Four Temptations
slapdash, but still he gave me a B-.
    It wasn’t long at all before I’d worked out how to get straight As.
    §
    “So how are things going with your latest?”
    Your latest .
    “You make me sound like some kind of sexual predator,” I said, but I knew that was just Maggie’s direct way: a bit of a dig, a bit of a joke, no barriers.
    “My dear,” she said. “I really do hope that you are. Have I taught you nothing?”
    We laughed and I sipped at my coffee, a large Americano with a generous swirl of cream that was now marbling and blending through the dark liquid.
    “So...” she prompted. “How’s it going?”
    “Better, I think.” Last time we’d discussed my relationship with Porter I’d been having a bad time, hating all the cloak and dagger, all the being the other woman. That had been exciting at first, but after a month it had started to drag. Yes, only a month. What can I say? I’m impatient, I don’t like to stand still. A month was long enough for it to go from the thrill of stolen moments, a couple of hours in a hotel room, sexting late into the night, to resenting the need to hide and cover our tracks.
    And there was always the fear that he was happy with things as they were: the married man with me on tap. He’d been there before, after all: I had known from the start that he was a womanizer. This wasn’t a new game for Porter Swaine.
    “He’s left his wife.”
    Maggie’s expression barely flickered, but I knew that her brain must be racing now to process this new nugget. I do like to drop the occasional bombshell.
    “So he’s married?” she said now. “So that’s why you’ve been playing your cards so close to your perfectly formed chest.”
    “Why thank you.”
    “And he’s left his wife for you? Does that mean it’s serious, then? I thought you said it was just a bit of fun.”
    “Serious? No, not serious. They weren’t happy. He didn’t leave her for me; he left her for himself . But it does mean we don’t have to hide any more.”
    “How exciting,” said Maggie. “You are coming next week, aren’t you?”
    Maggie’s book launch. Of course I’d be there: I’d been liaising with Maggie’s agent about the arrangements, after all.
    “Why don’t you bring him? A public date.”
    I didn’t think it through. Maybe I was so taken up with the idea of our coming out in public. Of actually being a couple , for God’s sake. Novelty value, or what?
    I didn’t think of the consequences or complications of Maggie’s invitation. I just thought of me , and I know that’s bad, but there you are.
    §
    There had been other men since my journalism lecturer, of course. I’d felt so worldly and grown-up, seducing him. A lecturer, an authority figure, a married man for God’s sake. I’d felt even better when it proved to be more than a one-off blow-for-grades kind of thing. He’d taught me a lot, and not just in the classroom (although we did it there, too).
    I didn’t realize how clumsy and unimaginative Harry was until later.
    Until Julian, perhaps. A professor on my third year literature course, he was about forty, but strong and fit from years of marathon-running. Married, but going through a divorce, which I counted as a step up towards the moral high ground for me. Like Harry, he wasn’t interested in a relationship; he wasn’t really interested in me, other than my body, and for me that was still such a novelty – to be seen as attractive, a conquest, to be seen as hot. I still wasn’t convinced that I was out of the ugly duckling phase.
    Or Patrick, a colleague and friend of my father’s, a man who had watched me grow up, and at some point – well before I had taken that leap – had seen me change from gawky teenager to, well, to me . I still remember vividly seeing him naked for the first time, watching his stubby little cock getting engorged, pushing out from its nest of black pubic hair, getting longer and fatter and then starting to push away from his body.

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