‘Did the wench have to choose a Wednesday night for attempted genocide? I have to be up for work in what will feel like six seconds,’ Neill muttered into the bathroom cabinet whilst Natalia perched piddling on the toilet.
‘Shall I use your toothbrush again?’ She coyly wiped herself whilst he rummaged behind some Listerine.
‘Sure. Oh, look… one paracetamol! Here, patient—’
He poked it into her lips, as she, glugging from the tap, still giggling from her green nightcap, a few minutes later was climbing into his bed. At once familiar and unfamiliar in the deep stillness of 2am, with the husky yawn of Neill padding behind her, the lamp snapped off with a glimpse of his hairy body and boxers now weighing down on the mattress.
‘Sweet dreams’ - an unseen hand tousled her hair - as they rolled onto their backs to the ceiling with polite conclusive sighs to the bizarre night, the heat from his arm emanating an inch away, as she shuffled her hips, turning her eyes to him wondering if he’d say something, trying to blink herself into calmness, and after staring into dark disbelief for a bit, fell asleep too.
She dreamt confused, of her cat, wailing dreadfully. Then her eyes shot open to the sound for real.
It was like a woman being strangled outside the window! Had mad Bertha turned up? Meanwhile, Rochester went on snoring next to her.
She jostled his arm. ‘Neill. Neill—’
Climbing over to the window, her knees clanging on the radiator along with the rattle of the curtain rail had him slurring:
‘Natalia, what are you doing…’
‘What is that noise!’
‘That’s just foxes, darling…’
‘Foxes? What? Why do they sound so awful?’
‘Mating season. The female gets caught on the male’s cock like a bear trap.’
‘But I thought you weren’t with Joan tonight?’
‘Close the curtain and come back here—’
‘Or you mean like a Corby trouser press?’
‘Natalia, baby, come here—’
‘Oh, I can see one wandering off! No mating going on though!’
He reached and yanked her arm.
‘Where am I?’ she giggled. ‘Why am I in bed with the Headmaster?’
‘Shut up and lay down.’ His arms latched round her stomach, pulling her torso right on top of him like a momentary, Heimlich-ballet manoeuvre, as her groin landed on his stomach just above his groin, his jaw nuzzling her strands of hair away, lips just behind her ear, from which came a grating sleepy, man-groan that sent an electrical bolt from her sole to crown… the foxes’ tapering mews could well be hers as she lay thinking, what joy from this painkiller! She’d fall down the stairs every day for this! Did he feel her sprinting heart through his arm? Her epileptic pulse at his chin? How was she going to sleep like this?
Squirming like a worm made his arms squeeze tighter, and then the faint words escape his lips - ‘I’ve got you now’ - shooting like a soldering iron from her scalp to kneecaps, and now his hands were sweeping up inside her t-shirt, over her bruised ribs, landing in a criss-cross squeeze of her breasts in his fingers, her nipples caught like marbles in a cattle grid. Her arms pinned down under his heavy elbows, she was essentially unable to move, and any protestation would go unacknowledged in his now resuming snores.
Her heels backed against his hard hairy shins, whilst her neck had no choice but to drop back into the collarbone of this big man body like Gulliver; a rescue stretcher she was strapped upon, literally stretching, a vast landscape that she could not feel the edges of where it began and ended. It spread through the walls of his cottage, beyond Scarcroft village, through to Gipton and to Haworth and out of Yorkshire altogether, to flashers in Hampstead, souks in Morocco, fuddy duddies in Russia; all the regions of life she had heard of but never seen, traversed inside her eyelids upon this magic carpet, and time-travelling to dawn like this, her eyes shortly flutter to the faintest chink of morning light, just as some foreign object lands with a thud below her belly button.
Her eyes open. Another light prod of something that was neither of his hands - for those were at her stomach, loose and limp but dead-weighted in place by skin friction - and as she craned her neck to the digital clock to see 4.45, nearly 5am - cock o’clock, morning glories as big as a cactus he’d said… and what did he say about being staked upon its spines as he slept?
Another little bounce of warm rotund bell-end, for Houdini must have escaped the pen of his pants, and all the while he slept deeply on, she lay like a vixen in a bear trap herself? Every three of his slumbering breaths it lumbered stronger, a Bratwurst tap-tapping its revenge of morse code, against which closing her legs would be useless, other than to thigh-clap it into more excitement. Straddled on it as though it extended from her own groin, with a bit of wriggling she managed to reach a weighted wrist toward it, cautiously, and lay a palm on it, to feel now for the first time, its warm, springy texture… she silently sighed with surprise, at this hard-soft, smooth-snake creature - as though it were her own, and now imagining it was - like his steering wheel she caressed when she climbed into his car, the same rigid, tan-leather girth… building a full sensory image with the brief sight she got in the office, before Ryan had burst in just as red-headed.
Beneath her palm she felt the wrinkle line of where the shaft met the foreskin, throbbing in time with her bloodstream and her bruises, as if to say shut up, I’m alive! I’m here, I’m back, silly sausage, and now Neill’s chest stirs beneath her finally, like a father jogging to keep up with his son, or hopefully, catch him before he does some mischief - and he puts his hand down, absent-mindedly, straight into the hem of her knickers, plunging into her sodden vulva.
‘Oh, my good god…’ he murmurs, as his hand stalls as though confused, along with a phfft-phoo of her hair in his lips, and his hand lingers, in place of where hers would be, whilst her hand is still resting where his should be. Both static, as though ensconced in secrecy there - as though he has mislaid his cock, or woken up as a woman - whilst she imagines she’s a boy, holding her palm to him like a dainty cod piece. Craning his head, his hand pulls out and her magic carpet heaves up beneath her - as she now goes limp pretending to be asleep, and he rolls Natalia off him as carefully as if she were a rolled antique rug, and creaks out to the bathroom.
She felt now the muscular relief of laying stomach down, as the action of the night catches up on her and she is asleep as deeply as he was.
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*
‘Oh she’s awake!’ The face of Neill, all washed and dressed as Headmaster again, danced down on hers through the steam of two mugs.
‘Are… you leaving?’
‘Soon. Here—’ He propped a pillow as she put her hand out for the tea, but he set it down on the table. ‘Top off,’ he motioned. ‘I want to see how bad these bruises look before I go.’
