Sisteria (20 page)

‘OK,' he said between kisses, ‘I agree. Whatever you say. A fling. Nothing more.'

She paused for a beat, maybe two, in order to feel the guilt rising inside her. Whatever Naomi had done to her, she didn't deserve this. Melvin certainly didn't deserve it.

‘OK. Let me borrow your mobile,' she said.

***

The moment they stepped into the empty lift and the doors closed he held her face in both of his hands and began kissing her on the lips, his tongue coming deep into her mouth.

‘You are so beautiful,' he said when they finally pulled apart. ‘And I love this coat. Makes you look like a French whore.'

‘I take it that's a compliment?'

‘C'mon, you know how sexy you are. Melvin must have told you a thousand times.'

‘Not since the Bay City Rollers were at number one.'

‘Well, take my word for it,' he said, laughing. ‘I work with beautiful actresses all the time and half of them aren't a patch on you. You've got the most gorgeous face, Beverley. You'd look great on the box.'

‘Oh, Mr Jago,' she simpered, doing her best Marilyn Monroe impersonation and at the same time batting her eyelashes, ‘could you get me into the movies?'

‘Stop taking the piss,' he chuckled and kissed her a second time.

She didn't believe the bit about her being beautiful for a minute. It was only when she put her hand under his open coat and traced the outline of his erection that she thought perhaps she would take his word for it after all.

He began undressing her even before he'd closed the front door. The moment her soaking-wet coat, jacket and shoulder bag fell to the floor he was pulling her silk shirt out of her trousers. Moments later the tiny buttons were undone and the shirt had slipped from her shoulders.

She could feel herself start to shake. She knew she wasn't cold. The place was roasting. It took her a couple of moments to realize she was trembling because she was frightened. Apart from a couple of fumbling teenage flings, she'd only ever had sex with Melvin. Their lovemaking had become so tediously lacklustre and suburban that Melvin's foreplay was more like one-and-a-half-play. What was more, he rarely seemed bothered about her taking time to turn him on. It must have been a decade since she'd given him a blow job. She was certain she was about to get it all wrong. She'd be all teeth. Within seconds she'd be giving Tom an accidental Lorena Bobbit and they'd end up dashing to casualty with the top of his penis packed in ice in a plastic bag. She felt as if she were about to sit her A level in strumpeting and hadn't done any revision.

Then, as she noticed him gazing down at her breasts, she realized there was something vaguely humiliating and yet hugely sexy about standing in front of him half naked while he was still fully dressed. In an instant, her fear was overtaken by desire. It occurred to her that the sexual energy she was feeling at that moment could have powered a small town for a month.

He clearly perceived her delight. Apart from taking off his damp coat, he made no other moves to undress himself. When she reached for his jacket, he gently pulled her hand away.

‘No,' he whispered, slipping his keys into his jacket pocket, ‘you first. Come with me.'

His arm round her waist, he kicked the front door closed with his foot and led her along a short, curved passageway, one side of which was made of greenish glass bricks.

What greeted her as she rounded the glass bend took her breath away almost as much as Tom. When she'd asked him on their way over in the cab about where he lived and what his place was like, he'd said little more than that it was a New York-style loft which he'd bought just before he met Naomi and that she hated it.

‘My God, this is truly beautiful. And vast,' she exclaimed, calculating that the room had to be at least fifty feet long. ‘And it's so light,' she went on, eyeing the floor-to-ceiling windows which went the entire length of one wall.

‘Yeah, only problem is, the people on the other side of the building can see right in.'

While he pulled down the white roller blinds and turned on table lamps, she gazed at the huge abstract canvases hanging on the white walls, took in the twisted, misshapen sculptures, the fifties-style sofas and chairs covered in apple greens and purples.

‘If you're that interested, I'll give you the guided tour later,' he said, coming back to her. He slid her bra strap down on to her arm and began kissing her shoulder. His hands went to her trouser belt. For a few seconds she continued to take in the modern wood floor, the kitchen units a few feet away with their aluminium doors and beechwood worktops. For a while, as her head turned excitedly from one exquisitely designed gadget to the next, she was like a patient determined to fight the anaesthetic.

