The Promise

The Promise

Pt. 0

2

of

4

Previously: When Rob Cumberland leaves his job at a Further Education college in inner London to take up a lectureship at a university, the last thing he is expecting is for any of his colleagues to make a move on him. Popular and politically correct Rob assumes his safe sex promise to be a measure that also guarantees his fidelity to girlfriend Stephanie, the mother of his child, who is at that moment, out of town. But domineering college administrator Christine Cutler spots a weakness in this assumption, and decides to personally add a carnal postscript to his leaving celebrations, by treating him to a night of casual sex. The ageing, acid tongued social climber loathed by his friends, exploits the weakness to spring an ambush on her youthful colleague. Rob's initial reluctance goes AWOL

as the

scheming bureaucrat's blackmail tricks and cunning advances bring him to a state of bewilderment and arousal from which she manoeuvres him easily into a hot moment of adulterous thrills...

Note about Phones: in 1992 in the UK, Caller Display did not exist and cellphone ownership had yet to really take off.

**********

"Steph?" he called into the dark. "Steph? Are you there?"

Rob had woken with absolutely no idea where he was, something he hated. He had thought that Steph had laid a hand on him, and he felt the weight of someone shift in the bed.

"Shhh... you're OK." An upright finger pressed softly on his lips.

"Can you put the light on?"

"If you must. I

will

look particularly gruesome at... five in the morning."

He heard some fumbling sounds, a click and then a light went on.

It wasn't Steph.

"It's...

you

... I thought that was maybe a dream."

"Well if it was, then that's one dream that's come true, darling."

It wasn't a dream.

It really wasn't a dream. He'd really done it with her, with that woman from the office—the one that no one could stand—really done it, cheated on Steph in the most random, meaningless, degraded way, and with someone who read the Daily Mail; someone whose glacial manner and snide put-downs of those she thought beneath her, blended fluently with her obsequiousness towards those she saw as standing further up. Yet the truth was that she was no better than an old boiler—and if she was an old boiler, then what was he?

He was no more than the latest guy she'd tricked and dragged into bed with her. He wondered if it would show in his face like a biblical mark, or like the shifty look on the face of a disgraced dog. He knew that when he got home, he was going to go straight up to the mirror and stare at himself to see if he looked different. Fuckit. He wasn't even going to do that. He was going to own up to Steph, at the earliest practical opportunity.

He lurched violently to the edge of the mattress, to get away from that other body in the bed. He couldn't believe he'd let a woman who wore false eyelashes have his cock inside her without a condom.

And how many times? Not that it made any difference to the shit he was in...

As he was thinking this, he noticed a box of Durex on the bedside cabinet and it started to come back to him—her strong, nimble fingers tearing open the wrapper and unrolling it down his cock, going at such unnerving speed that... that suddenly he was moving inside her and he didn't want to stop... but he must have done... he did stop. He came, and then he seemed to remember lying by her side, holding her as if they were lovers, while she murmured soft words into his ear. He didn't remember anything of what she was saying, but he remembered hearing himself chuckle quietly.

Now though, he lay there, at some distance apart from her, thinking about courses of action. He would have liked to have just thrown his clothes on, got on the Tube and gone home. But there were practicalities standing in the way of a principled exit, like the fact that the trains wouldn't be running yet. There was no principled gesture open to him that had any substance to it. If he was going to walk and try to get a night bus, he should have done it hours before

—

before he'd got into this mess. The truth was that he wasn't prepared to stand half cut, in the cold, for up to an hour. He was going to lie here until day time transport started rolling; lie here and ignore her and try and rehearse an introduction to t

he diabasis of signs as a form of hegemony

.

He looked up at the ceiling. Because of the position he'd adopted, a draught was coming in under duvet and he was beginning to feel distinctly cold. After a minute which felt like an hour, he cleared his throat.

"That was a slick little number you pulled on me out there," he said in a dry and bitter voice.

"Explain."

"Oh. Faithful partner, father... to adulterer

—

in one easy step."

