Relator I
FFM
The harbour wind cuts through my blazer as I park my Mazda outside the sandstone terrace in Kirribilli. I check my phone. Three missed calls from my boss, two from the bank. My finger hovers over the ignition before I kill the engine. The dashboard clock reads 9:47 AM. I have thirteen minutes to convince myself I deserve this commission.
I practice the smile in the rearview mirror. The one that doesn't reach my eyes but crinkles the corners enough to seem sincere. My mother taught me that smile. She sold real estate for thirty years before the market ate her alive.
"The house sells itself," she used to say, lighting her third cigarette of the morning. "You just convince them they deserve to live in it."
My phone buzzes. A text from Marcus, my boyfriend of six months, though "boyfriend" feels generous for someone who only texts after midnight. Still on for tonight? I type back Maybe with three dots that hang in the digital ether. The truth is I can't afford a new dress. I can't afford the parking ticket I got last week that's now doubled. I can't afford the desperation that's been climbing up my throat like bile for three months straight. Hell, they'll repossess my cute red Mazda any day now.
I check my reflection one more time. The navy pencil skirt I bought at Target, the silk blouse from a consignment shop in Newtown, the nude heels that pinch my toes but elongate my calves. I look like every other twenty-five-year-old realtor in Sydney.
I look like someone who has her shit together. Even if not fully upmarket.
The lie tastes like coffee grit on my tongue.
I gather my materials—the glossy brochures, the comparative market analysis, the single red rose I buy for every open house because my mother swore by it. The rose is wilted. I bought it yesterday to save two dollars.
Everything is a calculation now.
Every choice weighed against survival.
The couple arrives at 10:03. I watch them from the bay window of the formal living room, cataloguing details like I'm studying for an exam.
The guy—early thirties, dark hair, architect's glasses, wedding band fresh enough to catch the morning light. The woman—mid-twenties, blonde, a print dress that screams vintage shop find, matching band on her left hand. They're holding hands. They look happy. They look like every other newlywed couple who thinks the hard part is behind them.
I meet them at the door with my practised smile, my hand extended, my voice pitched low and warm.
"Beth Jones. Welcome. I think you're going to love what you see."
The man—David, I learn—shakes my hand with the grip of someone who builds things. The woman—Emma—has fingers cold despite the spring warmth, a tremor I feel against my palm.
Newlyweds nervous about their first real purchase. The fear and hope radiating off them is almost physical. I remember that feeling. I had it once, before the market taught me that hope is just another commodity.
I guide them through the house with my standard patter, hitting the talking points my boss drilled into me: the north-facing aspect, the original fireplace, the proximity to ferry transport.
I watch their faces in the reflection of the stainless-steel appliances, cataloguing their reactions. Emma lingers at the window overlooking the harbour, her fingers tracing the original architrave. David tests the water pressure in the ensuite, the muscles in his forearm flexing as he twists the tap.
They're imagining their lives here. I can see it—the morning coffee in the courtyard, the Sunday papers in the sunroom.
But when we reach the master bedroom, I catch David exchanging a glance with Emma. The kind of glance that means they've discussed a budget ceiling. The kind of glance that means my commission is walking out the door.
This place is on the cusp of their too frickin much. But what the hell isn't these days!
"We'll need to think about it," David says, his hand already moving toward his phone, toward the next appointment, toward the other agents he mentioned viewing with this afternoon.
Something cracks in my chest. Not dramatic. Not cinematic.
Just a small fissure in the dam I've been building since my last commission check three months ago.
The one that paid my rent and nothing else. The one that came from a couple who looked exactly like David and Emma, who smiled and nodded and disappeared into the market noise.
I look at them—really look at them—and I see the pattern I've been ignoring. The safety I've been clinging to. The rules I've been following while drowning.
My mother's voice in my head, her third cigarette burning down to the filter: Sometimes you have to give them something they didn't know they wanted.
