Page 57 of The Lucky Escape

One step.

Thud.

Two steps.

Thud.

Three steps.

Thud.

I put a hand up to his face. I didn’t want to rush. I didn’t want to launch at him. I didn’t want to take any of this for granted. I wanted to mean it. I wanted to remember it.

I looked into his eyes. He was serious and solemn. I ran my thumb over his lips and then leaned towards him, on purpose this time, lingering for one last moment right before my mouth met his.

25

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made out with someone. Why did that ever stop? Why do we have so much focus on kissing having to give way to getting naked when there’s so much joy, and heat, and passion in kissing over and over, speeding up and slowing down, just being together?

‘I need to take this slow,’ he breathed into my mouth, and I immediately understood:he hasn’t had sex since his wife died.

‘I want to take it slow too,’ I reassured him. I hadn’t been with anybody but Alexander in a decade so it was all new to me, too. All new proportions and lines and motions. ‘I’d like that.’

I could feel him bulging through his shorts. He lifted me up onto the counter of the small kitchenette and my legs were parted so he could stand between them. I pushed my crotch to his because I couldn’t help but arch my back to feel him, but everything else stayed strictly PG, even though the pulsing in my underwear was rated 18.

There was a tenderness to the way he kissed me. We werevulnerable – like we’d agreed, through the way we were touching, to be sensitive with each other because we both knew that was what the other needed. And as his fingers dug in to where he held the tops of my thighs, creeping towards my bum in a cradle, I could feel him losing himself, surrendering to me; it made it safe to surrender to him, too.

I trust him,I thought to myself, and then I stopped thinking at all.

26

We lay on the sofa in the dark. It must have been way past midnight – I honestly had no idea. His body pressed up against mine and we drifted from kissing to talking in hushed whispers, the hushed whispers giving way to more kissing.

‘Is this weird?’ I asked, because I couldn’t help it. ‘Do you feel weird about this happening?’

He shook his head, and he was so close to me that it forced his nose to knock against mine in an Eskimo kiss.

‘It’s the opposite of weird,’ he told me. ‘It’s weird how not weird it is. I’ve wanted you. I’ve been consumed with guilt about it, and I tried not to, but I have done since the day I helped you put your jumper on.’

His fingertips gently tickled my thigh so that they disappeared up my shorts and back again. I moaned, lightly, a signal that he made me feel good.

‘You understand how much I want you, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Taking it slow, it’s not …’

He didn’t finish the sentence.

‘There’s no formula we have to follow,’ I replied softly. ‘Sex is overrated anyway.’

He pulled away and tipped his head. ‘Bullshit,’ he roared.

‘Yeah,’ I replied, laughing too. ‘Come on, get off me. It’s bedtime, and I need a cold shower. And …’ I pointedly looked down at his crotch, illuminated by the moonlight. ‘… I think you do too.’

He grinned, totally unashamed at the tent he appeared to be pitching in his trousers.

‘I’m just a man,’ he said, rolling off me. ‘I told you I’m putty in your hands.’

‘Goodnight, Patrick Hummingbird.’

From the sofa he watched me go and replied, ‘Goodnight, Annie Wiig.’

---