The Exploits of Claire

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Please do not read this story if you do not like the theme of cheating partners. If you read this story regardless and then tell me to burn in hell, I'll assume that you secretly enjoyed it, but are ashamed of yourself. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Read chapter's one and two if you want this to make more sense.

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Three weeks passed as autumn's collage of reds broke down into winter's dustsheet grey. Remarkably for Claire, she'd had little contact with Chloe over the past month. That was about to change, however. A week before Halloween Chloe contacted Claire, and from the squeals emanating from the living room, James could tell that some form of party was being organised.

A look of dread clouded over him as he sat typing up his latest masterpiece. He had to file his story for the first edition of the magazine by Friday, which incidentally, would be the day after Halloween. It wasn't going well. The usual exuberance he imbued his stories with had dried up, and he felt the pressure of having to perform manifesting itself in predictable Subject-Verb-Object sentences. Or maybe he was letting his perfectionist nature get the better of him?

Soon Claire arrived in the room hovering around him eager to deliver the 'good' news, "We've been invited to a house party at Chloe's for Halloween. It's fancy dress; you'll need something to wear!" she giggled excitedly.

"Why did parties get her so excited?" he wondered. "There's no way of getting out of this, is there?" he asked, trying to evoke some sympathy through his studious glasses as he looked up from the desk.

Claire mouthed the words "no way" at him playfully. Despite her vivacious façade, she still hadn't managed to vanquish the demons troubling her. One of those demons, she was sure, had tempted her into cheating on her boyfriend. Then suddenly she realised: Carrick could very well be at this party! She must talk to Chloe to make sure he isn't.

The following day Chloe and Claire went out to get their costumes. The search, however, proved futile. Every single garment they came across was too tacky or too cheap for either of them to consider wearing. In fact, the two women were playing off each other: when one liked a costume, the other one deliberately disliked it. As they were shopping Claire took the opportunity to ask Chloe whether Carrick was going to attend.

"No, no, he's got something planned that night. He's not turning up – I did invite him. Did you want him to be there, Claire?" she taunted.

"No!" Claire protested but a little glint in her eye gave her away.

"Don't worry, I won't tell James that you want the guy you fucked last month to be at my party!" retorted Chloe sarcastically.

Claire glowered.

Eventually the girls decided that the best way for them to get a costume was to order it, that way they couldn't go back on the decision.

The order would arrive the day before Halloween. Chloe ordered a skin-tight PVC cat costume whilst Claire ordered a short, sexy witch costume. Both of the models in the catalogue looked sluttish modelling the clothes, as Chloe pointed out with relish.

Faced with the daunting task of finding his own apparel, James decided to order his with them as well, settling on a classic vampire costume.

Thursday rolled around quickly. James had finished the story, but wasn't happy with it. He submitted it anyway complaining that it didn't really subvert bland reality like he had hoped. The costumes had arrived the night before and were at Chloe's place.

James strolled into the kitchen, "So when does the party to end all parties begin?"

Claire was eating her tea perched on a stool. "In two hours" she said with a mouth full of pasta, "We'd better get going. My dress might not even fit!" She grabbed her plate and whilst still eating, headed for the bathroom.

She scuttled past James as he lamented that she could be much more than a simple office worker. He stood thinking statically for a moment before finding his reflection in the window, the dark night beyond. The man looking back was of average size, with spikey dark hair and cutting angled eyebrows. A pretty boy, maybe they'd say. He smiled exaggeratedly and began to speak to himself, "Hello Chloe, how are you tonight? Is that a catwoman costume...? I always thought you were a bit of a cow mys..."

"James?" yelled Claire from the bathroom breaking off James' conversation with himself, "Can you give Chloe a ring and tell her we'll be there in 30 minutes?"

He sighed, grabbed the phone and dialled her number heavy-handedly.

Claire and James arrived just after 8pm to 10 minutes of perfunctory, over-exclamated greetings and opening drinks before heading into a back room to get changed. Chloe had a nice house, "apart from some of the upper rooms, which are strewn with mess." She never neglected to mention that bit as if it was a warning never to go up there. She'd come into a decent inheritance after the death of her wealthy father, part of which was this airy, old, Victorian era 3-storey building with tall ceilings. James thought that it had a hell of a lot more class than its inhabitant and verbalised as much to Claire.

