The Doomsday Testament

XXIX

Sex, when you’re new to each other, can sometimes be awkward. It all gets hot and heavy a little too quickly and unless you’re a proper Casanova, no one’s quite sure what to do precisely when. The result is that you spend so much time wondering if the other party is having a good time that you don’t have a good time yourself. It wasn’t like that at all.

Jamie was astonished at the emotions Sarah stirred in him; a raw carnality he’d never experienced before, allied to a profound tenderness that couldn’t be far short of what he presumed was love. Her lips tasted somewhere between sweet cinnamon and heather honey and her skin was as soft and downy to the touch as his imagination had told him it would be. They had been sharing kisses for a few minutes when she drew in a deep breath, her eyes opened wide and her body gave a long shudder.

‘No,’ she said, loosening her grip on him.

Inwardly Jamie groaned. Christ, what had he done wrong?

‘Not like this. Like this.’ Her fingers flew to the buttons on her black cotton shirt and with remarkable speed they were undone and the shirt thrown aside. As he watched with his heart pounding somewhere in his throat, her hands reached behind her and with a single movement her bra was gone. She stood before him for a second, allowing his eyes to feast on her body and his mouth felt as if it was filled with sand. The clothes she wore had camouflaged the full wonder of her breasts, which were heavy and rounded for such a slim figure, with small dark nipples engorged to the size of ripe blackcurrants. Her eyes were wild and amused and inviting all at the same time. He moved towards her.

‘Wait!’

Now her hands were at her belt, and the button of her black jeans. She bent and slipped them over her hips, sliding one leg down at a time and kicking them off. Her underwear was black and silky and he wondered if she’d been prepared for this to happen and cursed himself for not making it happen sooner. Now she teased him, half turning while she slid them down her long legs so that it wasn’t until she turned back that he had a view of her sex, which was blush and swollen and partially hidden by a thin line of sparse dark down. She stood before him, hands hanging loose, hips thrust forward as if she was offering herself. He found he could barely breathe. Again he moved, tugging at his shirt, but she shook her head and glided across the silk map and the tracing paper, which crinkled beneath her feet with each step. She wrapped herself around him, like a beautiful python coiling itself around its prey, and drew him to the floor on top of her.

‘All in good time,’ she whispered hoarsely.

He was never quite certain what came off when, but it happened after a prolonged period when the eroticism of his fully clothed body against her nakedness drove him almost to the brink of violence. His hands were able to rove at will over her nakedness, while hers teased at his shirt and his jeans, now plucking at a button, now moving a zip half an inch downwards. At one point she moved away from him and he noticed the raw red mark where his belt buckle had forced itself into the taut flesh of her stomach. It was an age before she allowed him to reach down and stroke her, but when he did it was like touching molten fire.

He had his revenge when they finally came together. Now it was he who controlled the rhythm, taking her to the brink, then back again; first slow, then fast, then faster still, inspiring an earthy profanity he wouldn’t have believed could come from that sweet mouth. When they arrived together at that moment of mindless oblivion it seemed entirely natural. Her eyes rolled into her head and her lips clamped on his and she began to buck and heave beneath him until he was driven to an equal, stallioned frenzy and their frantic cries mingled.

Afterwards, they lay entangled for a few minutes, still touching and stroking, whispering the endearments and compliments that are the expected aftermath of love in the afternoon, before the ludicrousness of lying naked on a hardwood floor when there was an alternative available struck them and they moved to the bed.

The second time was even better.

When Jamie opened his eyes, he could tell by the fading light that it was still only early evening. He turned to find her on one elbow looking down at him, pert breast peeping out from under the bedcover like an interested spectator. She smiled demurely.

‘Now we should pack.’