The Gift

by Portia Da Costa

  ‘Well, come on then, now you’re here.’

  Jay’s rough voice echoed around the tiled room, bouncing oddly.

  ‘Er … it’s all right. I’ll leave. I just wondered if you were OK. You’ve been in here a long time.’ No longer than she had, but she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Liar. Are you afraid? Afraid my body might freak you out?’

  Shit, he was so clever. He’d sussed her out completely.

  ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she called out, flinging off the robe and marching towards the shower. When she reached it, she drew back the screen and joined Jay in the streaming water.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  But it wasn’t his scars that made her eyes widen. She noted them subliminally. They were extensive, and looked fierce, and spoke of agonising pain. No, it was his face, which she’d thought was becoming familiar to her, that caused her shock.

  ‘You’ve shaved your beard off!’

  She almost swayed in the water, and instantly Jay anticipated it, and stepped forward, slinging an arm around her, holding her steady.

  ‘Give the lady a lollipop for observation.’ His dark eyes glittered, their brilliance refracted through droplets of water that hung on the tips of his long black lashes.

  ‘Why? Why did you shave it off?’

  She could do nothing but stare at his face, tracking every detail, every feature.

  The beard had been a small one, and not really covered a great deal of his chin, but he looked astonishingly different. Younger. Less ferocious, yet still uncompromising, and strangely beautiful. Yes, there were scars, and some newly revealed ones around his chin, mostly on the left, but somehow they only highlighted the evenness and perfection of his features.

  This was a face that had been quite literally sculpted and reshaped. And while doing so, a great surgeon had naturally created the best work that he could. High cheekbones, firm jaw, a nose that was almost unnaturally straight. He’d have the face of a fairytale prince when the scars eventually faded, as she guessed they would.

  She really did sway then, but he held her, held her hard against the firm packed muscle of his chest and torso, the long strength of his thighs and, yes, the thickening jut of his erection.

  Sandy drew in a deep breath, gathered herself, then put a hand onto Jay’s wet shoulder, further steadying herself.

  Why had she thought that? Jay wasn’t a bit like her Prince Charming. No, not a bit like him. And yet why, when she looked up into his grey eyes, did the strange impression persist?

  ‘Hey, are you all right?’ he said softly, smoothing the water-logged hair back from her brow and slicking it over her shoulders.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Still holding onto his shoulder, she took a step back, looked into his face and then down his body, at his scars.

  They were fierce and reddened, twisting over his chest and flanks and belly, and across one thigh. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. The thought of what he’d gone through, the pain and presumably immobilisation while he healed, made her heart twist with sympathy. And when Jay frowned suddenly, she knew her face had shown her feelings.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, eh?’ he said, his mouth hard as he spoke, as if there was more than just this moment making him bitter. ‘Enough to put even the horniest bitch off.’

  Her knee-jerk reaction was anger, and she cried, ‘No! They’re not pretty, but then I’m not just some horny bitch. I like you. And I thought you liked me. I thought we had something.’

  Jay glared. But just for a second. Then his face twisted, playing out a complex series of emotional shifts. All even clearer now for his features being shorn of the beard.

  ‘We do have something. I don’t know what. It’s early yet.’ Sandy stood on tiptoes and reached up to kiss his face, pressing her lips to his chin, the corner of his mouth, his cheek, feeling it, knowing it. She ran her hand down his body, exploring raised and crimped skin, touching it lightly in case there was pain, but not flinching from it.

  Cupping her hand around his cock, she felt it throb and thicken and grow.

  ‘I don’t want a pity-fuck,’ he breathed roughly, mouth against her wet hair.

  ‘Why the hell would I pity-fuck you?’ she growled back at him. ‘What I’m interested in is a “best sex of my life”, “never realised what I was missing” fuck, that’s what.’

  He bucked against her, rubbing his cock against her hip, circling his pelvis.

  ‘OK, you’ve got scars. And yes, they look like pretty bad ones.’ She looked up and met his eyes, making hers as hard, and uncompromising in their own way, as his. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with this, is there?’ She ran her fingers up and down his cock, astounded that it could feel hotter and harder than ever before. ‘This bloody great thing is in perfect working order as far as I can tell.’

