‘What do you mean, you’re off? We’re here to have a good time, aren’t we?’
‘Too right we are. But not in the same airspace.’ Marcus rolled his eyes. It made me feel like his younger, dorkish brother rather than the other way round. ‘You’re on your own, Jake,’ he continued, and glanced at my new trousers and shirt with a look of approval. ‘Cut loose, explore. Do your own thing – you’re dressed for it.’
‘My God, you approve?’ I was shocked. Football matches, party invitations, enthusiasm for my clothes: this was breaking new ground.
‘Sure. Why not?’ He looked at my jacket. ‘I thought you were going to buy a new one.’
‘I was. But I was persuaded this one has a few miles left on the hip, cool and trendy clock.’
‘Shame. I was going to nab it, otherwise. I bags first refusal when you go back to wearing boring suits.’
‘Bags all you like, but don’t hold your breath. Experts in the trade say this jacket is about as able as it gets.’ And for a fashion dropout like me, I thought, that’s like being a born-again Christian.
‘Yeah, right.’ He turned away, barely able to resist flapping his hand as if telling me to get lost before anyone noticed we’d arrived together. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to find this new guy and see if I can squeeze some finance out of him. See you tomorrow.’
‘At home?’
‘Of course at home.’ He laughed, suddenly, sensing my nerves. ‘You haven’t forgotten how it works, have you?’
I had, actually. There was I, advanced in mind if not entirely in age, like a novice on his first day out from the monastery being offered the freedom of the city. Did I simply charge in, spreading bonhomie and conversation like confetti, or was it cool to slide in and absorb the atmosphere before striking up some idle chit-chat with the first person I saw looking as out of place as I did?
I nearly turned around and went home. I may have been dressed with the unconditional approval of Fred and his boys in Regent Street, but I was still the same person inside and consequently didn’t feel right. If it hadn’t been for Marcus eyeing my clothes the way he had, I would have bolted for the nearest pub and made do with a stiff drink before I caught a bus back.
Moments later I saw Marcus watching me from a downstairs window and decided I couldn’t let him down. Not without trying, anyway. So with family honour in mind and feeling supremely out of place, I trudged across the threshold and into a world I’d forgotten existed.
The music was loud enough to break eggs.
As I pushed my way through the crowd, I nearly lost it again, fighting a desire to turn and run. Then I saw Marcus through a doorway raising a can of lager in my direction. He was standing in the shadow of a towering, thickset, physical-looking character in a rugby shirt with a face like a punch-bag. I wondered if that was his investor. I waved back and went in search of the kitchen.
As any seasoned partygoer and fan of Jona Lewie knows, in the kitchen at parties is where it all happens.
After helping myself to a drink or two and listening to three blokes with yah-yah accents dishing the sleaze on some unsuspecting acquaintance, I decided to mingle before I lost whatever bottle I’d come in with. I tried three vague and unsuccessful attempts at conversation, repelled one obvious gay youth and finally wound up in what looked like a study, which was as far from the head-thumping music as I could get without being in the street.
‘You look bored. Aren’t you having a good time?’ I spun round from examining the contents of a bookcase and found myself looking at a pretty woman with long, frizzy ginger hair. She had pale skin and the barest trace of make-up, and was wearing a dark green, floaty number which looked as if it was made of silk.
‘No, not really,’ I said, and felt the temperature of the room zoom up a few notches. Underneath the green dress, which was clinging to parts of her body like a second skin, was a disturbing amount of detail I was trying hard not to notice. And it had been a long time since anyone as attractive as this had asked me whether I was having a good time or not.
‘I’m Jane,’ she said, and offered me a slim hand with green fingernails to complement the fabric of her dress. Her skin was cool and soft.
