The Englishman

chapter 35

“FEEL THIS.” HE TAKES MY HAND, and I am taken aback by what I suspect he is going to do, but he presses my palm flat against his chest. Wool, cotton, skin, ribs, hard but warm, and the fast beating of his heart. Very fast.

“Two scaredy cats,” I whisper. The skin of his neck is hot under my lips, and it smells all Giles-y and lovely. His right hand has begun to stroke my thigh, a bit like he fondled Toby’s ears a minute ago. I like that; I’m not ready for sex yet.

“At least I’m only a senior colleague and not your chair.”

“Hell, yes. I don’t think I could ever have done this if you’d been chair, Giles.”

“I knew that.”

“Even my brazenness has limits, and—what?” I lift my head from his shoulder, only to see him grinning at me with a strange expression in his eyes. Expectancy.

“I knew you’d never consider an affair with me for one second if I’d accepted the chair.”

All I can do is stare at him as the penny drops.

“I don’t believe that! You—refused—”

“Yeah.” He nods, still grinning. “I admit it was a gamble. Not that it was such a big sacrifice. I have no desire at all to be involved in any capacity whatsoever in Nick’s crimes and misdemeanors. But I thought I had a very slim chance with you as a colleague, and no chance at all as chair.” He wraps his arms around me and squeezes hard till I cry out. “I wanted this. Want.”

Our eyes meet, and expectation sends a shiver over my skin. All the things we haven’t done yet.

“What about your plane?” he asks. “Weren’t you off to New York tomorrow morning? Or are you thinking of doing a runner again?”

“I told my mother I’d met someone and couldn’t leave right now.”

“Oh, the truth. Did you tell her it’s me?”

“Good grief, no. She worries enough about me as it is, in her own way. No proper job, no husband, no children.”

“Do you want children?”

This is one question I did not expect. I sit up and look at him.

“I don’t know what your plans are,” he goes on, blushing, “but maybe it’ll help you to make up your mind about…all this, me, if I tell you straightaway that I can’t have any children. I’m sorry, this is really presumptuous of me. I shouldn’t even—”

“You just told me that we can’t have an affair, and now you’re talking about why we can’t have a family?” Maybe I should pretend to be more surprised, but I am too glad to pretend.

“No! Look, I just want to be straight with you, that’s all—”

“And I appreciate that.” I cup his face in my hand and kiss him on the lips, very tenderly. “Thank you for telling me. Why can’t you?”

He flushes with embarrassment; I can actually feel his body heating up.

“Lazy sperm. During my last year at school I had mumps, and that seems to have permanently damaged the—Christ. I can’t believe I’m making you listen to this!”

“No, go on!”

“Well, it all counts against me, doesn’t it? I should look for a woman my own age, past child-bearing, not one young enough to be my—”

“Don’t say it!” I warn him. “And I’m not!”

“It’s all so bloody wrong!”

“It doesn’t feel wrong,” I point out.

He looks at me, his face open and his eyes alert.

“No, that’s the problem.”

“I think I need another sip of that there firewater.” I sit up on his lap and reach across for our glasses of whisky. “What am I drinking?”

“Talisker. It’s made on the Isle of Skye. Do you like it?”

“I do. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have right now. It’s suitably overpowering.”

We laugh together, and the laughter—and the alcohol—clears the air a little.

“I think you should take one of those layers off.”

So much for his qualms. Relieved that I haven’t lost him, I scramble out of my thick woolen pullover.

“Doctor Lieberman!”

“What?”

“You’re wearing a Columbia sweater!”

“Oh. Ah. Yes.”

“Now, for that show of disloyalty you forfeit that same sweater.”

“Oh, okay.” Meekly I lose the sweatshirt, too. When I reappear, I nudge him with my elbow. “Go on then.”

“Doctor Lieberman! You’re wearing a very cute t-shirt with a little…let me see, sunflower on it.”

“No! I mean—I’m zero for two here.”

“What, this?” He tugs at his Norwegian sweater. Hesitates.

“M-hm. Yes, this.”

Reluctantly he pulls it over his head. He’s wearing his white Ashley Wilkes shirt underneath, and I don’t really see what the fuss was about.

