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Paul didn’t usually go for fans, at least not from the hordes that screamed and wailed and clawed their faces outside the hotel.
One, there was the screaming. Two, even if you fancied one, you could never be certain she was of age. Three, well, too many bloody virgins. When he and John had been lads back in Allerton and Woolton, that had been fun for a time, or at least it had seemed fun until those pretty girls you’d brought home from the pub were crying because it hurt so much and you were letting them sniffle on your shoulder for the better part of an hour, wracked with guilt. Besides that, they were terrible lays. Better the older girls who knew their way around men, the ones smoking backstage after the show looking unruffled and cool, giving a practised giggle at even your weakest jokes. Escorts were a safe wager, too; the ones in the big cities, at any rate, were young, enthusiastic, and could keep you busy for hours. Moreover, the experienced girls and the escorts mostly left off asking you harebrained questions about your life as a Beatle: your nicknames (none of which you’d heard before in your life), what your favourite sweetie was, who your perfect woman was, and other nonsense they’d picked up from the fan mags.
But as he was darting cab to hotel, dodging photographers’ lenses and grasping arms, his eyes landed on a girl at the front of the police barricade. It was her stillness, he realised, that had captured his gaze. The girls around her were a wave of frenzied motion, shrieking, jumping, waving, clutching their cheeks, but she was staring at him with an even calmness, head slightly cocked, looking rather like Botticelli’s Venus fresh-risen from the sea. She was wearing a leather jacket and gripping a pair of binoculars, which seemed to have been forgotten as she looked at him. Instead of being shellacked into one of those silly bouffant dos, her hair was long, straight, and fringeless. There was a large badge in the center of her chest that read I LOVE PAUL.
The badge alone was a dangerous sign; they had an unspoken rule not to have it off with any girl wearing Beatles memorabilia, to make no mention of the other red flags. Paul was in the mood, though, and he was still feeling miffed that he hadn’t gotten to take anyone to bed the night of his twenty-second. The girls who’d won the contest had been good company, but straight away he could see that they were too young and sweet to even contemplate; some still had mums and dads breathing down their necks about curfew, while others hadn’t ever been kissed let alone shagged. One girl’s dad followed her to the hotel, just to make sure the Beatles weren’t getting up to something funny with his daughter.
Twenty-two years old and not a proper lay to mark the occasion. He supposed he felt a bit sorry for himself.
When he was safely within the hotel doors, he nudged Neil and said, “That one back there. Did you see her?”
Neil looked flabbergasted. “What, one of those lot?”
“The bird in the leather jacket out front there.” He gestured.
Neil shrugged. “It’s your neck.”
“Cheerio, then,” Paul said, inclining his head in the direction of the lift. Neil hung back and Mal followed Paul into the lift.
Paul never stuck around for this part, never asked Neil or Mal how they were able to finesse it, what excuses they had to make to the policeman to smuggle girls inside the hotels or into dressing rooms. What mattered is that they always managed it, and managed it a discreet way that kept it out of the newspapers and tabloids.
The lift doors slid shut and Mal, who could sometimes be a bit shy about these things, struck up a conversation about the funny Australian seasons (winter in June?) and Paul was safe from having to answer for himself. He tried to remember what time Brian told him they’d have to leave for the Hall. Surely he still had a few hours.
It’d been a drag doing yet another dull interview, this one at a radio station, while the other lads were sleeping in and enjoying their morning off, but there hadn’t been anything for it. Paul was the eternal pleaser and John had put his foot down earlier, looking Brian and Derek in the eyes and saying, “I ain’t doing another fucking interview this week, hear? You can sit there yourselves and tell ‘em about your hair and Ringo’s rings, but I’m not having any more of those bloody stupid questions.” Brian looked wounded and Derek grumpy, so Paul had stepped in and made the cheerful offer to go ahead alone, earning a dirty look and a two-fingered salute from John.
