Christmas had never looked quite so bleak as it did this year.
I was newly single, just returned to London after a failed relationship -- what else was there to do but to go out and try and laugh, drink too much and pretend to be somebody else for a while?
It didn't really help that my libido was raging, having not had a good fuck in over a year... Pascal, my ex, was not only severely under-endowed, but fixated on 'making love', and, well and good as that might be on occasion... my tastes tend to veer more towards the wild fucking that comes with my fetish for BDSM.
Don't get me wrong -- Pascal is a nice guy. He genuinely is, but the relationship wasn't working... and when my friend kissed me, and I didn't stop him, well, that was the final nail in the coffin.
I sat outside a pub in south London, waiting for my friend Laura to turn up, smoking a roll-up and tapping my feet against the cold. Sighing, I looked up at the dark sky, fogged by the London mist, and wondered exactly what had happened. After a few minutes of this fairly melancholy musing, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and looked around for her, humming under my breath along to the song blaring into my ear through my one working headphone. She was supposedly dragging along her step-brother and his friend, God knew how that was going to turn out... I've never been great at meeting new people, and the state I was in -- well. I'd been talking about sex non-stop since the relationship ended, so desperate for a good fuck that I'd resorted to merely letting my imagination go into overdrive. Not that that was a rare occurrence, anyway... as a fairly day-dreamy person, my imagination tended to kick off without a moments warning -- and a fair proportion of the time, it was fairly X-rated.
A hand poked my arm, and I jumped, my headphone falling from my ear as I looked up and saw Laura grinning at me, a smoke hanging out of her mouth, 'how you doing, sweetheart?' she said, giving me a one armed hug as she yanked the man loitering next to her into view.
I didn't even look at the man for a second, I just looked at her, and said, 'just fine, except I would kill for a fuck.'
She laughed, and there was silence from beside her, before I heard an exhalation of breath and the words, 'well, my friends offered to take me out on the pull tonight, so this could be interesting...' fell from the air as I looked up to see a pair of bright eyes gazing at me with interest. My eyes slipped over his face, shrouded in the dark of the night, and I saw a pair of well-formed lips, set in a face that wore a half-smile as he raised his eyebrows at me.
'I'm Ash,' he said, patting me on the shoulder, 'I hear you're in need of some cheering up...'
I let out a half laugh and nodded, leaning back on my hands, 'yeah, could work... I'm Chess, Chessie, whatever you want to call me.'
'Cute,' he said, smiling as Laura groaned, and shoved me in the shoulder --
- 'dude, do you think you could turn off the flirting for two minutes?' she laughed, slapping her forehead as Ash shook his head.
'Jesus, Laura, I'm in there!' he laughed, stretching his arms up, 'give a guy a break!'
She shook her head, smiling, threw her smoke on the floor and grabbed my arm, 'get your ass in the pub, girl,' and we trailed in, with her step-brother behind us, still laughing as we entered the bright, loud din.
A couple of drinks later, and his friend, Andrew had turned up. Ash and I had been flirting a little, much to Laura's playful exasperation, and when her and Andy went out for a smoke, I stayed to keep Ash company out of pure self-sacrifice -- although, perhaps partially also because having seen him in the light... well, he was drop-dead gorgeous, with a body to sin for.
'Chess, keep the flirting at least PG rated, yeah?' she told me, shaking her head but laughing at the same time, and I grinned back and promised I'd try.
They left, and by the time they returned, I was leaning on my elbows over the table, laughing at something Ash had said, and watching his eyes twinkle as he looked down at me, occasionally dipping down to rest on the shadowed V partially exposed by my dress, making me blush and avert my eyes for a second... only to be drawn back, much like a moth to a flame.
'I'm heading out now,' I said, grabbing my smoke from the table and standing up, Ash's eyes following me as I stood, sending a rush of endorphins into my head as he stood too, saying he'd join me. We left the pub to a chorus of wolf-whistles from Laura and Andy, and we were both laughing as we got into the cold, dark outdoors.
I lit up, inhaling the tobacco as I blew it out into the crisp air. The nicotine hit me, and I wandered over to a bench and sat on it, smiling at Ash as he strolled after me. I shivered, hunched over as I smoked, having left my jacket inside, and he looked over and made a soft sound, 'cold, huh?'
'Yeah,' I replied, 'always am though...' and he laughed, the sound sending a shiver through my stomach.
'Do you want my coat?' he asked me, and, was it my imagination -- or did he move a little closer as he spoke? Was his voice a little huskier?
'Nah,' I replied, 'wouldn't want your pretty ass to get cold, after all...'
He laughed again, and barely a second later, his arm slipped around me, his hand slipping under the wool of my cardigan to lay on my bare skin as he pulled my body against his.