“This is nice…why were you so—oh.”

I am enjoying the feel of his lean chest underneath the shirt and had just wrapped my arms around him again when a certain female odor reaches my nostrils.

He smiles and raises his eyebrows in self-mockery. The rosy tinge in his cheeks is so adorable that I could eat him; at the same time I remember the crumpled underwear in my washing machine and feel ashamed.

“Giles, that is…”

“Pathetic?”

“…so sweet!”

He groans at my delight, and when I shift on his lap to be able to sit astride him, unbutton his shirt, and plant slow, lingering kisses on his throat and chest, he groans again, but differently. Undressing him is like undressing a girl. He watches me with that slight blush on his face, his eyes move from my face down to my hands on his shirt buttons, on the smooth skin of his chest, with just a small nest of gray curls in the hollow of his ribcage, around the dark pink nipples…then back up to my eyes. He’s watching me like a girl who feels the touch of a man for the first time, and under the flat of my palm I feel his heart beat hard, and his breath quicken. Blood pulses in my lips, and I lean in to kiss him. I want to make him beg for it. I clasp his wrists and pin them to the back of the chair above his head; he crooks his elbows willingly and watches me, waiting, his eyes a dark, moist green.

“I wish I was strong enough to hold you like you held me,” I whisper into his ear.

“You do? What would you do?”

I drive his wrists into the upholstery with both hands and swoop down to bite his neck. The odd thing is, I can’t. My jaw seems to lock just before my teeth would begin to pinch his flesh; it’s as if I lost control over my muscles. I can’t bite him. I can’t.

“I wouldn’t hurt you…I couldn’t.”

“Did I? Hurt you?” He’s serious, troubled, underneath his arousal. I don’t want to make him feel bad, but I don’t want to lie, either.

“No, but you almost frightened me.”

He nods. Lowers his arms to draw me against himself. “I was so lonely. And you were so…lovely.” His hands slide under my t-shirt and up my naked back. “Did I leave any marks?” His fingers inch upward to caress my shoulders.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Actually, I don’t know.”

“I think I should have a look.” He clasps my waist and pushes up my t-shirt with the backs of his hands. Is there anything better in this world than slowly undressing with an appreciative partner? I wriggle out of his arms and slide onto my knees on the rug on the floor.

“You did notice, didn’t you, that I’m not circumcised?” The corners of his mouth lift on half a grin when he says this, my hands on his zipper. “European and Gentile.”

“Yes, I noticed that. Not to worry,” I reply solemnly, but his stomach erupts in a spurt of laughter when I say this, because as I’m freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans and the shorts underneath, I have to swallow. Hard.

“Hard” being the operative word here.

He wraps his fingers, his beautiful, hard, strong fingers, around his beautiful, hard shaft and strokes it lightly.

“What you see is what you get…”

I inhale for a quip.

“…but it won’t behave like the meat of the striplings you’ve been f*cking.”

That word, uttered calmly in clipped English accents by this silver-haired gentleman, sends another wave of blood into my belly.

“So far it has been behaving rather better,” I murmur, leaning in. “Let’s see if it stays that way.”

I replace his hand with mine and shuffle closer until my knees touch the bottom of the chair; with my other hand I spread his thighs a little wider. Ignoring Giles’s sharp intake of breath, I run the tips of my fingers along its hard, silky length and gently squeeze it between the balls of my hands. I smooth down the soft wiry hairs, some dark, some gray, and run my fingers deep along the clefts of skin between thigh and groin, teasing the tightening, fleshy sac with my knuckles, as if by the way.

“I wish I could dance around it.” My voice is husky with anticipation. I run my thumbs up and down its curved belly, pull back the foreskin from the head and tenderly chafe the snake’s throat and chin. “Like dancing around a sacred tree…or a maypole…”

Giles stares down at me as I kneel between his thighs and worship his cock, and he’s so turned on by my words that he looks almost scared, with a deep crease between his brows. I smile up at him and run my hands across his white loins and flat belly. His penis arches up from its nest of hair, and without taking my eyes off his face I lean in and kiss the shiny dark pink head.

“Oh, God…”

I can’t help grinning at his wide-eyed alarm, and the velvety shaft brushes my flaming cheek.

