Why Does it Taste so Sweet? (2 page)

Somewhere over northern France she had to stop and snuggle into him again, wait for that arm to loop around her, for the thumb to start gently caressing. He had such a delicate touch when he wanted.

She let her arm rest on his lap, and he pressed up against her.

Suddenly this didn’t just feel right, it felt incredibly horny.

She peered up at him. That look in his eyes: he felt the same way, too.

She rolled her arm, and felt hardness shifting against the inside of her wrist.

There were people all around, though. Lights on, people reading and chatting. Cabin crew moving around with drinks. Even Ray’s status didn’t get him privacy on a flight like this.

She craned up so she could speak softly, close to his ear.

“Imagine,” she said. “Just imagine...”

She moistened her lips, let that guide his imaginings.

She loved that he wanted her so much. That he responded to her in that way.

She loved that just a word, a shift of position, an increase of pressure, and they were communicating in ways that were far more basic than words.

They landed in a small, provincial airport somewhere in the French countryside. Emily didn’t even notice the name of the place. By the time they had passed through security there was a limo waiting for them, their bags already loaded. As they drove to the chateau Emily tried to take in the scenery but she couldn’t concentrate. Some of the way they talked and laughed and sometimes they just lapsed into silence; always there was that undercurrent of sexual tension. Anticipation.

As their journey drew to a close, Ray gestured out of the window. They were approaching a country house up an avenue flanked by tall poplars, vineyards to either side. The building was constructed from pale gray stone, with columns by the doors and slatted shutters  at the windows. Wisteria and vines scrambled up the front wall, the whole scene cast in a soft golden light from the evening sun. It was a picturebook French stately home.

The limo pulled up in a wide area of gravel at the front of the chateau, and instantly Ray was out, leaning back in to take Emily’s hand and help her out. His eyes were sparkling, and that grin was pulling at his face as if he was trying to suppress it but just couldn’t.

“Let me give you the tour,” he said, and led her by the hand in through double front doors into a wide entrance lobby with more doors opening off it and a sweeping staircase curling up to a mezzanine floor.

The ‘tour’ only made it as far as the first room.

Ray pushed at a door and pulled Emily inside, kicking the door shut behind her. The room was like something out of a museum, all wood panels and dark furniture with curved legs and fleur-de-lys upholstery.

Emily barely had a moment to catch her breath and take it all in because all of a sudden she was in Ray’s arms, his mouth on hers, his body hard and urgent against her.

Forced up against the door, she ground the back of her head against the wood, the onslaught on her senses so intense. His hands were on her, pulling at her clothes, slipping inside to find bare flesh. His hard thighs were against her and –
oh my God!
– finding just the right spot to press so that all of a sudden everything focused in the pit of her belly.

He could do that, take her from nothing to the edge of climax in almost no time at all.

She clung to him like the vines clung to the wall outside, pushing back against his pressure. Now this was a two-way thing: his hardness against her and now the way she could control it, use it, take herself right to that precipice and...

“Oh my God!” Had she actually screamed those words? She had never been a screamer, had always been discreet and polite in her orgasms, but now... all that was gone. “
Ah!
” That last was a long, drawn-out sigh that was almost a wail as that initial tightness in her belly blossomed and then burst out through her body.

She hung on tight, glad for his strength and the solidity of the door behind her. Gasping for air.

“I don’t... That never happens.” Normally she needed time. Wooing. Build-up. That thing... it never happened like that.

She pulled her head from where she’d buried it against his neck. Found his dark eyes. He wasn’t listening. Didn’t care. All she saw in those eyes now was need. A pent-up, hungry
need
.

Her arms had been coiled around him as she clung on desperately, but now she dropped them, slid one hand and then the other in between their bodies. Finding the waist of his pants she unfastened the top button and let her fingers slip inside, the knuckles against his firm belly, the fingertips finding coarse hair, hardness.

His hands moved away, reaching up to press flat against the wood paneling of the door.

Those eyes – so intense!

She released another button, another.

