Dark Sky

It’s gone midnight here in London, which means that it’s officially the 15th December. Those of you opening door number 15 on your Advent calendars tomorrow morning will uncover another delicious chocolate with which to begin the day; those of you peeking behind the same door on Tamsin Flowers’ Supererotica Advent Calendar will find me, in short story form, aiming to start your day on a slightly less sweet and wholesome note.

My story is called Dark Sky. Here’s an excerpt.

She gazed back evenly, her chin jutting out like a boxer’s: open, but defiant. There was nothing unusual about her face – it wasn’t one to make men stop and stare in the street – but behind the impassive features her eyes glittered with something that made my skin prickle, and caused my thighs to tense with sudden need.

With exaggerated slowness, she moved a finger to her lips and smiled at me, lips quirked wryly even as her eyes continued to bore into mine. She shuffled in her seat, just enough to jostle her boyfriend’s sleeping head deeper into the crook of her neck; the movement freed up her right hand, which she used to tug her discarded shawl over her lap. Both of us looked down at it, as if the simple gesture had settled a debate that neither of us knew we were having. I cleared my throat, my tongue suddenly dry.

The story is based on an experience that an ex-girlfriend had, many years ago. In her case, the location was the back seat of the Oxford Tube – the coach service that runs between London and Oxford – late at night, after a gig in Camden with her boyfriend of six years. I can very easily recall the flush of excitement and shame that stained her cheeks as she told me about it in bed one evening. There was a hint of disbelief in her voice, as if the things she described had happened to someone else. I remember touching her as she whispered into my ear, and feeling her get wetter with every word. The sex that followed was short and intense, and that’s what I was aiming for with this story.

Much as we sometimes shy away from admitting it, cheating is hot – if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t find so many creative and damaging ways to do it – and very few things have brought that message home to me with as much clarity and impact as my ex’s back-seat encounter. She was a nice girl, in a nice relationship with a nice boy, but that didn’t stop her chasing the thrill of something dark and illicit; of risking someone else’s pain in the pursuit of her own pleasure – a someone else she loved very much.

I generally find cheating in erotica dull when the person committing infidelity no longer cares about their partner, or is motivated by something ugly like revenge or the desire to inflict pain. To me, it’s much more interesting when there’s real internal conflict in how that person feels about what they’re doing; and when the sex is hot, desperate and needy, rather than clinical and calculated.

Anyway, thank you very much to Tamsin for inviting me to contribute to this year’s Supererotica Advent Calendar. When I took another look this evening at which writers appeared behind doors 1 through 14, it became obvious just how big an honour it was to be asked! I look forward to seeing who else pops up between now and the 24th.