‘Jake,’ I replied, thinking, was it really this easy? It never used to be, and I looked around in case she was confusing me with someone else. Experience had taught me long ago that rarely does the best-looking woman at a party come up and introduce themselves unless they are (a) smashed out of their brains (b) desperate (c) trying to score a point off their boyfriend who will shortly come over and beat you to a pulp or (d) short-sighted to the point of blindness. ‘Sorry – I always go through bookcases when I’m anywhere strange. Terrible habit.’
‘Not at all,’ she said winningly. ‘I do the same. I’ve been through this one already. Nothing much to write home about, I’m afraid.’ She drained a glass of what looked like white wine, and I tried not to stare as the dress slithered over the outline of her nipples and down the gentle swell of her tummy. God, I couldn’t recall being as aware as this, so close to a woman for… how long? Years. Decades, almost.
‘Can I?’ I nodded towards her glass, assuming a veneer of cool. A pity my voice ruined it by coming out as a squeak.
‘I’d love some.’ Her voice was deep, even husky, and with a hint of the Surrey belt about it. Someone’s wife? Girlfriend? Significant other? I wondered what she was doing there. And who she was with. ‘Dry white, if they have any left.’
I dived into the kitchen, brushed aside the three yah-yahs shouting at each other, slammed in another two glasses of white and was back alongside Jane before the bubbles had time to settle. Unseemly haste, but I blame it on history; I could still remember the pain of what it was like going to replenish someone’s glass, someone I thought I’d clicked with, only to find on my return that some other oily git had slipped in while I was gone. In circumstances like that, I’d found, there were no second chances.
‘You don’t hang about, do you?’ She smiled over the rim of her glass with eyes a similar colour to the dress.
‘I used to be a waiter,’ I said casually, and made a throwaway gesture which pitched half the wine in my glass onto a highly-polished occasional table. If she noticed, she gave no sign and I instantly loved her for it.
‘Really?’
‘No. I made that up.’
She nodded and studied my face for a few seconds, which I found disconcerting. I wasn’t sure I shouldn’t whinny and paw the ground.
‘How old are you, Jake?’ she asked.
And here, I thought, is where it all goes downhill. She’s already decided I’m one bottle short of a crate and now she’s checking if I’m old enough to be on the registered senility chart. Age. Why does it all come down to that? I’m hardly leaning on a Zimmer-frame, I’ve got all my own teeth, a good head of hair and I don’t have to sit down to pee.
‘Forty-one.’ Might as well be honest in case Marcus had split on me. Anyway, it was out before I could stop it.
‘I’m thirty-five,’ she said with a twinkle. ‘So what do you do, Jake, when you’re not browsing bookshelves at parties?’
‘Well, I’d like to say I was an airline pilot or a brain surgeon, but I can’t. I usually work in the construction business.’ It was sort of true and would do for now. I sank some more wine and wondered how long it would take for her to get bored and wander away. If she did, I decided there and then that I’d probably grab her by the leg to restrain her.
‘Usually?’
‘Temporarily resting,’ I said, ‘as actors would say. Redundant and looking.’
She nodded and reached out to flick something off my jacket. It was an oddly intimate gesture, and I suddenly divined that she wasn’t about to run off anywhere. ‘Snap. I’m in the same position,’ she said. ‘I just got fired from my job in an art gallery near Bond Street.’
‘What did you do – hang a Picasso upside down? I mean, how would one know?’
Someone brushed past and forced her to
move towards me, and I felt a firm nipple brush my hand. I nearly dropped my glass and stopped breathing. Who needs to breathe at moments like that? When the other person had gone, Jane stayed where she was, close enough for a trace of warm perfume to invade my senses and close enough for me to see a tiny gleam of moisture on her top lip.
I wondered what she would do if I leaned forward and licked it off, and from down below felt a stirring which I hadn’t in any way been prepared for.
‘Nothing so mundane,’ she replied, looking up at me. ‘One of the artists exhibiting there thought I came as part of the facilities. He kept pushing against me, and when he stuck his hand inside my blouse and stroked my breasts, I showed him where he could shove his brushes. The boss decided he could afford to lose me more than he could the artist.’
