by Serena Dahl
“I think I’m allowed to have my own opinions, Clive,” I retort, trying to sound good-humoured.
The main course is delicious too, a fillet of line caught sea bass on a bed of samphire with crispy little potatoes. Adam’s ordered me a third glass of wine, and as it’s a 250ml glass I realise I’ll have had a whole bottle by the time I’ve finished it. Adam’s chosen a traditional steak pie for his main meal. It looks and smells wonderful but I’m glad I’ve got a lighter main after my starter.
When the plates are cleared, the waiter brings a dessert menu and Christine and I agree we can’t resist the sound of the chocolate delice. George gives pudding a miss but Clive orders a pear tart and Adam has the cheese board. I laugh at him, wondering out loud where he puts it all after that huge steak pie. We order coffees too, and with the warmth of the wine making my head decidedly fuzzy now, I find I’m really enjoying George and Christine’s company. I’m also enjoying the feel of Adam’s hand, which has resumed its place on my leg now that he’s finished eating.
When it comes to time to pay, I’m surprised to see George and Adam split the bill. But then, Clive isn’t earning at the moment. I suppose they want to look after him. I reflect that Clive gets looked after a lot by his family, and he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to thank his brothers for their generosity. It’s none of my business though, so I keep quiet.
Once the bill is paid, we head out and get our bearings. George and Christine give us directions to the nearest underground station and they seem to have memorised the entire Tube map, telling us exactly where to change lines and how many stops it will take to get us to Paddington. I laugh as Christine corrects her husband when he forgets that Edgware Road is the last stop on the Bakerloo line before Paddington. “I can tell you two are seasoned commuters,” I tell them.
“It’s a London pastime, trying to be the first to remember the most efficient journey from anywhere to anywhere,” says Christine.
“Fascinating,” puts in Clive sarcastically.
“Anyway,” continues Christine, ignoring him, “if you get going now you should be okay to catch the quarter past ten train.”
We say our goodbyes and walk to the tube. I feel a little sorry for Christine, having to put up with her husband’s obnoxious brother who is staying with them for another night. “Is Clive always like that?” I ask Adam.
“Pretty much,” he admits. “He’s not the most tactful person in the world. I hope he didn’t make you feel uncomfortable?”
“Not really, I was just surprised how different he is from you and George. It was lovely to meet him, by the way, and Christine.”
“Yes, Christine’s great, isn’t she? She’s used to Clive. She knows that’s just the way he is. And it’s not like any of us have to put up with him very often. It’s Mum and Dad I feel sorry for.”
I look at Adam. “But you do love him, don’t you?”
He grins. “Of course. He’s my brother. But just because I love him doesn’t mean that I don’t realise he can be a complete idiot sometimes.”
“You know, he reminds me of Simon a little,” I comment thoughtfully.
“Simon who I met in the Royal Oak?”
“Yeah, he can be so annoying too. Sometimes it’s like he’s just out to stir things up. I don’t think he even disagrees with me really, he just wants to have an argument.” Adam looks amused. “What?” I ask him, puzzled.
“You know why he does that, don’t you?”
“No – why?”
“Was there ever anything between the two of you?”
“Between us? You mean like were we in a relationship? No! Not with Simon!”
“There you are, then. That’s your answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“He fancies you. Isn’t it obvious? Anyone can see he’s nuts about you. He’s jealous that he’s never had a chance with you.”
“No! Not Simon. There’s never been anything there between us,” I insist.
Adam shakes his head. “I think you’ll find there is on his side.”
“Oh, come on, Adam, there are men in the world who can resist me, you know.”
He looks at me seriously. “Probably less of them than you think,” he comments. “I don’t think you have any idea how beautiful you are.”
“Well, it’s lovely to hear you say that, but I’m sure Simon doesn’t agree.”
I’m still continuing with my denials, unable to believe it could be true, as we walk arm in arm to the tube station. We go past the barriers and find our platform.
It’s been nice to see this side of Adam today, his family side, the easy camaraderie he has with his brothers, and it was good to meet Christine too. I really got on well with her.
Then I shiver involuntarily as I suddenly think of the other side of Adam, the one that likes to tie me up, hurt me, punish me. He’s already pushed me so much further than I ever thought I would be able to endure, and I’ve found that not only could I withstand the pain, I loved the thrill of it. Remembering that last orgasm, when Adam had me tied to two chairs, sends a pulse of desire through my belly. Adam looks at me quizzically as, without realising, I tighten my grip on his arm, and I give him a slow, sexy smile. The answering expression in his eyes tells me that he knows what’s in my mind.
As Christine predicted, we arrive at Paddington in time to catch the 22:15 train. We sit down together. Of course, we have to behave ourselves on the train, even though my mind is full of the memories of Adam’s delicious and very sexy mistreatment of me. Since I feel drowsy after my wine I rest my head on Adam’s shoulder. I drift into a happy slumber, the motion of the train rocking me to sleep, but then wake with a jolt as it pulls up into the station.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” Adam smiles down at me, smoothing my hair away from my face.
