Sleepless Nights

by Anne Weale

  In Sarah’s present state of mind, a bowl of plain boiled rice would have been acceptable. She didn’t care what lunch was like. What came afterwards was all she could think about. If he had said, ‘Let’s forget lunch,’ she would have agreed.

  Roger came out of a room leading off the main room. Seeing them, he came over. ‘Let me buy you a drink. It’s the least I can do when you’ve been so helpful.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve already ordered. Some other time perhaps.’ Without being overtly uncivil, Neal’s tone managed to convey that they wanted to be on their own.

  To Sarah’s relief Roger got the message. ‘This evening perhaps.’ He moved away to join the group.

  ‘And perhaps not,’ Neal said softly. With a silent eyesignal, he brought the manager over and spoke to him in Nepali. When their food came, a bottle of white wine came with it.

  The main course, a mixture of fried rice and vegetables, reminded him of the time when one of his sisters, then twelve, had stayed with a friend whose mother was a diabolical cook. The good manners instilled by their parents had made Jenny Kennedy feel obliged to force down soggy sprouts, boiled parsnips and watery spinach. When she came home and described this ordeal, her father had rewarded her with a handsome tip to be spent in the place where she spent all her pocket money, a bookshop.

  This led on to other anecdotes from Kennedy family life and Sarah knew it would have been normal and natural to reciprocate with stories about her own family. But there weren’t any. She had been an only child, born late to middle-aged parents, one with no sense of humour and the other afraid to express it.

  It wasn’t until she had met Naomi that Sarah had realised she, too, had been repressing a natural inclination to see the funny side of things.

  Seeking a conversational substitute, she told Neal about searching for his column on the Internet and asked him about the paper and the mechanics of his job.

  Answering Sarah’s questions, Neal wondered if it had been idle curiosity or a suspicion that he might not be telling the truth that had prompted her to visit one of Kathmandu’s cybershops and verify that he was who he said he was.

  The irony of that being that it wasn’t he who was being devious but Sarah herself. The only person in her life she had mentioned was her friend and business partner Naomi. All the others, and there had to be others, were a mystery. It could be that she was an orphan, brought up in circumstances she preferred to forget, and that her adult relationships had been similarly unhappy. But somehow he didn’t think so.

  In every way, except in her curious silence about her domestic background, she came over as a normal, welladjusted person with none of the tell-tale signs shown by disturbed personalities.

  He wondered if she was using a contraceptive pill and had the feeling she wasn’t. He didn’t know how old she was but could make a fairly accurate guess and a lot of women in her age group were beginning to worry about long-term use of pills and turn to other methods. Either way it didn’t matter. He had seen too much of the consequences of unsafe sex ever to risk it himself.

  Perhaps later, after they had made love, she would satisfy his curiosity about her.

  As the painters finished their meal and either drifted back to their easels or lingered over their coffee, Neal said, ‘I’ll just check on Maureen. She may not feel like eating yet, but it’s important she takes plenty of fluids. Shan’t be long.’

  Sarah watched him mounting the staircase until only his long legs were visible and then only his trekking boots. When they had disappeared, she sat drinking the last of the wine. They had finished the bottle between them, but it hadn’t been potent enough to give her the light-headed feeling she sometimes had when she and Naomi shared a bottle of good wine. Her mind had never felt clearer. She knew she was on the brink of an experience that would change her life for ever even if it had no lasting impact on his.

  By the time Neal came down she had finished her wine and was waiting for him near the door.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Sleeping. I didn’t wake her. I’ve been talking to Delia outside their room. She’s a retired speech therapist...an interesting woman.’

  How different from Roger’s attitude, thought Sarah. Neal found out about people before he stuck patronising labels on them.

  The painters were gathered round Roger who was giving a demo. Neal took Sarah’s hand and they walked back towards their rooms. But on the way to the annexe he veered off towards the path by which they had entered the grounds.

  ‘A little stroll before we siesta...OK?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ she agreed.

