20 Ethan
A fter a warm, dry start to winter, the rain finally arrived. Most of the work in the garden was done, and it was now too wet to head out most days. But now, we had plenty of other things to keep us occupied.
Other than us having sex, nothing with Ellie changed at all. We still saw each other for breakfast and dinner. We still split chores. We still hung out with the same friends. We still hung out at night, watching TV or just hanging out together in the living room and talking. But now, hanging out involved extra things like sex. Hot, hungry, feral sex.
I was ravenous for Ellie in a way that surprised even me. I chalked it up to her being the first female housemate I’ve lived with. I really had been celibate for far too long.
I took her from behind while we watched ourselves in the mirror, just like I promised that first time. I took her bent over multiple surfaces in the house, sometimes with a skirt on just so I could watch myself do her in it, sometimes without.
And Ellie was so willing, so responsive that I just had to fuck her some more. We did it almost every day since. And it wasn’t all take and no give with me. After the first time, something awoke in Ellie, and she became just as fierce with her lovemaking as I was. Everything she did to me, no matter how simple, was enough to undo me. All it took was a touch from her to destroy me. The act of just being in her was more than enough to blow my mind away.
One weekend, we decided to try what I had threatened her with the first time we fucked. I had agonised long and hard about it, but in the end, lust took over and I drilled a hole into the largest blank wall in the empty space in the dining room, right above head level. Then I attached a large hanging hook to it, one strong enough to hold the weight of an average-sized woman straining against it.
“Are you sure?” Ellie has asked me. “I don’t want to get you into trouble with the landlord for drilling into the wall.”
I was the landlord, and I damn well wanted to do it, especially for what I wanted it for. But I just told Ellie, “It’ll be fine. We can always plaster and paint over it if it becomes an issue. And it won’t be an issue.”
Guilt niggled at me for lying to Ellie about the ownership of the house, but with each white lie, it got easier and easier to do so. In the end, I stopped thinking too much about it. It was a small issue, and it protected me.
We thought about what to use for restraints. Anything rough went right out the window. I suggested using my silk tie but Ellie pointed out I only owned one and it cost too much to risk destroying for what we were about to do. In the end, we settled for using an old, unwanted scarf of hers.
We attached the scarf to the hook, and then I moved Ellie underneath it. She was already undressed and ready for me.
“Hands up, woman.”
Ellie giggled. “You sound like you’re trying to rob a bank.”
“Right now, the only bank I’m robbing is you,” I grumbled. “Up.”
Ellie giggled again. “A failed bank robber isn’t sexy.”
“Not unless you’re the rookie police officer I grabbed on my way out as hostage.”
“Am I now?” She looked coyly at me and finally lifted her hands above her head.
“That’s much better.” I took her wrists and bound them together. We had looked up what to do online so I wouldn’t accidentally hurt her and settled on a loose loop around her wrists. They would still hold her back, hold her tight. But Ellie could slip out of them anytime she needed to.
Now Ellie was nicely bound. I stepped back to enjoy the view. Ellie struggled against her bindings, completely naked and ready for the taking. Her hands pulled at the scarf as she pretended to try and get free. Her legs crossed together, pretending to demurely hide herself from me.
I knew it was all play, but damn it if I wasn’t rock hard right now.
“Oh no, Mr Robber. Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered in a pleading voice. “I promise I won’t try to arrest you if you let me go.”
I knew it was supposed to be sexy, but I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “I can’t do this. I can’t be the robber.”
“You’re the one who suggested it. Now what am I supposed to do?”
I stared at Ellie, all bound and naked and indignant. Suddenly, a surge of want coursed through my entire body. I moved closer to her until we were barely touching. I was still clothed, and the whole part of play involved me taking her as I was.
“You could stay right there while I have my way with you,” I whispered into her ear.
The back of my hand grazed her face, tracing the lines of her delicate jaw. Ellie shuddered.
My hands groped at her, palming her breasts, tracing the softness of her body. Her eyes fell demurely to the ground, and this time, she wasn’t playing it up for me. The urge to fuck her hard was suddenly replaced by the need to take my time, to make sure this was as good for her as it was for me.
I leaned in and kissed her, even as my hands explored her body, stroking her arms, caressing her breasts, making her squirm and shift with every touch.
