Dirty Bad Wrong(70)

Her eyes glittered like moondust, pale as the kiss of a ghost. “Please talk to me. What happened to you? Was it Rachel? Was it bad?”

I sighed. “It wasn’t a good time.”

“You came here for a reason,” she whispered. “Because you care. At least try and let me in.”

“I need a drink,” I grunted, brushing her legs aside. She didn’t follow me, just sat and watched, eyes haunting my every move. I opted for a coffee, and made Lydia one too, brooding around my own resolve as the kettle boiled. This time I positioned myself away from her, my elbows on my knees.

“Rachel was already married when I met her,” I began. “We worked together a long time before anything happened. She was married to our boss’s best friend, it’s how she got the job initially. Her husband worked long hours and she was bored, he figured she could do with a hobby and along she came, to join me as a junior even though she wasn’t such a junior.”

“Go on,” she encouraged, eyes wide and so fucking compelling.

“Rachel’s first husband was a lot older than her, boring, she called him, but I suspect he worshipped the ground she walked on. She was spoiled, but frustrated, claiming the passion had all dried up. For about six months it was all she’d talk about, how much she wanted to leave him. She told me she’d moved into a separate bedroom at first, that they weren’t having sex. She’d say too much, bemoaning the fact she was a red-blooded woman without a man, and me, well I was a red-blooded man without a steady woman. She came back to work after a long Christmas holiday that year and told me they’d agreed to separate. I believed her, I mean, why wouldn’t I? It’d been a long time coming. I guess it was around that time she decided she wanted me for real, and hell did I know it. She’d message me on my personal email, listing off fantasies she’d never fulfilled, and some of them made my mouth water, Lydia, some of them were so fucking filthy.”

“So, you fucked her?”

I smiled, despite myself. “Many times, and she was as filthy as her fantasies. She lapped up every single crazy thing I had to give her, and back then I was stupid, I thought we could hide it, I thought it wouldn’t matter. But Rachel craves attention more than she craves sex, only I didn’t know her well enough to realise that. She’d photograph every mark I ever made on her, emailing me a copy so I could take pride in my work outside of office hours. I figured she’d delete them, figured she’d be careful, but Rachel isn’t careful, she doesn’t think through her actions.”

I watched Lydia watching me, and she was biting her lip in the way that I love, the way that makes my dick twitch. “Go on...” she prompted.

“I’d been in that company since university, Cat, it was like a home to me, my whole fucking life was there, years and years of work. I’d worked my way up to the top, and it meant the world to me.”

“What did she do?”

“Rachel didn’t do anything, it’s what she didn’t do. She didn’t delete her photographs and she didn’t delete her emails. Every single photograph and sordid conversation was right there for the taking, and her husband did the taking, he read the whole fucking lot of it, copied every single picture on her phone, and then he went insane, called me a wife-beater, a psychopath, every fucking name under the sun. He even called the police, and when Rachel wouldn’t press any kind of charges, he emailed the all-staff email group on our company email and attached every single photo she’d ever taken of us. My boss went berserk, reeling for his friend. Life caved in, and the rest is a lot of painful history.”

“He fired you?!” Lydia asked, mouth open.

“No. It would have been easier if he had,” I sighed. “He didn’t fire me, but he made it clear every fucking day how disappointed he was in me. He railed me for unprofessional conduct, started micro-managing every single thing I did, claiming he couldn’t trust me anymore, but worse than any of that was the way he looked at me. He looked at me like I was a monster, and the rest of the company followed suit. If you’ve never experienced that, Lydia, I hope you never will. People you’ve known for years whispering in the corridors, looking at you with suspicion and mistrust, like you’re some kind of savage animal who needs locking up. Women in the office didn’t want to be alone with me, women I’d known for years unwilling to meet my eyes, and some of the men, well, they made it pretty clear what they thought of me.”

“Shit, James, I’m so sorry.” Lydia was pale, her eyes wide in sympathy. I had to look away to continue, staring at nothing but the floor.