I don't plan it. That's the truth I'll carry. There's no calculation, no strategy session in the three seconds before I move. Just the hollow space where my professional pride used to live, and the desperate conniving instinct to survive.
I step toward Emma first. Close enough to smell her perfume—something floral, inexpensive, chosen for a honeymoon. My hand finds her hip, my fingers pressing into the softness above her vintage dress. She startles, her eyes widening, but she doesn't step back. I feel the heat of her through the cotton, the quick rise and fall of her breathing.
"You're not thinking about the house," I say, my voice lower than before, threaded with something I've never used in a professional context. "You're thinking about whether you can afford to want it."
David turns from the window, his hand dropping from his phone. I watch his face cycle through confusion, offence, something darker that he immediately suppresses. I don't give him time to settle on a reaction. I cross to him in two steps, my heels clicking against the original floorboards, and I kiss him.
It's not a gentle kiss. I press my mouth to his with the force of someone drowning, my fingers tangling in his hair, my body angling to trap him against the window frame. He tastes like the peppermint gum he was chewing earlier, like surprise, like the married man he is.
For a second—maybe one and a half—he doesn't respond. Then his hand finds my waist, tentative, questioning, and I feel the moment he stops thinking.
I break the kiss but keep my forehead against his, my breath mixing with his. "You want this house," I whisper. "You want to fuck in every room. You want to christen the kitchen counter and the shower and that window seat where your wife is standing right now, watching us."
I don't look at Emma. I don't need to. I can feel her presence, the charged silence where she's processing what she's seeing.
Instead, I take David's hand—the one that was questioning, that is now certain—and I guide it under my skirt.
My other hand drags in Emma, guiding her to my cleavage.
My thighs are damp already, the betraying evidence of my own arousal, my own desperation. His fingers brush the lace of my underwear, and I press his palm harder against me, grinding slightly, showing him what I want.
"Feel that?" I murmur against his mouth. "That's how badly I need you to buy this house.
I lock eyes with Emma. Her eyes are wide, shocked, but there's something else there too—a flush across her chest, a dilated pupil, the telltale signs of arousal she probably doesn't recognise in herself yet.
I let our breasts touch, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
"You're not angry," I say. It isn't a question. "You're wondering if he'll look at you like that. If he'll touch you with that same desperation."
I guide her hand under my skirt, joining David's in the confined space between my thighs. Her fingers are colder, more tentative, but she doesn't pull away. I press her palm against the damp lace, rocking slightly, showing her the heat she's generating, the response she's creating.
"This is what happens," I breathe against her ear, "when you stop being good and start being honest."
I embrace the double finger forage. Her rummage through my fuzz and deft circling of my clit. His hooked finger, sliding into my slick slit.
I feel David move behind me, his body heat radiating against my back, his hands finding my hips. The three of us are pressed together now, a tangle of breathing and impulse and the particular madness of a Tuesday morning in a house none of us can afford.
I reach back with one hand, finding the hard evidence of David's arousal through his trousers, and I squeeze gently, feeling him groan against my shoulder.
"The Master Bed, lets fuckin' christen it. Join me!"
I lead them there, walking backward, my hands guiding both of them by a handful of their clothes, my skirt riding high on my thighs. This master bedroom is everything the brochure promised: king bed with white linens, harbour views through floor-to-ceiling glass, the faint scent of the jasmine candles I lit an hour ago.
I back onto the bed, spread-eagled on the edge, my heels still on.
"Use your teeth on my knickers," I urge.
David and Emma stand at the foot of the bed, looking at me, then at each other.
The moment stretches, elastic with possibility. I can see them calculating—the mortgage, the careers, the families who will ask about the down payment.
Then I can see the life they're supposed to want, the one that looks like this house and this bed and this view.
They come. David first, his hands finding my knees, pushing my skirt higher. Emma follows, tentative, her fingers tracing the line of my collarbone, the hollow of my throat.
I reach for both of them, pulling them down with me onto the white linens, and then there are too many hands, too many mouths, the particular chaos of three bodies learning each other's rhythms.
