Love: Classified (21 page)

     “You’ll stay, won’t you?” he asked, and the plea in his eyes
partly dispelled my doubts.

     “I’ll stay,” I whispered.

      “Let’s have a cup of tea,” he suggested, transferring the puppy to one arm and taking my elbow with the other. “There’s always hot water in the kettle, though there’s not much to eat. I was hoping to catch something for tonight.”

     “I’ve brought food.”

     “Oh then you have to stay,” he laughed.

     Just as we were about to climb into the van, he said, “I missed you.”

     “Because of my cooking?”

     “Of course. Why else would I have missed you?”

     To dispel the effect his eyes were having, I dug him jokingly in the ribs – and noticed there was less flesh over them than the last time I’d touched him. He’d looked at me so suggestively when he asked why else he’d have missed me that I knew he was referring to our love-making. There was no way I could control the trembling that made me almost miss my footing as I stepped into Matty.

     “How did you find me?” he asked, and I was sure it was because he
was trying to make conversation because he didn’t want a repeat of what had happened in the river. He probably thought he’d been out of his mind.

     “Daisy,” I sa
id, sitting on my mattress as he turned on the kettle, set out mugs and milk and gave the puppy a bowl of water. After her drink, the puppy nestled into his pillow and fell asleep. “I met her at a summer school and we became friends. I didn’t let on that I’d been travelling with you. I…I s’pose I didn’t think you’d want her to know that.”

     “I told her about you, Virginia. I was proud to.”

     I smiled wryly and said, “She’s lovely, your sister.”

     He nodded and asked, “How’s Josie?”

     “Fabulous, thanks to you.”

     “It’s too hot to have this tea in here. Let’s sit outside,” he suggested when the teapot was full.

     I helped him carry everything to the card table with its solitary chair that he’d set up in a clearing in the peppermint trees. He found the second chair and we sat overlooking the bay, the clean-smelling leaves making a cool curtain that kept away the flies and filtered the sunlight.

     “I’ll go and get something from my car to have with this,” I said.

     When I returned, Magnus lifted the lid of the cake box and asked, “You made this for  me?” Almost reverently he touched the replica record with its title and the icing-sugar turnstile. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me. Thank you, Virginia.”

     He leant over and took both my hands in his. “I’m not worth all this trouble, but I’m going to enjoy it anyway,” he said.

     “You are worth it,” I argued.

     “It’s too beautiful to eat. I wish I had a camera.”

     “If you don’t eat it, I’ll be offended. I’ll get a knife and you can make a wish.”

     I ran to the van and returned, smiling broadly. I was so happy to be with him again I felt as if I were floating over the sand.

     “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, standing up as I approached.

     I lay down the knife and opened my arms to him. I really did feel beautiful. I’d seen, in my unexpected reflection in the university windows, how I appeared to others. Even Josh had told me I was attractive. And Magnus, kissing me hungrily, left me in little doubt.

     But as suddenly as it had begun, the kiss was over. Magnus jerked his head up, his lips out of reach and stepped back as if to see me for the first time.

     “What’s wrong?” I whispered, aghast. Had I been too forward? Perhaps he didn’t find me sexy, after all.

     “I saw you with another man,” he bit out, his eyes boring into mine. 

     I racked my brain. I’d never been with another man.

     “You were walking out of the deli with him.” His eyes were accusatory.

     The penny dropped.

     “Bree’s dad…” I said.

     “Peter?”

     “Peter? No… Bree’s Dad is Josh.”

     “I always knew you’d have other guys
,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Josh, Peter, who else haven’t you told me about Virginia?” 

     In a flash I remembered how he’d reacted when Peta called me the very first time Magnus and I met. I’d said her name and he looked at me strangely, perhaps thinking it was a man.

     “I came back to see you a few days ago and you were with him,” he said coldly. “He had his arm over your shoulder and you were looking up into his eyes, smiling. Was that Josh? Or was it Peter? Or do you have so many encounters that you don’t remember?”

     “I can’t believe you could think of me like this,” I said, furious. “You’re a doctor. You should know only too well that when we had sex – and I won’t dignify it by calling it ‘making love’ – I was a virgin. Or has that little fact slipped your mind? And Pet
er
as you say is actually my female friend and workmate Pet
a.
I’ve known her forever, just as I’ve known her partner, Bree’s father, Josh, forever. Josh is a friend, that’s all.”

     I turned to walk to my car. I was getting out of there as fast as I could.

    I felt my arm being caught and pulled and had no choice but to face him.

     “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me. I’m jealous. It’s a fault and I know I have to learn to control it. It rears up when I’m scared I’m going to lose something very precious.”

     “But you accused me of being…”

    “I know,” he interrupted. “I said crazy, hurtful things that I didn’t mean. And I hope that when you called what we did together ‘having sex’ you didn’t mean it either. It was so much more than that for me. And I hope it was for you too. Tell me was. Don’t go away.”

     He drew me into his arms and held me tight, so tight that I savoured again the salty tang of his skin. But I was still angry, at least a little. What kind of person did he think I was?

     “Let’s have some cake,” I said, needing some time. Did I want to be in a relationship with a person who didn’t trust me?

     We sat at the table and he slid the knife into the cake. “I’m making a wish,” he said, cutting down into the middle of the  record but never taking his eyes off mine.

    “What are you wishing for?”

