Telling Tales (12 page)

I’ve got to admit, I bask in that a little bit. Who wouldn’t? The most he used to say about my stories was
That
part
where
her
head
came
off
was
cool
, so it’s not really a shocker that I’m gratified.

But it is a shocker that I can’t look at Cameron. I just can’t, and I don’t even know why. It should be Wade I’m embarrassed to look at. It should be Wade I don’t want to face. But instead all I can think about is Cameron’s steady gaze. How close the story seemed to things he’s told me and things I uncovered. Will he think I’m taunting him somehow? I felt as though I was taunting him, even though that’s ridiculous.

And then I
do
raise my eyes to him, and maybe it’s not so ridiculous after all. He looks…he looks as though I just set fire to his sleeve, and now he can’t move as the blaze slowly consumes him. His gaze has progressed from possibly wanting to kill me to actually wanting to kill me, even though I’m certain I’ve done nothing wrong.

I haven’t, have I?

“Don’t you think it’s a great story, Cam?” Kitty says, because she’s as sharp as a tack. She’s as cute as a button, my Kitty. Obviously she can see what I can see all over his face, and unlike me she’s not afraid to address it.

She wants him to give himself up. At gunpoint, if necessary.

“Marvelous,” he says, and he enunciates every last syllable as though each one tastes like poison. As though he has to gag and choke it down.

Clearly he doesn’t care if there’s a gun in his face or not. Kitty’s silvery little knowing tones do nothing to draw him out, and then once she realizes he’s not going to stop staring at me like he wishes
he
had a gun, she tries to lighten the mood by giggling with Wade over various elements of my apparent masterpiece.

I hear him say something like
Well, if I knew a Queen as hot as the ruler of Hamin-Ra, I’d let three guys alleviate some of my tension too. And by alleviate my tension I of course mean ream my ass until I cry.
And then Kitty squeals and kind of jumps on him, and there’s lots of reaming of asses talk going on. Lots of it. Probably way too much for my sanity, if I’m honest.

But it’s OK because my sanity is already being destroyed by Cameron’s furious gaze. So much so that when Kitty demands we all play a game, I think she’s said
There’s a ghost coming out of the wall
and almost jump right out of my skin. Though in truth I’m just not sure how else to explain my reaction. Seriously—I nearly throw the pages of “Hamin-Ra” across the room.

Kitty says: “Oooh, jumpy, huh?”

Then bumps my shoulder with her hip. I’m not even sure how she gets to my shoulder with her hip, in truth, but somehow she manages it. And then she stands in the middle of the room—oh Lord how I remember her announcements, made in just the place she’s in now—and tells me I should be jumpy, because now we’re going to play extreme sardines.

Oh God, no, not extreme sardines. Especially not when we’re all like this. Wade stands and I can
see
his erection making a tent of his pants, for God’s sake. I can
see
it. And then he says: “Yeah, but this is all just totally an excuse for us to get naked, right?”

To which Kitty replies: “Hee hee hee.”

Lord, I don’t want to be the one to find him in a cupboard somewhere and then demand an item of his clothing—because those are the stupid rules of extreme sardines. Kitty thought it up, of course. Maybe she just got bored of extreme Boggle, I don’t know. Either way, the sardines have to give up their pants or their tops or in the case of Cameron catching me, once, in the downstairs linen closet—one shoe. He always went with something innocuous like a shoe, whereas getting caught by Kitty meant you were a dead man.

One time she demanded my bra, even though I still had my top and trousers on. I felt naked long before we got down to the other stuff that time, I tell you.

And I’ve got a feeling I’m going to feel very naked long before we get to other stuff here too. For a start, she nominates herself as the hunter. Then she turns off all the lights, so that we’re all just sitting there in front of the flickering, demonic fire, while she informs us she’s going to go by torchlight alone in her quest for flesh.

She actually uses that term.
Quest
for
flesh.

Cameron still looks pissed. I’m not surprised—I’d be pissed too, if someone did something that made me extremely angry for no apparent reason and then another person threatened to steal my shoes. But even so, I don’t expect him to interject. Not even when it’s clear this is going to be some sort of “get everybody to have sex with each other” game.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to participate,” he says, though he doesn’t mention why. Of course he doesn’t. The reason is probably “I fear I might murder Allie in the dark if we do.”

