Exposure by Talitha Stevenson Page B

them and the light burned round the edges in a dazzling line. He got his fingers all deliciously confused in her suspender belt and she tore them away impatiently, kicking and wriggling, her heel spiking her knickers into the carpet. He had never met a girl more desperate to give him a blow-job. She couldn't wait: she licked her lips and pulled down his boxer shorts with her teeth. But, on the other hand, Luke thought, was this wise? Maybe, he decided, he just pushed her away and she looked slightly disappointed for a second until he thudded her up and back against the wall and she was forced to sink her teeth into his neck to stop herself screaming.
    'Luke?' said James. 'Am I interrupting something? I can come back if this is a bad time for you.
Luke
?'
    'Sorry. What?'
    Just then the bouncer came running down the stairs, looking angry. He had been up the road buying some cigarettes. One of the bar-girls had texted him to come back right away. He went over to the bar and Luke heard the bar-girl tell him they wanted to see him upstairs in the office immediately. 'Babe, you might have really fucked it this time,' she said.
    'Why? What the fuck? Was there an incident?' The bouncer peered around the room frantically—as though he might still catch the last moments of it. 'I
knew
there was an incident. I'm gone for two fucking minutes and there's an incident.'
    An incident. It was the right way to describe a story without a beginning or an end. Just the middle was there, the comical climax—the girl on the table, holding up her boot as if she was going to take out that big man's eye with the heel of it. Luke wondered what had made her so angry. He was surprised by how exciting he found the thought of her anger—and by how reluctant he was to acknowledge the false note in the scene. The truth was that when he watched her walk away up the stairs, hand in hand with her enormous boyfriend, it occurred to him that it might all have been an exciting game before bed. The jealousy this inspired was unbearable, directly proportionate to his lust.
    Arianne had long, muscular legs and he watched them climb the stairs, imagining the feel of her skin, picturing her standing above him in killer heels, letting him do whatever he wanted to her inner thighs.
    When he lay in his bed that night, blushing and exhausted after he had done full and appropriate justice to their time in the store cupboard, he thought about Arianne kicking the glass off the table. He smiled to himself. Smash. He loved these sassy, violent women. You envisioned their gratifying orgasms—you
heard
their gratifying orgasms; you conjured up the gorgeous shame of passing the neighbours on the stairs the next day. His girlfriend Lucy favoured pastel colours; she reminded him about dry-cleaning; she said, 'Oh, that was so lovely, darling,' after sex.
    And he was
very lucky
to have her, given the long hours he worked. He mustn't forget that, he told himself. No, Lucy was great. She was very pretty and she loved him and these qualities brought a lot of satisfaction—even if the subject of marriage had become more and more of an unspoken issue since her best friend had got engaged. How many times had he heard about the darling Tiffany diamond ring? But at least she was forgiving—even when she cooked for him and he fell asleep, too tired to eat at eleven thirty when he got home from work.
    Would he prefer to be
alone
? This was a rhetorical question he asked himself from time to time. He considered the idea of being alone with horror, with the sensation of free-falling through darkness. Like many English boys, he had, at great expense, been expelled from the home at an early age and sent to a boarding-school. 'Alone' was a sensation never more perfectly represented than by sitting in his school bedroom on the first day of term, the last traces of his glossy, silk-scarfed mother on the air, knowing he must just
get on with it
and unpack his trunk.
    All that