A noise from behind me, and I opened my eyes to see Poppy’s eyes opening, too, and to see her stepping back. Also, I’d lost my towel.
Jennifer had stood up from the couch, and Poppy said, “Oh,” again. There was a look on her face like ... confusion. Or possibly devastation.
“No,” I said. My door was still open, and I wasn’t wearing anything. A young couple was coming down the concrete steps set into the hill opposite, looking straight at me, more than startled. An older lady was trudging up from the shops, pulling a covered cart behind her. Her gaze was what you’d call “speculative,” like she was wondering whether to laugh or send a letter of complaint to the council. I contemplated picking up the towel for a split second and instead, kept hold of Poppy and said, “Not what you’re thinking. This is Jennifer, gynecologist at the hospital. She just came over to, ah ...” I couldn’t quite finish that, because I didn’t actually know why she’d come. “I’d been surfing.”
“Not with me.” That was Jennifer. “I don’t surf. I get enough excitement at work. That’s where I’ve been, staring at things much less beautiful than Matiu’s bare bum.”
“No,” I agreed. “We weren’t surfing. I was surfing with Daisy. You met Daisy.”
“Oh,” Poppy said for the third time. “So that’s two different women you’ve spent time with today.” She ran her hand through her new hair, the hair that was free and easy, like her, and laughed. “Also, you’re naked. And wet. Am I still a fool? No. I don’t think so. I’m going to believe in this. I’m going to believe in you.”
“You’re not a fool,” I said. “And you can believe in me.” I stepped back some more, and now, Poppy did come inside, which allowed me to close the door. Also to grab the towel.
“I’d leave,” Jennifer said, “as I’m so clearly surplus to requirements, but both of you may be interested in what I have to say. That’s why I’m here. To tell Matiu, not to watch him take a shower. I’m happily married, as it happens. Not that he’s terrible to look at, but he’s not interested in me anyway. From what I can tell, he’s not interested in anybody. We wondered for a bit whether he was actually gay. Slim, well groomed, charming? I’m thinking ‘No,’ though.”
Gossip, I thought distractedly. Everybody’s on-the-job hobby, and some people’s mission in life. And everybody thought I was gay? Well, this was new. Was this what you got for not abusing the stairwells?
“If it’s that the Ethics Committee has retracted Matiu’s suspension,” Poppy said, “I already knew.”
Jennifer said, “How?” I said, “What?”
Poppy said, “Because my dad called me and told me.”
Jennifer said, “And it’s quite the story.”
I said, “I appreciate you coming to tell me about it, but I don’t care. I may later, I don’t know. But right now? I don’t care.”
39
Glad to Go
Matiu
I didn’t exactly push Jennifer out the door, but I didn’t exactly not. I shut the door behind her, still wearing my towel, and Poppy stood where she’d started out, barely inside my apartment’s tiny lounge. She’d taken off her sandals, and that was all.
Flowing yellow dress, some sort of lacy thing at the deep vee at the neck, and skin so transparent, you could see the blue veins at her temples. And all that glorious hair, copper and bronze and gold. I stood there a second and looked at her, and she looked back at me. And then I took a step forward, got my hand in her silky hair, pushed it back from her face, and kissed her, long and sweet and deep. My other hand was at her waist, and if you think I was holding on tight? You’d be right.
After a while, I kissed her temples. I kissed her closed eyelids, then her cheeks, and she said, “I, uh ... I don’t have a disease.”
I laughed. It was soft, though, and I was giving her a cuddle, then kissing her some more. “Good to know.”
“And my, ah ...” I was moving my mouth over to her ear now, holding her hair back so I could get there. “My dad ... went to see somebody. Ethics somebody or other.”
“Do you think,” I said, “that you could shut up? I need to lay you down and take this dress off. Very slowly. After that, I need to make you come. I promised.”
