Serial Fiction | Dark Romanticism
The distractable Mr. Smith, and the delectable Mrs. Jones: Part 1
Whiskey Kisses
Mr Smith subconsciously bit his lower lip, and very deliberately ran his middle finger around the top of his almost empty pint glass. He closed his eyes, and nervously fought the urge to order another drink whilst he waited patiently to meet the beautiful stranger.
The mystery Mrs Jones.
Mrs Amy Jones. Or at least, that was the name she had given him.
To her, he was Mr Cooper Smith. A fake internet name to hide behind, a profile only ever imagined to be for some online flirting.
Now he was here, waiting. No more imagining; this was real, and this was happening.
Well, it was if she turned up. Cooper was 95% sure she would, but the nagging 5% of doubt was growing with every passing minute. Fuck, he thought to himself; am I making a terrible mistake? What if this is all a big joke and I am the punchline? What if this is all a big trap, and I am the thirsty fish hanging by my jaw from the seductively baited hook? What if everyone in here knows, and they’re all laughing at me?
In reality, barely anyone had noticed the not entirely unhandsome yet pretty unremarkable looking man sitting quietly on his own at the small table in the corner of the bar.
“Get your shit together man,” he mumbled firmly to himself. “She’s coming.”
Barely two weeks had passed since, following an unholy amount of whiskey and an uncharacteristic burst of self confidence, he had charged like a bull into her chinashop-inbox with just enough comically clumsy self-assurance to get her attention, but not enough cocksure arrogance to send her scuttling for the block button.
Within the week they were messaging daily, and within days, every hour. The connection was instant, it was mutual, and it was unbelievably strong.
Neither of them could deny it.
Neither of them wanted to.
What started as harmless flirting soon progressed to something with a little more intent. Chatting became talking, not just small talk but really talking, sharing more with each other than either of them did with friends, family or partners.
Souls bared, the innocence of the words was soon stripped away as the flames of desire turned the pretence of platonic friendship into nothing more than a memory. Words became pictures, pictures became calls, and soon enough they were naked together in more ways than shared secrets and extra-marital desires.
And then she dropped the bombshell question.
“Shall we meet for a drink?”
Six words.
Six little words seemingly so innocent, but unbelievably loaded with terrifying yet electrifying undertones.
Just a drink, they had agreed. A harmless drink, between two friends.
What was wrong with that?
Neither of them had told their partner.
Now here he was, waiting in a shabby-chic bar buried in the depths of East-London, his fidgety habit of playing with his wedding ring doing nothing to help him not think about his wife.
Amy had told him about her husband, how she had been married for 12 years. At first she told him happily so, in almost every way.
Every way except sexually.
In that way, she had told him that what she wanted, what she really wanted, was exactly what she never got; for someone to just want her. To need her. To be driven wild by her scent, to act on wanton impulse and give into lust, and to take just her, just have to have her there and then.
To look at her the way her husband used to look at her.
That, and a cock in her mouth, a big creamy load down her throat. Amy had admitted to him that her husband would, even on occasion, turn her down when she offered, which was more than unfathomable to Cooper, a man who was lucky to get a once-a-year birthday blow job if his wife was just the right level of tipsy.
He could feel his anxiety rising in direct correlation to the number of minutes the big hand on the clock upon the mantelpiece above the open fire ticked past 7pm. Fucking hell, he thought, he’d watched her cum, but didn’t even know her real name. She’d watched him but had never even seen his face. He couldn’t help feeling like perhaps he had dived into a pool that was far too deep, for him to reach the bottom.
In his mind, he decided to give her until 7.15, and if she hadn’t arrived, he would leave. Maybe 7.20. Or 7.30, and he’d get another beer at 7.15, and drink that and leave at half past. He was just about to factor a pack of dry roasted peanuts into the equation when announced by a blast of winter cold, suddenly, there she was.
He saw her first, allowing his eyes time to drink her in, to watch her scan the room, looking for the man clutching a dog-eared copy of Catch 22, the book which Cooper realised he was holding so tight his knuckles were turning white.
