Luis makes a guttural noise, a low hum of something good. ‘I think she’d like to watch this very much,’ he says, breath catching in his throat. ‘I think she’d like to see you on top of me like this.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I think she’d touch herself.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She fancies you so fucking much. She wants to do this to you. She wants to make you writhe like this so she can watch you. She wants to taste you, lick you and lick you.’
Ash’s body responds to his every word. She can imagine it, CJ close to her, touching her bare skin, caressing her, possessing her.
‘Say more,’ Ash commands. This game is working for her.
‘Oh god,’ murmurs Luis. ‘You and CJ … god, it would be perfect. Electric.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She’d be in her underwear,’ Luis whispers. ‘Lace. Red. Red lace. A thong so you could see herbunda, herbundais …’ He pauses, takes a big breath of pleasure. ‘Herbundais so big and round and juicy. You’d grab it, hold her and pull her close. Her breasts … herpeitos… they’re so bouncy. She’s thin and fit but those tits,meu deus.In her little red underwear she’d kiss you, and her hand would go up and down your body and she’d be so fucking happy to be with you, Ash. She wants it, badly. She wants to kiss you and put her hand between your legs. You’d be wet for her, like you are for me, and you silly little girls would be so horny, touching each other. She’d play with you and then put her finger in your mouth and you’d suck it, taste yourself, and she’d have to fuck you herself, push your legs apart, put her mouth on you, and you’d love it, you’d love her mouth on you. You’d push and groan and moan and hold the back of her head, grind up against her like you grind against me …’
Luis keeps talking, whispering rude, filthy things about what CJ would do to Ash, what Ash could do to CJ, and Ash’s movements get quicker, the friction between them sparking a thousand flames of passion deep in the pit of her stomach, a growing, rising wave that surges and swells as she rides him harder.
‘Yeah?’ Luis says, recognising that Ash is close.
Her eyes are closed, she’s imagining every single lastthing Luis is saying to her, imagining CJ, wanting to please CJ, wanting CJ to please her.
‘Don’t stop,’ Ash tells him, thinking about red lace, soft female skin and hot, wet, special places.
Ash grabs the headboard to get purchase on him, and she’s not in her body any more. Ash is not in her head or her soul or anywhere earthly: she’s outside of herself, vaguely aware that moans capable of waking the dead are emitting from her person, but then the wave washes over, crashes into every nook and cranny and crevice of herself so that light shoots from the top of her skull, there’s an almost painful explosion, the sensation of being pushed off a cliff towards the crashing waves of the sea, falling, falling, falling, rising again, rising and rising, a sweet, beautiful release.
Luis grunts and grunts as Ash starts to come back to herself, a final growl and push inside her, and after he comes too, their bodies relax, crumble into each other, and they sit there, Ash on top of Luis, Luis growing limp inside of her, flushed, sweaty, sated.
‘That was …’ Luis says, panting.
‘Yeah,’ Ash agrees, patting his shoulder and climbing off him. ‘It was.’
The next morning Ash meets Mona at Querido for breakfast, both women having news with which to update the other.
‘He shagged me like a prisoner on day release, Ash,’ Mona says, stirring a sweetener into hermeia de leite.
She’d wanted an iced latte, but the guy behind the counter had explained that in Portugal asking for an iced coffeewas apparently tantamount to shitting over the entire coffee industry. As an American, he said, he thought this was insane, but as an honoraryPortuguês, his hands were tied. Mona said she’d never heard of such stupidity, but fine, she’d take a milky coffee that was hot, but not too hot.
‘Who knew an old broad like me could end up in bed with a young whippersnapper like that!’ she adds, stirring and stirring, distracted by the memory. ‘I felt like Christine Baranski inMamma Mia!, except instead of asking if his mamma knows, I saidfuck it, your place or mine.’
‘I’m so proud!’ says Ash, her own shagged-until-sunrise glow meaning that she’s skipped her usual make-up routine this morning and is existing in the world with only a slick of mascara and a little lip gloss, like a Hollywood starlet in a gushing magazine feature.Bare-faced and exuding the kind of glow that does not come out of a bottle …her interview might begin.She sits at the outdoor café with her herbal tea, classic navy cardigan hanging nonchalantly over her sun-kissed shoulders …
‘I’mproud of me, Ash!’ Mona says. ‘I had no idea what was on offer out there. I don’t even know what possessed me, to be honest, except an appetite for imagining my ex-husband, balls deep in baby sick and bottles, knowing that I’m out here having the youth I never got to have the first time around.’
‘Here’s to that,’ Ash says, raising her tea to click acheerswith her new friend. ‘Revenge shagging can be the best shagging, and I won’t hear it said otherwise.’
She thinks of last night. She has so far declined the invitation from her psyche to examine the discussion of CJ duringsex, but the tiny voice in her head reminds her what a turn-on it was. It was a kind of revenge sex she had, if revenge over CJ counts. CJ must be actually unwell, commenting to her like she did that it wasgame onwith Luis. Ash didn’t even mention it to the man in question, though. It wasn’t worth it. CJ isn’t worth it.
As if Ash had conjured the woman herself, CJ suddenly traverses the corner and heads straight towards the café Ash is sat at. Her stomach flips over itself, and Ash can feel herself colour up, crimson as a cardinal – apparently, her body feels like she did something worth being shy about last night. Which, OK, yeah, getting off on the idea of CJ going down on her was unexpected and, in the cold light of day, largely weird. She can admit that. But to blush could be to give the game away, and if there’s anything Ash wants less than to be in a tangled fuckfest love triangle with CJ, it’s to be in a tangled fuckfest love triangle with a CJ who also suspects Ash has thought about her in her underwear. Dammit. CJ is looking right at her – there’s nowhere to hide.
‘Morning,’ CJ says, not quite smiling. She sails past Ash and Mona without waiting for any kind of salutation in return, so as Ash squeaks, ‘Morning,’ it is to CJ’s behind.
Mona hasn’t noticed, excited as she is to share the gory details of her hook-up with a 33-year-old, Ash getting length, girth and stamina stats as she tries not to make it obvious she’s looking at CJ through the big glass window. CJ seems to know the man behind the counter quite well, she’s chatting away ten to the dozen and the guy is laughing, which is interesting: is CJ capable of actually being funny? She’s ingym clothes: dark green Lycra cycling shorts that barely cover her arse, and a sports bra that peeks out through the sides of a baggy-armed muscle T-shirt. Is the woman not capable of wearing a T-shirt with regular armholes? She’s got a baseball cap on backwards, no make-up, is tapping her fingers on the counter as she talks, all perfect white teeth and voluptuous full lips.
‘So what do you think, doll, do you fancy it? I promise we won’t drink as much as we did at that restaurant – I needed a day in bed after that. Ash?’