Now her hand found easier access and she turned it to lie flat against his belly and slid it inside his shorts, second and third fingers parting to go either side of that hard shaft. She felt a pulse in his belly, a twitch in response to her touch, felt him pressing against her palm.

She pushed her hand down farther, her palm now against the base of his shaft, thumb and fingers wrapped around him. Even partly unbuttoned, his pants were so tight there was almost no room to maneuver her hand. She squeezed. Slowly, gently, then harder, tighter, until his jaw sagged and his eyes widened.

She leaned forward against him a little more, and that slight shift brought more of her weight to bear on her hand, on his shaft. She felt the skin gliding over the hard core, as she pulled down.

She needed to release him.

She twisted her wrist to turn the length of his shaft sideways, then eased it upright, flat against his belly. The heel of her hand pressed hard at the head, slick with his juices so that every slight move elicited another gasp, a tensing of his body, a slight thrust in response.

And all the time: those dark eyes remained locked on hers.

He reached down and hooked a thumb into the waist of his pants. With her free hand she took the other side and they eased the pants and shorts down over his hips until they were halfway down his thighs.

Now, fully free of constraints, his manhood stood long and straight between them. She wrapped her hand around it again and started to pull and twist, letting his wetness slide against her wrist and inner forearm, pumping against him until her fingers came up against his balls and then pulling back, twisting and sliding.

Both hands flat against the door again, his whole body was tense, held rigid so that the only movement was her hand on him.

He was close. A few more seconds and there would be a spray of come up her arm, across her front. She wanted to see that, wanted to see the release in his eyes, but not yet...

She paused, holding the base of his shaft even tighter than before. He groaned, an animal sound of tense frustration as he throbbed in her grip and she thought she might have left it just a moment too late. Then she felt the tension start to ease and she loosened her grip, pulled back along that delicious length, found the end and squeezed again.

He reached down with both hands, seized the hem of her skirt and hitched it up around her hips. One hand moved back between her legs to cup her, lifting her to her toes against the door, and now it was Emily’s turn to make animal sounds.

Bending at the knee, he reached down, one hand on her ass the other hooked under her thigh. Now his manhood was against her, pressing at the lace of her panties. She pulled them aside and steered him into place, sliding his length against her wet folds.

She swiveled her hips, sliding herself against his shaft until the base was against her clit.

She gasped, close again almost immediately. She’d never known anything like this.

He pulled her thigh higher so that her leg curled around him and that shift in position changed the angles, bringing the head of his dick to press against her opening.

He dipped his head and his lips were soft and delicate against hers and then, so slowly, she felt an almost splitting sensation as he entered her. Just the head at first, his movements were so slow and controlled.

His lips were still gentle, only serving to provide contrast with the hot intensity she felt as he slowly slid inside until his full length was in her and there was a heady pressure on her clit again.

He drew his head away, eyes still locked on her, urging her on. He knew she was close. He must see what he did to her. Only a slight, brief, smile broke the intensity of that look as he held himself deep inside her, every slight movement amplified because of the angles and the way her weight bore down on the place their bodies joined.

So close...

She squeezed, a tightening in the pit of her belly that transmitted itself through her core and now it was Ray’s turn to gasp.

She squeezed again and this time he pushed back, and she held him tight, against her and inside her, and he made a loud, animal grunt that drew itself out and became a strangled, “Oh, Emily!”

She kept herself tight, and now his jaw tightened, his head tipping back. A sudden widening of the eyes, a flinching of the whole body, and she felt a pulsing in his shaft, a thrust of his body, pressing him even harder against her. Abruptly, she was there too: her body tightening in response to the first pulse of his climax, so that all she could do was cling to him as the two of them held themselves upright against the door.

As that sudden, explosive tightening in her belly started to subside, she felt another surge deep inside and then his body slumped.

Softer now, he slipped out of her, and she felt herself wet with him, spent, exhausted and exhilarated and still surprised that he could make her feel like this.

