Violet #2
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve not done anything wrong. I shouldn’t have been putting pressure on you like that. Talking about my ex-fiancée and following it up immediately with a comment about how my mother is now mad-keen to meet you– that’s just too full-on. Ignore me.’
‘Ignore which bit?’ Violet was feeling her grasp of the conversation slip away, there was an undercurrent of emotion behind Gus’s words that she couldn’t interpret.
She tried again. ‘Do you mean, ignore what you said about your mum or ignore whatever I’ve read into that comment?
Because all I meant about not wanting her to be disappointed was that she might be– when she meets me– if she meets me.
Sometimes people are– disappointed I mean. ’
Gus looked relieved. ‘Oh, okay,’ he said.
‘I thought I’d scared you off. I thought maybe you’d think I was some sort of clingy possessive type who was about to propose despite having only known you for five days.
Whereas in fact, you meant what you actually said.
Just like you always do.’ He offered her a second helping of beans.
‘Anyway, I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed when they meet you.
You’re the exact opposite of disappointing– in fact, I’d call you “extremely satisfying”. ’
‘You would, would you?’ She laughed. ‘I’ll take that. Violet Winters, Extremely Satisfying .’
He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘I don’t want to get too heavy,’ he said. ‘But it’s really nice, you being here.’
She blushed and looked down at her plate, unaccustomed to such direct compliments. ‘I really like being here with you,’ she said eventually. ‘I really do.’ And they both smiled inanely at each other for a few moments before returning to their meals.
‘So, tell me more about the conversation with your dad,’ said Violet. ‘When was the last time you’d spoken to him before today?’
Gus admitted that it had probably been months. He had spoken to his mother and sister on Christmas Day but hadn’t managed to get hold of his dad before the night shift started.
‘And does that worry you?’ Violet asked. ‘When you can’t get hold of him.’
Gus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not anymore. I’ve spent a lot of my life worrying about him, worrying about my mum and my sister.
That was one of the reasons I didn’t want to tell them about the break-up– they’ve always looked to me as the one whose life is sorted.
I didn’t want to shatter their illusions.
Hence not going home for Christmas, like you.
I didn’t think I could maintain the pretence for a sustained period. ’
She nodded as he continued.
‘But I’ve finally come around to the idea that they’re all grown-ups now. And like I say, telling them about Amelia was easier than I thought. Makes you realise that honesty is usually the best policy.’
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘Indeed,’ she said, spearing a piece of potato with her fork. ‘Interesting, isn’t it, the different reactions we’ve each had to the example our parents provided.’
‘In what way?’
‘Like, my parents have a great relationship– blissfully happy in each other’s company since the day they met.
And yet for some reason, their perfect marriage has always made me suspicious of romance.
I felt I was never going to be able to reach that unattainable goal, I’m not like them, I’m not as likeable as either of them, so there was little point in trying to find someone who would love me in the way they loved each other.
’ Her tone was matter of fact. ‘Whereas your experience with your parents splitting up has actually made you more keen on the idea of marriage, so much so that you were prepared to get hitched before thirty, which is pretty unusual nowadays.’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’ Gus chewed thoughtfully on a green bean.
‘Yes, of course. I’m oversimplifying. I told you before, I don’t do nuance.’ She gave him a curious look. ‘But I do wonder whether maybe you actively seek out security and stability, because of what happened with your parents? It would make sense.’
‘Alright, you,’ Gus said, cutting her short. ‘Enough psychoanalysis for one evening.’ He gestured to the casserole dish. ‘Do you want any more to eat?’
His tone was light, but Violet wondered whether she’d hit a nerve.
She wasn’t usually aware or particularly interested in people’s motivations, subconscious or otherwise, and this realisation about Gus, and the way he operated, had come to her quite suddenly.
Certainly, too fast for her to have kept her mouth shut or to have considered that there may be more delicate ways of telling someone they were emotionally insecure.
She could have kicked herself. Gus was the master of tact and diplomacy.
He’d never have blurted out something so personal.
He was going to think she was a verbally incontinent idiot.
‘Uhm, yes, I would. Like some more, I mean.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry. What I said before. It came out badly.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I think you may have a point. I just feel like we should eat up and, you know, make the most of the time we’ve got this evening.’
She laughed and raised her eyebrows. ‘You wanna make out?’ she said, adopting a terrible American accent.
He smiled. ‘Yeah. Sorry. Your bluntness is wearing off on me. I’m going to start just saying exactly what I think. And yes, I do want to finish the food and get on with—’ But he didn’t complete his sentence because Violet had leaned across the table to kiss him.
‘I quite like the new, blunt, Gus Jovic,’ she said, smiling against his mouth. ‘How about we finish supper a bit later?’