But Kitty just flashes the torch she’s produced from God knows where in his face, and waits until he feels good and interrogated. Then she tells him: “Don’t you try to get out of fun, Cameron Lindhurst. We’ll tie you down and
make
you have fun.”

I can hardly see him through the flickering darkness, but I know he flashes a look at me after she’s spoken. I know it. I can
feel
it, rubbing against my skin like something ever so slightly prickly. It gives me an idea of what his anger is about, but only a nebulous one—maybe…maybe he thinks I told Kitty something? Maybe he thinks the story I read out was some sort of coded signal to her, about him?

It’s possible. Oh God, what if he really does murder me in the dark?

“You’ve got thirty seconds,” Kitty says. And then we all make a run for it.

At first I’m sure Cameron isn’t going to play. But then I really start thinking about the rules of extreme sardines and realize—hell, why
wouldn’t
he want to play? Hiding is the thing he’s best at! He’s six foot five but somehow he’s always the last one to get clocked, so he can just find himself a nice, safe corner and wait the night out.

Maybe with a good book and a cup of cocoa, to while away the hours.

But unluckily for him, I’m on his trail. He’s pushed it too far now—inventing imaginary reasons to be pissed at me! I can’t have that. What if the reasons aren’t imaginary at all?

So I follow him down the corridor of stepping stones—so eerie and gleaming in the darkness—to the door that doesn’t exist. The one underneath the stairs, the one he doesn’t think Kitty knows about, which in all honesty she probably doesn’t. And she’s the hunter, so why should he care whether I know about it or not?

Because I do know. I found it back when the boat room turned out to be a stupid place to hide, and I thought I was so clever pressing against the place where there should have been a door to a cupboard. Only to find that there was an actual door to a cupboard.

Then throwing up my hands on realizing Cameron had already come to the same conclusion, about ten games of sardines ago. It had made me imagine him creeping about in the dead of night, exploring the house without us and rootling out its little nooks and crannies, and the same idea comes to me now as I press the door he’s closed behind himself.

The shape of it springs out of the wood, too small for a real door and almost creepy. In fact, it’s all the way creepy and always was, and when you stand in there beneath the slanted ceiling, it smells like every weird thing you’ve always imagined. It smells like forbidden rooms and creatures hiding in the walls.

And the side of me that still thrills at the idea of such things gives a little shudder, before I plunge into the darkness behind the door that isn’t there.

“No, don’t, Allie,” he says, and weirdly the first thing I feel isn’t hurt. It’s surprise—that he knows it’s me so quickly. Everything is black as tar and impossible to see through. How can he tell I’m not Kitty?

“Allie, don’t,” he says again, but I close the door behind myself anyway, and shut us into utter darkness.

I can feel cool air against my back, immediately, as though a draught seeps in from the direction of the stairs, for no reason at all. Always makes me think there’s something back there, in that ever-slanting-down corner, but I don’t let myself think about it. I focus on Cameron in front of me, all solid and obvious even when I can’t see him.

I can hear his harsh breathing. I can smell his expensive man-perfume scent. I can feel him bristling, like a cat with its hackles up.

“Don’t what?” I ask. It comes out as a whisper I don’t intend.

“Talk,” he says, and I kind of hate him for that. So much so I simply have to call him on it.

“So you’re just going to be this asshole, then?”

I think I
feel
him flinch. The air definitely stirs around me.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he says.

“Yeah, but you’re definitely succeeding at being one.”

“Please don’t say that. You just don’t get—”

“I don’t get what? Look—none of what happened was a big deal. And it would be less of one if you’d just stop for five seconds and have a conversation with me. You know a conversation—that thing where you open your mouth and sounds come out, then I open mine and sounds come out?”

“Allie …”

“What? What’s so bad? Is it really so horrible of me to want to know what’s going on with you?”

He snaps then. I feel it happen before he gives voice to it—a shift in the temperature of this little room. A rush of air coming at me, as though his big body rammed right against everything it could.

“No, it’s really horrible of you to use it against me in front of everyone.”

I have to say that’s not what I was expecting—even after kind of thinking it earlier on. And if he could see my face I’m sure it would show.

