Mindgasm - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 3) by Gabi Moore (16)

Chapter 11

I closed the door behind us and he disappeared off to the bathroom.

I checked my phone. Three missed calls from aunt Lila. I searched my mind. Having decided there was nothing that she could legitimately be calling me about – especially not three times one after the other – I turned the sound off and stuffed my phone back in my handbag. It could wait. I was nearly 21 years old, an adult and busy living my life. Just because she was paying for college, it didn’t mean she could nag me outside of college, did it?

I hung up my coat and flopped down onto Adam’s couch, trying to arrange my nervous limbs so I’d look perfectly casual when he came back from the bathroom. I tried to find that normal, nothing-to-see-here-folks-just-a-perfectly-ordinary-almost-21-year-old pose. I crossed my legs and spread my arms out. That would have to do the trick.

He came out and smiled down at me.

“You look like you need a drink,” he said.

I laughed as he went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of gin and some flat soda water in a plastic 2-liter bottle, then poured us some hasty drinks in mismatched glasses. I was charmed. Sure, things were moving fast, but he was right …so what if they were? Adam had a sneaky way of just smiling, lifting his eyebrows and saying nothing …and somehow you always found yourself agreeing with whatever naughty thing he proposed. It’s not that he was pushy, probably. Just that he had an uncanny knack for knowing when people wanted to be convinced…

I took a sip of my drink. He pulled a thin white joint from his pocket and held it up to me.

“What, now?” I asked, giggling.

“No, I’m just showing it to you, doofus. I just like having things like this around so we can, you know, look at them” he said, laughing. I playfully punched his knee, and he lit it up. I took a sip of my drink.

“I don’t know, Adam…” I said. He raised his eyebrows at me and said nothing.

In a way, it’s easy for a goodie-two-shoes kind of person to turn down some ill-advised indulgence. After all, it makes sense, for them. But I wasn’t a goodie-two-shoes. I was a lost lamb, a recovering bad girl, a slag. I had made enough poor decisions to last me a lifetime. It’s not that I said no because I thought these things were bad. It was hard to explain to people… I actually turned them down because I thought they were so, so good.

“OK, just a little,” I said, my smile fading.

He frowned.

“Nyx, you don’t have to. Really,” he said. One look at my expression and he set the joint aside. “Hey, what’s up? Are you OK?”

“It’s just …it’s hard to explain. I think I’m almost …I’m almost scared to let go, you know? To enjoy myself. If I do, it’s like something bad will happen. Does that make any sense?” I said, hating how vulnerable I must have sounded to him.

“Perfect sense,” he said immediately. “Let’s leave it, then.”

“No I want to, but…”

He gave me a long look.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen to me, right? I’m not asking for trouble? I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. Is this normal? Am I going to get punished somehow for any of this?”

His frown deepened.

“Nyx, woah… what are you talking about? Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, of course not. Do you wanna talk about something?”

His hand was on my knee. No, I didn’t want to talk about anything. I wanted him to put me on the kitchen counter, like he had said he would, and do dirty things to me. I leaned forward quickly and gave him a long, deep kiss. Before he could say anything, I reached over his shoulder and grabbed the joint again, lit it up and took one long, slow drag on it, then held it out to him as I exhaled a white plume to the side.

“Every time I enjoy myself,” I said, feeling the smoke push into the tissues of my lungs, relaxing me, soothing out the jagged edges of my thoughts, “every time I do something I really want to … I get punished for it. Something bad happens to me.”

I had never ever told anyone this. Not aunt Lila. Not even my therapist. But as the hot smoke rushed out of my lips I realized how simple and perfectly true it was. I was superstitious, I guess. I couldn’t be 100% sure that life wasn’t punishing me somehow for my indiscretions, but why risk it, right? Why even tempt fate and ‘misbehave’ again?

He took the joint from me, took a puff himself and passed his sexy, warm gaze all over my body.

God, I loved the way he looked at me. Like I was something delicious. Something juicy. Instantly my clit throbbed at the thought of what he had told me on the way here. Something changed in the way his hand rested on my knee. He stroked the skin there, just a little, still holding my gaze. I loved how easy it was to slip into a trance like this with him.

“See?” he said and took another hit. “God’s not going to smite you from heaven just because you’re having a bit of fun.”

With shaking hands, I took the joint from him and did the same. The smoke rose up around us. I wanted him. Now. Every last inch of him.

“Are you sure, Adam?”

I smiled naughtily at him.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

Almost by instinct, I stubbed out the glowing tip and hastily blew out the smoke in my mouth. I shot him a panicked look, but he only laughed at me.

“Hey, will you just relax?” he said, and reached over to his jacket pocket to pull out his phone.

“Hello?”

I watched his facial expression change and move, like wind chopping over the surface of a still lake. His eyes wandered around the flat, mouth twisting a little.

“Uh huh. Yeah OK. Uh huh…” he said.

My blood froze as I shot pleading eyes at him.

“Yeah she’s with me. I’ll let her know. Are you sure there’s nothing we can do? We could always get the train and come over, be there in 20 minutes?”

He shook his head, hung up and then looked at me.

“Oh my God, Adam, what?” I said. My head was whirling.

I couldn’t read his expression.

“It’s Belinda. She’s had an accident,” he said simply, then watched my reaction.

“An accident? What kind of …is she OK?”

“Yes, she’s fine. That was Tamara. Hey have you left your phone at home or something? She said she couldn’t get hold of you.”

“I um… I think it’s on silent,” I said meekly. I could feel the blood disappearing from my face.

“What happened?” I asked.

A dark thought was forming in my mind. He looked at me as though he was weighing up his next words.

“She had a little accident in her car…” he said slowly.

The world went quiet. I felt dizzy.

“Is she… is she OK though?” I squeaked. I didn’t want him to see me upset. He came forward quickly and gathered me up in his arms, kissing my neck.

“Hey, don’t feel weird about it, OK? It was just an accident.”

A wave of paranoia fluttered through me. I wondered if I was going to be sick. I pulled back and shot a pleading look at him.

“She’s gone to the ER and they want to keep an eye on her for a few days. She’s hit her head. She’ll be fine but I said to Tamara we’ll visit her in the morning.”

I burst into tears. I didn’t know what to say, except, ‘see?’

He hugged me again.

“Hey, don’t be silly, come on. You don’t really think that you sitting here smoking a joint with me somehow made Belinda get into a car accident, do you? Come on now, that’s crazy. That can’t possibly be true.”

Actually, it was precisely what I was thinking. Before I knew it, his soft lips had closed over mine and he was kissing me gently, tenderly. My eyes fluttered closed and I let our lips hover there on each other. I tried to still my buzzing mind. He was right, of course. It was crazy. Or I was crazy. I sighed and kissed back, feeling at home for a moment in his kiss.

“So what then? Nothing means anything? People get in car accidents for no reason…” I said, my lips felt cold without his warm breath against them.

“It means whatever we say it means. Belinda got in a car accident. So what? I don’t know what it means. But maybe you can stop beating yourself up about it. Maybe you smoke a joint here with me and you change the universe forever in some weird ways we can’t even understand yet.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not. I mean it. But maybe it’s not all doom and gloom, have you thought of that? Maybe this is the part in the play where things get interesting, you know? Maybe this is a turning point, a blessing in disguise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, think about it. If you want to get all mystical and tell me that you caused Belinda’s accident, well, maybe that was a good thing.”

“How could it possibly –”

“Because now you can have that role,” he said.

I looked into his eyes, a warm haze developing somewhere close behind my own eyes.

“Just kiss me,” I said. And he did. I didn’t know if I wanted him to keep talking or to shut up. But even with his sweet lips in mine, the thought burrowed down into my brain.

I had never considered it before. Not really. But why not act? Why not now? Why not this play? It was crazy. It was a stupid, pompous idea and I had no right to be glad that Belinda was hurt, and I was awful for feeling excited that maybe, on some crazy, flimsy off-chance, maybe just maybe I could take her place. It was too ludicrous to even think about. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

His hands squeezed at the swell of my hipbone as we kissed, and I tilted my hips towards him and moaned. I suddenly felt on fire for him. I nibbled his ear and whispered fiercely to him, “didn’t I hear something about a kitchen table earlier on…?”

He grinned, squeezed me tightly and pulled me to my feet.

I was already wet.

Chapter 12

The air was always very still in this room. A cozy woven throw on the chair, a lamp, dimmed down almost to nothing, an African carving on the side table that I would sometimes pick up and hold while I talked. And my therapist, who was an extension of the room: a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

She was a middle-aged, middle-height woman with moderate views, mid-length brown hair and an annoying habit of pushing you about precisely the things you desperately wanted to avoid thinking about. I had been seeing her once a week, every week, since that fateful night when my father and mother took a quick drive and never returned. Psychotherapist Melissa P. Estes had a string of letters after her name and a long waiting list. Yet another thing my sainted aunt had paid for.

“So, you’ve told me all the things you’ve done to keep yourself safe this week, to solidify, to nourish yourself. But that wasn’t the only thing you wanted to practice doing this week,” she said, in a perfectly measured, middling sort of way.

I sighed and sunk deeper into the seat. Now that my actual parents were gone, there seemed to be an awful lot of people ready to step in and take their place. I had poor boundaries. I needed to learn to moderate. Have good clean fun. Like all the other normal people.

“I wanted to learn …balance,” I said.

She nodded.

“I was trying to learn to have fun again, but healthy fun.” I looked at her face to see if I had said the right thing. She looked back at me. I sighed and sunk deeper.

“But I haven’t …I don’t really know how to do the things I really want to do without it jeopardizing everything.”

“So you’ve been getting enough sleep. You’ve been following a good eating routine every day. You’ve been going into school when you should and doing your work.”

“Yup. Doing all of that.”

“And what are you doing for fun?”

I sighed.

“And what have you been doing to put yourself out there?” she asked.

We always got to this point in the conversation. Every damn session. She would talk about ‘putting myself out there’, like I was some kind of cake in a shop window. And I would tell her no, not yet. I can’t right now. Maybe later. And what about aunt Lila. And there’s too much work to do. And I haven’t earned it yet.

“Well …there’s that guy I mentioned to you,” I said quietly.

I probably shouldn’t be telling her any of this. When she asked me about what I was doing to feed my soul, to enjoy life again, I think she expected me to tell her that I had signed up for a pottery class or joined the church choir or something.

But in truth? My new hobby was Adam’s cock. Really, I was doing an advanced course in pleasing him. In lying back and opening myself to him and letting him make me come again and again and again. If I was healing, it was only in his arms, in our secret ‘sessions’ where I would head to that strange flat almost every day after class and kiss him till he made me feel funny inside, and then let his body do things to mine. If I was ‘putting myself out there’ …it was only in front of him. With him.

“Yes, I remember. Adam, wasn’t it?”

“Well, we’re hanging out a lot.”

She looked at me.

“We’re …well, it’s a very sexual relationship,” I said. Her face stayed motionless. “The thing is… we smoke together too and …” I shot her a look.

“And that makes you nervous?”

“Of course it does! Because what’s next, you know?” I looked at her again, waiting for the lecture to come. I knew she couldn’t tattle tale on me to aunt Lila, but I don’t think I could have handled her judgment anyway. Her judgment, surprisingly, didn’t come.

“Well, I don’t know, what do you want to come next?” she asked.

I chewed my lip. Good question.

“I want to keep seeing him. To keep going. I think I really like him.”

“Do you remember what we discussed earlier on? About ‘the question’?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“And what was the question you wanted to keep asking yourself?”

“I wanted to keep asking …is this good for me?” I said.

She smiled.

“Well …he inspires me, you know? Like, I feel so creative around him,” I said. “And he believes in me, too. He’s very exciting. I feel so alive with him, like he just fires me up, and I get this buzz from him, truly, like he’s, he’s…”

“Some sort of drug?”

I nodded. Exactly. Like some sort of drug.

“So how am I supposed to fall in love? What’s the difference between falling in love and just going on a huge bender?”

She laughed. “Nyx, do you already know the answer to that?”

I laughed with her.

“Is he good for me?” I said, and the question made me blush. “Yes, I think so.”

She clapped her hands on her thighs and glanced at the wall clock that one of her old clients had brought back from Peru. We had ten minutes left.

“OK, I think I’m ready to try another assignment,” I said.

“Fantastic.”

“It’s a weird idea though. Maybe you’ll think it’s strange.”

“Does it matter if I do?”

“I guess not. I want to …write a story. And then … I don’t know. Bring that story to life. Act it out. So, I want to plan out ahead what I’m going to do, and then actually do it.”

“Sounds interesting,” she said.

“Like doing set design, except without any sets…” I continued.

“OK. No sets. Then what do we have if not sets?”

I thought about it. “Well, the sets are the people. The ideas. The words.”

“I can’t wait for you to come back next week and tell me all about it.”

“Do you think it’s weird? Is it a stupid idea?”

“Not at all. In fact, it sounds like a very common idea.”

“It does?”

“Yes. You know what it sounds like to me?”

“What?”

“Like you want to write a play.”

I blinked hard. A play. Yes, of course, that is what it sounded like, actually. I stood up quickly and got ready to leave. Aunt Lila wasn’t paying for me to learn how to write plays or be an actress or do whatever selfish navel-gazing I kept seeming to find myself drawn to. It was already pushing it to do set design. It wasn’t as fun, but set designers could earn well, and they weren’t so …artsy fartsy. The course was expensive. Entry into it was extremely competitive. People would kill to have the opportunity I did.

“No, not a play. I didn’t mean I wanted to write a play, not at all,” I said, a little sarcastically.

She looked at me.

“Thank you for a good session,” I said, and left quickly. I went home and wrote …something.

***

It’s a chilly winter-ish day. Blank sky, no blue anywhere, just grey and brown. A woman goes to the house of a stranger she’s getting to know. He doesn’t speak English, and so they have to communicate with glances, with body language, with hints and spider webs and ESP.

At his home, he feeds her an elaborate, magical meal, one inspired from the ingredients from his native country, a place the woman has never been before. The meal is enchanting, and flavored with strange spices and aromas that are entirely new to her. She’s so happy, and she eats it all so quickly that she ends up choking on her food, and soon she can’t breathe at all and starts to go blue in the face. Something is stuck in her throat.

