Competitive Nature Read online

  He raised his head, his face all lazy wicked smiles, and reached into the picnic basket, where a pack of condoms nestled amongst the strawberries.

  “Stop, eh? I thought you were just getting into that,” protested Jay.

  “You certainly were,” she panted, watching him sheathe himself, both excited and scared at the prospect of what would inevitably happen next.

  This is it. Jay and I are going to fuck. Will it be as good as the fantasies? In the fantasies, for some reason, Jay had always been wearing a burgundy smoking jacket and drinking brandy prior to the Grand Seduction, so in that respect, it wouldn’t be at all the same. But she had a presentiment that it would be just as good, if not better, this way.

  “What do you expect? I’ve wanted to get a taste of you since I was a schoolboy. And you’re even more delicious than I thought. Salt and sweet and creamy.”

  He rolled on top of her, elbows clamping her arms to her sides, knees together in the haven of her thighs, and he silenced her response with a long, distracting kiss until she felt the tip of him at her entrance, nudging, jostling, ready for the off.

  He raised his face long enough to croon, “All mine now, Elyssa, all mine for the taking. God, I’ve waited long enough for this.”

  “So have I,” she whispered, then he was inside her, his face screwed up and contorted with shocked ecstasy before it dropped back down to take her lips once more.

  He felt so much a part of her, moving slowly and precisely within her tight, slippery channel, trying his utmost to keep the pace slow and sensual instead of racing for the finish as the teenage Jay might have done. She knew it must be difficult for him to hold back, and she put her arms around his neck and held him close, wanting his skin to join with hers just as they were joined at their roots. They could be one, a union so perfect that it could never be broken apart. He rocked back and forth in small, exact movements, grinding a little with his pelvis on each thrust, then he released her mouth, stretching his neck back so that the thin silver chain he wore around his neck dangled and brushed Elyssa’s chin with each push farther into her.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, almost savagely, seemingly to himself. “I’ve got you now.” He lifted her thighs, giving him a deeper angle of penetration, and she held them up, her feet pedalling the air, eager to feel him all the way to the hilt, to build the pace and the force, wanting to be his and to have him, for always.

  “I want to make you come,” he said, starting to pant, the words coming out in stertorous gasps, “harder than anyone has ever made you come before. I am going to do it. I am going to make you scream. I am going to be the best you’ve ever had, the best you’ll ever have. You won’t want anyone else, ever, once I’ve done with you.”

  He was moving faster now, faster and faster, and harder, plunging with abandon, and he had the angle, the exquisite friction of cock and G-spot, and Elyssa was too close to her edge to say anything in answer to his words of fierce challenge. Instead, she just let herself fly, let her brain disengage and her body take over until the pressure sent her up in the air, lid blown, sensations bursting out in a fountain, and she was saying his name, over and over, “Jaaaaay, Jaaaaay, Jaaaaay, ohhhhh, Jaaaaaay.”

  * * * *

  “You said my name,” he said later on in the rowing boat after the champagne picnic had taken the edge off their other appetites. They were drifting under a high afternoon sun, lying down on the blanket together, Jay’s fingers in Elyssa’s mussed hair.

  “Yeah. Did I? You said mine, I think.”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you remember everything you said?”

  Jay pushed his shades back over his eyes, his manner a little shifty.

  “You wanted to be the best I’ve ever had? The best I’ll ever have?” Elyssa persisted.

  “Well, y’know, in the heat of the moment you say things…” Jay laughed, a small embarrassed laugh.

  “You’ll never shake off that competitive mania,” predicted Elyssa. “You always have to be the best, don’t you? I probably shouldn’t tell you this…” She sighed.

  Jay propped himself up, squinting down at her. “Tell me what?”

  “You were,” she admitted. “The best I’ve ever had. Not just because you were, you know, good at it. But because it was you. It was always you I had the huge crush on.”

  Jay was silent for a while, looking over to the shore of the lake while the boat drifted.

  “So what are you going to do about Patrick?” he asked at length. “Will you still see him tomorrow?”

