40. Sarah
40. Sarah
He didn’t sleep for long, and I didn’t sleep at all. I just lay there, listening to the distant disco and the occasional whoop and shout of drunken wedding guests staggering about in the corridor outside.
When eventually everything falls silent again, I imagine all the mini dramas being played out behind the closed doors. All those hidden worlds. All those secret midnight murmurings. I wish that everyone could be as happy as I feel now. A new, all-consuming, dizzying happiness that I want the whole world to share.
It feels like a thing of wonder, having Carl lying asleep next to me, what we’ve just done.
I think of all the times I had sex with Danny. Fumbling teenagers in the early days and, later, illicit trysts on camp. Sex on camp was technically banned, so it could only ever be a rushed affair, snatched in the dark behind tents and trucks and empty hangars.
Danny never touched me like Carl has done tonight. I thought he loved me. I thought I loved him. But the truth is, I’ve never felt as loved and as wanted as Carl makes me feel.
All those nights in Wales lying next to Danny, unable to sleep, worried that he would wake up, angry and afraid, from another nightmare. Trying to talk to him, to help him, but being forever locked out. They were the loneliest nights of my life.
I don’t feel alone any more.
My body is perfectly folded over Carl’s. My head on his chest and my knee across his legs. I can feel his breath on the top of my head. I run my fingers up and down his arms.
Across the peaks and valleys of his muscles. Across the hairs and freckles and the deep, smooth groove of a scar below his elbow. I know how he got most of his scars, but I don’t know how he got this one.
I can’t bear to disturb him but I’m bursting for the loo. I wait for as long as I can, but when I can’t wait any longer, I gently lift his arms off me, and creep out of bed.
When I get back from the bathroom, Carl has rolled over on to his side, one enormous arm dangling over the edge of the bed. He looks so peaceful.
I climb back under the sheets behind him. I stare at his back, at the violent red of the poppies that seem to grow out of his skin.
I kiss his back, his beautiful, poignant tattoos, and suddenly he is awake. He turns to face me. He brings his face next to mine and we kiss. A long, wonderful kiss. He wraps his hands in my hair and pulls me closer to him.
My skin fizzes beneath his touch, and I feel a rush of longing that makes me bold. I climb on top of him and guide him inside me. He rests his hands on my hips and I watch his face beneath me, a jigsaw of emotions – of vulnerability and grizzled worldliness, of endearing anxiety and a dangerous wolfishness. All waiting for the last piece, so they can be put back together. Be whole again.
There is longing and intensity – and love too. I can see it in his eyes. There is no going back for us now. There is nothing I will not do, no hurt I will not inflict, if it means I can be with him.
I lean down to kiss him, but he gently pushes me back.
‘I want to see you,’ he says.
We look at each other for a long moment. I watch his eyes take me in, register the frown of concentration between his eyebrows that have always expressed so much more than the words being spoken.
He reaches a hand up and slowly, torturously slowly, traces his fingers up my stomach until they reach my breast. I watch his fingers move over my skin, feel as it turns to goosebumps and dances with pleasure beneath his touch.
When he starts to circle my nipple, gently massaging it, my groin begins to throb. Then, when I already feel like I might die with pleasure, he reaches between my legs with his other hand.
He is toying with me now, touching me then stopping until I can’t bear it. I take a deep, shuddering gasp and, as he touches me again, close my hand on top of his to keep it there.
I reach down again to kiss him, and this time he lets me, one hand on the back of my neck, pulling me tightly against him. I push my body on to his, pressing my hips into him.
His breath beneath me is ragged, urgent, like mine, until finally, the most intense sensation of pleasure shivers through me.