Her last faintly whispered words, having noticed how many of Tom's kitchen appliances seemed to be made of metal, were: ‘I see you've got everything including the kitchen zinc.' Then she succumbed. Not to anaesthetic, but to indescribable pleasure. Tom had undone her trouser zip and was stroking her through her pants.

‘Come on,' he said gently, pulling away. ‘Take the trousers off.' Wondering how much longer she was going to be able to stay upright, she slipped off her shoes. It was only then that she remembered she was wearing hideous flesh-coloured pop socks. The image of her standing there in front of him naked except for the socks was too gruesome for words. As she pulled down her trousers she managed to tuck a thumb under one sock band and then the other, yanking them off as she went.

‘OK, now the bra,' he said, smiling. He watched as she reached behind her and unhooked it. She'd been waiting for this moment. Even though she was only weeks into the pregnancy, she'd already gone up to a thirty-four double D. She took off the cream lace bra and thanked the Lord she'd treated herself to posh new underwear the week before. (She couldn't have stood the humiliation of letting Tom see her in her slack grey jobs with the perished sides and lost underwires which only a skilled mechanic could have retrieved from the innards of her washing machine.)

Her huge breasts flopped on to her front.

‘Wow,' he said appreciatively. He circled one enormous brown areola with his forefinger before leaning down and covering her nipple with his mouth. She closed her eyes while he licked and sucked and then ran his tongue over the rest of her breast. After a minute or so he moved on to the other one.

Finally, clearly sensing that her legs were about to buckle under her, he took her hand again and led her to the low bed at the far end of the room. Above the cast-iron headboard was a huge oil painting of a plate of bacon, sausages, eggs and black pudding. Bizarrely in the circumstances, it briefly occurred to her that although she had illicitly tasted pork once, she had never in her life eaten so much as a crumb of black pudding. Now she was about to make love to a man who not only had, but had hung a portrait of one above his bed. Most surprising of all, she found this obvious familiarity with the epitome, the embodiment, of non-kosher food yet another of the myriad turn-ons about Tom Jago.

She turned to face him and this time he allowed her to take off his jacket. She let it fall to the floor. While his hands went to his shirt buttons, her nerves having well and truly vanished now, she undid his belt and unzipped his fly. She pulled his trousers down to his knees and for a moment simply stared at the outline of his erection under his boxers. As she ran her hands over it, he dug his fingers into her shoulders and sighed. Finally she tugged the shorts down.

‘I had a feeling that being so tall you'd be above average in other departments,' she said, grinning. She knelt down and licked the tip of his penis very lightly with her tongue. She watched his stomach muscles quiver. Enjoying the power she had over him, she did it again. His entire body shuddered. Stroking his balls, she began trailing her tongue the entire length of his erection. Finally she covered it with her mouth and began moving back and forth over the shaft. From time to time she would let him slip out on purpose. Then he would cry out in frustration and she would go back to feather-light touches with her tongue.

‘God, you're good. Really good,' he said, trying to catch his breath.

‘Yeah, well, you know, I've been around,' she said, looking up briefly. Then she took him in her mouth again.

‘No, stop,' he gasped eventually. ‘I haven't finished with you yet. Climb on the bed and lie face down.'

She looked at him and didn't move. He knew. She had no idea how, but he did. He knew damned well she hadn't been around. What was more, he knew or had guessed accurately that she and Melvin had only ever made love with him on top of her. For the first time in her life, for the first bloody time, she was about to experience something quite different. She could feel the blood rushing through her ears.

She watched him while he walked over to a chest of drawers, took out a small bottle and unscrewed the top. The next moment she felt drops of oil falling on the backs of her legs. There was a powerful smell of lavender and what she thought she recognized as jasmine.

With slow, firm strokes, he began massaging her calves and thighs. The ache between her legs was now excruciating. If he didn't touch her, some dial on her was going to slam, cartoon-style, into the red danger zone and a siren start going whoop whoop whoop. After a couple of minutes he turned her over and began rubbing oil into one of her breasts. The other hand went to her belly button and down over her pants towards her pubic bone.

