Free Blood And Water by Siobhain Bunni Page B

there?”
    “Seriously, Enya, I’m grand.”
    “Grand? You keep saying that. So if you’re so grand then tell me where you got to yesterday?”
    “I had somewhere to be, that’s all. Nothing to worry about, honestly,” he told her. Then salvaging a small part of his intended story he continued, “I have a problem with one of my students. He’s buggered up his thesis and I’m trying to help him fix it up. That’s it. I swear.”
    Despite the silence her suspicion was palpable. “All right so,” she said, more determined than before, “come over later – call it a late lunch.”
    “I can’t later, I’ve got classes all afternoon,” he lied.
    “Tomorrow then? Ciara’s cooking.”
    “I’m not sure I can.”
    “Of course you can and, anyway, I’m not going to take no for an answer.”
    “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “Perfect! Call over about six. Dinner will be around seven thirty.”
    “Sure,” he replied, already thinking of potential excuses to bow out.
    Casting aside the phone, feeling like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, he flopped back into the pillows, exhausted and hung-over. Last night’s brandy bottle lay empty on its side on the duvet beside him, its wafting woody aroma a dull reminder as to why his mouth felt so woolly and his bladder so full. He needed to pee. Picking up the bottle he dragged himself from the bed and padded barefoot through the shimmering room to the toilet, placing the bottle on the dressing table as he passed. Without turning on the light in the bathroom he stood in the dark and let himself go, watching his shadow in the mirror before him. This was a reflection more used to being admired than castigated. With his back to the light he studied the structure of his darkened frame. Where his face should be was nothing more than an oval black mass wrapped in the outline of his tussled hair. No features. No shame. No words.
    He imagined the stream carrying all the waste from his body. He wished it all out and away, wishing he was man enough to cry and be done with it.
    One hundred thousand euro, he mused tragically. One hundred thousand euro. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things but to him, personally, it was massive. He repeated the words aloud. And what for? For a collection of slightly out-of-focus photographs. Was that four or five zeros, he wondered as he shook off the last few drops and tried to visualise the vastness of the amount in his head.
    And there was likely to be plenty more images to come, he presumed, thinking of the four that he had already received. He didn’t need his phone to see them; they were indelibly imprinted in his mind. Their naked flesh and co-joined bodies, the white powdery line, dull but apparent in the seedy darkness around him, his face leaning over the glass table with the rolled-up twenty at his nose. Ugly.
    Done, he returned to the safety of his bed and throwing himself face down cast his mind back to what had been one of the most salacious nights of his life. The mere thought of it gave him a hard-on, which he didn’t have the energy to suppress, and he felt it press into the bed, its head rubbing rough against the fabric of his shorts. He moved, just a little bit: a slight hip shift to the left, then to the right, enough to feel his tantalisingly sensitive skin spark. Inhaling deeply, Cormac let the sensation tickle up his spine but kept his hands where they rested above his head, torturing himself, punishing his error of judgement by not letting those expert hands indulge his building lustful hunger. Out of bounds.
    “What a fucking team,” he huffed bitterly into the pillow. The pity of their combination of talents. What a waste. The warmth of their lips, the softness of Orla’s hands, the strength of Mark’s arms, the sinews of his thighs, the mass of his own body compounded by the deviant wild response to Orla’s touch and the volcanic force of their combined climax. Cormac’s skin hummed at the