Competitive Nature Read online

  Or rather, almost everything.

  “Bloody, bloody hell,” she repeated, more forcefully, cringing inwardly at the memory of the stupid challenge she had made last night. Was she truly going to go through with it? Wouldn’t it be better to eat up and creep away early, pretending some work crisis or other? Her parents would be disappointed, since she didn’t see nearly enough of them these days, but at least ritual humiliation and awkwardness might be avoided. Perhaps Jay and Patrick had both been as drunk as she had, and wouldn’t remember. Or would be too embarrassed to…

  These thoughts persisted throughout breakfast, but Elyssa was only halfway through her second sausage when the cheery bleep of her mobile intruded into the conversation she was having with her mother about family matters.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” her father wondered, lowering the Sunday paper.

  “Oh, it won’t be anything important. They can leave a message. Probably a work thing.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  “There’s no day of rest for the wicked,” she joked, but her heart was racing fit to break the sound barrier. There was no way she could speak to Jay or Patrick just now. No way on earth. The phone silenced and she took a deep breath, gripping her fork tightly to stop it slipping through her trembling fingers.

  The third time the tune rang, she couldn’t fob her parents off.

  “Okay, okay, I’m going to answer it,” she huffed, retrieving it from her coat pocket and retreating to the farthest recesses of the living room, where she couldn’t be heard from the kitchen.

  “Elyssa! Did I wake you up? God, I’ve wanted to say that for years.”

  “Jay. Good morning.” The sound of his voice had tightened her chest, making her greeting sound breathier than she’d intended, and she felt a rush of shocking desire for the low-toned lothario.

  “Listen, are you up, seriously?”

  “Just having breakfast.”

  “Ah, okay, that puts brunch out of the picture. Never mind, there is a Plan B. And a Plan C. And a Plan D. I could go on.”

  “No, that’s fine. So…?”

  “So, wait for the signal.”

  “What? The signal? What signal?”

  “You’ll know it when you hear it. Wait and watch, my dear Elyssa.”

  “Are you—?”

  But he’d ended the call.

  Elyssa wanted to feel cross and put out, but instead, she felt strung taut with exhilaration and curiosity. What the hell did Jay have planned? If she knew him at all, it would be something totally unpredictable, and possibly dangerous. Deciding what to wear was going to be the least of her worries.

  She played it safe with jeans and a pretty cotton blouse, clipping up her mane of tawny hair and pulling on canvas deck shoes for a casual, summery look. She was not going to give him the impression she was making a big effort for him. The big effort was not hers to make. And yet, something at the core of her did want to pull out the stops for him, make him desire her with a fierce burn, make him unable to forget her.

  “Play it cool,” she chided herself. “If he wants you, he wants you. No extra coat of lipstick is going to make a difference. Look, Elyssa, you only live once, and you haven’t even started yet. You want him. Take him.”

  Her internal pep talk was interrupted by the clear, clean jingle of a bicycle bell. She popped her perfume spray back in her handbag, peered out through the net curtain in her childhood bedroom and emitted something between a laugh and a scream. Jay was leaning nonchalantly on the wall, holding up a tandem bicycle by the handlebars, not even facing the house but staring off towards the end of the street.

  Elyssa galloped down the stairs and flew through the front door, shouting a hurried goodbye to her parents.

  “Jay!”

  He turned around, peering over his rock-star cool shades and allowing a slow smile to light his features. “Ah. Madam. Your conveyance awaits you.” He bowed exaggeratedly, resting the bicycle against the wall, and stepping forward to take Elyssa’s arm.

  “I have never been on one of these before, and it’s years since I rode a bike!”

  “You’ll get the hang of it. It’s like riding a bike.”

  Elyssa clicked her tongue and lightly slapped his forearm. “Come on then. Where are you taking me in this fairytale carriage?”

  “It’s a bit of a magical mystery tour. I wonder if you can guess en route?”

  Jay slid a long leg over the front crossbar and looked over his shoulder, grinning at Elyssa as she tried to get comfortable on the unfamiliar machine, still confounded by its appearance.