He stepped off the lift and nodded goodbye to Mal. The door to the room he was sharing with John was unlatched, typical careless John. Security was posted around their floor—even so, though. His momentary annoyance with John was quickly replaced with concern for his appearance as he shut the door behind him. He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the back of the nearest chair, wishing he was already in civilian clothes. Neil tended to wait a bit before fetching the girls just so it wasn’t bleeding obvious what he was up to, wouldn’t want to march a girl in five seconds behind a Beatle, but you never knew. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, studying his face in the full-length mirror in front of him. Nothing in his teeth, hair looked alright. He dropped his waistcoat on top of the jacket and began wrestling the tie away from his throat. Then he set to work on the buttons of his dress shirt, far more than could have been necessary really, felt like four dozen.
He couldn’t pinpoint quite why he was in such a rush. He just felt edgy with his own hormones, couldn’t stop thinking about tits and bums and navels and the lovely black triangles (or sometimes blond and auburn) you found between girls’ legs. Christ, just the thought was making him hard. He extricated himself from the shirt, unzipped his trousers and shucked them down his legs—and at that moment the door to the toilet opened and John strolled out in a cloud of steam. He smirked when he caught sight of Paul.
Paul’s heart sank. “Bloody hell, what are you doing here?”
“Last time I checked this was my room, constable,” John said, watching Paul lay his trousers on top of his jacket. He was wearing a white terry-cloth dressing gown and his legs and feet were bare.
“Just clear off, will you?” Paul said, bending over his suitcase. He pulled out a fresh white T-shirt—that would do—and found himself wavering between jeans or black trousers. Perhaps the blue trousers.
“Why would I want to do that?” said John, giving him a self-satisfied smile. “Who’s the lucky bird?”
Normally John was happy to leave him alone and vice versa when there was a girl on the line, but he’d been in a funny humour since that morning. He got like this sometimes. Ominously, there was usually no talking him out of it. “I don’t know who she is,” said Paul, choosing the jeans, “But I’d appreciate you not being the welcoming committee.”
“What’ll you give me if I bugger off?”
“I’m not giving you anything,” Paul said flatly. He put one leg into his trousers. “You’re going because I haven’t had a girl in over a week.”
“Aren’t you just a proper martyr, then?” said John. “You’ll want to change your name to Joan of Arc, she went without a shag for two whole weeks once I hear.”
“Piss off John, alright?” He zipped himself up.
“Where?” John said.
“Dunno, don’t care. Go bother George or Ring. Get some fresh air. Go box a kangaroo.”
“Suppose I stay for the fun,” said John, giving him a toothy smile and batting his eyelashes.
“You’re not staying for any fun,” Paul said, gritting his teeth. He was starting to feel as though he would very much like to clobber John.
“I could pick up some pointers, you know. See how the act’s done.”
“You had a bird two nights ago,” Paul pointed out. “Let me have a go.”
“How ‘bout this one?” John said, pulling a polka-dot shirt out of Paul’s luggage and pretending to examine it.
Paul snatched it away and stuffed it back in his suitcase. “Out,” he said, clasping John by the shoulders and propelling him backwards toward the door.
“Hold on, let me put me trousers on first, at least! ‘Lennon Streaks through Hotel in Beatles Shocker,’ don’t want that in tomorrow’s papers, do you?” said John, removing himself from Paul’s grip.
He walked over to his own suitcase without a further word and opened it, looking for a change of clothes. Perhaps John was going to behave, after all. Paul shrugged on the tee and found his comb on the dressing table. He wondered whether he should dab some cologne behind his ears, but nah, he’d had a shower before the interview. As he teased his hair just so in the mirror, he could see John riffling through clothes, pulling out a shirt, holding it up, shaking his head, and discarding it. The third time he repeated this manoeuvre, Paul realised he was doing it deliberately.
“Oy!” he said, turning about. “Get a fucking move on!”
“Come on Paul,” said John, in a tone at once imploring and utterly disingenuous. “Let us watch.”
Paul was going to throttle him, he just knew it. He strode over to John’s suitcase and pulled out the first shirt and pair of trousers he could find. He shoved the clothes into John’s hands. “I’m warning you, if you’re not out of here in one minute, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” said John. His eyes gleamed.