  But she couldn’t help feeling piqued that now, when there were no more impediments, he didn’t seem as eager as she to consummate their relationship.

  Hand in hand but not talking they went down the path into the tunnel of greenness where the branches of the surrounding trees formed a canopy. Suddenly Neal halted, pulling her into his arms and kissing her with an ardour that made nonsense of the idea that he wasn’t impatient.

  ‘Change of plan,’ he said huskily, some moments later.

  ‘We have all tomorrow to explore. Right now...’

  Taking her hand again, he began to retrace their steps at a fast stride. Almost running to keep up with him, her lips burning from the heat of his kiss, her heart beating wildly even without the exertion of being hurried uphill at this altitude, Sarah had a moment of déjà vu, that peculiar sensation of being in a new situation yet feeling it wasn’f the first time that it had happened.

  It lasted only a few seconds and there wasn’t time to puzzle it out because very soon they were back at the annexe.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ Neal asked.

  ‘Yours,’ she said breathlessly.

  With the door unlocked and pushed open, he ushered her in, then relocked it. Two strides had him drawing the curtains across the wide window.

  Oh, God, this is it! thought Sarah, in last-moment panic.

  But then she was back in his arnns, the irrational alarm replaced by the lovely sensation of being held close to a powerful male body, its latent strength under the control of someone she knew would never use it against her.

  At some point in those first feverish kisses he scooped her off her feet and seconds later she was cradled on his lap on one of the beds.

  ‘Mm...you smell delicious,’ he murmured, nuzzling her neck.

  ‘You too.’ Her hands were enjoying the freedom to explore the structure of his broad shoulders.

  ‘But you have too many clothes on.’ He began to get rid of them, starting with her leather belt, opening the buckle and pulling it through the loops on her trousers. Then he unbuttoned the waistband and pulled down the zip, but only to tug her shirt free. He had stopped kissing her and she opened her eyes and watched as he dealt with the buttons on her shirt.

  This morning she had decided to replace her sports bra and cotton briefs with a set of more glamorous underpinnings Naomi had insisted she must bring with her ‘in case’.

  That contingency was happening at this very moment.

  ‘This is pretty.’ He touched the flowery georgette of the chain-store camisole, his hand caressing her midriff and then sliding higher to cover one of her breasts. The warmth of his palm through two thin layers of semitransparent fabric made Sarah draw in her breath.

  All the inhibitions she had expected to have evaporated in the urgency of her longing to feel his hands on her bare skin. She sat up and shrugged off her shirt, tossing it aside. Then she grabbed the hem of the camisole and pulled it over her head. Finally she reached behind her and unclipped the georgette bra.

  As she freed her arms from the loosened straps, she did have a moment of misgiving. What if, when he saw her naked, her body didn’t appeal to him? She wasn’t a twentysomething with a gorgeous big bouncy bosom to die for. Her breasts were still firm but only 34B.

  ‘Lovely...I knew they would be.’

  As Sarah sighed with relief, Neal looked at and touched and taste
d her pulsating flesh as if he had never been offered anything more pleasing.

  It was difficult to speak, even to breathe, while he was stroking and nibbling, but she managed to gasp, ‘I want to touch your chest.’

  Reluctantly he stopped what he was doing and leaned back on his hands. ‘I’m all yours.’

  Still perched on his lap, she slipped the tongue of his braided belt through the buckle but left the belt in the loops of his pants. They were fastened by a metal press stud she found it hard to undo. Supporting his weight on one arm, Neal opened the stud for her. She could feel his gaze flickering over her nudity as she freed his shirt and tackled buttons. When they were all undone, she unwrapped him like a surprise parcel, exposing the most beautiful male chest she had ever seen, or at least the one most appealing to her personal taste.

  Instead of being hairy, Neal’s skin was smooth and lightly tanned. The first sign of hair began below his navel. His chest, his ribs and the upper part of his belly were as inviting as a polished wood sculpture. Starting from his collarbones, she ran her hands slowly down his body, loving the taut sleek feel of him.

