Page 67 of Wild About You

And then we didn’t say any more.

At first, we took things quickly. There, on the sofa, tugging at each other’s clothes, stealing kisses roughly as though we were playing at things. It was only when he grappled a condom from his wallet that I took a breath. ‘I didn’t thinkthey sold those at Stonemore General Stores,’ I said, as casually as I could.

‘Under the counter. You have to say a password,’ he said. I started laughing and could only stop myself by gently biting his shoulder. Which worked, because at that moment his hands found a certain place as expertly as if he had a map of me. I was half losing myself in the physical rightness of it and half wondering at how natural it felt – the way we anticipated what the other wanted. When – at last – he was inside me, it was as though my body released all its tension and melted into pure sensation, sending me into a whirling vortex of pleasure so intense I wasn’t sure I could take it without passing out. Instead I dug my fingers into his back and made a noise I barely recognised.

‘And I was worrying about me losing control too quickly,’ he murmured, but I heard the roughness in his voice. We moved together, our hands entwined, first slowly and tenderly, then urgently, deeply. At the peak I was shaking so much he nestled his face against mine, tenderly. ‘Are you okay?’ he whispered, his breath catching on the words.

‘I am,’ I gasped, ‘very slightly better than okay,’ and when I heard him laugh grittily, I lost myself entirely, again, and so did he.

It was only afterwards that he lifted me and carried me upstairs to the bedroom, his mouth against my neck, my heart somewhere on the ceiling.

I’d felt pleasure before, of course, but that night with Jamie was at a different level. It was an unlocking ofsomething far deeper. Once we reached the bedroom, our caresses were slow, deliberate and so exquisite they left my skin singing. I could think about nothing but us, in that room. The exquisite building and release, the slow juggernaut of anticipation, which left me gasping in its wake. And to see him losing control made my bliss even more intense. There was only this, now, more, again. With him deep inside me, our gazes locked together, there was no room for past pain or uncertainty. I felt uninhibited, comfortable and utterly wanted, and I did everything I could to make him feel the same. I fell asleep in his arms, pressed against his chest. This was what a fling was all about, wasn’t it? This sense of desire coupled with belonging?

Wasn’t it?

When I woke at 5.30am, I couldn’t admit the night was over. Half asleep, I pulled him to me, telling him what I needed him to do, my voice describing every sensation and saying his name as I tumbled over the edge and he did too.

I opened my eyes and when I looked at him, he was smiling. He stroked my hair.

‘I’m not sure how to recover from this,’ I said, with a hollow laugh.

‘You don’t need to recover from it,’ he said. ‘This can be every day – well, maybe not every day. We might need to rest sometimes.’

I traced the strong curve of his arm with my fingers. ‘I see your family tree every day when I go into the office,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not the person you’re looking for.’

He stopped stroking my hair. ‘Don’t do this.’

‘One of us has to be sensible,’ I said, hardly knowing how I managed to say the words. ‘One night is fine. More? It’s going to be a heap of trouble in the long run.’

He disentangled himself from me and sat up, on the edge of the bed, his back to me. I put my hand out; touched his smooth, muscular back that I’d been clinging to only moments before. But he jumped to his feet, grabbed his clothes, and left the room. I heard him running down the stairs.

I followed him slowly, faffing around with my dressing gown and the flip-flops that doubled as my slippers. Crikey, I was weak at the knees after the night we’d had.

He was sitting on the sofa, buttoning up his shirt, his face like thunder.

‘Hey,’ I flip-flopped over to him. ‘Don’t go like this. I’ll make some coffee.’

‘This is so messed up, Anna.’ He pulled on his shoes and started tying the laces. Mechanically, I got the cafetiere out and started spooning coffee into it, then put the kettle on. I was scrabbling for words. This night had been supposed to sort things out, make things simple, reset things.

‘Come on,’ I said. I went to him, put my hands on his shoulders from behind. He tensed, then touched my right hand with his own. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Just have some coffee, okay? Don’t rush out of here. I want things to be alright between us.’

But as I poured the water and made the coffee, the reality of what I’d done started to hit me. We could have written offthe night in the bothy as a fever dream, a mistake made under the influence. But I’d gone and invited him, my boss, to my house for a one-night stand. Great move. Then gone through with it, in the most ecstatic, chandelier-swinging way, before rejecting him in the middle of it. Excellent, excellent, couldn’t have planned it better if I’d written it into a five-year plan. I blinked, looked at the kitchen in the cold morning light. It was as if I’d been drunk and this was the hangover.

‘Here.’ I took our mugs of coffee over and sat down next to him. ‘It’s almost six o’clock. I’m barely conscious.’

‘You seemed pretty conscious five minutes ago,’ he said. He was leaning forwards, his hands clasped together. I rubbed his back.

‘I’m not sick,’ he said irritably. ‘I don’t need your pity.’

‘It’s not pity.’ I took a swig of coffee. It was too hot and burned my mouth.

‘Let me get this straight.’ He turned and looked at me. ‘You enjoyed last night, didn’t you?’

My mouth dropped open. ‘Of course!’Best sex of my life by a country mile, I wanted to say, but I had enough metropolitan defensiveness left not to give him too much of a compliment. ‘It was wonderful.’

‘Thank you,’ he muttered. ‘So I wasn’t dreaming then? It’s not as if we just did it once, Anna.’

‘I think we were into double figures,’ I said. I’d been hoping to forge every detail of it into my mind so I could recall this perfect one night of passion when I was old and decrepit but I’d lost my mind and stopped counting.

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