Paul threw him to the bed, arm settling across John’s throat. His right hand dug into John’s arm and held him there. He didn’t know whether to laugh or just kill him and be done with it. “I could knock you right now, you know.”
John smiled up at him and let himself be pinned. He was stronger than Paul and they both knew it. “Do this with all the girls?” he said, mock-coquettish.
“Keep at it,” said Paul, pushing his face into John’s and putting pressure on John’s neck. His anger was real now. Why couldn’t John just fuck off? “Wouldn’t want a black eye on stage tonight. They’d never forget that headline, ‘Beatle Bashes Best Mate’s Bleeding Head In.’”
Later that night, Paul would wonder why he didn’t make good on his promise. John certainly deserved it for what he did next, raising his head and licking Paul’s ear just as Paul was trying to make up his mind where to hit him (ribs would be nice, no one would ever see the bruise there). The shock stopped him, sure, but was something else to it. It wasn’t done in an antagonistic manner like so many of the other things John did to be a twit, pretending to pick his nose and wipe his bogies off on your cheek or prodding you between the ribs during an interview and making you yelp “ouch!” in the middle of an especially eloquent sentence. In fact, John wasn’t smiling at all anymore. His eyes were clear and alert as he waited for Paul to react. And the touch of his tongue hadn’t been impish, it had been sexy.
Paul couldn’t tear his eyes away from John’s. He hadn’t noticed until this moment how long John’s eyelashes were or the way his damp, mussed hair stuck to his forehead before one of the hairdressers had attacked it with a blow-dryer. He’d never been aware of John’s body like this, either, had paid no attention to the placement of his own body when he’d shoved John onto the bed. Now he could feel that he’d landed astride John, was straddling him with hipbones pressed in a painful sort of way against John’s. If John could feel his hipbones, then John could also feel the pressure of his dick, which had responded much to Paul’s dismay. As if reading his mind John smiled, wetting his lower lip and then catching it with his front teeth, those front teeth that turned in at the middle ever so slightly, in a way that Paul now realised was endearing.
It wasn’t that he had a problem with people like Brian, it just wasn’t a name he’d ever attach to himself. He was mad for girls; sometimes he thought his appetite for them surpassed even John’s. When he wasn’t thinking about chords and lyrics, it was tits and arse. When you’re twenty-two you know everything about yourself, or at least you think you have it sorted and then all of a sudden you’re looking at your best mate’s crooked teeth and find you rather fancy them.
A knock at the door saved him having to think—and Christ forbid, do—anything further.
“Bloody hell,” he said, releasing John and standing. He ducked in front of the mirror and brushed at his fringe. For a few moments, he’d forgotten the girl at the barricade but that was sure to be Neil with her now. He wished he could adjust himself, but John had sat up rubbing his throat and was looking at Paul’s eyes in the mirror, which made Paul feel funny and prickly inside. Part of him thought that if he didn’t acknowledge it then it hadn’t happened, sort of a joint hallucination that’d fallen from the sky. But he hadn’t hallucinated the warmth of John’s tongue on his ear and the look that had been in his eyes. And bugger, what to do with a half-dressed John now?
To Paul’s horror, John solved that himself by opening the white, slatted bi-fold cupboard door and ducking inside amidst their pressed and laundered suits. Paul clenched his teeth. There’d be no extracting him now. “Shoulda thumped you when I had the chance,” he said to the cupboard, and received no response but a chuckle. Next time John wanted some private time with a girl, Paul was going to lie in the same bloody bed with a ciggie and Scotch and give a running commentary.
‘Course knowing John, he might enjoy that.
He unlocked the door and pulled it open. The girl was standing there with Neil, who gave a short nod to Paul and walked away, duty discharged. “Right, come in,” said Paul, finding that his usual easy charm was more than a bit scattered. It wasn’t often that he was at a loss for words, particularly when there was a pretty girl before him, but John had a knack for getting under his skin. He’d really outdone himself this time.
“Your badge,” Paul said, just to have something to say. She’d removed it and he pointed.