The stranger sees this, runs over to her and squeezes her hard. It looks as though she might die, but just in time, the stranger squeezes hard enough to release the blockage and the woman sputters and coughs and starts to turn the right color again.

As she opens her eyes, she realizes all at once that she is in love with the stranger. She has died and come back from the dead, and when she sees his face again, she realizes that he is her one true love. They kiss. They make love. They fall asleep together. In the morning, the woman makes some breakfast, using all the same magical and foreign ingredients that had caused her to choke the night before. But this time, she knows what she’s doing. This time, she doesn’t choke.

I put my pen down and read it through a few more times. It decidedly wasn’t a play, anyone could see that. Obviously. It was just a …story. Something like a dream. Like a game a child would play.

I took a photograph of the page and messaged it to Adam. He would be the stranger from another country. I followed up with a message containing nothing but a date and time. Tomorrow evening.

I went to my wardrobe and picked out an outfit, the kind of outfit the girl in the story would wear. I settled on something and perched the hanger on the bedroom door. Good.

I didn’t know if Adam would go for it. If I really wanted to literally act out this ‘story’. I didn’t yet know what the point of this story even was, or why I had written it. In fact, I had had no idea what I was doing, at all.

But I was having fun.

Chapter 13

He reached out for my hand and took it, and it felt warm and safe against the cold air. The sunlight was blotted out on the horizon and dulled by a layer of smog.

Without words, we said nothing …and everything. Without the use of words, our communications became more primal. Without small talk, our talk became …large.

I looked over to him and found his warm brown eyes. There was a deep, knowing look in them. I blushed and looked away, but he squeezed my hand. That was a sentence. We walked on a little and I turned to look at him again, back into those heavy warm eyes, and I looked, and this was a question. He returned my gaze, tilted his head. And that was the answer.

Like this we walked to his house.

He was a stranger from a strange land, but from what I could tell, he was still built like a man. He still had square fingernails and pale blue veins on his hands that disappeared into the sleeve of his woolly jumper. He still had lips. His breath was still warm as it left his body and went white in the air as we walked. I wondered how different he was underneath his clothes. They were unusual clothes, sure, but something told me that what I would find underneath would be …familiar.

He led me to his house. Inside was a style of décor I found completely bizarre. Candles and ornaments and artwork on the wall that didn’t make much sense to me.

He closed the door.

He stripped off all his clothes and put on a strange silky robe. His eyes, in their silence, said, this is traditional in my country, now you do it too. So I took off my clothes and took the robe he handed me. He was a stranger. I think his name might have been “Adam”, but in his country, details like this weren’t that important.

I followed him to a living room where he had set up an elaborate feast of foods. Tiny dishes and bowls, candles and foliage tucked in between platters laid out with dainty morsels, and cut crystal glasses glowing with an odd green liquid. The smell was intoxicating, but I couldn’t begin to put my finger on what it was. All I knew is that it smelt delicious, and I suddenly felt starved.

His arms said please, sit and so I did. On folded legs we both began to eat. We continued our conversation, here a smile, here a nod. I gingerly tasted the food, unsure of what it was or whether I’d like it. His eyebrows lifted and that was a kind of joke. I smiled, and that told him I had gotten it. It started to seem that not only were words unnecessary, they were actually far less useful than what we were learning to do with the corners of our mouths, or with the gestures of our fingers or shoulders, or with the quality of the air we exhaled when we sighed.

The food was amazing. Too amazing. I ate quickly. Too quickly. I was enjoying everything so much that before I knew it, I was choking. Something was trapped in my throat. My hands flew up to my throat and this told him, oh god help me, I’m going to die!

His gorgeous face flashed with concern and he was soon at my side of the table, his strong, masculine body kneeling close to me, his hand instantly on my chest. I looked to him with tears in my eyes. He crouched down over me as I felt my throat close over and the last of my oxygen leave my body. I sputtered and sagged in his arms as he looked down into my face, my eyes, trying to listen to what I was saying.

But it was no use.

I was dying.

I was slipping away.

My breathing slowed, the lights in my eyes dimmed and I took one last breath. I shuddered in his arms and closed my eyes, dead. I could feel the horror in his hands. I could hear the panic in his breath. All at once, he had spun me around and was holding me in front of him, my back to his chest, his strong arms linked round my middle.

Then he squeezed.

Hard.

He squeezed me so hard that something came loose inside. So hard that what was trapped before came sputtering out, that my life and breath came rushing back to me, and all at once I threw back my head and gasped loudly. The blood came rushing back into my cheeks. I swallowed. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. In front of me was the stranger, his dark, delicious eyes watching me closely, a look of joyful relief on his face.

I smiled too. I was alive now. He had saved me. I was so close to death, but he had saved me. Pulled me back from the brink and cleared the way, and now I could breathe again.

Two wet tears fell easily from each of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Real tears. Actual tears. I realized that I …loved him?

“Oh my god, Adam, this is real,” I said. My voice was croaky. I hadn’t spoken at all for the last few hours. He looked at me. He was the handsome stranger from a far off land. And he was also Adam. There was a lump in my throat.

“I know,” he said.

He kissed me and I kissed hungrily back. I had no idea what I was doing. I was crazy. I was just a mad, stupid girl and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with any of this. I was just a pathetic orphan, a bad person, a failure, ‘one of those girls’.

“Adam, I’m sorry I made us do that …I don’t know why I wanted to. It’s crazy isn’t it?”

It was all just a story. Just a joke. Just a game. It was just green food coloring in the glasses, right? Just regular food on the table, right? But the tears were real. They felt cold on my cheeks and as real as ever.

“Yes, it’s totally crazy,” he said and laughed.

“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” he said and grinned at me. “And I love it.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“In the story she wakes up and sees the stranger. Then they fall in love,” I said.

His arms felt so firm and safe around me. I could just let go and he’d hold me. It was the most delicious sensation in the world, just to be held by him.

“Yes, I know”, he said, and gave me a mischievous look.

Another tear rolled out. He kissed it away, and his lips found their way to mine again. I tried to speak but he kissed me again.

“Adam …Adam, wait, I feel silly.”

“I’m not surprised, you’re a very silly girl and you’ve written a very silly play.”

“A play?”

“Yes, what else is it?”

I kissed him again.

“Adam, did you think my play was stupid?”

“Was stupid? But Nyx, we’re not done yet. We’re just getting to the most important part, aren’t we…?”

And there it was. That familiar, aching glow between my legs. My body knew what was coming. I kissed him again, eating him up like a dish of magical food I had never tasted before. Fuck it. Maybe it was all OK. Maybe I was crazy. And so what?

The weird green wine was beginning to take effect. My head spun, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.

Chapter 14

“Now, you never went into much detail about this part of the play…” he said.

“It’s not a play,” I said quickly.

“No, of course not, nothing like a play. And I’m not playing a character,” he said, naughty grin all over his face. “But if it was, and I was, what would happen next?”

I loved the cheeky glint in his eyes. He never stopped seeming extraordinary to me. I tried to hide a smile.

“You …I mean the handsome stranger would whisk me off to the bedroom. I mean the coupling chamber. That’s what it’s called where he’s from.”

“Ooh… that’s hot. Coupling chamber huh?”

“Yes. He’s about to teach the heroine the erotic delights of his people.”

“Go on…”

I giggled. “And she’s a little nervous, naturally, but he discovers she’s really rather adept, when given a little instruction.”

“I feel like I should be writing this down or something.”

I couldn’t help but grab him and kiss him deeply. His fingertips felt like heaven as they went up to touch the skin on my neck. He bent down and gently picked me up. I loved how easily he could do that. He carried me to the bedroom and lay me gently on the bed, then stood above me.

“You know, my people generally begin every coupling session with an extended blowjob ceremony,” he said with all seriousness.

I burst out laughing. “Hey, who’s the one writing this play, anyway?”

“I thought this wasn’t a play?” he said and dropped his trousers.

I rolled over onto my stomach and reached for him, teasing his legs and belly with little kisses.

“Fine. The people of your country do start every coupling session with an extended blowjob ceremony, you’re actually correct.”

I inched closer to his crotch, the animal scent of him waking up something delicious and primitive in the back of my mind.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he said to my back as I leaned in closer and took him in my mouth.

Pressed against the pink of my tongue, his dick twitched a little and stiffened to fill my mouth. He was just nearly too much for me, but hearing him moan in response made it easy to press closer to him, to take in more, to be closer to that delightful musk on his skin, and all along the line of black hair trailing down from his navel.

He gently placed both hands on the top of my head. Slowly, I let him guide my eager lips over his slick shaft. All the way in his dick glided, right to the back of my throat, then all the way out it came again, swollen and hot. Then all the way in again, then slowly out. In, then out again. His jagged breath rose and fell with the same rhythm. I glanced up to his deliciously tormented face, lips parted and head tilted back as I stroked my warm tongue over and over exactly where I knew he liked it.

Adam was an expressive man. An open man. A man who wasn’t afraid of anything, not least of all feeling something too deeply. I could easily feel when he was getting close. I could feel his gorgeous cock swell and heat up in my mouth in response, and I held him and let his fingertips tighten their hold on my skull.

He slid out and I looked up sweetly at him. The look on his face was begging to be kissed.

“And so…?” I asked playfully. He stroked his fingers through my hair.

“You tell me, you’re the boss,” he said coyly.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled him down onto the bed with me, and his body came tumbling down, a dark lock of his hair falling into his smiling face. I opened my legs wide and guided him down into me, not wanting to waste any more time.

“I want you, Adam,” I growled into his ear, as that same glorious cock pressed all the way into me, right to the core. No sooner had I said the words had he obliged and thrust his hips square down into mine. I gasped and let my head fall back.

I loved this. I loved every second of it, but this, this part was the most delicious of all.

He peered down at me as I squirmed a little on his cock, enjoying me struggle a little, pausing and waiting for me to open my eyes again and beg for more.

And I did.

Chapter 15

I woke up to the sound of a dog barking somewhere far outside the flat. I peeled open my eyes and tried to remember.

Adam’s house.

The ‘play’.

Ah, yes.

My eyes adjusted to the thin morning light as my brain quickly pieced together the events from the night before. There had been more wine. More weed. A brief interlude where we horsed around a little in the kitchen, and joked that it was actually the traditional dance of Adam’s people. Even more wine. Even more weed. I rolled over in bed and felt an ache between my legs. And lots and lots more of that, too. Ouch.

I peered over to see him curled beside me, sleeping like an angel, no sign on his lips of any of the filthy things he had said to me the night before, no indication of what his softly breathing body had been doing just a few hours ago. I had seen his jaw clench, and the muscles in his hips tighten as he growled and orgasmed hard on top of me; I had seen a tiny fleck of sweat snake down his brow as he gave me a smoldering look and then asked me if I was ready to go again.

I wiggled my toes and felt my body wake up a little. I felt amazing. Alive after all. Able to breathe after all. But! The play wasn’t done yet, now was it? I smiled to myself and got up silently, padded over to the kitchen and tried to see what goodies I could whip up into a breakfast before he woke up.

Standing naked in the kitchen, a little song came into my head and I went with it. As I rummaged in his cupboards, a little dance came to my feet. Life was good. I was enrolled in an exciting program doing work I probably enjoyed, I had just spent the night exhausting myself on the hard body of a man that could make my toes curl with a single look, and now I was making toast with Nutella and sliced bananas. Could things be any lovelier?

As my hands worked swiftly with the knife, smearing a smooth glossy layer of chocolate over each warm slice of toast, my thoughts went somewhere strange and new. Aunt Lila was a bit of a slave driver. I knew that. She knew that. But wasn’t it really me who had agreed to go along with the whole thing? Wasn’t I the one who hastily said yes to a program that, granted, I didn’t even know that much about? It seemed like a stupid thing, but it was true: I had never even considered before if I wanted to be a set designer.

I stood with my gooey knife hovering above the plates, frozen in thought, then went back to smearing. So what if I pissed aunt Lila off and she stopped paying for my course …would that really be the end of the world? So I had been a party girl in the past. Again, so what? I wasn’t the same as I was back then. Hell, I wasn’t even the same as I was yesterday afternoon…

“Your genius knows no bounds, truly.”

I turned to see a groggy, naked Adam walk into the room, eyeing my chocolatey masterpiece, rubbing his eyes. I grinned and pushed a plate towards him. He sauntered over, in all his naked glory, and gave me a slow, juicy kiss on the neck.

“Now this is what I really want for breakfast,” he cooed into my ear. His face was all soft and sleepy and his hair disheveled. He smelt like bed.

“You are insatiable, you know that?” I giggled. “Can’t a girl make some toast without being accosted in the kitchen?”

“Apparently not,” he said and nuzzled his way into my neck again, sending a wave of goosebumps down over my body. I moaned and took a big, messy bite of toast.

Why couldn’t I be a luxuriously decadent artist, too? Have raucous sex and take risks and be eccentric? Why couldn’t I write plays and act and do as I damn well pleased? I also had ideas. I also had things to say. I took another big bite before finishing the last one, and he kissed my shoulders, then my upper arm.

By the time we had woken up properly, had our breakfast, showered, made love, showered again, dressed and said goodbye, it was well past 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I floated out of his flat on a cloud, new and delicious thoughts forming in my hungover head. I didn’t know how yet, and I didn’t know what, but something wonderful was about to happen to me, I could just feel it.

I took my time walking home, and enjoyed every little scraggly flower growing between the bricks, every little wisp of wind that blew on my face. Maybe I’d write another ‘play’. Maybe I’d really have fun with it this time. I could do whatever I wanted. I could make it scary. Or funny. I could write my own Bluebeard story. But why stop there?

I turned the corner to my dorm room and stopped dead in my tracks.

Aunt Lila.

What the hell was she doing outside my room?

The instant she turned and caught sight of me, the blood felt as though it drained right out through a hole drilled at the bottom of my feet. Her face was twisted into something like rage, something like horrible fear. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She marched over to me, her face rapidly going red.

