Never Have Sex With Your Ex (Regular Sex #2) (2 page)

My hand is resting
on his shoulder now, and I have to slide across the sheets and move into him,
to press my body against his. I’m wearing a scant black slip, no bra, and a
nude thong beneath it because I've insisted, even though Art has repeatedly
tried to demand I go commando for authenticity. Bugger that. I’m not risking flashing
my lady garden to the world for the sake of authenticity. The only thing I want
to hit the headlines for in this production is my powerful performance, not whether
or not I'm keeping up an effective intimate waxing schedule.

I used to sleep
in the nude with Reuben.

The memory
filters in as I inch slowly across the bed towards him. He is statue still. I
can see the movement of his throat as he swallows, and I'm close enough to feel
the heat emanating from his skin. His scent is achingly familiar, filling my
nostrils, instantly evoking memories and a bittersweet sense of lust and need.
These emotions might be helpful to me as an actress, but, Christ, they’re
lethal for me as a woman.

I’ve perfected
this scene with Stanley. He doesn’t move at all until my body touches his, and
then he stirs and pulls me in close by the hip. I think back to the script
direction, which is unhelpfully scant.

It hadn’t
mattered before now. In fact, both Stanley and I had appreciated the fact Art
trusted us enough to choreograph the details of the scene ourselves. It’s
actually the most graphic sex scene in the play, setting the adult tone for the
rest of the performance.

We don’t need to
wear microphones for this scene as there’s no dialogue. I’m glad because there is
no way I’d have been able to disguise my short, shallow breaths or the tattoo
drumbeat of my heart. I’m there now, across the bed, and I need to finish the
manoeuvre and slide myself against his skin.

I don’t want to.
I want to. I have to. It's in the script.

I close my eyes
and then I do it, slip my arm over his waist and fit myself against the warm,
familiar wall of his chest.

Oh dear god,
this is how it felt, this is how he felt, I remember, I remember, I remember.
I’ve done this countless times before, slipped back into bed with him at the
weekend and curled myself into the warmth of his body beneath the sheets.

This is insane.
I can barely breathe, and from nowhere, unexpected tears thicken my throat. My
head lies against his heart, and I can feel it racing every bit as fast as my
own. Faster, even. I need to get out of this bed and off this stage, but my
legs won’t listen to orders.

And then Reuben
slowly slides his arm down from over his head, his palm slipping flat over the
crown of my head, my hair, his fingers cradling my skull as his other arm slips
around my shoulders to gather me close.

I hate him. I
tell myself I hate him, but in that moment, I don’t hate him. I love him just
as I loved him back then as if the years and the problems and the heartache have
never happened and I am waking up with him in our bedroom as before.

His arms hold me
in the way only his arms can. It’s such a rush, such a blessed relief as if
I’ve been waiting for this since the day he left and I didn’t even know it.

What happens
next? If you were to consult the script, you’d see that it says that our
characters ‘make slow, tender love.’ That’s it, that's all it says. No ‘he does
this, she does this, his hand goes there, her leg goes there.’ We just have to
make slow, tender love, any which way we choose. We used to do that sometimes,
the slow and tender thing. Granted, a lot of the time our sex wasn’t tender so
much as it was hard, fast and even borderline violent, but when it was tender,
it was heart-achingly so.

He’s cupping my
neck now, and he’s dipped his face to press his lips against the top of my
head, as if waking slowly, pleasurably from his slumber.

I squeeze my
eyes tight shut, and my lashes brush over the fine layer of downy hair on his
chest.

Reuben shifts
slightly, lifting the sheet a little to move me beneath it with him from the
waist down, and a sudden wash of clammy panic coats my skin because unlike
Stanley and me, Reuben has opted to comply with Art’s preferences and is
totally stark bollock naked. Oh, fuck.

His cock is nestled
against my crotch, and he’s iron hard.

His mouth moves
down my hair until his lips are close to my ear.

‘Long time, no
see, Lizzie.'

I can hear the
suppressed humour behind his tone, and his words are so banal that I half gasp,
half laugh, and all in relative silence because the scene is supposed to be
loving and gentle.

‘Is that a gun
in your pocket?’ I murmur. ‘Because if it is I’m going to shoot you stone dead
for this.’