“Oh, yes that! Yeah, bit silly, wasn’t it?” she said, in a twangy Australian accent. The binoculars were still around her neck and there were sunglasses resting atop her head. Now that she was standing close, Paul could see that her eyes were blue and rimmed in black. Très différent. The leather jacket, the hair, the make-up—more than a Beatles fan she looked like a friend of Astrid’s or Klaus Voormann’s.
“I dunno,” said Paul. He gave her a winsome smile. “You an art student?”
She broke into an open-mouthed grin. “Yes, how did you know?”
“Well, you’re a bit different,” he said, reaching out to touch her hair. He let the silken strands fall through his fingers. “Where’s your fringe, you know?” He smoothed his thumb across her forehead in a playful way and she smiled.
Although beginning to relax, he was finding it challenging to forget his one-man audience mere metres away. John had seen him with women before; that wasn’t the difficulty. In Hamburg and, later, on the road, they shagged girls by the dozens, never caring which of their mates might be asleep in the next bed or whether one was already busy with his own girl. But generally it happened when they were laggered. Paul couldn’t recall a time when John or one of the others had watched the seduction itself, never mind that seduction wasn’t needed when you were ordering up escorts or taking your pick of backstage groupies who had showed up for one thing and one thing alone.
This girl was different, cool, more sophisticated somehow despite her quaint accent. She also looked as if she might have a year or two on him, and that made him excited. He liked the girls in their mid- to late-twenties more than the young ones, found they were rougher in bed and often articulated needs of their own, which rather thrilled him.
“What’s your name?” he said, brushing a hand across her cheek. Her skin was like velvet and made his stomach flutter.
“Debra,” she said, staring up at him as if she was drowning.
“Hi, Debra,” he said. “Name’s Paul.”
He was contemplating a kiss, but she looked away, saying “I’ve heard” and looping the strap of the binoculars from around her neck. She set them on a chair.
He liked this. Confident, not shy. Her eyes were wandering around the room as if it were a palace, so he said, “Go on, have a look.”
“Sorry,” she said, taking a few cautious steps forward and taking it in. “It’s just that it’s three times the size of my bedsit.”
“Bet your bedsit doesn’t have this crap carpet though,” he said, and nudged the lime-green shag rug with his sock toe.
She laughed. “No, that’s true.”
He tried to see the room as she might, but one was the same as the next to him. Same chairs in red, orange, and drab green with the spread, pointed little legs. Same ugly green curtains, same loos tiled in floor-to-ceiling blue or pink. If he was being honest with himself, they never felt luxurious in any sense other than space. He and the lads had room to breathe and stretch out, and that was it. Well, and these days there weren’t any roaches like there had been during the early days of touring.
His usual habit was to ask the girls about themselves and avoid any prying questions about himself or the Beatles, and then when they were at ease he’d take them to bed, but John had made everything topsy-turvy. You think you knew John, then he’d do or say something that made it evident you were in the company of a madman.
“Something to drink?” he said to Debra.
She sat at the foot of the bed (John’s bed, Paul noted) and continued looking about. “Yes, please. I’ll take what you’re having.”
“Scotch and Coke?” Paul said, and she nodded.
Paul knew neither he nor John was—like Brian. Or those men in America with the crew-cuts. He knew it as surely as he knew he was left-handed and preferred his eggs scrambled, but he also knew that he hadn’t imagined that look in John’s eyes. If they had been horsing about as usual, John would have licked him as wetly and revoltingly as possible and thrown Paul off of him. A classic-two-in-one Lennon insult: slobbered on your ear and I’m stronger than you, Macca. Instead, he’d slid the warm tip of his tongue down the rim of Paul’s ear and caught the lobe between his teeth with absolute gentleness before pulling off. Paul loved to be kissed there. The thought John might have noticed this at some point when Paul was messing about with a girl, might have intentionally filed this information away, made Paul feel extremely funny.
