As an introvert Jake was not great with larger numbers of people, even a handful could be awkward, and he loathed parties, but he was more than fine with an audience. There was only one of them and he knew how they worked.
Julie watched the stage anxiously, waiting to see her Jake. She had seen the surprisingly petite drummer come out first and take her place behind the drum kit, then a rather stocky looking guy arrived and picked up the bass guitar. A skinny man with arms that looked a little long for his body shambled on stage and took up his post at the keyboards.
She began to wonder if she had got it wrong and Jake would not be appearing after all, or perhaps he just was not in good enough shape to play and had dropped out at the last minute.
The MC appeared on stage and began to speak. At first Julie ignored him as an irrelevance. Then his words began to filter through to her,
"... ladies and gentleman, you are truly privileged, for one night only, to hear a man who is mostly to be found in the recording studio or writing hits for other stars. Here he is ... the man himself ... the one and only Jake Greville".
The audience went crazy. The noise they made became almost a physical entity in its own right. And then he was there at the front of the stage, picking up his guitar, casually throwing the strap over his head and quickly adjusting the microphone.
Julie was struggling to get her head round this. She had just assumed that he was a guitarist in the band, happy to cede the limelight to the frontman. But ... he was the frontman!
Jake was dressed as she remembered him from when they first met, in jeans, boots and leather jacket. God did he look good. She recalled with shame how she had lectured him that grown men wore suits, and even bullied him into wearing one for a formal function at her office, and then been a little embarrassed at how awkward he had looked in it. She looked around and realised how many women in this audience were looking at him with undisguised lust, and in some cases even with the appearance of adoration.
And then they began. The drummer launched into the first number, surprisingly aggressive for such a small woman, and then Jake was playing and singing, and his voice was a revelation. This was not her husband's quiet, diffident voice. It had a rough strength to it, and it seemed to Julie that her more sensitive parts were vibrating in sympathy with the deeper notes as he sang, and her pussy was slowly liquifying.
Soon Julie was lusting after this rock star on the stage like a teenage fan, and she could see the funny side of the fact that she was his wife. Then it struck her that some of the other girls here might have more chance of spending the night in his bed than she did, and she shivered at the thought of him bedding a groupie. If you had asked her a week or so ago, she would have laughed at that idea. but seeing this confident version of her Jake, strutting on the stage, she knew that the opportunity would be there, and it would be his choice to make.
The remainder of the concert passed for her in an altered state of consciousness, and at the end she had arrived at yet another revelation. This was not some act. In a way this was the real Jake. Julie had never let herself see him in his natural element and had then judged him for failing to measure up in what was not his world, for looking awkward in a suit, for not being able to make urbane small talk with executives.
She had a moment of self-loathing and found herself almost hoping that he might take one of the sexy girls she could see around her into his bed. He deserved at least that comfort, and if she could no longer be the one to provide it then maybe she should be willing to make that sacrifice. He deserved someone better than her. But in truth she shuddered at the thought, at the idea of some other woman having his hands run over her naked body and knowing the wonder of the unselfish pleasure he could deliver.
Once all the encores were done with and it was finally over, Julie was in an unthinking daze and made her way on autopilot to the backstage area. Of course, there was a line of autograph hunters, mostly women, and Julie quietly joined the end of the line.
For a moment she contemplated trying to jump the queue, telling everyone she was Jake's wife. And then she imagined the likely result of her being escorted out as some kind of deranged stalker.
The two girls in front of her had clearly had a bit to drink, certainly enough to lower whatever inhibitions they might have had. They were young, perhaps the age she had been when she first met Jake. One of them, called Kitty by her friend, was in tight jeans, a silky green shirt and sneakers, but her friend, Mel, had pulled out all the stops. Julie had to admit she was gorgeous, a natural blonde with a voluptuous figure. She was a little overdressed for the event in a figure-hugging blue dress and wearing black stiletto heels. Julie had tuned out their conversation at first but then she took notice on hearing Kitty say, slightly incredulously,
"You mean you're wearing stockings under all that?"
Mel, answered, looking completely unrepentant,
"Well, a girl can dream, can't she? I mean he's kind of dreamy."
Both of them started giggling. It was suddenly too much for Julie. What was she doing here? What could she say to Jake? She turned round and headed out into the night.
When Jake had finally signed the last autograph, and fended off some pretty blatant advances from would-be groupies, he grabbed a beer and looked at his bandmates, who already had their drinks. There was little Lana, their drummer, who after her youthful excesses was drinking lemonade, slouched on a tatty sofa that had acquired some pretty interesting stains over the years. Kevin, the bass guitarist, was sitting astride a flimsy-looking office chair that seemed at risk of collapsing under his weight, incongruously drinking Prosecco from a bottle. Lastly there was Nathan, full of nervous energy, unable to sit down for any length of time and so leaning against the wall with a beer in hand, still fidgeting.
Jake had given them the outline of what had happened with Julie. They had known him from the old days and were full of sympathy, though he was thankful they expressed it mostly through their normal banter.
Lana said,
"Hey Jake, you really should have gone for that last one, what was her name, Mel? The only way she could have been more blatant would have been if she'd stripped in front of you ... and for a moment I thought she might."
The others laughed and then Kevin said,
"Or at least you could have told her I was available!"
To which Nathan responded with,
"Yeah, but Kevin, you're forgetting the crucial point."
"What's that, oh wise one?"
"You're forgetting how we all turn invisible in Jake's presence."
