my clit until I shudder and stifle my moans on the bedsheets so Dean won’t realise how disgusting I really am.

I don’t think he’d notice anyway. His world is full of Alexander Henley.

He doesn’t fight when the hand clamps around his throat, doesn’t struggle as he chokes for the man I love.

He comes when Alexander does, spurting thick streams against Alexander’s stomach under the pressure of the thrusts.

Dean’s eyes are glazed for a long time as he comes down.

I feel so cold inside as he sobers up from this madness and realises what the fuck just went down.

He tugs up his jeans as Alexander watches him, and I cringe as he makes his excuses, says he’s got to leave now.

“Not so fast,” Alexander says and points at the smear on his stomach.

My eyes are watering with the need to retch as Dean licks him clean. I look away as Dean takes Alexander’s dick into his mouth and sucks him until there’s nothing left to take.

And then Alexander lets him go.

Dean barely even says goodbye, just limps from the room with his shirt still unbuttoned, shooting me a wild-eyed glance as he goes.

I flinch as the door closes behind him, collapsing onto the bed as my mind spins with all this.

Alexander pours me another wine and I take it with shaky fingers. I down it in one, even though it tastes rancid.

“I guess Dean’s not one for small talk.” His voice is laced with black humour, and that gives me shivers too.

“I guess not,” I whisper, and my cheeks are burning.

I’m surprised when he pours himself another whisky. I’m itching to get out of here, desperate to be just about anywhere besides the place I almost took my best friend’s dick.

“How do you know him?” Alexander asks, and I bolt upright.

“What?”

He smirks. “How do you know him? Don’t even think about lying to me, Amy.” His eyes are so dark. “I hate it when people lie to me.”

My whole body is burning. The urge to crumble and confess everything is a dam waiting to burst, but I can’t.

The quiet anger in his stare tells me that I can’t.

I’m surprised my brain isn’t too addled to think my way out of this as I swim through my options.

“It was supposed to be a surprise…” I tell him. “I’m sorry… I just…”

“You paid him?”

I shake my head, because I don’t think I could pull off that lie even if I wanted to. “We were friends at school. I know he… likes men…”

“So you called him up and said Hey, Dean, how about taking my boyfriend’s cock in your ass this weekend? Is that how it went?”

Boyfriend.

“Something like that.”

“And what the hell makes you think I can’t find a man for myself?”

“That isn’t what I think!”

He comes closer, my stomach lurches as he climbs onto the bed alongside me. “So, enlighten me, Amy. What do you think?”

I shake my head as the tears prick. “I wanted to do it for you. You do so much for me… and I… I wanted to make you happy…”

“Make me happy by setting up an old school pal to take my dick in his ass?”

I shrug. “Oh God, Alexander, I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking straight! It was…”

“Stupid,” I tell her. “Reckless to think I wouldn’t fucking notice. Believe me, Amy, I notice everything.”

But he doesn’t.

I shiver at the thought of him ever finding out about all my lies. I shiver at the stupid idea I ever thought I could confess my real identity and still have him at the end of it.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, and I am. “Please forgive me.”

“I’ve already forgiven you,” he says. “If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

The relief washes over me so hard my head spins. “Thank God,” I say, and my hand is to my heart as it begins to calm.

It takes me by surprise when his fingers land on my throat, steals my breath as he flattens me to my back and brushes my lips with his.

His voice is cold. Harsh.

“I don’t like being played, Amy. Don’t ever fucking do it again.”

“I won’t,” I whisper, and he kisses me. His fingers stay loose, and I keep breathing, even though my insides are burning up.

“You played a dangerous game,” he tells me, and I could cry. He doesn’t know the half of it.

He rolls onto his back with his arm under his head, and if he’s still angry he doesn’t show it. The room feels bitter cold now, and I know it’s probably just my own shock, but I pull the covers over myself and drape them over him too. He doesn’t pull away as I lay my head on his chest.

I love listening to his heartbeat.

It’s so much calmer than mine.

“That could have gone badly,” he says, as if I don’t already know that.