She turned her head and kissed him again and then he pulled away and they were laughing, hanging onto each other for all they were worth, Emily leaning back against the door as Ray sagged against her.

Gasping for breath, as if the two of them had briefly forgotten the basic mechanics of breathing.

“You okay?” he said, and all she could do was laugh into his shoulder, she was so damned okay right now.

§

‘Rake’ had never been an imaginative nickname. Six foot six and thin as the garden implement he’d been named for; and now his long black hair had become a silver ponytail, pulled hard back from an angular face, which only seemed to emphasize the narrowness of frame and features.

When Ray opened the door back out of the room, Rake was standing there grinning.

“Hey, man!” said Ray, stepping forward into a back-slapping embrace. “Hey, dude. This is Emily.”

Rake’s eyes flicked up and down Emily as she stood there, and she suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious. Her hair must be a mess, her face flushed, her make-up smudged, her clothes disheveled and awry, and the wetness she felt from their love-making only served to make her even more self-conscious. She managed to smile and opened her mouth to speak, but Rake got in first.

“I heard,” he said simply, and Emily immediately thought of the way Ray had cried out, her name almost unintelligible in that strangled cry.

She felt her face flushing even more, and then the moment was gone and Ray had slapped Rake on the shoulder and the two of them led the way deeper into the chateau.

§

“So tell me,” said Rake, in that deceptively charming Irish lilt of his, “what does Róisín make of all this?”

They were sitting at a table on a terrace to the rear of the chateau. A long rectangular pond led away from the terrace to a distant iron fence, and woodland beyond. As the last of the evening sun hung on, swallows swooped low over the water and heavy dragonflies hovered and darted over patches of white water lily.

Ray had always been up front about Róisín. He’d told Emily they were still married, then qualified it with a ‘technically’. They’d been separated for years – everyone knew that, especially a diehard Angry Cans fan like Emily.

So why did it always come back to Róisín?

Ray shrugged, and took another long pull from his bottle of 1664. “Róisín is history,” he said, in a tone that brooked no further discussion. “So,” he went on, “is there much more to do? Are we just about done here?”

In Rake’s company, Ray’s accent took on a few more Irish inflexions. At first Emily had thought this quite an endearing thing, an illustration of their closeness, but now she found it unsettling, a reminder that he had deep roots and they didn’t involve her.

Her confidence was such a fragile thing these days, and so easily undermined.

A short time later, Ray’s phone chimed. He took it from his pocket, glanced at it, then said to Emily, “Sorry: Mo.” Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “Hey, Mo,” and stood to move away from the table. Emily watched him as he walked slowly down by the pond. In this honeyed light, it looked like a scene from an impressionist painting: the figure by the water and the white lilies, the strip of grass to either side, bounded by a dark, clipped hedge.

“You think he’s really into you?”

She looked across at Rake, sharply. What did he mean by that?

He probably didn’t mean anything. He sat back in his chair, cradling his beer in both hands, eyes slit narrowly, almost shut. He was probably just thinking aloud.

“I do,” she said softly. “For now, at least.”

He nodded.

“I don’t mean to be a jerk, you know?” he said. “It’s just... well, I hope he is. Into you, I mean. It’d be good, you know?”

She realized that was some kind of compliment. “I know,” she said. “I hope he is, too.”

§

They slept and made love on repeat, all through the night, and when she woke in the morning he was gone.

Their room was almost completely white: the bedding, the painted floor, the walls. Was this the room where he’d filmed the video for “Let’s Make This Thing Happen”? Him standing there in black by the window, his guitar slung low.

But he wasn’t there. Just whiteness, and morning sunlight flooding in through those windows.

She found her bags in a dressing room through one of the doorways. She pulled on some jeans and a silk camisole top and set out through the house. Opening doors at random, she found more bedrooms, mostly painted white and furnished sparsely. At the end of one corridor she found a music room. A grand piano occupied one corner, and a dozen guitars stood on stands by the walls. A drum kit, an electronic keyboard and a closed Mac laptop on a card table completed the set-up.