To which they all laughed again, even though it was not the first time that idea had been raised. Jake was laughing along with them and realising how much he had missed the camaraderie of these friends.
A part of him wished he was the kind of guy who could grab a groupie for a night of meaningless sex ... but he knew it just wasn't him.
In that moment he decided he needed to go and see Greta. Maybe she could help him to see a way to deal with this.
***
Waiting in her office for her next appointment, Greta Weinberg was uncharacteristically nervous. She glanced up at the framed certificate of membership in her professional association where it hung on the wall. It was such a part of the décor that she no longer noticed it, but now she had a vision of a faceless official marching into her office and ceremonially ripping it into confetti.
She turned her attention to the framed photo of her with her husband, smiling into the camera, and this gave her some confidence. Their love was strong, and Paul had even laughed at her making a little extra effort when she had got dressed that morning. He knew the story and did not feel threatened.
Jacob Greville was her guilty secret and she wondered if this was to be the long-delayed day of reckoning. And there was nothing she could do about it if he chose to reveal her unprofessional conduct. She was a therapist who had initiated a sexual relationship with a younger, vulnerable client, who had come to her in a desperate state, at times even suicidal. Greta was no hypocrite, and she knew how she would look at a male colleague who had seduced a nineteen-year-old female client, and the fact that the gender roles were reversed had no bearing on it.
For a moment she lost focus and recalled first meeting Jake. He had been in an awful state. Convinced that he was worthless and doomed to scorn and rejection from women. At first, she had even slightly wondered whether what he had told her was all true. After all, if not he would hardly be the first client to turn out to be a fantasist; but a little detective work on her part and a conversation with his sister, Katie, had convinced her that, incredible as it seemed, it really was true.
Greta had found it difficult to comprehend people like the Urquhart-Dragos, and it had brought to mind the words of her aunt Frieda, also a therapist, who had fled Vienna and the Nazis as a child, retaining her Austrian accent throughout her life.
"Greta, my child, you must realise that there is such a thing as evil. Some people are born evil and others choose to become evil, and it is something beyond mere psychology."
Jake's plight had awoken in Greta a desire to 'rescue' him. She wanted at least in some small way to make up for what had been inflicted on him. This had become even stronger when she heard the story of how he had lost his virginity to a prostitute, convinced by that point that no woman would ever want him, and how this woman had charged him extra claiming that his cock was 'too big' and would hurt her. Although in one way she was inclined to almost laugh at Jacob's naivete, at the same time she had wept at the results. The idea of him somehow being 'monstrous' having fallen on such fertile ground, given how damaged he had already been.
At first Greta's help had involved using her various contacts to get him solo gigs in some of the little clubs and the backrooms of pubs, making sure that there would be at least some appreciative and supportive friends of hers in the audience, developing this facet of his existence that was untainted by the Urquhart-Dragos. And she had very quickly grasped that he had a very genuine talent with the guitar, along with a certain shy charisma as a performer, of which he was charmingly oblivious.
Greta was too self-aware to pretend that initiating a sexual relationship with Jacob had been an act of (admittedly unprofessional) self-sacrifice. He had been cute in his shy way, she was not immune to the attraction of the rock musician, and the idea of his having a 'large' cock had triggered a certain prurient curiosity in her. However, she had rationalised it as being the best way to get him to believe in himself as a lover.
Then so very quickly it had become real. There had been a chemistry between them. Being the experienced older woman teaching her younger lover had brought to life a hitherto unknown 'kink' in her. And Jacob had been such a wonderful 'student'. He had learned to please her with his tongue and fingers. Even now the memory of the feel of his large hands roaming her body and his sensitive musician's fingers making of her an instrument could still on occasions evoke an erotic revery. And Greta had taught him the art of pleasing a woman and making her ready and eager for his cock, which while a little larger than average was well within the limits that made this a good thing.
Even now, the memory of his unfeigned delight in her body could still arouse her. Despite his inexperience, Jake was an unhurried lover, able to enjoy her and her pleasure and unlike her previous boyfriends not anxiously hurrying to the main event. He had been that rare man who had truly enjoyed using his tongue and fingers on her pussy, revelling in driving her to cry aloud in her ecstasy, writhing on the bed and clutching the sheets.
Greta could still recall in vivid detail that first afternoon when she had taken him back to her flat, intent on his seduction. She had first insisted that they shower together, washing him all over and then getting him to do the same for her. She remembered enjoying both his evident delight in the opportunity for the unhurried exploration of her body, as well as her own unexpected pleasure in his slim muscular body on which his cock seemed even larger, bringing out from her a newly-discovered desire to openly worship his masculinity and his virile manhood. She had been amused at her reaction to the size of his cock, not having previously figured herself for a 'size-queen'.
That first time she had enjoyed taking charge, leading him by his cock into her sunlit bedroom and getting him to lie back on her flower-patterned quilt while she knelt between his legs. She had never done this before, but for Jake she was happy to be his personal porn star.
Greta even had a sense of how she might look as she did this and strangely revelled in it. She held Jake's cock with both hands, the first man she had known where this was possible, and bent over to lick the tip while gazing up at him through her eyelashes.
She had been resigned to him ejaculating quickly but he lasted a surprisingly long time, and after she had finally managed to get him to cum and had swallowed, which was another first for her, she had said,
"Wow, Jake, so not only do you have a gorgeous cock, but you also have impressive stamina."
She could see how happy he was, and it made her heart swell. She thought to herself how funny it was that she was doing what that prostitute should have done. Greta even imagined an alternative career for herself, provided her clients were all like Jake.
