(Note : This is a genuinely true story. Kate is my girlfriend and we have lived together for just over a year. All the situations that follow actually happened as written. Above everything, she is the one who grinds my gears for me. No one else even comes close. I might occasionally write about other women, but she is the one that I desire and curl up to late at night. When reading this story, it helps if you are familiar with my other work. This one is for you baby. I love ya.)
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The ringing of the town clock snapped my concentration, and I looked up from the screen. It was just gone Ten, no wonder my eyes were stinging; I had been writing solidly for the last five hours. I grasped the beer bottle and swallowed the remains, grimacing at the lukewarm taste. Probably been sitting there for an hour and I hadn't even noticed.
I stretched and stood, feeling the muscles pop in my back, and wandered out of the small second bedroom that I had converted into my office. Across the hallway I could hear the splashing of water from behind the bathroom door, and I knocked gently before opening it.
Kate was in the bath, and the water was covered with a sea of thick bubbles. Her head rose from them at one end and her toes from the other. Her fine blonde hair was smoothed back away from her face and her eyes were shut. The room was illuminated by candles, which ran symphonies of shadows across the tiles, and the small Compact Disc player was playing The Cocteau Twins at a low volume. She was bobbing her feet to the music, sending small ripples across the water.
'You okay, honey?' I asked softly.
She half opened one eye and looked at me. 'Perfect. This feels like heaven after the day I've had.'
'Get you anything?'
'I could go for a glass of wine.'
I closed the door gently behind me and padded down the hallway into the kitchen. I left the lights off and worked by the light of the fridge door, and fished out another bottle of Michelob for myself and some chilled white for Kate. I popped the top and took a generous mouthful of the beer, feeling a satisfying jolt of cold as the liquid hit my gut. The rain was lashing hard against the window, and I took a minute to look out over Chelsea from the fifth floor window. The lights of the city lay before me like a sprinkle of Diamonds on black satin, and in the distance I could see the Thames, with Tower Bridge and The London Eye glowing on the horizon. Even at this height, and through the heavy glass, I could still hear the sounds of the city below me. London and it's suburbs never rested. It was a cold winter's night and I was glad to be indoors. Just looking outside made me shiver, and I lowered the blinds, happy to shut the world out.
I returned to the bathroom with my beer and an almost full glass for Kate. Inside the air was heavy with steam and the smell of the candles, and the sounds had changed to U2. I sat on the edge of the bath and handed the glass to her. She wiped the moisture away from her face as she sat up slightly to drink, and as she did her small, pink nipples rose up through the bubbles, the surrounding skin of her breasts shining with the combination of water and candlelight.
'Oh, that tastes good,' she murmered. 'Think I might have had this water a little too hot.'
'Feels okay to me,' I answered, letting the water trickle through my fingers as I swept my hand under the surface and along the length of her thigh.
'Still working?' She said.
I nodded. 'Yeah. I'm nearly there, but I just can't seem to get a satisfying conclusion. Need a good way to wrap it up.'
'Why don't you leave it for tonight. You look tired.'
I yawned loudly as a reply. 'I think I will. Look at it first thing in the morning. I'll go and shut everything down.' I stood up, but before I could leave Kate stopped me.
'Give me a kiss before you go.'
I leant over the bath and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and she shot out a hand a grabbed the collar of my shirt, pulled me down close to her face. Her blue eyes were still as wonderous to me as the first day I had ever looked into them.
'Kiss me properly,' she whispered, lifting her face towards mine and her wet hand sliding around the back of my neck. Our lips connected and I felt her tongue push into my mouth to search out my tongue. Her mouth tasted of fresh water and wine, and I kissed her deeply, my arm dipping into the water to run around her back and up her spine. When we parted it was only for a distance of a few millimetres.
'Why don't you go and save your work, and then jump in here with me.'
I smiled and nodded, stood once more and exited the bathroom. The sleeve and neck of my shirt were now sodden, and I threw it into the whicker basket that we kept in the corner of the bedroom. The flat was warm so I remained bare-chested as I returned to my office. After all, with the suggestion that my girl had just made to me I didn't intend to have any clothes on within the next few minutes.
I'd been working on an article about the legendary New York punk group The Ramones, a piece which was due on the desk of the editor of Classic Rock magazine for Friday morning. It was now Wednesday night and I had wanted to email it to him that day, but as I had said to Kate, I was struggling to come up with a good closing paragraph. Still, I could sort that in the morning. I backed up the file and closed down the application then threw my badly scrawled notes into the top draw of my desk.
I was literally just a moment away from shutting down my PC and diving into the bath when windows kindly informed me that an email had arrived. My hand hovered over the power switch, and I almost hit it, then remembered that I had been waiting for confirmation of an acceptance for an article that I had done for a national newspaper. The feature would be worth both good money and some valuable kudos on my resume, so I sat down on the edge of my seat and opened the mailbox.
It wasn't from the paper, and I cursed. Nothing more than a few lines from a reader who had stumbled across one of my stories at a website called Literotica. I'd been enjoying some of the erotic fiction that was posted upon the site, and after a couple of months of myself and Kate reading some of the tales that I'd printed off (which had also led to some fantastic sex), I decided to post something of my own. That had happened a couple of weeks ago, and since then I had been recieving some feedback from readers, some good, some bad, all of it interesting. Any writer is always keen to have opinions cast upon their work, and I was no exception.
The sender of this particular email had enjoyed my story up to a point, but thought that the ending basically fizzled away to nothing. Fair enough. Although I didn't agree with that opinion, I could accept it. What pissed me off though was when the sender pointed out that my story contained several grammatical errors. I closed the mail application down with gritted teeth. How could I have been so stupid as to not proof-read what I had submitted? No wonder that the newspaper wasn't replying; a group of copy-writers were probably sitting around their office in a circle and laughing hysterically at my work, before taking turns to wipe their arse on it.
I snapped the PC off and lifted a file from one of the desk drawers, rummaging around until I had found the story in question. I leafed through the pages and did indeed see the offending errors, so glaringly obvious to me now that someone had pointed them out. Grabbing my marker, I started to make corrective notes in the margins; although this story was never going to be published anywhere but the net, the mistakes bugged me, and I wanted to put them right.
Head bent over my desk and deep in concentration, I completely lost track of time and the fact that Kate was waiting for me in the bath. It was only when I heard her approaching the half-open office door that I remembered. There was a small knock and then she walked in.