She gasped some, but I got a bit distracted, because she was kissing my neck, and her hands were on my shoulders, then running down my arms, all the way to my hands and back up again, as if she needed to touch me as much as I needed to touch her. Which wasn’t possible. “Where’s the bedroom?” she asked. Actually, she breathed it against my neck.
“Uh ... back of us,” I got out, and she was smiling against my skin, then walking me backwards, as if she knew where she was going.
I needed to get some control here. I needed to ...
Through the door and into the bedroom. The backs of my knees hit the mattress, and she was pushing me down onto my back, right across the bed. I’d lost the towel somewhere in there, but I wasn’t complaining. Her knees were planted on either side of my hips, and my hands were on the tie of her dress.
She said, “No. I’m going to do it. I need to do this. I need you to watch. I need to know you see it, and you want it.” So I took my hands away and watched her. She needed that message? I could give her that.
She went slowly. Pulling the ends of the tie, the bow parting, the soft dress falling open. She shrugged it off her shoulders and it fell down her arms, curtaining her in soft cotton. She leaned down over me, and the folds of fabric fell around me, too, so it was around us both. I had a hand on her breast, because I was never going to be able to help it, and she was kissing me, her hands around my head, her tongue licking into me. My hand was inside that lace-edged camisole, holding the weight of her breast, finding her nipple with my thumb, and I needed my mouth there. Just like that night in the spa tub. I needed my mouth at her neck, her breast. This time, though, I was going to keep going.
And then she got her mouth on my neck again and started moving south, over my chest, and I lost the plot a little. Her hands and her mouth were avid, stroking, kissing, sucking at me. I was going up too fast, and I still hadn’t even got her naked.
Poppy
This hadn’t been my plan. To be fair, I hadn’t had any plan when I’d run out of the house, except to get here. But now that I was here, I needed to touch him. I needed to taste him.
One minute, I was over him, my hand finally tracing that tattoo, my mouth sucking on a brown nipple, and he was groaning. The next minute, he had a hand on my shoulder and a leg over mine, and my back was hitting the mattress.
I expected something. Pretty words, the kind he knew how to say. Seduction, however that worked. I didn’t expect him to yank my dress all the way out from under me, and then to pull the camisole off and over my head without much finesse at all. I wasn’t expecting a hand to go straight inside my bikinis, to trace over me, greedy for it, like he was learning my contours and he wasn’t one bit shy to find out, and then for one of his fingers to go right up inside me.
I gasped, and he stopped and asked, “Hurts?” It didn’t come out in his smooth Matiu-voice, either. It was rougher. Stronger.
I was going to make a joke. Something about how we weren’t going to be interrupted today, because no kids. I couldn’t think of it. I had my hands on him, too, stroking over his flanks, his thighs and then, finally, holding him in my hand, feeling the weight and length of him, testing, feeling him jump against my palm, hearing him suck in a breath. I said, “No. Feels so good, but I need to ... kiss you here,” and started sliding down the bed, and he grabbed me again and said, “No. No. I have to do this.”
Haste, making us both a little clumsy. My legs parting, then parting some more, because his hand was still there, probing me, opening me wider. His other hand was in my hair, pulling a little, and I wanted it. Exactly like that.
I tried to think about making sure I stayed on my own path, that I focused so I could get there, but I couldn’t think at all. My hips were rocking, and I was making little mewing nois
es, like a woman with no pride at all.
And he stopped.
My eyes flew open. I said, “Don’t stop. Please. Don’t stop.”
His eyes were closed, his breath coming hard. He said, “I’m ... Need a break. Just a ... minute.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant. That he was too close, just from this. That he wanted me too much, and he was afraid he couldn’t wait. Or that he couldn’t last.
It was a surge of pure power. No more worry about how I looked, whether I was enough. I was enough. I was scooting down the bed on my back, and he was saying, “Poppy. Wait.”
Too late. I got my hands on his hips, tugged him upward, and said, “Come up here. Come on, Matiu. Let me have it. Let me do it.”