  She was repeating the caress, discovering a depth of sensuality she hadn’t realised she had, when Neal straightened to take off his shirt. Then he pressed her against himself in the first intimate contact of their half-naked bodies.

  ‘Mm...’ The sound she made was like a cat’s purr of pleasure.

  He answered it with a low growl from somewhere deep in his throat and that made her feel like laughing and, an instant later, like crying. Because this was what she had once had, and lost, and never found again.

  ‘We’ve forgotten something,’ Neal murmured, his lips exploring the curve between her neck and her shoulder, his hands fondling her waist.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve still got our boots on.’

  ‘Oh.’ She saw what he meant. They couldn’t take off their trousers until they had shucked their boots. ‘Well, in that case...’ She slid off his lap onto the bed alongside him and bent to unfasten her laces.

  ‘I like your back.’ She felt his lips trailing a kiss down her spine. ‘But it’s your front I’m crazy about.’ From either side of her a warm hand burrowed under her bent body to find and cup her breasts.

  ‘How can I concentrate when you’re doing that?’ she protested. ‘What about your boots?’

  He laughed and let her go. Although she had started first, his boots were off before hers. He stood up, unzipped his trousers and took them off, to be followed by his underpants. She was aware of all this without looking up from her task. When, her feet bare, she straightened, he was stretched on the other twin bed, waiting for her to join him.

  As Sarah rose to step out of her pants, she heard footsteps on the veranda.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she breathed in dismay.

  But whoever it was wasn’t about to disturb them. The footsteps passed on to one of the rooms beyond theirs.

  ‘New arrivals perhaps.’ Neal held out his arms to her.

  Quickly she whipped off the lace-trimmed micro briefs, put one knee on the edge of the bed and sank down to lie against him, aware without actually looking that he was ready to take her.

  But it seemed he knew more about women than any of her previous lovers. Without any sign of impatience, he began to kiss her again, first her mouth and then her body. The touch of his lips and tongue on all her most sensitive places was mind-bending. She found herself gripping the sides of the mattress, her body arching with delight as his hands roved over her body with a tender mastery that made her his willing slave.

  Very soon she had to use one of her own hands to muffle the whimpers of pleasure she couldn’t repress.

  ‘Oh, please...you must stop...L..oh, God!’

  The world blacked out, leaving nothing but an exquisite sensation tingling through her entire nervous system.

  It was still there, but dying down, when she felt him slide smoothly inside her as if their bodies had joined many times before.

  Sarah opened her eyes to see Neal swinging off the bed. She had no time to admire his long brown back and the lighter skin of his sexy male backside before he had disappeared, heading for the bathroom.

  Had she been asleep, or merely in a deep torpor induced by being wholly fulfilled for the first and only time in her life? ?

  How come he made love so brilliantly? she wondered. Was it a gift some men had? Or did it come from much practice? Either way it wasn’t important. All that mattered was what he had given her: a feeling of completeness that had always been lacking, as if some vital part of her was missing. Now, at long last, she knew that it wasn’t.

  Neal reappeared, still naked, but not to return to her arms. Pulling the quilt off the other bed, he draped it over the room’s only easy chair. Then he came to where she was lying, scooped her into his arms and carried her to the chair, folding the quilt round her.

  ‘What’s this in aid of?’ she asked.

  ‘To keep you warm while I rearrange the furniture. A single bed’s too confining.’

  She watched him remove the night table from between the twin beds and push them together. Then he removed all the bedclothes, spread the other quilt across both beds to cover the join and replaced the bedclothes, overlapping the sheets and blankets at the centre.

  Watching the movements of his splendid body with its powerful but not over-developed muscles, Sarah felt an anticipatory frisson at the thought of spending the night with him.

  She wasn’t expecting him to say, ‘Right: now let’s start again... without any restrictions.’

  What did he mean by that?

  ‘Now?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘No better time than the present.’ His eyes were glinting with laughter and more than a hint of devilment.

