Exposure (5 page)

“Bentley Hall doesn’t seem like a bundle of
laughs for your day off,” I said, when Nathan suggested going there.

“The hall no, but there’s a great boating
lake there. I’m going to row you about like the Lady of Shalott and impress you
with my rippling muscles and rowing skills.”

I laughed. “You mean the Lady of Shalott
who dies at the end of the Tennyson poem? Are you going to drown me then?”

“I’ll try not to. It might be a bit choppy
in that lake though. I’ve never had you in a rowboat,” he said, that look on
his face, the one that was always up to no good.

“You’re incorrigible,” I laughed.

I’d never change him. I didn’t want to.

“It will only be if it’s quiet,” he said.
“Wear that green sun dress with the buttons down the front and the tiny straps.
I like that one.”

“I don’t recall the Lady of Shalott wearing
a green sun dress.”

“No, I think hers was yellow,” he said and
laughed.

It turned out before we could escape to the
lake, we had to do the guided tour around the house with the next scheduled
group. The guide droned on. Was that tour never going to end? Nathan held me
back when the group moved on into another room so we could slip away.

“The guide will miss us,” I said.

“She’s got twenty people to bore to death.
She’s not going to miss two.”

Nathan, never willing to pass up an
opportunity, had noticed the entrance to one of the turrets and was pulling me up
the stairs behind a door marked “PRIVATE.”

“You can look over the parapet,” he said, a
grin on his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.”

“No,” I said. “Just no. The Guide will come
looking for us.” Nathan’s tall good looks often meant he was noticed when
others were not.

“But not for a while,” he said, and he
sidled up behind me, kissing the back of my neck, running his hands over my
bottom, over my breasts, between my legs.

I could barely see over the parapet. There
were people in the courtyard below, and I didn’t want to attract attention to
us being where we should not have been, so I kept quiet. As he touched me,
sparks of desire shot through me. I couldn’t help that. He pulled at the front
of my sun dress until I felt the rough cold stone of the wall against one of my
breasts and I moaned. He nudged my panties to one side, my dress pulled up at
the back, and he started fingering me, making me ready, whispering in my ear “I’m
going to take you right here.”

“You really shouldn’t be up here you know,
oh...” the guide stopped short. Perhaps she was aware of what Nathan was doing
with his fingers. I hoped not, but I thought it was pretty obvious. I couldn’t
look.

Nathan, cool as a cucumber simply withdrew
his fingers, pulled down the hem of my dress and said, “Sorry, couldn’t resist
the view.”

I had quickly adjusted the front of my
dress and turned around then to see him flashing her his widest, most charming
smile. She got all flustered and fanned herself with her clipboard.

“Well, please rejoin the group,” she said.
“The house is only accessible with a tour. Some parts are off limits for your
own safety, including this one.” She gave me a filthy look.

We left the tour as quickly as we could and
headed home without going on the boating lake. The day was wrecked for me.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nathan said, as we
got back in the car. “That guide doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know me. She’ll
never remember us except as a story to tell her pals at the pub. We probably
brightened her life because she has to give the same old spiel twenty times a
day.”

“You have to stop doing that though,
Nathan. That was horrible. The look she gave me. What if she had found us a few
minutes later?”

“She would have had the thrill of her
life.”

“Nathan!” He never got how mad I was at any
of this.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll behave myself.”

“You always say that until the next time.”

“Anyway. I promise I’ll be good. Boy Scout’s
Honor.”

“You’ve never been a Boy Scout, have you?”
I was smiling. Why couldn’t I stay mad at him? I loved this guy too much. Far
too much for my own good.

“No.” He laughed. “Anyway, I’m going to
drive you home and cheer you up.”

“How?”

He grinned at me. “How else?”

That was Nathan all over. Sex was his
answer to every problem.

“I want to fuck you in that sun dress when
we get in,” he said as we got close to home. “Keep it on.”

“Why?”

“I can’t have my favorite dress being
spoiled by memories of that tour guide. We need to exorcise it.”

“Exorcise it?” I laughed. “You’re crazy.”

“That’s why you love me.”

I didn’t deny it.

***

There was a small narrow window made from
etched glass in my hall. It was set high in the wall, designed to let in light
and nothing else.

“Hang onto that window sill,” he said, soon
after we got in from our visit to Bentley Hall. “Pretend you’re looking over
the parapet.”

I raised my eyebrows, but did as he asked.
Somehow, I always ended up doing as he asked. I reached up and held onto the
sill. What was he up to now?

His hands were all over me again, feeling
my breasts and inside my panties. I was squirming under his hands, feeling
desire flaring between my legs as he raised the back of my dress to my waist.

“That guide is watching you,” he whispered
in my ear. “She can see my fingers inside your panties. She can see me feeling
how wet you are, how ready you are for my cock.”

His fingers were teasing, sliding between
my legs, pulling at my panties to move them to one side.

“You’re very bad. You let men do that to
you. You let them touch you there inside your panties where everyone can see
you. She can see my fingers right inside you, fucking you exactly where you
want my cock to be right now. She can see you’re loving it.”

His fingers slipped inside me, massaging my
inner walls while his thumb worked my clit, and I moaned and gripped the window
sill. I could feel the shame of the guide’s disapproving eyes on me.