  “Jay, I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”

  “I want to be with you. I want this to be the start of something—not just the end of decades of wondering…”

  “Okay.” Elyssa kissed him. “So you feel that way, too. I thought you did. I just didn’t want to presume.”

  “I don’t live so far from you. We can do the weekend lovers thing…see how it goes…”

  Elyssa snuggled into the crook of his arm, feeling as if Christmas had come in the summertime. Jay, her brilliant beloved Jay, talking of commitment. Was it the first time? She suspected it might be.

  “Poor Patrick, though,” she murmured.

  “He’ll get over it,” said Jay philosophically. “I was kind of hoping we could stay in touch but…if he doesn’t want to…”

  “I’m going to meet him tomorrow anyway,” determined Elyssa. “I owe him that much. It won’t be much fun, but I don’t want to break it to him over the phone or by email. I respect him too much for that.” And still love him—even if that’s out of the question now.

  Jay put a hand on her hip, his arm resting on her stomach proprietorially. “I’ll come with you if you like.”

  “No, there’s no need. I should do this alone. It’ll be fine. It’s not as if he’s my boyfriend or anything.”

  So why do I feel as if I’m being unfaithful? She let the thought linger for a moment or two until Jay, his appetites restored by all the strawberries and champagne, kissed and canoodled it out of her head.

  * * * *

  Patrick had brought flowers, and that didn’t make Elyssa’s job easier by one iota. He had also dressed to the nines and driven up in a vintage car, having texted Elyssa earlier to advise her that her highest heels and best jewellery should be worn.

  Sliding in her diamond studs, Elyssa had felt sure that she was going to be sick before they got anywhere near dinner. Her stomach was churning, her head ached and the bruised soreness between her legs meant that Jay was a constant presence in her mind, and her body, all day. She wanted Jay—no question.

  But, oh, Patrick, when he walked up the path in his dinner jacket, looking like James Bond and smiling like a shy angel, bouquet clutched to his chest, tested that resolve more severely than could ever be fair.

  “You look sensational,” he said gallantly, handing over the flowers for her mother to put in water and offering his arm. “Wait ‘til you see where I’ve booked! You’re going to be the Queen for a night.”

  “Wow.” Elyssa laughed nervously, tripping along the path beside him. “I feel I should have worn a flowery hat and brought a corgi or two with me, then.”

  “What? Oh, haha, yes. Well, maybe not literally the Queen. But my Queen. God, that sounded so cheesy, didn’t it? Perhaps I should just shut up and drive.”

  Elyssa was helped into the passenger seat, then watched as he took the wheel, letting the car, which must be hired, glide off through the higgledy-piggledy streets of their small market town and out onto the country roads, past field after field of golden corn and vivid green vegetables, towards the neighbouring town, the place where all the rich people lived, and to which they had travelled to school each day as teenagers.

  “Remember this road?” asked Patrick, bowling along at a fair speed, into the setting sun.

  “Every day on the school bus,” smiled Elyssa. “Girls on the top deck, boys on the bottom.”

  “I never understood that segregation. If we’d h
ad the civilising influence of girls down below, I’m sure there wouldn’t have been so much spitting and swearing. I used to hate that. Until I got to the Sixth Form and was able to do something about it.”

  Elyssa remembered how much respect Patrick had commanded amongst even the most loutish boys in the school. As the best sportsman of his year, he had avoided the nerd tag that had been attached to Jay and Elyssa, and had been wildly popular. Not just with the boys either, thanks to his golden good looks and impeccable manners. He had been the Sir Lancelot of the Sixth Form, and damsels in distress with their coursework assignments had often thrown themselves on his mercy.

  “The top deck wasn’t that much better,” Elyssa revealed. “Thick cigarette smoke and bawdy singing all the way.”

  “You? Bawdy? Never.”

  “Well, I didn’t join in those songs,” said Elyssa delicately. “I was usually too busy helping Juliet do her homework that she hadn’t bothered with. The teachers must have wondered why the hell her handwriting was so jerky all the time.”