“And just where the hell have you been?” she screamed at me. Her rage was so intense I took a step back.

“I …I was out, I was with a friend, what’s the matter…?”

She was so angry it looked as though she was ready to pick me up and fling me down the road with her bare hands.

“You were out? Out? Do you not think to answer your phone?” she said, spitting each word.

Out the corner of my eye I saw the building security guard approach, a look of concern on his face. I couldn’t believe she was doing this to me. Why was she here anyway? I was almost 21 years old, I could stay out at a friend’s if I liked, surely?

“I guess I had my phone on silent…” I said quietly, as I pulled it out of my bag. The screen came alive in my hand. 45 missed calls. I quickly scrolled through them and saw something that made my heart sink.

Shit.

Messages from Tamara.

Lots of messages from Tamara.

It was Friday. I was meant to be driving her to Cambridge this morning.

Of fuck. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I squeezed my eyes shut to steady myself against a wave of nausea.

“I’m …I’m so sorry aunt Lila, I must have lost track of time…”

“Do you think that I have the time to come around here and look after you? Tamara Keane calls me and wants to know where you are. Nobody can reach you. I certainly don’t know what to tell her. We were just about to call the police and file a bloody missing person report!” she yelled.

Her words were like a cascade of tiny hammers to the skull. It was the same face she had given me in another life. The same expression she had laid on thick as I stumbled into the bathroom late on what my old friend had called The Jackson Pollock Night. The night where everything changed. The night where I my parents drove off into the darkness and never came back. I tried to fix my eyes somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t on her red, angry face just inches from mine. She was so mad she was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. I couldn’t look her in the face. The world came slowly crumbling down around me.

I hated Adam. I hated myself. I hated aunt Lila. I hated everything in this world. I couldn’t help the fat, hot tears from welling in my eyes and bursting out over my cheeks. I cried quietly as she fumed at me.

“Are you using again?” she said under her breath. ‘Using’, like I was some crack addict.

I said nothing.

“Are you even going to the classes? Are you still going to Doctor Estes?” she said, her voice rising.

Something bitter was rising in the back of my throat.

She took a step closer.

“We’ll have to have a proper chat about this later, Nyx. This is totally unacceptable. You’ve been given a second chance here and you’re screwing everyone around. How do you think it makes me look, to stick my neck out for you and then have you embarrass me like this?”

I watched the tears stain dark marks on my shirt.

“I said I was sorry. I was just having some fun. I lost track of time. I’ll apologize to Tamara…”

“Not good enough, Nyx. We need to have a serious chat, you and me,” she said.

The bitterness in the back of my throat deepened. A chat? God, I was so sick of chats. So tired of the threat dangling over me. Why didn’t she just say it? Why didn’t she just pay for me or not pay for me, and call it a day? Was she enjoying shitting all over me like this?

“Why don’t we just chat now?” I said and looked into her eyes.

She smiled an angry little smile and shook her head.

“I’ll tell you why sweetheart. Because some of us have work to do. Do you understand that concept?” she sneered.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I said quietly. I had never spoken back to my aunt. Never. The security guard shook his head and wandered off to keep an eye on us from a distance.

“Nyx, I am the only one that has your back here,” she said. “Do you realize how lucky you are?”

“Well, if this is what luck looks like, I don’t want it,” I said quickly. She widened her eyes at me. I had never seen her like this.

“And your course?”

“What about my course?”

I stared at her defiantly. I wanted her to say it. To just be honest and say what was really going on here.

“Nyx, I will not pay for you to waste your life running around with boys and taking drugs, for God’s sake.”

“Well, then, that makes the next step pretty straight forward for us, doesn’t it?”

I had no idea where my courage was coming from, but I spoke clearly and directly. I didn’t care anymore.

When my parents died, something in me died too. And I thought I would never see it again. But Adam had shown me something special. That there was magic in things. That I could create. That I had my father’s cheekbones!

I had gotten a taste of it now, a feeling of how life felt before everything went white and numb. And now I wasn’t going to let anyone take that from me ever again. Especially not aunt Lila. Not for any price.

“Are you high right now? You’re ridiculous. We’ll discuss this when you can take the situation seriously.”

“I am taking the situation seriously. Say what you mean. You’ve been hanging the threat of this course over my head for ages now, guilting me, making me feel like shit.”

“Watch your language.”

“So why don’t you just say what you really want to say?”

“If your father could hear you talk right now he would be so disappointed,” she said coldly, shaking her head.

“You think I’m ‘guilting’ you? Don’t blame me if you feel guilty. While your parents were dying on the side of the A40, you were out partying with your chums, and that’s nobody’s fault but yours,” she hissed.

I looked at her, smarting. Suddenly, I had a bright moment of clarity. This was not the story I wanted for myself anymore. And I wasn’t going to let aunt Lila write anymore of my life for me.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me so far aunt Lila. I know you mean well.”

“Well of course I do. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you--”

“Please don’t pay for the course for me anymore. Or for anything else for that matter.”

She gave me a hard look.

“You’re willing to throw away the chance of a lifetime? Do you have any idea how expensive the yearly tuition is? What do you think you’re going to do to get by?”

I stood and looked at her. The bitter feeling in my throat was passing. I didn’t know what I would do, actually. I had no clue. I was literally an orphan. I had absolutely nothing. But then again, staring at aunt Lila’s hard face, nothing was beginning to look like a pretty good deal.

“My life would certainly be easier with your help, but I don’t want it if it comes with strings attached.” Though I was shaking with anger, my voice sounded smooth and calm. “I don’t know yet what I’ll do. But I know I don’t want to do this,” I said, and gestured to the space between us.

“So you’d rather whore around and waste time? Nyx, I’m not playing games with you. Don’t try me. I’ll cancel your direct debit this evening, I swear to God.”

“I wish you would already.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Yes.”

I pushed past her and hurried into my dorm room, slamming and locking the door behind me. It took a good few minutes of staring at my hands to get them to stop trembling. Then I looked at the room. I could cry later. I could think later. For now, I needed a plan.

I needed to pack my things.

Chapter 16

It was a memory I thought I had forgotten. I don’t know why it suddenly came to me then, of all times, but all at once I thought of my father, the great actor Norman Westling, chasing me around the house with the brown inner tube from a roll of Christmas wrapping paper.

I couldn’t have been older than five or six. I remember squealing at the top of my lungs and racing around the house, my little heart hammering away in my chest. It had snowed that year and everything was perfect.

I don’t remember where mum was at the time. I don’t remember much, actually, but I can see clear as day the moment I ran skidding into the bedroom to hide under the bed, laughing all the while. He had pretended to be an ogre and had come after me, big cardboard tube in hand, swiping it under the bed to try and get at me. I laughed and hid and told him he’d never catch me, that I could always run away, that I could fit under the bed because I was so small and he was so big. And like it was just yesterday I remember how he laughed and said, “yes, well, you will get bigger. I’ll wait out here until you have to come out and I’ll catch you then. I’ll always find you.”

I didn’t think I ever would get bigger. But he was right. I did. And it turned out that he could always find me, too. Even now.

I walked quickly on and tried to ignore the burning tears in my eyes. Marching down the street to Adam’s house trying not to cry felt like carrying an enormous overfull jug of water without spilling a drop. Something swirled and lurched on the inside. I felt sick. Maybe aunt Lila would change her mind. Maybe we’d both cool down and realize we’d spoken in anger and …and what?

And then nothing. No, the only way was forward. I had tried to call Tamara but had just gone through to voicemail. I had sent her a message and prayed that she wouldn’t just kick me out the course herself. I had packed up all my meagre belongings into the box my new chest of drawers had come in, and it now stood waiting at the door. Waiting for what, I didn’t know. But I’d figure it out. I’d make a way, somehow. It wasn’t the end of the world. Right?

When Adam opened the door, he was in his pajamas. He frowned when he saw my tear streaked face. “Hey, what’s…?”

I collapsed into his arms and started sobbing. I hadn’t planned to but the moment I tried to speak the jar of water spilled over and I couldn’t hold in my tears anymore.

“Hey …shhhh,” he said and stroked my back. He guided me inside and I collapsed onto his sofa. He looked at me. I must have looked a mess.

“I’ve just had a big row with my aunt. She’s going to cut me off. I told her to stick it, actually, that I’m tired of her using her money to manipulate me, and tired of her using my parents’ death as a …as a…” here I couldn’t help but burst into tears again. He came and sat down beside me, his warm hand on my back again. “So now I’m on my own. She won’t pay for the course anymore, she won’t pay for anything…”

He took my head in his hands.

“Hey. Nyx, that’s crazy. I’m so proud of you,” he said, a faint smile flickering on his lips.

He was proud of me? Proud for being an unrepentant idiot? Proud for shooting myself in the foot? Suddenly, the sight of his smirking face seemed unbearable.

“Do you understand how royally screwed I am, Adam?” I yelled. I couldn’t believe he had the gall to smile at me, now of all times. He looked like he was struggling to find words.

“And Tamara! I was supposed to drive her to Cambridge, remember? I fucked up so bad. She won’t even answer my calls. She trusted me and she was just getting to like me and now she’ll kick me out for sure!”

Telling my aunt to stick her direct debit had felt like the most liberating moment of my life. So why did I feel like such shit right now? I smeared the tears from my eyes and looked at him. He was still fucking smiling.

“Are you actually joking right now? I wouldn’t have overslept and forgotten about Tamara if it wasn’t for you,” I said, and stood up off the sofa. The smile went a little sour on his lips.

“Hey, Nyx, come on now…”

“No, you come on now. This is serious. I told you I didn’t want to do this. I told you I needed to focus on school, and to clean up my act, I told you--”

“Hey, just wait a second. Who had a big row with your aunt?”

“I did.”

“And who told her to ‘stick it’?”

“Well, I did…”

“And is that what you actually wanted to do?”

“Well …yes. I do want her to stick it. I hated her hanging that over my head, of course I--”

“So then why exactly are you angry at me?”

I was angry at him. I was angry at the self-satisfied smirk on his face just at that exact moment. Angry at him wearing his stupid pajamas when my whole world was falling apart at the seams. Oh sure, it was so easy for him. Easy for him to waltz around like nothing mattered, while some of us had work to do.

The churning inside my stomach was taking shape. Maybe this was all just a huge mistake. Maybe it was The Jackson Pollock Night all over again for me. I couldn’t have anything nice, because I’d just ruined it, eventually. And Adam wasn’t some artist in shining armor …he was just some layabout in pajama bottoms and an untidy flat.

“Hey, there’s something important I wanted to tell you” he said, but I found it hard to listen. I looked around at his living room, exasperated. Then something caught my eye.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

I moved over to the entrance to his bedroom and saw something strange, and yet familiar. A big shawl, draped over his bed. Where had I seen this shawl before?

“Whose …whose is this?” I asked, picking it up in my hands and holding it out to him.

“It’s Laura’s,” he said, with the most infuriatingly neutral face I’d ever seen on him.

“You remember Laura? We met her at Andrew’s house that time, you know when we--”

“Yes I remember,” I snapped. “Why is it here though?” I hated how brittle my voice sounded.

He walked over slowly, took it from my hands and, for the first time since I had met him, his face didn’t seem so magical anymore. In fact, it seemed horrible. Just a nose and a mouth and some eyes, nothing special, just looking down at the shawl.

“She must have left it here,” he said plainly.

I flopped back down onto the couch. Yes. My aunt Lila must have been right. I was crazy. I had jumped into bed with this mysterious stranger, running around like I wasn’t an abysmal failure of a human, and people had warned me, hadn’t they? And I did it anyway, thinking that something special was happening to me, that I was something special. What an idiot I’d been. This was some true tragedy right here.

“Are you guys …are you seeing her? Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

The tears were starting up again. I didn’t try to stop them this time. He sighed loudly and tossed the shawl down, then rubbed his face as he looked around.

“No, Nyx. It’s not like that.”

“Then how is it?”

“It’s …complicated. Laura and I go back a long way. I’ve known her for years.”

“She’s an ex?”

“Well, something like that. But it was a very long time ago now. We’re very good friends and she came to see me…”

“In your room?”

He rubbed his face again.

“Look, I know you’re upset about this aunt thing of yours but--”

“This ‘aunt thing’?!” My face felt hot.

“Nyx, please just calm down. You don’t have to worry about Laura.”

“I’m not worried about her, you can run around with whoever you want, but please don’t try bullshit me at the very least.”

I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t eaten. I was miserable. I just wanted to go home. But where was home anyway?

“You don’t mean that. Please just sit down and chill. Have some tea with me or something.”

I shook my head.

“Nyx, please, I have something important I wanted to tell you. Will you just sit down for a second?”

I looked him in the eye. I tried to find that warmth again. That deep, brown, safe feeling I had grown so used to. But it wasn’t there anymore. Had it ever been? How do you know the difference between addiction and love? No matter how much I kept looking, I couldn’t see the magic in his eyes anymore. It was dead. Gone.

“I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t even know why I came here anyway, you obviously can’t help me,” I said quietly.

He came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders, then tried to lean in for a kiss. Almost without thinking, I turned my head and squirmed away. It was an ugly fucking shawl. Gaudy and loud and cheap looking and I hated it.

“I’m going,” I said, and headed for the door. I slammed it behind me and kept walking.

No, Adam wasn’t the answer here either. I was on my own. Really on my own. And it was all slowly starting to dawn on me. I had shared parts of myself with him that I hadn’t even known existed. I had gone further with him than I thought I was allowed to go. I had never felt so …alive.

But anyway, fuck him. He was right. It was me who had a row with my aunt. Me who pushed. And yes, maybe me that was just a teeny, tiny bit thrilled that now, it was all really happening. I don’t know what it was, but it was happening all right. And faster than I could keep up with it.

I would miss him. I would miss that unspeakably beautiful feeling of locking eyes with him as his slid slowly into me, into me to the hilt, so deep that his hipbone, his heartbeat pressed hard up against mine, and there was no further he could go, not even if we both stopped breathing, both dug into one another’s gazes like we were trapped there. I would miss watching the little wave of goosebumps flash over his taut skin as my tongue inched him closer to coming. I would miss his stupid, stupid flat and how desperately undecorated it was.

