For a little while, I’ve been putting the finishing touches to a story titled Kiss and Tell, which I will give away at Wattpad for free in the near future. A kind of mashup of the Femme Fatale theme with a little of Tales of The Unexpected thrown in,  Kiss and Tell is a deviation from what I normally write but I did have a bit of fun with this and hope to have the tale out there soon.    You can read a WIP sample below.

For those asking about my book Urban Chiller, I am delighted to confirm I have the extremely talented Steve Upham now on board for artwork duties for the cover, and the book will will be available at Amazon for Kindle in the near future.   

 

Kiss and Tell

By Jonathan Wood

 

“How much do you want to bet that I can’t do this?”

Nick Hagan looked back across the table at Naomie Neary, her words igniting his competitive edge and some other base form of childishness inside him. This girl was as cocky as her low cut top and short skirt suggested. Hagan glanced across at Stephen Powell, the other participant in this conversation who had remained coy and silent for the most part, just sitting there and staring at Neary. Hagan could see his eyes boring into her, her crossed legs at the lunchroom table causing her skirt to lift slightly and probably giving him the horn. Hagan knew what he was thinking.

 

They had started at Taylor Hart Insurance together, along with a spate of other new recruits that had recently joined the firm. They could be spotted a mile away, young trainees with suits too big for them, bright shiny shoes and new ties. All fresh faced and naive. But Naomie Neary was different. Coming through the doors on day one with the swagger of a pretentious movie star and standing almost six feet tall with heels on, perfect legs and auburn red hair reaching down her back, she attracted the attention of just about everyone with her provocative, unapologetic clothing. She was strikingly pretty, and she knew it. She oozed attitude, not caring about the female eyes looking her up in down every day with both scorn and jealousy of her figure and seemingly enjoying the male eyes lusting after her as she breezed along it’s corridors.

 

Hagan turned his attention back to the matter at hand and folded his arms.

“You really think you can seduce him, do you? Apparently he’s been here since the dawn of man and barely speaks to a soul. Grade one weirdo by all accounts”

 

“Yes, I do. I can seduce any man I choose”, came the curt and bullish reply. Hagan sniggered and leaned forward across the table. The brash nature of this girl excited him. He was close enough to smell her now, her perfume sweet and trendy. Her long fingers reached out, the bright red nail polish on the end of them as striking as the rest of her. He took her hand gently, shaking on the wager and at that moment Hagan suddenly found himself visualizing that her hand was slipping around his cock instead.

 

The wager was simple. Seduce Trevor Brown, get him into bed for a hundred quid by the end of the week and provide proof. Trevor Brown, or “Brownie” was the one of the IT technicians who handled first line support queries for staff. When your system froze or started misbehaving it was usually Brown’s monotone voice you would get at the other end of the phone when you called for assistance. He looked and sounded exactly like a Trevor Brown too. Thin, painfully so with pointy shoulders that sat uncomfortably in the cheap looking short sleeved shirt he wore with a dubious looking clip-on tie. Thick glasses and button eyes behind them with greasy looking side partoned hair, he was the quintessential office nerd. The rumors were he barely talked to anyone outside work, avoided all office get togethers, after-work drinks on a Friday evening and Christmas parties like they were a dose of the shits. He always sat alone at lunch, eating the contents of the same packed lunch box without so much as looking up and when he passed you in the corridors, a stale waft of BO swiftly followed. He seemed to be a subject of ridicule to most within the firm and horribly out of place in an office trying it’s hardest to be all hip and down with the cool people. An office where the senior partners wore suits with open neck shirts, no ties and liked to be called by their first names.

 

Hagan pushed his chair out and got up, prompting Powell to do the same. Neary remained in her chair looking back at Hagan with a nonchalant look on her face, her mouth slightly raised at one side. Smug, like the hundred pounds prize money was already in her DKNY purse.

“Just remember, Naomie, the deal is off without proof” said Hagan.

 

“Oh, you’ll get your proof, honey then you’ll be crying all the way to the bank”

 

Powell sniggered at her flippancy but cut it short when he caught Hagan’s irritated glance.

 

The following day Neary seemed uncharacteristically subdued. It wouldn’t have surprised Hagan if she had simply walked straight up to Brown’s desk and slapped her long stockinged leg up onto his desk like a ham shank and asked if he wanted to fuck in front of everyone with all the subtlety of a brick. But, the details of the wager had not concerned the seduction, only the act itself in order to collect the winnings. Hagan was sure from his observations of Trevor Brown that if he wasn’t gay, then he was so much of an oddball and loner that Neary’s sheer presence would be enough to send him into panic, let alone any suggestion that she genuinely wanted to sleep with him. As far as Hagan was concerned, it was a safe bet and he couldn’t wait to see Neary with proverbial egg running down her perfect face when Brown ran for the main doors.

 

For Hagan, it wasn’t about the money, it was about proving that cocky pretty girls don’t always get their own way. Pretty girls who now burped in public, talked openly about sex and football, weren’t afraid to mix it up and achieve the holy grail of Tom Boy girl culture. To be one of the lads. To Hagan, the very concept was a contradiction. Pretty feminine girls trying so hard to be unruly, daring, potty mouthed boys to prove that they could. Hagan knew he wanted Naomie Neary sexually, of course he did, who wouldn’t? He had thought about her virtually every day since he had met her and he was certain she knew this too. He had daydreamed about fucking her hard in the elevator from behind whilst he yanked at her hair. He had even jacked off to her image in his mind once or twice in the privacy of his own home. But he also hated her for a reason he couldn’t quite place. The arrogance she oozed, that cock sure grin. Her perfect unblemished skin. She was too big for her high heeled pumps, and he was going to be right there when she tripped and fell flat on that porcelain face.