She admonished him with a mandatory "How dare you!" as she pulled on her dress. James was already in his vampire costume, perched on the end of the guest bed contemplating the night ahead.

"Tights or stockings?" she asked.

He stood up and looked at the dress. Arching his back slightly, he found that he could see her pastel pink knickers beneath it with no trouble at all. Thinking about it for a second, he plumped for tights. Normally, he would have said stockings, but envisioning the sight she would offer many people later on when drunk, made him consider her respectability.

"Chloe would have said stockings." Claire reflected, as she sat to slide on the black nylon undergarment.

James thought it better to keep his mouth shut rather than make another snide comment about Chloe. Instead he sucked on his plastic fangs, swallowing the excess saliva that had been collecting around them.

Claire stood and perched her pointed hat on her head looking sultry. Her eyelids were coated in thick black eyeliner and her lips glistened with black lipstick. She looked like a 17 year old goth as she blew a kiss at James. He groaned in vampyric desire for her through his fake fangs.

Guests were already milling around, congregating in the rather large living room from where the music was pumping. Chloe's extended social network never ceased to amaze James. He suspected the place would be crawling with media-types she'd sucked up to, or sucked off, in some pretentious cocaine and neon addled lounge.

Pretty quickly he and Claire got separated in the crowd as Claire found lost long friends and instantly picked up wherever they had left off. There were far too many people to all be housed by the living room, and as a result, the party quickly spilled out into the adjoining kitchen, before spreading to the halls and upstairs like a rampant infection.

The atmosphere was becoming humid with the heat of many bodies in an enclosed space. After five minutes, James had left the throngs of partiers for the comparative calm of the kitchen and was searching in the cupboards for something else to drink besides Budweiser, which he considered to taste like cat's urine. He discovered an unopened, expensive looking bottle of port. It looked like Chloe had been saving it for a special occasion. He smirked as he opened it and poured himself a glass figuring that no one would know who drank it. One glass turned into three, and before long, a two-thirds bottle sat beside his spinning head.

He started to feel very pleased with himself, considering it quite an accomplishment to go 40 minutes without interacting with another soul in possibly the most difficult place in the world not to interact.

Having missed his tea meant the alcohol had double the effect. He lethargically and jovially strolled towards the action in the living room but along the way somehow got entangled in an argument with two guys over whether Mary Poppins would have made a good lay in her hey day. A part of him enjoyed talking absolute rubbish to people he didn't know, especially when the meaningless discussion became genuinely confrontational.

Interacting with people is certainly a lot easier when you're drunk, he thought. Several conversations about nothing passed before he strolled into the main hub of the party at 12:32am holding a glass of red wine. He caught Claire's eye as she stood in the corner in deep conversation with some tall guy in a skeleton costume. James spied her and stumbled over to them narrowly avoiding a collision with several tables and people. He arrived by bumping into the skeleton who halted his conversation in a contemptuous glare at James.

Claire observed her boyfriend for a few seconds. "Are you drunk?!" she gasped in disbelief.

James jerked his head up and down with exaggerated enthusiasm, "Yep, and what of it?" he spat.

Claire had hardly ever experienced him drunk, and from his aggressive nature, she didn't like it much. Turning to Clark she decided to ignore him, "Anyway Clark, you were saying..."

"Clark!" James scoffed before the man could open his mouth. Claire shot him a solar flare but James continued, "that names' almost as bad as that other guy you know, what's his name – Carrick!" He laughed more. "Jesus, I feel sorry for you mate!" said James as he sarcastically patted Clark on the shoulder. As he walked away his cape caught on several beer bottles on the table. Totally oblivious, he dragged them all to the floor causing them to shatter.

"The joke's on you, mate" Claire thought to herself as she watched him stumble from the room. It was now up to her and Clark to clean up the mess he'd ignorantly made before someone got hurt. She crouched to pick up the broken glass.

"Who was that dickwad?" asked the lanky Clark holding a bin bag open for her to place the mess in. As she squatted, Clark could see straight down her top.