“‘Like woman wailing for her demon-lover,’” I quote. Nibbling and licking my way down to the fuzzy base and up to the tender head again. “Her demon god…this phallic god…I totally see why people adored it. It’s so beautiful.”

And I raise myself up on my knees and slowly slide my mouth over the first four inches.

The sound that fills the air is surprisingly close to a wail, but it didn’t come from my throat.

“L-Listen, I—” His fingers grope for my arms, my hands. “I should say that it’s been a while since I’ve done this…had this done to me, rather, and…”

“It’s been a while since I did this, too.”

“It has?” His gaze is like a pool of green water with gray clouds chasing across it.

“Well, you wouldn’t let me, remember?”

“Mm-hmm.” But he tugs at my shoulders, urgently, and lifts me up so that I lie on his naked chest. “I have to kiss you. Come and kiss me.”

Kissing Giles Cleveland is like going to the fun fair in the morning, knowing that in the afternoon your best friend is having a big birthday party and you’ll be allowed to stay the night at her house. An endless series of pleasures, after which I get to make love to him. When I push his shirt over his shoulders, he leans forward willingly enough, but because he is still wearing the cufflinks, he can’t pull the sleeves off over his hands. I watch his efforts for a couple of seconds, and a hot rush of inspiration runs through my body.

“Wait, I’ll help…stand up.”

Because now I shall be horribly revenged for what he did to me in the observatory. I step round him, ostensibly to undo his cuffs. There is a small scuffle; he’s impatient to be rid of this encumbrance, but I grab his shirt tails and quickly tie them in as tight a knot as I can, and another on top, to make sure.

“Now, look here, young woman!” The look on his face is priceless.

He tugs at his manacles more violently, and then with as much force as he can. The muscles in his arms and shoulders ripple most beautifully, but the cotton shackles hold fast. I exhale slowly. Had the shirt torn under his struggles to free himself, I’m sure he would have given me the hiding of my life. I’m almost frightened of him for a moment, because for a moment he seems frightened of me.

The dogs, who lie curled up in front of the fire, lift their heads, and Toby warns me off with a deep, chesty growl.

“It’s all right, Toby,” I say confidently. “It’s only a game.” Another growl, but more quietly; the big head sinks back onto his paws. “That’s a good boy, Toby. Only playing.”

“Listen, my girl, this is not how we play this game!”

It is an effort to ignore his resentment, but I manage to bat my lashes at him, all limpid innocence.

“But it’s you, professor, who taught me this game!”

He thinks, and then, on an unwilling crack of laughter, he relaxes. The tension eases up a little. Was he really worried that I might hurt him?

“You didn’t mind that.”

“No.” I put my flat hand against his chest and push him down onto the sofa.

“Hey!”

“And I promise you, you won’t mind this.” He lies sprawled helplessly across the three-seater, one leg up, one down, his hips raised a little in the air because he’s lying on his shackled hands.

“No, but, Anna—aah…”

“Hush, you’ll frighten the dogs.”

The strangled sound that came from his throat when I slowly sucked him into my mouth turns into a choked laugh.

“Toby…Andrew…help!” he wheezes, but quietly, so as not to alarm the animals snoring in front of the fire. With my fingers ringed around the base of his shaft, I hold him in my mouth, suck on the head in fast, short movements, and wiggle my tongue around its slithery smoothness. Giles’s irregular gasps for breath are punctuated by the most gratifying moans of pleasure, and when I gently knead his tensing balls in my hand, he arches his hips in a convulsion of response that stabs his cock deep into my throat. He cries out, I gag, and the dogs woof their irritation.

“Giles, I fully intend to make you come loud and long, but I won’t if it means I’ll have the dogs at my throat because they think I’m killing you.”

“You are killing me.”

“My dear boy, I haven’t even started. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t stick your cock between my tonsils.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” He raises his head from the sofa and looks his contrition past his naked chest and stomach down at my face between his legs. “Really, I didn’t. I mean, I wouldn’t.”

The most incredible suspicion dawns on me. “Giles.” Very tenderly I tug at his cock, upward, downward, sideways. “How many women have done this to you?”