 

Leonards, the trendy pub come restaurant most of the staff flocked to for Friday evening ‘afterworks‘ lay conveniently adjacent to their main building was busy as Powell and Hagan plowed their way through the human traffic to the bar. The last few days had been quiet. Only once had Hagan passed Neary in the corridor since the wager had been agreed and he had taunted her about only having a few days left and offered her his bank details there and then. Neary had simply smiled back thinly and said nothing. Hagan thought he caught a vibe of unease in her response, but he genuinely couldn’t read her reaction one way or the other, and this pissed him off. He turned his attention back to the bar and scanned the space for girls, the selection of young eligible twenty somethings always plentiful at this time on a Friday night. In amongst the sea of folk talking and mingling at the tables in the far corner, Hagan spotted that now familiar and striking mane of dark red hair that reached down the long and straight back of it’s owner. Naomie Neary. Sitting opposite her was Trevor Brown.

 

Hagan hoped in that moment that Powell had not seen them, but it was too late. He too was looking over, disbelief washing over his face until it finally settled into a smirk. He turned back to Hagan.

 

“Still feeling confident? I’d be withdrawing that cash now if I were you, mate!”

 

Hagan couldn’t take his eyes away from the two at the table. Neary and Brown seemed to be in fluent and almost friendly conversation, like they had known each other some time. Brown, the same Trevor Brown who looked like a nerd with his greasy side parton and thick glasses. The same Trevor Brown who reeked of stale BO and sounded like an automated voice at a customer call centre. The man with the charisma of a wet dishcloth. Hagan felt his finger nails pressing into the palms of his clenched fist, the rage he felt inside beginning to bubble. Eventually, the stinging sensation in his hands broke his thoughts. Looking down at them, he saw he had actually broken the skin and drawn a little blood.

 

Seeing Neary leave with Brown an hour or so after spotting them chatting like old friends at the bar had gotten under Hagan’s skin. Right under. Even the bottles of beer and vodka shots he and Powell had gorged themselves on that night hadn’t helped to dim the memory. Even the girl he had pulled from the bar at last orders from the last chancers left hanging around at closing time and took back to his place could not displace the images of Naomie Neary and Trevor Brown chatting like lovers from his mind. Even during the mindless fumbling sex in the darkness of his bedroom, he had let his mind wander. The features of the girl who’s name he’d already forgotten there before him, eager to please and digging her grubby finger nails into his buttocks as she took him in her mouth, her breath smelling of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol, began to morph in the darkness. Morph into the image of Naomie Neary and that red hair. Naomie Neary, on her knees, begging him to let her service him.

 

When Monday came, Hagan thought about ringing in sick. He’d pictured the scene a hundred times in his head since Friday evening. Naomie Neary, grinning in triumph as she showed him some pictures on her phone, perhaps some kind of recording of her intimate encounter with Brown, whilst Stephen Powell loitered in the background silently, enjoying his annihilation. He felt sure Neary had hustled him. His certainty that Trevor Brown was so socially inexperienced and naive to take up such an offer from a Redheaded preying mantis now looked like a reckless gamble that was to lose him a hundred quid, and his pride.

 

The sky was a mixtures of different greys as he took the short walk from the tube station to the office and the elevator up to the Third floor and Taylor Hart’s open plan and invasive offices, reflecting his mood. He just wanted to get to his desk and hide behind the partition. Fasten his seat belt and wait for the pain. Wait for Naomie to appear, looking and smelling perfect and ready to revel in glory and show how all men were her toys. Novelties for her pleasure then discard.

 

By 11am, only Powell had poked his head around the partition, obviously on the the sniff for news. There was no sign of Neary in the rec area either where most on the morning shift would congregate to chat and drink bad coffee from the machines.

 

“What do you think happened on Friday night?” asked Powell, his question coming over as more of a taunt than he wished it to.

 

“Well, you work it out, Sherlock” replied Hagan, irritated. “You were there, she left with him and they got into a taxi together” Can’t imagine they were going back to his place to play chess, pal can you?”

 

“No, but a few drinks in the bar might be do-able for the office geek, Nick. Taking a girl like Naomie home for one night stand sex is another thing entirely, don’t you think? That bloke doesn’t look like he’s ever been near a girls pair of knickers, let alone inside them”

 

The mental image made them both snigger. It was certainly possible Brown may have fluffed his lines, even with the dutch courage of a few beers swilling around inside his belly.

 

“Can you imagine” Powell went on, “she’s there on the bed in just lingerie and beckoning to him, and he’s standing there in his Y-Fronts and white socks.”

 

Hagan laughed at the joke, the image of a fumbling Brown undressing in front of a woman like Naomie making him feel instantly better. Maybe the signs were brighter than he’d thought. He was sure Naomie would have been around gloating already if she had won the bet, keen to rub his nose in it and take her prize money. So the question was, where was she? Hagan discreetly went for tour of the office floor to look for her, only to find her workstation empty.  

END OF SAMPLE