     “Can’t you guess?” he rasped and I basked in the knowledge that his greedy eyes were feasting on the sight of my big round breasts under the gauzy fabric of my blouse, on my taut and upward thrusting nipples, on my parted lips,

     He slid a piece of sponge out with the knife and broke off a morsel with his fingers. He popped it between my lips, letting out a ragged breath as my tongue moved sikily against his fingers before sucking them
and licking their length.

     With a light laugh, I took a little piece and rubbed it against his mouth, shivering with delight as his teeth tugged gently at my fingertips.

    We ate, our eyes saying all the things we dared no enunciate.

     “I can’t wait much longer, Virginia,” he said huskily, reaching for me.

Chapter Ten

I slid from his arms, making the excuse of having to boil more water for our tea.

     He sighed then, as if he were starving, wolfed down more cake. I watched him,
rapt, from the window of the van, where I’d put the kettle on the stove. He tossed me a sideways grin, slid off his cargo shorts, and ran into the surf, his massive cock proclaiming his desire.

     I turned to make sure the puppy was safely asleep, turned off the stove and walked unsteadily to the water’s edge to watch hi
m.

     “Take your clothes off, come in,” he called.

     With clumsy fingers I lifted my blouse over my head and unhooked my bra. As soon as my breasts were bare he ran out of the waves and grasped me, kissing me on the lips and pulling me down into the warm sand. Straddling me, his cock pushing against my jeans, he buried his face in my cleavage then turned to take one nipple in his mouth, sucking until rhythmic ripples of fierce desire thundered deep inside me.

     “I. Don’t. Want. To. Do. This. Here,” I lied, somehow managing to push him off me. I didn’t care who saw us, but I was still smarting from his earlier distrust and accusations. He’d have to suffer.

     “Okay,” he whispered, his penis shrinking as he sat on the sand. “Later. Promise?”

     “Mmm,” I murmured, fascinated as the foreskin re-covered the potent-looking head.

     “I’m going to have to swim in the cold water to cool my ardour,” he said, striding into the foam.

     Primly and defying every screaming instinct that cried out for him I put my top on again and watched him power through the waves. I couldn’t have looked if I was standing as my yearning for him was crippling, but I savoured his fabulous body. He was a Greek god, beautiful, and every cell inside me tingled and fizzed for him. 

     When he’d had enough, he pulled on his shorts and I was better able to behave relatively normally.
The puppy woke and we gave her more water and some of the dry dog food from Colin and then dawdled with her in the sun-warm rock pools, marvelling at scarlet sea anemones, bright orange star-fish, startled purple crabs. He helped me up to his rock perch, from which he could survey the whole sweep of the ocean. In the middle distance a pair of dolphins danced and flirted, weaving silver circles. On the horizon a schooner glided with its white sails billowing.

     Magnus checked his line and found he’d caught a big schnapper.

     “I’ll cook for you tonight,” he grinned exuberantly, the thatch of dark hair flopping over his eyes and momentarily obscuring their brown warmth.

     I was so happy I wanted to weep. This, I thought, was one of the special days granted only once or twice in a lifetime. I smiled shakily, wanting to touch him, to make sure he was real.

     We walked back to the patch of sand closest to Matilda where I sat with the puppy while Magnus built a fire from pieces of driftwood, dry branches and twigs he’d found in the bush. He’d place a pile of kindling by the van.

     Magnus set up a frame, using two
long green sticks, and suspended the fish from a metal skewer between the two so that it could smoke over the peppermint-scented fire.

     As the day drew to a close, we moved nearer the fire, digging our toes into the warm sand, the puppy between us. In the west, over the gleaming sea, the sun dipped, spraying crimson, orange and gold over lemon sky and splashing the surface of the waves with slicks of colour.

    Magnus fetched doonas, wine and glasses from Matilda and we spread out the bedding on the sand and sipped dry Riesling as the flames crackled.

     “This has been the best birthday I’ve ever had,” he whispered.

     I turned to speak but his lips sought mine and I melted against him, all inhibitions gone, all resistance exhausted.

     Slowly, I removed my clothes, watching the effect I was having on him, enjoying my power over him as I knelt over his recumbent form. When I was completely naked I slid down his board
shorts, remembering how nervous I’d been about touching him in Dr Jenkins’ surgery in York. There was no nervousness now, only a compelling desire to show him how much I loved him and, beneath that, an insatiable hunger for him.

     His manhood poised, I took him in my mouth, his low groans of pleasure sending spasms through my own body. He swelled against my tongue and I felt my moisture well, my secret layers unfold, ready for him.

     “Let’s make this last,” he murmured.

     I got off him, still kneeling on the sand, and he stood and dipped his cock into his glass of wine, holding it against my lips.

     I sucked his penis, tasting grapes and the ocean flavor of his pre-cum.

     “Mmm!” I groaned in ecstasy, smiling up at him.

    Our eyes met. His were blurry with pleasure. “More?” he asked.

    I nodded and he dipped again. I ran my tongue from the tip of his cock to the base then wriggled further between his legs and turned to take his balls in my mouth.

     “Oh god that’s good,” he breathed.

    
I wanted him inside me but I wanted to taste him too and enjoy the clean grassy sweaty smell of him that was becoming overlaid with a deep musky aroma that sharpened my appetite for him even more. I sucked on his balls and then licked the skin behind them, the source perhaps of that truffle-like perfume that was driving me crazy.