He knelt at the minibar and pulled out the bottle of ambery Scotch and two cans of Coke. When they were on the road a couple years ago, John had been immersed in the Kinsey Reports, reading aloud the more salacious bits about buggery and marital infidelity and making them all snigger. Cyn had been up the stick by then which made John’s gleeful repetition of the passages about extramarital sex all the crueler; in those days, the only time he didn’t bed a girl a night was when he’d caught a cold. Paul remembered there’d been one statistic about bisexuality, how something like fifty per cent of men had gone queer at least once in their life. They’d all laughed at the time, joked for weeks afterwards about George and Ringo; when he wanted to set them off again, Ringo would sneak up on George to whisper sweet nothings in his ear or pinch his bum, and George would whip round and swat Ringo away in disgust. The figure was too high, too improbable. John had thought that Kinsey had made it up. “Probably a feckin’ fag himself,” were his exact words. So no, it wasn’t just straight and queer out there, but Paul had never questioned for a moment if he’d be amongst those men. It just wasn’t him.
“Sorry,” he said, holding out the Scotch-and-Coke to Debra. “Bit of a long day.” Which was a lie. He’d had a lie-in and answered some daft disc jockey’s questions, hardly taxing. He realised that the excuse sounded pathetic, she’d probably seen him leave for the interview after all, so he added, “Late night, too.” Sure, a late night arching into his fist whilst John snored away in the bed next to his.
Here was a bird he wanted to get to know, maybe keep in the manner of Peggy Lipton and a couple other girlfriends he’d just made in America, and John’s foolishness was once again distracting him. The knowledge that he’d started to go hard at John’s mouthy caress perturbed him. No doubt John had felt Paul against his hip, and it was driving Paul mad: what did John think about that, you know? Would he carry the tale to George and Ringo, boast about it within earshot of Neil, Mal, or, Christ forbid, Brian? “There’s soft Paul, got a stiffie for his best mate.” Maybe Paul would kill the stupid bloody bastard with his bare hands before they had a chance to find out.
“Where d’ya go to school, then?” he asked, as a last-ditch effort to distract himself.
He looked at Debra’s long fingernails curved around lowball glass, thought subconsciously of the way John’s fingernails were always neat and trimmed. How he cupped his hand around his mouth when he was playing harmonica, Adam’s apple bobbing as he broke away to sing …
Cor, it was like being under a spell. He shook his head, wanting to pinch himself. Finding he couldn’t really concentrate on Debra’s words, he slugged back the bevvy in one go. Shame because she seemed like such an interesting bird. She sipped at her drink and went on.
Maybe twenty-two was where it all fell apart. Or maybe he was just old enough now to admit that things had never been quite that straightforward where John was concerned. John was all bloke through and through and he was all bloke through and through, so it wasn’t like that, but it was different to anything he’d ever felt for anybody. George and Ringo, they were irreplaceable. But he and John were connected. It transcended anything he’d ever known. Love wasn’t the word for it, love was what he felt for bright, pert, ginger-haired Jane with her short skirts and clever hands, but she wasn’t his best mate, his partner. He couldn’t sit on a piano bench with her, leg pressed to hers, and work out their next number-one. She didn’t stir up his intellect the way the John did. Nor did he and John row the way he did with her, like the outcome of each quarrel would determine the fate of the planet. They bickered, and then next minute John was bumming a fag off him and reminding him of the time Paul had chucked a beer can at that vicar and accidentally hit him across the head, which he still felt ashamed about to this day. They’d shared toothbrushes, beds, loos, loads of girls. The only thing they hadn’t shared was one another. He wondered if it was a line they were capable of crossing.
A few months ago, Jane was reading one of her silly girl books and made him listen to a passage that ended with “Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” She’d meant it for him, but all he could think about was John and him. That, he thought. That’s us. And his heart beat faster. But he’d only smiled at Jane and pretended that he agreed with what she was getting at.
Sod the seduction, then. He knew how to still his thoughts. Setting down his empty glass, he put his hand on the back of Debra’s neck and kissed her. “Oh!” she said, interrupted mid-sentence, but she returned the kiss, lips parted against his.
