French Kissing

by Antonia Adams

  FRENCH KISSING

  A collection of five stories

  Edited by Antonia Adams

  Published by Xcite Books Ltd – 2012

  ISBN 9781908766991

  These stories have also been published in

  Foreign Affairs - 9781908086587

  Copyright © Xcite Books Ltd 2012

  The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors’ imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

  Contents

  French Kissing Josie Jordan

  An Argentinian Tango Troy Seate

  Romanesque O’Neil De Noux

  From Bradford To Bollywood Victoria Blisse

  Only In Vegas Elizabeth Coldwell

  French Kissing

  by Josie Jordan

  There I was on my back, with my legs in the air, sliding down an icy slope.

  ‘Help!’ I cried, but all I got was a mouthful of ice-chips.

  The legs of skiers and fellow snowboarders flashed past as I accelerated downwards. Just as I was about to slam into a fir tree, a strong pair of arms gripped hold of me, bringing me to a stop.

  ‘Ca va?’

  Through the snow-covered lenses of my goggles I saw the lift attendant peering down at me. ‘Ca va,’ I said weakly.

  When I removed my goggles, I saw him properly for the first time. What was it about some people that made them irresistible? Their smell? Their body language? Or just that mysterious element known as chemistry? Whatever it was, he had it.

  He helped me to my feet.

  ‘Merci,’ I said, blushing furiously.

  He must have sensed how unstable I was, for he kept hold of my gloved hand. ‘Engleesh?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, annoyed my accent had given me away already.

  I’d come to this small French ski resort with my boyfriend, Jake. It was our first day snowboarding, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that we’d fallen off the tow lift barely fifty metres up. But I thought snow was supposed to be soft! My bottom throbbed from where I’d landed on it. In fact I felt like I’d had a good spanking.

  Jake limped towards us. ‘You OK, Rach?’ he shouted.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I called. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The lift attendant shifted his Oakleys to his forehead. Was it my imagination, or was there more interest than there ought to be in his huge dark eyes? Flustered, I busied myself brushing the snow off my jacket.

  ‘My name is Mathieu,’ he said.

  ‘I’m Rachael,’ I replied.

  I had a split second to prepare myself before his warm lips pressed against my frozen flesh. They were soft with a hint of stubble. Four kisses: two on either cheek. And by now Jake was right in front of us. Being French though, Mathieu got away with it, especially since he then turned to Jake as if to kiss him too.

  I saw my boyfriend tense, clearly fearing the same. But Mathieu just slapped his back in a friendly manner and Jake let out his breath in relief.

  Anyway, that turned out to be the limit of Mathieu’s Engleesh. Luckily I spoke reasonable French. Ignoring the muttering of people waiting on the lift, Mathieu showed us how to hold the T-bar.

  ‘Open your legs,’ he told me, and I felt myself flushing again. I clung to his shoulders for support while he eased the T-bar between my thighs. He was a big guy, broad as well as tall, yet he had a surprisingly gentle manner.

  He helped Jake into place beside me. ‘Now hold on tight,’ he called and started the lift running again.

  This time Jake and I managed to stay upright. ‘I wonder if all the lift attendants here are that friendly,’ Jake said, as we slid on up the mountain.

  * * *

  The following day when we were queuing for the lift, Mathieu came bounding from his hut to greet us. ‘Jake! Rachel!’

  I loved how he said my name. There were four more kisses that made my stomach burn up despite the sub-zero air temperature, and an invitation to his New Year’s party.

  ‘Nice bloke,’ Jake said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, glad he hadn’t noticed the effect Mathieu had on me.

  Up to now, I’d always considered myself the faithful type. I was about to be put to the test.

  That night, Mathieu wore loose-fitting dark jeans and a black silk shirt instead of his red and yellow resort uniform. We were the first to arrive. There was wine for me and beer for Jake and a tour of the small wooden chalet.

  ‘I built it,’ Mathieu told us proudly.

  ‘No way!’ Jake exclaimed.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

  Mathieu smiled. ‘I lived all my life in this valley and I’ll never leave it.’

  I sucked in a little breath when he led us down the pine-panelled corridor to his bedroom. What exactly did he intend here? Menage a Trois was a French term, after all.

  The covers of his double bed were drawn back invitingly. I wanted to jump right in.

  The two men stood by the window. As Mathieu pointed out at the snow-dusted fir trees that glowed in the light of the moon, his shirt rode up to reveal a glimpse of bare midriff. His other hand rested on Jake’s shoulder, a move I could tell Jake wasn’t altogether comfortable with.

  Physically the two men couldn’t have looked more different. Jake was lean and blond - a metro man, if you know what I mean. I could see how other men (if they were that way inclined) might get the wrong idea about him. He got his bum pinched in nightclubs on a regular basis.

  Did Mathieu want to fuck my boyfriend? I imagined him groaning away on top of Jake and my knees went weak. But sadly there was little chance of this happening. Jake was staunchly hetero; there was no way he would even kiss another guy.

