Polly

by Freya North

  ‘Here.’

  Polly took off her glove and placed the little jewel in the palm of her hand, holding it up to the light to admire it closely.

  ‘Thank you,’ she marvelled, ‘it’s gorgeous.’

  ‘You eat it, you clutz,’ Chip explained affectionately, ‘Sugar On Snow.’

  Polly did as she was told and closed her eyes as the mellow nuttiness filled her mouth. Chip’s lips pressed lightly against hers and though her highly cherished, very important Bravery Award was still in her mouth, she was more than happy to share. She opened her lips and drew Chip in. They passed the fast disappearing lozenge between them until it was all gone. Their tongues lapped away at the pervasive taste of it in each other’s mouths until their own unique flavours were discovered again and they feasted upon them.

  Polly has taken to skiing on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

  Because I rather think I have a natural aptitude for the sport.

  You mean you fancy Chip and find all the attention, and legal physical contact, addictive.

  No, shut up, don’t be so ridiculous. I like the skiing – it’s a fantastic way to keep fit. And it’s exciting and new.

  Yes, Polly, it’s all exciting and new, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not deluding yourself. Look at all your marking you’ve had to relocate.

  I’m gladly giving over free time for it so I can take to the slopes.

  Yes? And the notion of Chip’s Bravery Awards awaiting your progress has nothing to do with anything? They don’t spur you on in some small way? Didn’t you tell Chip yesterday that you were happy to forgo Sugar On Snow and go straight to the kiss?

  You have to have an incentive.

  Polly!

  ‘I do hope you don’t think me inconsiderate,’ she had said beseechingly when they were once again in and amongst the maples in secret.

  ‘Bravery Awards come in many guises,’ Chip had assured her, wedging his knee up between her legs and sucking on her cold, crisp earlobe.

  Inevitably, Polly became too big for her boots. At the end of her third week as self-titled Snow Queen, she turned up in a beautifully proportioned ski suit in dark red and navy, as flattering as it is possible for such an outfit to be, which she had bought with Loma on a whim and a rare free Sunday. She was met by a chorus of approving whistling from the students, and a furtive pat on the rump from Chip.

  ‘Listen, you mind practising your stem turns for a while? We have a race at the weekend and I need to spend time with the downhill team.’

  ‘Mr Jonson,’ Miss Fenton replied, as Laurel and Lauren appeared within earshot, ‘I’ll be fine. But promise me if I perfect them today, we can go on to parallel turns on Thursday?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ was all Chip said.

  ‘Jolly good,’ Polly replied.

  ‘We’ll help,’ said Laurel while Lauren nodded.

  Polly did all the things her rational conscience was yelling at her not to do. She ran before she could walk and did not bother to look before she leapt. After an hour on the upper reaches of the nursery slope, she assured the two ‘L’s that she no longer needed baby-sitting, that she was in the nursery after all. The girls disappeared with snow boards, gratefully. Polly took the drag-lift higher than she’d hitherto ventured.

  How difficult could a parallel turn be? She’d watched hundreds and decided that they must be as effortless as they looked. It was all about confidence, right? And keeping the skis, well, parallel. And doing something with your bottom and something with your knees, a sort of twisting thrust. Lean into the mountain, remember. Bend the knees. Easy. Just watch.

  Chip was some way up the slopes when he spied a hurtle of blue and red heading for the trees. All he could do was observe the inevitable while amusement churned with horror. The more she lost control, the less control she could recapture. She was leaning and lurching backwards precariously, picking up speed, and had obviously lost all sight of the path she should have been making. As she became dangerously close to the trees, self-preservation kicked in and she made what she thought would be a parallel turn. Only it wasn’t exactly parallel. Mercifully, she missed the trees; unfortunately, she managed only 90 degrees and hurtled straight down the uneven reaches of the slope. A lone mogul, camouflaged to the uninitiated, halted her descent but sent her flying at a peculiar angle. Ultimately, Polly landed face down, her legs splayed but suspended with the skis wedged down into the snow; one pole digging into her solar plexus, the other lost, along with her left glove, her hat and her nerve.

  Polly queued for the athletic trainer with four others. While they waited, they discussed their war wounds.

  ‘I think I’ve done something gross to my knee,’ said Tanya, the sophomore trampolinist.

