One Final Night Read Free Page B

where spirit and soul counted as much as physical attraction. Something that bound you, and didn’t leave you beached when the tide unexpectedly turned in another direction. Initially he was very tender, although in truth I missed the animal urgency of that first time. Fortunately, he knew this.
    The next time we took our rudeness into the public domain was one afternoon high up a hillside, the one overlooking the oxbow in the river where rowers often beach up to have their picnic. It was the day I had my first inkling how different our views on relationships might be. In truth, I don’t count this the same as our other public shows because there was very little chance of us being seen right up there, but I did notice the difference in the way he made love to me. I quantify that difference as animal passion.
    It certainly started with the same tenderness as all those times in my apartment bed. Nothing was rushed. We discussed whether or not grapes could be grown effectively on the hill. We ate from the hamper without trying to display our simmering passion. We picked out distant features across the river valley and the far hills. We pointed out the novice rowers and giggled as one made a horrible, clumsy dismount that left him knee-deep in water. But when he was on me the urgency was suddenly sweeping. My skirt was up and he was roughly pulling my scant underwear down.
    ‘I’m going to fuck you,’ he said, the first time I had ever heard him utter so coarse a word under any circumstances. The shock of it and the weight of him upon my chest drove the air from my lungs. As my mouth fell open aghast, searching for a response, the assemblage of thin, white cotton scraps that constituted my knickers was pushed in to gag me. It was just as well, really, for when he pushed my knees up level with my ears and slid inside me with that one long thrust, I might otherwise have screamed at the top of my voice.
    There is an honesty about being penetrated in such a way. When you can be plundered completely without any prior direct stimulation, when you realise you are nothing but a hot, unctuous pool for him to dive right into, there is no doubting what your body thinks about it all. It has made an undeniably positive appraisal of your invader. Any contrary notions should end there. Your head might dilly-dally debating such things as caution, decency, and reputation, but meanwhile your body has been secretly readying you for what it craves and what it realises you should have. That was the thing with me: I had always assumed my head knew better than my body.
    The force and speed of his rutting was immediate, sending those rude, wet sounds from my body squelching into the air to drown out the buzz of the insects going about their pollination duties. I shivered at the noise I was making, so loud in the summer stillness, an unintended beacon that simply must draw the attention of those below to our sordid act. He entered and left my body with such pace that I couldn’t divide the two, couldn’t mourn his slipping exit before exalting in the bliss of his forward drive. His urgency was brilliant but unnerving, sending us toward a crashing finish that would jolt and wrench.
    But I understood his passion. The threat of exposure gave it an edge. There was an increased heat and tingle where he was sunk deep, like current was being passed through the cells and the juices of my sex. You want it to end, but the rush only leads to greater sensitivity. Everything is magnified. You can feel the sun hot on your face and make out the clear song of the lark in the blue above, but this is lost beneath the sound of your slippy lips smacking as he crams inside you. You have to keep your eyes tight shut because if you open them you will surely see the crowds drawn to your rude noise. The faster he goes, the more the intensity builds, panic and pleasure combined, so you are desperate to reach your finish but cannot help but cling to every glorious second