But I couldn’t think about any of that now. I had work to do. I had to …pull myself up by my bootstraps. Actually, I had to find a way to get ahold of some bootstraps first. Tamara.

I looked at my watch.

I might be able to catch her and throw myself at her feet. I didn’t know what I would tell her yet but I should probably show my face. Try to explain that I had a history of substance abuse, and unfortunately for me, I had discovered the most irresistible substance known to man. Fucking Adam Morgan. Dark, irresistible. The kind of thing that could wreck a life, apparently.

I shook my head clear and picked up the pace. I couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about her.

It was almost too perfect to be true: Tamara was standing outside the building again, smoking, again, just like the first time I had come groveling to her. I took a deep breath and walked over, trying my best not to look too sheepish. She took one look at me, stubbed out the cigarette with her toe and held the door open for me. I quickly went inside and she followed me down the hall to her office. Her boots click-clacked on the floor behind me.

She closed the office door behind us both and sat at her desk, templing her hands and looking at my nervous hands.

“Back from the dead I see,” she said.

“I am so, so sorry,” I said.

She waited for me to come gushing out with excuses. But by the way her eyes were unpeeling me, peering straight at me and my face no-doubt still red and swollen from crying, it was as though she already knew. She knew that Adam and I had spent every evening after rehearsals together. Everyone knew.

“I got Alice to take me in the end,” she said, “I was a little late, that’s all. Not such a big deal, don’t worry about it.”

I winced. That was it?

“The guy in Cambridge was amazing, actually, it’s a pity you didn’t get to meet him.”

“Tamara, I’m so so sorry I let you down.”

“Yeah, OK, you already said so.”

“You’re not …angry?”

“I’m angry as hell,” she said.

The air in the office felt strange.

“I may have to reconsider my place on this course,” I said slowly. Carefully. “My aunt was responsible for my tuition and she …well, it turns out she won’t be able to finance my way any further, and so I--”

“Yeah, she called and told me all about it.”

“She did?”

“Your aunt really cares about you, you know that?”

I couldn’t help my eyebrows from knitting together.

“Yes, well, we’ve had a bit of a quarrel and now I’m going to have to arrange some kind of loan or something,” I said moodily.

She tilted her head and gave me a strange look.

“Nyx, can I ask you something?”

“Um...”

“Do you even want to be here?”

Our eyes met.

“Tamara, I think Bluebeard is amazing. I can’t tell you. I love how it’s all coming together. It’s so exciting, watching everyone piece it together, watching it come alive. I’m so honored to be a part of it,” I said. “Truly.”

I meant it.

She sighed and looked down at her lap.

“If you were anybody else I would have kindly told you to fuck off,” she said. My ears burned. “But it’s not too often that we get to work with such raw talent here. And honestly, I’m curious about what you’re capable of. You’ve done good work so far. Really. But I’m not your aunt, yeah? I need you to really start applying yourself.”

“Absolutely. Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I’m so sorry, Tamara, I know I turn up late so often, and I’ve been so distracted and honestly, I’m so sorry for forgetting about Friday. I really am sorry… I just want to keep doing the set design, I really want to give it my all now, I’m ready.”

“Oh, you’re not going to do set design anymore.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I need more reliable people for that stuff, Nyx. Organized people. My plate is full, I need to know that the crew are on it when I need them to be.”

I gulped. What had her and my aunt spoken about anyway?

“No, you’re off the set design, I’ve already assigned Becky to finish up what you started.”

“So, then…?”

“Oh? Didn’t Adam tell you already? You were round his place just now weren’t you?” she asked and gave me a wicked smile. I didn’t know what was going on. But I didn’t like it one bit. She sighed again and adjusted her weight in the seat.

“You’re not the only one to leave me in the lurch. Belinda’s head injury isn’t getting better fast enough. She can’t perform. So you’ll play the female lead. To be honest we just don’t have anyone else and what can I say, there are people out there who have your back.”

I stared at her dumbstruck.

“You want me to act?”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

Before I could think about it, my lips answered for me.

“Yes. Yes it really is.”

“Good.”

“Did Adam…?”

“Did he ask for you? Yes. A lot of people have, actually. I’m a businesswoman, Nyx, I care about running things smoothly, so if enough people are telling me you’re the one, I guess you’re the one. So whatever, go and do your thing, you have a few weeks. Wow me,” she said and smiled wryly again.

“Oh my God, Tamara, I won’t let you down.”

“Yeah, you will, I’m sure you will. Just do a good job with it anyway. Take all of this crazy,” she said and gestured to me, “and put it onto the stage. You’re a piece of work, Nyx, but you are a natural, I can’t argue with that.”

I couldn’t find words.

“Now Jesus that’s enough favors for one day. The ghost of Norman Westling owes me one, that’s for sure.”

“You knew my father?”

“Of course I did. I attended one of his workshops, way back in the day. I was just a kid then, but he made a big impression.”

I smiled.

“Yeah, he’d probably be rolling around in his grave to see me now, huh?” I said, and smiled.

She gave me a sharp look.

“Why would you even say such a thing?” she said, suddenly serious.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just that …he was such a serious artist, you know? Such a sophisticated actor. So in control and all. I could never live up to that.”

She burst out laughing.

“Sophisticated? OK, are we talking about the same man? Your dad was crazy,” she said, walking towards the door.

“Yeah?”

She smiled knowingly.

“Yeah. You have more in common with him than you think, you know.”

Her shoes click-clacked down the hall until I couldn’t hear them anymore. I turned to walk the other way.

What would my father say, if he could see me now?

I sat on the cold concrete steps outside the building and watched the clouds. I watched them for a long time. Watched them till something cleared and went calm inside me. Watched them till I fell still inside, and could see a way forward.

Chapter 17

I folded the wad of forms and packed them tightly into a manila envelope.

Applying for financing this late in the year was more bureaucracy than any human deserved in one life, but it needed to be done. I had cried a little this morning, looking at my online banking and seeing that aunt Lila had indeed killed the direct debit. Shut off the tap. With the last trickles, I had to make my next move.

I had just over two weeks before I’d have to pay rent again, pay for my Internet connection, my utilities. I still had my credit card, thank god. I had blown the last fifty pounds I had in my account on rice, beans and frozen vegetables. That would last me for a good while, if I ate carefully. If they approved my convoluted appeal for a loan I could start looking for a new, cheaper place. But then, they may not approve my loan. I couldn’t think about that, though.

Belinda had offered me a place to stay for a little while if it came to it, which was fair given that I had stolen her role and all. Tamara had told me she’d give me some grace with the coursework and that I had a month to get my act together, but that she expected me to finish up the hall scene set that I had started. Becky would pick up after that. This meant I’d have regular rehearsals, a whole play’s worth of new lines to remember, all the regular class work and tutorials, and a set to finish. And I’d do it on rice, beans and frozen vegetables.

I stared over at some DIY supplies stashed in the corner. The hall scene was mostly done, but I needed some kind of artwork for the centerpiece, something that could be lowered and whisked away as it morphed into the wedding scene. I felt a pang that I wouldn’t be able to do the wedding scene anymore, but …well, let’s just say there were a lot of things I couldn’t afford to think about right now.

My phone pinged.

It was Adam.

Tamara told me the news. You can’t keep ignoring me, you know. You’re basically getting married to me in the morning, remember? :p

I flung my phone down onto the bed and tried not to think of him. Sweet, dark, irresistible Adam Morgan was the thing I could afford the least right now, that was for sure. Let him enjoy his weirdo girlfriend; I was on the skin of my arse and needed to think of myself. Oh, he was Bluebeard and I was Boulotte. I didn’t care about how many other wives he had buried in his secret chamber. I was going to act, and I was going to be a professional. And I was going to ignore each and every one of his stupid messages.

I woke the next morning fired up with fresh energy. I walked briskly and arrived at the college well before everyone else, while the air was still icy and I could watch the clouds a little before heading in. People shed their coats and scarves at the entrance and slowly began to take on their stage roles, to unpack the props and plug in the lights, to crack open the thick scripts and rummage in their bags for pink highlighters and lip balm. As usual, he was late. Late to his own wedding.

“Channeling Boulotte this morning, are we?”

I turned to see a smiling Tamara come behind me and playfully tap my dangling earrings. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. It wasn’t a dress rehearsal, but why the hell not? It had cost me a lot, this scary debut as an ‘actress’, so I might as well make the most of it, right?

“We’ll start just as soon as Adam’s here,” she said and gave me a knowing look.

“Sure, no problem at all,” I said, and she nodded.

“You uh …you OK to do the kissy bit?” she said, trying to sound lighthearted.

The kissy bit. Well, the truth was, it was infinitely harder to not kiss Adam than it was to kiss him. Kissing Adam had come so easily to me I had hurled myself headlong into his arms at every opportunity. No, the torture would be to stay mad at him, to remember that he wasn’t good for me, to kiss him, but not too much. To kiss him, but not mean it. To look like I meant it, but not to really mean it. He could kiss me as an actress. But he would never kiss me kiss me again. Just kiss me. I was resolved.

“I think I can handle it,” I said breezily.

She patted me on the shoulder and went to fuss over with a group of crew members as they put together a makeshift arch. I took a deep breath. I liked this. I could do this. Acting. Maybe it was in my blood, after all.

The doors banged open and everyone turned to look. Adam, of course, making a grand entrance. I studiously ignored him and pored over my script instead. As if he had his own gravity, he sauntered over to the stage and warped and bent everyone’s attention as he did, catching a trail of quiet looks, leaving a little wake of silence behind him as people watched.

He was just as hot as always. Just as animally magnetic as always. It was mightily inconvenient, to ignore a man so obviously unignorable …but I did it all the same. People looked to me for a second, realized there wouldn’t be any off-stage drama this morning, and quickly got back to their work. Out the corner of my eye I watched him chat a little with Tamara. Fine. I could do this. Channeling Boulotte. Channeling the great Norman Westling, why not.

Everyone settled and found their places on stage and we began.

I lost myself to the flow of the moment.

I loved this.

Loved watching the ballet behind the ballet, the coordinated cogs of this great drama machine. I loved how it came together, all the separate threads, timed just right, telling a smooth, full story. It was nothing less than magic to me. I stood in the wings and watched the forest nymphs and various ‘wedding spirits’ dance their part on the stage. They were wearing Primark tights and ratty gym shirts, but I could see that they were woodland sprites, could see them leap high into the air like the otherworldly beings they were.

“Good …good, lots of energy here, lots of joy everyone …good, keep it light…” I heard Tamara’s voice from behind the heavy velvet curtain.

I didn’t have to look to know he was standing there, in the opposite wing. I didn’t have to look to know that he had worn the same trousers he always wore to rehearsals, the same light grey ones I had peeled off his excited body more time than I could remember. I didn’t have to look to know that he was looking at me.

“And two three four, then out with the nymphs, nice …down comes the wreath…” I heard Tamara saying. The nymphs’ footsteps were hard on the boards, and I felt them bounce as they sprung off stage and cleared the way for the arch to descend. And then, all eyes were on us. I paced out into the strong light, face filled with fearful wonder. And there before me, pacing towards me, was Bluebeard himself.

I saw it all. I saw the evil eyes of a sorcerer, one with the faint smell of murder still on him, one with white gloved hands and a perfect smile, but sharp teeth and too much spring in the step. A handsome man. Alluring. Exciting. But completely dangerous.

I flitted my eyes closed and came to stand beside him, the full magnitude of what I was doing washing over me. I didn’t become Boulotte. I was Boulotte, from my dainty feet to the top of my doomed head. My wedding. The moment my life transformed, fairy-tale-wise, from dry bread and worn clothes and pig sties to candied fruit and chamber music. It was perfect. Hopelessly, disastrously perfect.

Then, with every fiber of my body, I fluttered open my eyes and looked into the dark face of my husband. He didn’t become Bluebeard. He was Bluebeard. I trembled in my shoes. I trembled elsewhere. He was an aristocrat, a worldly man. A man who would …show me things. I gulped and looked up at him. Adoringly. A delicious fear tinkling in all my wedding jewels.

“Nice, good …lots of foreboding here. Jeremy no more pink light, you’re too heavy handed there, yes, good…” I heard Tamara’s voice puncturing through everything.

The moment swept on.

I remembered my lines and spoke them as my own. The set moved and flowed around us, our movements and speech carefully choreographed. Soon, he would take my hands. We would seal our devilish union with a kiss. It was written in the script.

“Good …OK, Adam a little less enthusiasm from you …just for the time being. I like it; let’s keep going…” said Tamara.

I heard the creaking and wheeling of the props moving around us as we stepped forward, came onto a platform, waited for the wedding party to surround and frame us. It was only chipboard and stand-in tinsel. But it was also a breathtaking wedding of unparalleled splendor, a deliciously evil pairing of the sacrificial lamb to a man with cloven hooves hidden in his expensive calf-skin shoes. I could see it all. And I spoke, and moved, and the story unfolded around me…

The wedding party shrank away from us and the light concentrated overhead, too-bright and painful.

Now was the moment. A kiss to seal the deal. The mortal signature on the immortal contract.

He took my hands in his. I could see him breathing with excitement, with devilish anticipation. I realized that I was …turned on. Very turned on. I gave him my hands and lost myself in his eyes, standing before him, his.

My lips parted instinctually. He leaned down towards me, hands gentle, eyes vicious. In the time it took him to close and open his dark-lashed eyelids once, I watched my girlish life flash before my eyes, watched the seasons change and the rim of a new era spinning before me, and a great chasm opened up and I was on the rim, about to fall in forever. I couldn’t help myself. I closed my eyes and offered my lips up to his, and he kissed me.

My sigh was a groan, a cry of a forest creature pierced through the heart. As I kissed him, a flock of birds exploded from the forest behind us. A glass chalice slipped off the table and shattered on a stone floor. The light popped into fragments around us and fell twinkling at our feet. Then a darkness descended. A thick, deadly darkness – blacker than black. Black so black that it became …blue.

