The Gift (13 page)

‘Jay!’

Even though it was Wednesday, quiet and with no market, there were plenty of people around in the precinct. And a young woman, waiting in front of a shop as they passed, swivelled around sharply at the word ‘cock’. Jay smiled and waggled his eyebrows at her and Sandy could have punched him. Especially when the girl smiled back, evidently liking the sound of a tall striking man talking dirty, even when it wasn’t to her.

‘You’d like that though, wouldn’t you?’ he persisted as they moved on.

It took a supreme effort not to stumble, even though she was wearing her own comfortable flat suede boots today and not Kat’s towering high heels. Her knees went weak at the picture Jay painted.

Bound to a bed, bare and vulnerable, open before him. He’d be kneeling, her pelvis would be lifted. She be impaled on his erection, stretched by it, possessed by it. She could almost feel the sensations, and taste the chocolate on her tongue as he fed her truffles from a box beside them. As the rich unctuous confection melted in her mouth, he’d reach between her legs and delicately finger her aching clit.

‘Chocolate should be savoured without distractions,’ she shot back pertly, trying to banish the fantasy. Not wearing panties, she could already feel silky slippery moisture sliding down her thigh.

Jay just laughed, then looked ahead. ‘Our destination, I
believe.’ He nodded to their left, towards the pub and the tables that stood outside under an awning for smokers and the hardy.

The Fox and Grapes was an old dark traditional pub, and when they stepped inside it took a moment or two for their eyes to adjust to the low lighting. It was popular though, and Sandy recognised a few folk who ate lunch at the Teapot when it wasn’t their early closing, and nodded to them. There were no seats at all available in the main bar.

‘Shall we just get a swift half and then drive to the Waverley? The food’s good there,’ suggested Jay, glancing around.

‘No, it’s OK, there are always spaces in the back.’ Tugging on his hand, Sandy led him into the labyrinthine interior of the pub where there was a small ‘snug’ as well as a few individual booths accommodating just one table. ‘Here!’ she said, sliding into the one furthest from the main bar, and shucking off her jacket as she settled down on the long padded seat.

‘I like it.’ Jay’s gaze flicked around, along the row of booths separated by oaken partitions and stained-glass windows above, with the pub’s legend picked out in vibrant colours. When he glanced back at her, his eyes were hooded and speculative, making Sandy’s innards dance again as his gaze zeroed in on her newly-revealed cleavage.

What was he thinking? Not too hard to divine. He was probably entertaining exactly the same thoughts as she’d been doing, at first subconsciously, and now in the forefront of her mind.

Surely not?

But … oh … yes …

Lust roiled in the pit of her belly, and she felt the slide of
her arousal in her cleft as she adjusted her bottom on the seat, unable to sit still.

Jay caught the small movement, and his eyes narrowed as if the table and her skirt were both transparent and he could see the state of her sex.

‘What can I get you?’ he asked, his face and his voice superficially dead straight.

A glass of wine and an orgasm.

She nearly said it, too. But at the last minute, she bottled out.

‘A glass of White Zinfandel and scampi and chips, please.’ Jay pursed his lips. She could see he wanted to smirk, and she suspected it was as much about the girly wine choice as an awareness of what she’d almost asked for.

‘OK, so I like sweet pink wine. It’s not a crime.’

‘I never said it was, Princess. And you can have whatever you want as far as I’m concerned.’ The way he let the grin out now said that he was fully aware of her unspoken request too, and might well satisfy it sooner rather than later. ‘Right, I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

Sandy looked this way and that, pretending to herself that she wasn’t checking out whether or not people could see them in their little hideaway. She tried to quash the dangerous thoughts, but it was impossible. Every cell in her body seemed to be vibrating with excitement and anticipation.

Jay returned in a few minutes with drinks and a little white printed ticket for their food. As he slid in beside her, pushing a large glass of wine across the stained surface of the table towards her, she frowned at his own choice of beverage. It was a tall glass of totally clear fluid, crammed with ice and adorned with a slice of lemon.

Gin and tonic? No, it didn’t have the oily swirly look of gin. It was water, she realised, still water, plain and pure. Don’t drink and drive, she thought. Very sensible. But last night he’d had Champagne and not thought twice about getting into the Aston.

‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass to his as he lifted it.

‘Here’s to, um, distractions.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jay with emphasis, watching her mouth over the rim of his glass as he drank himself.

The Zinfandel was sweet and light, easy to drink. She felt like throwing the lot down her neck and asking for another immediately. The sensation of recklessness was like being on a merry-go-round, and she wanted the ride to go faster and faster and faster.

But when Jay set his glass down, he reached into the pocket of his jacket that he’d set beside him on the bench and drew out a foil blister pack of tablets. Offering no explanation, he popped two and swallowed them quickly with more water.

Painkillers, she thought. She’d been right about the tension in him, something that even with what she suspected were consummate acting skills he’d been unable to hide.

‘Is it from the accident? Is it bad?’

Damn, hadn’t she just decided she wouldn’t pry! She hadn’t meant to speak, but it seemed curiosity and concern had more power over her vocal cords than her sense of discretion had.

Jay gave her a long look, and she watched a battle in him too. Macho pride and being the ‘big man who didn’t give into pain’ at odds with an innate honesty and the simple response to sympathy.

‘It’s not good. Well, not just now.’ He drank more water,
set the glass down again. ‘But don’t worry. It’s getting better all the time, with every week that passes.’

Sandy didn’t quite know what to say, but she sensed that, even though Jay had admitted his ‘weakness’, he didn’t want to dwell on it too long.

‘But you could say that’s why I’m so fond of “distractions”, Sandy,’ he went on, leaning back in his seat, looking more relaxed now. Whatever he’d taken, they must be wonder pills, because his grey eyes were brightening in a way that was rapidly becoming familiar to her.

‘Like sex?’

He grinned, shaking his head as if despairing of an incorrigible child.

‘Yeah, like sex.’

‘So I suppose you could really do with something like sex right this minute … to help the pills work?’

Jay’s face lit with admiration. ‘You’re an amazing girl, Sandy, you really are. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you. In fact I haven’t done anything worthy of reward at all. But right now, you’re like a gift from heaven. You know that, don’t you?’

She wasn’t sure what he meant. It was hard to think straight at all. In close proximity to him, in their concealed little nook, she was turning into a mass of hormones and silky fluids, pumping and wanting. She wanted to touch him. And not just his strong thighs, or his big cock inside his jeans. She wanted to touch all of him, see all of him. Stroke her fingers over his face and feel the brush of his dark beard, the tracery of his scars. She wanted to study his body and see its magnificence, and also the ravages wrought upon it by mangled metal.

And she wanted him to touch her. Where it mattered.
Slowly, she slid closer to him along the bench, until their bodies were in contact through their clothes. Staring into his stormy-sea eyes all the time, she slid her hands under the table and plucked at her skirt, inching and inching it up at the side closest to him, until the hem was against her hip there, even though the fullness of fabric was still trailing at the other side and covering most of her legs. Reaching for his hand beneath the table, she placed it on the bare skin of her thigh. His fingertips felt cool, but only, she supposed, because her own skin was so hot.

He stared back at her, his face composed, his smile slight and mild as if nothing were happening. But his clever hand followed her lead, taking over control. His fingers walked up and up and up, and the corners of his mouth twitched a little. When he reached the side of her hip, he bit his lip and rolled his eyes.

‘Now that’s what I call a distraction.’

His hand flattened, sliding across her belly, little finger skirting the edge of her bush, then dipping in and tangling. It hugged the gentle curve, still for a moment, then started moving downwards, searching, exploring.

He leaned in close and kissed the side of her neck, next to her ear. ‘Ease your skirt up at the back. Pull it out from under you. I want your bare bottom pressed against the seat while I touch you.’

Sandy swayed, slumped against the seatback, suddenly overwhelmed by the rudeness of the idea, the sense of exposure. She’d wanted this game – why ever else would she have come out without knickers? – but the reality almost gave her palpitations.

‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ His mouth opened against her skin, his tongue stroking her in a way that suggested
other stroking, other wetness. Then that contact was gone, and he pressed his head against the side of her face in a strange, fondling, almost feline gesture. It was as if he was the cat now, not her, and the rub of his tightly shaven scalp was like fur too, like soft fine suede.