"Nobody!" she stated sternly before insisting that he continue the conversation as if James had never appeared.

Half an hour later James was walking around looking for people to antagonise. He'd refilled his glass with claret as if it was fuel for his scorn.

Claire was still in conversation with Clark, but had ushered him near to the entrance of the packed room, where they were concealed behind a curtain of people so James couldn't interrupt again. It was from this vantage point that her heart almost stopped upon seeing who had just walked in.

Carrick and David strode into the room with unnerving arrogance each brandishing Buds like precious weapons. Neither of them were in fancy dress, sporting their regulation skin tight t-shirts and faded blue jeans. Carrick took seat in a big leather recliner only 7 or 8 yards away, every bit as bulky and muscle-bound as Claire vividly remembered.

Her heart was in her mouth, and she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what Clark was saying. Her eyes kept wandering over Carrick's body - as much as it was visible between the dalliances of bodies in front of her.

Her pussy began to tingle as a torch was introduced to the bonfire of illicit ideas in her mind. Then James entered like a fire blanket, with no less arrogance than Carrick and Dave. He looked around purposefully but drunkenly, quite a sight shorter and thinner than either of the two body builders. Claire hunched behind some people losing sight of Carrick as Clark continued to mumble about autumn in Switzerland.

What was Carrick doing here? Was this one of Chloe's tricks? Claire wasn't as drunk as her boyfriend, but she was tipsy enough to be teetering on the brink between self-control and impulse. Carrick looked great as he sat there; his tanned skin and muscular body had her head in a spin. She thought about the many times she'd fantasised about him since the last time they met, and now he was right there, her dreams come alive! If she made a move, he'd accept, she was sure. A gulp of anticipation stuck in her throat.

Maybe Chloe was right, maybe she really did need something like that, something that James couldn't provide? Part of what was good about James was that she felt equal to him on every level, but that didn't satisfy her. Sometimes, possibly most of the time, she needed to be taken by a man, and Carrick was the ideal of virile man.

James appealed to her mind, but Carrick appealed to her body. And Claire's drunken states usually tapped into that unquenchable physical desire.

"Claire!" repeated Clark looking at her. "You're miles away. I'm going to have to go now."

She smiled and looked up at the tall man whose dark brown eyes beamed back at her, "I'm sorry I was thinking about somebody else."

"Somebody special?" enquired Clark.

She grinned at him, "Sort of." Before he left, she gave him a kiss on the cheek ordering him to contact her so they could catch up properly.

Claire then set off to find Chloe, consciously avoiding James and Carrick. After searching the main halls and rooms in vain she started checking the adjoining ones. Chloe was to be found flushed and draped across a bed in an upstairs bedroom 10 minutes later.

"What have you been doing?" Claire asked with implication.

"Oh, I just felt a little hot. And drunk. There's no one else in here, if that's what you're thinking!" asserted Chloe.

Claire returned to the topic causing her the biggest headache, "I've just seen Carrick! Did you know he would be here?!"

Chloe lethargically flapped her hand, "I didn't have any idea. Is Dave here too? Looks like you'll be heading for some fun tonight, anyway!"

"I told you I'm not going to do anything with Carrick," she exclaimed. "Yes Dave is here, he's with Carrick in the front room... Are you okay?"

"Yeah, a little too much to drink, I guess." Chloe answered. "Your hostess will be back amongst you all in 10 minutes or so..."

Claire was about to exit the room, when the adjoining bathroom door to the right of the bed opened and a handsome young man with a towel wrapped around his waste stepped out and looked at the two brunettes. Chloe shifted on the bed to look at him before glancing at Claire and bursting out into laughter in her inimitable, vivacious fashion. Claire exhaled a smile at her friend before winking at Chloe and running her eyes over the blond stud.

"Oh, can I leave my handbag in here?" she asked turning back halfway through the door.

"Sure" replied Chloe. Claire hunched the strap off her shoulder and set it down on the chest of drawers.

She closed the door giving one last appreciative glance at Chloe's partner and walked across the landing to the toilet. Her head was still spinning with the confusion of the night as she sat on the shut toilet seat: why was James acting so strangely? Why is he so drunk? What's Carrick doing here? What will I say to him if we meet? She almost didn't want to leave the bathroom because of the growing entanglement downstairs. A knock on the door and an impatient female, "How long are you going to be?" roused her from her problems, however.