“What should I do to you first?” I asked, even as I petted her bare pussy. Ellie had recently gotten waxed as a surprise for me, and after I got over the shock, I proceeded to show her just how appreciative I was of the gesture. Right now, I planned to show even more of my appreciation.
I rubbed her clit and watched her close her eyes and moan softly. Then I got on my knees and pushed her legs apart. Ellie was already soaking wet, and I drank her hungrily. My tongue lapped at her clit, then her folds, then her clit again.
A long, low cry escaped her, and I knew she was completely at my mercy. I worshipped her clit until I felt her body come right to the edge. Then I shoved my tongue into her and flicked.
“Oh—” Ellie moaned, louder than I had ever made her moan before. “Ethan—”
All of a sudden, she was so much wetter underneath. I needed to take her now.
I got up and pressed my mouth to hers, letting her taste herself as I unbuckled my pants. Then my hands gripped her hips, lifting her to me. I pushed myself into her. Her body took me like no other, and I couldn’t help but cry out in sweet, sweet agony.
Ellie whimpered at my entry. Her folds clenched tight around me. I gritted my teeth and took her, again and again, until we were both on the edge of losing all reason. The entire time, she strained against her restraints, trapped yet very much where she wanted to be. It drove me wild. How the hell did she feel so good?
That was when the doorbell rang.
“Ethan!” A familiar, muffled voice called out from outside the door.
I froze mid-thrust. “ Fuck .”
“Who is it?” Ellie’s eyes flew wide open.
“That’s my mother.”
“ What? What is your mother doing here? I thought you said she was overseas and wouldn’t be dropping by anytime soon,” Ellie hissed in panic. She pulled apart from me and started looping her hands out of the restraints for real.
“Shit. She got back yesterday. I forgot to tell you, and I didn’t expect her to show up here today.”
My mother occasionally liked to drop by my place unannounced. The only reason my mum hadn’t done so since Ellie moved in was because she had been travelling to exhibit her work. “It worked out when Dave was my housemate, kept him honest.” Dave had also been stealing from me at the time and having my mum drop by unexpectedly kept him on his toes. “I forgot to tell her to stop.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Ellie got one wrist free, but her other was stuck a little too tight.
“Here, let me.” I got her to stop moving and carefully slipped her wrist out of the loop.
Ellie immediately grabbed her clothes scattered across the floor around us and started dressing. I pushed my still-hard cock back into my pants and zipped myself up.
“It’s still obvious.” Ellie’s eyes were wide as she stared at my tented pants.
“That’s not my fault,” I hissed back, and glared hungrily at her naked self, her beautiful, lush naked self I had been busy plundering before this unwanted interruption.
“Ethan, are you there? I thought I heard something. Mum forgot her key again.” Joyce’s voice called out from outside. Wonderful. Even my sister was here. Mum had a spare key, but she had a bad habit of forgetting it. Right now, I had never been more grateful for her absentmindedness.
“Shit, that’s Joyce.” Ellie looked panicked.
None of our friends knew of our arrangement. Not even my sister. Ellie and I both agreed it was less messy to keep everyone else out of the loop. We were only sleeping together for mutual relief, not dating. There was no need to complicate things, and our friends finding out would complicate things.
“Think of king and country,” Ellie suggested, her eyes glaring at the very obvious tent in my pants.
“Why would I want to think of the king? He doesn’t even live on this continent,” I grumbled.
“Think of having sex. Now think of good King Charles and his ears and sausage fingers.”
I groaned, but it did the trick. The tent in my pants was gone.
The doorbell rang again.
“Coming,” I yelled, still really frustrated that I didn’t actually come, and neither did Ellie.
I made my way to the front door and opened it, hoping to all hope that I didn’t look like I had been in the middle of fucking my housemate.
“Hello, mum. Hello, Joyce,” I flung the front door open and greeted my family.
“Why so grumpy? We haven’t seen you in a while. Well, mum hasn’t. And we come bearing gifts.” Joyce held up a bag of what was likely food.
“Yes, Ethan. You moving out doesn’t mean you forget about your poor parents. Your dad misses you too, even though he’d never come out and say it.”
“Sorry mum,” I said sheepishly. “I’ve been busy lately.”