‘Bad luck,’ I croaked, trying desperately not to think about hands stroking breasts. Specifically her breasts. The imagery won over, however, and whatever had been in the background – music included – sank into a haze.
She shrugged, an elegant lifting of the shoulders, only this time she was so close I felt, rather than saw, her body move inside the green silk dress.
‘Could be worse,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I prefer to choose who I get bedded by… or who I bed.’ She sighed and peered up at me from the corner of her eye. ‘Have you… come with anyone tonight?’
Even through the loud music I felt my heart skip a couple of beats. Was that a deliberate double entendre or my filthy mind?
‘No. By myself.’ Covering both bases, just in case.
Jane raised an eyebrow to show she hadn’t missed it. Then she took my hand. ‘Goody. Let me show you around.’ She leaned in towards me and her cheek touched mine. ‘Stick very close, won’t you? I wouldn’t want to lose you in this crowd.’
Not a snowball’s chance in hell, I refrained from saying, but it was a close call. Instead I allowed her to lead me out of the study and across the hall, her cool fingers entwined in mine. As we eased through the crowd I felt as if I was being observed, but when I looked around they were all too intent on their own thing to pay us any attention.
Was this a smart move? I didn’t care.
We walked up two flights of thickly carpeted stairs and entered an attic room where the music was reduced to a muffled thump. It was a guest room of some kind, with an extending armchair, a bookcase, a drawer unit… and a double bed.
‘There,’ said Jane, closing the door and sliding the catch with a sexy snick. She evidently knew her way around, which made me think she was either the hostess or a regular visitor. ‘That’s better.’ From somewhere on the way up she had acquired a fresh bottle of wine, which she placed on the drawer unit.
‘It is?’
She moved against me and suddenly my hand was being pressed against a firm breast and moved around in a softly circular motion, the nipple hard and urgent under my palm. Then she lifted one leg and hooked it around my waist, pressing herself against me like a cat going up a tree. That’s when I realised that the only thing under the dress was her.
‘What’s up, Jake?’ she whispered with a grin, breathing into my mouth. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
THIRTEEN
Whatever my brain was thinking, the rest of my body was doing its own thing and pursuing an entirely different agenda. It was as if someone had taken a surgical knife and cut off any connection between the two, allowing my physical self to react where I would have expected my mental self to have hauled me up short.
Could this really be happening? Had I scored a home run on my first outing in God knows how long? Was this a wonderful dream and I was about to have the bubble burst with a damp pop and wake up in my own bed?
‘Who the hell cares’, I heard a part of me say, and responded with all the gentlemanly enthusiasm of an elephant on heat. My free hand developed a life of its own, drifting round Jane’s waist and sliding down to cup a firm buttock, delving into the warm cleft of her cheeks and bringing a soft groan from somewhere between our bodies that could have been one or both of us.
Then her mouth was reaching up and pressing against mine, her tongue darting across and between my teeth like a thing possessed. She tasted sweet and soft and fragrant, like warm chocolate with a hint of wine. If I had any senses in action at that moment, vision was the least of them. I relied instead on touch and taste and feel as I found myself drawn towards the double bed.
I stumbled after her, the small voice of caution that had served me so faithfully over the years when faced with what my father had called ‘sticky moments’, silent and unhelpful. I didn’t mind; if it had any sense it was sitting on my shoulder watching the action and hollering approval.
After what seemed like hours, but could have only been seconds, my vision cleared sufficiently to show me that the green dress had mysteriously vanished in a whisper of silk, revealing a glorious panorama of pale, smooth skin, a tiny fuzz of soft, gingery hair and a pair of erect nipples pointing at the ceiling. And beyond them was Jane’s smile, her arms held out as I flung aside the last of my own clothing.
‘Mmm, nice,’ she purred, and grasped the only part of my body which was upright. It sent a tremor right through me and anchored me firmly to the bed. ‘Very nice.’
