Master of the House (10 page)

‘Shit. Sorry. Forgot all about that one.’

I stood, apologising to Jamila about having to rush off.

‘There’s a nettle-eating contest at this one,’ I told her. ‘Can’t be missed.’

‘Right. Well, have fun. Maybe the man of your dreams will be there.’

No, he won’t. I know exactly where he is.

* * *

Joss was in the garden when I went to the house on Sunday afternoon.

Nobody answered the door, so I wandered around the edge of the building, drawn to the chug of a motor-mower somewhere close by.

Joss was riding it across the lawns. He wore nothing but a pair of cut-off shorts and some falling-to-pieces hi-tops. The spare flesh seemed to be less in evidence – the combination of hard physical work and laying off the booze was doing wonders for him. He was lightly tanned, his hair slick with perspiration and pushed back from his forehead. Both he and the gardens looked about 500 per cent better.

It was a good ten minutes before he saw me – ten minutes well spent on pop-eyed ogling.

He cut the engine and grinned broadly, waving over at me.

‘Fancy a ride?’

I walked down the path, no longer thick with weeds but neatly bordered by two spick and span verges.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You must have been hard at it all week.’

‘Oh, I have been,’ he said with a filthy look in his eye. ‘Hard at it. Very hard. Ever since you showed me your positions.’

I couldn’t stop myself giving him a blatantly lascivious look back.

‘I take it we’re talking gardening here?’ I said.

‘What else?’

He gave the steering wheel a suggestive stroke.

‘Hop on, then,’ he said. ‘You can finish me off. The lawn, I mean. Finish
it
off.’

‘I’m not getting on that thing,’ I said, but one appealing look later I was perched on the edge of the seat in front of him, feeling the engine rev up beneath me.

I was wearing shorts too, tight white tennis-style numbers, so my bare legs rubbed against his hairy ones and the back of my vest top was instantly damp with the sweat from his chest. He smelled of manly man and he felt like heaven.

He put his hands above mine on the steering wheel and we began to judder across what remained of the lawn.

‘I’ve been looking forward to this,’ he said, speaking into my ear over the roar of the machine.

‘What, mowing the lawn?’ I was strongly conscious of my bottom mashed up against his crotch. I could feel stirrings, prodding the crisp cotton of my shorts.

‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘Seeing you again.’

‘So you can satisfy your horrible depraved desires?’ I said.

‘You don’t think they’re that horrible,’ he said. ‘Come on. And no, that’s not what I mean. I mean, seeing you again.’

He still hadn’t shaved and his soft beardy stubble prickled damply against my cheek. The primitive core of me fought the impulse to turn around and impale myself upon him without delay.

‘Well, here I am,’ I said, with artificial briskness.

‘And here you’ll stay.’

The throb of the machine was having an inescapable effect on my nether regions. I tried very hard not to be turned on, but that engine was revved now and it would take more than the mower’s grinding to a halt to turn it off. I wanted to stay on it, enveloped by Joss’s muscular frame, for as long as possible.

But he levelled the last stripe too soon, cut the engine and removed his hands from the steering wheel to my shoulders.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘The garden is done. How about you?’

‘I’m … not done,’ I said, trying to regain my wits from their sensual scramble.

‘No, but you will be. Jump off, Lulu, and take off your clothes.’

‘What? Out here?’

‘Why not?’

‘But …’ I looked around cagily. We had acres and acres to ourselves, but all the same, it felt extremely risky.

‘There’s nobody here,’ said Joss, with a slyly raised eyebrow. ‘Nobody but us.’

‘Are you sure your millionaire isn’t enjoying a spot of voyeurism?’

‘He’s not down till next weekend.’

Next weekend, eh?

‘Are you sure?’

‘I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I wasn’t. Come on. Enough of this. Strip.’

Still peering at the surroundings, I began to lift my vest top.

‘Does he use the gardens?’ I asked, imagining the lawns thick with orgiastic revellers.

‘Yes. I think he will if the weather holds next weekend. But I won’t be allowed to see it. I’ll be sent off somewhere.’

‘Where do you go?’

‘London, usually.’ He looked, for a moment, pale with anger. I felt a twinge of genuine sympathy, which I batted energetically out of my mind.
Don’t start with the ‘poor Joss’ stuff. Just don’t.

