Yearning (9 page)

He began to talk. She couldn’t concentrate, but it didn’t seem to matter. He filled the gleaming room with a rush of ordinary words. She listened and watched. At ease, he dropped his track suit pants and underwear to the floor. She looked at her feet, shuffling from one to the other. His words kept coming, filling up her ears until they got all tangled up and stopped making any sense.

She heard him pull the shower curtain across and the sound of water spattering against the tiles. When she looked up again she could see the sway of his back through a narrow gap in the curtain. He was facing away from her. She watched, her heart pounding.

Soap suds slid over the arc of his buttocks. Steam clouded the air. He was close enough to touch, but she
wouldn’t dare. Couldn’t dare. Silently she named his muscles as he washed them – triceps, biceps, trapezius, buttocks, hamstrings, calves.

The hiss of the shower was suddenly cut off. He was careful as he stepped out, discreet. He dried himself, still talking, and she realised she was staring at him with her mouth open. She snapped her jaw shut. He still had his back to her as he wrapped a towel around his middle and turned to face her.

His words halted at the sight of her lingering at the threshold of his bathroom. Here she stood, the author of the passionate letters stowed carefully in his bedside drawer. The letters he read when he couldn’t sleep, the words that had drawn him in and held him in a blind, sexual stupor for days. The reality of who she was faded in the memory of those words. It no longer mattered that she was only sixteen. It no longer mattered that she was his student. Looking at her now he saw she wanted this as much as he did. He felt the familiar pull in his groin and stepped towards her. She looked up into his face.

Her pupils were full and round and she was breathing hard, the signs of arousal and anticipation coursing through her. He savoured a powerful desire to take her. He wanted to feel her words speak to him through her body. He took her hand and led her through the door and into his bedroom at the back of the house.

Slowly he pulled her to him. He felt her tense and hesitate at his touch. She began to pull away.

‘Do you think . . . This isn’t . . . I . . . ’ she stuttered.

He reached out and drew her gently towards him, hushing her quiet, reassuring her with soft words. Once
in his arms she covered her face with her hands. He pulled them away and rested an index finger lightly on her trembling lips, pulling her close so that their hips nestled together and his breath brushed her face.

‘Don’t move,’ he whispered. As he stroked her hair and back, she began to relax. ‘You’ve woken something in me and I want to show it to you.’

He threaded his fingers gently through the hair at her temples and drew her face toward his. Her lips parted as he bent to kiss her. Softness like she had never imagined. He wasn’t rough or callous or muscular as he was in her fantasies, but warm and pliant, and she yielded immediately. His moustache tickled her upper lip, sending tingles over her skin.

His kisses were full of a juicy intensity, his attention focused on her inner lips and tongue. His every movement, his voice, the feel of his breath on her skin, his quiet words, lulled and pacified her. She melted into a soft, sensuous sensation. It was like dozing in the sun with a warm breeze dancing on her skin.

His hands explored her body and she allowed his deft fingers to roam under her skirt and over her flesh. He seemed to know just where and how to touch. She felt goose bumps rise and fall away to a delicious quiver. Feelings grew, ripened and burst in her, filling her with a rich lustfulness.

She felt the edge of his oval bed at the back of her knees and wavered. He was experienced and she knew nothing. Would she disappoint him? She wished she knew what to do. She clung to his shoulders and pressed her lips to his chest, his chest hair brushing her cheek. She nuzzled into
him, inhaling his fresh, manly scent and felt the familiar tightening between her legs. She had no choice but to hand herself over to him, let him guide her, let him take her for his own.

The room filled with pale blue twilight. A slender white disc of moon peeped at them from the corner of the window. The only sound was the wind moaning softly around the house. Hardly daring to move, she waited as he pressed his desire to her flesh. His hands and eyes explored, searched for and found her. Like a branding iron he imprinted himself upon her skin, writing his name to private places, where it would be forever hidden but never forgotten.

He allowed her to wriggle out of her clothes, taking a little time to gaze at her polar white skin. He was driven now, filled with the familiar urgency. He had to have her. He had to bring what she had created for them out of the shadows.