David's mouth finds my breast through my blouse, his teeth grazing the lace of my bra, and I arch into him, my fingers tangled in Emma's hair, guiding her mouth to my neck.
She kisses like someone learning—tentative, then greedy, her tongue finding my pulse point and pressing there, feeling my heartbeat accelerate. I can feel her uncertainty dissolving, replaced by something more primal, more honest.
"Touch her," I tell David, guiding his hand from my thigh to Emma's waist.
"She wants you to. She's been waiting for you to notice."
Emma makes a sound—protest or encouragement, I can't tell—and then David's hand is under her dress, finding the same damp heat I found in myself, and her head falls back, her mouth opening in a silent gasp.
I watch them, the married couple I met an hour ago, watching her husband's fingers move inside her for the first time in this context, this betrayal, this gift.
I sit up, stripping my blouse over my head, unhooking my bra, letting them see me fully.
The morning light through the harbour windows catches the stretch marks on my hips, the small scar from a childhood fall, the ordinary imperfections of a body that has never been anyone's fantasy.
David's eyes find mine, and something passes between us—recognition, perhaps, or the mutual understanding of what we're doing to survive.
Emma reaches for me, her hand finding my breast, her thumb circling my nipple with the tentative curiosity of someone who has never touched another woman this way.
I cover her hand with mine, showing her the pressure, I want, the rhythm that makes my breath catch. David watches us, his arousal evident, his hand still moving between his wife's thighs.
I guide Emma onto her back, her dress bunched around her waist, her underwear—a simple cotton pair, bridal white—still in place though soaked through.
I kneel between her thighs, looking up at David, who stands at the edge of the bed, uncertain, aroused, watching his wife's face as I lower my mouth to her.
My teeth shred her fine knickers.
Ooh! My! She's carefully trimmed where it counts.
She tastes like salt and something sweeter underneath, the particular flavour of a woman discovering she wants something she never named to herself.
I use my tongue the way I want to be touched—slow, then urgent, finding the rhythm that makes her hips lift off the mattress, her fingers tangling in my hair with increasing desperation.
I lap and lap, adding saliva to her copious wetness.
She leaks wetness back to join my spit globs of tongue swiped frenzy.
"David," she gasps, and I feel the moment he joins us, the bed dipping as he kneels behind me, his hands finding my hips, his arousal pressing against me through the thin barrier of my underwear.
"Use your teeth, use your tongue."
It unleashes him. My knickers are shredded.
The dirty sod bastes my private starfish with his prodding, probing tongue.
The only thing that's real is the heat building between my legs, the desperate sounds Emma is making, the pressure of David's fingers as he finds me wet and ready and waiting.
He shoots a finger into my patootie.
He rams his pecker into me. He enters me in one stroke, filling me completely, and I gasp against Emma's thigh, my rhythm faltering, my focus splintering.
She makes a sound of protest—loss, frustration—and I force myself back to her, my tongue finding her again even as David begins to move inside me, his pace steady, deliberate, the rhythm of a man who has waited for permission and now intends to take everything offered.
The three of us find a balance, improbable, unstable, held together by friction.
David pummels my pussy. My tongue raids Emma's centre. Her hands cradle my head, willing me deeper into her soaked slash.
"Mmm, mmm," she starts.
"Aahh! Aahh!" as she rises.
"Hnggh! Hnnghh!" as she cums.
Her body tenses, her cry muffled by her own hand pressed against her mouth, her thighs clamping around my head as she shudders through the expanding bliss spasms. I feel her release like a vibration in my own body, the sympathetic pulse of watching someone else fall apart in joyous bodily acceptance.
David's rhythm changes, becoming urgent, less controlled. His fingers dig into my hips, pulling me back onto him with increasing force. I push up onto my hands, my back arching, and I meet his eyes over my shoulder.
He's watching me, really watching, seeing me for the first time not as the realtor or the convenience or the mistake, but as the woman who orchestrated this, who wanted this, who is taking something from this moment even as she gives everything away.