He lies very still. Stares up at the beamed ceiling of his cottage.

“Several,” he finally says. “But not the woman I was married to for eleven years.”

This is fascinating—and very welcome—information, but I will leave its discussion till later. Mentioning his ex-wife has made him go a little limp, but in no time at all I lick and suck, nibble, and squeeze him back into a rod-like state.

His eyes flit up to mine a fraction too quickly. “Look, I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful, but…I’m really rather uncomfortable with this.”

“What, with this?” I kiss the hollow of his throat while I’m running my hands along his shoulders and his arms down to the cotton shackles at the small of his back. “Or this?” He winces when I tweak the skin of his stomach with my teeth. “You’re surely not uncomfortable with this?” I push his jeans and boxers over his knees and pull them off his long-muscled legs.

“Yes, actually, I feel extremely un—”

“Shhhh…” His embarrassment turns me on, and knowing that I will make him lose control in a very short while gives me a sense of power that is unfamiliar and extremely arousing. “I have not yet…seen you…”

“Seen me?” Again he glances up at me a little uncertainly.

“Yes, seen you. Touched you.” I feel myself slowing down, relaxing. The higher faculties of my brain shut down, and primeval, atavistic impulses take over. Bodies moving against each other, skin against skin. Giles watches me with slow bright eyes as I put another log on the fire and as I turn round to pull the t-shirt over my head. The blazing fire caresses my naked back and puckers the skin around my nipples. Slowly I unbutton my corduroys.

“The stockings are left to your imagination, I’m afraid.”

Going by the expression on his face and the response of his twitching cock, one would think this is a man watching a woman in black lace suspenders, a nipple-exposing corset, and six-inch heels.

“I really very urgently need to touch you,” he says.

“Maybe…but it’s my turn.”

Naked but for my sensible cotton panties and my knee socks, I squat on my haunches and run my hand up the inside of his long, hard thigh, brush past his balls, and explore the strands of muscle, the bones and ribs rising from smooth surfaces of flesh and skin. His blush has deepened, and his chest looks as if he had been out too much in the sun. This may be the only time I’ll get to touch him like this.

“I seem to end up naked all the time when we meet, while you hide inside that tweed armor of yours.” Careful not to squash any sensitive parts, I climb onto the sofa, my knees between his, stretch out along his naked length, adjust my hips, and close my thighs tightly around his erection.

“Am I too heavy like this—?”

His half scathing, half desperate grunt is answer enough. He stares at me, helpless in his arousal, and then his head sinks back and he closes his eyes.

“This is torture.”

Stretched out on top of Giles Cleveland I move my hips in slow, deliberate gyrations and clench the muscles in my thighs, using his rock-hard cock as an instrument of stimulation, which does nothing for my detachment but feels absolutely wonderful.

“Is that nice?”

“Nice! A nice Jewish girl shouldn’t even know what to do with a foreskin…certainly not…not know how to—oh, yesss!”

“Shmuck,” I whisper against his throat, keeping up my restrained but effective medium-dry humping.

“W-What?”

“That’s what shmuck means. It’s Yiddish for foreskin. Well, actually, what it means is jewelry.”

He has to laugh. “Well, I can’t tell you how ecstatically glad I am right now that I still have mine!”

“One can do strange and wonderful things with them. I’ll show you.”

I roll off him and with my fingertips deftly manipulate the creamy, silky skin around the hard shaft underneath. Now we are both looking down past his flat belly, and I adore the sight of his arched cock between my fingers. Giles catches his breath and releases it in a hiss.

“Sit on me…ride me. I need to feel you. There are some condoms in the bathroom cupboard. I think.”

I am tempted to do as he asks—but no. I want to remain in control. I want to turn the tables on him and make him come while I’m watching him.

I push my hands underneath his buttocks and cup the smooth, firm globes, lift his hips a few inches higher to arch the middle of his body. His fingers grope for mine, and we hold hands while I do what I can to give him the blowjob of his life. I’m so caught up in what I’m doing, so aroused myself now by the noises he makes in response to my manipulations, that I almost miss my cue. With my wrists supporting his balls, I can feel him tightening, ready to explode. I let him slide out of my mouth with a plop and wrap both hands around the hot, moist shaft.