He sat her down on the edge of his bed and separated her knees. She bit her lip as he knelt before her, unsure of what was coming. He smiled before he ducked his head and gently nibbled and licked the inner secret of her thighs. At the touch of his tongue to her clitoris she threw her head back and the room filled with her gasp. She squirmed with shock and pleasure, surprised by the intensity of it. She was aware of the strange prickling of his beard against her virgin skin and a funny, wobbly fear in her stomach that made her weak. She wanted to leap away and at the same time wrap herself around him.

He held her hips tightly to keep her from moving. He wanted her still, so she could feel the power in him.
He wanted her motionless and ecstatic. She began to whimper and moan, the sweet, youthful briny scent of her overwhelming him. Her surprise at every new touch filled him with a bewildering pleasure. He lapped at her, slaking a thirst that had grown in him since the letters had begun to arrive. Sounds evaporated from her, breath and sighs combining to a siren song that almost drove him mad. He thought he’d explored the limits of desire in his life, but now those limits stretched and he discovered an unknown, almost savage passion within.

She began to writhe, her head tossing from side to back, her breath beating and singing. She surged under him like the sea, rushed to him like a tide. Rising to his feet he pushed her gently back onto the bed and climbed over her. Looking into her face, his gaze locked with hers and he saw fear pass behind her half-open eyes. With monumental effort he forced himself to slow down.

He stroked her hair, kissed her eyelids and nose. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you, I promise.’ His fingers slipped through the tendrils of her hair. He steadied himself on one elbow while massaging her with the other, long, slow strokes from the roots of her hairline, down the sweep of her neck and over her shoulders to the tiny curve of her breasts. Gently he nuzzled her nipples, teasing them with his tongue. She heaved beneath him, rising and falling with her breath.

‘We can stop here if you want,’ he murmured, ‘No need to go any further if you don’t want to.’ His fingers found the wetness between her legs and he smoothed it over her skin, coating her in her own juices.

Silently she shook her head. Oh, the perfect kindness
of him, the gentleness of him. This man who was doing these things to her, the man she had watched, the one she had longed for all these long months. She could hardly believe that he was really touching her, making her feel so . . . No. She couldn’t go back now. She didn’t want to disappoint him and, besides, she didn’t know
how
to stop. The compulsion to go on rose up in her like an adder, rose up from the base of her spine and wound around her throat so tightly all she could do was pant. Her mouth was dry and she was desperate for him.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t stop.’

He bent to kiss her again, his fingers exploring the softness of her pubic hair. It was sparse and light, so different from the women he’d known. She pushed against his hand, open and inviting. His fingers were covered in her moisture. She smelled delicious, new. His lips explored her barely touched skin, her tiny pink nipples peaking in his mouth. Her desire consumed him. How he wanted her now. She’d said yes. He had to take her. There was no turning back.

She whined and her fingers tore at his buttocks, pleading with him to enter her. He stretched over to a side drawer and withdrew a small square of plastic which he tore open with his teeth. The very action made her vagina clench with anticipation. She kept her gaze locked on his as she waited for him, knowing what was coming, barely able to contain her excitement.

He reached down between her legs and slid a slender finger inside her. She yelped, with pleasure or pain he couldn’t tell. Gently he circled the tight space within, spreading her swollen flesh apart, preparing her. He slid
his finger out and shifted a little so that the tip of his penis pressed against her slippery opening. Her eyes were closed, her mouth wide and gasping. With measured, tiny movements he inched himself in, patiently nudging her open, as though she were as fragile as glass, afraid if he moved too quickly she might splinter and break apart beneath him.

The sensation of his cock inside her, the size of him, the heat of him, turned her breath song guttural. Pain, sharp as he entered her, faded when he stilled. She felt herself being stretched, deliciously widened to accommodate his girth. Every few moments she felt him sink deeper then pause. Each tender thrust bought a fearful bite inside that made her wince, followed by a wave of intense warmth. Afraid to move she waited, holding her breath, all her attention focused on the sensation of fullness between her legs.

