Love by Hannah Harper

He wondered if she’d noticed yet. Sometimes he could get away with it - for a little bit, anyway - as she bucked underneath him, willing pleasure on. He was amazed actually, at how often he did get away with it. Couldn’t she feel it? Going all soft? Stuffing it into her, bendy and useless, like it was the lop-ears on the beanie baby rabbit she had propped on their dressing table. Beady eyes judging him as they did it on the bed.

He watched porn, yes, occasionally. Could it be that? Too much on tap? But she watched it too, he was sure of it. He knew how to check a history. He knew the drawer where she kept her sexy novels. And she still got wet with him. And it wasn’t as if he watched anything nasty and had got desensitised, or whatever it was that they said could happen now. He deliberately avoided degrading stuff, those nasty ads that blinked at him from the side bars. 18 and Abused. Rough Sex. Dirty Sluts. Watch My Girlfriend. No thanks, not for him. Just the one-camera-one-cut-two-or-more-amateurs-at-it-on-a-bed fare please.

He wondered if she knew he mixed up the genders sometimes. Of course he liked to watch women. So did everyone. But he wasn’t averse to two men getting hard while wrestling each other on a waxed gym floor either. He was an open-minded bloke. If they were turned on, then he was turned on. That was his line, he thought, if she ever asked him. Though she probably wouldn’t. They were big on privacy. That’s what made them such a good couple. Why fret about what you’ll never ever know? Or really, what you have no business knowing?

He pumped faster and faster, sweat blooming on the bridge of his nose and beading his forehead. Why would you want another bloke to watch your girlfriend doing whatever? That would be wrong. Just plain wrong. An image of his best mate Chris going down on his girlfriend popped into his head unbidden. He himself was just watching. He added some detail. He was sitting on a wicker chair, naked. The wicker had imprinted itself on his thighs in little red criss-crosses. He knew when he got up he’d have a pattern there. Chris was a muscled guy. He imagined Chris’ jaws working his girlfriend into a frenzy. He imagined how hot his girlfriend would look writhing under another guy’s hard, big body. His cock agreed. He’d bought himself some time. She moaned again, loudly, and grabbed his hand to suck on his fingers.

He glanced at the clock. Eighteen minutes they’d been at it. The national average was seven. He’d pat himself on the back for doing well but it wasn’t like it was a desperate effort not to come. They’d started at nine-seven. It was now nine-twenty-five. He said to himself, I will make her come in the next five minutes. He pumped to the rhythm of the sentence in his head.

Another image needed, another one please. His girlfriend on her knees, servicing Chris. Chris’s fat, hard prick messily slopping in and out of her mouth. Big sucking noises. Her tits bouncing everywhere. In and out. Blood surged into his shaft. And then, oh, oh my, what’s this? Chris has turned to him. Chris’s cock, baton-like, swats his own. She has not been allowed to make Chris come. That job has been saved for him.

He groaned, mortified but curious, urging himself to think harder, think wilder. Think anything at all. Christ, in his brain he could have, do, be anything, anyone. He rewound Chris, sent him scuttling backwards to his girlfriend’s eager mouth. He needed something a bit seedy. Teenage teases in bikinis with little bud breasts. What are they doing? He drew a blank. Young girls exploring themselves and each other. In a pink bedroom. Hmm. OK. Him in the pool with a hot firm blonde who is teasing his cock through his trunks while unsuspecting swimmers splash round them. It sounded great, it sounded filthy, but he couldn’t keep the thrill. He was tiring.

‘You’re so fucking big and so fucking hard,’ she gasped into his ear.

He looked at the clock. It was nine-thirty-one. He drew out his soft little prick and looked down at her flushed face.

‘No I’m not,’ he said. ‘No. I’m not.’

She looked defeated. Embarrassed. Why did she look embarrassed? he wondered. Why should she look embarrassed, when he was the one who couldn’t keep it hard?

‘I know you aren’t,’ she said quietly. ‘I know. But what am I meant to say instead?’

She rolled over on her side and put her hands to her hot cheeks.

He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t one.

Hannah Harper grew up in Reading, UK and lived in Sheffield and London before moving to Norwich, where she gained an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She's worked as a copywriter, bookseller, and bid writer, and she is slowly but surely churning out her first novel.

Love was read by Alex C. Ferrill on 1st August 2012