"Oh. It's going to be like that then is it? It wasn't one easy step. It wasn't one step and it wasn't easy. You were eyeing me up all evening with my 'fuck me' lipstick and 'rockchick' dress and

—

whether you care to know it or not

—

you've been checking me out for months

,

every time you come into the office for no reason at all—if you want to know. Sometimes I look round and you're just staring at me. If you're on the road to ruin, well I think you know who put you on it—that was you—and you've been walking it for quite a long time."

With a filthy look on his face, he glanced again at the box of Durex, as if it were in some way to blame. He was quite uncomfortable on the edge of the bed. To add insult to injury, Christine had simply spread herself into much of the space he'd vacated.

"Huh... You know, I reckon from you telling me I needed to get

your lipstick

cleaned off, to you pushing me into you... I reckon about

—

oh—ninety minutes tops. I guess we've got to give you some credit for being a quick worker

—

oh... oh fuckit."

"Oh fuckit what?"

"Fuckit, I don't know... what is it about that song?"

"My life began with the sixties and it ended with them. It ended with that song. That's

my

song. He's singing to me."

"Is this something to do with being married?"

"Yes."

"Who were you married to?"

"Someone I shouldn't have got married to."

"Why?"

"Because he was a crook."

"Oh. You mean like the Krays or something?"

"No. He wasn't even a good one."

It was clear that that was all she wanted to say about it.

"Oh fuckit," he said, returning to the mess he was now in.

"What are you oh-fuckitting about now?"

"You. You..."

"Yes, I...?" She beckoned for his words with a cupped hand, as if she was guiding a motorist into a really tight reverse. "Let me guess. I led you astray and took advantage of a trusting nature to come between you and your vow?"

"Yeah. That sounds just about right."

"You only did it

once

, for god's sake," she snorted. "It hardly counts, does it? And you used protection."

"Hardly counts? It doesn't matter if it was one time or a hundred. It's still cheating—"

"I'm not sure I can manage another ninety nine, darling—not all at once, anyway."

"Shut up."

"Fine. But you said it."

"It's not funny."

"Really? Well, It would pass the time till you can leave in a huff and get away on a train. And, speaking for myself, it's the least you could do after waking me up like that." Her eyes passed down and up over the duvet where he lay, with no attempt at concealment.

"Look, it's really not funny."

"So you keep telling me. But who says I'm joking? You were the one who just said another one wouldn't count."

"Of course I keep telling you, because it's

not funny

."

She stuck her tongue out at him and blew a raspberry.

For about half a second, he wondered if it would shut her up... He banished this thought from his head. But if he was going to have to spend the time arguing with this awful woman, well...

Bring it on.

"Oh I think it is a little bit funny, Robert. You're a grown-up, for god's sake. You accepted an invitation to a divorced lady's apartment for a midnight tipple. That's as good as a leg-over in my book."

"Well it might be in your book, but... Oh god. This is really fucked up."

"Really fucked up?" She started to giggle. "I thought it was

really

fucking

good

, actually." She was peering over a handful of duvet she had gathered to conceal her amusement. "I didn't hear you complaining once we got to ramming. Quite the reverse, if I remember rightly. But if you feel that strongly about it, then go to the police and tell them you were ravished. I can direct you to the station. I'm sure when you supply all the details, they'll take you really seriously."

"Stop laughing. This is a huge mistake. Don't you regret it at all?"

There was something of a pause. Christine's eyes rolled ceilingward with a flourish of dishevelled false eyelashes, as if she was waiting for an answer from on high. Eventually she dropped the duvet and looked Rob bold in the face.

"No."

"

No

?" This response was beyond rational comprehension.

"No. The only thing I regret is you being such a pig about it. I really like you. I wanted you, Rob

—

ever since you first came into the School office staring at my tits. If I could have had you then I would."

He looked as if he'd just noticed two moons together in the sky.

"What's up?" she said after five seconds or so had passed. "Have you had a stroke? You look like it." She reached across the bed and gave him a poke in the stomach as he tried to put his thoughts in order again. It was their first bodily contact since he realised he'd woken in her bed.

"Oh. That umm that... that stuff may be true but it doesn't mean it isn't a mistake. All over London, all over the world, every week, there are people waking up in bed with someone after a staff party and thinking 'Oh my god. What have I done? I can't believe I did this.'" He paused for a conclusion: "It's not very original."