  Jay’s laugh was a broken, bitter bark, and he shook his head.

  ‘If only you knew, Princess. If only you knew.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She strummed the head of his penis with her thumb, caressing the groove beneath, and then smiling as he hissed through his teeth, his fingers gouging her shoulder involuntarily as he rolled his head.

  ‘Jesus, Sandy … Oh God …’

  He pumped his hips, then stilled, clearly fighting for control.

  ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘Fucking hell, Sandy, if you want me to admit it, I will!’ As she looked up at him, he closed his eyes, and a muscle in his jaw jumped. ‘The first time I was with a woman after my accident, this “bloody great thing” wasn’t in such perfect working order as it is now.’ He gritted his teeth momentarily in an obvious battle with his every alpha male instinct. ‘I was pretty much a non-event, a dead loss. I wasn’t a man.’

  A wild clamour beat in Sandy’s chest. Awe. Wonder. How much had it cost him to admit that to her? A man’s greatest fear, and yet he’d shared it, with her. A woman he’d known less than a day. A woman he wanted to impress.

  She wanted to kiss him and hug him and tell him everything would be all right, but that probably wasn’t the response he wanted. Instead, she gave him another long lingering stroke with her thumb, cherishing the supreme hardness that hadn’t wavered despite his confession.

  ‘Well, as far as I can see and feel it’s an insatiable monster now, Jay, and that’s a fact.’ She pumped him, slow, slow, then faster. ‘Whatever happened before must’ve been a post-traumatic blip. There’s nothing wrong here now. Nothing at all. In fact everything’s right apart from the fact we don’t have a condom handy.’

  ‘Damn,’ Jay growled, but it was a happy sound. Confident and primal. ‘I’ve got condoms aplenty, but they’re all in the bedside drawer.’ He laughed, thrusting with his hips again, sliding her grip. ‘And the way you touch me makes me want to come. And now, you sexy little tease, right now!’

  ‘What are we doing to do?’

  ‘Here, hold onto the rail,’ said Jay suddenly, turning her in the stall. ‘We’ll just have to improvise.’

  She grabbed the chrome handhold with one hand while Jay manoeuvred behind her, pressing his erection against her hip and swirling it against her skin. He too gripped the hold with one hand, and the other arm he slung around her belly, holding her tight.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ he commanded, his mouth against her hair as he began to work himself against her. ‘Make yourself come as I get off rubbing against you.’

  The words were raw and no-nonsense, but they excited her, as did the feel of his hot slippery penis, gliding against her bottom and her flank, coasting on the streaming water and its own lubrication. She swirled her own hips, trying to follow his, and stay in sync.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ he repeated again, his arm tightening around her as he moved in an up and down jerk, right in her bottom cleft.

  It was rude and delicious, and her clitoris pulsed as she pressed a fingertip against it. Jay’s cock was tantalising delicate sensitive forbidden areas, and he was hard. It was like having a warm silky dildo rubbing and teas
ing her. The sensations were delicious and perverse, but now, with this man, she was hungry to try anything while the fires were hot, before they parted.

  A little pang, a prefiguring of the loss she knew may well come, made her lose her thread a moment, but, when Jay kissed the side of her wet face, she found it again. Gyrating her bottom, teasing him back as he teased her, she got their groove back.

  She barely needed to touch her clitoris. It felt as if it were simmering beneath her fingertip, ready to detonate. That was the way she seemed to be always, around Jay. As her pussy jerked and fluttered wildly, she cried out incoherently and pressed her forehead against the tiles. They were still cool despite the tropically hot water sluicing down.

  Her orgasm was rough, hard, too soon really. She’d wanted to last out longer. Moaning, she pressed forward, jamming her hand against the wall with the weight of her body, still circling, trying to drag out the last pulses of pleasure as long as she could. Jay followed, pressing and moving too, rocking against her, not with all his weight, but adding force and more momentum. He was pleasuring himself, but working with her, sensing her needs.

