“Oh.” Elyssa felt a pang at the memory of that night. “That’s where you went.”
“Don’t say you missed me.”
“I did. I wondered where you were.”
“You were busy in Patrick’s arms, I believe.”
“It was one dance, Jay. God, I can’t believe you’re still so…bitter about all that.”
“I’m not bitter!”
Elyssa arched an eyebrow, intending to convey her disappointment at Jay’s dwelling on their youthful jealousies and imagined slights.
“I was just so in love with you. I couldn’t stay and watch.”
“You daft thing.” Elyssa stroked a strand of hair that had strayed behind the lenses of his sunglasses, brushing it out of his eye. “You don’t believe nothing else happened with Patrick that night, do you?”
“If you say so, I believe you. Patrick told me different, though.”
Elyssa gasped. “He didn’t!”
Jay covered his face with his hands, groaning as if in pain. “It’s such a disaster,” he wailed. “Everything could have been different without the stupid competitive bollocks! Why couldn’t we just be normal?”
“What’s normal?” Elyssa’s wry remark was taken seriously by Jay, who put a finger on her lips, took off his sunglasses and held her eyes in a steadfast gaze until she had to stop smiling and remember to keep breathing.
“Kissing,” he said. “I think kissing is normal. When two people fancy the pants off each other. Want to try it out?”
/> Elyssa would have made some jokey comment about him being a fast mover if only she hadn’t been struck dumb by the serious intensity of his stare. Instead, she found herself nodding mutely, letting him take her face in his long-fingered hand, holding as still as silence itself while he moved towards her, that slow, inevitable glide and bob that ended with lips on lips. Oh, the warmth and the perfect fit of it. His mouth was the right one after all these years, feeling just the way she had dreamt it would each time she had kissed her own arm in adolescent practice sessions. She was so entangled in the sensation and the emotion that she made no attempt to resist when he laid her gently down and hovered above her on his elbows, deepening his reach, keeping her lips parted to accept his tongue while his fingertips massaged her scalp, setting a wild butterfly-riot of desire alight across her body. He smelt and felt and sounded and was so wantable, touchable, kissable that she wanted it all to go and on. His light cotton shirt against hers, cool on her skin. His knee finding a space for itself between her denim-clad thighs, their belt buckles clicking and locking together as they began to shift and grind a little under the lascivious direction of their starved kisses.
It was like being a teenager again, when the kiss, itself, was sufficient and need not—perhaps should not—lead anywhere. Jay and Elyssa sucked the sweet nectar from each other, the closeness they had finally achieved putting all of Elyssa’s lonely nights into glorious context. Elyssa, pushing her tongue past Jay’s teeth, was beginning to understand that this would not, after all, be enough. She was a grown woman now, and she knew where kissing could lead. She was not sure it was a good idea, and yet on another level, she was so sure that it was. The weight of Jay upon her pelvis, the brush of his heated skin on hers, the unmistakable lump that pressed into her groin, all these were pushing her forward, awakening desire that was entirely adult in nature. She knew she was wet, the damp transferring in patches to the rough denim of her jeans, and she was letting Jay nudge her thighs ever farther apart as they continued the ardent lip-lock. If the ghosts of monks or nuns walked this ground, they were getting quite a sinful spectacle.
It was the thought of those ghosts that finally prompted Elyssa to shy away and end the kiss, staring up at Jay’s flushed face and clouded eyes in near-consternation.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Am I going too far? Too fast? Shit, I had so much planned before this was supposed to happen. Picnic, champagne, a boat on the lake. We can still do those, can’t we?”
Elyssa was touched by his self-flagellatory tone. It was clear that this was important to him.
“It truly is like being eighteen again,” he moaned. “My hormones have gone into overdrive. I’m like a six-foot-four mountain of testosterone.”
Elyssa put a reassuring hand in his tumbling hair. “Believe me, Jay, the oestrogen is doing its damnedest here, too. It’s okay. I’m just…overwhelmed. And a bit…well, this is, like, sacred ground, isn’t it? Might not be the place…”
Jay’s face lit with wicked purpose. “Oh! So it’s the place, not the time?”
“The time is fine,” she confessed, biting her lip, pained to be so bold.
Jay knelt up, straightening his back, and took a long view down towards the lake, shading his forehead with a hand. The sun was strong now, heading for its midday zenith. “The lake has some secluded spots,” he mentioned offhandedly. “And I believe the ground there is as profane as it gets. Profane ground is what we’re after, I think.”
“Obscene ground, even,” giggled Elyssa, sitting up. Mention of the picnic and champagne had made her hungry for more than sex. The only question was, what order should they do it in?
“Or there are some hotels in town. Would you rather…?”
“No. The shores of the lake sound good to me. As long as we stay away from the bit with all the fishermen.”
“I know the perfect spot.”
“I’m not getting back on that bike,” she warned him, shaking her legs, which were beginning to ache.
“That’s not the kind of ride I have in mind,” he told her, taking the basket in one hand and her arm in the other. “Come on. Last one down has to strip off and jump in the lake.”