He hesitated for a long second. Not believing that hippo-book authors would say that, or that they’d do it. That I’d do it. And then he was muttering something very dirty, followed by something even worse, and he was on his knees and over me, straddling my face, and my hands were caressing his waist, his perfectly solid, hard-muscled bum, his strong thighs, roughened with dark hair. Pulling him closer, and closer still.
I could see his face, now, over me. A twist to it, nearly agonized. His hands were in my hair again, lifting my face up, tipping my chin. And then, slowly, he pushed his way into my mouth. And stopped.
His thighs were so rigid, they nearly quivered. One hand was all the way wrapped around my hair, twisting, and the other was stroking my face. I wanted to tell him, It’s all right, but I couldn’t say anything at all.
A second. Two. Three. And he started to move.
Matiu
I shouldn’t do it.
I couldn’t help it.
I managed to say, “Slap ... me ... if it’s too much.” In answer, she rubbed her hands down my thighs and increased the suction, and I lost the battle.
I tried to be careful. I tried to take it easy. But bloody hell, that mouth. She was sucking me like that was all she wanted to do, and my eyes were trying to roll back in my head. One hand was wrapped in her hair, pulling her head back, and that felt too good. The other one was tilting her chin up farther, letting me go deeper. I was saying some things I hadn’t intended at all, and she responded by holding me tighter and sucking harder. I groaned, a sound of pure anguish, and thought, I can’t stand this. I can’t. I’m going to ...
I thought about pulling out. For about a second. And then it was too late, and I was jerking, spasming, spinning out of myself. And emptying myself straight down her pretty throat.
Poppy
Matiu was sitting back, then scooting back, kneeling over my waist now. His hands were still on my face, and they were shaking. “Poppy,” he said, and his voice was shaking, too. “All right? Bloody hell.”
I got up on my elbows, looked at his face, his heaving chest, smiled slowly, and wiped the back of my hand over my mouth. I turned my face into his hand, kissed his palm, and said, “Mm. You taste delicious.”
He groaned and lay over me, kissing my mouth, then kissing me more deeply, and I knew why. Because he could taste himself in my mouth, and it was exciting the hell out of him. I was so aroused, I ached. I throbbed. I wasn’t one bit satisfied, and I was absolutely satisfied.
I knew how to do this. I was all good.
His hand was running over my shoulder, down my arm, all the way to my wrist. Threading his fingers through mine, then dragging my hand up over my head. He got the other one up there, and was holding me by both of them. And still, he didn’t stop kissing me. He kissed me like we had all day, like this was all he wanted to do. Plumbing my mouth with his tongue the same way he’d been in my mouth before, and for the same reason. That it excited him to feel me taking him in, to know that I was under him and he was inside me. That I’d let him do this.
By the time he finally made it to my neck, I was squirming. And when he was sucking at my breasts, taking it gently, his other hand caressing me, letting me know, as he licked at me, tasted me, that this was exactly what he wanted to do, I was moaning.
I was still wearing my bikinis. Somehow, we’d never got them off. Being touched through them was incredibly stimulating, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He played and teased, rubbing the fabric into me, over me, and, finally, when he’d got down there, kissing me through it, his hands opening my thighs, stretching them wide.
I wasn’t worried about not getting there anymore. I was worried, though, that I was going to explode if he didn’t hurry up.
I said, “Matiu.”
“Hmm?” He still wasn’t hurrying. He was nibbling at me, and then one finger was tracing along the very edge of the leg band, coming closer, almost inside. Almost ... there.
“Hurry,” I said. Now, my hands were on his head, and I was trying to show him. Trying to move him.
“Ah, nah,” he said, sounding so amused, that shaky fella he’d been ten minutes before absolutely gone. Like he’d been the one in charge of that. Which, actually, he had been. “No,” he said, tracing that finger along the edge of the silky fabric one more time, then, so delicately, making its way inside, where I was slick and wet and ravenous. “We’re going to do this slow. We’re going to do it right. I told you I was the expert, remember? Lie back and listen to the doctor.”