They both stood, still kissing each other over the table until Gus broke away, skirting around the chairs until he reached her side and their bodies met.
She brought her palms either side of his face as they kissed deeply, the spice from the paprikash making her lips and tongue tingle.
Her head began to swim with that familiar feeling and she felt her legs go weak as the heat coursed through her.
Gus seemed to sense that she was about to buckle at the knees.
He nudged her back towards the kitchen island as they kissed, scooped his hands under her bottom and lifted her onto the countertop, pulling away to look at her.
‘You know how when we were in bed yesterday?’ he said, his mouth curling into a hopeful smile.
‘First time or second time?’
‘Second time.’
‘Ye-es.’ Her voice was wary.
He kissed her again. ‘Don’t go all worried on me,’ he said. ‘It was just that, you didn’t let me do much. To you I mean.’
‘Well– I did let you put your penis into my vagina,’ she said. ‘And I don’t let just any old penis in there.’
He paused, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘I should hope not. God, I love your insistence on the correct anatomical nomenclature.’
‘And I might let you again if you ask nicely.’ She smiled sweetly as she wrapped her legs around him from her seated position, pulling his body closer.
‘But before that,’ he said, kissing her again, ‘how about you just let me play around for a bit? Purely for my own entertainment.’
She pulled her face back an inch and looked him in the eye seeing her own dilated pupils reflected in his. ‘And what does that mean exactly?’ she said with a little tremble of anticipation in her voice. ‘Are we back onto that conversation?’
He smiled– a combination of reassurance and naughtiness. ‘How about we don’t have a formal discussion about this, Violet? There’s no need to overthink it. We could just see what happens– I’m not planning on anything really outlandish.’
‘I– uhm– I’m not…’ The thought of simply letting him have his wicked way with her was both appealing and terrifying in equal measure.
‘We’ll take it slowly,’ he said, kissing the dip at the base of her neck. ‘You can ask me to stop whenever you want.’
‘Okay,’ she said after a pause which involved some fairly persuasive kisses along her throat and jawline.
‘Ok-kay.’ Gus’s breath was hot against her neck as he slid his hand up her top to brush against the outline of her breast. ‘Can we take this off?’
‘My jumper?’
‘All of it,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’ll be cold?’
She considered this for a moment. ‘No, I think I’ll probably be alrigh?—’
Gus was already sliding her jumper up her body so she reached down and pulled it over her head, dropping it on the counter behind her.
She then reached around and undid her bra, letting it slip to the floor.
She was now sat right in front of him, legs spread either side of his body, naked to the waist, but bizarrely she didn’t feel in the slightest self-conscious.
She leaned forward, her fingers tucking inside the waistband of his trousers but he pulled his hips away a fraction.
‘Not yet,’ he murmured into the base of her throat, trailing warm kisses down to her breasts, flicking his tongue across her skin until she gasped.
Violet wrapped her legs more tightly around him, pressing herself against the hard muscles of his torso and he lifted his head, returned to her mouth, kissing her deeply while his hands remained busy on her body.
At some point she felt him tugging at her leggings, sliding them off and trailing his fingers back along her bare thigh, up to the top, pressing his palm against her until she cried out in frustration.
He finally relented, inching his fingers underneath the elastic of her knickers and as he touched her she felt the external world slipping away– sound became muffled, her vision blurry at the edges, as if her body could only focus on this one level of sensory input.
He moved his mouth back to her breasts, kissing and teasing while his fingers worked away inside her underwear and she felt a pressure building inside, nothing like the predictable response she had when she touched herself.
This feeling was out of her control, a fire raging through her body, and when Gus moved further down, pausing to peel off the remains of her underwear, she put up only the most feeble of mumbled protests.
‘What if I taste funny,’ she said– a little worried voice poised on the crest of a tidal wave.
He pushed her very gently back so she was resting on her elbows and began a leisurely progress of kisses down the flat of her stomach. ‘Do you want me to stop?’ he asked, his fingers ceasing their action, his mouth poised just above her.
‘No,’ she said, the word emerging with a guttural urgency she hadn’t known she possessed. ‘Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.’
She tightened against his fingers as his tongue moved lower and he pushed her thighs apart, hungry for her in a way she hadn’t expected.
‘You taste fucking amazing ,’ he murmured against her, the vibrations of his voice finally tipping her over, drawing her into a whirling vortex of rhythmic sensation that started at her core and spread through her body like a flood, waves of heat flowing over and over and over again.
In a brief moment of clarity, a tiny point of calm in the sensory storm, she thought to herself, this is it .
This is what everyone talks about. A once in a lifetime pinnacle moment.
I must hold onto it, keep it close. Because surely, surely , I can’t be lucky enough to ever feel like this again.