hair between my fingers—I can’t remember whether it was to pull him closer or to pull him off—his fingers feel for mine, tenderly at first, but then they are like a vise around my wrist and secure my arm between my hip and the seat of the sofa so that I am trapped by my own weight. His other hand comes for my other wrist and clasps it in a way that allows no resistance.
“Relax,” he murmurs.
His fingers slip over my eyes, light and warm…God, I’m so tired…then they are back on my hips, my thighs, pressing into my flesh, massaging the strands of muscle into uselessness. I rear up when the slow, soft caress of his lips and tongue becomes more insistent; I try to struggle, but he shoves his hands underneath me so that his fingers can clamp my elbows to my sides and my knees are forced apart by his shoulders. So wide open. Panic.
“Giles—I don’t like this!”
“Yes, you do.”
Unfolding me, unfurling me layer by twitching layer, Giles draws nearer to my core.
For what seems like hours I drift into and out of sleep, floating in a warm, slow stream that occasionally runs faster, more turbulently, and I tense up, subconsciously fighting against the undertow. Then I give in. Even when I’m sucked under, I do not drown. Finally I emerge, gasping for breath, climaxing against his mouth with long, soft, fluid contractions.
He waits till I am done; his lips are warm and slow on the damp skin of my belly. Never in my life have I been more deeply sated. Every fiber, every cell in my body is limp with the exhaustion that comes after long and intense stimulation.
“No! Oh, G-Giles, no, I c-can’t!”
“Yes, you can.”
He settles himself between my wet thighs and slides into me. I’m too weak even to scream, although his cock pierces me with a thrust of exquisite torture, as if my whole body were a sheath of nerve endings. I manage to clamp my arms and legs around him, to have something to hold onto, to stop my chest from exploding. He makes no attempts at finesse now; a few minutes, and he lies on top of me, heavy, surely uncomfortable on the sofa that is just long enough for me. With my arms around him and my fingers in his hair, damp at the nape, I think of newborn babies, squidgy with goo, resting on their mothers’ sweat-drenched breasts.
Tears run out of the corners of my eyes, into my ears, onto the cushion.
He lifts his head.
“Is it something Paul French said?” he murmurs.
And now I’m sobbing helplessly, hopelessly, stunned with the loss of him who is still inside me.
Chapter 40
GILES MUST HAVE CARRIED ME over into the bedroom. At least that is where I wake up, and I doubt I would have been able to walk there. My wrist watch on the bedside table says half past seven, but it takes me an age to figure out whether it is morning or evening and whether I’m on Greenwich Mean Time or Eastern Standard Time.
I am alone in my bed, but like a lover in a movie, he has left a note.
Gone to pick up the dogs. Thank you for last night. G.
It takes me another six hours to get up, partly because I feel as if I had swum across the Atlantic instead of flown across, partly because I don’t want to wake up and think about the biggest mess I have ever got myself into. So much do I not want to think about being Giles’s farewell fling before he leaves for University College, London, that all other chores seem attractive.
Karen answers the phone, and I ask her to come over as soon as is convenient. My voice must have sounded ominous, because ten minutes later she knocks on the door.
“Sorry to make you trudge through the slush, Karen, but I suspect you may not want witnesses.”
I prepared myself for a confrontation, but she denies nothing and grows very quiet.
“I’m sorry, Anna.” She plays with the handle of her teacup, and I notice how tired she looks. Christmas is never a relaxing time for mothers.
“Is there more?” I say after a pause. “I had hoped you’d be sorry, but—is that all?”
“You took the key off her? That’s good. Hold onto it, hide it somewhere in the shack, but hide it well.”
“Karen!”
She sighs and hides her eyes behind her hand for a moment.