Babyville Page 0,57

my breast, moving my bra cup down until the white mounds of my flesh pour over the top, pulling my nipples into hard peaks with his mouth, his magical mouth, as I close my eyes and groan with pleasure.

I reach down and stroke his cock through his trousers, feeling the hardness, feeling, already, as if I cannot hold on much longer, and then he is inside me, thrusting deep inside me, breathing heavily into the side of my neck, holding one leg up by his waist as I cling to his back and move with him, moaning with lust.

He doesn't look at me afterward. We walk out of the alleyway and I watch the people passing, wondering whether they saw, whether anyone saw. We walk side by side, careful not to touch, all thoughts of a cab long-forgotten, and when we reach the end of the road I turn to Mark to try to say something, anything to break this silence, and when I look at him he starts to cry.

“Oh, Mark, what is it?” Surely the fast, furious fuck of a few minutes ago happened to someone else. I feel like a stranger again, and put an arm round his shoulders awkwardly to comfort him.

“I'm sorry,” he blurts out. “Oh fuck. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to . . . Christ.” And neither of us knows what to say.

But I know one thing. I can't send this man home like this.

“I swear on my life that I'm not making a pass at you,” I say gently, feeling as if this whole situation is completely unreal, “and I understand that you might feel very awkward about this, but I think you need to talk to someone. Why don't you come back to my flat, just to talk? I'll make you some coffee and then you can go home.”

By the time we walk through my front door, I'm really not sure whether anything actually happened. I look out of the cab window on the way home (it did take forever, but we finally got one) and wonder whether I fell asleep at the table and dreamed that I had the most passionate fuck of my life, with Mark, in a seedy alleyway on the way home. Wonder seriously whether it was only wishful thinking.

I make coffee and we sit on the sofa, a yard between us, neither wanting to be the first to speak, neither knowing quite why we are here.

“This is ridiculous,” Mark says. “First of all I don't know you, other than, um . . .” He has the good grace to blush, and I realize that it wasn't a dream after all. We definitely fucked or he wouldn't be blushing. He continues: “. . . and you work for the same bloody company and I can't believe what happened tonight, and now I can't believe I'm even here, and—”

“Mark.” I stop him, laying a hand gently on his arm. “I know this sounds bizarre but sometimes it's far easier to talk to strangers than it is to talk to people you know. I am renowned for many things, but what I am really famous for, other than my spectacular ability in bed” (I only threw that in to lighten things, and although it could have been entirely inappropriate it works and Mark does manage a small, sad smile) “is my discretion. This may be none of my business, but you don't seem happy, and you seem to be a man who is shouldering an extremely heavy burden. You don't have to explain anything to me, but, and I'm not saying this because I want a repeat performance, but I would like to help, and I'm saying that because I think you're a nice guy and you seem like you could do with a friend.”

I stop to breathe.

“I don't know where to start,” he says, before laughing bitterly. “If I started with the events of tonight you probably wouldn't believe me.”

“Go on. What happened tonight?”

He tells me he went home and found his girlfriend and one of her friends dressed in white sheets and dancing round some sort of occult circle, almost in a trance as the flames of the candles scattered round the room tried to lick the bottom of the sheets.

“It was actually quite beautiful,” he says, “but we ended up having a huge row because the whole premise of it was completely ridiculous. She's desperate to have a baby, has been for ages, and we