The Gift (8 page)

‘Sandy! Are you OK? What’s going on in there?’

The fact that Kat was bursting with laughter as she called out through the door told Sandy in no uncertain terms that her friend knew exactly what was going on. The butter incident was obviously over as quickly as it had begun, and the younger girl, and possibly her paramour, had come to see what the other commotion elsewhere in the flat was about. She was also clearly puzzled as to why Sandy wasn’t using her own bedroom, but Kat was never one to stand on ceremony where sex was concerned.

‘Wh-what do you think’s going on? Go away, Kat. Use my room, whatever …’

Jay’s hand, staking a claim to her naked crotch, made her stutter over her words.

More laughter rang out, male and female this time, accompanied by muffled comments and encouragements.

‘Okey-dokey! There’s a couple of boxes of condoms in the drawer. Dig in, but just leave a few for us, eh?’

‘Thanks!’

It came out as a squeak because Jay’s thumb was on her clit, pressing hard.

As he began to circle it, it became impossible to concentrate, or coordinate, or even see straight. His cock slipped from her fingers and she grabbed wildly at his body instead, clawing at his back and buttocks, pulling him closer with every ounce of her energy.

He’s going to make me come again. He’s going to do it. Please God let him fuck me afterwards though.

Between her legs, he worked her, rocking the tiny sensitive crest of flesh without let-up or mercy. Half-crazed already, it took barely seconds for Sandy to achieve his objective. She arched against him, limbs jerking, her pussy melting.

But even as she came, she grabbed and scrabbled at him, wanting more, wanting connection as if her life depended on it. With his hand still squashed between them, she rubbed her pelvis against his, inviting and imploring him to fuck her.

‘Please,’ she gasped, ‘please, please fuck me.’

There was a moment of still, silent shock. Had she really said that? She’d never really talked dirty in bed, always been quiet, taken her cues from her man, responsive but not proactive. But now, with this man, she could do or say anything.

Or was it too much?

As if confirming her fears, Jay eased back a little and looked down at her.

His eyes were an enigma, but she sensed questions, and also surprise. Was he angry? Disappointed? Repulsed by the very hunger he’d aroused? How could she displease him? This was what he’d goaded her into, wasn’t it?

Well, fuck you, Mister! You asked for it, you’re getting it. And if it doesn’t suit you, I’ll find somebody else to get the benefit of the new me!

But when she tried to pull away, he grabbed her shoulder, and plunged down on her for another kiss, hard and savage.

He was asserting himself, she realised, dominating her, imprinting his will on her. The power of his mouth made her lips smart and her jaw ache, but she loved it. Desire peaked again, at higher tide. She felt a wild, silvery, weakening sensation flood through her veins. Not like compliance, not like her easy acceptance of a man leading the way in bed. No, it wasn’t that at all. This was more total, a submission to the thrill of him, and the way he could bend her any way he wanted her. It was so easy. And it made sex easy, but also strange and new.

She melted again, coasting towards new pleasure merely on the power of his kiss and the push of his tongue against hers. When he slid his hand down her thigh and pressed, her knees fell apart, surrendering and opening herself to him.

And she just lay like that – a boneless, displayed, available thing – while he roughly wrenched open the drawer and grabbed a condom.

‘Cover me,’ he commanded in a tight raw voice, hefting his cock in his fingers as if compelling her to worship it.

Sandy needed no encouragement. Suddenly it seemed as if his cock was designed solely for her to adore and service. With swift care, she ripped open the wrapper, teased out the rubber contraceptive and slipped it over his tip.

Jay’s eyes closed, and his head twisted to the side. For a moment, she thought she’d been too heavy-handed and hurt him, but then his hips bucked and he pushed forward, urging her to continue.

As she rolled and rolled and rolled, it dawned on her he was the biggest man she’d ever been with, and her pussy
trembled as if with glee. Her ex-husband and her few carefully selected boyfriends had all been average, or puny, compared to Jay.

Suddenly, she wanted to see more of him, not just his stupendous cock. She began to pull and tug at his shirt, revealing the white vest he wore beneath it. She tried to push that up, out of the way, so she could see his abs and his chest, but he stopped her with an iron hand and a harshly growled ‘No!’