He stood and waited as she duly pulled off her t-shirt, her hands playing loosely in front of her breasts for modesty in the stark daylight of the room, feeling vulnerably make-up-less, lank-haired, but as subject to his prompt demands as last night.
His fist presses into the mattress as his breath leans into her, concern rippling his forehead.
‘Oh, fuck—’ he almost whispered, running his fingers over the blue and purple watercolours on her torso. ‘That’s some art piece.’ Stroking across her shoulders, down one arm, and on the front of her ribs, he rubbed in a few more places and patted her.
‘I don’t think there’s anything broken, you’re lucky. Back into bed.’ He handed her the tea. ‘Do you want breakfast bringing up before I leave?’
‘No no, I’m fine with this tea for now.’
‘How’s the pain?’
‘I just feel really stiff. I mean—’
‘I’ll drop by the chemist for more pills later. For now you can finish this.’ He produced the stump of joint from yesterday. ‘Lucky you saved some, hm?’
‘Oh… here in the bedroom?’ It was already plonked in her mouth.
‘I’ll have a fresh one for you later.’
‘Mhmm—’ as he lit it and watched her inhale.
Now she was topless with tea in one hand and joint in the other. She gripped the stump in her mouth, trying not to spill the tea whilst pulling the duvet up over her nipples, laughing, muffled: ‘Is this… some kind of joke?’
He didn’t seem to hear, frowning out over the garden.
‘Natalia, I’ve been thinking a bit. This is all quite serious now, I think you know that.’
He turned to her. She hurriedly puffed.
‘I mean Christ, you could be laying there with two broken legs like the Stephen King novel. Has your mum ever used violence on you before?’
‘Er, not really…’
‘Lucky you didn’t need the hospital. And there, you know what would happen. Your mum would be arrested and you’d be taken into care. If I took you into hospital last night the same would happen, except I’d probably be the one arrested.’
‘Mm. But what do you suggest we do? Cannabis for my mum? Can it cure cuntiness as well as cancer and cracked ribs?’
‘Perhaps a lobotomy or assassination. But one thing is simple,’ he nodded. ‘You’ll have to stay here for a few days till you’re better and we have something figured out. No school till Monday.’
Her mouth wobbled. ‘Ohh. And… then on Monday? I don’t have any of my school things.’
‘We’ll have to fetch them at the weekend. Meanwhile you’ll just have to wear my t-shirts, hostage-style like when you first came to Chez Neill.’
She squashed the finished stub on the saucer then sipped her tea, starting to grin.
‘This is serious, young lady. And as you know, most underhand.’
‘So, what, you’re… adopting me. Or abducting me?’
‘Semantics, same thing. Either way, I’m responsible for you right now. Which means doing everything I tell you. Don’t go out anywhere, ok? Don’t answer the phone or the door to anyone. Keep the curtains in all rooms drawn. You can go out on the patio, just the first bit before the lawn. I’ll have to cancel my cleaner for now so she doesn’t come busting in on you. And every day, you will text your mum, bring your phone to me and show me.’
Every day. Bring her phone to him. She set down her tea on the saucer, rubbing her hand across her mouth.
‘Yes?’
‘Er. Yes. Sir,’ pulling the duvet up to her face.
‘That’s the spirit. You say you spoke to mum last night?’
‘I just texted her.’
‘Did she reply?’
‘Yeah, she just said… well, I wasn’t quite sure what to say back…’
‘Where’s your phone?’
‘Must be downstairs.’
He paced out of the room. Meanwhile she let out the hugest, silent chortle to herself, then promptly composed her face again as he returned with her phone in hand.
‘Cracked again?’
‘Just the screen protector.’
‘I’ll order you a new one. Screen lock code?’
‘Er, 5151…’
‘Where’s…’
‘In the text messages.’
‘Natalia,’ he frowned, ‘why do you have me in your phone as ‘Lord That Shit Shepherd I Never Want?’
Her eyes went like saucers, remembering she’d been in the middle of changing it at midnight till she got distracted by Friends on Comedy Gold.
‘It’s er, a long story,’ biting her lip as the spliff started to lift her like Mary Poppins.
He sighed and tossed her phone. ‘Change it at once.’
She typed and passed it back.
‘‘Dr Fondle?’’
‘Yeah.’
‘Mmm, good. So let’s see… ‘‘What does Sarah say?’’ Goodness, she must be shaking like a leaf trusting you to keep that quiet!’
‘Yee-ah.’
‘‘I just care about yer safety, after that fall!’’ he imitated. ‘Bigger bullshitter than I am. I should hire her.’ He threw the phone back on the bed. ‘Fob her off for another day till I figure things out. Just text. Don’t speak to her. Tell her it’s not a good time right now.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Hm?’
‘A good time.’
‘Natalia. You’re not my pretend girlfriend anymore.’
A playful glint in her eyes regarded the ambiguous sternness in his.
‘I’m your what, prisoner?’
‘You’re my new… pet. Sick kitty.’ He turned to the door. ‘There’s some food in the fridge. I’m going to Sainsbury’s after school so WhatsApp me if you want anything.’
‘WhatsApp?’ she said with a mouthful of duvet.
‘I said, text me if you want anything—’
‘No, you said WhatsApp…’
‘Yes, the app? Or use Telegram if that’s safer.’
‘No no, I know, but I deleted our chat like you s—’
‘Better start a fucking new one.’
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43Please respect copyright.PENANA8jgKbQZqRy
*
She didn’t even ask No More Mr Nice Neill if she was allowed to wank. But, buzzing off the buffer of the joint after the front door banged shut, Natalia had the time of her life, which wasn’t bad considering yesterday she’d almost died falling down the stairs.
First she laid in bed for an hour masturbating continuously, with no shortage of material to climax to, having a break only to smile, laugh, and inhale his cool bedsheets before resuming her game where she’d come for every corker line of Neill’s, of which there were many, so many that there was a backlog… so she’d start on the newest ones. Newest were always the most exciting. Newest made her explode.
‘You’re mine now,’ was it… as her fingers slowed in hesitation… no, it was ‘I’ve got you now.’ Oh fuck! Clit 1, Misery 0. ‘You’ll have to stay here for a few days doing everything I tell you. You’ll text your mum and show me.’ Oh fuck! Another explosion. Who knew she could come thinking of her mum? And, ‘either way I’m responsible for you. Abducted, adopted.’ And how he’d mumbled ‘oh my good God,’ where she’s laying now, when the shepherd had rummaged for his staff and found himself in the wet pastures with little lamb. Four-nil, for-Neill.