  ‘I’ve, like, totally screwed my shoulder?’ said Zoe, who was in the gymnastics team.

  ‘My ankle’s gone again,’ rued a squash-playing junior called Paul who Polly had never seen.

  ‘My lower back,’ grumbled Sam, a senior swimmer. ‘How ‘bout you, Ma’am?’

  Polly sighed. ‘I think I’ve cricked my neck and wrenched my inner thigh.’ The students awarded her injuries the greatest ‘wow’.

  ‘OK,’ said Chip when he arrived, his cheeks glowing gloriously. He walked along the line and made rapid assessments about severity and priority. ‘I reckon we start at the bottom and work our way up, hey? Ankle, knee, back, shoulder, neck – Paul, Tanya, Sam, Zoe, Miss Fenton.’

  ‘Shouldn’t Miss Fenton go first?’ Paul asked gallantly, ‘I mean, she kinda has two injuries, you know?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Chip explained, looking only at Paul, ‘I’ll probably need to spend more time with her.’

  When the four students had been sufficiently manipulated, bandaged and banished, it was nearing dinner-time.

  ‘You hungry?’ Chip asked Polly. She tried to shake her head but winced. ‘You mind skipping dinner?’ Chip continued, ‘I reckon you need fixing before feeding.’ Polly agreed with an impassioned humming sound. ‘You done something to your jaw?’ Chip asked. Again, Polly tried to shake her head. ‘You can’t speak?’

  ‘I can speak,’ she whispered, ‘I just don’t know what to say.’

  Chip grinned at her and brought his lips to her forehead.

  ‘It was pretty spectacular,’ he chuckled into the top of her head.

  ‘Please,’ Polly pleaded, ‘I’m so embarrassed.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I’m such a bloody idiot.’

  ‘True. But it was kinda funny to watch.’

  ‘Well,’ Polly said, ‘it’s not remotely amusing to feel, I assure you.’

  Chip took the back of her head gently in his hands before slipping them down until they encircled her neck. He then took one hand to her shoulder blade and his other round to the front, half covering her breast, murmuring encouraging ’uh-huh’s all the while. ‘OK,’ he said, wiping his hands on his trousers for some reason, ‘come lie here.’ He helped Polly on to the examination table, unbuckled the bib of her dungarees and helped ease off her thermal polo neck.

  ‘Cute,’ he said, bending low to nuzzle her broderie anglaise bra.

  ‘My neck,’ she remonstrated, wanting Chip to fix it immediately so she could enjoy what was currently physiologically painful but psychologically tantalizing.

  ‘Lie back,’ she was told. Chip rested her head in his hands and moved his fingers in a gentle rhythm at the base of her skull.

  ‘You might hear a snap,’ he warned while a sickening, hollow crack rang out before Polly had a chance to panic.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, sitting bolt upright, her adrenalin pumping. She rolled her head very carefully and bestowed upon Chip a smile of immense gratitude and prodigious proportions. ‘Let me see your hands,’ she implored, sitting sideways on the table, her legs over the edge. Chip held out his palms for her to inspect. She scrutinized them closely and then kissed each in turn, accompanied by a titillating dab of her tongue tip. ‘Healing hands,’ she proclaimed, looking up at
Chip, ‘golden touch.’ She held his wrists and brought his hands to her breasts, holding them against herself though she could feel that Chip needed no assistance.

  ‘Polly,’ he said throatily, ‘man, I could lay you down and make love to you right now.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Polly extremely sweetly, eyeing desirously the poking protuberance in his tracksuit bottoms. She gave an inviting heave of her breasts and licked her lips enticingly.

  ‘But,’ said Chip, with much clearing of his throat, ‘there’s the question of your inner thigh.’ He peeled down her salopettes and ran his index finger along the waistband of her matching broderie anglaise knickers, pressing his little finger into her bellybutton. He whistled very low and very slowly. ‘Man, I’m gonna have to send you to Nurse. I don’t know if I can deal with this! I’m kinda, like, totally distracted.’

  ‘Don’t send me to Nurse,’ Polly implored, pouting beseechingly.

  I’m so wet it would be embarrassing!

  Chip exhaled a few ‘phew’s, went to the sink and doused himself with cold water.

