Ms Thomas' Guide to Lovemaing

1

'Thinking naughty things?'

The unmistakeable chime of his phone's message tone seemed so loud and somehow so urgent in the still of the night.

He had been lying there, recalling the events at the party - specifically none other than those which took place in private, between him and the impossibly sexy Miss Vanessa Thomas - and again he was hard as a rock, knowing all too well that he wouldn't sleep until he took care of himself once, or twice, or maybe more.

Just lying there with his eyes closed, happily playing victim to the graphic visions that visited and courted with the imaginative erogenous zone between his ears, his blood simmered, his heart skittered, and that dazed and hazy state she'd put him in left him with a delicious buzzing sensation that vibrated deep into his bones.

And the longer he went without giving in and touching himself, the greater the need to touch her became. It was a terrifying kind of hopelessness to want somebody this much; to the point where lust could lead to paralysis.

Outside the world was a blur of black and white as the blizzard raged on in all its deafening silence, insulating the world against all signs of life but for an occasional bird tweet.

His eyes opened to the horrid brightness of the lit screen now before him, and his heart once again pulsed stronger as he read those words. As his eyes adjusted to invite her words, Michael breathed deep and thought of what to say.

'I can't stop thinking,' he replied. 'And you?'

He waited minutes for a reply that maybe wasn't going to come. For a moment he trusted himself to drift off because - sod's law - now the lag was hitting him. But again he was jolted awake by the arrival of a new text.

'Thinking and doing,' came the reply with a line of winking emojis. His hardness ached insatiably. Fighting with his remaining strength not to touch himself now, he failed happily. But he went slow and gentle for how tender and sensitive that woman had left him.

Still he felt jittery and in the best way. What did he say without sounding as desperate as she had made him?

'Me too...'

'Is it too late to call?' Vanessa texted back.

'No, you can call,' Michael replied, and a moment later they were listening to each other's soft, heavy breathing.

'Hi,' she said, as did he. 'I really enjoyed our private party.' Sweetly she sighed. 'I'll tell you now that I'm a woman who knows what she wants and knows how to get it, but as for doing what I did - that was new to me.'

'You and me both,' Michael responded, thinking that she definitely didn't mean the things she did to him with her mouth. He just laughed.

'Just so you don't think that this is something I just go and do.'

'I didn't think it,' Michael disarmed as he lay flat on his back in the dark, his free hand wrapped around his shaft. 'I haven't been able to think of anything other than what we did,' he testified.

'Me too!' She breathed heavily. All playing with herself had done was work her up into a desire to fuck Michael into a lustful frenzy. 'That and the ideas it put in my head.'

'Tell me...'

She laughed. 'But that'd be telling.'

'That's the idea,' Michael teased. And he thought of what had happened near the end, with the lights off - with Vanessa on her knees before him. He closed his eyes and swallowed dryly.

She wasn't even in the same room, the same building, or the same neighbourhood, and again Michael's heart was jack-hammering in his chest as though she was right there, her lips on his, her hands on him too.

'In this case, Michael, telling would be spoiling,' she hinted mysteriously.

'Terrible tease,' he chided with a sleepy grin.

'Maybe just a little,' she half-admitted, and then, 'what are you doing next Friday evening?'

Michael wasn't even sure he'd survive until next Friday.

2

"What the fuck have I done now?" were not the words any friend of Michael Bench would associate with him, and least of all in the family home. But then the fools even a clever man had no choice but to suffer he would have to be bound to by blood.

Three days Aaron had harassed his now ex-girlfriend by phone, although it was ultimately him who rejected her at the end of that fateful night. Now somehow it was the fault of his allegedly frigid virgin younger brother.

Before that nonsense had touched him, soiled him - made him feel dirty and abused - Michael was summoned once again to his mother's house with the words, 'your brother's got a few choice words to say to you.'

'Then he can say them,' Michael responded coolly from his own side of the call. It was seven in the evening on a horribly cold Tuesday and he was about to sit down to his dinner - ramen noodles, toast, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

'You'd better come round to the house then,' Victoria said distantly. In that moment his own mother was no better than the guy who wore sunglasses and a baseball cap to the game on a sunny afternoon, only to be sitting there none the wiser, shading his eyes with his hand with the bill of his cap resting over the back of his neck.