  Perhaps Mathieu hoped he and Jake could share me? I’d never had two guys at the same time, although I’d fantasised about it. Jake fucked me in the arse occasionally, when he was in the mood for it. Yet after five years, his dirty side came out less and less often. Which of them would I take up the arse this time? Presuming of course that Jake was OK with the idea … which I very much doubted. I felt a mixture of disappointment and relief when Mathieu led us back to the living room.

  ‘More wine?’ he asked.

  In front of a roaring log fire, he told us stories of winter storms and avalanches. I sat between him and Jake, translating. Every time our eyes met, I felt butterflies. And our eyes seemed to meet a lot. But I was with Jake and Mathieu clearly respected that.

  One by one his friends arrived. Mathieu introduced Jake and me as though we were guests of honour. ‘‘appy New Year, Rachel,’ he said at midnight, bending his head to kiss me. I got a blast of his spicy aftershave and couldn’t help myself; I turned my cheek and met his lips with mine.

  He jolted but didn’t pull away. Perhaps I thought it would get him out my system, yet when I pressed my tongue into his mouth and tasted him, I realised immediately that it wouldn’t. It only made me long for more.

  Afterwards, we just stood there looking at each other. Wrong place; wrong time. I felt guilty and torn. Luckily nobody had noticed – Jake was dancing in the corner.

  ‘Really nice bloke,’ Jake said as we staggered back through the snow to our hotel.

  I shoved him to the bed the moment we got to our room.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ Jake asked as I ripped off his clothes.

  ‘Shut up and fuck me,’ I demanded.

&
nbsp; I lay on my stomach, my face buried in the pillow. When he entered me, I moaned in delight. Poor Jake. As he pumped his cock into me, he had no way of knowing what I was imagining.

  For the rest of the week, I steered clear of Mathieu’s ski lift. I didn’t trust myself. Yet we couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. So on our last day we returned to his little chalet and Mathieu scribbled down his contact details in ornate French handwriting.

  He gave Jake a warm embrace. ‘Take care of Rachel for me.’ Then he kissed me and said: ‘Au revoir.’

  Until we meet again. I so wondered if we would.

  There was a lump in my throat as we loaded our bags onto the coach. Every fir tree, every metre of descent took me further away from him. Too soon I was home and back at work. Life returned to normal and the mountains seemed a whole world away.

  Yet I couldn’t get him out my head. Jake and I began to argue, worse than we’d ever done previously. When we broke up a few months later, I suspected that Mathieu had a lot to do with it.

  I spent the summer moping and my mood only picked up in autumn. A friend of mine was working in France as a chalet girl that winter, so I arranged a trip out to visit her, knowing in the back of my mind that Mathieu’s resort wasn’t far away.

  I hesitated over whether to call him. It had been nearly a year after all. Then I remembered his kisses. And as soon as I heard his voice, I knew I’d made the right decision. He sounded delighted to hear from me.

  ‘I’m visiting a friend in Tignes,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, but you’re very near. You must come and see me.’

  As my train chugged and screeched its way across the Alps, I pictured his liquid brown eyes and wondered if they would still hold the same magic. I reminded myself not to get my hopes up – I barely knew the guy.

  It was mid January. Four o’clock, and the sun had long since sunk behind the mountains. A lone figure waited on the poorly lit platform. He was there!

  He took me in his arms for his customary four-kiss greeting. ‘Salut, Rachel! So good to see you.’

  ‘And you,’ I said breathlessly.

  A chunky white flake floated from the sky.

  I cupped my hand to the heavens. ‘It’s snowing!’

  ‘There’ll be a storm tonight. We must hurry or the road will be blocked. Come.’

  Slipping his gloved hand into mine, he led me to his car. He jammed my snowboard between the seats, cleared the windscreen with his sleeve and climbed in.

  The snowflakes flew at the glass as we drove up the valley. The road surface was covered already. I squeaked and gripped the dashboard when the wheels skidded around the first of the hairpins.

  Mathieu covered my fingers with his larger ones. ‘Don’t worry, Rachel.’

  ‘Keep your hands on the wheel!’

  He chuckled. ‘Is normal for me, this snow.’

  Further up it was several inches deep, and on the track to his chalet deeper still. I clung to his fingers as we bumped along, expecting at any moment to have to get out and push.

  When he turned off the engine there was a strange silence. We looked at each other shyly.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘Run!’

  Dragging my suitcase and snowboard bag between us, we rushed inside. I breathed in the familiar smell of wood smoke and felt like I’d come home. It seemed only yesterday that I’d been there. The place hadn’t changed at all. But had he?

  He tugged off his boots and crouched in front of the fire. Soon he had a flickering flame which grew stronger when he fed it with kindling. I felt its warmth on my forehead.

  Looking satisfied, he stood up. ‘You are hungry?’

  I noticed the table was set for dinner. ‘Wow, have you cooked for me?’

  ‘Of course. Would you like some wine? No – sit down, relax.’

  Expertly, he uncorked a bottle of red. The wine added to the heat in my stomach. From the sofa, with the fire crackling in the background, I watched him at the stove.

  His rich tomato and ham pasta was accompanied by a fresh green salad.

  ‘You’ve gone to so much effort,’ I said, touched.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Our eyes met.

  He reached across to top up my wine. ‘How’s Jake?’