I stroke his
back, sticking rigidly to the moves Stanley and I practised.

‘No pockets, no
gun,’ he says. ‘I’m just very, very pleased to see you again. And to feel you
again.’

‘You need to
kiss me now,’ I say, doggedly faithful to the script, and he groans small but
audible against my hair.

‘Christ, I like
it when you’re dominant,’ he murmurs, then unexpectedly, he tips me on my back on
the bed and half pins me beneath his chest.

Off script! Off
script! I want to shout it at the top of my lungs, but if I do, we’ll have to
stop and start again… and I don’t want to stop.

I open my eyes
and look up into his dark, suddenly serious ones hovering inches above mine.

‘I’ve thought
about kissing you every damn day for the last six years,’ he says, and then he
lowers his head and his mouth is on mine. 'I've grown up, Lizzie,' he whispers
between kisses. 'I've grown into my stupid heart, and I know how to not break
yours this time.'

I’d made myself
forget Reuben so I could sleep at night, but the second he starts to kiss me I
remember everything and I yield, opening my mouth to invite his tongue in.

Oh. My. God. He starts
out tender, but it is as if my lips are laced with lust because I sense him
lose it a little when I start to kiss him back. I can’t stop myself. I feel as
if I’ve somehow sleep walked through the last few years and he's just woken me
up. I am Sleeping Beauty in his arms, except I’m pretty sure that Prince
Charming’s cock wasn’t erect and pressing hot and heavy between Beauty’s legs.

Reuben’s fingers
tangle with mine on the pillows, and his other hand is pressed between our
bodies.

He’s stroking my
nipple through the slip.

I can’t cope.
His tongue slides into my mouth and his body is a pleasurable weight over mine,
and we’re not acting any more.

This scene,
however inappropriate, is our reunion.

‘I’ve missed you
so much,’ he whispers, for my ears only as he mouths my neck, licking me,
biting me, his stubble a sensual graze on my face.

‘I can’t do
this,’ I say, but my body tells him the exact opposite. It welcomes him home,
strokes him, wraps itself around him like ivy around a tree trunk.

‘Yes, you can.
You have to. It’s in the script.' His voice is soft as he slides his fingers underneath
the silk edged slip and plays with my nipple. His touch, secret and intimate, is
like an exquisite electric shock, so intensely pleasurable that I bite the
inside of my lip to keep my gasp in.

‘Stanley never
did that,’ I strangle-breathe.

‘Stanley was a
fucking fool then,’ Reuben whispers. ‘No one can see what we're doing. Pretend
it’s just us, Lizzie, the way it used to be.’

He says all of
this while rolling the stiff nub of my nipple between his thumb and finger, and
all I can think is how much I want his mouth on me there too. I stroke my hands
over his hair as he kisses me again, uninhibited, his tongue deep in my mouth
until I groan and rock my hips up into him.

I know that the
crew can’t see through the sheet, and I pray to god that they all think he’s
wearing jockey shorts because we aren’t acting anymore.

He’s kissing me
like a man just released from death row, hungry and gasping, and then he opens
my legs with his knee and reaches a hand down beneath the sheet.

I should call a
halt to this. Surely it has to be plain as day to everyone what’s going on
here? I’ve rehearsed this scene with Stanley in front of the crew dozens of
times, and once or twice maybe I’ve even gotten into it a bit too much, but
never like this. But then this isn’t acting. I’m having sex with my ex-husband,
and sheet or no sheet, he’s just rucked my slip up to my waist and right this
second he’s hooking his fingers underneath my thong and pulling it aside.

‘Does Stanley do
this to you?’ He licks into my mouth, hot and sexy, and then his fingers move in
between my legs, opening my lips to slide into the slick heat there.

‘No one does
this to me like you,’ I say, and he strokes my clitoris as a reward.

‘Good. It kills
me to think of you with anyone else.'

I can’t look
away from his eyes, from the study of concentration there as he watches my
face.

He knows just
how to touch me, and I want him to rip the silk slip from my body so I can feel
the heat of his skin on mine. He’s fingering me, playing leisurely with my clit
as if we are alone on a lazy Sunday morning, slipping his fingers inside me to
press against my g-spot.

