“Who’s acting pretty bloody stupid,” Jax said. “I have to say it.”
“You think?” She ignored my attempts at body-shielding and got to her knees, then scrambled to her feet.
Jax said, “Oh, yeh, I needed to see that. For God’s sake, Poppy.”
I stood up and tried to get in front of her again. It didn’t work, because she stepped around me and spread her arms wide. “What? It’s a body. Just like yours.”
“Well, not just like,” he said, looking somewhere over her head.
“Yeh,” she said. “I’ve got all the parts, and I want to use them. And don’t tell me I’m a mother. I know I’m a mother. I could hardly forget it, could I? I’m also a person. I’m also a woman. Who hasn’t had sex in more than five months, and hasn’t had an orgasm with another human in the room for heaps longer than that. If you want to hear about faking it, though? I can tell you all about that. Do you want to hear the full, pathetic story, or do you want to lecture me some more about not making decisions when you’re coming out of trauma, when you’re hurting and scared and your life’s just changed too much and you know you can never be the person you were before? Oh, wait. What a surprise, you do know about that. Remind me, how did that work out for you?”
“That’s different,” Jax said. “Would you put something on? Matiu, too. I don’t need to see any of that.”
“Then. Don’t. Come. Out,” Poppy said. “Easy-peasy. And no, I’m not one bit different from you. How many weeks out of hospital were you when you met Karen? How long before you had sex with her? How much did you try to fight that? I’ll tell you, because I was there, remember? Actually, I was here. What was it, after you met her? Two days? Three?”
I’d gone over and found the towels, doing my best to ignore Jax, the same way he was doing his best to ignore me. Possibly because if we looked at each other, we’d be fighting. It was those antlers on the savanna again, the hair rising on the back of my neck, my muscles tensing with the need to engage. Instead, I handed Poppy both towels, because she had more to cover than I did, and also because I didn’t care how much Jax saw of me, and Jax said again, “That was different. I wasn’t a ...” He’d been about to say “mother” again, I could tell. He changed it at the last second to, “I wasn’t married. Also ...” He looked triumphant, like he’d hit on a truly excellent point. “I didn’t deliver her baby.”
“I’m separated,” Poppy said. “And he’s a doctor. He’s forgotten that already.”
“Well, no,” I felt compelled to say. “I haven’t. But it’s one incident, one piece of what I know about you. Not the first one, either. The first one was the wedding.”
“When you barely looked at me,” she said. “And I was pregnant.”
“When you were beautiful,” I said.
She looked like she was going to argue about that, but instead, she told Jax, “Right. Back to fighting. I’m loving fighting, you know? I’m hating it, but I’m loving it, too. Isn’t that odd? I’ve been trying not to do it for so many years, but it’s so ... refreshing. Freeing, even. So let’s see. As I recall, Karen was a couple weeks out from a breakup from the man she’d been with since University when she met you. The man she was engaged to. She told me she nearly had a breakdown. In other words, she was on the rebound, and so were you, and you found each other anyway.”
“You think that’s happening with him?” Jax said. “That you’ve found your soulmate? He’s a good ten years older than you are, and if he’s ever even put his toothbrush in a woman’s bathroom cabinet, it’s more than I’ve heard. He’s a player, and that’s all. Want to know how I recognize that? Because I’ve looked in the mirror.”
Poppy drew in a breath. She’d slung a towel around her waist, but she seemed to have lost the plot about the rest of it, because she was still holding the second towel, and advancing on Jax like an Amazon, bare breasts leading the way. It was spectacular. “Right,” she said. “I changed my mind. Losing my temper isn’t refreshing. I don’t know what I think, is the answer. I don’t know anything at all, and maybe that’s fine. All right, it’s just once, and I’m just having fun. What’s wrong with that? Max got to have fun. Why shouldn’t I?” Which wasn’t one bit what I wanted to hear, and you could say I had mixed feelings about what she said next, too. “I don’t trust my judgment, you’re right, except that I do. I want to do what I want, because what I want is normal. I want someone to touch me. Someone who isn’t three years old! I want an orgasm with a person, not a piece of plastic, and I’m not hurting anybody, so why the hell not?”