“I … what?
What?
”

“You wanted a laugh, and I guess you got one.”

“You think…laugh…
what?
”

He does something loud and air shuffling. Claps his hands together, maybe. I feel something almost brush the front of my jersey.

“Come on, Allie! You knew the kinds of things that turn me on so you thought you’d get me riled up and have a laugh at my expense. What do you think I am, stupid?”

At this point I really, really want to say:
Yeah, I think you’re stupid
. But instead I go with the most mind-boggling part of his little declaration there.

“Did the story I just read out really turn you on?”

Of course, I knew it was a possibility. Or at least, I thought he might react to it somehow, and then talk to me about it. But him reacting with
that
kind
of
thing
really
turns
me
on
is just a little beyond what I was expecting. As is the other stuff about laughing.

I mean, seriously. He thinks I find this
funny
? Does funny mean horny, in his language?

“What?” he says, irritated—I think—that he’s been caught out somehow. “No, no.”

“You bi, Cam?” I ask, and I swear to God I do it in all seriousness. But he just gets even more irritated and hand-wavy about it.

“Yeah, keep it coming, Allie. Keep tearing one off me—it’s real funny. It’s a great joke, I’m gonna start laughing any second—”

“Cam!”

I shout it much, much louder than I intend. And I do something worse too—I reach out through the darkness and grab his arms. They’re easy enough to find because he’s waving them about like nothing else, and he lets me too. He lets me get a hold of him.

“Cam,
knock
it
off
. Hey—I’m not trying to make fun of you. I don’t even know why you’d think something like that. Have I really been so cruel to you, so unfeeling, that you’d think I’d read a story to torment and then
laugh
at you?”

Silence.

“Cam—is that what you think? Why would you—”

“No—
no
it’s just Wade did it first and then I thought—”

He shuts himself off before the rest of
that
little sentence can come out. But oh ho ho it’s too late for that, Cameron. Far, far too late.

“Wade did
what
first?” I ask, and though I try to sound normal my voice comes out low and strange.

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing.”

So it’s obviously
something
. And it’s like the
something
is just boiling away inside him, because although he’s straining at my grip it’s not as though he’s really trying to get away.

I can almost
hear
him wanting to say it.

“Cam, remember back when you could tell me just about anything? Let’s go back to that, for a second.”

“I could never tell you anything about myself,” he murmurs, which smarts, I have to say.

“Then at least try now. Because you know if Wade has done anything to hurt you, I’ll kill him. You know that, right?”

“Oh, you won’t do anything,” he says, and tries to shake me off, just a little bit. I think he’s turned his face to one side, like he’s looking for an escape route—but of course I can’t be sure. “You’re totally in love with him—you’ve fucked him already, for fuck’s sake!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Cameron swear before. It sounds wrong in his mouth, as though he had to bite down on hard on something to get it out. He seems sensible of this fact too, because once he’s got the words out he breathes too hard and tilts away from me, a weird sort of judder making its way down through his body to the hands I’ve still got around his wrists.

Is it odd if his suddenly blazing jealousy—as offensive as I should probably find it—just makes me want to slide my hands down and clasp his?

“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment. Flatly, bleakly. “I’m so sorry, Allie. That was completely unnecessary and uncalled for and I’ve really got no excuse. Just none.”

“It’s OK—hey. It’s OK.”

I make a mistake then. I run my hands up over his arms, right over his heavy biceps beneath the stupid Pringles-style jumper he’s got on, and I really shouldn’t have. Not because it makes him shiver—which it absolutely does—but because it makes
me
shiver. It makes me realize how illicit it feels somehow, to touch him in any sort of intimate way. Even when I’m just trying to get him to calm down or some stupid shit like that, there’s a sexual undercurrent now that I can’t easily deny.

He feels good. He feels strong. He’s making me wet in the middle of a fucking argument.

“It’s not OK. It’s not—you
should
be with him, you know? He can give you things that I’m…not even capable of.”

“You mean, like, talking about your feelings? Because I gotta agree—you are
terrible
at that.”

“No, Allie. No…
Jesus
, it’s not even easier in the dark.” I think I actually hear him swallow. “I mean…I can’t give you all the…sex stuff he gives away so freely. I can’t just…I don’t know how to—”

“Who says I want that stuff?” I whisper, but he just laughs, bitterly.