  This was a strange way to fuck, have sex, make love. But then nothing about Jay was common or usual. He’d blown into her life like a volatile dark storm, gathering energy and yes, with every hour that passed, wreaking havoc.

  ‘Come again,’ he urged, his penis sliding rhythmically in the cleft of her bottom. ‘Come again for me, baby. You can do it!’

  ‘I – I’m not sure I can,’ she gasped, suddenly feeling exhausted. Hellfire, she’d had so much sex in the last twenty-four hours, more than she’d had in the previous twenty-four months. Slumped against the tiled wall, she seemed to have no energy in her.

  Whereas Jay had enough for two.

  Turning off the shower, he wrenched open the glass screen, and half lifted her out of the stall. Then, still manhandling her, he took the pair of them down onto their knees on the bath mat. There was a towel on the rail just in reach, and he snatched it and slid it underneath her as a makeshift pillow over the side of the bathtub. Following his lead, Sandy folded her arms on top of it and rested her face on them, the natural dishing of her back bringing her bottom up.

  Sliding around behind her, Jay rubbed himself against her thighs and her bottom as before, but this time with his hands free to reach around and beneath her, to give pleasure.

  Sandy drifted, didn’t try to rouse, just let Jay ‘happen’ to her. It was a gentle liberating state, free from responsibilities and expectations, no performance stress. Floating and listening to Jay’s breathing and her own occasional grunt of pleasure, she closed her eyes and surrendered to the moment.

  His touch was light, incredibly measured and circumspect given what must be happening within his own body. It was like being stroked and gently roused by some incredible computer-driven sex robot. Or maybe cyborg, formed of warm human flesh but with the millimetre-perfect accuracy of a machine. An image that had amused her before made her grin. Surely only a Terminator was capable of operating in the face of such conflicting forces.

  ‘What is it?’ he purred, leaning over her. She could hear a smile in his voice, just as he seemed to read the slight smile on her face. He couldn’t know what had provoked it, could he?

  ‘Nothing. Just crazy thoughts. All this sex is making me mental.’

  Jay paused, his fingers stilling between her thighs, at her breasts.

  ‘No! Don’t stop!’ she cried, the stillness making her realise that her arousal was winding up again and she wanted – no, desperately needed – him to work her up to its conclusion.

  ‘Your wish is my command.’

  His fingers started slicking, slicking, slicking again, in her sex. But as he did so his mouth started moving in a track, down over her shoulder and on down her spine.

  Before she knew it, suddenly the pleasuring was all about her again. Jay moved back a little way, presumably still as rampantly erect as before, but now his mouth was kissing the small of her back, then her tailbone. And below.

  And then he was kissing the pucker of her anus. Tickling it with his tongue, lightly probing and flicking with the furled point.

  ‘Ooh … no,’ she crooned, years of inhibition speaking for her while every nerve and desire in her body screamed, yes, yes, yes!

  ‘Yes!’ confirmed Jay, his breath searing hot against the cheeks of her bottom and the little vent that pulsed with excitement in time to the tremors of imminent orgasm that shimmered in her vagina.

  He prodded her with his tongue. He gently squeezed the bud of her clit with his thumb and finger. With the power of his mind, he somehow silently said ‘Come!’

  And she did. A massive wrenching orgasm that sent waves of dark transgressive bliss surging through her pussy and her entire pelvis. Incoherent, she let out a raw uncouth cry and slumped hard against the side of the bathtub, her sex pulsating and her anus pouting against his tongue.

  For a few moments he held onto her, sweetening the sensations with his fingers and his tongue. And then he let go of her where she rested against the side of the bath and reared up over her. Summoning her last energy, Sandy twisted, craning to watch him behind her as, like a scarred and pagan god of sex, he pumped his cock in rough, almost angry strokes, then spurted semen over her bottom, shouting and snarling as incoherently as she had.

  But as he slumped back, and took her with him, half falling onto the bathroom floor, he whispered, ‘Princess …’, and then repeated it again and again and again as he held her body, still wet and sticky, tight and close against his own.