I nod anyway. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re done with sorry. I’m trying tell you something.” It feels like heaven as his hand wraps around my waist under the covers. “I think you need to know.”

My voice is so timid. “Need to know what?”

“Why I have such a… reaction to wanting men.”

“You don’t have to…” I begin, but he shakes his head.

“Just listen,” he says, and I do.

* * *

Alexander

My throat is dry as I opt to tell this sad fucking tale.

I can’t say it’s a pleasant confession. The last time I told this story it cost me my marriage – the final dying scraps of the sham it was anyway.

I’d made a note to myself in the aftermath – never fucking talk about it. But I’m drawing a line through that now.

“My parents are pieces of shit,” I tell her. “I used to feel sorry for my mother, putting up with all my father’s fucking crap all the time. The women, the late nights, the work meetings that ran on until the early hours most days. I thought she was naive. I thought she turned a blind eye to all his seedy outlets because she was scared of losing him. I thought that’s why she drank herself into oblivion every fucking evening before I’d even finished my dinner.”

“But it wasn’t?”

I shake my head. “She knew everything, she’d just rather keep quiet and stay in the fancy house with the glitz and glamour of being Mrs Henley Snr. than do something about all the lies.”

She doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to continue.

“I wondered where he went at night. I was a teenager living in a house full of lies and hushed whispers. I was at a school I hated, preparing to take over a family business that made my father bitterly fucking twisted, at least that’s what I thought. I thought that’s why he was always so fucking angry.” I take a breath. “You have to understand. My father is a legal icon, he’s one of the best lawyers this country’s ever seen. Walking in his footsteps was… hard. But I did it. I wanted to make him proud when I was too young to know better.”

“I get it,” she says. “I wanted to make mine proud, too.”

Wanted.

I make a note of the tense for future reference.

“I knew my father paid for sex. I’d see him at social events schmoozing with all the high class hookers on the scene. I’d see him take a feel whenever he thought nobody was watching. But I was always watching. I saw everything. I’d watch him with those beautiful women and I’d want them for myself. I wanted to be like him one day, taking whatever he wanted, doing whatever he wanted.”

“With prostitutes?”

I nod. “With women I could pay to do whatever pleased me. It was the power. I saw how my father used it, and I wanted to be the same.”

She takes a breath against my chest. “That’s normal, right? Wanting to be like your dad?”

I laugh. “Not quite. Not when I fully realised how far his depravity fucking went.”

“What happened?”

I fight the urge to grab another whisky. “I started following him. Spying.” I breathe. “It’s a dangerous hobby that, spying on someone. The tiny victories are… addictive. A little snippet of insight here, uncovering some seedy little secret there. I felt so fucking clever. I felt like I was so fucking in control.”

She tenses in my arms, as though she knows what’s coming.

“I thought I knew everything about my father. I’d been snooping on him for well over a year, rooting through the paperwork in his study, going through his phone records, his emails, trying to fit together the shadowy pieces of his life.” I sigh. “I know it’s hard to understand, why someone would… do that. I know it’s hard to believe that someone would be so… desperate to please someone else that they’d take it so fucking far as to follow them across the fucking city to a public toilet in the East End, but I was all in by then. I wanted to know him. I wanted to please him. I wanted to be just fucking like him, even though he at least partly repulsed me.”

Her breath is ragged but I keep on going.

“I peered in through the door to the urinals, feeling so fucking pleased with myself for my stealth.” I smile. “But the cards always come tumbling down eventually. My luck ran out. It wasn’t my father who caught me, it was some big fucking ape of a guy who was piling on in for the fucking show. He grabbed me by the throat and dragged me inside, and slammed me up against the wall as a couple of others laughed.”

“Oh God…” she breathes, and I kiss her head.

“He said he’d got a young one. He thought it was hilarious. He told me I should have piped up if I wanted some dick in my ass, not skulked around the outside like a wimpy little queer.”

“What did you…”

“Nothing. My face was pressed against the wall and the guy’s weight pinned me tight.”

I feel her shaking, and I realise I’ve got to tell her the fucking truth. The whole fucking truth.