  ‘OK, Miss Fenton,’ he said, avoiding eye contact, ‘your inner thigh please.’

  TWENTY

  Miss Fenton would definitely benefit from hydrotherapy. Mr Jonson was not sure how many sessions, but he estimated half a dozen. The damage to her adductor was not critical but he feared that any tightening, stiffening or reduction in mobility could well have consequences for the hip, possibly referred pain elsewhere.

  ‘You OK with that?’ Powers Mateland asked him. ‘You want to send her to County?’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Chip, ‘I have a treatment schedule mapped out.’

  ‘She’ll be in good hands,’ praised Powers. ‘The best – we’re going to miss you, Chip. Know what? I’m sure gonna make your last three weeks full – anyone has even the slightest twinge, they’re coming to you direct!’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ Chip acquiesced, ‘and I’m going to miss Hubbardtons – majorly.’

  ‘You got to go forward,’ Powers conceded.

  ‘Sure,’ said Chip, ‘it was a big decision but I feel good.’

  ‘How about Jen? We gonna lose her too? She gonna follow in your footsteps?’

  ‘We broke up,’ said Chip.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Powers said, privately unsurprised.

  ‘It’s recent,’ said Chip, ‘and, you know, like, quiet?’

  Powers pulled an imaginary zip across his lips, slapped Chip between the shoulders and sent him on his way to fix Miss Fenton.

  ‘I hope Belsize School for Girls is reaping as much from Jen as we at Hubbardtons are from Polly Fenton,’ Powers mused. ‘Isn’t she just great?’

  ‘She sure is,’ Chip agreed openly, ‘I’d better get going so she can make the revue rehearsal.’

  Chip entered the hydrotherapy pool first and told Polly to sit herself carefully on the edge.

  ‘Ooh, isn’t it warm!’ she marvelled, dangling her feet into the water. ‘Do you like my cossie?’

  ‘Your what?’ asked Chip.

  ‘This,’ Polly explained, running her hands suggestively over her torso.

  ‘It’s real nice,’ said Chip, who had hardly been able to keep his eyes off her figure. Clad in a flatteringly cut swimming costume, black piped in white, the contours of her figure were more sinuous than he had envisaged. She had looked thoroughly gorgeous in her cotton underwear, but in her swimsuit, she looked positively sexy.

  Polly eased herself into the pool, Chip’s hands gently on her waist.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she cooed, immersing herself to her jaw. She had pulled her hair into a pony tail perched high on her crown. Her bob was barely long enough and splayed out spikily from the band with escaped tendrils now wet and clinging to her neck in little silken trails. ‘It’s really just a glorified jacuzzi, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a hydrotherapy pool,’ Chip remonstrated, propelling himself behind her, the hardness in his shorts brushing her back as he did so. He looped his arms under Polly’s and clasped his hands together just above her breast bone.

  ‘Just relax,’ he told her. She had no voice with which to answer. Her heart raced but her limbs were loose, her mind was clear and her conscience calm. Chip eased her around the water and congratulated her on the fine recovery of her neck, placing a round of kisses in the appropriate region. She turned herself to face him and they kissed, their wet limbs gliding around each other.

  ‘Let’s work on that thigh,’ Chip said huskily, pushing her away, holding her from behind as before. He then turned the water jets off and sat Polly on the submerged ledge that ran round half the pool. The sensation of the bubbles evanescing into a tickle of fizz against the skin was gorgeous; the silence once the motors had stopped, and the serenity of the stilled water, were hypnotic.

  I’ll do whatever he says.

  I bet you will.

  ‘Let your legs just relax and slide them apart a little. Great. A little more. Great.’

  Polly did as she was told. Chip took hold of each of her ankles. ‘Hold on to the bars beside you. Good.’

  God, see how it makes her tits jut? I gotta think adductor – I can’t disrupt the programme but Jeez, I’m desperate to suck those nipples.

  He gave just perceptible tugs to each leg in turn, rotating them subtly this way and that, praising Polly all the while; concentrating hard, aware that her eyes were scorching his face yet knowing he could not afford to catch her gaze.

  Not yet. I got my job to do, man. Gotta stick to the programme. Gotta fix her adductor.