I pulled away and saw my kiss, still wet, lingering on his lips. He smiled; a smile of victory. The music came to an end and he dropped my hands.

“Yes, oh my god yes! That is precisely what we’re after!”

I woke up from my daydream and looked to see Tamara on her feet, watching the stage intently with the rest of the crew around her, frozen as they witnessed what was unfolding on stage with awe.

“I don’t know what you guys are doing up there, but holy hell, I like it!” Tamara said and clapped her hands together with glee. She gestured for me to step down and come sit beside her.

The lights came back on again.

“Nyx,” she said, “come here for a second. That is brilliant, really. I think even the garbage men outside wanted to watch you, truly. This is good. I like what you’re doing here.”

I tried not to follow Adam as he took the steps off stage and went to get a drink of water. The crew around us were talking again, getting prepared for the next round.

“You know, there was something off about making Boulotte so …so …”

“Innocent?” I said.

“Exactly. She’s too one-dimensional, isn’t she? Too much a victim. But the way you look at Adam …it’s like Boulotte is not just a victim, she’s--”

“She’s complicit. She wants it, in a dark way,” I said.

She nodded absentmindedly. “She wants it…” she repeated, trying out the words in her mouth. “Yes, OK, good, I like where this is going. Tell me quickly Nyx, what’s missing in Boulotte’s character, do you think? What do we need more of here?”

I flicked my hair and took a breath.

“Sex,” I said.

“Sex?”

“Much, much more sex,” I said matter-of-factly.

She stared at me for a while, thinking.

“But why would she be so drawn to Bluebeard in the first place? Why would she be so keen on him when he’s so clearly bad for her?”

Good question.

Very good question.

“Because maybe some part of her knows that in a way, he’s just what she needs,” I said. “He’s a catalyst. She’s daring herself, trying to see how far she can go. She wants it. She instigates change. And that change has to happen …violently.”

She gave me another look.

“Violently, you say?”

“Oh yes. And sexily, too.”

She gave me a naughty smile and nodded. “Good, OK. You do that Nyx. Bring that. I think we do need to change up this character a little… you and I need to talk I think, let’s discuss this at our next meeting.”

She wandered off and made some notes in her script, but just as she left she turned around again and pointed her pen at me.

“Before I forget. You’re still good to do the props for the hallway scene? I need a big print or something for the wall, yeah?”

“Yup, got it,” I said. She frowned at me.

“I promise. I’ve got it. Don’t worry about it.”

She wandered off and went to speak to one of the forest nymphs.

I stood and thought for a moment. I had no idea how I was going to put together the hallway props. My mind was in pieces and to be honest, I hadn’t even started with “something to go on the wall”. Rehearsal was over for the most part, but I almost didn’t want to go home. It would only be more frenzied calls to the student finance office. Only more emails flat-hunting. More beans and rice. I looked around to see if anyone needed my help; if I could distract myself. And of course there he was.

“That was a good rehearsal,” he said.

“It really was,” I replied.

“So you’re at least speaking to me in person?”

“Of course. You’re my co-star, why wouldn’t I speak to you?”

The look he gave me almost hurt.

“Are you still mad at me?” he said.

I sighed and looked away.

“Can we talk? Come for a walk with me or something,” he continued.

The light in his eyes looked dim. It was enough to me melt. I wanted more than anything to be mad at him, no doubt about it. But my body certainly wasn’t playing along. Had he spoken to Tamara about getting me this role?

“I’m really busy though,” I said, with every last thread of willpower I had.

“With what? Let me help you with whatever it is.”

I looked up into his eyes and saw his eagerness. “Really? You want to help me?”

“Of course I do.”

“OK. Well, I have to make a piece of artwork or something to go on the walls for the hallway scene.”

“Cool. But we’re doing the hallway scene tomorrow…”

“Exactly.”

“Then we’d better get busy, right?”

Chapter 18

“I’m just warning you,” I said as I unlocked the door and led him inside, “the place is in a state, I’ve packed a lot of things up so don’t mind the mess…”

I could handle it. Bringing Adam to my flat was a bit like a recovering alcoholic going to the pub. It was worse than tempting fate. It was flirting with fate.

“Looks good to me,” he said and scanned the room.

“Well, considering what your place looks like, that’s not the compliment you think it is,” I said and headed to the kitchen to get some water. When I came back he was just standing there in the doorway, looking dejected.

“How long are you going to do this, Nyx? Can we just talk?”

“We’re talking right now.”

“I miss you. You’re ignoring me.”

“So?”

“That’s the worst thing you can do to me, Nyx, please…”

“I’m sorry I can’t give you attention right now, I’m not in the position to have any kind of relationship I guess. I’m sorry. I need normal, healthy things in my life now. Boundaries. A regular bedtime every night. A budget. That kind of thing.”

“So?”

“So, that’s not exactly you, is it?” I said bluntly.

He looked hurt.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just …I’m in real trouble here. I don’t know if they’re going to approve financing for me. I don’t know where I’m going to sleep in two weeks’ time, or what I’m going to eat or…”

“Sleep with me. Eat with me,” he said quickly.

“But you’re the reason I’m in this mess in the first place,” I said, and glugged down my water.

“Mess? What mess? It looks to me like things are going really well for you. You don’t have your shitty aunt running your life anymore, you’re finally doing something you’re good at …where’s the problem?”

“You see, that’s the problem. You just don’t get it. I’ve lost everything, Adam. Every last thing. My friends. My mum and dad. Now my aunt. You have no idea what that feels like.”

“Don’t I?”

“You have no idea what’s it like to lose basically all your family in one day, and--”

“At least you had a family, Nyx.”

“What?”

He kicked a cardboard box on the floor and looked angrily at me.

“I had nobody growing up. Your dad was fucking Norman Westling, of all people. Excuse me if I don’t break out the tiny violins for you,” he said.

I was stunned.

“What ...what happened to your parents?”

With horror I realized that I had never asked him. I had never asked him anything, really. I had no idea about his siblings or his family. No idea about where he had grown up.

Shit.

“I lost my parents too, Nyx, first my dad, and then my mum. I was 14 when she died. The last year she was alive she spent entirely in her bed. I swear to God she never left that room. She died in that room. I’d go in there and try to cheer her up, try to dance or sing or tell her jokes or something, anything to get her to wake up and pay attention to the world again. She was a fucking zombie…”

“I’m so sorry.”

He fumed and stared at the box on the floor.

“You’re really, really lucky, Nyx.”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “I know. I’m sorry for ignoring you.”

“It’s OK.”

He lifted his eyes to mine and tried to smile at me. My heart broke as I realized – he was trying to cheer me up. We stood there a long time, looking at one another. The props and fanfare from earlier that day had all gone, but we were still on a stage all the same. The little bedroom nymphs scattered and left us standing there, looking at one another, a whole ocean of space and silence between us.

I took a few uncertain steps towards him. Touched my hand to his chest. He looked relieved, took my hand in his and kissed my knuckles. Like a little surrender, like taking a big gulp of air after coming up to the surface of the water, our lips met and we kissed. Quietly, delicately, breath held just in case we disturbed something. He exhaled and pulled me in closer. Kissing him was breathing for me.

“I’m sorry Adam,” I whispered. In response, he tightened his arms around me and rocked a little with me in his arms.

“I’m sorry too, Nyx. There’s nothing going on with me and Laura. And I don’t want you to think of me as a bad influence.”

I pulled back a little.

“I know but,” I said and looked around the room, “I don’t know if I can do all of this on my own.”

“Of course you can!” he said and pecked me on the forehead. “You’re a firecracker. And like I heard you telling Tamara, the play just needs a little more sex in it and everything will be fine.”

He gave me a naughty wink.

“You were eavesdropping?”

“Of course I was.”

I playfully tried to bite his arm.

“Well, I don’t see how that’s going to solve my actual problems right now. I have a massive painting I have to pull out of thin air by tomorrow morning. I don’t think sex can help me in this instance.” I scoffed.

“What? Of course it can” he said. I eyed him closely.

“How…?”

Like a light flickering on inside, something naughty sparkled behind his eyes and he started to search around the room.

“Got any paint?” he asked.

“Oh my God, Adam, what are you going to do?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

He laughed and began to rummage around in the cardboard box at his feet; it was a box of supplies from the college and some leftover materials from making the forest props a few weeks ago. I looked down at his frantic hands and admittedly, felt a little excited.

“We could go to the art shop quickly, “I said. “I don’t know when they close but maybe we can have a look around for paint?”

“To hell with the art shop,” he said.

He was on his knees now, scrambling through the supplies like a nutty professor. I loved him like this. All fired up. He didn’t notice me staring at him. So I just stared.

“A ha!” he said and held up a fistful of small paint tubes. I had forgotten about those.

“Now what do you want to do with that?” I asked, but he had already bolted to his feet and was fanning them out in front of me, like a magician asking me to pick a card.

“Which one should we use? Go on then, choose one.”

I looked down and tried to think. We didn’t even have any paintbrushes, so I wasn’t sure what harebrained idea he could have been planning.

“Don’t think about it so much, just pick a color!”

I laughed out loud. “OK, red!” I said quickly.

He was so good at stirring people up, and getting them excited about the thing he was excited about. Maybe I could get a little carried away by him. Just a little.

He tossed the other colors back into the box and held up the red tube, smiling mischievously.

“Now what?” I said.

“Well, of course we’re going to need a canvas.”

“But I don’t have a canvas.”

He pulled his lips tight to the side and mimed thinking about something deeply. It made me laugh. It was so funny to see him like this, in his element, playing the clown. A hot clown, that is.

“Hm… are you sure you don’t have one?” he said in a funny accent. My eyes widened as he turned to look in the direction of my bedroom and then darted off.

“Wait, where are you going?” I cried, but he had already emerged from the room looking victorious, my white bedsheet in hand.

“What? Are you saying …no, we absolutely cannot use my sheet!”

“Oh yes we can.”

“No, we can’t!”

“Yes we can.”

He started pushing things aside so he could lay the sheet down flat. It took up the whole living room.

“You’re nuts!” I shouted, but I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’m nuts, am I? I saw you on stage earlier today, I think it’s very obvious who the nutter is around here,” he said, and made a lunge for me. I squealed and darted out of the way, and all of a sudden we were playing a game of catch, me desperately trying to avoid stepping on the bed sheet.

“Adam! Adam you’re terrible, come on stop, I have so much work to do!” I laughed, and narrowly avoided him catching me.

“Work? Oh we’ve got lots of work to do, all right,” he said and we raced circles round the bedsheet. I gave up and flopped down on the sheet, laughing and trying to catch my breath. Quick as a Jack in the box, he sprung next to me and lay down beside me. God, it was ridiculous how quickly he could turn my legs to jelly.

“Well, what now, smart guy? We don’t have any paintbrushes or anything. And it’s going to be a lousy painting in just one color.”

The blood rush felt good in my cheeks. Still smiling, I watched as his face turned a little serious. He gave me that look, that same mesmerizing look that had thrown me off guard right from the start.

“What?” I said, suddenly taken with his intensity.

He smiled.

“Well?” I said, giggling nervously.

He sat up, peeled off his shirt and tossed it overhead. In the silence of the room, I heard it land softly on the bare floor. I wanted to tell him he was crazy. That that’s not what he was here for, that I needed his help, that he had gotten me into enough trouble as it was, that he was indeed a bad influence …but no matter how much I thought I wanted all that, I wanted to just keep looking at him even more.

He stood and peeled off his trousers, and slowly tossed these aside as well. I gulped and tried to look away. His body was beautiful. Strong, lithe. Crackling with a kind of wild energy that was impossible not to look at. I wanted to tell him that I was un-seduceable, that I couldn’t let myself get carried away by him again, couldn’t slip, couldn’t fall again like that, couldn’t let go… but no matter how much I wanted all of that, I wanted him to lay back down again and kiss me.

And he did.

He took me out of my clothes, all the lines and textures and colors of my skin stark against the plain white sheet. We lay there, a quiet symphony in flesh and white, something clean about it all, and also something delightfully dirty. I could do the painting after he left, I guess. I’d think of something. I didn’t care. I just wanted his lips on mine.

Naked skin to naked skin, we wound our bodies together and kissed, each caress a little apology, a little suggestion, a little permission. It was so easy to kiss him.

“Lie back,” he said.

I obeyed, the hard ground underneath me pressing hard up against my spine and shoulder blades. To my surprise, he rose and lifted his hands up in the air, and before I could make out what he was holding in his hands, a long snake of red fell from high and came splattering cold down onto my bare chest.

The paint! I recoiled and looked down at the twists of bright red on my breasts and stomach.

“What the …are you crazy?” I yelled. He held the paint tube overhead like a sword he had just plunged into my heart, and now I was bleeding out in acrylic. He was smiling wickedly. I tried to sit up but he flopped down on top of me, squelched his chest against mine and pressed, squashing the paint coils between us into a red film that gave me instant goosebumps. I squealed and laughed and tried to get away.

His weight heavy on me, his hips pinning me in place, I could do nothing but laugh and wriggle and then look down at the seeping red spreading out between us. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, his face was glowing with mischief.

“See? We don’t need paintbrushes,” he said, pleased with himself.

I slapped his arm.

“You big brute. Now what, huh?” I said, but just as I spoke these words his eyes told me the answer. I bit my lip and he leaned in for another kiss. Though the paint was cold and sticky and alien, his lips were everything but. They were warm. Slick. Every inch perfectly familiar to my tongue. I sighed and let him kiss me.

“You bastard,” I mumbled into his mouth.

I felt him smile and then wiggle against me, making the paint squelch between us.

Like a spell, like clockwork, as predictable as the tides and almost as inevitable, I was wet. I squeezed my thighs together and held onto that sweet ache inside. I loved being naked with him. But I wanted to be more than naked. I wanted him to not only know what was under my clothing, but further under, under the skin itself, somewhere deep inside where only he seemed to reach. Instinctively, I arched my hips and parted my legs against his stiffening cock. It was the affinity that puzzle pieces have for one another, the easy click of a key in the right lock.