And then, re-introducing all his old lines that she’d been estranged from this past two weeks - her favourites? Baise-moi, Monsieur Neill… quiet in there, hostage! Don’t move a muscle, girl, which means no wanking. Come lay in Lap-land, my little hen. Come tell Mr Twitch all about it, Tremble-twat. You can bend over there and take it!
Whoops, she was leaving stains all over his bedsheets, which were dark linen this time… Farrow-Ball greens and navy blues, as dark as his face when he spoke of her mum, as dark as this ‘most underhand’ new ‘pet’ of his… oh, another…! Then she spied the joint stump, thought of him poking it into her mouth, and flopped back over the edge of the bed.
Now for a hot rainfall shower over her swirling art piece, she needed four, five squirts of fig and cedarwood Neill gel to finally dissolve the other Neill gel, where his own hand had been - could she have a 17th in the shower? Oh, to reinstate the semi-colon in the hymn with Him whilst she did! Misery come here, for another wallop, a penalty shoot-out, just as she belts out, The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want!
She rinsed her knickers as best she could and hung them on the column cast radiator. Then she plucked out a fresh navy Neill t-shirt, lingering on his drawer knobs and his knob’s drawers - then danced a hello-again of her fingers along his suits’ shoulders, to each and every Headmaster, every day she’d seen him around school and not been able to get to him… now she had him, that morning, Under Her Bum. And with her phone and charger being her only possessions, she plugged in her phone to light up her screen, eyes and ears with Just Can’t Get Enough! …He was big and strong, and his eyes a-flaming glow! …She’s the sweetest pet in the world! …Let me sleep all night in your soup kitchen! …For I have no fear, I live by the river! …she danced past the Thames painting, into the kitchen to pull out the Beloved Biggest Box of Cheerios He’s Ever Seen, then shortly was answering her phone with a mouthful of milk and maize like the cat who got the cream.
‘Hello sir!!’
‘Have you burned my cottage down yet?’
‘Not quite!’
‘Good. Are you… ok?’
‘Yes, thanks! I slept more, had a shower, and just having something to eat.’
‘You should run yourself a bath. Use the Epsom salts in the cupboard, it’ll do your bruises good. Has the postman been?’
‘Don’t think so. No-one’s knocked or rang and everything is super quiet here. Oh wait - do you have a hairdryer?’
‘Super quiet? Not till you turn on Morphy Richards circa 1990. Bedside drawer.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘If there’s anything you want from the shop later can you please message me. …Steve! Yep, ok, darling, got to go—’
‘Ok! Bye!!’
She downloaded Telegram. Looked more colourful than WhatsApp, so if it’s safer she’d use that. What does she normally like to eat at home? She couldn’t start typing tins of tuna in brine, nor have him fiddling in the bright-lit women’s bit for Rimmel Volume Flash Mascara. She noticed Neill only has granary bread.
‘Hello it’s me! Can you get… a white bread loaf? Bananas, oranges… cherries? I never have those! Lots of fruit…’
Her finger jumped away - her mum was calling! She waited till it finished flashing then continued:
‘…Crisps! And… whatever you’re cooking for dinner. ;-)) Thank you!! x’
Returning from upstairs, hair dry, dry knickers on, she wondered for how long the latter would stay that way, when she read:
-‘Hello, you fruitloop. Ok, see you later. X’
Uh. Telegram was beautiful. An SMS came from an actual fruitloop:
‘Hello?? I tried calling. R u ok??’
Fob her off, abductor instructed.
‘Told you I’m fine. Staying away for a few days till my bruises heal, ok. X’
-‘Can you get Sarah’s ma or pa to give me a call’
She stared. Then jumped at the sound of the letterbox flapping. She crept out five minutes later to pick up the post on the doormat. Barclays statement for Mr Richard Alexander Neill in stern capitals… oh God she’ll do whatever he says. She propped it on the windowsill, then after picking at ham in the fridge, she peered down a vase of oddments on the window ledge, saw a golf ball and thought of the tall golfer at Oulton talking of ‘dog legs’ and ‘tricky holes,’ and hitches up her own on the sofa for the 24th clit triumph on her scorecard. Misery; red card, disqualified, out of the game!
Her phone buzzes - he’ll be home in a hour! Oh god, where does she stand, sit or lay to receive him and his bootful of sinful fruit? She’d had as many orgasms as his years of life since he left this morning! Will he sniff the scent of his cottage becoming demarcated by a schoolgirl’s putrid pubes, like a lion who knows the language of the deer he’s used to catching, as much of that of his new pet bichette?
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*
It was just after five when Neill came through the front door, slowed by the plastic rustle of two shopping bags, whilst Natalia, bare-legged in one of his t-shirts, pretend-browsing the bookshelves, knew he would step up behind her and say something like:
‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’
‘I have.’ She turned, smiling. ‘Did you have a good day?’ she blinked politely, feeling a curious warping of her insides to see him back, larger than life, in the cottage that had seemed to become hers, adapted to her size through her day’s private party here with the curtains drawn.
‘Yes, thank you.’ His eyes ran down her as he reached for the shopping. ‘I’ll just have to get this stuff into the fridge—’
She followed to watch him crackle out packaging and bang away at the cupboards.
‘Oh! Peaches!’
‘Totally out of season but they didn’t have cherries. I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy your bleached bread so I picked up a Farmhouse. Simple dinner tonight - you may have enjoyed my four-course and Sunday roast but on work days it’s things like this—’
He pulled off a colourful artisan sleeve, pulled off some plastic and shoved a wooden tray into the oven.
‘Looks posh from where I’m standing.’
‘I’m hoping that’s what everyone will think tomorrow night. It’s the Ofsted party at the Metropole in town. I’ve been running around constantly today trying to make sure everyone knows it’s a black tie affair and never to talk about vibrators, Luxton or the stabbing rate of Killingbeck. Our canteen might not have Charlie Bigham level cuisine of Joan’s school’ - he nodded at the oven - ‘but they’ll be watching her arm in mine all night pretending that it does.’