His eyes were furious, dark as rain-laden thunderclouds. Why was he so reluctant to let her see his body? Then it dawned on her.

Scars.

He had them on his face, but somewhere along the line she’d stopped noticing them, and now saw only his tough male beauty. But maybe they were worse, and more extensive, on his body?

Once again, she felt her will subsiding in the face of his. It was still there, perhaps stronger than ever, but his was greater, it overpowered her. If Jay said ‘no’, he meant ‘no’. She had to concede. It was what he wanted. No arguments.

To her surprise, she experienced no sense of pity for him, and his healed wounds, just the overpowering urge to bow down and kiss his feet and acknowledge his supremacy. Panting, gasping with a new voraciousness she didn’t quite understand, she subsided against the mattress and let her legs fall open even wider.

Take it. Push yourself in. It’s yours by right.

Their eyes met as he moved over her. Silent messages passed between them that were unquantifiable in words. But she understood … something … and wanted more of it.

As Jay’s latex-clad cock pressed against her sex, his hard lips curved into the faintest of small wry smiles. For a second, she struggled to divine it, then gave up the fight to do anything other than enjoy the all-consuming sensation of being filled and stretched and fucked.

Again she clung to him, compelled by an inchoate longing to climb inside him even as he pushed inside her. She grabbed onto his shirt and the back of his trousers, using them as leverage to push and push and push herself against him. Her feet hooked around the back of his calves, her body flexing to increase the contact and get as much of him inside her as was humanly possible.

Every sense was as sharp as a pin, yet the moment was dreamlike. She could feel every hard millimetre of his cock inside her, imposing its length and girth on the soft yielding walls of her sex. His weight bore down on her. His scent intoxicated her. The sharp rhythm of his breathing seemed to blend with the beat of her own heart as he thrust into her. And when she opened her eyes again, not quite remembering when she’d closed them, she saw a fugue state on his face that matched her own.

His expression was intense, but also contemplative, and he seemed far away, detached from her, apart. His eyes were closed, his incongruously long black eyelashes resting like arcs of silk against his cheekbones. Even his network of scars had acquired a strange and magical glamour.

The small thinking area of her mind wondered what
he
was thinking. Because she knew that he was thinking. Jay Bentley wasn’t a man who turned his mind off during sex. Jay Bentley was a man who used his faculties, all the time.

Despite the pleasure, the ever-growing, ever-swelling pleasure as he pounded into her, despite the thumping of
their bodies against Kat’s less than immaculate mattress, Sandy felt a new plume of antagonism.

I’m here! It’s me! Fuck me, not some fantasy in your head!

Scrabbling at the back of his trousers, she pushed her hands inside them, and beneath the waistband of his half-pushed-down trunks. Her fingers flexing fiercely, she grabbed at the hard, tensing muscles of his buttocks.

His eyes flew open, flaring with light, as she dug in her nails and flung up her hips in time to the concerted, rhythmic pressure. Laughing, he ploughed her harder.

‘Witch!’ he hissed.

‘Bastard,’ she shot back, hysterical laughter of her own bubbling up.

They threw themselves at each other, scrabbling, jerking, battering each other with their bodies. Jay, bigger of course, got the better of it, imposing his strength and his hard-won athleticism upon her. He’d clawed his way back from terrible injuries, that was obvious, but now he was supreme and powerful. More so, she sensed, than he’d ever been. And she was the lucky woman reaping the benefits!

Each long hard lunge of his hips knocked their bodies together. Each knock pressed and tugged on her clit, relentlessly ramping up the pleasure. Still laughing, she growled with lust, yapping like an animal revelling, without conscious thought, in pure sensation.

When the orgasm came she shouted, her loins melting and her heart soaring with a transcendent exhilaration. Dimly aware that her cries would be clearly heard in the rest of the house, if not the next street, she only whooped louder and dug her nails hard into Jay’s backside.

Jay let out an oath, blue and profane, his own fingers flexing cruelly and digging into her as his body convulsed
too. His pelvis jerked like a hammer and, in the midst of her own chaos, she felt the distinct lurch of his cock, and the heavy pulse of his semen pumping within her. He seemed to thrust on and on as if he’d not come for years.