And then she saw him.
She saw him, and she looked at him in a way that made him feel 14 all over again. Her face burst into a broad smile, her eyes sparkled with a mischievous curiosity, and before she’d even negotiated a path between winter coats hanging on the backs of chairs and stepped over the sleepy dog that he hadn’t previously noticed, all his nervous apprehension melted into nothing.
He stood to greet her, his own stupid grin stretching across his face. She ignored his awkwardly outstretched hand and instead opened her arms to invite him into an embrace. Cooper duly obliged, and as he felt her pull him close to her, he could feel her breasts pressing against him through the thin material of his shirt.
They held the embrace longer than he expected, her skin soft against his, the smell of her hair causing him to breathe deeply, to inhale every last drop of her. As he let his arms drop, Amy caught his hand, squeezed it, and looked into his eyes, her confident entrance hiding her own nervous insecurities.
A sub-par poker player, Cooper was unable to disguise the look she so desperately wanted to see. He wanted her. His eyes couldn’t even pretend it was just a drink anymore, he wanted her, needed her, and he couldn’t hide it.
“Good fucking god I want you right here, right now,” was what he wanted to say, but with the very British habit of good manners piercing through the haze of lust currently fogging his thoughts he instead asked “Can I get you a drink?” Amy nodded, and motioned that she’d follow him to the bar.
“What’ll it be?” asked the barman. Five minutes previous, Cooper could have recalled every detail of the bar, of the barman, of the number of different types of gin stacked artistically on the shelf but now she was here, she was all he could see, and he seemed to have lost the capacity to make a decision.
“Whiskey and coke please, make it a double,” ordered Amy.
“Make that two please,” added Cooper. He paused, suddenly painfully aware of how strange it was to pretend to be someone else, to think of himself with a different name, to be living an extracurricular adventure so far from the realities of his everyday existence.
He found himself lost for words, but he needn’t have worried. Amy talked and talked to him with a nervous energy that sent blood coursing through his veins.
They definitely both needed that drink.
With the first whiskeys dispatched before the ice had even had a chance to consider melting, Cooper made a move to head to the bar for a second round. As he stood, she placed her hand on his. “Make them to go?” she smiled. Sensing Cooper’s confusion, Amy gave his arm a playful tap, and laughed with her big green eyes locked on his. “Okay, fine”, she purred. “One for the road”.
14 year-old Cooper would have instantly cum in his pants. 42 year-old Cooper wasn’t far off.
The second, and then the third whiskeys were consumed at a much more sensible pace. Both Cooper and Amy relaxed into the evening, sitting opposite each other and talking and laughing like old friends, whilst flirting with the lusty intent of two lovesick strangers who had every intention of fucking each others brains out in the immediate future. The frequency and longevity of the lingering fingertip kisses on each other’s skin grew as their inhibitions evaporated in an amber mist.
Cooper knew with all his heart that he wanted to have sex with her, but despite her obvious affections for him, his whiskey confidence still hadn’t figured out how to make his move. Most of him was being the gentleman, waiting for her to ask him; the remainder was desperate to ask, but terrified that the answer might not be what he wanted.
As if reading his thoughts, or perhaps prompted by the first awkward silence of the night, Amy stood and moved around the table, trailing her fingers through the ring of wetness left on the table by the now empty whiskey glasses. She sat down next to him, leaning gently into him, her breast pressed against his arm, her intoxicating scent making him feel light-headed.
“Is this ok?” she asked, motioning with her eyes towards the hand she had placed on his thigh, under the table, whilst sucking the whiskey leftovers from her fingers. Cooper could smell the alcohol on her breath, could see the lipstick glistening on her lips, lips that were mere inches from his own. All he wanted to do was kiss her, to taste her, to press his mouth to hers, to tear her clothes from her body and give her everything she craved, but he knew he had to wait.
They were, when all said and done, both married and this was, after all, a public place.