‘I’m sure you’re doing a great job,’ as they stepped back into the lounge. ‘I saw the other day you had a whole line of staff clucking at your office door. It’s literally Fawnwood.’
He chuckled as he sat down on the couch to pull off his shoes.
‘Oh. I left my fags in the kitchen, could you pass me them please. You’ve got me into smoking on the sofa now.’
She fetched one to his mouth. ‘There we go,’ she smiled. ‘Cigarette to forget.’
She perched up beside him, compelled to nuzzle her face down into the shirt armpit, then looking up his jaw, he quickly exhaled smoke the other way then looked down at her - rather entranced, in his usual nonchalant way - and for the next fifteen seconds their eyes speak a sort of language that invites their lips closer, pressing into a kiss, a faint mutual snigger on their faces, like this is what they wanted to do for two weeks - or even that very first time they met - and then she can’t help but shower adoring pecks all around his lips, before jumping back onto his lips for another, slow soft kiss that makes every gland on her body gasp with outrageous delight.
‘Ahhh,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Is this what I get from my kitty when I get home?’
‘Well, this pet likes its vet.’
He puffed again then returned his lips to her forehead. ‘I think this vet’s made this pet too better.’
‘You, ahh… keep making me better.’
‘Like you probably were on my bed, I was… banking on it.’
She giggled.
‘And how much better are you since this morning?’
‘Better, or…?’
‘Better, Natalia.’
‘I rested in your bed a lot.’
‘How many times?’
‘Well, one long… oh! Wha—’
‘Only one long one?’
‘One long… run.’
‘Thought I told you not to go out?’
More squirming, playful sniggers as she glances down at a familiar throb though his trousers.
‘Oh, hello…’
With post-work-weary breaths of bemusement, he watches her slide down his lap, face at his thigh, rubbing her cheek right against the X marks the spot, as his hand comes to her shoulder gingerly, groaning a little, trying to regulate his breath, feign control, like there was a dog about to hump his leg that he must act dignified in the face of.
‘Oh - Natalia… I…’
He takes in this girl who, with eyes closed, is in a private reverie almost, looking all the world as though she is nuzzling the spot where the most beautiful flower in the garden will grow, whose root is bulging already, knowing it will soon burst through the soil, with the sunshine of the chafing smile she bestows on it, and whether he wishes it or not, the flower will react of its own volition, germinated by the language she speaks to it that she perhaps barely understands herself.
He murmurs again, almost wistfully, as she looks up at him and laughs, either because it just throbbed right against her face or because she is so happy to feel it again.
‘Is this keeping lowdown enough?’
His phone vibrated in his pocket. ‘Oh, shit—’
She pulled it out for him, to see the screen flashing Joan. ‘It’s about tomorrow’s party. She’s calling me back about something but I can—’
‘Take it, take it, it’s fine, do what you need to do,’ as she tapped answer and passed it to him.
‘Oh. Hi, Joan—’
She began to pull away, but he held onto her upper arm, so she climbed up next to him, and with a signal of eyes she was scooped sideways into his lap, planting kisses into his throat as he spoke, inhaling the reverberation of every syllable from it in pure appreciation to be in his world again.
‘No, all is good with that. It was a fight that broke out, had to caretake someone who got badly bruised—’ Cue squeeze on her bare buttock of her knickered bottom, making her huff a hot breath she hoped Joan would think was his - ‘Yes, all on for tomorrow at the Metropole. I still need to clarify the beverages… coming over after?’
His eyes met with Natalia’s, as he pressed the mute button and sighed into her jaw. ‘She wants me to come over after with some governor chap. Schmooze or lose, basically.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she nodded earnestly. ‘I’m fine here. Do what you need to do… go, it’s fine, honest.’
He resumed. ‘Ok, I’ll come over for a bit, but Saturday morning I have to be… yes, yes. I’ll have to scoot now, got dinner on. Bye my dear.’ He tossed his phone. ‘Right, that’s done. Although some catering bloke called Keith Precious is going to call at some point.’
‘Doesn’t Joan ever insist on coming back to yours?’
‘She’s asked, yes.’
‘And you decline? She might think you’re… secretly married or something?’
‘No, but I have a new and dangerous kitty that she shouldn’t meet.’
‘What, this one?’ Her knee chafed his trouser lump. ‘Who I did meet once, but only briefly.’
He sighed. ‘Do you want to meet him properly? Do you want to say hello?’
‘Haaa…’ She slipped to the floor down between his knees, holding his trousered calves in each hand like railings as she smooshed her face into the sofa gap between them.
‘Err…. yes? What, you don’t think we’ll….?’
‘Natalia, do you really think I would desecrate the maidenhood of my poor pet whilst she is ridden with malaise and physical injury and who is all but sixteen years old?’
‘You might not but he would.’
‘You’re probably right. But I’m still with Joan at the moment for various necessary reasons and as you heard me declare on Truth or Dare night, I don’t cheat.’
‘Doesn’t all this… count as cheating?’
‘Caretaking you is charity, of course.’
‘Raising something for it?’
‘Begins at home. Pass me another fag. I barely sucked the last one, and if every cig knocks eleven minutes off my life, that one only did four, and that’s seven minutes too long on this mortal coil with men with names like Keith Precious.’
She passed him one, which he gripped in his lips as he began unfastening his belt and opening his fly, but not parting his layer of pants until she’d come back down between his knees, putting her hair behind her shoulders as if she was about to appear on some important webcam meeting.
‘Do I look ok?’ she smirked.
‘Good job you have that t-shirt on, else all hell would break loose.’
He clicked his lighter, puffed and sat back as though spectating her imminent rummaging should be most edifying.
‘Go on then. You know where he is.’
‘Oh.’ She began to push her fingers through the fabric slit of his pants to reach the hard fibrous base, that lovely warm flesh from this morning.
‘Well, now I know the root of cock…’
‘Staying at your Headmaster’s is highly educational.’
Resting her head onto her upraised elbow like a curious student examining pond life, her two fingers wriggled to what she knew was the soft, wrinkled surrounding testicles below the start of his penis. Then, with one of her hands and one of his, they pulled up the hem of the pants, to reveal the unobstructed view of his manscape of hair-speckled groin, centred by a long hand pointing twelve o-clock - almost fully erect, bouncing out headfirst onto his stomach - rising up from his olive green pants and brown trousers, as if they were the grass and soil from which his sunward-growing plant now bobbed, moving in the way she was familiar with, like a blind person who’s long heard the pips of a pedestrian crossing, and now touching it lightly with her fingertips, examines it with erratic blinks like some rare exotic creature.