"Not original?" She was lying on her side, and leaning on an elbow. "Tell me about it. You already said the last bit."

"How's that?"

She reached over to play with the little patch of hair on his sternum.

"You know when we were

screwing

? I heard you say 'I can't believe I'm doing this'. Do you remember?"

"No. I don't remember that. Maybe I

still

can't believe it."

"Hmm. I wonder what you meant? Was it... 'I can't believe I'm making love to this glamorous and sophisticated older woman'? Or was it more like, 'I can't believe I'm cheating on my wife with that stuck up bitch in the office'? Which one would you pick?"

"I wouldn't. I don't believe I said this thing you quoted. But if I had to, I guess I'd have to go with the second one."

"Why's that?"

"Well, it's more exciting." The faintest suggestion of a smirk passed over the grim landscape of his face.

"It is. Isn't it?" The hand she had on his chest came to a dead stop. Without his realising it, he had been moving back into the bed, coming within easy reach of her hand.

He looked over at the wall, staring at it as if it were the horizon.

Actually, it

i

s

excitin

g—re

ally

exciting

. He thought of the way he'd given in so completely to this appalling creature with her stockings and suspenders and her false eyelashes, and the quiet fury he'd just been feeling about being manoeuvred into this infidelity. Yet somehow, he knew that if he was in the same situation, he would give in to her and do it all over again, cheat on Steph all over again with her.

When she said that thing about 'screwing', the word was rasped out with a jeering malevolence that seemed to include him as her willing accomplice in something fairly unpleasant.

The maddening thing was that once she'd got him inside her, there was no point in stopping; yet he could have. But the truth is that he was hers from that perfectly timed moment when she'd shown him the Durex. Somewhere a switch had tripped, and suddenly all he had wanted to do was to grab her and penetrate her with his cock.

It was like a slot machine paying out in his head. Once he'd accepted he was fucking someone other than Steph, he found himself thrilled by her carnality. He'd never felt anything like it and his only thought had been to please Christine and to enjoy her.

He pictured her bustling around the office with that dismissive look on her face, her navy colour pleated skirt flicking smartly from side to side as it flared from her waist where it was gathered, the cruel spiked heels click-clicking on the floor like icicles falling from the roof of a cave...

She had once asked for his help with the stats, and the deployment of this hocus pocus about modes, medians, standard deviation and quartiles.

"Don't worry. Nobody else understands them either," Rob had said as he showed her how to populate a spreadsheet with the data. In truth, he actually did understand them, but only because Steph had explained it all to him.

"I'd like to reward you in some way," she said taking his arm.

"Ah, don't worry about that. I'll get my reward in heaven."

"I hope you'll get it a bit sooner than that, but if you find you can't wait that long, come back to me." Her eyebrows raised and arched as she said this. For an instant an image had flashed across his mind's eye, of him taking her hard against one of the filing cabinets.

Quite often she would ask him to get down some lever arch files from a high shelf, as a favour. And when he came down the ladder, somehow it would always turn out that he would be having to squeeze past Christine to get out of the alcove.

"Thank you, Rob. You are a dear. I'll just move back a titch so you can get past without rubbing up against me."

He could smell her perfume as he moved past, nearly grazing her breasts, with the lace of her white bra cups showing like frost patterns under the milky translucence of her blouse. He could feel the beginnings of a hard-on as he shuffled past.

"I loved the way you sent Alan Thornton packing, Christine." Thornton was someone Rob regarded as no better than a paedophile.

"I'm not having him using the School's photocopiers to run a private business. Theatrical agency? Hah! Do you think it represents anyone who isn't female and under eighteen?"

"He's a scumbag."

"He's a very arrogant and unpleasant man. He deserves to be humiliated and it gives me great pleasure to be the one to do just that."

"You're a real snow queen, aren't you Christine?"

"I don't know..." She peered at him over her glasses, somehow managing to find a loose thread to pick off his shirt. "Are snow queens beautiful?"

"Obviously."