He nodded, and placed his hand on hers. Squeezing it gently, Cooper pondered whether to ask Amy her real name. They had agreed, at the start, to stick to Cooper and Amy. Pseudonyms meant less risk, and more mystery. The secret intimacy was a powerful aphrodisiac to them both, but Cooper knew that slowly his heart was overtaking his cock in controlling his thoughts, and his actions, and he wanted to know more.
Patience, he thought to himself. She’ll tell you when she’s ready.
Not for the first time, it appeared as though Amy was reading his mind. “Cooper”, she started. “What’s your real na…”
“Don’t,” he interrupted, softly stroking her hand under the table. “We agreed, remember? No names”.
“I’m Lottie’’, she blurted out, defiantly. They both paused, and Cooper smiled.
“I’m Peter”.
Lottie grinned. With those four words, those two small sentences, another wall was broken down between them, and their hearts moved closer together.
“Hi Peter”.
Peter blushed, his name sounding like summer’s day perfection rolling off her strawberry lips. He felt like he was seeing her differently, almost like a detail as seemingly small as a name allowed him to see her with renewed clarity, bringing every little detail of her beautiful face into a sharper focus.
He needed to kiss her.
She wished he would.
Peter still couldn’t do it, not in the bar. Despite living in a city with over 10 million people and only having a handful of friends, the paranoia of doing something he definitely should not have been doing meant he still couldn’t kiss her in public.
“Shall we get out of here?” he asked her, with no next destination in mind. Lottie nodded and stood too quickly, losing her balance and catching Peter’s shoulder as the heady cocktail of three double whiskeys on the rocks and a bad intention fuelled meeting with a married man caused her some momentary discombobulation. Peter laughed and helped her into her coat, his fingers brushing her neck as he gently pushed her hair from her shoulder.
Pulling on his own jacket with the air of a man very much in control of his own destiny and with every intention of kissing her as soon as they were outside, Peter led them to the door, and out into the cold night air. The sudden change of temperature not only hit him like a sobering sledgehammer, but also sent his confidence crashing into his brogues.
The rude intrusion of reality seemed to open the floodgates of doubt, and suddenly Peter was unaware if he felt sick from too many whiskeys or whether the root cause of the nausea was the crippling guilt seeping into every bone in his body.
Before he had a chance to find the answer, Peter felt Lottie pull him into the dark alley next to the bar, her hand on the lapel of his jacket, pulling him down towards her. Away from the bustle of the bar and the glare of the streetlights, holding his face barely an inch from hers, she stared deep into his eyes, giving them both one last chance to not cross that line.
Without any further hesitation, Peter pushed his lips to Lottie’s.
Tentatively at first, with his hand gently caressing the side of her face, and then with more intensity as she ran her fingers through his hair and pulled his mouth harder onto hers. With their lips pressed together and their tongues intertwined, nothing had ever felt more natural to either of them.
Peter wanted to bottle this moment and keep it with him forever. Everything about her was setting his senses on fire; the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, the way she leaned into him with her head tilted upwards and pulled his mouth onto her, making her simultaneously vulnerable, yet somehow in control. The way she closed her eyes when she kissed him, the way her hips responded when his hands slid inside her coat.
All those days of being ignored, the nights of being rejected, all the pain and frustration they had shared with each other seemed to fade to nothing but a distant memory of a different life as in that instant they became the absolute centre of each other’s world.
That kiss was the only thing that mattered.
Lottie groaned into Peter’s mouth as his hand untucked her blouse from the waistband of her skirt and his cold fingertips made contact with her bare skin. She broke the kiss and let her head fall back, pulling and pushing his face closer to her, enjoying his warm, wet kisses on her neck.
Peter’s hand slid up her torso, the tips of his fingers finding the underwire of her bra. Lottie gasped as he moved his hand around and squeezed her breast, his thumb caressing the skin at the edge of the lacy cup, her hardening nipple pressed against the palm of his hand.
