“I’m very sorry. You are lovely and only old in a distinguished, sexy way like Bruce Willis’s only with more hair.”
“That’s better.”
He knelt down in front of her, and suddenly it all felt very very real. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears, was sure she could hear her heart beating louder than the radio and the noise as he slipped the condom on was almost deafening.
“Are you sure? Sure sure sure?”
She thought about it. It would make a good basis for a set, if nothing else.
“Get on with it, then.”
When he leant down to kiss her again, she felt him brushing against her; then there he was, inside her. Simple as that. All that fuss over nothing.
“This has got to be the weirdest shag I have ever had.” she said after a moment, filled beautifully but static.
“You try getting purchase on a threadbare sofa from British Heart Foundation! It’s tricky.”
“Wuss.” She put her hands on his waist and pulled him closer, crossing her ankles behind his legs and bucking, taking the initiative for once which made him match her, push for push, their breathing thick and noisy, the radio all but drowned out by bodies and furniture and friction making independent rackets feeding into a glorious wall of sound. It felt perfect even when it wasn’t, he was big but not the biggest and the way he worked his way in and out with each stroke felt wonderful. Better than at least her last two boyfriends and that one night stand in Cardiff.
They were so caught up in the thrashing and pounding that by the time they were falling off the sofa it was too late; first Siobhan felt her shoulders slipping and the next thing she knew they were collapsed on the floor. Luckily the sofa was low and the piles of discarded clothing beneath them broke their fall; the jolt sending him into her so abruptly that it shocked Siobhan into climaxing. Her tender skin throbbing and aching with pleasure. He felt her clenching and pulsing; watched her eyes close and her chest redden and the final confirmation of her voice rising above it all, howling his name with her head flung back into the leg of his jeans and it would have been hilarious if anyone could have seen them.
Ritchie kissed her tilted neck and drove himself into her with the renewed force gained from the confidence of knowing she was satisfied, and when he came some moments later, held her tightly so that she could feel it too, though it was not her name he called. To Siobhan’s untrained ear, it sounded suspiciously like that Welsh station with the world’s longest name, though later he was assure her it was nothing of the sort.
Silence reigned in the aftermath as he sat up on his knees, extracting himself from her and rising to get rid of the debris. Siobhan rolled over onto her stomach, watching.
“Should we be giving critique?”
“Not so soon after - have the night to think it over at least. Drink?”
“Please - two fingers.”
He looked up with raised eyebrows “After all that?”
“Ha. I’m insatiable.”
“That’s not something a man wants to hear.” He grouched, handing her a glass. he sat down on the clothes pile next to her. “Cheers.”
She sipped, and felt the alcohol warm her belly. There was a neat scar on his abdomen and she stroked it lightly with a fingertip.
“War wound?”
“Appendix, nothing so exciting.” Then “It’s gone two. I should be getting you back.”
“So soon?”
“Did you have something else in mind?”
Siobhan carefully turned over onto her back; displaying herself with the abandonment of the truly contented. her breasts replete with pillow creases from the shirts beneath her which only seemed to accentuate their fullness, and much deeper, redder than the skin on her stomach below.
He stared at her for a long time, admiring these things and more as she stood and retrieved her knickers from the tangle; then her shoes from beneath the desk.
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps not tonight.” She slipped them back on, then bra-less buttoned her shirt over her chest. “You should get dressed though, imagine being stopped by the police in the nuddy. That would never do.”
“No...”
“How about Thursday night? I’m free all day Friday for you to completely get to grips with my finer points.”
He stared.
“You’re a remarkable woman, Siobhan.”
“I know. Now put your pants on.”
Crowd-Pleaser
Part II
“We are never going to make this work, you know.” Siobhan said matter-of-factly as they walked home in the wee small hours some weeks later. It was Spring and with the days getting longer and slightly warmer, Ritchie had taken to parking the car at Siobhan’s (Student-lite area - less crime), and walking her back afterwards. They stopped at the lights.
“No one’s going to stab you, Shiv.” He said, out of habit.
“No, I mean this. Us.” The Green man appeared and they crossed.
“Why not?”
“Dunno. Just seemed like the right thing to say.”
“Gary,” He added, slowing down a little “Doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Even his wife says he does most of his talking out of his arse.”
“He said it was nepotism. Or cronyism. Or whatever it is, only with shagging.” she said, glumly, worrying at the fluff in the pockets of her coat.
“You got gigs before we got together, correct?”
“Yes, but,”
“Then there is no but, there is only talent, and audiences to satisfy. We’re here.” He walked her to the door. “Now, none of your nonsense. We’ve had this conversation every week for the past month. Enough is enough, ok?”
“Ok.” she agreed, as he kissed her, slipping his hands into her pockets, which was a tight fit with hers in there too.
“And repeat after me. ‘Gary is a wang.’”
“Gary is a wang.”
“With a micro-cock.”
She screwed up her face in disgust. “I’m not saying that!”