“Why wouldn’t you let me touch you, earlier?”

“What? God!” he cries and rolls his hips to maintain some friction. “Don’t stop! D-Don’t stop now!”

“But I’m not stopping at all,” I object sweetly. “I’m just pausing!”

“I’m going to get you for this!” He thrashes around on the sofa, trying to loosen his shackles.

“Yes, Professor Cleveland, sir, but not yet.”

Very slowly I pump him inside the tube of my hand and fingers while I kiss and lick my way up from the tender, defenseless flesh above his hairline to his warm throat that smells more intensely of Giles than ever, and to his mouth.

“Tell me,” I whisper between slow, deep kisses that he receives almost passively; he is too far gone. I hadn’t been sure whether to expect that he would relax, after his initial discomfort at being tied up. But when he opens his eyes they are blank with sensation.

“Hmm?” His voice comes from somewhere deep in his throat, low and hoarse.

“Why you wouldn’t let me touch your cock when we were making out in your office.”

He closes his eyes again and swallows before he answers. My hand maintains a slow, steady rhythm of stimulation, and I can tell that he has about five percent of his consciousness available to answer my question.

“Because I thought I’d be able to keep my hands off you, if you…didn’t want me. But I was frightened of…this. That if you touched me, like this, I would want you again and again. Ludicrous, really, because I do…anyway.”

I gaze down at the flushed, defenseless face. I can’t allow myself to hope that this might be a beginning.

When I take him into my mouth again, I stop thinking. I make love to him with my lips and tongue and teeth and fingers, respond instinctively to the tensing of tissue, to his sighs and gasps. I’m no longer focused on egging him on; I no longer try to control his arousal. All I’m doing is reveling in his smell, his skin, his hardness, his softness. I’m reveling in the fact that for a few minutes I have made him forget any other woman who has ever touched him.

“Pleasedon’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstoppleasssse…Oh, no, don’t—”

I suck him deep into me until I feel a load of jizz hit the back of my throat. Mission accomplished. Milking him with both hands, firmly and slowly, I swallow and let him slide out of my mouth. This I want to see. He groans as if his entrails were on fire; his hips buck in spasms of release, and the next few milky white blobs land on my breasts and throat, run down my fingers onto his belly. I don’t think he was looking at me when he came, because it’s only when the spurts of cum subside to pearly drops that he raises his head and opens his eyes. I can’t suppress a grin—half of pride, half of tenderness.

“Why, Professor Cleveland…I always knew you had it in you.”

He is gasping for air, for the moment too weak even to laugh.

“You’re only so cocky because…I have my hands tied and…my spirits drained!”

“Not at all. I’m your willing handmaiden, sir. Here, let me clean you up.”

Very tenderly I take him between my lips and suck the wet, fragrant, softening shaft into my mouth again. He catches his breath as if I’d bitten into him.

“Not nice?”

“It blows all remaining fuses in my brain…but yeah, it’s lovely. But you have to be gentle with me.”

Satisfied, I settle my head against his thigh and very gently, with infinite tenderness, suckle his wilting cock. Inhale the smell of his sex in his hair, on his skin. Hold his drained balls in the hollow of my hand. Wait for the turn. Was this the climax that is followed by a falling action and imminent ending? Or is this a beginning? While I’m lying against his naked body, with his cock in my mouth, I almost don’t care.

“Why did you come?” he asks after a long while.

“Hmm? I didn’t.”

“No, I meant, here. When I was wandering through the snow feeling sorry for myself.”

I pull my knees underneath my body and squat between his legs.

“Will you thrash me if I untie you now?”

“I don’t think I’d have the strength,” he sighs. “You’ve shot yourself in the foot, my girl. Middle-aged men are completely incapacitated for hours by ejaculations like that.”

“That’s okay. Honor is satisfied.”

Cautiously, I push my hands under his buttocks again and feel for the cufflinks.

“So—you came here to make me come?” he insists.

I sit up and angle for my t-shirt and sweater while Giles very gingerly frees himself from his shackles and moves his arms about. Flexes his hands. Groans as the blood tingles in his fingers.

