A Well Proportioned House

She was standing at the bedroom window, wearing only a pair of black knickers. The type that look like gym shorts. Her hair had frizzed on the walk from the train station to the house. The air was damp. There was a haze to the day that the sun wasn’t strong enough to burn off. She had smelled of outside when he opened the door to her.

Her hair was still frizzed, but now it was mussed up, too. He had pushed her body against the sheets as he moved in and out of her. Her head had moved against the pillow. In the moments of her ecstasy, as she tried to rise away from the excruciating pleasure, before he had pinned her and her body had become taut, like a bow extended, curving backwards, in those moments, her head had moved from side to side, pulling her hair in its wake.

And now she stood at the window, wearing only her knickers, staring down at the street.

“They’re taking their time fixing that broken pipe, aren’t they?”

He sat on the end of the bed, almost fully clothed again, pulling on socks, drawing his shoes towards him, then slipping his feet in and lacing them up.

She crossed the room; the short distance from the window to where he is sitting. She straddles him, across his lap. She loosens his tie again.

“It must put people off, when they see that outside at the front gate.”

She means the hole, surrounded by blue plastic barriers. It was dug five days ago, the water meter exposed like a tooth, the ground around it like a receding gum.

He doesn’t get the chance to respond, because her mouth is over his, kissing him, hot and wet, their tongues fighting and moving over and around each other.

She grinds herself against his groin, and he feels himself harden again. She feels it too, and she’s off his lap and down on her knees in an instant. She unzips his fly and gently draws him out with her fingers, guiding him gently into her mouth, which is just as hot and wet as when she was kissing him.

She comes out of the bathroom dressed in her business clothes, hair pinned up, and looks down at him.

“Are you wanking?” she asks, although it’s clear that he is.

The fantasy dissolves and he opens his eyes, still lying there with his dick in his hand.

“I don’t look appealing right now, do I?” he says. More of a statement than a question.

She ignores it anyway and walks across the room from the doorway to the window.

“You look a bit daft, actually, love,” she says, pulling aside the net curtain to look down at the street. “That bloody cab’s late again. Third time this week.”

“Come back to bed,” he says, reluctant to lose his waning erection entirely.

She turns to look at him over her shoulder and smiles, then turns back to look out of the window.

“I can’t. You know I can’t, Jon. I’ve got to be at this meeting. It’s important.”

She’s fiddling with the cuff of her left sleeve. “Can’t get this bloody button fastened properly,” she mutters to herself.

“Let me,” he says. He half sits up, angling his naked body towards her.

“It’s alright,” she replies, head down, worrying at the button and the way it won’t go through the hole properly. “I’ll get it. It’s just a bit tight that’s all.”

She looks up from her sleeve and back out through the window.

“Where is that fucking cab?”

Her impatience is rising. Frustration at the button on her blouse, panic at the thought of being late for her meeting. He can’t remember what this meeting is about, although he’s sure she’s told him in one of her work-related monologues recently.

“Take the car,” he tells her. “I can use the cab when it gets here.”

She looks at him, frowning, weighing up what his offer might mean. Suspicious of his motives.

“Are you sure?” she asks eventually.

“Yes, I’m sure. All my appointments are local today. I can walk to them from the office.”

“Well then, I will,” she says, looking out of the window again, but less urgently now. “Thanks,” she adds, without looking at him.

She’s fastening the button at the cuff of her left sleeve as she walks back across the room. She manages it at last, now she is less panicked about the lack of cab and the impending lateness of her arrival at the meeting. She picks up her suit jacket from where she had placed it on the chair.

“I’ll see you for dinner,” she tells him and leaves the room.

He sinks back onto the bed. His dick flopped long ago, as soon as he realised that trying to persuade her to have a quick one was pointless. He draws in his breath, thinks about giving his fantasy another try, but his purpose has flopped just like his tired prick.

The cab arrives just as his wife drives out of the garage. He hears her faintly through the window. She is telling the cab driver that he is late, that he might as well go, forgetting about him still lying naked on the bed. Or maybe realising that he won’t be ready in time to make use of this cab without running up a huge waiting bill.

He hears the cab drive off, followed by her; both of them leaving the cul-de-sac as quickly as they can; the cab driver in anger, his wife in panic.

He gets up slowly, showers slowly, he even dresses slowly. Meticulously. He can catch the bus to his office, or he can walk. His clients like the fact that he lives in the same area, that he has knowledge of amenities to pass on to prospective buyers. He has a manner that is different from the other agents. He seems not to be all about the sell. He gives the impression that he cares about finding the right house for buyers and the right buyers for his clients.

It has taken him years to perfect the act.

He makes it to the office on foot with twenty minutes to spare before his first appointment. The house is just around the corner. He picks up the details, checks the name of the viewer, collects the keys and signs them out. He walks out of the office and into the fine morning. It is bright and sunny and the air smells fresh like spring, even though the year is at the beginning of autumn now.

He walks along the street to the house. The leaking water main still hasn’t been fixed. The blue plastic barriers are still around the hole, forming a triangle with the garden wall as the base.

He opens the gate and squeezes through. The house is unoccupied. The property of the bridal half of a recently hitched couple. There’s no urgency to sell, he hasn’t been marketing this one as aggressively.