“Your stories say you want that stuff.”

“So do yours,” I tell him, and this time I
don’t
whisper. It comes out fierce, fierce, and for the first time in my life I actually tug someone down to bring them closer to me. As though I’m going to kiss him any second and, oh God, I want to. I do.

“It’s not the same,” he says, but I can think of many ways in which it is. Not least of which is the thing pressing between us, suddenly—the one that’s brushing against my belly even though we’ve hardly done anything at all. I haven’t kissed him; he hasn’t touched me.

But he’s definitely hard, anyway.

“Really? Then how come the story I just read out turned you on?” I can feel his breath on my face, all hot and too quick. It’s making me buzz higher than all this oddly frantic talk is. “You like the thought of a cock in your ass, Cam?”

“Don’t say that,” he whispers, though really I think he means the opposite. He sounds so hoarse and tremulous suddenly, and I understand why.

I feel hoarse and tremulous too, saying something as dirty as that to someone like him.

“Or maybe you want me to do it to you instead, huh? You want me to fuck your ass?”

He lets out a little short, awkward breath, then definitely presses himself against me. Just a little, just enough for me to know it’s his cock doing the pressing.

“Tell me what you want,” I murmur, into someplace good and warm like the side of his throat. He’s leaning down into me now, so it makes it kind of easy—even if he won’t answer me. He won’t give me anything.

“You want me to touch you?” I say, and finally he shifts against me. His mouth opens against the side of my face, hot and soundless.

Then finally, finally he manages to get out words—even if they’re not the words I expect.

“Don’t ask,” he says. “Don’t ask me.”

And then a spike of arousal jolts through me, hard and unyielding. Somehow, somehow I know instinctively what he means. I know because he’s told me in a thousand ways—with the stories he likes and the looks he’s given me and all the meaning between the actual real words he’s used.

And sure enough, when I don’t ask—when I just
do
, instead—he moans loudly. I don’t wait for his permission, the way I would usually. I don’t let him lead the way—
I
lead the way. I run the heel of my palm right down over the solid ridge of his cock, and when he tries to back off a little I squeeze the wrist I’ve still got clasped in my other hand.

I squeeze it, and hold him in place.

“No,” I tell him, as though I’ve suddenly become someone much more powerful and sexually sure, in my head. “No.”

Then suddenly he’s breathing hard and bucking toward me, as though I said something encouraging instead of that one harsh little word. Funny, how it so often means something bad, a refusal, a barrier in the way of everything good and yet here it feels…it feels like that word he used to describe Wade.

Free.

I think of all the things I’ve wanted to do to him since reading his story and finding my picture, and I just get to pick the one I like best. I get to choose, and I do: “Keep still,” I tell him, then I push the words right out of myself. “I’m going to go down on you now.”

He makes the dirtiest little sound, at that—caught somewhere between a forced-out breath and a moan—and for the first time I really wish I could see his face. I can feel his lips are parted, all hot and wet and almost kissing me in little fits and starts, but it’s his eyes I want. They must be pretty lust blown by now if his mouth is open and his cock is this hard, but I can’t know for sure.

I want to know for sure.

But more than that I want to suck and lick and stroke his big, gorgeous cock—because it is. When I finally manage to fumble open the buttons on his jeans—him squirming and bucking into my touch, all the while—he feels immense.

Smooth as silk and so thick I can barely get my grip around it, and oh when I stroke down to the tip there’s far more of him than there should be.

“Sorry,” he blurts out and I have no idea why. None at all. It’s lucky he fills me in, really, because I’m so mesmerized by the smooth, solid feel of him I can’t do anything but sigh with arousal. “I know I’m insanely big.”

God, he’s even apologizing about
that
?

“Stop saying sorry,” I tell him, and then I squeeze that glorious cock just once. Hard.

He grunts as though it goes through him like a punch to the gut, but he still keeps on trying to explain.

“Women say they like it but they don’t. Mostly they scream and run a mile.”

“Really?” I say, but I don’t mean it as a question. I’m not actually making idle conversation. I’m just saying meaningless things while I stroke up and down the fat length of him, tingling all over with each new discovery.