  Chapter 13

  In her dream, Prince Charming was leaning over her, his glorious features full of concern, his dark shaggy hair dangling forward over his brow. His grey eyes offered comfort and sympathy.

  The fear and shock slid away, and she reached up to touch that dear face. But he receded, speeding away from her as if on a camera dolly, down a long menacing tunnel.

  She called out to him, ‘Jay! Please come back … Jay!’

  A hand touched her face, but not Prince Charming’s, and she sat bolt upright in a strange bed in a room smelling of potpourri, her heart thudding and her pulse racing, totally disorientated.

  But the arm that came around her felt just as good as the one that had encircled her all those years ago. And it was probably far stronger.

  ‘Hey, are you all right, love? You were shouting and thrashing in your sleep.’ Jay’s fingers curved round her cheek and he made her look at him. With his other hand he brushed back her hair where strands of it had fallen across her face as she slept and into her mouth. ‘You shouted my name. I hope I wasn’t a monster in your nightmare.’

  Sandy gave him a cautious little smile, still not quite sure what she was feeling. She glanced around the room, at all the chintz. Ah yes, the Waverley. The bathroom door was open and, seeing the gleaming white tiling beyond, she felt a rush of heat, and a blush rising in her face. She seemed to feel the slick of his tongue, licking her skin and probing wickedly between the cheeks of her bottom.

  Oh boy …

  Unable to look at him for a moment, she continued her perusal, and blushed more. At some point while she’d been taking the nap that she hadn’t realised she’d needed until she’d laid her head down, someone had come and taken the tea tray, replacing it with a trolley laden with sandwiches, cold cuts, bread and cheese, wine, coffee in a cafetiere. They’d seen her sleeping in a guest’s room. Sandy focused in on the beautiful presentation of fine food in an attempt to stop thinking about that. And about Jay’s wicked tongue. And the deeper implications of her dream.

  It’d been Prince Charming, she was certain of it, his face clearer than usual in her memory. But Jay had been the one she’d called for as that face had sped away.

  Why do I keep linking the two of them? Surely, it’s not possible that …

  She shook her head. It was ridiculous and unlikely, and even so, if it was true, she hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening
years, even if Prince Charming had. Her face and her hair were just the same, and he must have recognised her, even if he was unrecognisable himself.

  ‘Sandy?’

  He was staring at her in concern, and perhaps a bit of suspicion. Was he really Prince Charming and even now realising that she’d sussed his true identity?

  What the fuck is your true identity?

  ‘Just a weird dream. I’m OK. Nothing to worry about.’

  He frowned at her. For a face that had been stitched together by a surgeon’s skill, his was extraordinarily expressive, especially now the goatee beard was history.

  She decided to test him.

  ‘It was about something that once happened to me, and someone I once met.’ Shaking herself free of him, she slid off the bed and went to the tray, poured some coffee into a cup, then added milk. ‘I was at the seaside, and someone tried to mug me on the sea front and steal my bag. They knocked me over, and this young man helped me.’ She took a sip of the brew. It was rich and aromatic. Under normal circumstances she would have sighed with pleasure and made a point of remembering to ask at Reception about the brand, but instead she went on, ‘He was kind and sweet and he sat with me until an ambulance came. But then he had to go and catch a ferry with his friends, and I never saw him again.’

  ‘And he never tried to contact you again? Or you him?’ Jay’s voice was neutral, unrevealing. He wasn’t Prince Charming, obviously. Disappointment stabbed her, even though she’d not seriously thought it was possible.

  ‘No, alas, we never exchanged names.’

  She heard him get up, come to stand beside her. Almost felt the heat of his body as he approached, even though he was wearing a hotel bathrobe, just as she was.

  ‘But you still think about him.’ It was a statement, as he too poured coffee, black and strong.

  ‘Yes. Somehow in my mind he’s become some kind of perfect fantasy hero. A kind of Prince Charming. The very embodiment of nobility, of chivalry … and romance.’ She put down her cup, picked up a sliver of cheese and nibbled it. ‘I know it’s ridiculous. He’s probably not like that at all. He could have turned out to be the most horrible, lying conniving git, a total bastard.’