Very busy with Ellie, but there was no way I was telling anyone that, much less my own mother. I opened the door and welcomed Mum and Joyce into the house.
“What did you bring?” I gestured towards the bag Joyce was carrying.
“Siu ak, siu yuk and char siu,” Joyce said in the only Cantonese she and I spoke. Roast duck, crispy roast pork and barbequed pork.
I made a hungry noise. It was almost dinner time, and the classics always made my mouth water. I didn’t have this kind of food as often, because it took half an hour to drive to the closest Chinese restaurant that did the meats to an acceptable standard, and that didn’t count the drive back.
“Is it all for me, or am I expected to share?” I teased.
My mum gave my arm a smack. “You can have it all if you’re busy for dinner. Otherwise…”
“Fine, fine. Stay for dinner.” I looked around the house for Ellie. We had originally planned to head out for pizza at a nearby brewery. There were so much better things to do that Saturday evening than cook…
Right then, Ellie walked in from the back garden, her hair tied up in a ponytail and her sleeves rolled up. She looked like she had been busy gardening instead of what we had actually been doing. Smart girl.
“Hello, Mrs Chu, Hey, Joyce.” Then she turned back to my mother again. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Ellie, Ethan’s current housemate. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you come in. I was in the backyard clearing stuff out.”
I stared at Ellie. She smiled innocently back at all of us as if I just hadn’t had her tied up and ravished. That girl…
Joyce held up the bag. “We brought siu ak, siu yuk and char siu. Join us for dinner?”
Ellie’s eyes widened. “That sounds so good. I’d love to. Is there anything I can do?”
My mother looked at Ellie strangely. She didn’t expect a white girl to know what Joyce meant, but Joyce and I had taken our friends out to various Chinese Malaysian/Singaporean restaurants so many times over the years, that they knew exactly what we were on about.
“Well, we didn’t bring veggies. And Ethan will need to cook rice. I hope you two have rice in the house,” Joyce replied.
“Uh…” I couldn’t remember if we did. We were running low the last time I cooked. Unless Ellie already restocked it…
“We’ve got some in the pantry, third shelf down next to the pasta. It’s the new bag,” Ellie jumped to my rescue. She did restock it after all. “I’ll take out the rice cooker.”
“We haven’t been to the shops yet,” I suddenly remembered. “We were planning to go this weekend, but that means we haven’t got veggies.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Ellie waved my concerns aside. “The little veggie patch I put in a month ago is thriving. The bokchoy, kailan and rainbow chard are begging to be harvested. Either one could be blanched and tossed with the oyster sauce and shallot oil we have in the fridge.”
Now my mother’s eyes really bugged out.
“Good idea. I vote for kailan please,” my sister jumped in smoothly. “If you grab the veggies, I’ll go start the rice.”
“I guess I’m setting the table,” I murmured to no one in particular.
“Before I go back outside, would you both like a drink? Water? Wine? Beer?” Ellie turned to my mum and Joyce.
“That’s lovely of you. Water would be great.” Mum suddenly had a dangerous smile on her face.
“I’m helping myself to your beer stash,” my sister informed us and headed for the fridge.
Ellie passed my mother a glass of water, then headed back outside with a basket and gardening scissors. When she was out of earshot, my mother turned to me and exclaimed, “ Ethan Chu. Are you dating her?”
“ Mother ,” I complained. “And no!”
“Is she single?”
“Mum!”
“Suck it up, big brother. You don’t live at home. I get it worse,” Joyce made a face at me as she headed for the pantry. “And yes Mum, Ellie’s single. And in a good job. And have you noticed the house?”
Joyce gestured to the new furnishings with an evil look on her face. She was the one who let slip that Ellie fancied me, and she had been very enthusiastic in encouraging me to go for Ellie. Too bad for her, Ellie no longer had feelings for me. As long as Joyce didn’t know about everything else…
“Why yes, I have. The house does actually look so much less like a student pad, and you’ve been out of uni for years.” My mum surveyed the place with an impressed eye. “For one, it’s actually clean—”
“That was Dave’s fault, not mine,” I pointed out.
“—and it actually looks like a home for once. Cut flowers in a vase? That lovely runner in the hallway. And your living room actually looks comfortable for a change.”
“Well, Ellie’s been a good housemate,” I had to admit even though I knew what was coming once I said it.