  “Well, no homework, spitting, swearing, smoking or bawdy singing for us tonight,” said Patrick, navigating the picturesque streets of the historic town. “Or we shall certainly be thrown out of Jean Montel.”

  “Jean Montel!”

  Patrick steered the car into the gravel drive of the exclusive restaurant and parked it against the low wall topped with shrubs and ferns, taking the key out of the ignition with a flourish.

  “Patrick! Brad and Angelina had trouble getting reservations here! How did you…?”

  “I pulled strings. Made a few calls. Mentioned my name…okay.”

  Elyssa pulled a face of disbelief and he laughed.

  “I confess. My brother-in-law is the maître d’.”

  “Oh! That makes sense. I knew you couldn’t have got a table at one or two day’s notice. Jean Montel!” She stepped out of the car and looked up at the gracious grey stone manor house. The sun was just low enough in the sky for the fairy lights dotting the garden to glow like fireflies, and Elyssa turned to Patrick, excited despite herself.

  “I said I’d take you here one day. Do you remember?”

  Elyssa remembered, and she also remembered, with a painful lurch, that she was here to disappoint him. “Oh yes. At the Leavers’ barbecue.”

  “Where we danced,” he reminded her. “And I kissed you. And you ran away.”

  “I…know. I panicked. I had to find Jay.”

  Patrick put a hand on her arm, looking down at her until she had to return the gentle pressure of his blue eyes. “Don’t run again,” he said softly.

  “Patrick, I—”

  “Let’s go in.”

  It wasn’t until the chilled wine arrived in its silver cooler and the food had been ordered that Elyssa felt able to broach the subject of Jay.

  “Patrick,” she said huskily, breaking into his nervous chatter about surgery and city living. “You haven’t asked me about how it went with Jay yesterday.”

  “Do we have to talk about him?” he asked, taking a sip of wine in affected nonchalance.

  “He was your best friend.” The mild reproach in Elyssa’s voice made Patrick frown, then put down his glass heavily, a cloud of realisation passing over his brow.

  “Oh, I see,” he said dully. “The best man has already won, has he? Or rather, the first man to the winning post. Right?”

  “Patrick, I should have told you from the start. I’m sorry. Perhaps I should go…”

  “No.” Patrick’s rebuttal of the suggestion was so forceful that several diners looked over in curiosity. “You shouldn’t go. Stay. You promised me a date, and you’re going to deliver on that promise. And you’re going to give me the same chance you gave Jay. That’s the deal.”

  “But Jay and I—”

  “Whatever is between you and Jay, you have to hear me out. You have to give me the opportunity to sway you. Let me try and sway you. I fully understand that I will probably fail, and if I do, I’ll ask nothing more of you. But at least give me this night.”

  Elyssa, impressed by the anguished sincerity of his words, shrank back into her chair. “All right,” she said. “We’ll have our date. But I do love Jay—”

  “You love me too,” said Patrick, and the calm, confident way he said it made Elyssa realise that it was true. “You love us both. What if you could have us both?”

  “Don’t be…I can’t have you both. That’s greedy.”

  “Be greedy. Be greedy with life. Grab all the happiness you can. Just for today, imagine that you can have whatever you want. You can have whatever you want. Name it and it shall be yours.”

  Elyssa stared, and noticed the waiter from the corner of her eye, allowing her to release a breath and dissipate a little of the high tension. “Well, just now, what I want is that crayfish salad,” she said. And now he expects me to eat. After telling me that I can have him even though I’ve already slept with Jay. I can’t, though…can I?

  Elyssa found herself unable to eat much of the superb meal. She eschewed pudding in favour of a stroll around the manor’s substantial grounds with Patrick, the moon now out and illuminating them as if by her suitor’s personal request.

  “Did you order this moonlight?” asked Elyssa jokingly, thinking all the same that it was perfect—too perfect to resist.

  “Yes, I did. Moonlight, roses, fine food and wine and…oh, you’re going to hate me.”

  “Why?” Elyssa stopped abruptly, turning to study his face, which was alight with suppressed mischief.