How stupid could she get? How insultingly stupid, for god's sake?

'He has a phone,' Michael reminded her patiently. 'He knows how to use it. What's it about?'

'You'll find out, won't you?' Michael did not care at all for the dismissive tone of her voice. 'He's here now, waiting, anyway.'

'Put him on,' Michael insisted less patiently. She hung up.

Now he was sitting there all alone, his simple dinner getting cold right in front of him, and he had lost his appetite. Well fuck it, he thought, in spite of the way they treated him like a human footstool sometimes.

Regardless he trayed his food on his lap and sat back to eat, and he would take his time just to piss them off, because if anybody had provoked a fight over nothing, he was not going to jump through hoops for them.

In silence Michael ate, and though he didn't enjoy his food, he enjoyed the very fact that he was looking out for himself where nobody else did. An hour and fifteen minutes later he stood on his mother's door with the uneasy beginnings of indigestion.

She opened the door and gave a cursory glance of disdain, almost seeing right through him. A little more of that golden patience slipped away.

3

'You took your time, didn't you?' she asked.

'Yes I did,' Michael answered promptly. 'You gave me no reason to think there was an emergency.'

'Two hours though?'

'Nowhere near two hours,' Michael flatly denied and they bickered in the hallway over just that. Aaron who was sat alone in the dining room then appeared in the hall and demanded his brother take a seat.

'You've got some fucking explaining to do,' Aaron said gruffly, pointing one accusing finger.

'No, you're the one who needs to fucking explain what's going on,' Michael once again rejected.

'Watch your mouth, Michael,' Victoria breathed down his neck.

"Oh, gas-lighting already!" he thought to himself and chuckled dryly.

'I'll wipe that grin off your face,' Aaron threatened.

Michael rolled his eyes and then met him with a hard glare. 'Trust me, brother, I am already far from amused...'

A while later - he didn't dare look at the clock for time, considering how slowly this shocking turn of events took just to unravel - Michael sat deep in shock, wrestling not with the apparent truth of the matter, but with how idiotic his brother was to believe it, and how despicable his mother had been to immediately choose one of her sons over the other.

'So in short,' Michael surmised, 'April, who dumped you - or you dumped her, whatever you want to believe - got so sick of you harassing her ever since the party, and told you that she's now carrying on with me?'

'That's not what I said,' Aaron growled. Regardless, Michael was humoured to no end, even if he couldn't prove otherwise. A man who lived alone had no alibi.

'It's not what you said but I know you,' Michael judged flatly. 'You treat women reprehensively. You seem to find more personality somehow in a premier league football player than you do in the girls you bang for a couple weeks before you move onto the next.'

To prove the things that April had said to him, Aaron had shown Michael the texts between them. Quite disturbingly he saw no issue in the way he spoke to her even before she decided to play games with him to get back, and even then the games she had employed to mess with his head had been mild in comparison.

Michael balked to imagine such a fight happening face to face between his brother and a woman of standards. He didn't even hear their mother coming to Aaron's defence, the one woman he'd never dare talk down to, when he found his conclusion.

'All these words you use to describe the women you're done sticking your dick into - slut, slag, whore, cunt, pig - you're so full of hate when things don't go your way. But what is your way? All you care about is fucking whoever will let you, and you get away with it time and time again.

'But I'm telling you, Aaron,' Michael concluded, 'and you can believe me or not, I don't care because you don't speak to me like I'm a piece of shit when I'll never dare behave the way you do. I give less of a fuck for the kind of girls you're into specifically because of the way you treat them. I wouldn't waste my time on April or any other girl you've been with. Do you know why else?'

Aaron wanted to know. Aaron didn't want to know. Aaron didn't know what he wanted, other than to smash his balled fists into something and to scream and to avenge his ego, which Michael had picked apart in a matter of seconds just now.

'Go on,' Michael tempted. 'You've already threatened me over nothing. I know you're looking for a reason, anything to be bigger than me, right? Ask me why!'

Aaron shrugged, sulked, his eyes two deep and shady sockets of pure bruised ego. Now, Michael saw, he was speaking from the id, only he had no words for what he wanted to say, not like his scarily intelligent younger brother.