“She can’t stop watching you,” he said.
“Even when I yank your panties right down to your thighs, baring your bottom,
your dress lifted up, she says nothing. She watches as I take my cock out and
put it right inside you. She’s holding her clip board tight, her knuckles
white, seeing everything. She’s shocked you’re letting me do that, but she
wants to watch.”

Nathan entered me then, hard, and I gasped.
I imagined that woman’s eyes on me, seeing my disgrace.

“She’s watching while I fuck you from
behind,” he said. “She’s seeing my cock go in and out of you, ramming right
into you, and you’re letting me do that in front of her. You’re letting her
watch while I fuck you and hang onto your tits, pulling the front of your dress
down. She’s enjoying it, and you’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That feels good baby, doesn’t it? Letting
her watch you,” he said as he plunged into me over and over, his hands on my
bare breasts, pushing me against the cold wall, my green sun dress pulled down
at the front and up at the back.

“Yes,” I said.

“She’s waiting now. She knows you’re going
to come. She knows you don’t care what she sees or what she hears. You’re going
to come, aren’t you baby? Come for me...”

I couldn’t stop myself. I came just before
Nathan howled out his own release, my limbs shuddering against the wall,
against Nathan, and I imagined the guide hearing me call out and witnessing the
whole shameful scenario.

As we came back to reality from that,
Nathan hugged me, and we laughed though I was disturbed by how much that
fantasy had turned me on.

Only Nathan could turn my distress at being
caught into a whole new sex game.

***

I wouldn’t say Nathan was more careful
after that day because we had been seen by the tour guide at Bentley Hall. He
didn’t seem to mind that at all, even if I did, but things changed anyway very
soon after that to curtail his antics.

The open-air performance had been a
sell-out that summer. I think the audience liked the whole idea of sitting
under the stars watching a play. They spread out picnic rugs and ate whatever
they brought, drank Pimm’s or sparkling wine, and made an occasion of it.

The weather was not always kind. The
British public just carried on rain or shine, the same as they did at Wimbledon
or Cowes or Ascot. They simply put up huge golf umbrellas or held raincoats or
anything they had available over their heads to keep themselves dry until the
rain stopped.

The actors were not so lucky. They just had
to carry on if it rained. Luckily, it was a reasonable summer. They hadn’t had
too many problems.

I’d seen the performance a few times with
friends and with my family, but I wasn’t there the day when everything changed.

Apparently, there was a deluge toward the
end of the play that evening. The actors could hardly be heard for the rain
battering off the stage. James and Nathan were in the final scene together.
They just spoke louder as the rain intensified. The audience watched them in
awe, amazed they were carrying on. Their white shirts got wetter and wetter
until they clung to their bodies. The rain dripped off their hair and faces,
and still they continued. The show had to go on.

The scene ended, and the audience broke out
in a tumult of applause. The guys bowed, and then peeled off their wet shirts
and wrung them out, and the audience laughed, flashbulbs going off left and
right.

That night pictures and a video from the
end of the performance went viral. Everyone wanted to know about the actors.
They already knew James from
Doctor Devlin
, but they didn’t know Nathan.

Until that night.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I
liked the freedom of no one knowing who he was, but fame was lifeblood to
Nathan as an actor. How could I begrudge him that?

And I thought it would all blow over
anyway.

But Nathan had caught the eye of an agent,
Paula Reid, who happened to be in the audience with a group of friends.

“She wants me to audition for a movie,” he
said, when he called after she spoke to him. “It could be a big break for me.”

“What kind of movie?”

“A historical thing set in the highlands.
They’re going to start filming soon in Scotland. The star they thought they had
lined up just went into rehab.”

“Who was that?”

“She wouldn’t say. I don’t know if she
knows herself.”

As it turned out, Nathan was a hit at the
audition and got the part. He had a movie role. As well as the ability to play
the part, it seemed he had the exact dark good looks and physique they were
looking for. And he had proved he could drive publicity with his antics in the
rain. He was the best they could hope for at that point without canceling the
whole production at vast expense.

Paula, the agent, was determined to keep
the public’s eye on Nathan following the wet shirt video. She thought he would
do best presenting himself as a ladies’ man, a playboy, a lovable rogue, and,
new to the whole publicity thing, he was more than happy to take her advice. It
wasn’t as if those ideas were out of character for him. It was exactly who he
had been before he met me.

Paula seemed to know what she was doing
because he was never out of the media from then on. Before filming began, she
did her best to have him photographed in some kind of cheeky, irreverent way
with every female star who came near the UK. She said there would be less
opportunity to keep him in the papers once he disappeared to Scotland.

“Do you have to go?” I asked once when he
was leaving me to go to yet another showbiz function his agent had somehow
managed to get him invited to. I wasn’t happy when he disappeared to party
after party, especially as we didn’t have long before his new role began.

“It’s my job, Mel. You know I’d rather stay
here and do unspeakable things to you, but I have to do it.”

“You’d rather go and do unspeakable things
with those women?”

“With actresses? No way. They are no fun in
real life. Believe me. They are not like they are in any rom com you ever saw.
It would be like mating with a stick insect. Most of them don’t eat, and they
don’t laugh except on screen for fear of putting a crease in their faces. Going
there tonight and leaving you here is the last thing I want, but I want to make
something of myself. I want you, my parents, everyone to see I made it big,
doing what I want to do, and that’s act.”

I knew it was true. This was his big
chance, even if it was difficult to swallow the consequences. But nothing is
ever as simple as that.