Still holding her close, he took the drink from her suspended hand and set it on the floor. She tasted like fags and spearmint gum. He tangled his hand in her hair and deepened his kisses. Then he lowered her to the bed, mouth still on hers. He had her in the same position he’d had John just a few minutes earlier, but the body beneath his now was slighter, much softer. She pushed a questing tongue against his, which wiped his brain blank; suddenly all he could think about was what her tits were like under that leather jacket and curtain of hair.
“Go on, take off your jacket,” he said, mouth open and hungry. She obeyed, prising it off as he raised himself to his hands to allow her room to move.
His hands went to her hair and pulled her head back to his. She put her hands at his side, separating shirt from skin as their lips met. He wanted to move them to the other bed—felt weird to shag a girl on sheets that John would sleep on that night—but of course the blasted cupboard was at the foot of his. He ought to have booted John out when she’d knocked, clothes be damned. Removing him now might cause a scene. ‘Beatles Busted in Deviant Voyeur Scandal,’ it would be just his luck with the band and tours going so smashingly to have the world thinking that their squeaky-clean lads were bagging innocent young girls for wild orgies (not that it was too far off the truth). This bird didn’t seem the type to kiss and tell no matter who popped out of the cupboard, but when it was your neck—well, your fame and money—on the line, you never wanted to take chances.
His mind returned to John, who was presumably watching them through the slats. Well, let him have a show if that’s what he wanted. Paul always had been an excellent a performer.
He moved his lips away, breathless and more than a bit hard now, and said, “Let’s move up a bit, eh?” He stood and took her by the hand, pulling her to him and kissing her as his fingers felt for the edge of her shirt. Making sure that she was positioned in full view of the cupboard’s occupant, he stripped it off in one movement and found to his endless delight that she hadn’t worn a bra. Before he could stop himself, he’d knelt and was sucking, kissing, licking every centimetre of skin within his reach. Randy Paul, that was him, but he couldn’t help it, he loved women too much. Debra made a small noise of pleasure which inflamed him even further. He straightened up.
“On the bed, love,” he said, all business, and she kicked off her shoes whilst she clambered onto it.
He undid his trouser button and drew down the zip, manoeuvering the trousers around his erection and off his legs while Debra lay down on the pillows. Her nipples were peaked, her eyes dilated and heavy. He crawled in after her, positioning himself between her legs. Before he could bend to kiss her again she was running her hands under his shirt and he was letting her, smiling at her audacity. Generally they seemed frightened to touch you. Part of that was the Beatles thing, partly it was just girls, but he loved when they took the reins and he wasn’t quite sure what would happen next.
“Dirty girl,” he said, grinning. She smiled back and ran her hands up his bare chest, which made him groan low in his throat. He kneaded a breast with one hand and ran his hand through her sleek hair with the other. This was good, this was what it was about. He felt heady, young, beautiful. “You’re marvelous,” he said against her mouth.
“I’m marvelous in other ways, too,” she said, sitting up.
She was giving him those seductive bedroom eyes girls did when they were about to do something they thought to be clever and naughty, and though he could guess what that something was, he was relishing every moment of it. He allowed her reverse their places and push him to the bed with a press of two fingers on his chest. His eyes went to the cupboard as she knelt between his legs and stripped off his shorts. Not a peep from John so far. It was almost like he wasn’t there at all. Perhaps he wasn’t watching, had gone to sleep slouched against the wall, bored with his game. Then she took him into her mouth and John, the Beatles, the shrieking masses, tonight’s concert ceased to exist altogether.
Time went out of joint as he screwed his eyes shut and let her work her wonderful agony. He was aware faintly of digging his fingers into the duvet and sighing deep within his chest. He’d intended to fuck her silly, but this was too good, too perfect. He wondered if he’d ever been so grateful to learn that a girl had some practise with this as when she started working him with her hands as well: gripping, stroking, reaching down to brush his testicles in just the right way. The skin on his arms was all nerves and heat, the ache in his groin had started to blossom.
When at last he opened his eyes to watch her, drunk with the bliss of it all, he noticed that something in his peripheral vision was not quite as it had been a minute or two before. Lifting his gaze, he was horrorstruck to find John standing quietly in the half-open cupboard door. His eyes were on the bed and he was clearly pleased by the spectacle if the naked erection rising from the folds of his robe was anything to go by. Paul made an involuntary sound somewhere between a gasp and a choke, and Debra raised her head.
