The part of me that wouldn’t mind having a pharmacy of alternatives stored in my room still resents it when it works. Although I concede that right now it might have more to do with draining the third glass of wine than mastering the method.
Swinging my feet off the bed, I sit up, rubbing the back of my neck as I try to ease the stiffness from my shoulders. I should go to the common room, hang out with Rowena for a while.
The thought of socialising isn’t appealing but, like the controlled breathing, I know if I force myself to do it, just for a while, I’ll lighten the load on my mind.
But my craving for solitude is stronger. A few minutes more won’t hurt.
I swing my legs back onto the bed, unfastening the top of my knee-length shorts and licking my middle finger before shoving my hand through the gap. Another natural remedy my counsellor recommended, though I’m not sure she knew how eagerly and often I’d help myself to this particular drug.
My increasingly relaxed mind swings into space, letting the sensations flood through my body until they stall, needing a story, needing a vision to release the next stage of arousal.
And, like it always does when I’m low, getting drunk, my mind flicks on the gallery of Seb, selecting an image from the multitude stored there.
I pick the time he was at the open-air showers, just off the beach. He’d been surfing and stopped to wash the sand from his body and the salt from his hair, tugging the chain and turning underneath the spray, the water glistening against the glow of his sun-kissed skin, the rivulets snaking along ever-changing pathways down his chest, sweeping over and around the sharp definition of his muscles before soaking into the elastic waist band of his board shorts, turning it dark, turning it black.
I see him as he catches me looking and releases the cord, the water turning from a spray into individual drops, his tongue sweeping out to lick the salt from his fat lips while I wondered what it would be like to suck it from his fat cock.
A moment. Ten or twenty seconds and it’s imprinted on my mind like a shallow trench, growing deeper with each repeat visitation.
My breathing hitches as I stab at the pause button, wind back, catch the exact moment when his eyes hit mine. And it felt like a hit, like a punch to the solar plexus. His reciprocated interest a physical sensation, still two months before the bullying began.
Another memory layers overtop the first. One shortly after I first arrived at school.
My lunch got knocked out of my hand when a game of corners sent the basketball flying straight at me. Seb had picked my sandwich up from the ground and handed me his instead.
When I said it was all right, embarrassed at the attention, trying to snatch mine back, he demolished the whole thing in four big bites, licking his fingers, saying too late and insisting I take his.
My brain bounces between the two, the childhood kindness and the adult physical perfection. Each one bringing its own brand of warmth to my belly, branding me with its own special heat.
Pleasure signals flood my body, turning up the element so it rises in temperature. My finger slides inside me, then withdraws, rubbing either side of my swollen clit, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing…
There’s a knock at the door.
For fuck’s sake.
I pull my hand out, doing up my shorts before giving my fingers a quick sniff test.
This better be fucking good.
I twist the key and pull my door open, a glare at the ready for whoever waits outside.
It’s Seb.
Shock pulses through me. Did I conjure him from my memory?
Then reality reasserts itself. He obviously hasn’t returned his friend’s access card. I hate the thought he’s mentioned my name to a fellow student, but he must have done to find my room.
On his face is a wide shit-eating grin. Like he knows exactly where my mind and fingers were lodged just seconds before.
I swing the door closed but the split-second hesitation is enough for him to force his way into my room. I open my mouth to… I don’t know… yell for help? Give a dismayed squeak?
His hand covers it, trapping any noise behind his palm. The shock as effective as a slap across my cheek. He pushes me back on the bed, and my drunken muscles capitulate with sickening ease. When he releases his hand, he puts a finger to his lips.
“Rowena’s next door,” he whispers with a menacing glint in his eye. “And these walls are paper thin. You don’t want her to hear you and come check.”
“How did you…?” I break off my whisper, struggling to sit up when the shockwaves keep pushing me back. “You can’t be in here,” I seethe, the effect of my anger dampened by my whisper, smothered by a rush of inebriated lust.
He ignores me, shutting the door and twisting the key before facing me again. “That’s not much of a welcome,” he says, his impossibly large smile still somehow splitting wider. “And after I brought you a present and everything.”