Her gasps soon turned to groans as Peter moaned into her ear, the feeling of her breasts in his hands causing the noise to involuntarily escape from between his lips. His moan soon turned into a guttural growl as Lottie dropped her hands from his hair to his hip, before stroking the full length of his hard cock through his jeans.
Lottie knew that Peter’s cock was a good size, but she had on occasion wondered if his girth was exaggerated by good angles and clever photography; but now, as she rubbed his shaft through his jeans, she could feel that he was every inch the man his pictures showed to him to be.
Peter couldn’t believe how good it felt to have his hands on another woman’s body. How good it felt to have that feeling reciprocated, to feel just how much she wanted him too. To be lusted after, to be hungrily desired.
He wondered just how far he could go.
In that moment, he realised he would do anything she wanted.
Dropping to her knees, Lottie began to tug at Peter’s belt.
It was then that her phone started buzzing in her handbag. A low, grating, determined buzz.
They both tried to ignore it. Lottie focused on the belt buckle, the buckle that just wouldn’t fucking undo but the incessant bloody phone kept buzzing and buzzing and fucking buzzing and she knew, she fucking knew, there was only one person in the world who called her on repeat like that.
“Is that important?” Peter asked her, closing his hand around hers on the half open belt buckle and motioning towards her handbag. “Do you need to see who that is?” Lottie nodded unwillingly, and reluctantly reached into the bag. Peter couldn’t help notice how her alabaster skin took on an almost ethereal quality when bathed in the light of the phone screen, and his wonder only deepened. Fuck he wanted her, but the look on her face told him tonight was not going to be the night.
The phone started buzzing in her hand again. “Oh god, i’m so fucking sorry, I’ve got to take this,” Lottie sighed despondently. Peter helped her to her feet, before she turned and walked a few paces away, answering the call and speaking in muffled tones.
She leaned on the lamppost and ran her fingers through her thick red hair whilst she talked. Peter was struck by two things; first he completely and utterly couldn’t believe how sexy Lottie was. Everything from her hair to her smile to her laugh to her shitty jokes and her dirty mouth. He knew he was attracted to her from how they had been together online, but the reality of her in the flesh had smashed even his wildest expectations out of the water.
Second, he could tell from her body language that the call was not going well.
Lottie hung up, and walked back towards Peter, tears forming in her eyes.
Without any words, Peter wrapped his arms around her. She melted into his chest, holding onto him as tightly as he was holding on to her.
“I’m so sorry,” she sniffled. “I’ve got to go.”
Peter nodded. “It’s ok darling. We both know there are other lives…” His voice trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid. Neither of them needed to hear it right now.
Seconds turned to minutes as neither wanted to break the embrace, comforted by the strength of the silence.
“One bloody evening”, Lottie eventually started. “Can I not just have one evening? Not just one fucking evening to do what I want to do?”
“I know darling, I know”, Peter empathised, feeling a little guilty that he had deliberately left his phone on silent, determined not to be disturbed. His kids could be sick, his wife could have left him or his house could have burnt down, and he’d be none the wiser.
He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. “There’ll be another time for this darling, I promise.”
Lottie sniffed, wiped her eyes, looked up at him and smiled. She could see the kindness in his eyes, and knew that it was a promise he would not break. With a big consolation sigh, an acceptance that the moment had passed for tonight, Lottie’s thoughts turned to her journey home. “Walk with me to the train?” she asked Peter.
He nodded, and together they made their way to the station, the unexpected interruption disrupting more than the flow of kisses. Stopping just short of the ticket barriers, they awkwardly embraced, the harsh glare of the station lights bringing a stark focus onto their reality.
Undaunted by the late night commuters and perhaps emboldened by the lasting effects of the whiskey, Peter took Lottie’s hands in his. “Let’s do this again”, he said, his eyes locked on hers. “Soon.”
“Absolutely”, smiled Lottie. “See you soon Mr Smith.”
“Goodnight, Mrs Jones”.
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