“I could’ve screamed. I could’ve fucking yelled the place down and kicked out or elbowed him and told him to get the fuck off me.”

“You were scared…” she whispers.

I shake my head. “It wasn’t fear. I was scared, of course I was fucking scared, but it wasn’t that that rooted me to the fucking spot. It was the fucking hard on in my pants. It was the stench of the wall, the stench of him, the way I wanted a part of whatever fucking seediness was going down there.”

“You wanted it?”

“Wanted it, didn’t want it… it’s a fine fucking line. My dick wanted it, my brain not so fucking much.”

Her voice is a choked little squeak. “What did he do to you?”

I smile. “You’ve seen what he did to me, I just did it to your poor little virgin friend back there. He pulled my fucking pants down and put me in a chokehold then rammed his fucking cock in my ass. Only he went in dry. I at least allowed your friend a little grace.”

“He choked you?”

I nod. “Hard. He choked me hard. Fucked me hard, too.”

She gasps, stiffens, and I know what she’s thinking. I know she thinks I was violated, which is true. I know she thinks this shit has fucked me up, which is also probably true, but that isn’t it. That isn’t why I’m telling her this.

“He fucked me so hard the tears streamed down my fucking face, and I came for him. I shot my load in his hand, splattered the fucking wall with it.”

“But you couldn’t not…”

I laugh. “Oh believe me, Amy, I could. I fucking wanted it. I really wanted it. That fucking climax was one of the best I’ve ever fucking had. I shuffled out of there with my ass bleeding and my lungs on fire and my dick still wet with my fucking cum, and I loved it. I hated myself for loving it, even right there in the aftermath.”

She shudders. “It’s ok… to be bisexual…”

“I know it is,” I tell her. “It’s not that that bothers me. It’s the… seediness. The brutality. The fact that I came with my face pressed to a wall that stank of piss, with a man that stank of sweat, and I loved it. I felt so fucking ashamed.”

“You had nothing to be ashamed of,” she tells me. “It was them.”

I laugh again, and then I pull the covers back. Her eyes widen as she sees the state of my fucking dick. I’m hard enough to fucking blow.

“It’s ok to be bisexual,” she whispers again.

“My father knew,” I tell her. “He followed me outside and clipped me round the ear and told me never to fucking follow him again.”

“He knew?!”

“Of course he knew. He knew I was following him, too. The old cunt set it up. Nothing happens without my father’s say so. Nothing. He’s the fucking real puppet master. He pulls everyone’s fucking strings. And I’m just like him.”

“I don’t think you are…” she whispers, and it’s so sweet. Her faith in me is so fucking sweet. I kiss her head.

“It was the first real time he took me under his wing. He told me I should be on the other side of the fence next time, the side with all the power. He paid for hookers and brought me into his rancid network of rich clients, and taught me everything I needed to know about playing the system and enabling the rich to do whatever they fucking please as long as they’re willing to pay for it.”

“You were just trying to please him…”

“For a time. After that I was all in for myself.” I turn to face her, and her sadness for me is so beautiful. Beautiful but misplaced. “I’m a sex addict,” I tell her. “Or I was. I calmed it down when I got married, but it was always there, lurking behind the scenes. Claire wanted to know why I didn’t fuck her anymore like I used to. She asked what really turned me on, what she could do. It was a mistake to tell her the truth. She insisted I should have therapy. Every time she looked at me, her eyes were full of pity and disgust.” I pause. “Maybe yours will be too.”

She kisses me. She kissed me hard. She tangles her fingers in my hair and presses her body to mine, and my heart pounds in my chest. “You will never disgust me,” she whispers. “Never. I love you.”

She loves me.

The thought makes my stomach twist, but it’s beautiful. It’s everything.

“I hate my father,” I tell her. “I hate everything he is. I hate everything he dragged me into, but mostly I hate myself for becoming just like him. But that’s going to change. I’m getting out.”

She strokes my arm. “I’ll come with you,” she whispers. “Wherever you’re going, I’ll come with you.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Good,” I tell her, “because I’ll be going soon.”