Bewitched in Budapest (Xcite Romance) (6 page)

‘Are you scared?’ He was all the way in now, pinning me to his cock, stroking a silky ellipse around my clit.

The voice seemed to come from someone else, saying words I would never say. ‘Fuck me.’

‘Of course.’ He gave me the gentlest, sweetest kiss, then he started to thrust.

His rhythm, his motion sent ripples of sheer overwhelming sensation from my cunt outwards, reaching every nerve simultaneously. My first orgasm came within half a minute, eagerly flooding my clit when he rubbed, but I knew I had more in me, maybe I could come forever, over and over, while he gave me this ride to the heavens.

He looked proud and he laughed when I came the first time, bucking wildly into me. I hid my face in his shoulder, oddly ashamed at how easy it was for him to push my buttons, feeling exposed and undone.

‘You feel how I make you come,’ he said. ‘I give you more.’

Behind my tight-shut eyes, a flash of light. Was János such a good shag that he could make me see literal stars? Was this what happened when a man fucked you the right way?

But a huge crack of thunder almost immediately afterwards forced my blurred thoughts to register that it was the weather above me, not the cock inside me, causing the spectacular side-effects.

I put my face up to the sky and felt the first fat raindrop on my skin.

János powered on as if oblivious to the sudden downpour. We ignored the way our hair flattened and our noses dripped, ignored the flashing and crashing around us, ignored everything but our own mixed energies, ebbing and flowing, thrusting and retreating, bringing the peak of pleasure ever closer. His belt jingled around his ankles with every stroke. I dug my heels into his flexing buttocks, making him speed up, clinging on for dear life, loving every second of his penetration, wanting to keep him inside me forever, through rain or shine, through hell or high water.

We were drenched by the time he started kissing me in a frenzy, feeling my chest heave, my heart thump, everything join together in a rolling wave of orgasm. I sobbed into his mouth, my fingers pinching and clutching at him, and then he roared and poured into me, slamming me back against that board so that the cheap wood split.

Another roll of thunder accompanied our subsidence into bonelessness. János slumped against me, burying his head on my shoulder, panting like a marathon runner.

I ran my fingers through his soaked hair and wept into his chest. It wasn’t as if he’d notice anyway. We were drowning together, clinging to each other for our lives.

After what seemed like hours, János withdrew from me – it felt like losing him, somehow – and stood straight, peering up into the ceaseless rain.

‘Well, the place is still standing,’ he said with a self-conscious laugh. ‘I was worried it fall down.’

I tried to crush my tears with the heel of my hand and smiled at him.

‘Hey,’ he said, pulling me back into a hug. ‘You are crying. Hey, shhh. What is wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m just being stupid. That was just so … intense.’

‘Intense? That’s not good?’

‘No, it’s good. Amazing. I don’t even care if it’s just a one-night stand … in the daytime … At least I know what good sex feels like now. Thank you for that.’

His bamboozled frown made me laugh through my tears. More lightning, more thunder. ‘What you are saying? You don’t want to see me no more? You have sex with me and that’s it, all over, bang bang bang.’

‘Well … Jodie says you’re a bit of a shagger. I thought you’d probably disappear once you’d got my knickers off.’

‘Can you please speak English?’

‘Jodie says you like to … love a girl and then leave her.’

‘Jodie says, Jodie says. Jodie says a lot of stupid stuff. She don’t know me so well.’

‘Isn’t it true?’

He kissed me, long and tenderly. ‘Not for you.’

That skipping a beat thing that hearts are supposed to do happened.

‘Oh.’

‘Look at you.’ He laughed. ‘Look at me! We will get bad influenza. Come on.’ He tried to pull up his jeans, but it took several attempts due to their waterlogged state. My skirt slapped and slopped about my shivering thighs. My shoes were full of rain. My knickers lay in a puddle, beyond hope. We left them there and passed, hand in hand, through the archway, back into the street.

Baross utca was deserted. The smoking man had disappeared from his doorstep and only a couple of people dashed past with umbrellas. Pale light flickered behind blinds and tattered curtains.

‘Where are we going?’

We seemed to be heading deeper into the Nyocker, instead of turning back to the main drag.

‘I have my home near here. I take you there to be dry.’