This viewer has been back a couple of times, though. They’re becoming quite relaxed in each other’s company. Quite intimate.

He thinks of her breasts as he unlocks the door to the porch. He thinks of their firmness and the hardness of her nipples as he fucks her.

He puts his jacket over the back of one of the sofas. The sunlight is streaming into the living room, casting shadows of the furniture across the floor. He walks through to the dining room that creates a corner between living room and kitchen.

A well proportioned house.

A well proportioned body.

She rings the bell at the front door. He has left the porch door open. The front door is unlocked. She tries the handle and comes in.

“Hello?”

He emerges from the dining room, into the living room, where she can see him from the hallway.

“I didn’t know if you were here,” she says. “Your car isn’t outside.”

“I walked,” he explains. “Would you like me to show you round, or are you happy just to wander through on your own?”

She smiles. He remembers the heat that her mouth contains. She walks towards him.

“Jon,” she admonishes, still smiling, “we don’t need to play that game any more.”

She stands before him, close. He can smell her perfume; it surrounds him like an anaesthetic ether, drawing him under; the mixture of designer scent and body’s musk. She loosens his tie. It’s all part of the ritual they have established. This time she unfastens his tie completely and draws it away from under his collar. She pulls it slowly and he listens to the rasp of its fabric against the underside of his collar.

His hands come up and push her jacket off her shoulders. It falls to the floor slowly, with a crump. His hands find the buttons of her blouse just as hers find the buttons of his shirt, just as their mouths find each other.

She unfastens his trousers and they break from kissing so that he can step out of them, and so that she can divest herself of her skirt. He pulls his shirt off hurriedly and she shrugs her blouse away from her body, then tosses it onto the sofa.

They stand facing each other in underwear. In his jacket pocket, his blackberry starts to beep.

She grabs him to her and kisses him. “Leave it,” she instructs, and he is more than willing.

With one hand curled around his neck, with her mouth still over his, she pulls him back towards the hallway. Her other hand is unfastening her bra, and she removes it deftly. They come to a halt when her back makes contact with one of the walls, at the foot of the stairs.

He pulls away from her slightly, so that he can see her eyes, her face.

“Aren’t we going upstairs?” he asks, gauche for a moment like a schoolboy unable to believe his luck.

“I don’t think so, Jon. Do you?”

She pulls his cock out from his shorts and works it with her hand for a while. She isn’t gentle. She wants him to know that she is in control. He submits to her willingly. He doesn’t touch her. He stands with eyes closed as she masturbates him. Then she pulls him towards her, hooking one leg around his hip, and he slides into her easily.

They fuck against the wall. They are not quiet. It turns him on to think of the neighbours, a retired couple who never seem to go out, listening to them grunt and moan; listening to her body bumping against the wall each time he bangs his cock into her.

He comes, and she bites him on the neck.

“Fuck!” he yells. “What did you do that for?”

He withdrew as soon as he felt her teeth bite in. He pulled back. He stands now, looking at her with a mixture of panic and confusion.

She grins wickedly.

“Didn’t you like it?” she asks.

He puts a hand up to his neck, where she bit him. He sprints up the stairs to the bathroom, to look in the mirror at the damage she has done.

There is no disguising the angry red and purple suction mark, or the teeth marks that surround it. There is no way he will be able to hide that from Kay when she sees it tonight.

He stands at the top of the stairs.

“You fucking bitch,” he says quietly, with menace.

She looks up at him, unconcerned; laughing and icy.

“Don’t fucking laugh,” he says. He starts to walk slowly down the stairs, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “Don’t fucking laugh about this.”

She stops, but her eyes continue. They are scornful.

“Don’t be such a baby,” she says. “It was only a little nip.”

He’s standing in front of her again now. His hands go up. They brush the hair away from her shoulders, almost tenderly. Her eyes go dead, like flint. He takes his time, clearing the hair from her shoulders; the wisps and tendrils of copper bright hair; the cream of her skin. She never takes her eyes from him, he raises his from looking at her shoulders and her breasts.

Her eyes grow wider as his hands strengthen their grip around her neck. His thumbs press firmly against her windpipe and her breath begins to rattle in her lungs and in her throat.

“Don’t ever fucking bite me again,” he says, watching the life flow out of her, feeling her crumpling beneath his touch. Her knees buckle first, and he has to support the weight of her body with his arms, as his hands and thumbs maintain their grip.

She fights against him at first, her hands clawing at his arms, her fingernails scratching the bare skin. He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do to Kay tonight.

She goes. Finally she goes. She put up a good fight. He lets her body drop to the floor at the foot of the stairs. She was a beautiful woman. Expensive, but still beautiful.

He dresses again and locks the house up on his way out.

As he walks back to the office, he pulls his blackberry from his jacket pocket. Alex from the office. Someone else wanting to see that particular house.

He rings Alex back, stopping at the end of the street.

“Alex, hi. There’s been a problem. You know how they’ve been fixing the water main outside? Yeah, there’s been a bit of a leak in the house. I’m going to call out a plumber, get it sorted. Can you rearrange my other viewings for today? Cheers, mate. I owe you one.”

He hangs up on Alex and dials again. Calls in a favour. A plumber to fix the leak. A cleaner to tidy up the mess. A couple of scratches to be explained away.

© J R Hargreaves September 2006