I’ve pulled on my clothes without wiping his cum off my chest. I want him on me. This is no time for niceties. “I had this terrible sense of…waste. And I knew for a fact that it wouldn’t get better at home, but worse. I just wanted to be outside, in the snow, and calm down. And then suddenly I was here. I don’t know, Giles.”

The beautiful naked man sitting next to me on the sofa smiles. It’s a wistful smile, as if he, too, thinks that this will be our only evening together. Then his expression changes and he flings himself on me, wrestles me down onto my back and kisses me with a vehemence that startles me.

“G-Giles!”

“Mhmm.” He raises his head and licks his lips. “I think the last time I tasted my spunk was when I lost a bet with Rupert Harding.”

“You shock me. And who is Rupert Harding?”

“Oh, he was my best friend at school.” He wriggles his torso between my thighs and slumps on top of me in all his naked glory.

“Ooofff…from what I heard about English boarding schools, I would have guessed that you tasted his.”

“Haha. No, I lost a bet—I can’t honestly say that I remember what it was all about. Something entirely puerile, no doubt. Something to do with the form master’s hairpiece, I think. Anyway, I lost, and I had to wank into my hand and taste the blob of cum on my finger. It was very exciting. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do that if I hadn’t been…you know, honor-bound.”

“What a fascinating life you have led!”

His eyebrows twitch in ironic acknowledgment, but his eyes and his mouth are serious.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Are you sad?” I ask, and even I can hear the anxious tone in my voice.

He smiles and scoots down the sofa so he can push his head underneath my t-shirt and sweater, like a small boy who hides from the world. His playfulness makes me laugh, but there is something strangely arousing in the childish—child-like—embrace of this broad-shouldered, gray-haired man.

Meanwhile his hands roam over my naked thighs and under my t-shirt in a way that is not in the least child-like. He reappears, cradling my hips in his hands, and trails an intoxicating line of kisses across my belly just above my panties and along the insides of my legs. His lips and nose caress my crotch through the hot, damp cotton. I feel him settling his lips over my *oris, the tip of his tongue finds the tip of my *, and for a crazy second I regret not having a cock that he could suck into his mouth.

“Will you stay until I’ve had a proper go at you?”

His tongue burns the hard little cotton-covered nub of flesh. Slowly he laps at it, teases it, and the sensation floods my pelvis like an epic deluge of lust and makes my heart pound almost painfully in my chest. His lips form an O over my *, and he exhales slowly against it.

“Y-Yyy-aaah!”

“Is that a yes?”

“Giles!”

“Hmmm?”

“Giles, stop that. Or finish it, but don’t—”

He raises his head and looks at me with a mixture of amusement and exasperation.

“Don’t tease?”

“Yes…no.”

His eyes narrow, and I brace myself for the imminent assault.

“Oh, all right.” He shrugs his shoulders in a show of unconcern and clambers onto his feet. “The fire needs stoking anyway.”

For the second time this evening I watch him busying himself around the room, this time stark naked, which to my delight doesn’t seem to bother him at all. I curl up on the sofa in my socks and sweater and watch him. The long, well-defined strands of muscle in his legs and his back, his pale, tight buttocks gleaming in the dim light.

“I can’t believe that none of the older boys at school had a crush on you.” I lean on my elbow and smile at him. Giles looks up from the grate, clearly taken aback. “You have such a fine ass…‘arse,’ as you’d say.”

“Well, as for that, madam, your own little tush is very fine, too.”

“Thanks…but I wasn’t fishing.”

“As indeed, why should you? You’re used to men lusting after you.”

There he stands, slimmer and more angular than Michelangelo’s David, more boyish, but just as perfect in his nakedness, and suddenly there is an acid tone in his voice. I register the electric flash that runs along my nerves. Wait while it peaks and fades. A remark like that would have really hurt me, a few years ago. I am more resilient now. I have grown, I am a little harder, and generally much better at protecting myself.

“And I thought I was paying you a compliment,” I muse aloud. “I’m sorry if I’ve trespassed into a no-go area, Giles.”

And it works. His rigid posture relaxes. I hadn’t even seen him tense up, but he relaxes and casts down his eyes.