‘You’re either
enjoying this or you’re a damn fine actress,’ he grinds out against my hair,
and then he moves to lie heavy on top of me and his cock is hard and pulsating between
my legs.

I hold him, my beautiful
Reuben, and he brackets my face in his hands and kisses me.

’Tell me to fuck
you, Lizzie,’ he whispers.

‘Tender, like
the script,’ I say, because somewhere in my head, I think that the crew haven’t
noticed they’re being treated to a live sex show rather than a mundane
rehearsal.

‘I can be
tender,’ he says, his voice thick with emotion, and then he sinks his hips and
pushes the length of his cock all the way inside me until we are locked
together, hip bone to hip bone.

‘I’ve always
been in love with you,’ he whispers fiercely, his lips slow over mine, his
hands moving in my hair.

‘Jesus, Reuben,’
I breathe, sliding my fingers into the back of his dark hair and holding his
face to mine. ‘What is this?’

A small,
melancholy smile tips his lips, and his eyes are inescapably sombre. Sad, even.

‘This is me,
fucking the woman I love as tenderly as I know how, Lizzie. This is me
following the script I always should have, instead of some screwed up horror
movie script about a string of women who don’t hold a candle to you. No one
does.’

He’s fucking me
slow and sensual as he speaks low and only for me, the thick base of his cock
rubbing against my clit, and with every deliberate thrust, I edge closer to
coming. I’m clamped around him, drenched in desperate longing, damp-cheeked and
trembling with how much I need him.

’Is this tender
enough?’ He’s kissing me again, gentle now, and then he slides his hand between
our bodies and finds my clitoris with his magic fingertips.

I clutch the top
of the sheet at the base of his back as my body arches greedily. I’m going to
come. I’m going to come right now, I can feel the engine of that powerful
juggernaut roaring through my body, from the tips of my fingers and toes,
racing towards his fingers on my clit and his cock buried inside me.

‘You broke my
heart,’ I gasp quietly, and he absorbs my words against his lips.

‘I’ll mend it,’
he says, urgent, and his body tenses because he’s so close to coming himself.
‘Every fucking day, Lizzie, I’ll mend it.’

I hide my face
in his shoulder and bite down to stop myself from screaming his name out loud,
because my orgasm is peaking and there’s not a damn thing I can do but let the mind-melting,
pleasurable racks of it jolt my body against his. He fingers me hard as he
grinds his hips down into mine, biting my lip, his cock pulsing hot and
shockingly sexy as he comes seconds after me. We jerk almost silently,
clutching each other, our faces buried deep in each other's necks, agonised by
the need to shout, scream, groan and roar.

I feel strangely
as if I'm in one of those matrix style scenes, you know when everything slows
down and you see snapshots of all of the players? Snapshots of Reuben and I on
our wedding day, snapshots of us up here having sex, snapshots of the rest of
the cast and crew scattered around the theatre watching us. If anyone dropped a
pin in here right now, you'd hear it.

‘What happens
next, Lizzie?’ Reuben whispers, when he’s finally got his breathing back under
control.

Beneath the
sheet, his cock slips out of me and I miss him already.

Someone coughs,
and Art struts on from the wings.

‘We might need
to run through that again, folks,’ he says, frowning at the script. ‘Do you
think you could you make it less obvious that you’re actually fucking, next
time around? This is the West End, people, not Amsterdam. Take five.’ He stalks
off set again, clicking his fingers at one of the set runners.

‘Clean sheets,
please.' He shoots us a dark look over his shoulder and then turns back to the
runner. 'You better order in a supply.’

I guess I should
be mortified, but you know what? I’m just not. Art asked for chemistry. Maybe
next time he'll be careful what he wishes for.

'You'd think
he'd be grateful that we're such dedicated method actors,' I laugh shakily under
my breath and look up at Reuben.

‘Same time, same
place tomorrow?’ he says, and his dark eyes dance with laughter, and something
that looks for all the world like love.

Behind his head,
I watch a flashy new neon sign for the play being hung out in the foyer.

Never have
Sex with Your Ex

Yeah. About
that...

I hope you enjoyed reading about
Lizzy and Reuben’s reunion!

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