I come with his next thrust, the pressure building too fast to control, spreading from where he fills me to my clenching stomach to my tingling fingertips. I cry out, not caring about the neighbours, the empty houses, the professional reputation I just incinerated.
"Orrghh!"
For these seconds, I am only sensation, only the contracting waves of pleasure, only the instinctive certainty that I am still alive, still capable of wanting something this badly.
David follows, his release marked by a guttural sound, his body pressing flush against mine as he empties into me.
The three of us collapse onto the bed, a tangle of limbs and sweat and the particular heady musk of sex, none of us speaking, none of us moving, the harbour light shifting across our exposed skin.
I don't know how long we lie there. Time operates differently in the aftermath, elastic and meaningless.
I become aware of small things: the cramp in my left calf, the dried sweat itching between my breasts, the distant sound of a ferry horn.
Emma shifts first, sitting up, her dress falling to cover her thighs. She doesn't look at me. She looks at her husband, and something passes between them, some married communication I can't read and suddenly, painfully, want.
"I'll need the contract," I say, my voice a bit pitched, unfamiliar.
"The standard REINSW agreement. I can have it ready by this afternoon."
David sits up, reaching for his shirt. He looks at me then, really looks, and I see the calculation in his eyes. Not judgment—that would be easier.
Just the cold arithmetic of what this was worth, what it cost, what it means for the life he's supposed to build with the woman buttoning her dress three feet away.
"You don't have to," Emma says suddenly, her voice small but clear.
"We were going to make an offer anyway. We loved it. We loved it before—"
She gestures vaguely at the bed, at us, at the thing we can't name.
I stand, finding my underwear, my bra, my professional armour. My hands shake as I hook the clasp.
"Then this," I say, "was just for me."
I don't look at them as I dress, as I smooth my skirt, as I find my blazer and my brochures and my wilted rose.
I don't look at them as I walk to the door, as I pause with my hand on the original brass handle, as I force myself to turn back with my professional smile restored, cracked but functional.
"I'll expect your offer by five PM. The vendor is motivated. I can recommend an excellent conveyancer."
They stand together by the bed, holding hands again, their matching wedding bands catching the light. They look young. They look like I did, once, before I learned that wanting something badly enough means being willing to destroy yourself to get it.
"We'll double-check the finance and sign later," they say in tandem.
I watch them drive away.
I close the door behind me and stand on the veranda, breathing in the harbour air. My phone buzzes. My boss, again.
I let it go to voicemail.
In three hours, I'll have an offer. In three days, a signed contract. In three weeks, my first commission in months, enough to keep the car, the apartment, the fragile illusion that I'm still someone who sells houses rather than someone who trades pieces of herself for survival.
I walk to my Mazda, my heels clicking against the sandstone path. The harbour glitters in the distance, indifferent to my small drama.
I start the engine and sit for a moment, my hands still shaking on the wheel.
I don't know what I am anymore. I don't know if this was the beginning of something or the end. I only know that for the first time in months, I feel awake. The fear is still there, the desperation, the certainty that I'm dancing on a cliff edge.
But underneath, something else: the memory of Emma's fingers in my hair, David's weight pressing me into the mattress, the absolute certainty of wanting and being wanted, however false, however purchased, however damned.
I pull away from the curb and drive toward the office, toward the contract I need to prepare, toward the life I'm constructing from wreckage.
The sun is high now, the spring morning giving way to afternoon.
Somewhere in the city, David and Emma are discussing their offer, their future, the thing I gave them that they didn't know they wanted.
I roll down the window and let the wind take my professional smile, tear it from my face and scatter it across the harbour.
Underneath, something harder. Something that knows exactly what it did and exactly what it cost and exactly what it's willing to do again.
The road opens before me, full of houses full of strangers full of needs I can learn to meet.
I press harder on the accelerator.
The city blurs past, indifferent, waiting, already forgetting my name.