  “I’m sure we’re going to topple this thing,” she said nervously. “What’s in those baskets? Are they heavy?”

  “Heavy enough. Got your feet on the pedals? Are you ready? Hang on tight.”

  It took some wobbling, some squealing, some lightly grazed shins and a lot of laughter, but eventually they set forth, sailing down the slope and out of town on to the verdant country lanes that surrounded the place where they’d grown up. Elyssa tried to guess their eventual destination, but every time she thought she had it, Jay took an unexpected turn. Over bridges and through tunnels they went, alongside the railway line for a stretch, then through a deep woodland. Just when Elyssa felt sure her knees were going to seize up forever, Jay swept around a corner into the grounds of the ruined abbey they had often visited as teenagers.

  “I didn’t know you could get here that way!” Elyssa remarked. “I didn’t know it was so near to the forest.”

  “I have the map of this county permanently seared on my brain,” said Jay, applying the brakes and leaping off the bike, helping Elyssa to follow him.

  “You miss living here?” Elyssa almost staggered on alighting, her legs were like runny jelly.

  Jay caught her, bringing her close to his side with a lightning-quick arm.

  “Yeah, of course. It’s a beautiful place. I miss everything about it. Can you stand?” He chuckled, steadying Elyssa with a hand on her shoulder while he unloaded the baskets from the tandem. “Let’s go and sit down. We’re not as young as we were. Our old joints are creaking.”

  They found a spot that they both remembered, a grassy knoll shaded by the overhanging section of ruined stone wall, where long, mournful windows with pointed arches let shafts of sunlight through to pierce the shadows.

  “I came up here,” said Jay, laying a cloth and spreading himself out on it beside Elyssa, “the night of the Leavers’ barbecue.”

  “Oh.” Elyssa felt a pang at the memory of that night. “That’s where you went.”

  “Don’t say you missed me.”

  “I did. I wondered where you were.”

  “You were busy in Patrick’s arms, I believe.”

  “It was one dance, Jay. God, I can’t believe you’re still so…bitter about all that.”

  “I’m not bitter!”

  Elyssa arched an eyebrow, intending to convey her disappointment at Jay’s dwelling on their youthful jealousies and imagined slights.

  “I was just so in love with you. I couldn’t stay and watch.”

  “You daft thing.” Elyssa stroked a strand of hair that had strayed behind the lenses of his sunglasses, brushing it out of his eye. “You don’t believe nothing else happened with Patrick that night, do you?”

  “If you say so, I believe you. Patrick told me different, though.”

  Elyssa gasped. “He didn’t!”

  Jay covered his face with his hands, groaning as if in pain. “It’s such a disaster,” he wailed. “Everything could have been different without the stupid competitive bollocks! Why couldn’t we just be normal?”

  “What’s normal?” Elyssa’s wry remark was taken seriously by Jay, who put a finger on her lips, took off his sunglasses and held her eyes in a steadfast gaze until she had to stop smiling and remember to keep breathing.

  “Kissing,” he said. “I think kissing is normal. When two people fancy the pants off each other. Want to try it out?”

/>   Elyssa would have made some jokey comment about him being a fast mover if only she hadn’t been struck dumb by the serious intensity of his stare. Instead, she found herself nodding mutely, letting him take her face in his long-fingered hand, holding as still as silence itself while he moved towards her, that slow, inevitable glide and bob that ended with lips on lips. Oh, the warmth and the perfect fit of it. His mouth was the right one after all these years, feeling just the way she had dreamt it would each time she had kissed her own arm in adolescent practice sessions. She was so entangled in the sensation and the emotion that she made no attempt to resist when he laid her gently down and hovered above her on his elbows, deepening his reach, keeping her lips parted to accept his tongue while his fingertips massaged her scalp, setting a wild butterfly-riot of desire alight across her body. He smelt and felt and sounded and was so wantable, touchable, kissable that she wanted it all to go and on. His light cotton shirt against hers, cool on her skin. His knee finding a space for itself between her denim-clad thighs, their belt buckles clicking and locking together as they began to shift and grind a little under the lascivious direction of their starved kisses.

