Page 67 of The Lucky Escape

He winked at me suggestively. ‘There’s a joke in that sentence somewhere …’ he said. ‘But we can’t do it here.’

‘Patrick Hummingbird, you’re the horniest man I’ve ever known.’

‘Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,’ he said, standing up and pulling me with him.

The sun was already coming up when we got back to the suite.

‘You pull this face,’ Patrick told me as he lowered me down onto the sofa. ‘And it makes it very difficult not to want to take your clothes off.’

There was something different about his energy. He was more feral, rawer than I’d ever experienced him.

‘My face is just my face,’ I whispered, trying to be adorable.

‘No. You know what you’re doing. You know exactly what you’re doing.’

I giggled.

‘See?’ he said. ‘You’re seducing me.’

He tipped my chin up and we kissed again.

‘And now I’m going to seduce you. Starting …’ he said, as his fingers tiptoed down my chest and to the top of my dress. ‘With this.’ He unbuttoned the first button, and then the second.

‘Is this okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He unbuttoned two more, and he no longer looked at my face, but at my chest, taking in the lace of my bra, the curve of my boobs. I wanted him to see me. I didn’t want to hide how he made me feel. He reached the last button and pushed the fabric off my shoulders so I lay in just my underwear.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he told me, and I could tell he meant it. ‘There were so many times when I thought I was going to kiss you. I couldn’t tell if you wanted me to or not. I didn’t know what was happening.’

He was so present. So attentive. He was deliberate and purposeful, as if we had all the time in the world – not mere hours before it all ended and Cinderella turned into a pumpkin on a flight back home.

‘I feel like I’ve won the lottery,’ he said, nuzzling into my chest.

I smiled.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he continued.

My tummy dropped. When somebody says, ‘Can I ask you something?’ it means they’re about to say something you don’t want to hear – an observation expressed as a question so it’s less forthright.

‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if you would be my girlfriend.’

His girlfriend! He wanted me to be his girlfriend! My skin tingled with elation.

‘I would very much like to be your girlfriend,’ I replied, and I think I giggled a little bit as I said it. But I suppose that’s how it felt to be with him – light and fun. If being his girlfriend meant holding on to this giddy, fun mood for even a second longer, of course I wanted that.

I’d never had sex like what we did then, on the sofa of our hotel and then eventually on the floor. I’d never had sex that was so completely like a sweaty, thrashing commitment to becoming one. It was different to the night before. It meant something more, and there was a lot of eye contact, a lot of face-touching and reassurance, like finally it was okay to fully give in to this desire.

When we lay beside each other afterwards, happy and exhausted, a blanket pulled off the edge of the sofa and a cushion under his head, everything was right in the world.

‘My girlfriend,’ he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Do you think our fourteen-year-old selves would believe it?’ I asked.

‘My fourteen-year-old self didn’t even know to dream it.’

‘Ahhh,’ I said, lifting my head to reach for a kiss. ‘That was a cute thing to say!’

---