‘It’s… huge…’
A chuckle, tender enough not to sound patronising, emits from him as he taps his fag ash.
She ran her hand loosely up the shaft, as he sighs upon this touch, but puffs again on his fag as though trying to forget - or forgive - that there was a schoolgirl there touching his penis, lifting it on her palm like a Biology specimen.
She thought its bulging veins made it look like a comic artist’s idea of a superhero exaggeration, whilst there hung a delicate scent of bread dough, a fleshy almost sweaty, smell of genital crack that reminded her of her own. Like a tarantula she dared to stroke once more before she drew her hand away, she rested her chin on his knee and continued gazing from there.
‘It’s so… hard. Rock hard… pavement hard.’
‘All the better to have Joan with, I guess,’ he sighed heavily, ‘and when she gets my… pavement, I’d best not think of you else she’ll think I’m laughing at her road, as such.’
‘Her cunt-crete?’
His phone blared - just as the oven began beeping at the same time.
‘Well, talk about a double ender.’ He began to shuffle forward. ‘It’s all go today…’
Natalia slunk back, as he got up, and went to turn off the oven and answer the phone with his cock still hanging out. ‘Hello, my man! No, no, the menus are all good. I just wanted to get the Black Tower swapped out for Casillero del Diablo—’
She looked over a moment later to see him out on the back terrace, chiming ‘yep, yep,’ whilst one elbow pumped at his side. She looked away again till he returned, chucking his fag stub and sighing:
‘Goodness. I need three hands.’
‘A riveting conversation?’
‘I livened it up. Everything is a mission up North. Daft fellow needs a couple of hours to get back to me about posh plonk and that will be just to spell the name right. Guess it’s for a bunch of educational frumps so it doesn’t really matter.’
He slid his phone onto the side. ‘I’ll just get changed, then dinner is served in ten.’
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*
They sat at the kitchen table, she in his robe, and he in his ‘evening comfies,’ as she took her fork to the steaming bowl.
‘Lasagne! Better than the school’s?’
‘Sadly Thornwood’s budget, even with our great Ofsted result will never stretch to Harrogate Grammar’s. I conjecture that the only parsley garnish our pupils will be lucky to find is one of Janet’s pubic hairs.’
‘The question is,’ as she licked the sauce off her fork, ‘is the great Ofsted result more down to my conjectures or you mistaking a lucky inspector’s pubes for parsley garnish?’
‘You devil. Well Joan seems to think it’s all down to her influence. Arrogant bitch wasn’t even involved back then, yet she literally touts credit.’
‘Pfft. Definitely wipe the smile off her face tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I will,’ he grunted, mouth full. ‘Swamp creature returns.’
‘No… something new.’
He lifted his wine glass as he chewed. ‘Gosh, my new pet is such a bad influence. What are you suggesting?’
She pondered. ‘Something that takes her by surprise.’
‘Hmm. Well she never does anal. Shall I put my cock up her arse without asking?’
‘Would you do that for me?’
‘Of course darling.’ He chinked his wine with her champagne flute of Tropicana as she squealed in laughter.
‘My god!’ Then she paused, thinking that their laughing at Joan was probably no better than Ryan’s odious blowjob threat. Their forks tinkled in silence.
‘Talk to me, little kitty. So what happened with your harpie? You say she lied about being married?’
‘Yeah. I found out from a man called Bill. They were too pissed and skint to ever get wed, can you believe it! But why she let me carry on believing Dad’s name was Molova, I don’t know! To stop me finding him? Anyway, I prised his real name out of her. It’s Tretchikoff.’
‘Tretchikoff? And who’s she, the Green Lady?’
‘What? Oh, the famous painting! I saw that in a book at school. And it came up online when I started looking last night. Not sure it really counts as Interiors though.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just my Art exam.’
‘So have you looked him up? Is it spelt with two Fs or a V?’
‘Mm? Two Fs. She showed me on Google.’
‘Google?’
‘When she typed it on Google.’
‘Your mother used Google to spell your father’s name?’
‘She’s dyslexic.’
‘Hmm,’ as he scraped his last mouthful. ‘All I can say is she’s fishier than Kirkgate Market. A matriarchal debacle of a farkle.’
‘Farkle?’
‘Look it up. Oh good girl, you ate all your food. Even after demolishing the entire contents of my bread bin today! Pass me your bowl.’
He cleared away as she reached for her phone, navigating her web browser away from the page of Anton Tretchikoffs, to the Urban Dictionary:
‘Farkle!—’ she called, ‘‘a red-headed person with pale skin and freckles…’’
He hooted with laughter whilst bent over the dishwasher. ‘Really?’ He came and peered over her shoulder. ‘A redhead?’
‘Best you don’t think of calling Ryan that!’ she laughed. ‘A farkle is also ‘a fart that is trapped by clothing and travels between the legs to be emitted from beneath the genitals…’’
‘That’s the one. Come, let’s withdraw to the drawing room. Brrr! You can feel that chill coming in, can’t you? No wonder you’ve put that robe back on.’
‘Well this hostage is pretty happy in your robe and t-shirts!’
‘You’ll be lucky they don’t go missing.’ He flicked the kettle. ‘I’ll get the fire roaring in there, close up the doors and it’ll be hotter than Marrakech. Are you fit enough to make two Earl Greys whilst I build the logs?’
‘Yes, Mr Grey!’
She brought in the teas, as the fire blazed and birds flew off jungle branches to David Attenborough’s leisurely commentary playing on barely audible volume.
‘Now! …This little birdie is about to fly,’ Neill aped Attenborough as he rummaged into a wooden drawer for Rizzlers, whilst Natalia wrapped herself up in a blanket on the main couch.
‘Natalia, you look like a mole going into hibernation! Take off all that cocoon and come over here at once.’
She laughed, slipped down to her t-shirt, and melted with a sigh down into the single chair by the fire, raising her feet over the armrest. Ten minutes ago she was feeling a little guilty that she should’ve, or would’ve, or could’ve, used some kind of womanly wiles to retain Neill on the couch and expertly stimulate his cock whilst he was talking to Keith on the phone. But now she need do nothing but be gazed down at by him like the most tempting apple in the garden of Eden - and bitch Joan, daft Keith, Big Tits and every other Small Fry in life for the last fortnight was all but a rotten orange.