“Did I hurt you?” she said, worried.
“No no no,” he said. “Just really good, that’s all.” He forced himself to smile even as his heart pounded in his throat. Don’t turn around, he willed her. Please don’t turn around.
When he risked a glance again, the door was mostly closed and John was nowhere in sight. Thank God for well-oiled hinges. He sank back into the pillow and closed his eyes, trying to process it whilst also trying not to lose focus on the warm heaven of Debra’s mouth.
It was like a sick joke. But the sickest part of all was that underneath his anger at John for spoiling his lay, he wasn’t disgusted as he knew he ought to have been at John’s evident pleasure in the scene. In fact, his body had responded to the sight of John in a way it never had in the hundreds of times they’d seen each other naked before. He’d wished the robe hadn’t concealed so much, a realisation which made his face flush and his mind go all panicky. The blossoming sensation in his groin was growing and his brain was beginning to blot out everything but the pleasure. The worst most treacherous kind of autopilot, when all you can focus on is what gets you off no matter how embarrassing or unusual.
He opened his eyes and John was part way out of the cupboard again, gesturing to Debra’s bum. He made an unmistakable motion that meant, Her skirt, you fool, take off her skirt.
Heart beating rapidly, Paul was now confident that he would murder John later that evening for this, maybe push him in front of a bus or let him be torn limb from limb by the screaming mob of pants-wetting girls. The lust-struck, impulsive part of him had to admit, however, as with many ideas of John’s—especially ones that involved girls—this one was good. He rose to his elbows, watching John duck back into the cupboard and not bother to shut it this time. Debra had him deep in her mouth by now and it took nearly all of his willpower to halt her.
“Will you …?” He felt shy saying it, never had the grasp of dirty talk he knew John did. “Erm, take down your knickers?”
Debra smiled and stood up on her knees. “Of course.”
She unbuttoned her skirt with exquisite slowness, revealing first the curve of her belly and then the creamy expanse of her thighs. Paul sat up and helped work it down her legs and off her feet. Finally, he drew down her knickers in an unhurried way he knew would set John off. She moaned and he captured her mouth again, pushed two fingers between her thighs and discovered the wetness there. But his body was aching for release and he couldn’t concentrate on anyone’s pleasure but his own, not at the moment. Hoping she wouldn’t be too bothered by his selfishness he laid back again, determined to enjoy himself in whatever pitiful amount of time still remained to him.
She bent over him again with her arse in the air, and like a magnet John the lech was out of the cupboard again, staring at Debra and stroking himself. Paul sneaked little glances at her to make sure that she was engrossed in her task before hazarding a look at John. John had caught his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes were heavy-lidded. His fist went down and up, up and down. The thought of him, the look of him, drinking in the view of Debra’s arse and fanny, drinking in the sight of her sucking Paul off, made Paul groan out loud.
That caught John’s attention. He let go of himself and mimed taking off a shirt. Paul glanced at Debra again (her head was down) and raised an eyebrow at John. Her shirt was already gone; her luscious breasts were hanging down and quivering delightfully as she bobbed her head.
John rolled his eyes and shook his head. Not her, the expression said. Christ but you’re thick. He pointed at Paul and put his fingers at his waist, motioning again like he was pulling off a shirt. He pointed a second time and Paul’s heart hammered. John meant him. The warm, electric feeling had spread from his arms to his core and his legs.
“Just a moment, love,” he said to Debra, reaching out and putting the flat of his hand gently on her cheek. “Bit overheated.”
Barely believing what he was about to do, he crossed his arm and grasped the hem of his T-shirt with both hands, and drew it up over his head. Debra smiled and closed her eyes, wasting no time getting back to the task at hand. When he was certain she was preoccupied, Paul looked up again.