Afterwards, it was like emerging from the bunker after a twister had passed over. In a moment of pure panic, Sandy thought she’d lost the ability to breathe, until she realised that it was simply Jay’s weight lying on her that was hampering her chest and lungs. Bereft of strength, she pushed at him, shoving vaguely, like a Victorian consumptive on the edge of expiring. Luckily he got the message and, heaving himself off her, he rolled over onto his back, at her side.

‘Jesus.’ He huffed out his breath. ‘Jesus,’ he repeated, as if his entire vocabulary had been erased in the conflagration.

Typical man … He’s all shagged out and he’s almost forgotten there was anyone else involved.

Wallowing in entirely irrational disappointment, Sandy’s eyes filled with moisture, but she bit her lip, quashing the autonomic post-coital weepiness. How could she expect anything more of a man she’d only really spoken to for the first time tonight, and fallen into bed with like the easiest of trollops? She was worse than Kat. By a long chalk. Even her friend usually tried to get to know her boyfriends a bit before she dragged them into bed.

I’ve only got what I deserve.

Continuing to gnaw her lip, she prepared to sit up, but just then a warm hand patted and probed the bed at her side. When it found her hand, it clasped it, held on hard, then lifted their linked fingers.

The tears did come when Jay pressed a sweet and very soft kiss against her knuckles.

‘Thank you, Sandy. Thank you.’

Surreptitiously she wiped her face with her other hand, and stole a glance at him. Something in the fractured quality of his rough voice suggested that he might have been crying too. But his face looked composed. In fact, he was smiling. A broad smile, without guile or artifice.

‘Er … my pleasure,’ she answered, then found herself laughing again.

It certainly had been her pleasure. In fact more of it than she’d probably ever had before in her life, with any man. It hadn’t lasted all that long but, boy, had it been intense!

Jay kissed the back of her hand again, and flashed her a wink.

‘Would you think that I’m a crass, horrible, insensitive philistine of a typical man if I said I was hungry now?’ He turned on his side and, giving her fingertips one last kiss, he released her hand. ‘That was amazing but, somehow, I’m starving.’

Sandy glanced away, suddenly embarrassed, as he plucked at the condom that still enrobed his wilted cock. But she couldn’t help noticing out of the corner of her eye that he was still sizeable when flaccid and, deep in the quick of her, she felt the echo of response.

‘No, I’m a bit hungry myself,’ she admitted, wondering if he could read the ambiguity, the half-baked double entendre.

But it seemed not, because he was already disposing of the evidence, and fastening his trousers, then his shirt. ‘I just hope we can get into the kitchen now. Kat and Greg might have gone back there.’ She tweaked down her skirt, wondering exactly where her knickers had got to this time. ‘We are in her room, after all.’

Jay was on his feet now, tall, even in his stockinged feet.

‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that,’ he said conversationally as he cast about for his shoes, then, finding them, slipped them on. ‘But … well …’ He turned to her, smiling again, strangely shyly. ‘It was important to … to get together as soon as we could, you know?’ His muscular shoulders lifted in a shrug.

She did sort of know, but somehow she sensed there was more to it. A more compelling drive than lust, pure and simple. There were shadows about Jay, things he hadn’t yet told her. Things he might never tell her.

It just depended how long this relationship, or whatever it was they had, lasted.

‘I’m sorry.’

Sandy’s head whipped round, and the spoonful of mayonnaise she was dolloping onto the salad sandwich plopped onto the kitchen counter. She wasn’t yet ready to prepare any kind of food on the table, even though she’d gone over it several times with sanitiser spray, and the tablecloth – and the butter dish – were now in the waste bin.

She wasn’t used to men apologising, especially when they didn’t actually have anything to apologise for.

Had he steamrollered her into sex? Well, no, not really. She’d been with him all the way. Doing things she wanted to.

Had he made her do what he wanted? Surrender, submit or whatever? She supposed she could accuse him of that, but what difference did it make if she’d ended up wanting it too? God, she felt too confused and too tired
to psychoanalyse that right now.

Mopping up the mess on autopilot, as she did a dozen times a day in the café, she stared at him. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his expression oblique and thoughtful.
One of his long hands was resting on the bare scrubbed wood, and with the fingertips of the other he was absentmindedly tracking the line of one of the scars across the back of it.