  It was like being a teenager again, when the kiss, itself, was sufficient and need not—perhaps should not—lead anywhere. Jay and Elyssa sucked the sweet nectar from each other, the closeness they had finally achieved putting all of Elyssa’s lonely nights into glorious context. Elyssa, pushing her tongue past Jay’s teeth, was beginning to understand that this would not, after all, be enough. She was a grown woman now, and she knew where kissing could lead. She was not sure it was a good idea, and yet on another level, she was so sure that it was. The weight of Jay upon her pelvis, the brush of his heated skin on hers, the unmistakable lump that pressed into her groin, all these were pushing her forward, awakening desire that was entirely adult in nature. She knew she was wet, the damp transferring in patches to the rough denim of her jeans, and she was letting Jay nudge her thighs ever farther apart as they continued the ardent lip-lock. If the ghosts of monks or nuns walked this ground, they were getting quite a sinful spectacle.

  It was the thought of those ghosts that finally prompted Elyssa to shy away and end the kiss, staring up at Jay’s flushed face and clouded eyes in near-consternation.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “Am I going too far? Too fast? Shit, I had so much planned before this was supposed to happen. Picnic, champagne, a boat on the lake. We can still do those, can’t we?”

  Elyssa was touched by his self-flagellatory tone. It was clear that this was important to him.

  “It truly is like being eighteen again,” he moaned. “My hormones have gone into overdrive. I’m like a six-foot-four mountain of testosterone.”

  Elyssa put a reassuring hand in his tumbling hair. “Believe me, Jay, the oestrogen is doing its damnedest here, too. It’s okay. I’m just…overwhelmed. And a bit…well, this is, like, sacred ground, isn’t it? Might not be the place…”

  Jay’s face lit with wicked purpose. “Oh! So it’s the place, not the time?”

  “The time is fine,” she confessed, biting her lip, pained to be so bold.

  Jay knelt up, straightening his back, and took a long view down towards the lake, shading his forehead with a hand. The sun was strong now, heading for its midday zenith. “The lake has some secluded spots,” he mentioned offhandedly. “And I believe the ground there is as profane as it gets. Profane ground is what we’re after, I think.”

  “Obscene ground, even,” giggled Elyssa, sitting up. Mention of the picnic and champagne had made her hungry for more than sex. The only question was, what order should they do it in?

  “Or there are some hotels in town. Would you rather…?”

  “No. The shores of the lake sound good to me. As long as we stay away from the bit with all the fishermen.”

  “I know the perfect spot.”

  “I’m not getting back on that bike,” she warned him, shaking her legs, which were beginning to ache.

  “That’s not the kind of ride I have in mind,” he told her, taking the basket in one hand and her arm in the other. “Come on. Last one down has to strip off and jump in the lake.”

  Chapter Two

  Elyssa, substantially shorter-legged than her prospective lover, lost that competition and, once they had found the perfect sheltered bank, overhung by trees that obscured them from the rest of the shores, she wriggled out of her jeans and blouse and kicked off her deck shoes.

  “Are you coming in?” she asked breathlessly, padding barefoot down to the reeds, feeling the soft, warm mud squelch between her toes.

  “Er, excuse me.” Jay held up a lean finger and lowered his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose, glaring at her with mock-severity. “I think I said, ‘strip off.’ You’re still clothed.”

  “Jay!” she whispered. This was real. Actually happening. Jay expected her to get naked in front of him. “What if…?”

  “Nobody will come here. Nobody except you and me, that is.” His lip curled, irresistibly devilish. “Now get those undies off and get in the water, because I’m coming to get you.”

  Elyssa squeaked and, crouching in the reeds, removed her bra and knickers, escaping backwards into the water, which was chilly but not unbearable, watching Jay throw off his jeans and shirt to reveal that long-limbed body, still pale but freckled and without a pinch of spare flesh on it. He had been, she recalled, self-conscious about it as a youth, and had loathed sports and games as a consequence. But now he seemed to care nothing at all for his excess height and leanness. He was confident, comfortable in his skin, and so very much more attractive for it.