John had shrugged off the terry-cloth dressing gown. He had been wearing nothing beneath. His hand was back on his dick, pumping it fast now. Since John’s eyes were on Debra, Paul allowed himself a peek at his friend’s naked form. It looked nothing like Debra’s body, and—he shouldn’t have been thinking about this, really. But it was impossible not to, now that John was in front of him. His legs were spread in the short-sighted stance he took while onstage. Paul wondered for a moment if John had his contacts in, but then of course he did because why else would he have asked Paul to take off his shirt if he couldn’t see him? The thought caused Paul to squirm and sigh. From a distance John looked hairless but for the dark tuft between his legs, though Paul knew up close his arms and legs and stomach were covered in a fine golden hair that bespoke his Irish heritage. Unlike Paul’s, his dick stayed almost hooded when erect; Paul wondered if he’d ever noticed that before but why would he, it was a completely mental thing to think about.
Still, the sight of John without anything on made him moan, improbably, irrationally. Debra didn’t pay him any mind so he looked up again and this time John’s eyes were on him, combing over him as if he were studying Paul the precise way that Paul had been studying him moments earlier. Paul felt his heart go faster at the thought. He stared at the muscles in John’s upper right arm, flexing, tightening as John rolled and twisted his wrist. And without anticipating it, all at once he was looking into John’s eyes as John fisted himself. Paul reached up, not thinking, and pulled the erect bud of his nipple.
John threw his head back. His throat was flushed and Paul could see sweat shining there. His thighs tensed and his hand pistoned faster and faster, and then without warning he was coming in strong, steady pulses and somehow doing so without making any noise, breathing through his nose with his chest heaving. A torn sound escaped Paul’s throat and he pushed up into Debra’s mouth, clutching his hand in her hair.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,” he begged. “That’s so good, oh that’s so good, oh I’m so close, Christ, keep going keep going.”
He didn’t know why he thought it, but as his climax broke over him he pictured John beneath him with his eyes squinted in that wry Lennon way and his lips parted, revealing the white upper teeth which were so even except for the slightly canted ones in the middle. Wrapped around his dick, Debra’s mouth was so wet and warm and perfect that it didn’t seem to matter that for the first time in his twenty-two years the thoughts filling his head did not involve girls. Because to be honest, men’s bodies weren’t all that bad and perhaps Kinsey wasn’t so far off the mark.
When he finally came to, he was certain he’d been asleep for three hours. The light seemed fuzzy, somehow heavy. He sat up on his elbows, panicked.
“How long have I been asleep?” he said to Debra, who’d crawled up at some point and curled herself around his chest.
“Not long,” she said, with a content smile. “Half an hour?”
He gave her forehead a kiss and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “We’ve got practise at four o’clock,” he said. He felt sweaty, grotty.
He managed to redress himself and help Debra into her things, holding the leather jacket for her as she slid her arms back inside. He got her number from her and slipped it in his jeans pocket; there was the whole evening ahead of them and he’d been a downright lousy lay for her, though from the way she beamed at him she clearly didn’t think so. Plus that hadn’t really been the shag he’d thought it would be. Now that it was over, he found himself not wanting to dwell on it overmuch. And there was still the problem of John in the cupboard . . .
As he was walking her out, he almost tripped on the dressing gown puddled on the floor. A look crossed Debra’s face; he could tell she was trying to work out whether she’d seen it before. The cupboard door was cracked just a hair. He ushered her past before she noticed it or, Christ forbid, the sticky mess John had left somewhere on the floor.
Somehow he smuggled her out of the room and passed her off to Neil without looking too sheepish. “See you tonight, yeah?” he said to her, running a hand through his hair. Tonight he’d nick Neil’s or Mal’s room and be shod of John.
When he returned to the room John was in the robe, standing between the drawn curtains and staring out of the window that opened onto their balcony. There was a cigarette between his fingers. He turned around when he saw Paul.
“Was it as good for you as it was for me, love?” he said with a smug half-smile. He cocked his eyebrows in an evil way.
“Shove off,” Paul said, not meeting his eyes.
“Tetchy,” John observed, meandering over to him. “D’ya treat all the girls like this? C’mon, you’re breaking me heart, Paul.”
Paul hit him.