Teach Me Dirty(69)

Anna.

I found a picture of her on the mantelpiece, and she was just as beautiful as a teenage weirdo like me would fear. Her dark hair was bouncier than mine and she was curvier, prettier, lovelier.

And dead.

She was dead.

I felt like such a horrible, jealous little cow.

I closed the door on the art room, and decided to stick to the safe option.

The laptop was still signed in, and I was about to log back into Facebook and mind my own business when a directory icon caught my eye on his Desktop.

Anna Mark Private

Private.

What is it about the word private?

I didn’t want to look, I really didn’t, but I was guided by some morbid fascination that took control of my fingers and tapped that double click, and the directory contents window sprang up in front of me.

Pictures. Loads of pictures.

I scrolled down.

Videos, too.

I caught a flash of nakedness, and looked away with my heart thumping in my throat. And then I knew I was doomed.

Oh shit.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

This was really none of my business. It was absolutely, definitely, one million-billion percent none of my business.

But I couldn’t stop myself clicking Play.

***





Helen



Anna had beautiful dark eyes, and there was a sadness in them that reminded me of open fields in a rain shower. I could almost feel the rain on my skin. She was a proper artist, I could tell. One of those people with sadness in their soul, that hear the lonely song in everything.

Like me. But I wasn’t a proper artist.

I was just a kid, and seeing Anna Roberts on camera just hammered that home to me all over again.

She was lying on the same sofa I’d been sitting on the night before, but it looked newer, and wasn’t covered in magazines. She was staring at the fire in the grate with her feet resting on the arm of the chair, dressed in white satin that crinkled across her breasts and showed almost everything. There was a lot to see, too.

The cameraman moved closer and knelt at her side and her smile filled the screen, so dazzling, and happy, and in love.

She was so in love with him, and it knocked the air from my lungs.

Mr Roberts’ voice was still the same.

“How is my beautiful wife?”

“She’s tired.”

“She should go to bed.”

“She should go to bed with her beautiful husband.”

I felt a flash of guilt, as though I’d been in her place, trespassing in someone else’s sheets.

Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

Bad little Helen Palmer.

The screen showed the side of Anna’s face as she leaned forward, and I heard the press of lips, and then the camera moved, and pictured them both. Mr Roberts looked so much younger. His hair was longer, past his shoulders but just as curly and with no grey, and he was clean shaven. And happy.

He looked so happy.

He kissed his wife as the camera watched, and he brushed her cheek with his fingers and I knew how that felt and my skin tickled, too.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed into his mouth and I knew how that felt, too.

“I’ve been thinking about you…” she breathed. And her hand moved to her chest, pulled down the satin. “I painted a roomful of strangers today and every single one of them was you.”

“And how many of those strangers made you wet?” There was something in his voice, something I hadn’t heard before. Something dark, and dangerous that made me shy, even though I was all alone.

“All of them.” Her eyes widened as she stared at him.

I heard a rustle off camera and she gasped.

“You touched yourself…”

She grinned and it was beautiful. “Many times…”

“You know what this means?”

She nodded, and her eyes twinkled. “Yes, sir.”

“Have you forgotten your manners, Anna?”

“I think I need reminding, sir.”

The screen went dark and all I could hear was my own breath until the picture resumed. The camera was on a stand of some kind, and it looked like the art room, the same big workbench without all the clutter. And there was Anna, and her wrists were bound and secured somewhere out of view. She was naked, and her arse was positioned on the edge of the bench, her thighs lolling out of shot, and her hip bones pronounced as she tensed and arched her back. Mr Roberts was naked as he came into view and I burned up at the sight of his erection. He was more wiry in the video, leaner somehow, and his expression was dark and full of lust, and I felt that hurting jealousy again.

He lit up a candle.

“Such a beautiful canvas,” he said, and lit another, a red one. And then one in blue, and then green, and purple, and he lined them up in a row on the bench beside her and their flames looked so pretty dancing in the darkness at the edge of the screen. “Show me…”

She moaned and wriggled.

“Show me that naughty little cunt, Anna…”

And she moaned again, and I did too and my stomach tickled. He said the C word.

He pinched and groped her thighs and she squirmed.

“Show me what’s mine…”

She pulled her legs up, and spread them wide, and there was no hair between them, and she looked so swollen and soft. I was burning up, and my heel was tapping, my eyes flicking to the doorway even though I knew he was miles away.