‘Goodness. You look like a Balthus painting with your crack crocked up like that.’
‘Balthus?’
‘The next painter you can google,’ as he sat down opposite, rolling a joint.
‘Painter? Does he paint interiors?’
‘Mm, not sure I’d put it like that. But I rather think he wished he could.’ He arose toward her.
‘Would you like to check my bruises?’ she murmured.
‘Good grief, if Balthus paintings could talk. And I haven’t even drugged you yet.’ He hovered the joint to her face. ‘Here kitty, kitty—’
She did a joke bite at his hand.
‘No no. Be a good kitty. Do you want it?’
‘Yes,’ as she tried to swipe it.
‘Manners, girl—’
‘Please.’
‘I meant take your top off.’
She laughed, slipped it straight over her head, then swiped the joint, put it into her mouth and puckered forward for his lighter as he stared at her.
‘Well. Here you go, beautiful naked kitty. This one is regular sativa strain from the fresh batch I got today. More sativa than a girl’s scout so you’ll probably be gigglier than a girl scout but smoke it properly kitty, and then you’ll be purring…’
‘You’re really quite bossy aren’t you,’ she laughed, as he sat back down opposite, lighting up another cigarette.
‘If you want to feel it properly. Then you may come and sit with Dr Fondle so he can do the same. How was the one earlier?’
‘What, the feel or…’
‘The green.’
‘Lady?’
‘Like mother like daughter.’
‘It lightened the aches. I had a good sleep.’
‘I’ll bet. Have you been wearing those same knickers since you got here?’ he nodded.
She laughed.
‘Crap. I should have bought you a pack of knickers from Sainsbury’s.’
‘Childless Headmaster spotted buying teenage panties in the supermarket,’ she puffed. ‘That will keep us on the lowdown.’
‘Lo in the morning, more like.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Lolita. The little girl who gets kidnapped by the English professor.’
‘Oh. Speaking of which, did you find out whether Becky saw the CCTV? I’m assuming it didn’t go… big bust?’
‘Can’t gauge whether she knows. She’s all giddy talking dresses for the Ofsted party so I left it for now.’
‘And it’s going ok with Ryan?’
‘I parkle to meet the farkle up at Colton Retail Park to give him a stash weekly. His mum’s only taking it because she’s fed up of everything else and thinks an ‘‘erbal remedy is wuff a bash,’ in that mutt’s words. I could do with a translator sometimes.’
‘So, all is good as far as you can see? You’re not… afraid,of anything, right now?’
‘Your knick-knacks are more frayed than anything I can see right now. For how many years have you been wearing those Earl Greys?’
‘Two days!’
‘And owned them since the day Mr Stretchikoff left, by the looks of it.’
‘Such a bad joke.’
‘Lucky you’re almost as ripped to appreciate it. When you go home they can stay here as a sort of museum relic, memento-glori.’
‘Knicker bocker? Will they be framed in place of the Thames picture?’
‘With you in them. That bruise on your shoulder is looking nasty. Does it feel painful?’
‘More sore, to be honest. I mean sorer. Sorer? Does that sound right?’ she giggled.
‘We’ll have you fixed. Just like the fire. Still not burning as well as usual. Bit of a smoky stink in here.’
‘Isn’t that our fags?’
‘There’s soot around the flue and I can hear a scratching of probably a bird’s nest up there. And that’s just your knickers. I’ll need to call the sweep at the weekend.’
A silence fell as they puffed smoke up to the ceiling, and she looked down at her body, with a sudden desire to lose what was cramping her style, so she unlooped her knickers from her ankles one by one, as Neill blinked over in surprise, and watched her fling them up at the Thames picture over the mantelpiece where they landed splayed upon the diffuser sticks.
‘Did I really give you a certificate for PE?’
‘They’re getting dried and freshened there, it’s perfect!’
‘Just like something else,’ he gazed at her. ‘Let’s swap—’ He motioned his fag.
‘I just did,’ she laughed.
‘Nicotine for green.’
‘Do I have to get up?’
‘Yes.’
She arose, walking up to him naked head to toe, marked with a few bruises that she considered her glorious passport to this moment. Her pubic hair, which she never thought she could show to Neill without recoiling shame, had outgrown its leotard shave-tidy, and his eyes moving reverently down it with a soft fag-puffing moan says it doesn’t matter in the least, or maybe, being flash-lit by the fire serves as a flattering introduction.
Standing knee-kinked, the roll-up lodged nonchalantly between her fingers, he sighed.
‘You know, I’ve imagined you naked many times before, and it never looked as good as that.’
She smiled coyly, reaching out her arm to swap their smokes, as he gazes back like the whole lounge had become a fogged up, seedy bar.
‘You’ll be lucky I don’t tie you to my bed and throw the keys away.’
She smiles again and turns to the fire as though to curtail the sight of her front nudity in the same way he walked off earlier, stubbing out in the ashtray, then perusing his bookshelves whilst knowing he’d be perusing her bottom.
‘There’s a book I saw up here somewhere… with a yellow spine!’
‘Against shelves of spines is none so lovely as yours, yellow bruises and all.’
She leapt up onto the shelf behind the TV like a cat burglar, a nimble display of lithe sinewing legs and perky breasts as she ran her hand along the titles.
‘Ah—!’
‘Come down from there, you rascal. I don’t know how safe those shelves are.’
‘Here it is… Oh, Goldilocks! How apt, Headmaster! I didn’t know this was on the high school curriculum!’
‘All from the haul they purged onto me down in RUT, but apt indeed for Thornwood’s level. You know my feelings about baby stuff, get it off my shelf—’
He stood and came up beside her, just as she opened and held up the book straight onto a page of Goldilocks looking open-mouthed at Daddy Bear walking into the room with braces and trousers bulging.
‘Do you reckon his cock is as big as yours?!’
‘Pass it here.’ He swiped it and slapped its cold cover against her bottom. ‘Goldilocks can go to the charity shop. And the book.’
‘We’re both already in one. Ah!—’ She reached to draw out Much Ado About Nothing. ‘We did this in Year 10!’
