“Payback’s delicious, isn’t it?”
“God, you have no idea,” she whimpers.
“Au contraire… if I give even half as good as I get from you, then I have a pretty good idea.”
She turns her head and blesses me with a lopsided smile. I lever myself off her and curl up against her, my breasts pressed against hers and my head pillowed on her shoulder.
I can feel her gently teasing the very tip of a finger up and down my spine, and I shift happily against her. I love the way the soft curve of her hip presses into my belly. I love the feel of her ribs against mine; the goosebumps she develops when I exhale. I love the perfect pale teardrops of her breasts in the combination of dying day and flickering fire.
I love that I’m hers.
Gently, I lift my right thigh, and hook it and my leg over her left, pulling me in against her. I can hear the gentle lub-dub, lub-dub of her heart, close in speed to mine now.
“If only every day could be like this,” she says, softly.
“We’d starve,” I return, amused.
“Pretty sure I can live by sex alone,” she answers. I snort.
“Not with the number of calories we burn while doing it.”
“True,” she smiles, planting a gentle kiss on my cheek.
I close my eyes and lie there quietly for a while. It takes me a while to realise that Robs is singing under her breath. My own breath catches, and I try to keep as still as possible so as not to disturb her. It’s such a rare event for her…
It’s Dionne Warwick, I realise. I smile – Robs is praying a little prayer for me, and I can’t help but join in on the refrain. She laughs, and stops singing, then squirms over to face me.
“I wish you’d do that more often,” I say, sadly. “You sound like an angel who took up chain smoking. Turns me to putty.”
“One artist in the family is enough,” she says, eyes twinkling. “But if you’re good maybe I’ll sing more for you.”
“I’d like that, Robs. I’d like that a lot,” I say, softly. She strokes my cheek, then reaches over and pulls a blanket over us, adjusting me slightly so that she’s comfortable.
As we lie there, listening to the fire and watching the daylight fade, I find myself hoping that I never lose the childlike happiness I feel when I’m around her. Robs as always notices and intervenes.
“Stop thinking so hard, Lexi-love,” she whispers quietly.
I watch the firelight flickering in her eyes, and slowly the world seems to shrink around us, till it’s just her and me.
It’s our little slice of heaven, and I hope it lasts forever.
THE END
**************
NEW STORY TITLE:
ARCHANGEL (EROTICA)
Finding solace in the arms of a stranger.
Enjoy…
***********
I don’t know where Ceridwen came from. I think she’s a melange of the tired city girls you see every day on the London commute.
Our city is hard and jagged, and those of us lucky enough to have someone should be glad; too many people here are alone.
—
I was tired and cold.
The Victoria line platform at Vauxhall was busy and I clasped my violin case to me as I dodged around other people and made my way towards the train station. It was a windy evening, with drizzle and low clouds scudding over the small patches of blue sky. Commuters huddled into their coats as they walked, or crowded into areas of relative calm behind bus shelters or walls in order to smoke. I hurried to try to make my rehearsal on time.
It had been a long Tuesday. Work had been difficult; I was reporting in to a new manager and he’d been abrasive and condescending about both my prior boss and my work for her. I’d put up and shut up but it had taken energy that I didn’t have to spare, and I’d had an exhausted, frustrated cry in the ladies afterwards. I’d got sympathetic looks and a hug from Ally, but it didn’t take the sting away, and it hadn’t helped the sense of shame I felt about blubbing at work; I hated looking weak.
But I was so tired.
I cursed my new boss under my breath, and hoped he’d fall in front of a bus on his way home.
I touched my oyster to the reader; the gate beeped, and I turned sideways, stepping through the barrier. I glanced up at the departures board; my train was still on schedule and I had a few minutes to spare. I took a left turn and started the climb to platform three.
I missed Jason. He had left me a few short months ago – he’d come home, packed a bag, and left again without even a goodbye hug. In hindsight the signs had been there for a while, but hindsight is no comfort when your heart is a lump of stone in your chest. I’d spent the first week sobbing myself to sleep; my friends had been gentle and supportive but they had their own lives and, ultimately, I was alone.
I’d lost weight. People were commenting that I looked too thin; Sam from operations had brought me a tub of ice cream and had shared it with me.
She had shared her tissues too when I’d cried again.
The last thing I needed was a reputation as a crybaby. But Jason and I had been together for four years, and even though it had been cold and hard at the end it had still been an us, and now it was just me.
And it hurt. Some days it hurt more than others, but every day was a struggle, and yet in spite of it I had to get up, get dressed, go to work and be a productive team member in our small marketing consultancy. I had no safety net any more, and my job and my music were all I had left.