  She lay back and floated, letting the water lap over her skin, basking in the dappled sun that penetrated the willow branches. She felt so free, it seemed ridiculous that she had never done this before. She thought back to all those years in Oxford, bumping into Jay on the street or in the pub, and never trying to rekindle their awkward youthful passion. She must have been stupid.

  The splash of his entrance into the water reminded her that she was supposed to be trying to elude him, and she darted off, letting waves ripple in her wake. But there was no way she was going to allow herself to escape, and it was with a delighted shriek of laughter that she felt his arm grab her around the waist and pull her back against his chest.

  “Mmm, look at you, all wet and naked,” he murmured into her dripping ear. “What shall I do with you, hmm?”

  “You’re the rocket scientist, you tell me,” said Elyssa, which made him laugh and swallow her smart mouth in an all-conquering kiss.

  “I think showing beats telling,” he told her, coming up for air, his hands all over her beneath the surface of the water, snaking down her back to her bottom, then up her belly to her breasts, like water creepers. “God, you’re gorgeous. Why did I leave it this long?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing.” She lifted a leg to wrap it around his hip, pressing her exposed centre against his crotch. The invitation was honest and unmistakable, and he kissed her again, squeezing those mounds of flesh he’d found, holding her in a tight octopus grip.

  The water streamed around their bodies and through the gaps between their flesh, warming in the sun. Jay pulled Elyssa down so that they both knelt on the lakebed, the surface lapping around Jay’s chest and Elyssa’s collarbone. Beneath the sunlit blue-green ripples and the floating fronds of lakeweed, the lovers were free to do as they pleased with each other, and they did, causing waves to roil around them until the water was choppy.

  “Perhaps we should get back on the bank,” whispered Jay. “I’ve heard of drowning in passion, but I don’t really want to know if it can happen literally.”

  Elyssa kissed his neck, lingering over the soft flesh, wanting to consume every inch of it. “You’re sure nobody can see?”

  “I’ve been around this lake from every angle, and I’m sure this is the blindest spot on the shore.”

  “Oh, so you’ve done your research then.”

&n
bsp; “Of course. Come here.” He gathered her against him and strode with her out of the lake, emerging onto the shore like a triumphant naked Trident with his captive mermaid.

  She was tipped unceremoniously but gently onto the picnic rug, spread in the dappled shade of a clump of weeping willows, and there she lay, looking up at her rocket scientist. She could see how he was very much like the supercilious, glamorous eighteen-year-old Jay he used to be, and yet, how very different. Some of the youthful arrogance was gone, replaced by self-deprecation, almost humility—and yet the wit and charm remained, in a more polished form. Now, as he dropped down beside her, blinking myopically in the sunlight yet still looking as intensely focused as any predator, she could see that he had real desire for her, way beyond the need to win a foolish contest. She hoped he saw that reflected in her.

  His mouth hovered over hers for a moment, then it zoomed downwards, to the base of her throat, and began to kiss a trail between her breasts and beneath their mounds, careless of the rivulets of lake water that streamed from them down her body and onto the blanket. He buried his face in the soft curve of her belly, rubbing his nose gleefully until she had to push him away in ticklish protest.

  “Lower then,” he ordained, and his mouth was at the triangle of her pubis, his fingers untangling the short matt curls of hair, parting them to reveal the victor’s spoils —Elyssa’s offered sex, waiting for his attentions, ready and prepared for him. He tested its readiness with fingers and tongue, so that Elyssa squirmed and sighed deeply, pushing upwards to beg for more, which Jay happily bestowed.

  Crouching over her from the side, one palm flat beside her hip while the fingers of his other hand plundered and explored, Jay feasted on her fattened clit like a man possessed. He licked and tongued her as if this was his ultimate end, as if it gave him as much pleasure as it gave her, which made the sensation even more piquant. Eventually, almost unbearably stimulated, she came once then twice on to his enthusiastic tongue until she felt exhausted and had to beg him to stop.