‘‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,’’ he trilled, pouring a glass of wine and sitting back down. ‘‘Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea, and one on shore. To one thing constant never.’’
‘‘I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.’ Ha! I always liked the quotes in this! And how Beatrice and Benedick ‘verbally joust and spar’ - Coleman would say - all the way through, till they fell in love.’
‘That’s the couple Joan once compared us to. I wanted to retort that fluffy exhortations and inane PC asides don’t make you Beatrice, darling, and the similarities end at her being Bend for Dick, but all that would have gone over her head - so to speak.’
She laughed and bounded off to the kitchen. ‘What do you have for dessert? …Ooh, it’s cold in here!’
‘That’s because you’ve got my head in my freezer!’ he called, hearing the stiff iced drawers being yanked open.
‘What’s this! Ice lollies! A fan of the Fruit Pastille lollies too, Mr Neill? You can’t have bought these today?’
She brandished one at the door. ‘Sixpack, there’s five left!’
‘Ohh. I only bought those when I had an abscess last week.’
‘Do you want one!’
‘Was a godsend till I got to the dentist. No thanks.’
With a clunk of the pedal bin she came back with one unsheathed from its wrapper, and standing on the hearth, she tread her toes as close as possible as the fire, as he watched her pad the frosted red tip against her tongue.
‘It’s not exactly lolly season, Natalia, but by all means continue. Although I should say that’s not as big as mine. It’s more like mummy bear.’
‘It’s as cold as her,’ as she held it out to the fire like toasting a marshmallow.
‘Did you text her back today?’
‘Yeah. She even tried calling! I said it’s not a good time to talk right now, like you said. That I’m fine and staying away for a few days till my bruises are healed. Is that ok?’
She turned to him, rapping the lolly on her absurdly outstretched tongue.
‘And what did she reply?’
‘She asked a bit more about Sarah…’
‘Show me.’
She reached for her phone on the side, dropped to the floor, crawled up to him with the lolly briefly grasped in her lips and handed it over his knees.
‘Sucking hell. Now that’s going to be how you bring me your phone.’
She laughed mid-lick, the weed raging through her cells now, compounding her flirtiness and fondness for him in this moment, to be herself, completely naked and silly.
‘Now let’s see… mum’s the word, or the turd… She ‘wants to hear from Sarah’s marrh or parrh?’ Audacious filly, too! Not only expecting you’ll play along with her delusion of innocence but that it won’t rile you into dobbing her in!’
‘Yep. So what should I do?’
‘At least we know she won’t rush to the police.’ He handed the phone back. ‘Don’t reply for now, I need to think about how to play this.’
‘Maybe I should reassure her I’m safe and well with a picture.’
‘Of you in the nude, between my feet like a puppy, sucking something more purple-dickular than what’s between mine?’
She mouthed the last chunk of ice. ‘Thought I was your kitty.’
‘Not when you’ve bitten through it so fast like a pooch. You ate it wrong. Bad kitty.’
He tousled her head, plucked and catapulted the wooden stick into the fire.
‘Look at me,’ he cupped her chin. ‘You have lolly round your mouth. Right there—’
She laughed and swiped his hand away, but he caught and lowered her wrist.
‘Uh-uh. Not this time.’
She blinked in surprise as he chafed his thumb over her top sticky lip until it ran smooth, and then, sliding the tip of his thumb into her lips, she tried to look away he gripped her chin gently toward him.
‘Look at me. Take it—’
Clamping her neck, his thumb moved to wriggle against her tongue, and there was a look in his eye that told her to close her lips around it, and with a fluttering in her chest, somewhere out of obedience or sensual inclination, she played her tongue onto it for a second, till her eyes faltered again, and he nudged her firmer again to him.
‘There we go, little kitty. Suck it. No teeth… you don’t want to bite your master do you?’
Something clunks inside her like the pedal bin as he draws her up between his knees, and his thumb pushes a little further inside her mouth, and suddenly she feels like this might as well be his red mushroom-topped tool in her mouth, and she finds herself just as alarmed by the lick-clicking of her tongue that is following in line to his eyes, looking up at him like her ‘master’ who’s uttering words that would normally make her squirrel under the duvet with a wanking hand, thrown instead at her blushing face:
‘My lovely little kitten, hmm? Sweet but very naughty, are we going to train you?’
An electrical pulse flashed her ribs, front and back, as though dirty syrup was dripping down through them, and as his fingers stroked her cheek, she almost couldn’t take it to hear:
‘That is the best blush I’ve seen since Wankie Goes to Hollywood on the ride back from London.’
On this comment she let out a moan, either from a desire to pull away - or continue, she wasn’t sure which - all she knew was that something deep inside her was growing as hot and moist as his thumb that was now couched up at her palette. He’d lodged a different kind of joint in her mouth, and the whirlpool from her ribs to pelvis was now reaching her bare open vulva.
‘Come up. Come up here—’
Expecting him to draw away his hand, he scooped her up from the floor with his thumb still held there, and as though it were a handle, pulls her up and turns her onto him, where her tickling, soggy back crack chafes against his warm fabric of his lap, as his other hand crosses her breast to lean her back with him like fireside tales with a gone-wrong Santa. It removes the intimidation of facing him, but now his thumb pushes deeper, right to the knuckle, yawning her lips wider open and with what he says next, her eyes too:
‘So tell me this, Goldilocks, after seeing Daddy Bear’s cock and biting mummy-sized lolly, you’re now sucking the baby bear size that is just right… is that right…?’
She couldn’t even respond to this if she wanted to, being basically gagged, with a perversion of a fairytale fed into her ear that sparked a shock of repulsion in her insides at the same time she could feel tiny bubbles of lubricant from her vagina. There she’d been just a day ago, thinking that she’d have to wait till July to taste his redcurrant and whatever-berry-bushes and today she sat Under his Thumb, forced to swallow her saliva tainted by his fags, cock and wherever his hands had been, and as the ongoing silence clarified her subservience, sitting there with his hand held in her mouth, his cock grew under her thigh to further rock her body amok with lurches and drops.
His phone beside him rang. Swift return now to normalcy, she thought, but he answered it still with his thumb firmly lodged - curled, now, in her mouth - pinning her back into his chest as he outrageously, casually, brought the phone to his ear and answered:
‘Hello Precious. All sorted?’