  “Elyssa, would you kill me if I told you I’d reserved a room in the manor?”

  She let her mouth drop open. “Maybe not kill you. Maybe give you a hearty slap round your presumptuous chops though!”

  “Go on then. I deserve it.” Patrick stood dramatically straight and still, offering one flawless cheek to Elyssa. “Aren’t you going to slap me?” he asked after a while.

  “I should. I’m not a violent person, though.”

  “But you are a passionate one. I want to see your passion. Come on. Hit me.”

  “Are you doing this to get one over on Jay? Is it all about the competition?”

  “Fuck Jay! Oh, excuse me. You’ve already done that.”

  Elyssa, torn and conflicted to the point of torment by her competing lovers, let her arm swing through the evening air and her palm connect, with a ringing slap, to Patrick’s cheek.

  “That’s it!” he shouted jubilantly, grasping her wrist in a strong hand. “Fire! Passion! Everything you bottled up for years. Bring it out, Elyssa. Give it to me.”

  Then they were kissing, hard, up against the plinth of a statue, hands all over, bodies bumping and crashing, Patrick’s solid chest blocking Elyssa’s heaving bosom so that she had to fight him as part of the embrace. Their tongues battled until the lovers lost their breath and Patrick took advantage of Elyssa’s capitulation to take her hand and run with her across the lawns to the reception area, where he claimed the key to his room and dragged her upstairs behind him.

  “Let’s take this to the bedroom,” he muttered, fumbling with the lock and pushing her against the door as soon as it was shut, continuing the grimly purposeful work his kiss had started with the addition of hands and thrusting pelvis. Elyssa clung to his neck for dear life, drinking in all the torrents of his desire this evening had released, accepting them into her body and converting them into her own delirious lusts. Handsome Patrick, after whom all the girls had languished, wanting her, and only her, so badly that he had taken a string of gambles—so badly that he would forget everything that had passed just to hold her for that one shining moment.

  Her fingers grappled with his bow tie, loosening it, unbuttoning the starched collar, exposing his reddening throat beneath. He felt so large, so substantial, so different to Jay, and yet so complementary. Patrick’s hand, a big hand whose fingers nonetheless performed the most delicate surgery on a daily basis, slipped under her skirt, stroking Elyssa’s sheeny thighs, clamping her hip
. With his other hand, he lifted the fabric so that his knee could rise up and wedge itself against her sheer lace-covered sex.

  “God,” he panted, tearing his lips off hers. “I have to have you. But I think the bed will be better…this time…”

  Elyssa allowed him to propel her to the bed in a savage waltz, then unzip her dress and let it fall while she performed the same frantic operation on his shirt and trousers. Half-naked, they fell in a sideways heap onto the four-poster bed, their arms and legs everywhere. She had seen Patrick in swimming trunks before, so she knew he had a magnificent body, but, oh, she’d forgotten the sheer majesty of it—the shoulders, the pectoral muscles, the tight hard abdomen and the powerful limbs. A man in peak physical condition, capable of overpowering her as easily as if she were a rag doll, and yet, she knew he would never do so, would never use that formidable force against her.

  He rolled over on his back, pulling her on top, waiting for her to settle her legs on either side of his hips before bringing her down for more kissing, more touching, more exploring. His intrepid fingers had found her underwear now, and they delved inside, finding the soft hillocks of her breasts, contrasting so well with the full-blooded hardness of her nipples. His mouth sought them out, freeing them from the lace cups with his teeth and tasting them while his hands moved downward, straight to the ripe split that waited, impatiently, inside those lacy panties for him.

  Elyssa was relieved he’d had the presence of mind to remove the condom packet from his jacket pocket while she was undressing him, and, after peeling her knickers down and off, he freed himself from his boxers and slipped the rubber onto his rigid cock.

  Patrick held Elyssa above him at her hips, allowing her pussy to slide up and down and over the head of his cock, never quite going far enough back to swallow it inside her. Instead he worked on her clit, circling it, rubbing it until she moaned her frustrated desires into his mouth.