  Aware that knowing all the theory wasn’t the same as having hands-on experience, she stayed where she was, reminded of the time at school when she had been dared to jump off the swimming pool’s top board and had lost her nerve and chickened out.

  Neal came to the chair and put his hands on the arms, leaning over her. When he’d first returned to the bedroom his body had been quiescent. Now he was strongly aroused.

  Bending still lower, he gave her a long, lingering, deeply sensual kiss. Before it ended, she knew that this time she wasn’t going to lose her nerve. Wherever he led, she would go. The quilt fell away as she put arms round his neck and rose with him as he straightened, pressing herself against him.

  They made love, dozed in each other’s arms, made love again and slept. When Neal woke her by kissing her eyelids, the dimness of the room told her it was early evening.

  ‘Let’s take a shower. I’ll go and run the hot water in case it takes time to come through.’

  A few moments later she heard the water running and Neal whistling like a man without a care in the world. Too contented and lazy to move, she lay thinking that it felt as if they had been making love for years, not just a few hours. Now they were going to shower together, an experience she expected to be a lot more exciting than the solitary baths she was used to.

  ‘I hate to tell you this, sweet thing, but I think there’s a problem with the boiler. The water’s not hotting up.’ Neal stood at the foot of the beds. ‘So we’re going to have to be brave.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting a cold shower?’ she protested.

  ‘We don’t have much choice. Come on: it will only be hell for the first thirty seconds.’

  ‘Maybe the water is running hot in my room.’

  ‘Not a hope. This whole block is served by the same pipes. Out you come.’ He whipped back the bedclothes.

  ‘Neal! I don’t want a cold shower. You can’t force me to have one.’

  ‘No force required...just a little gentle persuasion.’

  He pulled her onto her feet, spun her round and pulled her against him, her shoulder blades to his chest. A hand on the back of her head, quite gently he pressed it down and put his teeth to her neck, lightly biting
the nape.

  Like many other things he had done to her this afternoon, it sent a primitive ripple of pleasure through her. Why the feel of his teeth delicately clenching and unclenching should have this effect she didn’t know. But it did and when, at the same time, he started caressing her breasts, her knees went weak.

  ‘This isn’t fair,’ she muttered.

  Neal tipped her head back to rest on his shoulder. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ He applied his teeth to the lobe of her ear, his hand sliding down her body to the cluster of tawny curls which betrayed that she wasn’t a natural ash blonde.

  Even to have his hand near the source of her ecstasy made Sarah’s defences crumble. How, after living like a nun for so long, she had now, in one afternoon, developed this insatiable need, was a mystery she couldn’t rationalise. She only knew that it was so. In silent surrender, she let him walk her to the shower.

  Before he turned on the water, Neal turned her to face him. ‘It won’t be as bad as you imagine,’ he murmured, close to her ear.

  He was right: it wasn’t. For fifteen, perhaps thirty seconds it was like needles of ice, and then the agony was over and it was strangely exhilarating to be under the downpour of water with this man who was now her lover.

  Taking a shower with Neal was an erotic game. First he shampooed her hair, the firm massage of his fingers on her scalp followed by a gentler, more sensuous massage of her entire body with handfuls of shower gel. Then she had to lather his body while he was washing his hair. Finally they both rinsed off under another deluge of water which now seemed invigorating rather than freezing.

  ‘Too bad they don’t have decent towels. I’d like to wrap you up in a king-size bath sheet, but I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with this,’ he said, handing her the towel provided.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I can dry on a face cloth.’

  To her amazement, he could. By the time she was dry, he was too.

  Sarah dressed and went back to her room to change her shirt and put on some make-up. At Naomi’s insistence she’d had her eyelashes dyed for the trip. She only needed a touch of eye shadow and some lipstick. While she was putting on earrings, she heard voices further down the veranda and then footsteps and a man speaking what sounded like French. As they passed her room a woman answered him. Then the sound of their conversation died away as they headed for the main house.