Jax opened his mouth and shut it again. He did the whole thing once more and then said, “Every answer I’ve got sounds wrong, the second before I say it.” He dragged a hand over his hair. “Shit.”
“You may have to face that I’m entitled to my opinion,” Poppy said, folding her arms, which was also a picture a man could hold in his mind for a good wee while with no trouble at all. “To my life.”
“Jax?” Another voice. Karen’s. Hurrying feet, and Karen skidding into view, wearing a short white dressing gown and nothing else, it was pretty clear. “Oh,” she said. “Wow. That escalated quickly. Whoa, Matiu. All right, even better than I imagined. Teenage dream so realized.”
Poppy laughed, and that was the mood changed, because I had to smile myself. “Cheers,” I said. “I’ll take that as a vote of confidence.”
“You should,” she said. Cheerfully.
Jax sighed and said, “Somehow, this isn’t the conversation I thought I’d be having with my wife.”
“You’re not having it with me,” Karen said. “Matiu’s having it with me.”
“Which is my point,” Jax said.
“Sorry, buddy,” Karen said, “but I can’t unsee that. Never mind. I still like you better. Also, Poppy? You have a seriously great figure. I mean, I knew, but ... Geez. You’re, like, a Barbie.”
Poppy was laughing again. “I told you. Breastfeeding.”
“Huh,” Karen said. “Food for thought.” She looked at me again and asked, “How does that work? I mean—physically? Isn’t there, well, milk? Isn’t that off-putting? The sort of—being a baby again thing? Or no?”
“Stop,” Jax said. “No. Not with me here. Ask Poppy later. What happened to ‘Confidences women share amongst themselves?’”
“Sorry,” Karen said. “No filter. But if Matiu and Poppy are, uh ...” She waved a hand in a vaguely circular manner. “Why are we out here talking to them in the middle of it? Just asking. I mean, the human body’s beautiful and sex is a wonderful thing and all that, but ...”
“We’re not,” Jax said. “We’re going inside.” He turned on the crutches and took two hopping steps, then turned back and said, “Not my best moment, Poppy. Sorry.” And left, with Karen following after.
I told Poppy, “I’m going to have to like him after all. Bugger.”
29
Not Your Buyer
Poppy
Jax and Karen disappeared into the house, and I was still standing there with Matiu, every bit of me still supercharged—frustration, desire, the works—and every bit of me feeling fairly ridiculous, too. I was also having a hard time looking at Matiu. I wanted to say something sexy and sophisticated, something a leading lady would have said in an old movie. I wanted to purr it like the lioness I absolutely wasn’t and get the mood going again.
I couldn’t think what that something was, though, or how to do it. Instead, I said, “Well, that was, uh, seriously awkward.”
Matiu started to laugh, I did, too, and that made him laugh harder, until we were both staggering around like fools. “Like being in high school,” he finally got out, “with the girl’s dad stomping out to the car and opening the door. When you’re sitting up so fast, trying to pull your clothes up, thinking, ‘Oh, shit, I’m buggered.’ Caught in the act.”
“The car you parked up the street,” I said between gasps, “thinking you were so sneaky, that you were so daring. Except that you steamed up all the windo
ws, so your dad could see it plain as day, and so could all the neighbors. Oh, wait. That’s still me. Fuck my life.”
I noticed my language too late, but all Matiu did was let out a shout of laughter. I threw a hand over his mouth and staggered against him, and my towel fell off. I said, breathless with it, “And the part about me faking it. Nothing says ‘sexy’ like a woman telling you she’s not going to come. And then there’s the worst one. The breast milk question. Only Karen, eh. Exactly what I didn’t want to think about. Exactly what I’m trying not to think about.”
Matiu had his arm around my waist, which was good, because it was a bit cold out here, and he was so warm. He was still smiling, but he also pulled me closer, his hand on my lower back, and asked, “D’you want to know the answer, so you don’t have to think about it anymore?”
“No,” I said, then sighed, leaned my forehead against his chest, and said, “Yes. Ugh.”
There was still a smile in his voice, but there was tenderness, too. “Yeh, I tasted a bit. And it didn’t matter. Everything we did worked for me, including that. Full disclosure. And, Poppy?”