By the time he’d pulled the bikinis down my legs and got a couple pillows under my bum, by the time he had his hands on the backs of my thighs and was pushing my legs slowly overhead, all I wanted to do was whatever he said. And by the time he finally got his mouth on me ...
I was already shuddering, crying out, wanting to thrash but totally unable to, because he had my thighs, and he wasn’t letting go. Instead, my arms were sweeping over the mattress like the beating of wings, faster and faster. He lifted his head and said, “Tell me what you want.”
I said, “Please. Matiu.” It came out more like a sob. “Please. Do it hard. Do it now.”
He did. And my head was banging. My mind was melting. My hands were beating against the mattress, and I was calling out loud. Incoherent. No words.
It was torture. It was release. It was everything.
I was still shaking, still shuddering, and he was off me. My eyes were closed, because I couldn’t bear to open them, but I heard a drawer open and shut, the rasp that was a packet opening. He came back to me and said gently, “I’m going to turn you over now.”
“Oh,” I managed to say.
A soft sound that was his laugh, and he had his hands under me, was turning me over, dragging me to the edge of the bed, shoving my knees up under me.
He was standing behind me, his hands tracing down my bum, the backs of my thighs, and up again, and I got a thrill of excitement so strong, I shuddered all over. He said, his voice still gentle, “I’m going to fuck you like this. I’m going to go deep. Is that all right with you?”
“Uh ...” I said. “Yes. Please. Do that.” I needed him. I needed him.
“If it’s too much,” he said, “tell me so. Because otherwise, it’s going to get hard.” He had his hands running over my inner thighs, and then was parting them and, finally, diving in again, like all he wanted to feel was how wet I was. Like he was reveling in it.
My midsection was still over those pillows, my knees on the edge of the mattress, my arms over my head. His hands were on my thighs now, pulling me back into him, and I was so swollen that when he pushed inside me, I felt the friction all the way through my body. All the way to my toes. I was resting on my palms, pushing back against him, my forehead dragging down the sheet with every slow withdrawal, driven forward with every thrust, my mouth open, panting. I was already shaking again when he started, and when he got his hand around there and started to rub? I was shaking more.
I felt him all the way to my belly. All the way to my curling toes. And bloody hell, but I felt him in my head. I felt him everywhere.
He went slowly, like he had all day to do it. He didn’t tell me I was beautiful, and he didn’t tell me he wanted me. He didn’t say a word. He just list
ened while I moaned, and when I got louder, when I was nearly screaming, he did it harder.
He fucked my brains out, and he made me glad to go.
It was amazing.
40
A Little Mold
Matiu
I managed to say, when I had my breath back, when I was lying the right way around on the bed with Poppy in my arms and the duvet over us both, “That wasn’t quite how I intended our first time to go.”
Her shoulders shook, and it took me a couple horrified seconds to realize she was laughing. She kissed my shoulder, and I ran a slow hand down her bare back and up it again, grinned like the fool I was, and said, “Yeh. Well. Best-laid plans, eh.”
“Mm.” She kissed me some more, and that was nice. “I haven’t even told you about my dad. About the hospital.”
“It can wait a minute. I need to hold you a bit more and remind myself it really happened. Finally.”
She propped herself on an elbow and smiled down at me, all the life of her there to see, and her beautiful breasts, too, full and white and round. With those blue veins just under the nearly transparent skin. “Really?” she asked. “Have you been thinking about it that much? I thought it was just me.”
I laughed. I was so contented, I could have drifted off right now. “You could say I’ve been thinking about it, yeh. You could also say it’s been consuming me. Of course, I haven’t been able to work, so it could just be that I’ve had too much free time.” I laughed again when she hit me in the chest. “Nah. I think it was you.”
“Does it worry you?” she asked me after a few quiet seconds, when her head was on my chest again. “What people may say? That the dissolution won’t come through for nearly two years, which means I’m still married? That I have kids? Does it feel wrong?”
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 29