would sometimes get me to read back our lecture notes in the voice while we were revising.
Joshua’s vibrating with laughter. I get down the page best I can, but I’m starting to laugh too. I manage a few more sentences before I lose it and we both shake with silly hysterics for a good thirty seconds until Joshua reaches out and pulls me on top of him, and the book slides to the floor. We laugh into one another’s mouths as we kiss. It’s a strange moment of total and utter happiness. For two seconds, I’m laughing as I kiss a very nice man who seems to like me and get my weird. It’s enough. For me, at least. One of life’s slivers of brilliant moments – the sort you wish you could suspend and bathe in. I’m lost in the connection throbbing between two humans. But then Joshua groans into my mouth. His hands slide up the back of my dress. The mood shifts. I can sense he’s been activated. A surge of panic gurgles in my throat. Suddenly all I can smell is the acrid scent of the fajitas we are supposed to have forgotten about. I feel like prey … like Joshua is gone. The bits of him that make him reasonable and trustworthy shut down with the power of his lust. A thousand small birds take flight in my stomach, flap through my limbs, and Joshua moans again.
But Gretel wouldn’t feel like this. She’d be going with the flow. She’d be kissing back. Fajitas? What fajitas? She’s just so totally lost in the moment. She’s so like that with moments and getting lost in them. She enjoys the impact she has on men. It makes her feel strong, rather than vulnerable.
And I’m Gretel now so I push my panic down and I kiss back. I lace my hands around Joshua’s head, threading his hair between the webs of my fingers, relaxing my body into his. If we could just stay kissing long enough, even April could probably get into this. If he could just stroke my face like he loves me, and take his time, and look at me adoringly, and kiss my neck for at least ten to fifteen minutes and ensure I feel totally comfortable and relaxed and ready then we could have incredible … oh, hang on, he’s pulling me up off the sofa and into his room.
We stumble around, trying to find our way to his double bed – still attached by our groaning mouths. I open my eyes, keen to see what his room’s like. There’s a curious painting of Paris hanging over the bed.
‘You’re so sexy,’ Joshua mutters.
‘I know.’ It seems the sort of confident thing Gretel would say. And it works because he groans again as we fall back onto his bed with freshly made sheets. He lands on top of me, pinning me down, tongue fat and heavy and plunging into my mouth. I twist my head so he’s kissing my neck, and he takes the hint and stays there for a good while. I’m able to find peace in the moment again, in how good his lips feel on my skin. I close my eyes, to hone in on the blissful sensation. If I had the money, and if it wasn’t strange, I would totally just hire someone to come and kiss my neck for ten minutes every day. That is really strange actually. But it feels so good. I let out a sigh, and I don’t know if it was April or Gretel, but it reactivates Joshua, and, typically, rather than thinking ‘she’s sighing because this is really enjoyable, so it makes sense for me to carry on doing exactly what I’m doing,’ he instead thinks ‘hmm, that sigh has really turned me on, let me act on that and go back to what I want out of this foreplay.’ So he stops kissing my neck and starts fumbling to take off my dress. I take a deep breath in the moment the fabric’s pulled over my head, so I’m able to smile up at him when my head reappears. He grins back, his eyes lingering over my body, hungrily drinking me in. Then he kisses me with renewed vigour, taking my hand and guiding it to his erection in his jeans.
Clothes come off.
Mouths emit moans.
Skin finds skin.
I don’t even know this man’s favourite colour and yet he’s unwrapping a condom. While he is faffing about