The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

Things You Can Do in Alleyways

London, 1992

Mick had taken her hand to lead them out of the Groucho Club, but he dropped it once they were outside. He bundled her into the alleyway beside the building, pushing her up against the brick wall. In his haste, he had banged her head, but excitement negated any pain.

Was what Katrina had wanted since the age of twelve about to happen?

"You're all grown-up," he murmured and kissed her hard, hands pushing themselves under her shirt and stroking her sides. The kiss was incredible, forceful and mind-boggling, sending tiny jolts through the rest of her body.

She could taste the whisky on him, feel the bricks behind her and smell the sour, rotten whiff of the bins to the side of them. They all helped to heighten her senses. Even the bin stink didn't matter.

It was beginning to get dark. People streamed past them, but the bin made them invisible. Mick's hands began to inch up Katrina's skirt.

"Not here," she said.

"Aw, c'mon Catty," he whispered, those persuasive fingers working their way inside her pants. "It's no' like we can do it at the Walkers house."

It was a good point. Besides, the cocaine and years of pent-up lust had well and truly kicked in. Her nipples were rock hard, and her groin ached. She returned to kissing him and began to tug the waistband of his jeans.

Without breaking away from her, Mick undid his buttons and shoved the jeans down. He pulled up her skirt and plucked at the elastic of her knickers, trying to slide them down and off her. About to help him, Katrina stopped. There was a sound, something like a door opening.

"Oi! You two! What do you think you're doing?"

"Fuck!" Mick yanked up his jeans, leaving Katrina to make herself look respectable. The man who had interrupted, appearing behind them on the steps outside the side entry to the club, wore the all-black uniform of a security guard. He stood there, arms folded as they made themselves decent.

"Go home. Do it in a comfy bed, for crying out loud." The bouncer tried and failed to look threatening. Nevertheless, they left anyway, Mick pulling her by the hand out onto the street. It was proper night-time now, the streets of London coming alive with the pub and club crowd, laughing, loud, boozy conversations going on all around them.

"Do you want to find another alleyway?"

He had pulled her into him so she could feel how excited he still was. "I want to finish what we started."

Katrina did too, more than anything. She felt like that thirteen-year-old girl again, desire fizzing in her veins, and compelling her body to do things her head said no to.

"How romantic," she said and tore herself away from him. Mick, she guessed, had done this more than a few times in Edinburgh's dark and dingy closes. The shove up against the wall felt practised and assured. And he hadn't said anything about condoms. Now, that was taking her for granted. Hadn't he seen those adverts, so prevalent in the last decade, the doom-laden prophesies where cascading rocks and tombstones promised death from ignorance if you didn't go Latex-clad into each encounter?

"Catty!" His voice sounded wheedling. "C'mon Catty, don't sulk."

Now, he was right behind her, and he wrapped strong arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. He was a cape, protection against the wind and the cold. Katrina, who hadn't relied on anyone for years, relented and leant back. Ah, heavenly!

"Are you in the huff?" he whispered the words in her ear.

"No!" Of course, it came out exactly as if she was.

"We'll do as the man says. Get a comfy bed in some cheap hotel somewhere. You can phone the Walkers and tell them you're no' coming home tonight."

On the one hand... oh god, yes.

He probably thought she was easy, though. He'd known her for a long time, and he knew about the casual sex relationships she had been part of for years—the men she'd shagged hoping that if she closed her eyes and then opened them they would turn into him.

An image popped into her mind, the man in the turned-down overalls, smirking at the artist who drew him, eyes crinkled, an anchor tattoo covering his torso. She shook her head to dislodge it.

On the other hand...

She knew where this would end if she agreed to the comfy bed thing now, and it wasnae the fairy story ending, 'and they all lived happily ever after'.

She could feel the cosmopolitan and coke-induced madness that had taken her to that alleyway bubbling out of her body. If she spat now, the phlegm on the ground would reform itself into the word 'NO'.

"Debbie gets uptight if you're out late," she said. It was true. As her daughter had a chronic health condition, Daisy's mum worried about her excessively, so some of that worry landed on Katrina. As a rule, Katrina didn't mind it. It was nice to feel cared about.

"Anyway, you need to be good for tomorrow."

True as well. Dee Marchmont was pitching her young, cool, sexy celebrity chef idea to Channel 4, and Mick needed to go along. Maybe Dee thought Mick's appearance would do all the talking for her. The Channel 4 bosses would take one look at him, and say, "Do whatever you like, Dee!"

Mick sighed. "Alright, Mum." Then, he laughed, the sound startling the people nearest to them, who moved back and then snapped their heads around so they could look at him properly. Mick was so beautiful that was the kind of thing that happened to him all the time.

"Could I sneak into your room, quietly, like?"

"No!" It was easier to refuse him now. The idea of Mick creeping around the Walkers house and trying to make his way up the stairs past Debbie and Tony's bedroom cursing as he stepped onto the creaky floorboard was the best kind of contraception. It made him utterly repellent.

He slung a hand around her shoulder. "Aye, fair enough. I suppose we'd better get back. An early start and all that. Show me the way to go home, London girl."

Two days later, he was gone. Back to Edinburgh with a promise he would be in touch as soon as he'd heard back from Channel 4. Katrina waved him off. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, the way you do a relative, and didn't look back.

She thanked the heavens and all the stars. Imagine how much more terrible she would feel now if she had slept with him.