“Oh, are we here already?”
“Yes, we’re here already. Time to rise and shine.” He tilts my chin up with his finger and kisses me tenderly on the lips. Oh, how I love this man. One day soon, I’ll have to find the courage tell him.
We walk to the taxi queue and stand in line as the people in front give their directions to the drivers and climb into the waiting cabs. I check my phone and frown as I see a message from Michael. Another pleading request to meet. I hit delete; I don’t want to think about Michael right now, and I really don’t want to encourage him by replying.
“You look serious. Was that bad news?” asks Adam.
“My ex again,” I admit. “You’d think he’d get the message by now.”
“The one that waited for you the other night? Drives the green Golf?” I nod. He turns to me, his tone suddenly serious. “Justine, if he keeps on bothering you, you must tell me. Do you understand? Don’t keep this from me. I’m not happy about this guy. I want you to promise you’ll tell me if he turns up looking for you again.”
“Okay,” I agree, somewhat taken back by the vehemence of his tone.
He squeezes my hand silently and the last couple in front of us climb into their cab. We move along and another taxi pulls up to take us home.
“Don’t worry, Adam, I’m sure I can handle Michael,” I reassure him as we get into the back of the car. “Really.”
Fourteen
Saturday, 2 June
BACK AT MY PLACE, WE RELAX on the sofa and channel-hop. I’m cradling a steaming cup of tea, hot and comforting after the wine I had at dinner with his brothers. “Why is it that there are about three hundred channels and all of them are rubbish?” asks Adam.
“It’s always the same,” I agree. “Have a look through the skybox.”
Adam starts to search the shows I’ve recorded. “Ooh, stop,” I tell him. “Let’s watch University Challenge.”
“University Challenge? Don’t you want something a bit more relaxing on a Saturday night?”
“No, I love University Challenge,” I pout. “Don’t you want to watch it?”
“Well, I suppose it’s only half an hour,” he concedes and selects the qu
iz show from the Sky Plus list.
Jeremy Paxman introduces the teams. “Oh, look, it’s an Oxford versus Cambridge match,” I say to Adam. Trinity College Cambridge are lining up against Corpus Christi, Oxford. “This should be a good match.”
“Why exactly should that be a good match?” he queries with raised eyebrows. “Do the teams have to be from Oxford or Cambridge to be any good at this?” This sounds a little like jealousy – Adam studied law at Warwick, a good university but not one of the elite top two in the country.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” I chide him. “There are lots of other teams that are good, but as a generalisation, Oxford and Cambridge teams are more likely to be made up of bright people with a broad knowledge base that’s conducive to getting a good score on this show. Corpus Christi won in 2009 – or should have won – they were disqualified and the title went to Manchester in the end. Do you remember? It was the year there was all that stuff in the newspaper about the Oxford captain – Gail someone or other. There were articles in the newspaper for weeks debating whether she was a new breed of sexy bluestocking or just very intelligent and rather smug.”
Adam is looking at me blankly. “That one must have passed me by,” he notes wryly. “Anyway, I’ve got my own new breed of sexy bluestocking right here.”
“Very funny. Anyway, shh. The questions are starting.”
Jeremy Paxman starts the quiz, asking a question about Latin terms in law. Not surprisingly, Adam shouts it out and gets the answer right. “One-nil,” he grins at me.
“I didn’t know we were going to keep count!”
“Shh, the questions are starting again,” he teases.
The next questions are maths and physics based, and neither of us have a chance. Then it’s another starter question for ten points on the Russian novelist Dostoyevsky. I know the answer but Adam shouts it out just a second before I can form the words.
“Two-nil!” he smiles. I poke out my tongue at him.
“These questions are on queen consorts of England,” continues the presenter. “I need the name of the queen and the king she was married to.” I look around to grin at Adam before turning my attention back to the TV. “Which queen of England, the wife of a Tudor monarch, was beheaded after an accusation of adultery with Thomas Culpeper?”
“Kathryn Howard, Henry the Eighth,” I declare. “Two-one.”
“Anne Boleyn, Henry the Eighth,” the contestants guess. Paxman puts them right and continues.
“The alleged lovers of which thirteenth century queen are rumoured to have been executed on the orders of her husband the king, by being hanged from her bedposts?”
“Isabella of Angouleme, King John!” I shout. “Two-two.”
“Philippa of Hainault, Edward the Third?” guess the contestants and the presenter corrects them.
“Finally, which queen, whose husband inherited the crown of England in 1302, took Roger Mortimer as a lover, together deposing her husband to put her son on the throne in his place?”
“Isabella of France, Edward the Second,” I declare, “and get it right, Paxman, Edward the Second came to power in 1307, not 1302! Can’t you read?”
“Okay, calm down,” says Adam with a look of amusement.
“Two-three,” I reply triumphantly. “I’m in the lead!”
“I never knew you were so competitive,” he mutters.
