Page 151 of The Man Upstairs

She had one word.

“Wow.”

“Come here,” I said, holding out my arms, and she was straight on over, a delicate flower as I held her.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “You may have bigged me up like I’m the greatest girl who ever existed, but that doesn’t matter. It’s an amazing story. Amazing.”

“I have an excellent editor to thank for that.”

She pulled away enough to look me right in the eyes.

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s great, and I’m sure he’s polished it like a dream, but that doesn’t make any difference. I know your voice. I know the way you sound, and the way you say it, andthatover there on the screen, is you. You’re the one who’s talking.”

“That’s because he’s a very good editor. He keeps my voice intact, while getting his polish out. He used a lot of polish, believe me.”

“Say whatever you like.” She sighed so sweetly, and ran her fingers through my hair, climbing up into a straddle. “So, are you going to publish it?”

“Do you think I should?”

She rolled her eyes. “Iknowyou should.”

“And what about the filthy scenes? How would you feel about having them out there?”

“I wouldn’t give a shit.” She laughed. Then stopped. “Unless my mum read it.”

Interesting.

She brushed her lips against mine for a gentle kiss before she spoke again. I had to resist the urge to twist her ponytail in my hand and strip her naked on the spot, claiming her like I had in the story.

“You know what?” she asked. “Maybe Lola could make a cover for you. Honestly, she could! You know how good she is. You’ve seen it. She could be amazing, and she wouldn’t mind, for sure. She’d love it.”

“Hmm. Quite.”

I shifted her from me enough to get up from my seat, taking her hand for her to join me, and my smirk must have spoken volumes.

“What?” she said as I led her back to the dining table. She was wide-eyed before I’d even called up the file. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you? You asked her!”

“And she delivered. Better than I could have ever hoped for.”

Rosie was open mouthed when I called up the image. It was beautiful. The dainty legs of a girl with a rose in her hand, so vulnerable, and so pure… yet with a tone. A hint of the story inside. A picture can paint a thousand words, so they say.

“Fuck,” she said. “That’s just fantastic. The whole thing is just insane. It’s INSANE. You have to publish this, Julian. For real, you have to publish this.”

“You’d like that?”

“I’d love it! The whole world can read about how much of an asshole someone like Scottie can be then, too. Just a shame a lot of them won’t find a saviour waiting for them in an apartment upstairs.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told her, my nerves still slightly on edge, but I was swaying towards the goal of making the book available to the public and I could feel it. The names would be switched out in a different draft, of course. Locations moved. No way of tracing the tale back to its real origin.

But first, I needed someone else’s agreement. I’d need them to feel it, too…

It was another prayer I’d been holding tight for weeks. A prayer that would soon be answered, one way or the other.

We fucked almost all night long. Rosie was insatiable as the emotions flowed as well as the filth. She begged and whimpered just the way I’d captured in the novel, wantingmore, more, moreas I turned her into an angelic little slut before my eyes. We enacted scenes, flowing one into the other. From the sofa, to the shower, to the bedroom. Ropes, and marker pens, and the pulling of beads from her asshole so slowly that it drove her wild. I came inside her sweet cunt three times over, filling her up through the night. I licked her clean, and she finger-fucked herself, pushing it deeper and deeper.

And then together, in the aftermath, cleaned up and ready for bed, we watched the dawn beginning to bloom through the bedroom window, curtains open.

“I’m going to be absolutely knackered at college today.” She laughed. “And you just wait until I see Lola. I can’t believe she managed to keep such a big secret.”