  He slid his hands up until they rested behind her knees, gave further little pulls and rotated some more. Almost involuntarily, Polly let go of the bars and took her hands to his. They clasped each other tightly and Chip thrust his face to her right breast, biting at the nipple through the wet fabric.

  ‘Stop,’ he said hoarsely, launching himself to the opposite side of the pool, ‘you gotta hold on to the bars, Polly. You gotta get fixed.’

  They remained at either side of the pool, staring hard at each other, panting, like two boxers in a watery ring.

  ‘C’mon, Polly, let me at your thigh.’

  Anytime, Chip, come on over.

  Once more, he took his hands to the backs of her knees and manipulated her legs for a few more minutes. Then he ran his hands up the fronts of her thighs, quite firmly, informing her he was searching out any tightness, tenderness or knots in the muscle. He took her right thigh and rolled it between his hands as if he were shaping dough. He did the same to her left leg but she caught her breath sharply.

  ‘Easy there,’ he soothed, ‘did that hurt, huh? Can you take more?’

  ‘Yes and yes,’ said Polly bravely, while Chip began a sensitive massage of her left thigh. He rolled it again. ‘Better?’ he asked.

  ‘Much,’ Polly smiled.

  ‘OK, now spread them wide for me,’ he said in as normal a voice as such a request permitted. Polly obliged and Chip ran his hands up the entire length of her inner thighs firmly and very fast, sweeping round to the front of the leg when his thumbs were just about to touch the gusset of her swimsuit.

  ‘Wider?’ he implored. Polly opened her mind and her legs a couple more inches. ‘Good girl.’

  No I’m not.

  This time, Chip’s progress up her inner thighs was much slower, the pressure from his hands alternately light and then firm. His eyes were closed.

  ‘Your eyes are closed,’ Polly whispered, wishing she was allowed to let go of the bars.

  ‘I can feel so much more intensely,’ he explained, his eyes shut.

  ‘Oh,’ said Polly. Chip’s hands whispered their way up and down her thighs, up and down, again and again, lightly, firmly, up and down. ‘Oh,’ Polly murmured. ‘Oh,’ she gasped.

  ‘Whose eyes are closed now?’ said Chip, kissing the tip of her nose and then letting his lips fall to hers fleetingly. ‘Nearly finished.’

  ‘Really?’ protested a disappointed
Polly. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Let me just work on this area,’ Chip said, massaging the tops of her thighs. Occasionally, he let a knuckle brush against her crotch but she could not anticipate when exactly and, by the time she moved her groin against the friction, his hand had gone again.

  Still he rubbed at her thighs, trailing his hands back towards her knees and working there awhile. He tiptoed his fingers up her legs in a drunken walk of sorts, lessening the pressure the higher he reached. Neither of them had their eyes shut as Chip walked his fingers straight along the centre of the gusset of her swimsuit; they were gorging themselves on the sight of each other. He pushed the palm of his hand against her sex and kissed her deeply. He took gentle bites at the length of her arm, licked her armpit and then sucked her chin.

  ‘You can let your hands go,’ he said. Polly released them from the bars at once and encircled Chip just as soon as she had. She drew him against her, in between her legs; his erection, compressed within his trunks, grazed enticingly against her sex. He swept his hands up and down her torso; first slipping them under the arm-straps of her costume to fondle her breasts, then taking them down and burrowing behind the gusset to tangle with her pubic hair and search out the secret pocket of wet warmth. He inserted a finger deep within her and kept it very still, turned on by the way she bore down on his hand, the sound of her moan as she increased the pleasure by herself. Suddenly, he made his finger dance; as it moved, so the seam of her costume caught against her clitoris and, with a gasp and a thrust, she climaxed and laughed.

  Chip submerged himself underwater, his hands soon appearing above the surface like Excalibur. He pulled at her swimsuit and she wriggled free, mesmerized by his disappearing hands and her own sudden nudity. He came up for breath, sucked each nipple in turn and then disappeared again under the water. Soon he was tugging at her swimsuit, suddenly it was propelled from the water to land just behind her head. Polly grabbed on the bars when Chip started licking at her sex, and closed her legs around his neck in her bid to weld her crotch to his face. As soon as Chip surfaced for breath, he penetrated her in one long, luxurious, effortless plunge, dipping his head alternately to each nipple in rhythm with his thrusts.