"Then I think I'm a snow queen. Do you?"

"Uh. Well yes, of course. Obviously."

The wintry flurries that seemed to blow around her were not for him. Instead, the harsh frost of the Snow Queen's countenance would soften to the smile of the Queen of Hearts, when he came by.

He remembered now that one day she had contrived to draw his attention to her slip. It was royal blue, with a silky sheen to it, decorated with scalloped edges. And the hem was showing. She had pulled it up with an expression of irritation, inviting him to share her annoyance and leaving him to speculate on what else she wore next to her. That was it,

that

was how he knew she wore a slip, not by 'looking up her skirt'...

The

cunning bitch

, he thought, remembering how she had panicked him with threats of disciplinary action, to trick him so she could get her hands on his cock. There was no way she was going to let him leave without shagging her. Somehow, he couldn't help admiring her determination. The arrogance was breath-taking, but now that he was awake enough to remember things properly, he had to admit it:

She really was amazing in bed.

A

ll

's

fair in love and wa

r

, he thought, although he wasn't sure which one of those it was.

C

heeky bitch

too

.

She had a knack of making him feel as if he was taking things (and himself) far too seriously, and she seemed to be able to make him laugh when he really didn't want to.

But the main thing was that it had worked, and that was something he couldn't do anything about. And because it had worked, it had brought him pleasure, even though it shouldn't have happened...

And not just him. He'd made that old whore shriek and writhe as if she was about to break open. He could still feel where she'd dug her nails into his back. Somehow he found that he didn't even care if Steph found that Christine had left marks.

She was just a few inches away from him in the bed: the few stubborn inches he'd set between them... Across this no man's land, he could sense her willing him to join her in a world of pleasure and deceit and he started to feel that the ground he was standing on was moving, drifting off in some unknown direction.

Her body heat seemed to reach across this gap and he was sure her cunt was dripping wet. It was as if it was speaking to him and saying 'Come in'. Earlier, he had said to himself that he was having sex with the wrong woman and enjoying it. Why had he enjoyed it if she was the wrong woman?

I can fuck her if I want to,

went the voice in his head again. These words started to repeat irresistibly.

She'd been studying him all the while, her face turning grave like an approaching storm. It held a look of blank intensity, like a zombie, glassy eyed, mouth open.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" he said, unaware that it was he who'd caught

her

eye. Those eyes seemed to sweep into his soul in a frightening intrusion.

"Because..." she said very slowly in a low sing song, as if she was playing a game with a child. Their eyes were still locked and she kept them that way as she rolled towards him and he felt the lazy, soft touch of her lips on his as her tongue swarmed slowly into his mouth.

"That's why," she said and her hand was off again, slowly trailing fingertips along his bare flesh in a downward sweep beneath the covers. A triumphant smile came onto her face as they found and encircled the erection which had grown there unbidden. Her eyes glittered briefly with malice and one of her carefully tended eyebrows lifted in mockery, as if to say, "Well, what about that?" She started to masturbate him to make it hard for her, and then her hand went round his neck, drawing his head to hers so that she could prepare him with a series of kisses of increasing intensity and invasiveness.

He saw the dark shutters of the added eyelashes closing in a passion. They were no longer ridiculous. They were perfect for this bedroom conquest. Because that was what was happening now. Everything was falling into place.

In the morning, it wasn't going to make the slightest bit of difference whether they'd been screwing once or twice. Whatever way he looked at it, he'd spent the night cheating on the partner he'd committed to. If he was going to feel guilty, he might as well get some thrills: He was dying to enter Christine's body again, to feel her long legs wrapped around him and her crafty hands at work, trailing all over his body while she spoke soft, corrupting words in his ear.

A kind of tenderness had come to him. He should not have been using such harsh words to her. He owed her something: When he had reached orgasm in the front room, it was the first one he'd had in ages that wasn't brought on by his own hand. He hadn't even been sure that he could

perform.

But she had made sure of it. Her confidence was infectious. To refuse her then, would not only be perverse, but also ungracious and mean spirited: real whited sepulchre stuff...

M

aybe

we can

even

make it

three

times

,

he thought suddenly.