My heart was thudding as if it wanted to get out of my chest. Bam. Bam. Bam, like the basketball bouncing against the drive earlier. I saw Matiu leaping, twisting, shooting, beautiful and graceful and focused and driven. That jaguar, nothing about him casual, no matter what he pretended. I said, “Yeh?” and hoped it wasn’t another joke. If he made a joke, I’d have to make one too, and I couldn’t. Or I’d have to think about him risking his reputation, his job, his career for this, and know I couldn’t let him do it.
He laid a gentle hand against my cheek and drew his thumb down the side of my face and up again. “You don’t look like a Barbie. You look like a woman. And you won’t have to fake it. I promise.”
“How do you know you can?” It was meant to be challenging. Possibly sexy. That 1940s film star again. I wasn’t at all sure I’d pulled it off.
He said, “Because I won’t quit until the job is done.”
He bent his head and kissed me. Still gently, but with every bit of his focus. How long had it been since somebody had kissed me like that? With one hand on my head and the other one stroking down to the small of my back and lingering there, then sliding stealthily down again, to that incredibly sensitive spot that was the bottom of my tailbone? I knew the answer. Never. Nobody’d ever touched me like that. He lingered there, and I waited, wanting him to move his hand down and not wanting that at all, because that felt ... bloody amazing. That was what was so surprising about him, I thought fuzzily. When another man would’ve moved on, he stayed.
I should be thinking about what I was bringing to the party, but I couldn’t, because his mouth had dropped to the side of my neck, and he was sucking me there. I heard somebody whimper, then realized it was me. I said, “We should ... I have ... the kids.”
Matiu raised his head, kept those barely-there fingers going on the underside of my tailbone, still not trying to go faster, seeming to want nothing more than to give me every single minute of delicious sensation he could, and said, “Mm. And yet here we are, got this chance. But I don’t have a condom. Difficult.” He smiled down at me. Ruefully. “Not so much like those times in the car after all. I’d have had one then. Hoping, always, and focused on the destination, not the journey. Fortunately, I’ve learned a wee bit since then, and I’d love to show you.”
“You’re joking. No condom?” It was still a bit gaspy, because he was drumming his fingers now, and I’d swear I could’ve had an orgasm from that. But I wasn’t on birth control yet, and, well, there was that reputation of Matiu’s.
The realization hit me like a dose of cold water, I was the one who’d been having unprotected sex with somebody who wasn’t exclusive. I was the one who wasn’t safe, who hadn’t been tested.
I got a bit distracted from my safe-sex ruminations, because he was still touching me, and somehow, what I was actually saying was, “Please. Do that some more.”
He smiled, slowly, looking like a dark angel dropped down here to make my dreams come true, and did it. First the drumming, then the barely-there brush of fingers, almost ticklish but not quite, and so stimulating. When he traced his hand down over my bare bottom, then over the back of my thigh and back up again, still with that lightest touch, I shivered and asked, “Not even a condom in the ... glove box? Wallet? Nowhere?”
“No.” It was muffled, because he was kissing my neck again, too. “Hired car, and besides, I was trying to tell myself it wouldn’t happen. Never mind. We’ll find a way. Better, maybe. There’s that promise I just made, after all. To get you there, nice and slow.”
I wanted this so much. I was pretty sure I needed it, in fact, or something was going to ... what did happen to a woman who was too sexually stimulated for too long? I was liquid inside, my legs trembling, all my tender parts swollen and aching. Standing out here talking, both of us stark naked, feeling Matiu pressed up against me, knowing that he wanted me exactly as much as I wanted him? My fingers were on his biceps, doing some tracing of my own over his tattoo, and I wanted to see him on his back, lying across white sheets, so I could touch and kiss and love all of that. I wanted to run my hands slowly down his shoulders, over his chest, and especially, over that spot on the inner bicep where a man was so sensitive, and where the flax ribbons inked into his skin wound around him. I wanted to kiss him there, to see his eyes looking up into mine, his face somber and beautiful in the low light. In a bed, with no deadline and no pressure, in the kind of space and time we absolutely didn’t have.
I said, “Karen. The kids. My brother. Now that they know ... I can’t, not out here. Not even, you know, fast and all. Even if we only have this once. I’m sorry.”