.:.
I’d climbed maybe a third of the way up the stairs when a suited man charged down past me. His backpack hung from one shoulder, and as he passed me it swung out and caught my violin case, and his momentum pulled me backwards. I screamed and tried to grab hold of something to stop my fall. But there was nothing but the empty space behind me, an empty space full of metal-edged stairs.
I think I hit each of them on the way down.
.:.
I lay, curled into a ball, cradling my left wrist and gasping for breath.
Vaguely I heard voices around me.
“Oh my god, are you alright?”
“Come on love, come on, you’re OK,”
“Did anyone get a look at him?”
“Cunt didn’t even stop. Wanker.”
A big black man in a London Underground uniform knelt down in front of me and spoke gently to me. “Love, you alright?”
“No,” I cried, “no I’m fucking sore.”
“Love, you stay where you are, alright? Don’t move, we’ll get the ambulance guys here for you. Alright?”
I sobbed out something affirmative as the pain ramped up. My wrist felt like it was on fire, and my head and shoulders ached. Somebody, I don’t know who, covered me with their jacket, and a dreadlocked girl held my hand. I lay there on my side, watching the feet go by me. Time seemed to pass slowly, but I guess it can’t have been that long before the St Johns Ambulance people were there.
A kind woman in green overalls shone a penlight into my eyes as her partner put a neck brace on me, and they talked gently to me as they rolled me onto a spine board for transport, their voices gentle and pitched to be reassuring. I tried to ignore the bystanders filming my bad luck with their cellphones, and I desperately caught the hand of the female paramedic as they wheeled me to the waiting ambulance.
“My handbag. My violin,” I begged.
“We’ve got them, lass,” said the woman. “Don’t fret. We’ll get you to St Thomas and get you checked out, OK? You’re going to be right as rain in a short while, lass. Don’t fret.”
I closed my eyes and tried to be brave.
.:.
X-rays and checkups, an eternity of them. I sat, aching, on a cot in A&E as the duty orderly strapped up my wrist.
“You have some really bad bruising,” she said, “but no broken bones and no fractures. You were lucky.”
“I don’t feel lucky.”
She snorted. “A fall like that can kill. Take it from me, you were lucky.”
I sighed. “How long do I need to keep my wrist bandaged?”
“Three days. You will have limited motion for a week or so, but after that you should be OK. Make sure you stop at Boots on the way out and get these painkillers,” she added, handing me a printed script. “You will need them for a day or two.”
“Ugh.”
“Can you stand?”
I slid slowly off the cot, and straightened. I took a painful breath and then exhaled. “Yes.”
“No dizziness? No weakness?”
“No. Just pain.”
She nodded, sympathetic. “Do you have a bath at home?”
“No, just a shower.”
“Take a long hot one tonight and try to dress up warmly in loose clothing. You are going to be purple by tomorrow.”
“It gets better and better,” I grumbled.
.:.
The queue was short, and I ordered and paid for my extra-strength Ibuprofen tablets. Then I limped slowly back into the entrance hall and ordered a latte in the small, dubious coffee shop there. I needed to sit and collect my thoughts before I tried to get home.
I was too late for rehearsal, there was no point in even trying to make it, and there was certainly no point in even trying to play were I somehow to get there – my wrist was agony; I would never be able to hold my violin, even were I to take off the bandages .
I laid my violin case down on the table and took a sip of my insipid latte. Then I undid the latches on the case and lifted the lid to check my baby.
My heart dropped through my stomach.
“Oh god, no…”
I reached into the case, and touched my broken instrument.
Then I closed it, slumped forward, and tried to fight back the tears.
My violin.
My mother had sold some of her silverware and had used the money to buy it for me when I was fourteen years old. It was a glorious instrument; old and mellow. I’d played it at Eisteddfod, at school, and at University. And now I played in a small string quartet to supplement my income. It was as much a part of me as my face. To see it lying there, neck broken, sound board cracked and bridge destroyed, hurt me far more than I ever could have imagined.
I scrubbed at my eyes, opened the case again, and lifted my instrument awkwardly out, trying not to lose any parts or do any more damage. I laid it in front of me, and just looked at it, gulping.
You can repair an instrument, but it never sounds the same. Something changes; a violin’s soul dies when you break it and the new one is always different. My first teacher told me that the time I dropped my case. So I’d always cared for my violin. Always kept it safe.
And now some cunt had destroyed the best part of me without even a backward glance…
“Hey. I’m sorry to intrude… but are you OK?”