“Shh, the questions are starting.”
We carry on like this for the whole of the show, and eventually I have thoroughly beaten Adam with a score of his fifteen points to my twenty eight. He switches the TV off and I sit with a smug grin on my face.
“Don’t you want to watch anything else? I’ve got some more of them recorded,” I suggest, laughing.
“I’m a bit bored of TV,” he grumbles. “I think it’s time to do something else.”
I grin at his grumpy tone. Clearly he is regretting keeping score now. In truth, I’m pretty astonished by my own performance after so many glasses of wine. I must have sobered up a bit on the train. “Oh, yeah? Like what?” I reply.
“Well, my sexy bluestocking, let’s see if I can think of anything...” He smiles and pulls me near to him for a kiss.
A familiar shiver of desire courses though me as he kisses me tenderly and strokes my hair, then gently runs his hand down to the nape of my neck to caress it. His other hand strays to my breast and I feel my nipple become erect as he strokes it with his thumb through the fabric of my blouse and my bra.
He pushes me back, lying on the sofa, still kissing and I feel the delicious weight of his lean, muscular body on top of me. I’ve got my legs parted and he’s between them, his erection already pressing into me, thrilling me with the promise of what’s to come.
But despite my rising desire, Adam stops and looks round.
“What?” I ask him.
“Your sofa is a nightmare,” he answers ruefully. “My legs are too long for it.”
I look down at him, with his legs sticking out over the other end, and laugh. “I see what you mean.”
“Bed?”
“Bed sounds good.”
He leads me up the stairs and into the bedroom. Then he faces me, all traces of his smile gone, his grey eyes darkening.
“I’m going to have to fuck you really hard,” he says.
“Oh...” This sounds even more promising. “What, really really hard?”
“Yeah. Really, really hard.” Then he’s tearing at the buttons on my blouse, pulling them open and discarding the garment on the floor. I reciprocate, pulling his t-shirt up and over his head as he helps me, and then we both hastily take off our socks and jeans and Adam pulls off his boxer shorts, standing naked and erect in front of me.
He stares as I stand in my underwear, a very pale turquoise lacy bra and thong, and then suddenly propels me towards the bed. I lie down and immediately he’s on top of me, between my legs again, kissing me hard this time and pushing the fabric of my bra cup away to access my nipple as he kneads my breast and teases the hard nipple with his thumb.
I watch as he trails kisses down to my chest, licking and sucking the nipple and making my clitoris throb in an answering sensation of pleasure and need. I arch up towards him and reach down to feel the hardness of his muscles, enjoying every inch of his athletic body as he teases me with his tongue. He starts to lick further down, travelling slowly south beyond my navel and then he deftly pulls my thong down and off, baring me to him and moving his silky wet tongue to my sex to taste me intimately. I writhe underneath him as he licks the sensitive bud between my legs, and I feel him slide his fingers inside me, doubling my pleasure. Then he starts to kiss higher up again, all the while moving inside me and using his thumb to massage my clitoris, wet from his kissing and my own juices.
“Oh,” I groan. “Oh, Adam, I really want you inside me.”
With his free hand, he reaches for my bedside drawer, where he knows I store the condoms, fumbling as he tries to find the box inside. I don’t want him to stop touching me, so I reach out and find them myself, pulling out a foil packet and tearing it. I throw the foil to one side and reach down to roll the condom all the way down his impressive length.
Then I moan as he penetrates me, pushing all the way in. He slams into me, again and again, keeping his promise to fuck me really, really hard, pushing my thighs back and apart to open my body to him even further. It’s so deep like this and I can’t help but cry out with every savage movement, but I know that Adam is nearing climax. His rhythm changes, he’s driving into me even faster and I hardly know if I can withstand the sensation for much longer when with one final thrust he finds his release and stills on top of me.
I cradle him in my arms, groaning as I return my legs to their natural position. “Wow, I think that just goes to show that I need to spend more time in the gym,” I grin.
“Achey legs?”
“Yes. Very achey legs.”
“Sorry.”
“No, achey legs are nice. Don’t apolog
ise.” I run my fingers through his hair.
He lies on his side next to me and strokes my breasts. We stay like this, just gazing at each other, for a while and then his leisurely caresses start to travel down my body again. I part my legs to allow him to stroke my inner thighs. Oh, that feels so good, and then he moves his hand, travelling up and touching my wetness. He circles round and then moves in and out, and I’m starting to arch up off the bed again when he pulls out his fingers and rubs my wetness onto my clitoris.
I close my eyes and give in to the sensation as he skilfully touches me just how I need him to. I moan, wanting this never to stop, and I turn my head to him, pulling his face to mine to kiss him deeply as he gives me pleasure with his hand. As we drink each other in, the sensation builds and builds and at last I arch my hips as much as I can and I’m consumed by my climax, coming sweetly and deliciously and then shuddering and sinking back to the bed, pulling away from Adam’s kiss and panting as I recover from my ecstasy.