He lifted his head, and his fingers stopped. I wanted to tell him not to stop, but the expression on his face wouldn’t let me. “This once?” he asked. And stepped back.
“I ... that’s all right with me,” I said. “I know it’s too complicated, and there’s the hospital, and anyway, that’s you. Everybody in the world’s told me by now, so I’d be a fool not to know it, and I don’t care. I may care later, but that’s my problem, not yours. I just want to be ... to be carried away. To have those things people say. Head banging. Mind melting. I want it. I need to know it’s out there. Just for once, I don’t want to be a mum. I want to be a body and that’s all, and you know how to make me do it. How to make me feel it. You could make a ... a date with me. Tomorrow, during the day. I can get somebody to babysit, and I’ll get a room somewhere, so we can both let go, and nobody has to know. Your family, my family. The hospital. If you want to, I mean,” I hurried on, because I couldn’t read the expression on his face at all. “I’ll make it easy.”
“Once,” he said slowly. “And you’ll get a room. Going to leave me money on the bedside table as well?”
“No. Of course not.” I was flushing now, trying to explain, feeling stupid and exposed. Somehow, I’d got it all wrong. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I know my life’s too complicated for you, kind as you’ve been about it—well, my life’s too complicated for anybody, obviously—and I don’t want to jeopardize your job. That’s the last thing I want, when all you’ve done is try to help me. But I need to know that it’s ... that it’s possible. I need to feel like I’m going to be—someday, anyway—that I’m going to be actually desirable to somebody I’d want. Somebody good, like you. So—please. You want to do it, obviously, so—brilliant, right? Meet me tomorrow, and we can. And I’ll do, uh ...” The words were tumbling out too fast, because his face was hard. Remote. “I’ll do whatever you want, too. I mean—oral sex, positions, things like that. Not whatever you want, not if it’s anything too mad, but most things. Things I know about, anyway,” I hastened to add, because who knew what Matiu thought “most things” would cover?
You were meant to have a conversation before sex, set the rules, right? I’d read it in a column. I probably should have read it more closely. “It won’
t be just about me,” I tried to explain. “I’m not asking you to service me, or whatever you’re thinking.”
I ran down at last, only because it’s hard to proposition a man when he’s looking at you like you’re arranging to sell him your table on TradeMe and he thinks the drive is too far and the price is too high. When you can see that he’s not your buyer. I said weakly, “Not romantic, I realize. Not sexy. Sorry. Not my strong point. As I’ve mentioned.”
Those hot precoital conversations probably ran more along the lines of breathless suggestions whispered into ears at restaurant tables, I suddenly realized. I wrote children’s books and had been married forever, though. How was I meant to know? Hazel the Hippo never had this problem. Of course, she was seven. I said, “And I’ve mucked it up. I realize that. Could you just pretend I said whatever it is women normally say to you and ...” I waved a somewhat frantic hand. “Move on? Please? Because I’m desperately embarrassed. Also, Isobel’s going to wake up and start crying any minute, Karen’s going to be out here to let me know, and it’s all going to start up again. So please. Say something. Help me.”
Matiu
Half of me wanted to say something curt and cold and stalk away. Once I’d found my clothes, that is. The other half wanted to hold her. She was trembling from cold and nerves and a horrible sense of overexposure, and there was only one thing I could possibly do next. I retrieved both towels and handed them to her, then said, trying not to let it come out as hard as it felt, “That’s a no. You’ve got the wrong bloke. I’m sorry for your problem, but I’m not the man to fix it.”
I hadn’t been too successful on the not-hard thing, because she jerked like I’d slapped her and said, “Oh. Yeh. I guess ... I knew that was wrong. The wrong way, I mean. Sorry. I’ll just ... I’ll go inside.” She blinked back what I was pretty sure were tears, then hurried off before I could say anything else, or more like—before I could think of any possible thing to say that would make it clear how I felt, since I actually felt about twenty things, and I didn’t have a clue how to express them. Then she turned and headed back toward me, and I thought, Right, mate. One more chance. Think fast. Say the right thing. Those tears? They were humiliation, and how could I humiliate her? Was I really as much of an arsehole as my family thought? As everybody thought?
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 22