Forgetting the paint, I pulled him in closer. It had been too long. I was in withdrawal and wanted my fix urgently. But he lifted himself up onto his hands and peered down at me, pulling back and teasing me, his cock hanging thick and long between us. I begged him with my eyes. He smiled and grasped my waist, then with an abrupt movement spun me around onto my stomach. I giggled as we both watched the paint on my chest press and seep into the bed sheet beneath us.

I peeled my skin off to have a closer look at the mark I had made, human paintbrush that I was, but he quickly dropped his weight down onto me again and pressed me into the floor. I shrieked as the cold paint on his chest touched my back, then dissolved into giggles.

I was a mess. This was all a huge, silly mess.

And I think I loved it.

I wiggled underneath him as he made a big show of smearing me with paint.

“So help me God, Adam, if you get paint in my bits I will never forgive you.”

I felt him sit up, perched on my thighs and quite possibly admiring my paint-smeared rear end.

“What? That’s not the right spirit at all. An artist must become one with their work, Nyx…”

I laughed and squirmed and tried to twist round to see him. Out the corner of my eye I saw him tracing lopsided hearts onto my bottom.

“Gosh, how romantic,” I said.

“You’re awfully opinionated for a paintbrush, you know that?” he said, and when he smiled, the twinkle in his eye did something to me. Not just to my body but …deeper inside. All at once, I thought of Jackson Fucking Pollock. The fateful night with Leah. The night I Went Too Far. It wasn’t like a Jackson Pollock painting at all. It was just disgusting. And I was disgusting. I couldn’t smile anymore.

“Hey what’s wrong?” he said and leaned into my ear to kiss it.

I tried to answer but choked on my own words. I was disgusting. A wave of anger and humiliation washed over me. This was stupid. I was stupid.

“Get off me, I think I want to get up,” I said.

He was by my side in a heartbeat, his hand reaching out for my chin. The bitterness was rising in my throat. Something was wrong.

“We can stop if you want to, only look at what an awesome painting we were making.”

I looked.

To my amazement, it wasn’t half bad.

Lying underneath our red-streaked bodies was a giant, red-and-white abstract painting, part Rorschach blot and part finger painting. It actually looked …nice.

I reached down and touched the red. The color looked so thrilling on my skin, so vibrant and scary and loud. I lifted my fingertips to examine it closely, then stroked lines down the front of my chest.

“I think …wouldn’t this make a cool scene for the play? Just this right here?” I looked at him, hair disheveled and skin doused in glorious lashings of red.

He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “A murder scene? A virginal bed?”

“Both,” I said, and gave him a strange smile.

He embraced me.

“I like the way you think,” he said. “Now if you don’t mind, I think it’s my turn to be the paintbrush.”

I couldn’t help but break into a smile. It was impossible to feel sad with him looking at me the way he was. We hugged and tumbled and soon he was on the bottom, and the ache was back in full force, and my hips clasped for dear life round his hard body, his cock pressing firm against the slit between my legs.

“Now so help me Nyx, if you get paint on my bits, I’m going to be--”

“Shh! That’s quite enough out of you, Mr. paintbrush, you just lie there and do your job, OK?” I said, and pressed a finger to his lips.

He smiled.

Holding his gaze with hungry eyes, I reached for him, placing the hot knot of his dick at the entrance to my body, savoring that sweet moment of inevitability, pushing myself to feel just how delicious it felt to want him so much it came in pangs. I eased over the wide lump of him and settled noiselessly onto his body, a little flicker of recognition passing over his face as both our bodies took a moment to remember how exquisitely they fit together.

I took the next inch slowly, so slowly it took me several breaths, but my greedy body was way ahead of me, squeezing onto his and sending warm, deep flutters of pleasure all through me. His hands rose to my hips and held me there. Frozen except for the sweet, tentative movements linking us together, we sunk into one another, all heat and wetness and bright, zinging bliss buzzing through us both.

It was heaven.

What happened next? Well, I remember it only vaguely. We made love, of course. But it was unlike anything else I had done with Adam ever before. It’s as though the memories of that evening themselves were burnt out, my neurons stroked to frazzling and then simply blacking out with pleasure.

We must have kissed. He must have held me gently as he stroked pump after pump of ecstasy into my body, waiting for me to absorb every last ripple he had given me before pulling back and lunging into another. And another. He must have squeezed me and pressed hard on my skin – if the finished painting was anything to go by. And if the finished pattern of bruises and scratches on my arms and thighs and belly were anything to go by, he must have done …other stuff too.

In our red and white haze, in the middle of our swirling, slashing, exploding red masterpiece, I remember him poised behind me, his strong body delivering aggressive thrusts into that swollen cleft, his arms wrapped tight all around me as I whimpered and felt myself slip further and further into that deep, delicious void.

“You like that don’t you? Hm?”

I could only respond by groaning and writhing under him.

“You fucking like that? You like being a little slut for me?”

I could feel something delicious rattling all through my legs, making them shake and shudder.

“Good, be my little slut then… good girl …I want your legs wider,” he growled, and pressed me open.

It was too much. Too intense. Too deep.

I remember his breath in my ear as I came, came so hard I felt my heart nearly stop, felt my eyes squeeze so tight all the colors wrung out, felt every muscle pull and snap as I convulsed with orgasm.

And after I had stopped screaming, after my body had stopped jerking and bucking on that ruined white sheet, I remember coming to consciousness again, his muscular arms still round me, and as I opened my eyes I saw the red on white. The skin on skin.

We lay there together till the paint started to go tacky. I peeled off him with a crackle and gave him an astonished, happy smile. How did he always know how to do that to me? How could he always tell just what I needed? It had grown so dark I couldn’t see the painting clearly. I reached over to him and touched his lips, his chin. It was a still, magical moment. He looked down at his lap and then back at me.

“OK, keep giving me that look and you’re going to start something again.” He gave me a playful smack on the knee. “And we’ve got work to do for heaven’s sake. You really are a bad influence on me, you know?”

He stood and offered me a hand and we both got to our feet, still giddy. We must have looked insane, the pair of us. Like serial killers. Like we had spent the evening stomping wine grapes, but naked.

We held hands and looked down at the painting. It really was perfect.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” I said at last.

“And I can’t believe you’re actually going to give this to Tamara,” was his response.

Yes, why not? She didn’t have to know how it was made. In fact, it would be perfect, just as it was. A little secret mini play inside a play. A red and white talisman.

Art.

Chapter 19

“Boulotte doesn’t get saved?” she said. “But that’s …that’s kind of the whole point of the story.”

I hadn’t worked too closely with the writers up till this point, but Tamara had shoved us all in a room and was now insisting that we wouldn’t leave until we had given poor Boulotte what she deserved, i.e. a grittier take than we had done with her character so far. Lynn, one of the writers, look alarmed at what I was saying.

“She’s right,” said a weedy guy in the corner, one whose name I always forgot. “Boulotte needs to be saved. There’s no narrative tension if shit just gets worse and worse for her.”

I drummed the back end of my pencil on the table and tried to think. I knew that when they looked at me, they saw someone who was a little young, a little stupid, perhaps. But I was onto something, I knew it. Boulotte was boring. Innocent was boring. We needed to come out with something that was truly wicked. The victim had to want it. It seemed so obvious to me now.

“No,” I said carefully, contemplating the wood grain on the desk. “I really feel like we need to get rid of that completely. No brother coming to rescue her. No father. Nobody saves her.”

“Then what?” the weedy guy said. “She goes into the chamber like, laughing or something?”

I shot him a dark look.

“I’ve got it. Bluebeard is not so much a murderer. He’s just kinky,” I said.

Both of the writers groaned, but I had Tamara’s attention.

“Picture this,” I said. “He wants to initiate her into …we don’t even go into it. But something dark and sexy, definitely taboo. This room, right? This bloody chamber? It’s like right on the edge of things, right on the precipice between scary and sexy. So sure, it’s whips and chains and things, but it’s more than that. He’s a magician, right? We’re already hinting heavily at the sex element, why not just come out and say it? Just run with it? And Boulotte is saved, but she’s saved because she isn’t afraid of what’s in the chamber …in fact, she’s curious.”

Silence.

“Michael’s going to shit himself when he finds out there isn’t a brother role. Seriously, Tamara, to change the whole story now, this late in the game?” whined the skinny guy. But Tamara was deep in thought, as though she was listening to a very quiet voice only she could hear.

“So, help me understand this Nyx. I think that Boulotte still needs to feel …sacrificial somehow,” she said.

“Oh and she will, don’t worry. But it’s only her innocence that’s murdered. We could make her become the first successful wife of Bluebeard. A woman to actually match his depravity.”

The two writers exchanged worried glances with one another, but Tamara was smiling.

“Yes, yes I can see that. It’s crazy though,” she said and looked me straight in the eye.

“Maybe,” I said and smiled easily.

The weedy guy looked a bit put out, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care that there were rumors about me on this production, that people had thought I had been given preference just because of my last name, or that Tamara had lost her mind in giving me such free run with everything – right up to deciding to completely change the final scene with only two weeks to opening night. I didn’t care. It was a good idea, and it felt good speaking it out loud.

“Sooo… Bluebeard is actually into BDSM and little Boulotte is not so innocent after all?” Lynn said, not bothering much to hide her sarcasm.

“No. Bluebeard’s not into BDSM. It’s so much scarier than that. Think more like …he’s sold his soul to the devil himself. He’s almost pure evil. Dark sided.”

I trilled my pencil faster, images and ides bubbling up into my mind quicker than I could hold onto them. It was as though Boulotte herself were there somehow.

“So, the idea is that thematically, Boulotte discovers that her husband’s good-looking appearance actually covers over some shocking truths. It’s a fairy tale about not looking too closely at the dark masculine, about rooms you shouldn’t be looking into. The punishment for looking is death …but what if you can handle what you see? If you’re OK with it somehow? What if Boulotte looks at Bluebeard, evil as he is, and still loves him?”

Lynn scoffed.

“I’m sorry but that’s ridiculous,” she said. “It sounds so cheap and obvious, Nyx, honestly. I just think it’s a bad idea.”

“It’s actually a stronger arc than what we had before. She goes from completely naïve to fully initiated. She overcomes everything, she’s completely transformed. It’s sweet really, a bit of an allegory for discovering sexuality in general, don’t you think?” I asked.

I knew they knew about me and Adam. I knew that every last forest nymph and maid in waiting would have given her left arm to have a go at Adam. Well, as far as I was concerned, they could all have him. I shoved the thought out of my mind.

Tamara chuckled to herself and made some notes on her notepad.

“What happens, then, from the moment Boulotte discovers the chamber? We have the bloody key, now what? Writers, I need you to work on this and have something for me within the next few days.”

“But …but what about…” the weedy guy said.

“If you have any questions, ask Nyx,” Tamara said.

I felt ten feet tall.

“Sure,” the weedy guy said.

“I like the direction this is going,” Tamara said. “It’s late, I know. We’re going to have to backtrack a little and make sure the ending is still cohesive. But I think it’s worth the risk. We’ve been playing a little safe, it’s true. We’ve been too …too…”

“Too Disney,” I said, and stopped drumming pencil on the table.

She smiled at me.

“Yes, exactly.”

Chapter 20

If you’ve never experienced the static electricity that snaps and hums in the air on the opening night of any new play, it’s impossible to describe. Like a strange, wobbly machine, the crew and actors and organizers behind the scenes hurry about and boot up slowly, everything coming to life in pieces.

And as the set is prepped and the players all breathe and quickly whip through their lines just one more time before the big moment, nothing is allowed to be insignificant. Every little item becomes a prop, every little word needs to be delivered properly, and at the right time. Costumes are checked and double checked. Forest nymphs tighten their dance shoes.

I loved every second of it. It was almost a play in itself, watching everyone bustle around and get ready. I had rehearsed so much it felt like Boulotte was just another version of me. Slowly, it took no effort to be her. Slowly, I spoke her words each rehearsal as though they were my own, as though they were simply what needed to be said with each unfolding moment.

And if I let myself get carried away with it, I could release myself into the flow of that strange machine, and after a while, the script spoke me, and Boulotte came alive and moved me as a puppet, and we all whirled and glided over those boards, every movement choreographed, but done for the first time new somehow, with new players, in front of new eyes.

It was a completely full house – something even Tamara had been impressed by – and the curtains were set to raise in just five minutes. I had peeked and seen the usually empty hall bustling with dimly lit people. I closed the curtain again and took a deep breath. I was wearing Boulotte’s tattered rags for the opening scene. The first scene would have me sitting with my sisters at our sputtering hearth and dreaming of a new life, and in would bluster mighty Bluebeard, ready to seduce us all away with promises of a life of luxury and maybe, a little dark magic.

“You’re going to be amazing.”

I turned to see Tamara smiling at me, and instantly gave her a big hug.

“Oh god I’m so nervous!”

“Nah, don’t be,” she laughed, and looked deeply into my eyes.

Something about that look brought a small, hot tear to my eye. I felt my chest tighten.

“Nyx? You’re going to be amazing. I know it’s been a weird few months for you. But you have this sorted,” she said and grinned again at me.

I thought of my father. I had tried hard all morning not to, but I couldn’t resist anymore and his face burst into my mind, every painful fold and line of his face, every stinging memory, every picture that made my heart feel scraped out and empty.

“Did you ever watch him? Did you ever see him perform?” I said quickly, the atmosphere behind stage felt as though it was suddenly dissolving all filters, all manners. A strange place between worlds. But she seemed to know exactly whom I was talking about.

“Luckily for me, I did. He was something, wasn’t he? You have his talent, no question.”

She hugged me again.

“Really? As good as him?”

The other eye had its own tear now, too. I left it there.

“As good as him? Oh no…” she said, and took a quick peek toward the crowd. “Oh no Nyx, not as good. Much, much better,” she said and winked at me, looking over my costume to see that everything was in order.

My cheeks burned hot. I heard the crowd buzz behind the heavy velvet of the curtain. I nodded back and smeared away the tears with the back of my hand. Some of the white on my face came off on the skin of my hand. I looked down at it, eyes bleary. It was beautiful. It wasn’t exactly a trance I went into at that moment. But maybe it was.

