grumpy, abrupt.
Good, you say, I’m so glad, you say, warmly, knowing this would be his response. And wanting him so much.
Gradually, gradually, you slow Gabriel down, allowing him in a fraction at a time, pulling away if he tries to rush. Teaching him that a key to the exquisiteness lies in the waiting, the refraining, the holding back; and you’ve both been experts at that, ever since your hands brushed a touching in a cafe as a phone number was handed across. You tap into that now: enforcing the rules of no contact during the week, not removing your clothes the instant you walk through his door, sitting down over a cup of tea and then slowly, absently lifting up your skirt, no underpants, of course, and lightly touching yourself as you chat. Widening your legs, flexing your back, watching his distraction, his inability to stay seated: gathering his head to your kiss as you come.
You get Gabriel to feel you as if he’s a blind man reading the secrets of your inner skin. You make him vary his rhythm, gently admonish if it strays into monotony, teach him the secrets of tenderness, relaxing, surprise, teach him everything that you want. You iron him out until your inner thighs are fluttering and your pelvis is aching from stretching under him, until your thighs are trembling hours after you leave and into the next day.
Gabriel wants the lessons more frequently than you, he rages against the pleasure he’s missed, he’s afraid of time running out. It’s as if he wants to make love incessantly to cement what you’re doing in his life, to make your time together solid and settled and a habit you both cannot break. He says he is happy, so happy. He never thought he could have such greed in him.
You hold him, you laugh, squeeze him tight. You don’t tell him you feel that too.
You will not be hurried. You refuse to increase the frequency, to quicken your pace: you want to linger. You will not lengthen the lessons into the evenings, despite his insistence. When the dark comes you must stop. The lessons can only be conducted in the light, it’s like you’re living in fear of falling asleep with Gabriel and being kissed awake in the morning light, and being trapped, for ever, in his life.
It’s as if you’ve never felt pleasure until now. It’s as if what passed as pleasure before was a cardboard cut-out of it. For you’ve never been in control, until now; you’ve never, before, had exactly what you want.
hints on shopping: always buy the best article of its kind
You want Gabriel’s finger in your ass as he’s fucking you, you tell him that, you’ve always wanted to try. There are so many things you’ve always wondered about and now there’s a willing partner who’ll never embarrass you, for he’ll never be entwined in your normal life. With his finger in your ass you have your first orgasm while a man is in you and you smile wide, you can’t stop: you could grow to love this too much.
And then the licking, whole golden afternoons of it. It’s never quite worked for you: Cole, particularly, always thinks he knows best. Now you tell Gabriel exactly where you want him, around the clit most of all and you splay your fingers on each side of it, you straighten them to draw back the flesh. It stands bold, a wild red. You lift your lower back and press his mouth on to you and you won’t let him come up as you twist your fist into the sheet. And then he breathes you in gently and his tongue dips into you, it sweeps deeper and deeper and you didn’t know you could ever get so wet. He stares at you as you come, stares at what he’s done and you turn your face and tell him not to look, go away; you don’t want him to see you so cracked apart. But he keeps looking, gleefully, his fingers held over a smile, as if in prayer.
But I love you like this, he says. I just love it.
Gabriel’s not afraid of your sexuality. Your pleasure is giving him pleasure, it arouses him and he asks nothing physically of you in return: no one has taught him to do that, to expect. He’s your first lover who’s utterly selfless, there’s no request to go down on him, it’s purely unselfish, feminine sex.
Your orgasms are becoming increasingly intense, they trip over each other until almost as soon as his tongue touches your skin you have to push him away and thrust your fingers between your legs, trying to stem the coming, to slow it down, and you slam your face into the pillow, muffling sounds you’ve never uttered before that break from the base of your spine.
You feel so alive. Shaken awake after years of apathy until you’re almost coming with just his kiss in greeting, or the sound of his voice on the phone.
You wonder sometimes if he enjoys the licking that much, for a colleague let slip once that the taste of a woman, when he went down on her, always made him gag, that there was no woman whose smell he’d ever liked even though every woman’s smell was different. But you’re addicted now and many afternoons he’ll be between your legs until your inner thighs are trembling and you’re begging him to stop for it’s too exquisite, it verges into pain now, you can hardly bear it. And yet he goes on, as if he’s trying to stamp out the memory of any other man’s fuck and you’re drowning in the pleasure of it, you’re glutted, keeling, lost.
You kiss, softly, the valley at the base of his neck, you kiss, softly, the pale clearing behind his ear, you breathe him in deep, kneel, swell him. Want to give so much back, to have him as stunned by sensation as you are.
Changed, utterly.
And each week hurtling home on the tube you wonder where it can all end, how much more can you ask of him. For everything else is obliterated by that explosive pleasure at the base of your spine, your whole other life is wiped away. Neither of you talks about husbands or families, or what on earth comes next, because you can’t bear to think about anything that might put a stop to all this.
go to bed not later than ten and get up at five or six when you are grown-up
You ring your mother. It’s her birthday; you’ve sent some lovely, hand-made Spanish riding boots that were way too much but you feel so generous and large-spirited in this new life.
Hey, you sound great, she says.
Yeah, I feel it. I’m getting lots of rest, and exercise.
You want to tell her about Gabriel, burstingly, but if anyone finds out you’ll have lost a little of your control: you’ll never know when it could slap you hard in the face.
Keep doing what you’re doing, she says in farewell. It’s working, darling.
You smile. Take down an old photo from the mantelpiece. Your mother’s in the Gobi Desert, on a dig site, a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other, and her eyes are narrowed against the sun and strands of hair whip across her face. You used to hate her loose, loud life when you were growing up: the way she’d wander around the house naked, push you out to experience something of the world, take you to interminable dinners to meet yet another of her men.
You recognise now that your mother was doing exactly what she wanted and, in her mid-fifties, she’s still doing it. She’s now contentedly celibate. Living a vivid life, which sometimes involves watching old black