When he looked up again, his eyes were full of fire. Hard. Compelling. She couldn’t defy him. She didn’t want to. She began surreptitiously tugging her skirt from under her, as per his instructions. His expression softened, became more playful and amused.

She wondered if his pain had gone, or whether he was just sufficiently distracted by her lack of knickers to be able to ignore it.

There was a lot of fabric in her long swirly skirt, and it took some tweaking and shuffling and wiggling about to get all of it out from under her. Sandy kept looking towards the bar, afraid that at any minute the waitress would come with their food and immediately suss out what she was doing. After all, these nooks might have been designed expressly for the purpose of sexual shenanigans.

But it was the pub’s busiest time, and as yet there was no sign of the scampi.

Eventually, the skirt was up, and discreetly arranged so that not even if some passer-by climbed under the table for a look would they get an eyeful of something they shouldn’t see. The sensation of the rough upholstery against her bare bottom was weird, and disquieting. She wondered how many naked behinds had sat on this same seat before her, playing games. The idea made her wriggle again, involuntarily, and Jay’s eyes narrowed.

‘Good girl,’ he whispered, reaching for his glass with his left hand. It seemed that the devil was ambidextrous,
because his other was already going walkabout. ‘Now drink your wine. It’ll relax you. You’ve had a trying morning.’

It was a good job she hadn’t actually picked up her Zinfandel yet, because she would have choked. And not just at Jay’s quaint idea of a trying morning. His fingers were already playing in the cleft of her sex.

She reached for her glass. His forefinger slid up and down, alongside her clit.

She put the wine to her lips. He circled the entrance to her vagina, delicately skirting around with the pad of his fingertip.

She took a tiny sip of wine, and he entered her just a little, just half of the first joint of his forefinger.

When she jerked, and made to put the glass down again, he went, ‘Uh oh!’ and shook his head, sliding the finger out again and brushing her perineum.

The wine was delicious, such easy drinking, but it seemed bizarre and vaguely obscene to be sipping away at it while she was being played with. It was as if her brain was short-circuiting all the time, unable to compute the two different kinds of stimuli simultaneously. Sweat popped out all over her body, and she could feel heat rising in her face as it trickled and pooled between her breasts and in her armpits. She took a deeper drink, and Jay took her clitoris between his finger and thumb and tugged it.

The glass shook and the wine nearly spilt.

‘Careful,’ he admonished, still tweaking, manipulating.

‘I … I can’t …’

‘Yes, you can.’

She put the wine to her lips, swallowed. Despite its sweetness, a moan bubbled in her throat as he squeezed and stroked, squeezed and stroked, squeezed and stroked. Tears
formed in her eyes, not because she was upset or distressed, but just because the rush of strange contrary sensations was close to overload.

‘Please,’ she muttered incoherently, setting the glass down regardless. It was like being in a match or tourney of some kind, requesting a time out. Immediately Jay withdrew his hand, giving her crotch one last friendly little pat.

‘Didn’t you like that?’ He sounded gentle and concerned, the way he might have done if they’d just tried a ride at the fairground, or a new sport. Maybe it was a sport? If not that, it was definitely a game. Sandy plucked up the glass again and drank nearly all of it in one gulp.

‘I don’t know. It was weird. I’m not used to doing – feeling – the two things at once.’ She twirled the glass’s stem in her fingers, trying to quantify the experience. ‘I didn’t not like it, it was just unusual. A bit intense.’

‘Intense is good,’ said Jay steadily, swirling his water in its tumbler. ‘Intense reminds you you’re alive, stretches your senses. A girl like you deserves “intense”, no half measures.’

Sandy stared at him, amazed and a little shocked. He’d hit on a nerve somehow. She realised that she’d never really done ‘intense’, at least not sexually, until he’d kissed her between her legs last night at the Waverley. She’d enjoyed sex, yes, but never felt swept away by it, even during orgasm. But with Jay, she was riding a riptide. All the time.

He sat beside her, sipping his water and looking at her over the rim of the glass, yet it still felt as if his fingers were touching her sex. The impression they’d left on her was indelible. When he’d gone, would she ever forget the feel of him?