The stage crew hushed and took their places. The lights in the hall dimmed even further and the crowd stilled. We were all waiting. Waiting for the magic to unfold. The stage was cleared and waiting. The lights looked down in anticipation for it all to begin. The people in the crowd pleated their programs and held them crumpled in their laps, stopped chattering and all looked forward.

It was time to start.

“Where the fuck is Adam?” I heard Tamara hiss. I closed my eyes and tried to center myself. Adam was always late. Always. But he’d be here. I knew he would. This moment was simply too important. A few flustered crew members in black burst quickly along the side of my vision, hastily fretting over a tall figure, walking so fast you’d think he could clear the stage in three strides. Adam. My Adam. There he was. I smiled to myself and tried to steady my nerves.

I’d know him anywhere. Even without the elaborate neck frills and buckled shoes of a French aristocrat, even without the wig and immodest cake makeup, he was larger than life. Bigger than any person here, so big that I knew the moment he erupted in on the domestic scene with me and my peasant sisters, everything would change for us forever. I peered over to see him clumsily tying on black ribbons over his stockings, and smiled. He straightened and immediately caught my gaze. Through the bustle, we locked eyes.

While the backstage flurry blurred away, he came into sharp, high def focus. He smiled at me as if in slow motion. The tiny black heart painted on his cheek crinkled slightly as he looked at me smiling, eating me up. A moment before he had been clumsy, goofy Adam. Larger than life, outrageous, irreverent Adam.

But as he straightened and pierced me with this new, different gaze, he became The Beast. The Murderous Magician. Bluebeard himself. The effect was so swift it nearly took my breath away. He was a vision of perfectly coiffed cruelty. Civilized, urbane. A gentleman with tastes his traumatized house servants called ‘unconventional’. A man with dark eyes and a dark heart. A man with a secret chamber, filled with the bodies of women just like me.

“Places everyone! Places!”

Through a flurry of whispers and clumsy activity, I tore my eyes away and found my spot. The curtains were about to open. With a beautiful roll and click, the great scarlet curtains heaved themselves up and opened, one world meeting the other.

My heart skipped a beat.

The lights warmed on the heads of my sisters around the fire. The crowd was silent. I took a breath and then stepped out into the light, and as it touched me, I became Boulotte, the deliciously hapless heroine who, slowly but surely, would land herself in the delightful jaws of a predator…a predator sexy as the devil himself.

My mouth opened and the lines spoke themselves through me, perfectly on cue.

And just like that I was swept along.

Chapter 21

Later that month, very much later, I went to visit my parents.

The newspaper clipping felt dry and rough against my skin, bundled in my jacket pocket with my cold hands. My breath came in clouds as I walked. It was the dead of winter now, right at the apex of the pendulum where it seems as though everything pauses completely before coming back down into another swing. Spring was poised, but not yet quite ready to bloom. Everything around me felt frozen in time for a moment.

I walked on, winced as I unlatched the icy cold iron gate and walked into the cemetery. No graves, just a plaque. Some crispy carcasses of flowers that may have been white to start with. Fans of my father, most likely.

I knelt down before the grave, the frozen ground hard as steel against my knees. I took the clipping from my pocket and unfolded it. The bitter wind tried to snatch it from my hands but I held it, cleared my throat, and started to read.

“That the daughter of late stage legend Norman Westling should so thoroughly replicate her father’s frightening talent is no surprise. But after watching Blackworth College’s offbeat reworking of Fairy Tale Bluebeard, what is surprising is just how much further the young actress is willing to go. Together with the adept Adam Morgan, Nyx Westling brings to life a tale so deliciously macabre, I watched with delighted horror throughout every second of the production – which on the down side was a touch too long.

This is a young, viciously talented generation of new artists that I for one will be watching closely – not least because, yes, the whole thing is dripping with sex appeal. The producers are not afraid to lay it on thick and then some. As the female lead gets into worse and worse trouble, the audience flits between obvious sympathy and concern for her, and a truly morbid desire to see just what form her ruin will take.

By the time the final scene rolls round (no spoilers from me!) all pretense is gone. The viewer is fully complicit. The entire effect is more Marquis de Sade than Fifty Shades. The audience feels involved not in a mere play, but in a dark ritual of sorts; a ceremony of sex, magic and death. I left the theatre with the strong sensation that I had taken part in something sickeningly real. A solid ten out of ten. Don’t miss it.”

I crumpled the newspaper clipping back into my pocket and wiped away the wet at the end of my cold nose. I looked at the silent plaque. What would my parents have said, if they could see me now? Well, dad would have made a dumb, off color joke, obviously, and mum would have slapped his arm and tried to pretend she didn’t find it funny.

Some slate grey clouds skidded across the horizon and threatened further drizzle. I thought of saying some words. But now was no time for a performance. No point now in tears or drama. I knelt in silence for a moment, then rose and dusted my knees. A bundled figure came hobbling slowly up the path. We both paused when we saw one another. Aunt Lila, I realized with a start.

She, too said nothing. She simply positioned herself next to me and together we looked at the plaque. I hadn’t seen her since the day we fought. It had been months.

“Well done,” she finally said, voice as dry and brittle as the roses, which I now began wondering – had she left them?

I looked at her.

Even in her sharp collared jacket, even in the harsh cold, there was something warm in her face. In my memories she always looked like so much more of a harpy. But now her eyes were damp and soft and she looked utterly harmless. It made me feel strange.

“Your production, I mean,” she continued. “You did very well.” She said these words slowly and deliberately, as though each one cost her a great deal, and she was taking pains not to say the wrong thing.

“You heard about it?” I said, trying to sound casual.

The corner of her mouth flickered into a little smile.

“Nyx, I watched it,” she said. “I came to every performance, obviously.”

I looked away.

“Oh. Well, that’s not so obvious to me,” I said.

When she sighed it came as the same little white clouds. Not much different from my own.

“Nyx I’m proud of you,” she said quietly, although to the plaque, and not to me.

“Yes, well, it seems like whoring around and embarrassing you has all worked out pretty well in the end, huh?”

I was surprised at the venom in my voice. It had been almost nine months since she had cancelled that stupid direct debit. Nine months since I had moved into a dingy student hovel with four others and nine months of working 12 hour days, seven days a week. Not a lot of time, in some ways. But in other ways, a lifetime. I had learnt a lot since then.

“I’ve had a chance to do a lot of thinking, Nyx. The way I handled things was …well, it left something to be desired. I know that. But you must understand, I was grieving too. I missed your father terribly. I still do.”

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care. That it wasn’t any of my business what she did now. But before I could, she was speaking again.

“I was even a little envious of you, to be honest.”

I shot her a confused look. Envious?

“You know, you running around, being so young and carefree. And I thought I was helping. You were always a difficult child, Nyx. The thought of being your legal guardian …I cannot describe how terrifying it was to me. There’s a damn good reason I didn’t have children, you know,” she said, and chuckled quietly to herself.

It suddenly didn’t seem quite so important that I gloat about my good review. At least not now.

I let the conversation fizzle and float off with her white breath.

“I miss them,” I said quietly.

“Me too.”

We stood together a little longer.

“Do you …do you need anything? Are you alright sweetheart?” she asked carefully.

I narrowed my eyes at the glaring light that seemed to be slicing through the horizon now that the sun was starting to dip down.

“No, thank you.”

Her lips tightened but she said nothing, gave a little nod and walked out of the cemetery the same way she had come.

Chapter 22

November 21, 2021

Five Years Later

I looked down at the photographs and try to decide which one I liked better. Five slightly different versions of myself gazed back up at me from the screen.

“This one, I like this one,” I said and pointed to a glossy portrait where my head was tilted slightly down, and my eyes seemed a bit cloudier somehow. I was wearing a black-ish, trendy kimono, you could see my sleeve tattoos and my hair was tousled and half-tucked into my collar. A proper artsy-fartsy affair, that was for sure. I liked it.

“Yes, I like that one the best, too,” the photographer said, and handed it with a flourish to an assistant. The interviewer with Deep End magazine was waiting for me in the foyer. I wiped my hand across my forehead and looked down to see a white streak of makeup left on the skin. I smiled. It was beautiful.

I was still warm, still buzzing. I could still feel his fingernails dragging deliciously down the skin of my back. Could still taste him. Could still feel the weight of his body all around me. And in me.

I settled down into the big sofa and the interviewer kicked off with all the usual questions. I tried to answer them with all the wit and tasteful candor you’d expect from the youngest woman to ever win The Stage Awards Producer of the Year Award. It was utterly embarrassing and ridiculous, but …I liked it. All of it. Plus, it was good publicity. The interviewer suddenly changed tack and began asking slightly more personal questions.

“So, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you, as far as, what can I call it, tabloid scandal and so on, how deliberate is all of that?”

The interviewer was a cheerful gentleman with sharp teeth and manic hands. He crossed his legs and leaned in close, notebook perched on his knee even though I had signed two separate documents agreeing to be recorded. I smiled at him knowingly.

“Ah. You’re talking about Adam. Yes, he certainly finds his way into the tabloids and--”

“No, I meant you,” he said, eyes smiling.

“Me?”

“Well, yes. It certainly appears that of the two of you, you’re the more daring, no? The more fiery one? I just wanted to know if what we see in the tabloids is a true picture of the real Nyx Westling. Jeremy Fontain said recently that your habit of courting scandal must be something like a second art for you, what do you say to that?” he said through a good-natured grin.

I was still turning over the idea between Adam and me, I’d be considered the more ‘daring’ one. I’d have to remember to tell him that for sure.

“Well, uh, if there’s anything Adam has taught me, is that there are no real distinctions between life and art and so on. So I’m not sure what that even would be, a ‘true picture’. I try to be authentic. That’s all. I try to create something that I don’t just think is good, but which I actually feel is good.”

I pressed a clench fist to my chest to demonstrate exactly where this feeling would emanate from.

He nodded.

“As you’ve said in other interviews, an instinctual process,” he said.

“Exactly. An instinctual process. Like sex.”

He scribbled something into his notebook.

“Like sex?”

“Well, yes. When people make love, their sense of self is more elastic. The boundaries between them disappear almost completely, especially at the peak of ecstasy. It’s not about what looks good or sounds good, it’s just about pleasure. Just about what feels good. With good sex, there is no question about what is real or not, what comes next, or any of that. We all have the instinct in us, I think, that inbuilt timing. Good sex is always like good theatre. The ultimate performance. And so when I work on a production, that’s what I mean about working instinctually. Feeling the flow of what to do and when, in the same way as you’d ask yourself that during the act of lovemaking.”

He lifted an amused eyebrow at me. I could see the article already, see the over-the-top headline they’d splash on everything. Maybe I did court scandal after all.

“Well, that’s certainly an interesting take, and rather gutsy if I’m honest,” he said and gave an uncomfortable laugh.

I liked it. I liked that I put him slightly on edge.

“But it was always a very obvious move for you, wasn’t it? Coming from a family already so heavily involved in the theatre, anyway?”

There was something a bit nasty in his smile this time.

“Actually, in the very beginning, the plan was never to act at all.”

“Really? Some would say that you’ve been extremely fortunate, privileged even …certainly many talented young people didn’t start life with nearly the connections you did, and from what I’ve heard…”

“What have you heard?” I said bluntly.

He smiled. His teeth weren’t so sharp as they had first seemed.

“Oh, only the rumors of course, but you know people do have their theories. Your critics for one say it’s easy to create the kind of fantasy theatre you do when you’ve had such an easy rise to fame.”

“Easy?”

“Well, you’re basically theatre royalty. You’ve had many opportunities handed to you.”

“Nothing was ever easy for me,” I said.

He held up his hand and looked apologetic.

“No, of course not. Of course it wasn’t. I suppose the question to ask is, would you see yourself going into acting and directing if you hadn’t, by some chance, been born the child of a great actor? Would you have pursued that path anyway?”

“There’s no question in my mind that I would have,” I said.

The light glinted off his teeth as he smiled once more, and extended his hand.

We shook.

“Miss Westling, it has been an absolute pleasure.”

“Well, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” I said and laughed. “Pleasure.”

The photographer gave me a sly look as I put on my jacket and left the building. I took a glance at my phone. It was getting late. My fingers tapped quickly over the screen:

Interview was ghastly. You were right. I should have turned it down!

The reply was instant.

Should have …but didn’t. But I do know how much you love having your picture taken, though ;)

Even now, nobody could make me blush harder than he could. It was his special talent, riling me up like this, with minimum effort. Sending me into an urgent frenzy with a look, a naughty word. I pulled the collar up round my neck and found my car, turned on the ignition and made my way home.

Chapter 23

“Mommy’s late again! Mommy’s late again!” came a shrill little voice from inside the house. I threw my car keys into my handbag and walked up the driveway, pretending to hide my face in my hands from shame. There was a time when Adam was the late one. I suppose life goes on, though.

“No, I’m not that late!” I mumbled and when I parted my fingers I saw her standing in the doorway, very pleased with herself indeed.

“Yes, late. Too late. You can’t come in,” she said and grabbed the door jamb, blocking my entry with her little arms.

“Yeah? Well what do you want, a magic word or something?”

“Yes.”

“OK, is the magic word Nelly?” I said.

She looked crestfallen. She was only three, granted, and I don’t think she knew that many words period, nevermind magic ones.

“Noooo, it’s not Nelly,” she said and gave me a naughty smile.

“It’s not?”

“No!”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Nelly though.”

“No!”

“Then what is it then?”

She looked around at my feet, then her little face brightened.

“It’s flower!” she said.

“Oh, OK, not Nelly?”

“No!”

I scaled the steps and stood before her.

“Wait, you can’t come in yet! You didn’t say the magic word!”

“But I know the magic word. It’s flower,” I said, and kissed her cheek. Her little face scrunched down into a frown. She had deep, expressive eyes and cheekbones to make a supermodel jealous.

“No it’s not!” she said, getting flustered.

“Hey hey hey, what’s all this commotion?” came Adam’s voice from inside the house. I looked up and smiled to see him there, tall, shirtless and with a paperback in his hands, all bent out of shape.