Just then there was a noise as someone rattled the door handle.
Jane froze, her hand gripping me like a vice, inadvertently applying a delaying tactic I’d once read about in Dr Comfort’s Joy Of Sex. I’d always thought it would fail miserably, given the rampant and unstoppable nature of the male member when sensing victory within reach. But right then it worked like a bucket of ice-cold water, and my ardour disappeared as if by magic.
Jane felt it, too, unwanted visitor outside the door or not.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ she whispered against me, and gently bit my nipple. Fortunately, she didn’t take her hand away but began to move it up and down in long, gentle strokes.
We waited as the handle moved again, then heard footsteps retreating downstairs.
‘Oops,’ Jane murmured with a faint giggle as she looked down. ‘I think someone got distracted.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, and cursed. Why now?
But she appeared not to mind and peered up at me with a wicked smile. ‘Don’t worry. Nurse Jane’s coming to the rescue. We have a procedure for this kind of emergency. Don’t go away, will you?’ Then she slid slowly down, trailing her breasts so deliberately across my stomach I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
It was like being bathed in soft, warm liquid. I felt the background disappear as she moved her head up and down and did things with her tongue which made me want to howl like a wolf.
A long time later she was back up with a triumphant grin.
‘There,’ she said. ‘The operation was successful and the patient has been revived. Now it’s my turn.’
Your turn? Oh, right. Backsies. Seconds later, guided by her helping hands, I moved down her slender body, breathing in her perfume and revelling in the smooth skin of her breasts and tummy. Then someone began making noises like a wounded buffalo in mortal agony… or at least, something close to it. It was me.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, peering down at me. I felt her tummy tremble with suppressed laughter, which merely added to my sense of abandonment. Who was it that said sex was a serious business?
My mother had impressed on me that I should never speak with my mouth full, so I made do with a vigorous bout of nodding, which, in view of where my tongue was, quickly had her gasping and rolling her head from side to side.
‘OhmyGod!’ she yelped, and flopped back on the mattress as if I’d slugged her with a piece of four-by-two. Her breasts quivered invitingly as she bucked and moved violently beneath me, thrusting upwards with her hips and using her hands to press my head ever more firmly into her groin. Moments later, at her urging, I moved up her body and slipped inside her while she locked her legs around my back and imprisoned me.
‘Wow!’ I finally managed, grinning like a s
ix-year-old trapped all night in a sweet-shop. ‘Wowbloodywowwowwow!’
FOURTEEN
It was either very late or extremely early when I staggered down the two flights of stairs and out into the fresh night air. The number of guests was now seriously depleted. The music was a shadow of its former self, too, but as I stumbled along the hallway, I could hear the same yah-yah trio banging on in the kitchen, while a jumble of bodies writhed around the front room like a box of worms, unwilling to let go their grasp of the night’s fun. The air smelled vaguely of alcohol, cigarettes and a heady mixture of perfume and something sweet. Whatever it was, it all seemed a lot stronger than in my day.
I bagged a cruising taxi two streets away and was halfway back to Marcus’s place before I realised that the sinuous Jane had somehow managed to wake me up and get me dressed and out of the door with the minimum of resistance, as if some instinct had been at work telling me it was time to be gone. It was like one of those dreams where you do everything without being able to fight back. I’d complied without a murmur.
It seemed that Marcus hadn’t made it home yet, so I crashed on the settee and tried to make sense of the night’s activities. All my wrecked brain could manage to work out was that I’d gone to a party thrown by heaven-knows-who, had wandered about with little chance or even expectation of anything happening, and had met a gorgeous woman who had dragged me up two flights of stairs and had her wicked way with me. Or was it the other way round?
Did I have any feelings of remorse? Shame? Disgust? Not for a second. Then I remembered Susan’s words at the tapas bar and the unassailable feeling that I was the one expected to feel the guilty party.
Smart Moves Page 9
