On Christmas Day I was only really interested in Steve's phone call. Luckily it came early, and I looked at my mobile through bleary eyes just after six.
"Wake up, sleepy head." His soft, west country burr cut through my foggy brain and I smiled.
"I was asleep."
"We've been up for hours here." He said. He probably had- he was one of five children, two were still kids themselves and two had kids of their own. "Don't you want to see what Santa has brought you?"
"Well," I said sitting up in bed, "it's not quite like that here. There are no kids. It's just grown ups. Grown ups with a Jewish dad. It's not very... C hristmassy."
"Well, Miss Scrooge. I have a surprise for you." Steve said. I absent mindedly gazed down at my engagement ring, which was on my right hand due to the secrecy of the arrangement, but had been tenderly placed on my left hand two nights ago by Steve. It was a gold band with a ruby in it, it had been his grandmothers and though it didn't quite fit, I was besotted with it. "You're outside right now and you're coming up to bed with me?" I said, leaning back on the pillows. He laughed.
"I wish, Miss Minx. No. How do you fancy being Mrs. Minx on the 20th January?" I scowled. What?
"Sorry?" I said. I didn't understand.
"I'm saying," Steve said, "that me and you get married on January 20th." I was speechless. Only a week ago Steve had been my housemate I had group sex and secret sex with, behind his girlfriends back, the girlfriend who, complicatedly I had also had sex with. Even more complicatedly, the three of us had often engaged in threesomes. And now he was suggesting we get married within the month.
"You must be kidding." I said. Even on the other end of the phone line, I could hear he was crest fallen.
"I thought that was dead romantic." And it was. But how could I get married? I was 21. We had only been together for a week. Until last week in fact, our whole arrangement had been friendship and house sharing incorporating a friends-with-benefits situation. It was a short, sharp road into a messy divorce.
"Oh Steve!" I exclaimed. "It is. It really is. But.... Really? I mean, it's not....sensible is it?" He conceded that it was not.
"But January 20th is the soonest we could do it. We're back in town on January 6th. We give notice to marry then and two weeks later that's the date we could get married. I looked into it." He sounded like he really meant this. I promised to think about it and he seemed satisfied that this was a good idea. In the meantime, we agreed I would go to Devon for new year to be with him, and that I would have an answer for him then.
Christmas came and went as it always did, and as well as it ever could with a Jewish father and an agnostic mother. My mind was elsewhere, but suffice to say, we did sing some carols and we did eat some mince pies and my dad kicked off about Hanukah once or twice, but soon calmed down when a Baileys was put in his hand. It was standard.
Greeting me at the station on new years eve, Steve was holding a sign that said, sweetly, 'The Future Mrs. Phillips". Clambering off of the train and onto the platform I laughed.
"You're Mr. Determined, I see." He kissed me deeply and took me in his arms.
"Just want to make you Mrs. Determined." He wrapped me up in his arms, that were covered in thick winter coat. It was freezing and there was sleet in the air. "I told my mum and dad we were together now." I rolled my eyes.
"I thought this was a secret?" I exclaimed, my tone very much telling him off.
"And it is back in London, back at uni. But here.... Here. You are mine." I smiled. I hadn't told my parents, but told my best friend Jenny, who said, without doubt, that I was insane. She had met Steve a lot and liked him, but as she put it 'He tried to make me have a threeway with your two! He isn't marriage material'. Despite this, I really thought this had changed everything. He was a new person, I could see that.
I was glad to see however, that he wasn't so changed that the first thing on his mind wasn't a damn good fucking.
"Absolutely everyone is away." He said gleefully, behind the wheel of his mums car. The snow was coming down in buckets now, and we could barely see out of the windscreen as we drove along at 5mph. "They've all gone to my aunties in Newquay for a blow-out party. We were invited, but I thought you'd prefer...." He broke off. I did prefer. I squeezed his thigh.
"You thought right." I grinned. He grinned back.
"So with that in mind, the house is all ours and I am all yours and I'm going to lock you in and make you my prisoner." I liked this idea immensely.
Soon, although not as soon as either of us would have liked, we were behind the thick wooden front door, in the warm and shedding our layers. The house was beautiful.
"You never told me you were the child of rich parents." I said, easing my coat off. Absent mindedly Steve came and started undoing the buttons on my dress. He kissed me and pushed me against the dining room wall. He groped my breasts.
"I'm not." He said, between kisses. "They just brought in the boom years." I could feel his erection against my thigh. He pulled off his own jumper and unbuckled his jeans. "Lay on the table." He gestured to a vast, oak dining table.
"So keen today?" I teased, doing as he asked. He smiled and eased my tights and knickers off. He touched me. I was already ready.
"I can't promise," he said, pulling his hard penis from his jeans, "that this will last very long." He kissed me long and deep. I groaned with desire. He opened me with his fingers and eased himself gently in. We both moaned at the perfect fit. "God." He whispered. "God." I just groaned in agreement. He thrust into me and opened my dress, exposing my bra-clad breasts. He pulled them free from the cups and sucked on a nipple. "I really do think you've got the perfect body," he panted, "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you this past week," he was still keeping up his rhythm, "every night," he said breathlessly, "I've wanked myself raw thinking about your tight little cunt." This tipped me over the edge and I felt myself starting to cum for him. I cried out and he silenced me with a kiss. "And every night, all I've wanted is to do be able to do this...." I felt his cock suddenly expand inside me and knew he was close. "All I've wanted, is to fill your with my hot, thick, aaaah." And his face contorted, half with pain half with pleasure. We both collapsed on the table, panting and giggling. "Well, well, well, Miss," he began, withdrawing from me, "I did warn you that that wouldn't last very long." I laughed, kissing his forehead as he pulled his trousers back up.
"I'm a very lucky lady. The second he gets a ring on her finger, he unleashes hell." He laughed and kissed me back.
An hour later we were drinking champagne, in the big bath in his mum and dads en suite. Well, I say champagne, it was cava, but it was fizzy and we were in the bath and there were candles. It didn't matter what we were drinking. He washed my back absent mindedly with a loofer while I got merry on wine. The water was warm and luxuriously full of bubbles and bath salt and whatever else he could find on his mums side of the bathroom. He kissed a trail of tiny kisses up my back and I shivered with pleasure. It was as intensely erotic an experience as I had ever had.