'Well?' he finally said.

'There is no way of knowing where your type has been before you dip your wick in them and claim yet another conquest. But when I know they've been with you, there isn't enough bleach in the world to think about claiming sloppy seconds,' Michael explained. All the while he shook his head in disgust.

'Not once in the past ten years have you been with anyone worth the respect. And that should tell you something really fucking important about me, your own fucking family,' he said. 'I'm not you. That's why I don't act like you, and I never will.'

'You think you're fucking better than me, is that it?' Aaron seethed. He was ready to pounce across the table. At any moment Michael was sure that he would.

'It doesn't matter what I think,' Michael finalised, hoping that he could wrap this up and leave soon after. 'The facts don't lie. I don't play games and I don't stick my dick in stupid. That's not hard when your own mother and brother are so manipulative and narcissistic that there isn't a woman in the world you'd want to introduce to them.'

Their mother uttered a harsh gasp, covered her mouth. 'How bloody well dare you,' she whispered.

'I'll see myself out,' Michael groaned, and got up from his chair at the dining table. He himself was filled with the urge to rage, to lash out, to lose control and give it to those he least trusted right now.

Now every step closer to that front door seemed like it cost him a measure of that control, and especially when Aaron gnashed out the words, 'I'm not going to let him speak to me like that!'

He was out in the snow once again and headed for the driveway gate when his brother's thundering footsteps came crashing towards him, turning into loud crunching ones as he hit the snow and came charging.

The familiar ham-fisted claw grabbed at the neck of Michael's coat to spin him around. Michael expected it and still did nothing. Not a moment too soon, Aaron's other fist glanced off his brother's cheekbone, but he was so angry that he had involuntarily pulled the punch; so balled up with anger he was to let loose.

'Fucking hit me again,' Michael growled, overtaken by adrenaline. 'Go on, trust the word of the little bitch you hit and ran on.'

Aaron faltered, squeezing his fist so hard that it shook too crazily to make another safe landing. But eventually he did try again, and this time Michael was waiting. At the last moment he tucked in his chin and offered up his forehead.

Aaron's white-knuckled fist landed and crunched audibly upon impact. He screamed, a mixture of fury and agony when he realised what had happened, and then his feet skidded in the icy white beneath his feet and he landed on his arse.

Something crunched loudly again. His screaming turned to helpless wailing then.

'You proud of yourself, big man?' Michael said, so calmly that he surprised himself.

At that moment their mother rushed to the door, beckoned by the cries of her eldest son. 'What have you done?' she shrieked in sheer panic. Michael shook his head in disdain, uttered a breathless laugh, and turned to walk away.

'Why even try to explain,' he called out as he crossed the road. 'You'll only make it up to suit yourselves. That's what you're best at.'

'Aarrgh, you fuckin' bastard,' Aaron called out. He could now at least make the connection between his knuckles and his arse. He had broken them both.

4

Wednesday was filled with the dread of what was to come, or maybe what would never come. What would become of Michael and his family? Had they disowned him?

In any such situation he imagined that worse people than him had a right to know about their brother's broke-ass trip to the hospital went, at least in the attempt to induce a guilt trip. None came and though Michael was used to the silent treatment, he was adamant that he didn't deserve the guilt.

A thought occurred. Maybe both had decided the incident wasn't his fault, though he had laid the insult on thick before the injury had happened. Whose fault was it that Aaron, ever the slave to his own ego, wanted to beat his own brother into subservience with his fists?

He was certain also that he couldn't blame April. Nobody could. Only a Grade-A moron would have fallen for a simple lie like "I've been fucking your brother, so go fuck yourself!"

And in this instance, what Aaron and their mother had completely overlooked - that lie went along the lines of "I fucked your brother after we were over".

'You've gone quiet,' read a solemn text message later that night. Michael was afraid that Vanessa didn't deserve him in the state that he was. Somehow he had avoided any bruises or swelling of the face, where Aaron had hit him, but he was feeling low indeed.

'I don't suppose you heard what happened yesterday,' he replied. In a matter of moments they were talking over the phone again.

