The Make

Alfie. Oh Alfie, I love you so much, he thought, and then his eyes opened, startled. He wondered if he’d said it aloud because he had felt it, had felt it and heard it and knew it was the truth.

‘It’s okay, Alf,’ he said to the shivering boy, and kissed his hair, and then Alfie lifted his head and George could see the faint wetness of tears on his pale moonlit face.

‘Please kiss me, George. Please,’ moaned Alfie.

George kissed him; he kissed Alfie as he had never kissed any woman – with his heart, his body and his soul. He felt close to tears himself, he loved Alfie so much.

‘I love you, I love you,’ he found himself murmuring ecstatically against the boy’s soft, silken skin.

‘I know, George. Oh, you bloody fool, don’t you think I know that?’ Alfie was half laughing and crying all at once. ‘I love you too, George. I love you.’

They made love, and George was gentle and slow and easy, the way he’d never been with any woman. This was right, this was so right. And when finally, at last, his orgasm came like a warm, shuddering, exquisite jolt of lightning, and Alfie’s came too, there was only peace and contentment and complete, utter joy afterwards. The way it had never been with any woman he’d ever been with.

They lay together afterwards, warm and happy, murmuring their love for each other, kissing each other’s tears away, laughing, snuggling down together, and finally sleeping like spoons, George behind Alfie, his arms wrapped securely around him as if he would never, ever let him go.

Chapter 49

Across town, Harry was still working. The evening had gone well; he’d escorted top corporate lawyer Becca Stanway to dinner at Langan’s; they’d had a great meal and then they’d got into a taxi to go back to her place.

She’d paid him not the usual hundred, but five hundred pounds. She’d handed it to him in a discreet white envelope over their starter of scallops, samphire and black pudding. He’d gone to the Gents mid-evening, counted out the cash, and been both amazed and a bit doleful. Extras were expected, and he was up for it, he was always up for it, like an Ever Ready battery, that was Harry.

Only . . . he felt numb at heart. After Emma had found out about him and her mother, ever since then, he’d felt like someone had deep-frozen his internal organs; he would perform because he had to, but it meant nothing. Less than nothing.

But now it was put-out time. The minute they got inside her flat, Becca – who was gorgeous, with straight long blonde hair, a perma-tanned body and beautifully French-manicured nails – led him into her bedroom, which was tricked out all in neutrals, with flowing curtains of white star-marked voile at the windows and surrounding the four-poster bed, and dense, deep cream carpet underfoot.

‘Hurry up,’ said Becca, striding off into the en suite in her strappy five-inch heels. ‘Get naked, Harry.’

Harry stood there. Now he not only was a tart, he truly felt like one. He hated this. Oh, granted, it had started out as a light-hearted jape. George in the lead, saying hey Harry, how about you and me doing this, couldn’t we use the readies? And oh, there had been readies all right. Bags of cash. But they’d both ignored the core message of that cheesy old Richard Gere film, hadn’t they? And the message was: Richard Gere had landed up to his neck in the shit.

And hadn’t they done that too?

Well, maybe not George. But Harry? Oh yes. Perhaps not as badly in the shit as the character in the film. But Harry looked at the facts and they weren’t cheering.

The fact was, if he hadn’t got involved in yet another of George’s mad schemes, he would never have met Jackie. And if he hadn’t met Jackie, he wouldn’t have met Emma, either. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t be standing here now feeling like someone had scooped out his innards and left him feeling empty and bereft.

What was that stupid old saying? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Well, that was crap. He’d been happy before all this had started. Now, he was miserable. And now . . . oh shit, here came Becca in nothing but a pair of sheer royal-blue Agent Provocateur panties, still teetering along on her five-inch heels, ready for action and holding an open jar of chocolate body paint.

Harry stared at her. Her body was gym-toned, her breasts obviously surgically enhanced; she looked truly fabulous. Yet he felt like stone. He felt nothing.

Becca sent Harry a come-hither smile and headed for the bed. She sat down, dipped a finger into the paint in what she clearly thought was a sexy manner, and smeared a touch of the paint on to each of her erect nipples. Then she put the pot aside and leaned back on her hands and smiled at him.

‘Come and lick me, Harry,’ she said.

Well, he could do that. Maybe this was what he needed. A hot session with this gorgeous-looking woman might just shake him out of the morose mood he was in.

He took off his jacket, dropping it on to the floor, and went over to the bed. He gripped Becca’s exquisitely sculpted thighs and eased them apart. He knelt between them. Her smile widened. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips parted voraciously, her tongue shooting into his mouth so suddenly that he had to stop himself from pulling back in surprise.

It wasn’t like kissing Emma.

It was nothing like that.

He moved away from her mouth, annoyed with himself, thinking, What the hell is the matter with me? He trailed a line of light kisses down her throat, over her collarbone. Becca moaned and pushed her pneumatic breasts at him.

Well, here goes nothing, thought Harry, and started licking at the chocolate paint. It was sickly sweet. Becca moaned louder. The paint was so sweet it was making him feel a bit nauseous, in fact. He drew back.

‘Becca . . .’ he said, about to suggest something else, anything else, the stuff was foul.

‘No, keep doing that,’ she said, and yanked his head back towards her breast. He hesitated. Their eyes met and she must have read the reluctance in his because hers were suddenly harder, more demanding. ‘Come on, Harry, it’s what I’m paying you for.’

She was right. Harry got back to the task, hating it. Hating her. The paint tasted disgusting, and it set a tingling at the back of his throat, a rush of strange sensations right up to the top of his head. Weird feelings stabbed downwards, hitting his groin, making his cock stir. This time, Harry drew back so suddenly and so forcefully that he fell back on his arse on the shag pile.

‘What the fuck?’ he demanded, his head spinning.

He looked up at Becca, smiling there as she bent and slipped off her panties.

‘Yeah, come on Harry. Let’s do it,’ she said, leaning back invitingly.

Harry scrambled to his feet. His head felt strange, all rushing sounds and kaleidoscopic lights. He looked at the innocent pot of body paint on the bedside table, then at Becca.

‘You put something in that,’ he said.

Becca lay back and nodded slowly. ‘Got it in one,’ she said.

‘What?’

She shrugged. ‘Just a little coke,’ she said.

Harry stared at her. Harry was the mildest-mannered, sweetest of men, but suddenly it all crashed in on him, the enormity of it all. Losing Em. Knowing he wasn’t good enough for her. Knowing he was now just a piece of meat, a cheap hooker, being paid for and pawed over by women with more money than sense.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘All right, you’re paying for my body. I get that. But now you think that gives you the right to dope me?’

Becca looked up at him with a tinge of irritation. ‘Look, Harry,’ she said, ‘It’s just a couple of lines of coke I mixed in there, just a little something to mellow us out. Jesus, you certainly seem to