about it, stay right there, please, hands on the table.’
I laid my palms on it as he crouched down behind me, his hands running up my legs, and I suddenly wished I’d worn stockings instead of an 80-denier pair of opaques from M&S. Mia always wore stockings, claiming that they were more comfortable. I found this a dubious excuse and suspected it was simply another maxim that women told themselves because they thought men preferred stockings to tights. Stockings seemed unpractical – what if one fell down? Say what you like about a thick pair of opaques but at least they kept your bits warm.
Rory didn’t seem to mind the tights. He peeled them down with my knickers and I lifted each foot in turn so he could remove them. At the warm sensation of his hands on my bare skin, I dropped my head back and sighed. Then he stood, running his hands back up my legs as he did, one thumb brushing between them when they reached the top.
Next, pressing his erection into me, he reached around my waist and tugged the drawstring of my Homer Simpson dress.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I whispered. There was a mirror above the table decorated with wedding invitations and a newborn baby card which announced that Araminta had been born three weeks earlier. I couldn’t concentrate on sex while looking at a photograph of little Araminta in a woolly hat.
Plus, now my dress was untied at the waist it hung around my body like a Victorian nightie. I wanted to pull it over my head and feel Rory’s skin against me again. I wanted his hands and his mouth over every bit of my body. And I wanted to touch him. I felt lazy standing there, my feet on the cold floor, my hands on the table, as if I wasn’t pulling my weight.
‘We’re staying here,’ Rory replied, pulling the skirt of my dress up again so his hands could feel underneath it, running over my hips and up to my bra. He yanked the cups aside and pinched my nipples hard, making me gasp. As he pinched, I instinctively pushed my bottom out into his groin. OK, maybe the hall was all right for a moment. I just wouldn’t look at Araminta.
Rory dropped one hand back down to between my legs, lightly brushing the tips of his fingers back and forth along the skin there. I groaned, desperate for him to rub me harder and for this to be more of a joint activity. I reached behind to the crotch of his trousers and tried to undo the button at the top but, one-handed, facing away from him, it was impossible. Luckily, his hand found mine and he undid his flies so I could take hold of his penis. Making a circle with my fist, I lightly traced my fingers up and down it.
‘Harder,’ he moaned into my hair.
How hard? I was uncertain. It seemed a delicate thing, a penis. I didn’t want to pull on it as if I was ringing a church bell. I tightened the grip of my thumb and forefinger and Rory sighed again into my hair, which I took as a good sign.
‘Harder,’ he urged so I made the circle of my fingers smaller yet again. Could one break a penis? Please can I not break this, I thought, as I moved my hand up and down. It would be just my luck to get a boyfriend and then immediately snap his most precious part.
After a few moments, Rory moved my hand off him, lifted up my dress and pushed into me. It felt rough at first, so I shifted slightly, leaning further forwards on the table, his hands on my hips, the folds of my dress halfway up my back. This angle was better, and Rory sped up, back and forth, back and forth until the table was banging on the wall in front of it in time with his thrusts and my necklace was swinging from my neck like a pendulum.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ he started repeating, faster and faster until his body froze, glued to mine, suspended in the moment. ‘COWABUNGAAAAA!’ he groaned into my shoulder as we both remained rooted in place, my body bent at a right angle so my head was resting on my arms.
The trouble was, there never seemed to be a good moment to broach this.
Ruby, Mia and I were all at home the following night.