Claire exited, awkwardly sidestepping the woman who needed the bathroom. She had just turned for the stairs when Carrick rounded the corner at the bottom. His face immediately broke into a grin upon seeing her above him like a dark angel. Nervousness took hold of her body - what was she going to say?! All thoughts evaporated from her head as Carrick ascended.

She smiled wobbily at him, finding it difficult to make eye contact, offering a single dippy "Hi."

"I was hoping I'd meet you here. Are you still with that James?" he questioned unabashedley watching her face for every expression. She shrunk against the wall beneath his bulky shadow.

"Yeah, w-we're still together." Her heart was beating ever faster. Carrick moved onto the same step and leaned against the wall opposite.

"You look stunning tonight, Claire." She looked at up at him, unable to keep her eyes from his broad chest sculptured by the taught t-shirt.

"Thanks," she said under her breath. The longer her eyes took in Carrick's being the bigger they grew. She was so attracted to this man; it awakened a deep-seated lust in her that she'd never known with James. Her feet shifted over each other in her stiletto-healed knee-high boots.

"I haven't stopped thinking about you since The Temple" offered Carrick referring to their illicit act in the toilets of The Temple nightclub. Her mind told her that Carrick probably told all the women this, but her heart didn't want to listen.

She gasped, "Really?"

"Yeah, of course" he insisted. Claire felt herself believing him like a naïve schoolgirl experiencing her first crush. Carrick sensed the growing intensity between them and he stepped up the stairs and stood next to her, giving himself a good view into her eyes and cleavage. She was fully aware of the view she was affording him.

He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, "Can you believe we did it in the toilets?!" A heat arose in her cheeks. "Your boyfriend was outside!" Carrick stroked her forearm. And she wasn't stopping him; it felt tender.

Her eyes traced his chiselled square jaw, tinglings of lust forming like dew. His hand stopped stroking and snaked around her slim waste, pulling her closer. She felt her knees becoming weak as her hip touched his crotch. She pulled away hesitantly.

"What's wrong Claire?" he whispered picking up on the conflicted vibes from her. "At The Temple you were insatiable, now you're all subdued. Become a free spirit again!" he hissed.

She looked curiously at him, "its just...James is acting weird, he's got drunk. I've never known him so drunk before, and he's really pissed me off!" Anger surfaced before she paused to recollect herself, "and now you're here to complicate matters."

Carrick could see the effect he was having on the attached young, nubile woman. She kept dipping her head momentarily masking her shadowy eyes beneath a cloak of impenetrably black hair. He grabbed her hand announcing, "I've got just the thing!" before starting up the stairs with her in tow. After a short search for an empty room, one was found strewn in dust and old boxes. It had no carpet down and the bulb fizzed out when they tried to turn on the light but this didn't matter much, as the moonlight streaming through the curtainless window in great shafts cloaked everything in an ambient electro blue.

As Claire's eyes acclimatised to the dim light, she watched Carrick fumbling in his pockets. Out came a clear plastic pouch containing weed, which she recognised instantly. He laid it on top of a cardboard box before fumbling in his other tight pocket for the skins and lighter. She bit her lipstick blackened lower lip in anticipation causing a bit of it to stick to her two front teeth.

"This is skunk," he proclaimed proudly. "It may be a bit stronger than what you're normally used to." Claire had smoked weed many times but her reaction to it was mixed. Sometimes it would make her feel placid and sexy, but other times nothing seemed to happen. She'd never tried skunk before but demonstrated a youthful interest in it, founded on the thought that the substance might ease her overactive mind.

Carrick rolled the drug up lovingly - if he'd had a magnifying glass handy he would surely have put it to good use. All the while Claire was being harangued by duplicitous thoughts; she knew James would like this room, or at least he would if he was sober. And now she was in here with Carrick. Again the feeling of guilt that had been her nemesis for the past month began to flow – it had certain victories to its name, when she caved into lust, but she could also claim to have resisted her desires more than once, even if she did think about Carrick when having sex with James.