“Trust me, it’ll make you feel better.”
She sighed. “With a micro-cock.” then “Hey, that does feel better!”
“Works every time.”
It wasn’t just that her career appeared to be taking off, ever so slowly. It was the sex. She felt guilty that his company and friendship were coming second, but she had honestly never known the like in her five years of practice. Siobhan had always considered herself open and fairly kinky, like most people born in the 1990s and growing up in the era of provocative lingerie ads and mild sadomasochism everywhere you looked. She’d been tied up. She’d been told she was a bad girl, and spanked. She’d even taken decent photographs of herself in a state of partial undress to a warm reception. What she had never done was sustained pleasure for so long she felt certain she’d soon reach her life quota and live the rest of her days with no further access to her lower body.
When Ritchie touched her, he made sure he was paying attention to everything, every single reaction of her body. He knew that quickies had their place in the grand scheme of things, but given the time and opportunity, preferred to take an afternoon, lock the door behind them and not reappear until one of them needed to stretch their legs. One morning she lay on top of the duvet, naked, watching the light from the window dapple over her legs and stomach, as Ritchie followed the tiny spotlights with the lightest yet most perfect touch she had ever encountered.
His flat was outside of town, in the attic of a Victorian villa, or The Pleb’s quarters as he’d affectionately described it when he invited her round for the first time, and cluttered with sporting memorabilia and musical instruments and puppets. Shitloads of puppets.
“I like puppets.” He said simply, when she pointed out that a man approaching his forties with an or
iginal Gordon the Gopher guarding his loo roll might be a tad odd.
“I like puppets too, but there’s a limit, isn’t there? I don’t like the way he eyeballs me when I’m changing my tampons.”
Ritchie never pulled faces if she casually mentioned her periods and the next time she visited, Gordon had a white hanky tied around his eyes, court-martial style.
In the bedroom, all she had to contend with was Batman ephemera. Batman she could handle, he was just a man in a mask and a suit.
“What about dressing up?” She asked once, tangled in the bedclothes with her fingers in his chest hair and Bruce Wayne gazing moodily at her from the corner of the room.
“No.” He said simply.
“Batman does it.”
“We can’t all be Batman.”
“Really, why not?”
He smacked her across the arse by way of a response.
“I’d do it if you asked me to, it’s just not something that I really understand, or like. I liked naked. Naked is good. I like the way you walk, like watching you lumber towards me after you’ve gone for a piss in the middle of the night. Full of sleep, disorientated. Naked.”
“I lumber?”
“Maybe not lumber. It’s a sexy walk, though. And then you come back to me.”
“... Because you are a fanny-magnet.”
“Because I am a fanny-magnet, yes.”
He pulled her on top of him and kissed the sweet spot where her neck met her décolletage and kissed it until she went pink. Then his hand slunk low until he could two fingers into her, and when she came over his hand, gripping the bed rail, he put his arms around her.
“It’s a gimmick. And I don’t do gimmicks in my working life or my private life. Seems pretty reasonable to me.”
“Me too.”
In Siobhan’s opinion, however, this wasn’t strictly true. His fucking skills were certainly embedded in skill and stamina rather than bells and whistles, and she was experiencing the benefits. But he had quirks, the way everyone does.
Once an established couple, the other regular acts had taken it upon themselves to celebrate this with a night of non-stop drinking and regaling Siobhan with lurid tales of her predecessors.
“Fee - now she was a piece of work. Marketing bod, power-dresser. Red lips and had his balls in a vice from day one.” Adi offered on his turn, earning nods of agreement as a third round of shots arrived on the table. “She hated his job, hated us, hated his mum, hated Gordon. With for for two years. Why?”
“Because there was more to her than what you saw for two hours a week? Pass the peanuts.”
“If all of you girlfriends - and every one so far has done - if we all hate Gordon leering at us when we’re in the bathroom, why haven’t you done the decent thing and moved him somewhere he won’t be perving on us?”
“Because a) it’s my flat. And b), I tried moving him to the wardrobe but you said his eyes followed you around the room when I went down on you and gave you the willies. There isn’t space for him anywhere else. Besides, he’s blindfolded now.”
Nodding, Siobhan turned to the room.
“Yeah, now he just looks like a doomed army deserter. So much better.”
This went on til last orders, around 1am. Then they went to an all-night Pizzeria for Hawaiians and unlimited salad bar, and for Siobhan to hear more stories, this time about Daniel, Ritchie’s comedy partner who’d moved to Belfast a couple of years ago. No bad blood, just in need of a change of scenery and some space. Apparently he lived in a hut on the beach, surfing for ten hours a day.
“That’s what he puts in his texts. Possibly lying.”
“I remember him - he was on The Apollo when I was in Primary school.”
Everyone snorted.
“I’ll tell him you said that!” Brian shouted from the other end of the table.
“Yep, that was him. He was an infant prodigy - cheap laughs and braces. But I made him the man he is today. He said he might even come and visit this year. Not seen him for ages.”