She groaned loudly and he had to resist an exquisite urge to pierce her. He felt her pulsing around his crown, her muscles instinctively drawing him deeper inside her, and it took all his powers of self-control to wait for her to be ready for him. She was so gloriously taut. He swallowed hard and shifted his mind away from the slow torture of entering her, staving off the orgasm that threatened to thunder through him at any moment.

Was it minutes or seconds – he couldn’t tell – before she held all of him in a sleek but tight embrace? By the way she was scrunching up her nose and grunting he could tell she was balancing on a knife edge of sexual pleasure and physical pain. He rested inside her and released a deep sigh. The firm grip of her around his cock was more than he could bear. He fought back an impulse
to start pounding her, focusing instead on her delirious face, watching her struggle with the conflicting sensations moving through her.

Looking at her now he saw how she gave herself to him. She was splayed, waiting, moaning, her flawless skin flushed blood red. His touch seemed to glow on her skin in rivers of shining silver. The sound of her filled his ears, her voice resonating with longing. She was so beautiful her name caught in his throat.

How long had they lain, still and connected? She couldn’t tell. All she knew now was that she wanted to feel him moving inside her. She strained against the bed as she pushed her hips up to meet his. God, the shock of him; his hardness forcing her apart; the surprise of the softness that was his pubic hair tangling with hers; the firm press of his pubic bone against hers; it all excited her more than she could ever have imagined.

Swallowing hard he gradually drew away from her, only to return with the same calculated slowness. The rush of fluid that tumbled so freely from her seemed to fill the room with a dense humidity. The moon shone across her face, sheened with sweat, the light spilling over her lips and long neck. Her eyes were shut fast and he sensed she was lost, given over to something larger than them both. With each thrust he drove further into her, swaying with her, rocking back and forth, sinking deeper and deeper into the moment. He sensed a quiet, open space waiting beneath them and, with all his focus on her inner spaces, he propelled them towards it.

A quiet descended upon the room. Time hesitated, taking a slow breath in. He floated, light, ethereal. Sounds
became distant as a sacred silence filled him. The sound of the wind outside became the sound of his breath – Oh God. Oh God. Oh God – till he was blinded by a pleasure so intense it was almost painful. Her high-pitched shouts broke through to him in waves and his entire body shuddered, his toes tensing and cheeks quivering. He cried out, his body drowning, breathless.

As the moment passed he gradually became aware of the bed, the window and moonlight. Her skin and hair and tightly closed eyes lay before him like a luminous landscape. Her body seethed beneath him. She was whimpering and kissing his shoulder and neck. It was then, as his senses returned to him, that he felt hot tracks of tears on his cheeks.

He swiftly brushed the wetness away with the back of his hand and rolled away from her onto his back. She lay beside him catching her breath, delirious in the wake of orgasm. He pulled her to him his senses elevated, skin tingling, and kissed her long and deeply. He was at peace, drifting in a wordless, timeless place.

She gazed out at the crystal-studded sky through the window above the bed. White sheets glowed against the brown of his skin. She rested in the delicious curve of his bicep, the softness of his tongue, the musky sweetness of him. If she could keep the world out for long enough this might be heaven. Swaying her hips gently against him, she crooned. His fingers traced the shape of her lips. She sighed, watching the hairs on his chest bend with her breath. The awe of this perfect place, this giddy feeling of bliss, it was nothing like she’d expected. She wanted to drift here forever, her head cradled in his shoulder, his free
hand wandering over her skin. In this moment she was satisfied, but still longed for more and more of him.

She stretched to look up at him. His dark eyes were distant and reflective. ‘That was so beautiful,’ she murmured into his ear, nibbling at the long lobe.

He didn’t turn to look at her. ‘Mmm. It was.’

She wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled herself tightly to him, strapping herself to his side like a lifeboat.

Uncomfortable, he lay very still.

‘I wasn’t sure . . . ’ her voice trailed as she lost her words to the sudden awareness of the touch of his skin against her own. How was she to tell him about this boiling thing inside her, this enormous glut of love that had grown within and pushed her across his driveway that afternoon? ‘ . . . I wasn’t sure if you knew it was me. Who wrote the letters.’ She blushed, ashamed of her own silliness. She held her breath in the wake of his long silence, waiting for his reply.