‘So we can’t meet up next weekend?’

I was topless now, the sun warming my breasts.

He shrugged. ‘Come with me,’ he suggested.

‘Can’t. Work,’ I said.

‘The shorts,’ he prompted, and I unbuttoned and lowered them swiftly, knickers and all, to my ankles. If I did this quickly it was much easier.

‘You’ve forgotten what I showed you last time,’ said Joss, and the anger was now replaced by disappointment. ‘Remember what I said he liked.’

‘Oh. Yes. Sorry.’ I should have kneaded my breasts for him and done the whole ‘Is this body part to your satisfaction, sir?’ thing.

‘I’ll have to get you here more often. More practice,’ he said. He had got off the mower and was leaning against it, tight shorts exhibiting an unmistakable bulge. He took off his sunglasses and his eyes were narrow and intent.

‘Are you going to make me do it now?’ I asked, hoping we could take all that as read and move on.

‘Of course I am,’ he said quietly.

I didn’t even think of arguing, though I sighed a little before handling my breasts then bending over to show him more. I reminded myself that he had seen it all, many times before, yet it was still uniquely embarrassing to display myself in this way.

When I straightened up, he was rummaging in a little haversack hanging from a tree branch. He brought out a bottle of sun lotion.

‘If we’re going to do this outside …’ he said, slapping a palm-full on his chest and arms.

‘Oh, right. Yeah. Don’t want sunburn as well as … everything else.’ I was thinking he might spank me today. Maybe sunburn would be the least of my worries.

‘No, we don’t. Will you do my back for me?’

He threw the lotion over and I caught it, blinking. I gave his back a considering look. It was broad and light brown, narrowing pleasingly to where the denim shorts clung to his hips. What an Adonis. I’d forgotten …

I reached up to rub the lotion into his warm skin, where it quickly melted, leaving a glisten and a sweet beachy smell. His breath was audible and occasionally he made an ‘mm’ of appreciation.

‘God, that’s nice,’ he said, once I was finished. ‘You have such talented fingers.’

‘Thanks.’ I poured some into my own palm, but he snatched the bottle off me while I was rubbing it into my face and neck.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You must let me.’

‘Joss …’

His expression brooked no refusal.

I turned away from him so he could attend to my back and shoulders, which he did so thoroughly and with such heavenly precision of touch that I found myself edging backwards, seeking more in the way of skin-to-skin contact. His thumbs were strong, pressing upwards from my shoulder blades into the tenderer flesh of my neck in a way that made me gasp and then purr.

‘God, you should charge for this,’ I said. ‘Ohhh, that’s so good.’

I knew I should try and stop him, but this was the best I’d felt in about five years and I just couldn’t deny myself.

‘Relax,’ he whispered. ‘Let me …’

When he reached around to oil up my belly and then my breasts, I didn’t raise a squeak in protest. I leant back into him and let him smear the lotion thickly over every inch of bare skin. He reached lower and I could feel his breath on my neck and the tantalising brush of his whiskers. He lotioned my hips and my lower abdomen and then one hand cupped a buttock and caressed it in slow lubricated circles.

Between my thighs, I was already soaked and my clit was starting to weigh me down. My knees no longer existed.

He squirted more lotion into his palm and moved on to the other cheek, dropping the bottle into the grass so that his other hand was free to stroke my nipples.

This was a long way beyond anything we had agreed. I had never said he could touch me like this. But my body was saying it for me, saying much more than that, begging …

I was deaf, dumb and blind to anything but my body’s need to have his all over it. He slipped his slippery fingers between my bottom cheeks and I let out a little cry – of despair, of desire, of so many complicated things that all added up to one thing:
have me
.

I moved my neck a little as the desperate sound flew out of me, closer to his mouth, close enough for him to stop up all my little animal noises by pressing his lips to mine.

Yes, God, this was almost a relief, to have this kiss we had been dancing around since we met again. It had to happen and now we didn’t have to skirt it any more. Keeping one hand on my bottom while his other arm pulled me in tight, he plunged deeper, got his tongue inside me, got me to join in with mine. His hand went to the back of my head, holding me so I couldn’t break this fierce, gorgeous, decadent kiss if I wanted to.

This was it. This was what my body wanted.