Five minutes rush through the storm brought us to a front door a little better presented than most of its neighbours. János hustled me into a high-ceilinged echoey hall area and up some ornate stairs to the second floor.

His flat was a little old-fashioned but clean and well-kept, if you ignored the general man-clutter around the sofa and coffee table – DVDs, a couple of books, a newspaper and some gaming equipment, wires trailing like weeds.

‘You have great honour,’ he said, chivvying me through the living area to a small bathroom. ‘I never bring a woman back here before.’

‘Really? Never?’

‘Uh huh. It was my mother’s. I feel like she will not approve, you know.’

‘Didn’t she want you to have girlfriends?’

‘Oh yes. But not girls like the ones I see.’

‘Oh, right. She’s not alive?’

‘No, she die three years ago. Same year I divorce, that’s a great year for me.’

‘Oh, you poor thing.’ I put a hand on his back, which was bent to turn on the bath taps.

‘I came to live here, said to myself, I will not fall in love no more. Just, what you said, shag. Have fun. No danger.’

‘I see we have different approaches to curing a broken heart. Mine, shagging nobody. Yours, shagging everyone in sight.’

He stared into the plunging steaming tap water for a while, then turned his face to me and shrugged.

‘My way, nobody gets hurt,’ I pointed out.

‘You get hurt. You get lonely.’

‘I don’t matter.’

‘Ruby.’ He reached for my waterlogged top and began peeling it up my stomach and arms. ‘You don’t say things like that. I don’t permit.’

‘You don’t permit?’ I widened my eyes in challenge.

‘Not in my house. In my house, you are kind to yourself.’

The top passed wetly over my face and landed in a heap in the corner. I clutched my arms to my ribs and shivered.

A crack of thunder made the bathroom shelf rattle.

I jettisoned the skirt and stood, damp and naked, ready to help János with his impossibly awkward jeans. In the end he had to sit on the side of the tub while I heaved them down his clinging legs and over his feet. Once they were gone, he clamped his legs together either side of me, trapping me inside the bend of his knee, pulling me forward until the angle was right for him to lean and kiss me.

‘This was the first time,’ he said softly, reaching out to turn off the tap. ‘Not the last time. Come on.’

He let himself slide, rather gracefully, into the water, pulling me by the arm so I landed with a colossal splash that formed puddles on the tiled floor.

I lay back, nestled between his thighs, head resting on his shoulder, looking up at the ornate light fitting and the tangle of old-fashioned pipes on the wall, feeling blissfully warm and contented and wanted. It was a moment to capture and keep.

Then there was a flash outside the tiny high-set window and the light went off with a tinking sound.

‘Ah shit!’

‘Power cut!’

‘Lucky we get the bath full first, right?’

Although it was close to midday, the iron grey storm clouds hanging low in the sky gave the impression of dusk and little light filtered through the tiny window. 

‘Wait.’ János stood, dripping, and got out of the bath, returning swiftly with candles and matches. Soon a flickering glow covered the tiny room, and János rejoined me, pleased with the effect.

‘You like candles? Is romantic, yes?’

‘Very.’ I rearranged my legs around his and half-pivoted, wanting to kiss him. He was reaching for the shampoo bottle, though, intent on massaging my rain-ruined scalp and hair.

‘Here,’ he said, and his hand descended on the top of my head. Strong fingers distributed the shampoo through my tangled hair, awakening gorgeous sensation that trickled from my scalp downwards, making me sigh.

‘Mmm, you should be a hairdresser. That feels so nice.’ Blobs of lather slid down my neck and back.

‘I open a salon maybe? But I cannot cut. I maybe open salon for hair wash only. You think people pay for that?’

I chuckled. ‘Maybe not. Oooh. Do it forever. It’s so, so nice.’

His thumbs drew deep circles on the back of my neck until I thought it might fall backwards, no longer capable of supporting itself. Somewhere around the base of my spine, something was hardening, pushing to assert itself against my pliant flesh.

He finished rendering me into putty and began rinsing the suds out of my hair, the water streaming down me while I lay against his chest. For a moment, the intimacy of it all overwhelmed me and I had to fight to keep from bursting into tears. After the hard work of putting up defences and keeping my suspicion reflex honed, it felt too strange to be relaxing, enjoying, trusting. Could love really be so simple?