‘Please,' she begged, ‘please.'

‘Ssh,' he whispered. ‘What's your rush?'

The next moment his finger, still outside her pants, was thrusting repeatedly into her. She could feel the roughness of the lace inside her and let out a gentle sigh. Finally he made her lift up her bottom and pulled off her pants. Barely conscious now, she let her legs fall open.

But instead of doing what she wanted, he turned her over once again. As she knelt on all fours, he placed a couple of pillows under her stomach.

She felt more oil. Lots this time, dripping down her buttocks. He began sliding his hands over her bottom. The next thing she knew, he was running his fingers towards her swollen, aching clitoris. The moment he touched her, she cried out in delight. He rubbed her, flicked and teased her, varying the pressure all the time. Just as she was on the point of coming, he moved away from her and drew himself on to his knees. He spread open her labia and pushed himself into her. She thought she would come within seconds, but he teased her clitoris, keeping her going until he was ready to come. Finally the thrusting stopped and he rested his head on her back. Her orgasm, powerful and blissful as it was, reminded her nevertheless of Melvin's decrepit Passat and the way its engine overran when the timing was out.

‘I know this sounds daft,' she said afterwards as she lay wrapped in his arms, ‘but until this moment I think I've always felt like a virgin. Now I've got this sudden urge to tell the entire world that at the age of forty-two I finally lost it. Maybe I should throw a coming-in party.'

‘Maybe,' he said, laughing. He began trailing his finger from her navel to her pubes, ‘You know, Bev, I promise we'll make up for lost time.'

‘Really?' she said, looking up at him. ‘OK, then let's do it again. Now.'

She let out an exceedingly theatrical moan.

‘Hang on,' he chuckled. ‘What are you doing? I haven't touched you yet.'

‘I know,' she giggled, ‘but I couldn't wait, so I started without you.'

***

While Beverley and Tom devoured each other, Melvin shovelled fridge-cold bolognese sauce into his mouth.

Beverley had left him a note reminding him she was spending the evening at the pictures and that Queenie and the children had gone to see
My Fair Lady
at the kids' school. She also told him to heat up the bolognese sauce and pour it on the fresh M&S spaghetti she'd left in the fridge, but he was tired and miserable and couldn't be bothered. Instead he'd taken the Tupperware full of sauce from the fridge, along with a bottle of Budvar. Then he'd gone into the living room and plonked himself down on the sofa, the TV remote at his side.

As he ate the cold sauce, complete with solid globules of pale orange, tomato-dyed fat, he took the occasional swig of beer and channel-surfed. The best he could come up with was a documentary on the Serengeti or an ITV quiz show. He plumped for the quiz show.

‘So, Donna from Billericay - you're going for answer number three,' the quiz master gushed. ‘And remember, ladies and gentlemen, if she gets it right, our Donna will be taking a state-of-the-art deep-fat fryer home to Billericay tonight. So, Donna, you say a Pavlovian response is one which comes about as a result of craving for meringue...'

Melvin grimaced and stabbed the remote again.

‘And just before we end this edition of
Watchdog
,' Anne Robinson was saying, ‘a quick word of warning to all you snorers out there...' He'd been about to hit the remote again and go in search of football on Sky, but the word ‘snorers' had caught his attention.

‘People have been e-mailing us all week,' Anne Robinson continued, ‘to complain about some electronic snoring devices - reputedly developed for Mir, the Russian space station. And if you believe that you'll believe anything. Anyway these are they...' She held up two five-pence-coin-sized pieces of white plastic. Melvin leaned forward on the sofa, holding a forkful of bolognese sauce in mid air. Fucking shitting bollocks, they were his, the ones Vladimir had sold him.

‘According to the advertisements which have been cropping up in all the national newspapers over the last few weeks, you put
this
in your ear - yes, you did hear correctly, your ear - and hey presto, it'll stop you snoring. The manufacturers don't explain exactly how. Funny, that. Well, it seems there are hundreds of gullible punters out there who've shelled out twenty pounds for these things which, according to the ads, are “guaranteed to put an end to snoring”. Right, let's give one a try.'