“It appears I can’t come in because I don’t know the magic word,” I told him. Our eyes locked for a moment. My home. Those eyes. Of all the roles we had played in our time together, of all the lines I had seen him deliver, of all the expressions, all the costumes, there was one role I never tired of sawing him in. And it was this role right here. This bare chested Adam, clear eyed, something mischievous playing on his lips, and nothing but a silent smile. God, I loved him like this.

“Well that’s perfectly all right, I happen to know the magic word,” he said and bent down to grab her round her little belly.

“No! Don’t tell her!” she squealed and giggled in his arms, but he had hoisted her up high and now had her perched on his shoulder where she looked at me red-faced and indignant.

“It’s Nelly,” he whispered loudly to me.

I laughed and stepped inside.

“Nelly Nelly Nelly!” he said and blew bubbles on her stomach and she squealed and wriggled on his shoulders as I shut the door behind me and put my stuff down on the kitchen table. He put her down and she gave me a poorly aimed kiss on my knee, then scampered off to another room, no doubt to figure out a more reliable magic word.

“Interview no good?” he asked. He came over to me and wrapped warm, dry hands round the back of my neck. I smiled, shut my eyes and sunk into the comforting musk of his neck.

“Ugh,” I said and I heard him laugh quietly from somewhere inside his chest. He stroked my hair to the side and kissed my brow.

“Don’t worry, Leah will be here soon and then you can tell me all about it, hm?” he said quietly.

I smiled at the thought. It had been a hell of a week. Two interviews, too many late nights meeting with the cast of Sinderella, too many scripts and lines and ring binders. But in Adam’s arms, none of that seemed to matter quite as much. We had come a long way together, me, him, and those naughty eyes of his. The doorbell rang, and Nelly ran off to go and answer it and, presumably, tell the visitor that they couldn’t pass unless they guessed a very, very obvious magic word.

Adam pecked my cheek and disentangled himself.

“Here she is! Let me dash off and put a shirt on quick,” he said and disappeared off to the bedroom. I could already hear Nelly’s bossy little voice through the hallway.

“No, it isn’t Nelly, that’s not the magic word!”

I came up behind her, swooped her up and let Leah in.

“Blimey, Nyx, she’s definitely your child, isn’t she? Stubborn as a mule, I swear,” she said and came in laughing.

“What, me? Nah that’s all Adam, promise. He’s taught her all that magic word shit” I said and closed the door.

“Daddy! Daddy! Mom said a swear,” Nelly squealed in my arms.

“Mommy don’t swear,” came Adam’s voice from the bedroom.

“Charming,” Leah said and leaned in to give Nelly a big kiss on her cheek. “You all right love? Ready to come with auntie Leah?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a good girl.”

Nelly scrambled off to fetch her little backpack and I handed Leah a cooler bag of juice and snacks. Leah still had her outrageous red dreadlocks these days, only they were a little shorter now, and she had foregone glitter and hot pants.

“Who’d have thought, hey, Nyx? You. A mum. I still can’t get over it sometimes, you know?”

“You and me both,” I said.

We walked into the living room just as Adam emerged from the bedroom, hair still ruffled from a hastily thrown on shirt. It was no use, really. There wasn’t very much he could do to hide that body of his, truly.

“Hey, Adam.”

“Ah, Leah! Greetings. Did you get the magic word right?” he said, smiling.

Leah laughed and then frowned and pointed to something in the dining room.

“Hey, is that new?” she said.

I followed her gaze. The picture. She was pointing to a giant white canvas, splattered and smeared with red, hanging behind the dining room table.

“That? No that’s not new at all. Just …something Adam and I made,” I said. I flashed him a naughty smile and he sent one right back at me.

“Jesus. It’s pretty intense for a living room, isn’t it?” Leah said. We all laughed. For those who didn’t know, it might have looked a little …serial killer-ish, it’s true.

“All right poppet, you all ready to go? I’ve got something for you that you’re going to love…” Leah said to Nelly when she came bounding back in to join us. She gave me saucy wink, took Nelly’s hand and in a moment they were outside again, chattering away, and Adam and I stood on the front door steps, watching them both disappear into the night. As Nelly’s prattling faded off into the distance, and the night closed dark and quiet around them, I reached out for his hand and gently took it in mine.

“I’ve got something for you that you’re going to love,” he whispered under his breath. I shot him a look and he beamed at me.

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Uh huh. Wanna see it?” he said and gave me a cheeky grin.

I led him inside and locked the door, then pinned him against it.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted you all day,” I purred into his ears.

“You have?”

“I’ve missed this,” I said and reached for his crotch, wishing he’d take every single last stitch of his stupid clothing off and never put it back on again. His laugh was quiet and low, and his hips tucked a little to press towards me.

“Tell me how much. Tell me how much you’ve missed it,” he said.

“Oh God, I was sitting all through that stupid interview thinking of you, thinking how badly I wanted it.”

“You want it?”

“Only all of it,” I said and peered up at him, hunger in my eyes. He reached his fingertips down and pulled me closer to him for a kiss. He pulled away again, looked deep into my eyes.

“Suck it,” he said.

Something juicy kicked inside the pit of my stomach. I dropped to my knees in an instant, tearing away at his jeans, yanking them down to reveal his manly form. His thick hard cock sprung out at me and I took it between my lips without skipping a beat. I slid the ring of my mouth down his shaft and then all the way back up again, slowly, deliberately. At the tip I kissed closed and stared back up at him.

“A little intense for a living room, isn’t it?” I teased.

“Wanna take this party to the bedroom?” he said, smiling down at me.

I got to my feet and we scrambled to the bedroom, clumsily shedding clothing as we went. He gripped my wrist and spun me around, and I went skidding, landing square on the bed in a fit of giggles.

“It really is a fucking horrid painting,” he said, laughing.

“I found it in the basement the other day, I thought it was time to bring it out again.”

I sunk into his delicious lips again.

Even now, years later, Adam could still make me giggle and hiccup like I was drunk, could make my head spin, could make my fingertips tingle and my eyes shine with naughty ideas. He still made me giddy, woozy, easily dissolved into a puddle of lust with just a little flick of his wrist, a little magic and a little smile on those delicious lips of his…

“Fuck me,” I pleaded, and spread myself on the bed before him. He stood towering over me, his strong hands in fists at his sides, his body tight and hard and a little dangerous looking.

“Oh I will, but you’re not done sucking me yet,” he said, and took a step towards me.

I rolled onto my back and gave him a goofy smile. He took his time scanning his black eyes over every part of my naked, vulnerable body. He knew that when I got horny like this, I would do anything for his cock. Anything. And so he looked me over and decided just exactly how far he could push his luck today.

My desperate hands went to the aching folds between my legs and I started rubbing furiously. It was small relief – what I really wanted was him. I wanted to throw my head back and let him take me roughly, to have his fat dick locked into me, right to the very hilt, and to fuck him so hard that he exploded deep inside and his voice went weak and broke and I heard that gorgeous, shuddering sound came bubbling out of his throat.

But instead he angled my head off the bed, guiding me gently so that it lay dangling off the mattress. My legs flopped open as I watched him upside down, his cock like a monolith over me. He had always been a …veiny man. And from this angle, I admired how hot he looked from underneath, his cock tight and rippled as he took it in his hands and gently, gingerly glanced it over my cheek. Instinctively I opened my lips, closed my eyes.

“Good,” he whispered.

The swollen tip was slid over the contours of my lips, slowly, tracing a delicious path round my slightly opened mouth. The ache at my clit became a white-hot fire, the flames licking further and further up from my hips, engulfing me in a quiet inferno as he looked down at me, his own face perfectly composed. He knew how much I wanted him.

“Now put your head back.”

I obeyed and scooted myself to the edge of the mattress, letting my head flop a little off the edge. The blood rushed to my head.

“More,” he ordered, so I scooted down some more.

“Now open your mouth for me.”

I moaned and opened my mouth, feeling the tightness in my throat as I let go and exposed my neck to him. One firm hand at the base of his cock, and another resting gently on my brow, he lowered himself onto my hot tongue and pressed himself down, down and into my throat. Adam was a big guy. I already knew this. But in this position, he felt so thick it was almost overwhelming. I took a deep breath and focused on the sensation of my lips against him, of the warm musk of his skin.

To my delight, I felt little ripples throbbing through his veins; little pulses rush through his cock as he guided himself further into my mouth. It was intense. I couldn’t move. He inched in slowly, very slowly, and the moment became strange, almost meditative. Head back, upside-down, everything felt more sensitive somehow. I swallowed. This alone caused his cock to bounce in my throat, and he whimpered a little under his breath.

“Fuck, that feels amazing,” he said.

I was too focused on accommodating every last morsel of his glorious dick that I could scarcely respond. Everything in the room disappeared and all that existed was his hot, throbbing pole wedged deep in me, a delicate position, one where the slightest movement would be unbearable, would make him come.

“Play with yourself,” he said.

My hand went between my legs again and I easily found that electrical spot again, that delicious thrill buzzing in my clit and sending waves of bliss all through my body.

“Make yourself come for me,” he said, and as he did, he tilted his hips a little towards me. I lapped my tongue around his length and heard him growl in response. I teased my pussy till I felt close to coming, closer and closer to the edge. The closer I got, the more I fancied his dick reaching deep into me, so deep it shot right through my entire body, penetrating all of me and somehow responsible for the gorgeous ecstasy brewing from below, curling my toes, shooting up through my legs and radiating out from my hips.

He moaned, bent at the knees, pleasuring himself in my mouth, stroking aside the damp hair from my temples.

“Are you going to come for me?” he muttered.

Oh God, did I want to come for him. I pressed hard against my clit, squeezing out a throb of pleasure there that instantly exploded and sent big, delicious shudders all up my body, all along my spine. When I moaned, the sound wasn’t from my throat, but from somewhere much, much deeper. From way down inside me, I cried out with his dick still in my mouth, my throat involuntarily clenching and tightening around him.

“Oh fuck,” he cried.

His stomach muscles hardened and pulsed as he exploded onto my tongue, his cum emptying out into my mouth. I loved the noises he made when he came. Half whimper, half growl. That ragged, desperate little cry right at the moment of surrender. I was almost sad when he gently pulled out of my mouth and stood there for a moment, dazed.

“You’re fucking amazing,” he said, and idly traced the sticky white tip of his dick on my lower lip.

I kissed him. “No you’re amazing,” I said and giggled.

“No, you. You’re the amazing one,” he I insisted and pounced onto the bed beside me. I beamed.

“Shut up, you are.”

He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me right up close to him, gave me a smoldering look and then diving in for a passionate kiss. I wanted him again. The memory of orgasm was fading fast and in its place came that same wild ache again. I wouldn’t be satisfied until he fucked me. Hard.

“Now, tell me again, what was it you wanted?” he said slyly, between kisses.

“I wanted you to…” I traced my fingertips down his sweat-slick chest and down towards his navel and even lower down to the patch of fuzz growing underneath it, “…to fuck me,” I said playfully.

I got up onto my hands and knees and waggled my hips for him. He didn’t need any further encouragement. He split open the folds of my drenched body and slid into me easily. We both paused for a moment, savoring how delicious it felt, how perfect to be cradled in one another’s bodies like this, how neat and tight the fit, how warm, how wet.

His hands wrapped tightly round my waist; he drew himself up and gazed down at me. I threw my hips back against him, daring him to do his worst. Though I was a fancy up and coming director these days, and though I spent all day telling stage hands what to do and when …in the bedroom, it was all Adam.

He still knew all my secrets. All the strange little trapdoors and quicksands of my heart, knew my nightmares, my dreams, how I liked to be touched. Still Adam who looked me in the eyes and told me to spread my legs. Adam who told me to calm down, to just shut up and kiss him. Adam who knew what I needed. And Adam, the only one who could give it to me…

When we were finished, we sprawled out together on the bed, exhausted and sweaty and messy-haired. And grinning. He leaned over for a kiss and got up.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” he said and disappeared off to the bathroom. I smiled and blew him a kiss and then collapsed down on the bed again, cooling off, the buzz in my head slowly quieting down.

I sat up cross-legged on the bed and listened to the silence in the house, quiet now that little Nelly was gone for a while. I got up and went to the window, and gazed out. Though it was dark, the moon illuminated a few scraps of slow clouds moving across the sky.

I felt like I watched them forever. And then, all of a sudden, I saw them both. I saw all three of us sitting around the kitchen table making Christmas crafts. Cutting links of paper and gluing them together to make garlands for the tree. My father’s smiling face as he showed me how to line them up carefully, and even though my fingers were too stubby and I was impatient, I tried anyway, again and again, till we had a long chain that I proudly hung over the tree. I was probably only a few years older than Nelly was now.

I felt cold. I quickly wiped the moisture from my eyes. I heard Adam clattering in the bathroom and whistling under his breath, but something about the moonlight took me away for a moment, far away from our little house and everything in it. Eventually a cloud went over the moon and dulled the light. I was snapped from my reverie. I closed the curtain again and stepped back inside the room.

And then I saw it.

A stain.

At first I thought I was seeing things, but no, there it was. Clear as day, a white splatter sitting right in the center of the bed, looking defiantly back at me. If I were writing a play, a play about a young girl who finds herself and learns to love her talents, I certainly wouldn’t have used this as a recurrent motif.

Cum stains on a sheet certainly wasn’t a symbol with a hell of a lot of romance in it. I was still staring when Adam came out of the bathroom.

“Oops! Looks like we made a mess,” he said as he followed my eyes and caught sight of the wet patch. “Looks kind of interesting, doesn’t it?” he said, pulling the blanket straight and looking at it.

“Like a Jackson Pollock painting,” I said absentmindedly.

His slightly disgusted face turned happy and he smiled.

“Oh yeah, you’re right. That’s what I like about you Nyx. You always know how to see the beauty in everything, even the dirty things,” he said and leaned in for a kiss.

I smiled.

“Get dressed,” he said. “If you’re quick we can still catch that pancake truck before it closes for the night.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.