She stares at the fire in disbelief, feeling like jelly, horny, somehow humiliated whilst at the same time strangely comforted, his muttering voice in her ear: ‘Diablo. As in Devil. Cellar of the Devil. No, that’s not the name, it’s Casillero—’ wriggling his thumb to remind her to suck, as her breaths take wild dunks, and her clitoris is throbbing madly, shifting her hips against his thigh as he glances down to her body, until it was ‘goodbye Keith, goodbye,’ tossing his phone onto the cushion whilst her eyes are wide in waiting.
‘Think you’re right about my keeping women quiet, even in aid of the stupidest man in Yorkshire.’
‘Don’t be sho hard on yourshelf’ - she tries to reply, loosening off his grasp finally, as he spreads a glistening thumb mid-air.
‘Is that wetter than your cunt was this morning?’
Free from his grasp, and curious herself to know - if at least to gather some of it up before it was a puddle on his thigh:
‘We’ll… see who wins?’ she laughs softly.
She drew hers down, and then held it aside his to compare, realising she had no chance to be self-conscious about her white-translucent-striped knuckle in this impromptu game of thumb wars.
‘Oh. You win. Or rather, I do. Now, you have a choice… between us, which of these is the closest to the size of the chickstick pocket-pleaser that you took up your window and then just as disgracefully threw out from it?’
‘Well, yours isn’t far off, so…’
‘Oh, in that case—’
He pushed her spine forward, his arm shuffling at her sacroiliac for the prompt provision of what she herself had just suggested - the probing of his thumb tip, into that wet ’n’ wild place via the backyard - as though she were the ear of a mug of tea, she slides and stakes onto it, a bit uncomfortably for a second as his thumb joint accustoms to the angle, and she is wondering what he is thinking, just as he murmurs the same words from this morning:
‘Oh, my good God.’
‘Oh my good God… what?’
‘So wet. So wet… and so, tight…’
Shifting his hand into position, for a moment it is almost like he is tempted to prod her back and forth, or take his side-cast audience ‘member’ and take her virginity by surprise right over the coffee table whilst she’d whimper like a fox up at her childhood knickers hanging like a pair of soiled trainers off a lamp post in Gipton. But he draws her back onto him, his thumb like a miniature sculpture stiffly erected into her as though she’d reversed and sat onto a hitchhiker, and kisses her cheek and temple, whilst she starts to rub her clit.
‘Oh my word…’ comes his murmur as his fingers brush ahead to her labia, almost meeting hers, feeling her wetness seeping like a melting lolly, and as intimate as this is, she senses he cannot feel her as he would with fingers, and whilst his proxy cock pokes inside her, he is captivated like he’d never touched a woman before, or rather, as new to white-knuckle-riding a virgin as she was, whilst his real cock somewhere down there leers them on.
She stalls and shifts her body. ‘I’m not used to… you know, I…’
His hand moves to her clit, knocking hers out of the way - emulating the exact same position and action - as though he’d been studying it all this time… and oh! …for her now to feel another person circling it, both her hands free whilst a man does it, he does it, as shock and thrill and ‘who is this’ ululates through her vulva, a finger of different size and texture and yet at once familiar enough to ease the orgasm back onto the runway… or perhaps a catwalk, down which it begins to strut - and then blush, as he mutters:
‘Spread your legs a little bit, that’s it—’
Her breaths mount in a feeling of controversy, to see his hand pressed up against her pubic hair, ensconced between her legs, his muscles writhing like clockwork on that private spot of hers - just as his phone vibrates at his side.
She laughs, grabs it and pushes it between her legs.
‘Oh, we got it back!’
They both laugh now, as vibration ran through his hands and their conjoined groins, and she writhes upon the idea that they are back in the office undisturbed, no leotard, no sex toy and no Ryan, then suddenly the phone stops and they hear a man’s ‘Hello?’
‘Shit—’
‘The cunt’s talking?’
‘Can you believe it? It’s him… again…’
Both tipsy on naughtiness, she swings the phone behind her head, as he craned his ear upon it.
‘Keith! The aperitifs!’ He shifted her upon his hands as he strained to hear. ‘I’m driving now but I’m on the handsfree. Trouble again?’
His hands still in place, he continued to stimulate her. ‘Oh, I’m all fingers and thumbs with this party. Good, good, no problem. Yep, I gotta go. Bye. …Well, I say. Calls with Keith are… precious indeed.’
She, still trying to climax, but too many interruptions, too many giggles, too much of a… thumb stuck up her cunt, her heart is racing and her excitement rushing, but her hope of climax subsiding, her vagina drawing friction as she sighs:
‘I don’t know… I don’t know if I can…’
‘Well I’d better pull my finger out.’
He draws out his thumb and before she has time to blink, it is straight back in her mouth, a warm, clammy, yeasty, sweet taste of her own cunt that she is not sure how she feels about, and not daring to suck at first, she hears:
‘Suck. Suck on baby bear, because that made you run… and he is going to make you come…’
His other hand is back circling her clit, and now she, sucking in half reluctance and desire - and the shock of how the reluctance becomes desire - and with no thumb down there now, she can feel the orgasm taking shape, coming toward her now, and she allows herself the shocking inner dip to fully relent, submit to this sleaze and sink right into him and suck, full-lipped!… mouth like fluid, washing over all her own taste and scent like she was sucking herself off, going down on herself… the taste and scent starts to turn her on, all the wrongness gets spun-cycled together and she is coming, five times more powerfully than any of the six clit Os she’d had with him, now it was six for sucks; sucks as sex, oh sucking hell - sitting on daddy bear’s lap, gobbling his baby bear thumb like a mummy bear breast - and the orgasm lasted about ten seconds, half of which she blots out deliriously, and feels him smouldering down her temple, about how wet she is, ‘finger-licking-clit-clucking’ or something he’s muttering, and that he doesn’t want to take his hand away, and that she should ‘come, come upstairs’ and sleep on him ‘like a rahhft’ again.
‘I liked that, being sandwiched between two virgins’ - as he hoists her across his arms and she laughs reaching for her knickers from the mantel, swiping into the air along with her hair as he carries her to the stairs. ‘This time lay the other way face down into me. You can leak all over my pants and then I’ll hang them next to yours tomorrow.’
‘Where’s my t-shirt!!’
‘Outlawed. Like you.’
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