eight, roughly halfway up, I was exploring other parts of your extremely responsive body...’
Violet blushed. As always, it was one thing saying something and another actually putting it into practice.
Right now, although he had done as asked and had drawn back from her, the one thing she wanted to do was pull him right back towards her so that they could carry on where they had left off.
It was only a very small consolation that these little shows of strength helped her to maintain the façade of being as casual about what they had as he was. She knew that she had to cling to them for dear life.
‘I’m going to cook us something special.’ She led the way to the kitchen and retrieved a cold bottle of beer from the fridge, which he took, tilting his head back to drink a couple of long mouthfuls.
‘Why?’
Violet contained a little spurt of irritation. Shows of domesticity were never appreciated. He had never said so but, tellingly, his chef would often prepare food, which he would bring with him, stuff that tasted delicious and required an oven, a microwave and plates, or else takeaways were ordered when they had been physically sated. The ritual of eating was usually just an interruption, she sometimes felt, to the main event.
‘I’m trying it out as a meal for my class to learn,’ she lied and he shrugged and swallowed a couple more mouthfuls of beer before retreating to the kitchen table, where he sprawled on one chair, pulling another closer and using it as a footrest.
Violet bustled. Now that they weren’t tripping over themselves, tearing each other’s clothes off in a frantic race to make love, she wished that they were. Her body tingled at the knowledge that he was looking at her. She loved it when his eyes got dark and slumberous and full of intent.
‘Tell me how your mother’s doing,’ she said, to clear her head from the wanton desire to fling herself at him and forget about the meal she had planned.
She listened as he told her about recent trips into the village, her upbeat mood, which so contrasted with her despair when she had initially told him about the situation, recovery that was exceeding the doctor’s expectations...
Violet half listened. Her mind was drifting in and out of the uncomfortable questions she had recently started asking herself. Occasionally she said something and hoped for the best. She was a million miles away when she jumped as Damien padded up towards her and whispered into her ear, ‘Must be a complicated recipe, Violet. You’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes.’
Violet snapped back to the present and turned to him with a little frown. ‘I’ve got stuff on my mind.’
‘Anything I’d like to hear about?’
She hesitated, torn between not wanting to rock the boat and needing to say what she was thinking.
‘No. Just to do with school.’ She cravenly shied away from doing what she knew would ruin the evening.
‘What can I do to take your mind off it...?’ Just like that, Damien felt his tension evaporate. He thought he might have been imagining the thickness of the atmosphere, her unusual silence. He turned her back to the chopping board, where she had been mixing a satay sauce, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. ‘Looks good. What is it?’ He slipped one big hand underneath her loose top and did what he had been wanting to the moment he had set foot through the front door. He caressed one full breast, settling on a nipple, which he rubbed gently but insistently with the pad of his thumb. With his other hand, he dipped a finger into the sauce, licked some off and offered the rest to her. Violet’s mouth circled round his finger and she shivered at the deliberate eroticism in the gesture.
She moved across to the kitchen sink, carrying some dishes with her, and he released her, but only briefly, before resuming his position standing right behind her.
Outside, with the days getting longer, darkness was only now beginning to set in. Her view was spectacularly unexciting. The back of the house overlooked the wall of another house; the outside space comprised of a pocket-sized back garden just big enough for Phillipa to lie down in summer and spend the day tanning without having to dismantle the washing line.
Their bodies, merging together, were reflected hazily back to them in the windows overlooking the garden and their eyes tangled in the reflection as he slowly pushed up her jumper until she could see both their bodies and the pale nudity of her breasts. She gasped and fell back slightly against him as he began massaging them, rhythmic, firm movements that pushed them up, making her large nipples bulge and distend.
‘Damien...no...someone might see us...’ Although that wasn’t really a possibility. The one thing about the house and its location was that it was surprisingly private, given the fact that it was in London, where privacy was a rarity. The small back garden was fully enclosed with a fence and a fortuitous tree in the back garden of the neighbour opposite ensured limited view.
Damien continued rubbing her breasts, filling his hands with the heavy weight of them, bouncing them slightly, as though evaluating their worth.
‘Get naked for me,’ he murmured, nipping her neck and then trailing hot kisses along it.
‘Get...what...?’
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear. Get naked for me. Take your clothes off. Scratch that. Maybe I’ll let you get away with just wearing an apron...’
‘I’m not dressing up for your enjoyment!’ But already the thought of his dark, intense eyes following her naked body as she moved around the kitchen was making her feel hot and bothered.
‘I’m not asking you to dress up. I’m asking you to dress down...’ He shifted her jumper up, over her breasts, and Violet responded by spinning round to face him, her bare breasts pushing against the hard wall of his chest.
She began unbuttoning his shirt. From a position of relative inexperience only months ago, she had grown in confidence. He might not have had it at his disposal to offer anything most women would have expected of a proper relationship, but he certainly had it within him to turn her into a woman who was no longer tentative when it came to responding in ways that would pleasure her.
She shoved her hands under his shirt and felt the abrasive rub of his chest, not smooth and androgynous, but aggressively masculine with its dark hair. Slowly, she pushed the shirt off his broad shoulders, running her hands expertly along the contours of his muscles until the shirt had joined her jumper on the kitchen floor.
He propped himself against the counter, caging her in, and took his time kissing her until her whole body was burning up and she could feel the damp heat pooling between her legs.
‘Those jogging bottoms do nothing at all for your superb figure... They should be banned from your wardrobe...’ He slipped his fingers underneath the stretchy waistband and tugged them down, allowing her to wriggle out of them, keeping his arms on either side of her so that her movements were restricted. When he looked down, he could see her generous breasts shifting as she moved, soft and succulent. Unable to resist, he captured one and lifted it until her nipple was pouting directly at him. Reluctantly he decided that a full-on assault would have to wait. He wanted to take his time. She had been in his head for days; frankly, from the last time he had seen her, which had been the previous week, and he wasn’t going to rush things. He had spent hours fantasising about the next time they met and he intended to see at least some of those fantasies translated into sexy reality.
‘Same