We fell to the grass, slipping and slapping against each other, and he ground his jean shorts between my legs, and I unbuttoned them and arched my back and pushed my pelvis against him and then he was in me.

Yes, he was in me and I gloried in it, in his thick cock stretching me wide, digging deep. I had forgotten how utterly wonderful he felt inside; stirring a vague memory of disappointment at my first experience with Károly, that he didn’t fill me in the same way.

We kissed on, teeth and tongues all mashed up like the rest of us. His hair fell into my eyes and his beard burned but I loved it. We grunted and thrust like animals uncaged and set upon each other.

I knew how to angle myself so that his cock hit all the maddeningly sweet spots inside me with each vigorous stroke, oh, how it all flooded back to me, like riding a bike but thousands of times better.
This is how we did it. This is how it’s done.

We seemed to melt, just like the lotion, into each other. He pushed in, I pushed up, he went deeper, I opened wider. The faster he went, the harder I held on.

I curled a leg around his hip and shut my eyes as sparks were struck against my G-spot. This would be it. Here it came.

From the back of my bottom and the top of my abdomen and those absent knees together, all the sensations began to gather and join force. I pushed his tongue with mine, seeing his eyes when he whipped my legs, hearing him tell me he could do what he liked to me.

I came, and he broke the kiss, tilted his neck until his face was towards the sun and joined me in my ecstasy. We pulsed and rocked together, all ragged breath and astonished sighs, until the force was sapped from us and we lay spent in each other’s arms.

That was when the realisation began to creep up, through the residual tingling and the blissful white-out.

We probably shouldn’t have done that.

He put his palm against my cheek and kissed me again, very slowly and gently this time. All romantic, like. Oh, dear.

‘Darling Lu,’ he whispered, the words dusting my lips like a zephyr.

I shut my eyes, anguish tearing at me.

‘Oh, I never meant to,’ I wailed.

‘Sweetheart, hush, don’t say it. It’s done. I won’t let you regret it.’

‘Third time lucky, eh?’ I say, hating my bitter tone, then finding it was all that stood in front of a torrent of tears. Damn them! A few of them leaked through my defences and I turned my face away.

‘Don’t be like this. We’re so bloody good together. Can’t we just let things happen? Enjoy them?’

‘Like I did the last time, you mean?’

I put a fist in my mouth to keep the sob back.

‘That was years ago, Lu. And I’ve always wanted you back. Always.’

I turned to face him, too incredulous to remember to cry.

‘Oh, you liar. If you wanted me back, you would have come after me. You would at least have called me, or emailed or something. You’re a fucking chancer. Well, you got your shag out of it. Well done.’

I tried to wrench myself from his arms, but he had me fast.

‘OK, I know how it looks, but I stand by what I said. I mean it. What happened … the way it ended, I mean … is the big regret of my life.’

‘Whereas mine is meeting you.’

He lay back on the grass, his eyes screwed shut.

‘I deserve it, I know,’ he said. ‘Can’t we –’

‘Look,’ I said, regaining my sense of self-preservation and intent on making the best of this mess. ‘What’s done is done. And, yes, it was nice. Very nice. But it’s just sex, OK? That’s all. It’s been a while.’

‘Animal instincts, you’re saying?’

‘If you want to put it that way.’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way. To me, it felt much more like human passion. But if that’s the story you want to tell yourself …’

‘Shut up, Joss. Stop trying to fuck with my head. What we’re doing – it’s sexual. It’s bound to make us a bit … It’s an occupational hazard. I succumbed to it. Stupid of me, but I’m only human.’

‘Nicely rationalised,’ he said. He propped himself on an elbow, looking down at me. I didn’t meet his eye.

‘You can believe that if you like,’ he said. ‘As long as it means you don’t leave.’

Perhaps I should. Cut my losses. But I knew, not even that deep down, that I couldn’t walk away from him.

‘I want to be your man,’ he said, and I was done for all over again. ‘But if I can only be your friend with benefits, that will have to do. It’s better than nothing.’

‘Friend,’ I repeated. ‘With benefits. Benefits – hey, that’s an idea. Maybe you could apply for Working Tax Credit.’

‘Don’t change the subject.’ He looked so sad. But I know he can do that look as easily as blinking.