'I knew there was something going on, but your mum doesn't talk to me about these things,' Vanessa explained her part. She did hear a commotion at the salon that afternoon. 'I just took it that there was an argument and your brother's girlfriend was involved.'

Michael told her everything, and then finally, 'I just couldn't bring myself to give a fuck. They treat me like shit either way, no matter what.'

Vanessa sighed hard and then paused for thought. 'It's drama you just don't need. But if you want to call off Friday...'

'Oh hell no!'

'Good answer,' she replied. The smile in her voice was impossible not to notice and that made him warm up inside. He wasn't the only one to start feeling those butterflies again either. They talked on for three hours until just before midnight, and barely even skirted the subject of that certain big elephant in the room.

5

Anxiety!

It isn't the same as simple nerves or the excitement and curiosity one faces in the presence of the great unknown. Michael, who lived with it since the exit of his father, knew it well and knew all the more that it couldn't be ignored or dismissed.

Like those butterflies it often started in the pit of the abdomen or stomach, sometimes high up in the chest as the heart became constricted with it, and then rather than good feelings it came out in fear and doubt, and sometimes in anger.

He wasn't about to unload his emotional baggage on Vanessa. If anything he would seek to protect her from it, but at the beginning of Friday evening, as he showered and groomed himself, and then dressed up casual but smart, he began to ask himself what he was expecting of her.

Without question he slipped a strip of condoms into the pocket of his jeans and then knocked back a shot of vodka for courage, though there was no doubt that, whatever happened, she would meet his few easy needs.

'I'm on my way,' he texted. 'I won't be long, I promise, but I'm leaving my phone at home...'

There was nothing that needed explaining on that matter. Last Saturday had come with enough distractions from his errant brother. The ensuing drama had no place between them tonight.

The sky was pitch black and cloudless before six, the ground a hard and unforgiving crust of black ice to suit. And along the gritted roads the traffic jams inched ahead - full of people going nowhere fast - as Michael carefully traversed the roadside as he walked the distance.

Slung around one wrist, to at least allow a single hand to warm inside his coat pocket as he also handled a small bunch of pretty winter flowers, a plain white bag also carried a magnum of rose champagne. He'd ditch the bag in a bin near his destination, just to be that little bit extra classy.

Looking back, maybe the flowers and bubbly were a bad idea. Not that he didn't want to spoil Vanessa, whom he was not only attracted to but secretly enamoured with, he didn't count on fate getting in his way once more and spoiling the mood.

April Dodd was the last person he expected to run into. Even less did he expect her to speak to him, which she did as though they had been good friends all through that night she spent being his dick brother's sly little cheerleader.

She was with a friend of her own, another girl who appeared even younger - and too young to be drinking from a can of strong white cider. Michael felt all the more uncomfortable in the younger girl's drunken beady-eyed glare. She was almost insect like in her appearance and looked puzzled by the flowers alone.

'Hey Michael,' April beamed, and floated over to him before he could move on. He didn't need to wonder what she might have expected from him, but she surprised him. 'Are you going to a party?'

'You could say that,' he said short and flat. In all honesty he had no idea why he'd even stopped and given her his attention. Maybe he wanted to hear what she had to say.

'Can we come? It's freezing out here!'

'No, it's a private party. Don't you have a home to go to?' he asked, and then hinted, 'somewhere you won't be seen with the brother of a certain ex you lied about?'

'Whoa,' April reacted as though she had done nothing wrong. And would he be expected to believe that lie too?

'It is cold isn't it,' he agreed. 'Is there something you want?'

'Look I'm so sorry about that,' April lied again. She wasn't very good at this. 'You should see the shit he was saying to me though.'

'I did,' Michael said. 'When he and my mother chose to believe you anyway and turned on me. They showed me everything.'

'You're fucking kidding,' April exclaimed harshly in feigned disbelief.

'I'm preoccupied right now is what I am,' he stated bluntly.

'Well I'm sorry but your brother's a cunt!'

Michael laughed. 'I know, what a waste, right?' he replied ironically, but neither April, nor her anaemic and absent looking friend picked up on the sarcasm. 'But you know what, it's my family you played and I'm the one being treated like I don't exist as a result. I'll overlook the insults, considering the way he spoke to you, but what did I do to deserve your revenge?'