Ritchie was quiet, lost in thought and Siobhan took this time to study him a little more carefully. He didn’t look his age, the double figures that were between them in years seemed to decrease every time she caught his childish grin when she undressed in front of him, or brought up his favourite film clips from childhood for her to enjoy. He was a bigger kid than she was.
Post-pizza, the sun was finally rising and they were both knackered.
“Come back to mine, it’s closer.” said Ritchie, hailing a cab.
It was still dusky by the time they got upstairs, stood in front of the bedroom window she could see the Milkman three streets away, trundling down the dead centre of the road, daring other cars to challenge him. She thought Ritchie was in the kitchen fixing hot chocolates, but half-asleep and mesmerised by the little electric cart, she hadn’t noticed him setting the mugs down and coming up behind her. He put his hands on her stomach, under her t shirt. And asked, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, “Have you ever flashed anyone?”
She thought about it. “No.”
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“Why, have you got a football match you want ruining?”
“You could never ruin anything. It can give some people a buzz.”
“Some people like you?”
“Yeah. When the time’s right.”
“Isn’t that indecent exposure, whether the time is right or not?”
“You do it somewhere you’ll never get caught. Up here, for example, no one would ever be able to see you. None of the neighbours’ windows overlook ours.” His voice was getting quieter and quieter, his hands moving slowly upwards. “You get all of the rush and none of the aftermath.”
“And no one can see?”
“No one can see. Scout’s honour.”
“Ok then.”
And so he very carefully continued moving his hands upwards, over her abdomen and up, pushing up her bra wholesale so all her clothing bunched just below her chin. It only lasted seconds before he covered her again, first with his hands feeling her nipples stiff against his palms, then pulling down her tee so she was covered back up again and kissed her ear.
“See? How does it feel?” He retrieved the mugs and they sat down on the bed.
“I’m falling out of this bra.”
“Not that.”
“It felt strange. But the tingly sort of strange.”
“Good.”
“But I might go so far to call this a gimmick...” She added slyly, glancing over at him.
“Maybe. It’s not just standing in front of windows, though.”
“I thought not. You can tell me all about it, later.”
It took a little while for her to pry everything out of him. But it wasn’t just windows. Nights passing through bus shelters with girlfriends wearing no knickers. Gardens. The balcony at dusk. Buses, trains, trams. And cars.
“But then we’re moving onto confined spaces and illegality which is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.” he said finally. It was Sunday, they’d been eating breakfast in bed - soldiers and soft boiled eggs in complementing Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder egg cups. As Siobhan was scooping out the tastiest, runniest bit of yolk he’d suddenly said ‘It’s probably because I lost my virginity in a car, like some kind of fucking cliché.’, as if they’d been in the middle of the discussion all this time.
“Isn’t sex in a car really uncomfortable, though?” she asked through a mouthful of protein. Swallowing, she went on “Steering wheel up your bum and getting your hand caught in the glove box?”
Ritchie took the plate from her and set it on the bedside table.
“You do it in the back unless you’re a fucking idiot. That way you don’t end up impaled on the gear leve
r. Haven’t you ever done anything outside of the confines of the bedroom?”
“No... No. Very boring, apparently.”
“You’re only young. Plenty of time for you to get un-boring.”
“So when do we start doing that stuff then? I’ve got a reading week coming up, then Finals not long after that. I could pencil you in for some time in early March.”
“It’s generally a bit more spontaneous than that. The element of surprise, you know.”
She frowned.
“I don’t like that. I might not be wearing my good knickers. Couldn’t we have a codeword so I know that impulsiveness is on its way?”
“No. Just don’t worry about it. If it happens, it happens. It might. It might not. Might get shit on by a pigeon tomorrow, you just never know. Besides,” he added, indicating down the bed. “Since when have I ever been bothered by what knickers you’re wearing? I’d shag you if you were wearing my threadbare boxers. And you are, which is handy.”
“They look better on me than they do on you, right?” She retorted, standing up in a wobbly fashion. They were grey and baggy, and gaped at the front where the buttons had long since been lost in the washing machine; through the slit Ritchie could see a beauty mark he’d never noticed before. He was about to mention it, perhaps reach out his hand and grab her to get a closer look, but she suddenly flinched and nearly fell off the bed.
“What?” He asked with concern as she raced about the room digging out her dress and tights and the emergency knickers she was allowed to keep in his sock drawer.
“Visiting Day. Fucking Visiting Day and I forgot. Shit shit shit. Can you drive me back to mine?”
“Visiting Day?”
“Parents are driving up. Due in - An hour. My room is a tip and I bet Carrie didn’t even try to do the washing up even though most of it’s hers. I never eat risotto during the week. Well?”
Now she was dressed and standing impatiently by the bedroom door, powdering her face with a tube of mascara clamped under her arm to make it easier to apply.
“Of course, just let me get in the shower-”
Always Leave Them Wanting More Page 2