  ‘He’s fine, as far as I know. Actually, he’s engaged to a girl he works with. We broke up.’ I couldn’t read his expression. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I dated a Parisienne for a while.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘They’re complique, les Parisiennes. And she wanted me to move to Paris.’

  ‘You didn’t want to?’

  ‘I belong here in the mountains.’

  ‘Right.’ I certainly couldn’t imagine him in a city. He’d be a fish out of water; too big, too alive to be confined by concrete.

  Outside the window, the snow gave off a ghostly orange glow. The glass had steamed over, so I wiped it clear. ‘It’s still snowing.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We might be snowed in all day tomorrow.’

  ‘Really?’

  Again our eyes met.

  He put his wine glass down. ‘Shall we go outside to watch the snow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The icy blast when he opened the balcony door made me shiver.

  He unfolded a blanket and held it out to me. ‘Come here.’

  I stepped towards him and then we were kissing. We stood at the railing with the blanket wrapped around us, exploring the insides of each other’s mouths with our tongues. French kissing. And he was the most amazing kisser.

  ‘Rachel,’ he breathed when he finally came up for air.

  I blinked, dazed.

  ‘I wanted to do that for so long,’ he said.

  ‘Me too. It was just bad timing before.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You are here now.’

  I nodded. I had the strongest feeling that this was meant to be. Events had lined up to bring us together, halfway up a mountainside in the middle of a snowstorm. I touched his lips with my finger and his mouth descended on mine.

  The tip of his tongue swirled and probed. I imagined how it would feel elsewhere and our kiss became frenzied.

  He pulled away. ‘You want?’ he asked in English.

  My stomach flipped. I knew exactly what he was asking. ‘I want.’

  Wordlessly he picked me up and carried me down the corridor. Inside his bedroom, he kicked back the bedclothes, deposited me on the mattress and stripped me to my knickers.

  I loved his urgency. The wait was over. I was his for the night and he was mine. Once he’d pulled off his sweater and stepped out of his jeans, he climbed into bed with me, pulling the duvet over our heads. His tongue found its way back into my mouth. Against my belly I felt the cool silk of his boxer-shorts. Inside them he was hard already.

  His hand slid into my knickers. Whenever Jake had touched me, it always felt like he was fumbling for the light switch. But Mathieu knew exactly where my switch was and how to work it as well. He looked down with his big dark eyes as he slicked his finger back and forth.

  When he pressed the finger into me, I arched my back and closed my eyes, aware of nothing except his finger. He added a second finger, making me twist and writhe. Then his thumb got in on the act, rubbing in tiny circles. He kissed my open mouth and I came in a short sharp blast.

  Still quaking with aftershocks, I ripped down his boxers and burrowed under the covers to take his swollen cock into my mouth. He tasted soapy sweet and I couldn’t get enough. His hands stroked my hair while I sucked him deep into my throat.

  Now he was the one gasping for breath. He caught me by the shoulders. ‘I want you, Rachel.’

  In the darkness, I saw him holding a condom. When I nodded, he ripped it open. His expression was serious as he lowered himself over me. He pushed my hands to the bed, level with my head, his fingers entwined with mine. His eyes searched my face as his cock nosed into place. It was as though he feared, even at this late stage, that I might change my mind.

 
I shifted my hips to accept him. Inch by inch he slid in. I was so wet that I squelched. He bit his lip and held himself still inside me for a moment. I bucked my hips, desperate for more, but he shook his head in warning and drew back.

  Only when I relaxed, did he begin slowly fucking me. His lips parted, his eyes closed. I wriggled my hands free so I could hold his hips as he moved. His movements became more urgent. He buried his face in the pillow and panted into it as he thrust away. I dug my fingernails into his buttocks to urge him on.

  He muttered something under his breath and came to a stop. Eleven months ago we’d had to hold back. We didn’t have to hold back any longer. I wrestled him over so that I was on top of him, pressed his shoulders to the bed and rode his cock, hard as I could. He lost it and thrust upwards to meet me, biting into the side of my neck as he did so. With a groan, he made one last deep movement and his body spasmed.

  He pulled me to his chest and we lay there, his cock still jerking away inside me.

  A while later, I raised my head to look at him. ‘Remember when we came to your New Year’s party?’

  ‘Yes?’ He cupped my breasts in his hands.

  ‘You brought us into this room and I thought …’

  He squeezed my breasts gently. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, for a start I wanted you to throw me down in bed and take me.’

  He smiled. ‘You don’t know how badly I wanted to do just that.’

  ‘But I was trying to work out where Jake would come into it. Like, you and Jake doing me at the same time?’ The thought was still enough to make me hot.

  ‘I admit I thought about that. But I didn’t get the feeling Jake would be into it.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘How about you, Rachel? Did you like the idea?’

  He could tell from my face that I did. He laughed and pinched my nipples. ‘Naughty girl.’

  I squeaked and rolled off him.

  He gripped hold of my waist and pressed himself up against my back. ‘Now you’ve made me hard again.’

  I felt his cock pressing against my buttocks.

  ‘The other thing was,’ he said gruffly, ‘I didn’t want to share you.’