Jane Lark - Just for the Rush

I’d have put her in front of the camera in one of our adverts but I had a feeling if I did that I’d never see her again; some modelling agency would pick her up and steal her away. And the thought of not having Ivy around to look at, and get my kicks over in the day, was gut wrenching.

But my kicks were all safe and innocent – she was with someone – and she was not the sort of girl to go anywhere near me when I had a wife. Plus Em would kill me if I tried it. And anyway I wouldn’t; Ivy was a nice girl. Too nice to treat like a throw-away.

‘Have a good weekend, Jack.’ She smiled at me.

I smiled too. ‘See you on Monday – have a good one.’

Nice, and someone else’s or not, though, every time she looked at me her eyes told me she fancied me too.

When I rode the lift downstairs I stared at myself in the mirror, looking into my eyes. I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror any more. I was getting bored of me. This school reunion had made me do a lot of reflecting on the boy I’d been and the man I’d become.

I changed into my leathers in the toilets on the basement floor, then lifted my hand to the security guy when I walked out.

This used to be the part of the week I looked forward to most. Friday night. Spending the money I’d earned, showing it off to win girls.

I preferred being at work now.

I shoved my clothes and the shoes I’d taken off into the pannier on my motorbike. Then I straddled the machine, revved the engine and gloried in the roar and vibration between my legs. I rode it out of the car park with a good feeling about going to do something different this weekend.

It was a warm night. The sky was pure blue. I dodged through the traffic, weaving in and out, avoiding the queues, unless I saw a police car and then I waited and queued with the rest, my feet on the floor as the engine rumbled between my thighs.

I loved the bike. I loved the anonymity of being behind a helmet and the freedom of speed. But it was getting out of the city on it that was the best. Then I could speed, especially in the middle of the night when hardly anyone else was around.

Riding the bike absorbed my thoughts and my mind needed to be absorbed in something else when I was heading home to my wife. Tonight I hoped Sharon would be out.

I used the word ‘wife’ loosely. My marriage wasn’t really a marriage; it was more like regular sex for the investment of half my income, the cost of a penthouse and every other thing Sharon wanted.

When the lift opened on to the top floor I owned, I sighed as I walked over to put the key in the lock. I hated coming home. I came home because this was where I lived, but the place didn’t feel like a home.

I turned the key and opened the door. ‘Sharon!’ I called out her name because I never knew what I was walking into and I wanted to give her the chance to stop if necessary.

I unzipped my leather suit and left my helmet on a chest by the door.

There was nothing wrong with the apartment. The place was amazing. It would be perfect if it didn’t house Sharon.

A part of me sulked all the time over the fact that Sharon had ruined this place for me.

I’d got myself tangled up in something stupid with her; every room in this place was tainted by it and I didn’t know how to untangle myself from the mess I’d made.

The place was a massive open space with three walls of glass. There was a Jacuzzi in the bathroom and a pool on the roof outside that had a view across London through another glass wall when you swam. I’d thought the place was ‘us’, me and Sharon, when I’d bought it. A wild place for a wild couple, who loved to live without limits. We had orgies up here and took drugs that made the skyline and the world distorted. We lived life to the extreme – on top of the world. Riding the world like the world was a motorbike, to be raced and dodged through the stationary and slow traffic.

I still loved the place, despite it not being homely. But I didn’t love Sharon any more. I probably never had and I didn’t like the way we lived any more. I think I’d just been in lust with Sharon in the beginning and excited by the way she lived – so fast and far on the outside of normal.

The life I led with Sharon ran parallel to everything else. It had felt like unleashing the true me in the beginning. The rebellious, fast-living, independent, unboundaried me. But if this was the real me, why didn’t I like it, or myself, any more?

Maybe I’d always known this wasn’t right for me because I’d never told my friends about it, not from school, not from my climbing club, uni, work or anywhere.

‘In here!’ Sharon shouted from the bedroom. I hoped this wasn’t going to be another gift. She knew my interest was waning and so she’d started trying everything she could to keep me in the game with her.

I didn’t want to play.

Ever since I’d had the invite to go back to my old school I’d been evaluating my life and nothing fitted. I’d been ambitious as a kid and Em and I had the business, and I had my investment properties and ten times more than I could have expected to achieve at my age – except that it all tasted sour because I’d never been ambitious for this empty fucking marriage. This was not how I’d seen myself. This was not where I wanted to be five years from now.

Sharon was on her own in the bedroom, in her underwear – just old-fashioned suspenders and stockings. Maybe she hoped I’d be motivated to react to her nudity before I left. I wasn’t. I started stripping off my leather suit. After I’d released my arms, it hung from my waist

‘What time are you going out?’ she asked.

‘As soon as I’m showered and ready.’ I removed my boots and took the leather suit off my legs. Then straightened and stripped off my t-shirt.

‘Is it okay if I ask some people over?’

By ‘some people’ she meant her friends – I used that term loosely too – and a mix of strangers, who’d take cocaine that I’d pay for and drink booze that I’d pay for. Then they’d come in here, into my bedroom and have sex on my bed, a twisting puzzle of tangled bodies. Or maybe not in here, maybe in the Jacuzzi or in the living room, or in the pool… ‘Do what you want.’

I left my clothes in a pile on the floor for the cleaner to pick up, then went to have a shower.

I washed my hair and let the water teem over my head, tipping up my face, then I sighed. I spat out the water that had run into my mouth and turned to face the wall. Fuck. The thought of tangled bodies and long legs wrapping around me and the tongues and mouths that would be all over me, if I stayed here, did still turn me on. With one hand flat on the cold marble slab lining the back wall, and the water running over my head and down my back, I took my dick in my hand.

The images in my mind had made me hard.

I gripped it with anger, because I really didn’t want to be like this. Then I shut my eyes and let thoughts of sex wash over me with the water.

Sharon would be willing to murder me if she knew I’d rather wank than have sex with her. She thought I was going to pick someone up at the reunion party. I had no intention of doing that. The girls I’d been at school with were not like Sharon.