“Oh my God, Ethan. Look at your pantry.” Joyce’s voice came from behind the pantry door. “Mum, look.” Joyce flung the door wide open to show Mum the super neat, super organised pantry cupboard.
Mum looked inside and nodded approvingly. “Let me guess. Ellie did this, because in all the time you’ve lived here, you certainly haven’t.”
“Yeah, she did.” Credit where credit was due.
“So, Ethan,” Mum turned back to face me again. “If she’s single, why aren’t you two dating? You already live together. Your sister approves. I approve, and I’ve barely spoken to the girl.”
“Because we’re just friends, Mum. I can live with a woman and just be friends with her. Besides, she doesn’t have feelings for me, and I don’t have feelings for her. It’s better this way.”
Just then, Ellie popped back into the house with the kailan. She caught the last bit of my sentence, but she didn’t react. A part of me was worried she still held a torch for me, but I was glad to see it wasn’t so.
Dinner went quite smoothly. Mum had already warmed up to Ellie, and Ellie warmed up to her right back. When Mum saw that Ellie could use chopsticks with no trouble, I suspected she was already planning our wedding. By the end of the night, they were trading closet organisation techniques.
Halfway through dinner, Joyce spotted the scarf on the wall opposite her. Ellie and I had forgotten to take it down in our rush to get dressed.
“What on earth is that?” Joyce pointed to it.
Ellie’s face turned a deep shade of red. I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, “It’s wall décor. We’re trying something new. It’s avant-garde, like Mum’s sculptures.”
Mum was a working artist, and she was known for her modern art installations. The Art Gallery of WA currently had one of her collections on exhibition. Now mum stared at the scarf with her brows furrowed, trying to see the artistic merit in it.
“Okay…” Joyce looked even less convinced.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll take it down,” Ellie jumped in, playing along. “It was just an experiment. Especially with how the light hits it in the morning.”
I choked back my laughter, but no one else seemed to notice.
Afterwards, I walked Mum out, intent on having a word with her.
“Don’t get any ideas, Mum,” I warned her. “Ellie is a good friend, and that’s all she is. There’s no way I want to mess that up.”
Mum looked disappointed. “I really like her. No, I love her. I’ve met your previous girlfriends before, and Ellie has them all beat.”
“Mum…” I growled. “She’s not a girlfriend.”
“Fine, fine, but do think about it. The girl is a great catch. If you don’t snatch her up, someone else will. Maybe you should tell her you own the house. Settled men are so much more attractive.”
Mum knew to keep me being landlord secret. She had met each and every one of my previous tenants, and she had been a strong advocate for hiding my home ownership from them. Until now.
“Goodnight, Mum. Goodnight, Joyce. Thanks for the food.” I shooed them out the door and shut it behind them.
When I got back to the kitchen, Ellie had finished stacking the dishwasher.
“I like your mum,” she told me. “She’s nice. I thought she’d be super intimidating, being a famous artist and all, but she’s quite easy to get along with.”
“She likes you too,” I told her. “And she’s only famous to a small circle of people.”
Ellie laughed. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”
I grinned. “She says it all the time herself. She tells me it keeps her humble. And she likes you a bit too much. If you charm my mum anymore, she’s going to start planning our wedding.”
Ellie let out a hollow laugh. “Sorry to disappoint her. You did tell her we’re just friends, right?”
“Oh yes, in very strong terms.”
“Good.”
~
W e got to try out the hook again the next day. This time, there were no interruptions.
My mum and sister’s transparent matchmaking attempts kept coming back to mind. There was nothing wrong with Ellie at all. She wasn’t as striking as Renae, but she was hot in her own way. Since Renae left, I hadn’t really thought much about my master plan. Everything had been going so well that I stopped planning my next steps. But I knew what Ellie and I were doing couldn’t go on forever. My stomach knotted at the thought.
Maybe I should have put more thought into my master plan after the Renae setback. If I did, would I have started sleeping with Ellie? On paper, and in person, Ellie was a great partner. She was good at her job, she was great at home, and even better in bed. Too bad she no longer had feelings for me, and I didn’t have feelings for her.
All we had between us was friendship and our mutually beneficial arrangement. Nothing more. But could there be? And did I want there to be?