Soapy hands reached around to cleanse my skin, my belly, my breasts, the touch glidingly light. My nipples peaked again and I wriggled against him, a little coy at the way my burgeoning desires announced themselves.

His were no less blatant though, my back and the crease of my bottom subject to an increasingly bruising attack from his erection. Could we do it in the bath? And if we did, would I ever be able to break my mental association between water and good sex? Maybe I should save it for dry land.

He sponged my inner thighs and the outer part of my labia, keeping the stinging soap away from anywhere it might not be welcome. With a confident hand, he grabbed a thigh and pulled it up towards him, washing my captive leg then repeating the process with the other.

I slipped around like a fish until I faced him, grinning and snatching the sponge from his hand. ‘Now I want to wash you. Do you shampoo your moustache?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you trust me to do it?’

‘I’m not so sure.’

I took the shampoo, fixed on my course, refusing to let him duck away from my foamy finger when I drew it along the bristly bank of hair.

What happened next was a great boiling mess of giggles and swirling water and splashing and play fighting and yucky soapy kisses and sweet tongues entwined. We had to calm down when a candle fell from the shelf and fizzed out in the water.

‘Shit, that could have burnt us!’

‘You are a bad girl, Ruby.’ He clicked his tongue at me, fishing out the candle and patting my watery bottom en route.

‘Me! That was you, doing all the kicking and thrashing.’

‘You know what happen to bad girls?’

‘Tell me.’

‘They go to my bed.’

‘How awful for them.’

‘Yes, very awful. So are you a bad girl?’

‘Oh, I think so.’

‘Then I must get you to the bed immediately.’

Thunder, more distant this time, mixed with the sound of disturbed water when he stood and reached for the towel.

‘No time to waste.’

He took my hand and pulled me upright, wrapping me in the towel as I stepped out on to the floor with its treacherous slippery pools.

He rubbed me vigorously, until my skin glowed and my hair was half-dry then he left the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist so he resembled a modern-day gladiator, all rippling muscle and slick damp hair.

Not for the first time I appreciated his rear view, drinking it in all the way to the bedroom, which was as dark as the bathroom and not just because of the cloud.

Old-fashioned dark wood furniture, heavy and ornate, dominated the room, which had wall coverings in a doomy crimson hue to complete the effect. Shelves of strange figurines and ornaments took up one wall, and all was overlooked by a gigantic crucifix.

‘My mother’s taste,’ explained János, noticing my curiosity. ‘I don’t have time or money for change it.’

He whipped off my towel and guided me to the bed with its dark overstuffed duvet and velvet throw. I don’t know what I’d expected – some kind of disarranged, nearly bare bedstead surrounded by perilous piles of CDs perhaps – but it hadn’t been this. The incongruity added to my feeling of sudden helplessness.

‘OK,’ I said, as he advanced upon me. ‘I’m finding this a little weird. Like … were you conceived in this bed?’

He stared. ‘I don’t know. I suppose.’

‘Do you think we could … maybe the living room?’

He sat down beside me. ‘I really have to decorate. This three years has been bad, you know? I think maybe I get a little depressed. Start things, don’t finish, lose my, ah, my …’

‘Will? Interest?’

‘Yes. Too much drink, too much party, too much sex with girls I don’t remember their name. My work goes bad, I don’t finish any project.’

I linked an arm through his and laid my head on his shoulder.

‘It’s funny, you seem so full of the joys of life.’

‘I have to keep the look of happiness, you know. Very common in my country, suicide of young men. I fight depression, not with pills, with my own energy. At least, I try.’

‘You’re very strong,’ I whispered. ‘But you know, there’s no shame in asking for help.’

‘I have help. You make me see things different. I want to work hard now, to make success.’

‘Have I really helped you?’ I contemplated this with pleasurable disbelief. What had I done to deserve this “life-changer” accolade?

His forehead touched mine, his nose following suit. ‘Yes.’

There was so much I wanted to say back to him – that he had helped me, and how, and why, and was this it? Or is there a future for us? And if so, what can it possibly be? But he shut off all the questioning with a kiss, a sincere if slightly soapy snog. I breathed it all in, as if it might be my last. It might be, for all that.