“What, school-boy crushes?” He had already forgotten about that question. “Oh, I’m not bothered about that. The geography master fondled my bottom once or twice, but then he fondled pretty much every boy’s bottom. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was thinking how young you look, and what you must have looked like when you—”

“Were.” His voice is dry as winter leaves. “Young.”

“No!”

He grins at me with that ironic incredulity that makes me want to hit him.

“Are you hungry?” he asks. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry!”

“Drink?”

“You’re horrible! I’d like a glass of water, please.”

He gives a curt nod and walks off into the kitchen, to reappear a few seconds later with two glasses, a jug of water and an open but full bottle of red wine.

“When did you open the wine? I didn’t hear you.”

With a grim expression around his mouth he pours water into my glass.

“Earlier. Before I took the dogs out. I was going to get well and truly plastered tonight.”

“Oh, you had plans? I’m so sorry! You should have said! I wouldn’t have stayed!”

I’m not going to let him get away with whatever mood he has dropped into, like into a vat of sadness. Maybe that’s all it is: post-climactic tristesse? Don’t think so. My taunts make him pause; he seems to be looking at the mouth of the bottle hovering over my glass.

“I’m glad you’ve come.” He doesn’t say it as if he were glad. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“But?”

He sighs and pours me my drink. Then, finally, he looks at me.

“But I wish you hadn’t made me come…like that.”

A ball of lead plummets into the pit of my stomach.

“You think that was sluttish of me.”

“What? No! That’s not at all—no!”

“You think a girl who gives head on the first…date—”

The rest of my protest is stifled against his naked shoulder when he pulls me roughly into his arms.

“You’re crushing me!”

“I’m sorry…”

He releases me from his bear hug, and we laugh together, dazed by the intensity of feeling that is between us, and cowed by the misunderstandings that fly thick and fast.

“Let’s not talk,” he says dumbly. He lays a hand on my knee and runs it up my thigh, then both hands, on both legs, and he is so lovely and so sad, and I don’t want to talk either. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to spoil this. But.

“But what did you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Giles!”

“Look!” He isn’t looking at me; he’s looking at his hands on my knees. “It’s just that Amanda, my ex-wife—”

“Is she your ex-wife?” I ask, a little pissy.

“What? Oh, yes.” He grins. “All over now.”

“Because she wouldn’t give head.”

“No! Well, I don’t know. She said it was demeaning. Eighties’ feminism and all that, but I think she simply didn’t like it. She hated it, frankly, and I hated her turning it into a political issue. Because I don’t think it is that! If she doesn’t want to be so…intimate with me, she doesn’t, but there’s nothing inherently denigrating in a blowjob. Why should there be? Patting someone on the shoulder can be far more denigrating, in a certain context, than—oh, I’m raving again! I’m sorry. I can’t explain.”

“Yes, you can. Do. Please.”

He rouses himself to greater effort, but he still doesn’t look at me, not even when I clasp his hands in mine.

“Well, what I mean to say is that for me…it still feels…special, as if it meant something. I know it doesn’t, so you needn’t tell me how absurd that sounds, but—well, it makes me feel like one of John Donne’s poet-lovers. You suck my life’s spirit from me, from my body, and I’ll be a hollow man who’ll sicken and die unless you give me your spirit in return. I’m sorry, I can’t really talk about it in less high-falutin’ terms!”

“What you’re saying is you’re sorry that you let me have you.” At this, he looks up, surprised at how poignantly I have summarized him. “But you already had me, remember?”

“At Notre Dame?”

“At Notre Dame, and in the observatory, and in your office! My life sounds like an X-rated movie.”

“But that wasn’t the same.”

“How wasn’t it? Of course it was!”

“I’ve never pleased you as you did me, just now!”

He looks like a boy who insists that he has been wronged. He knows it, too, and is ashamed of his insecurity. A few years ago I would have started arguing with him; now I am wiser. I wrap my arms around his neck and snuggle against him. He is warm and smells of arousal. I breathe softly into his ear, making him and myself giggle.

“Do you know, it’s quite ridiculous how sexy you are…even when you’re being silly.”

“Anna—”

I cut him short with a slow, deep kiss.

“Let’s go to bed, Giles, hmm? And bring a pen and paper. Maybe we can start a chart.”