Eat Me (13 page)

No reaction. To be precise, there was no positive reaction, but then again, there was no negative one either. He could have been kissing a statue.

A gull squawked and swooped. Sandshoes crunched the gravelly dirt of the path by the rock. ‘Mum, what are those people doing?' squeaked a young girl's voice. The footsteps sped up and faded away.

Jake felt sillier and sillier. Time passed. Should he do something else, put his hand on her waist or something, or nibble, or just retreat while he was ahead? For some reason, a picture of his amp popped into his head. It was broken and would need to be fixed before the gig in a couple of weeks at the Sando. That could cost a hundred dollars at least. Such a rip-off. Where was he supposed to come up with that kind of money? Certainly not from anyone else in the band. They were even less solvent than he was, if such a sorry state were possible. He should have borrowed it from Julia. Julia. Philippa. He suddenly remembered where he was and what he was doing.

What
was
he doing? He opened his eyes to see if her face could give him some signal. Her eyes were closed. He considered this a good sign.

He was jumping to conclusions. It was not necessarily a good sign, because, in this case, it meant Philippa was thinking. Philippa was not quite as easily impressed as Julia. She had a slower reaction time with boys. Of course, she wasn't comparing her reaction time to Julia's because she had no idea just how relevant the comparison was. And if she had, her reaction time would have been less than zero: she didn't believe in fooling around with her friends' lovers.

What was running through Philippa's mind, racing, in fact, neck and neck, were the following two thoughts: Thought 1: she fancied Jake. He was a total spunkrat, a sexy boy with a dry and wacky sense of humour. She liked his cheeky presumptuousness and found his slacker style— in and out of the water—highly amusing. Thought 2: he was Big Trouble. Her warning system was going off like a smoke detector in hell. Did she really need Big Trouble in her life, she asked herself.

Just as he was contemplating a tactical withdrawal, Jake felt the slightest twitch of her lips against his. He persevered.

Of course, she didn't have to get too involved. He was ten years younger than her. He probably wasn't into the idea of involvement anyway. She could make it just a one-night stand kind of thing. She didn't mind a touch of discreet, casual sex now and then. But hold on, what if it proved a truly excellent one-night stand? Wouldn't she want a second night? And what if they had a second night, and that was good too, and then it ended? Two-night stands were actually far worse than one-night stands. A one-night stand is just that. You wake up in the morning, you look at each other. You go, hmmm. If you're both thinking, so that's what the cat dragged in last night, the visiting team packs up its gear and exits the stadium. The home team takes a shower and gets on with the day. If you're both thinking,
BABE,
you have one for the road. They don't call, or you don't, or you do, or they do, and you discuss it, and then you get over it. But two-night stands, those are the really painful ones. To you it's a relationship, to him it's just a coincidence. You've started to tell your friends, he's already on the prowl for someone new.

Oh dear. Philippa suddenly realised that Jake was holding his breath.

He was beginning to feel faint. Philippa pursed her lips against his. He exhaled through his nose, as calmly as he could, and she felt the breath tickle the corner of her lip. Forcing himself to breathe normally, he pursed back.

Then there was this younger man-older woman thing. Philippa wasn't too sure about this. Julia was all for it, and swore by the virtues of younger men. Their playfulness, their sweetness, all the free time they had to spend clipping their toenails on your bed and installing games on your PC, their sense of adventure, their reliable erections. You didn't have to spend half your time putting bandages on festering old wounds caused by some other woman, or pretending to sympathise with the jaded, cynical outlook on life of an older man. You could be successful in your career without being perceived as a threat, or competition, Julia had also argued, because the younger man would expect you to be further down the career path than he was anyway.

Philippa could certainly see the virtues of younger women. But when she went for men, she usually liked them a bit older, a bit kinkier and a bit more experienced. Still, there was something about Jake, something deeply naughty, which strongly attracted her. It would be foolish to make decisions on some vague principle. She didn't like making rules for herself. When she discovered she'd made some sort of rule, she usually tried to break it.

When Philippa opened her lips slightly to nibble at his, a tremor reading at about 5.6 on the Richter scale erupted in the region of his solar plexus and rippled out through his torso and down his limbs, including the crucial fifth one. Trembling, Jake sighed into her mouth and eagerly nibbled back.

Then again, precisely because she was so attracted to Jake, if it did turn out just to be a one-night stand she'd probably get really depressed. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. She willed her lips to stillness while she reviewed all the options. Why were people in such a rush these days anyway? I mean, how does it happen that if you make a move to see someone you met once before that the question of sex comes up before you're even through the first date? Then again, not only had she asked him out, she'd suggested they come to this park. Everyone knew that couples came to Nielsen Park for one reason: to pash. And she would tell people that she was writing an erotic novel, wouldn't she? She shouldn't be such a hypocrite.

Jake felt pins and needles creeping up his left leg, which was folded under him, and in his right hand, which he was leaning on. He was sure there was a mosquito feeding on his left arm. But he didn't dare make a move to slap it. She still hadn't responded to that last nibble and this worried him. Maybe he was moving too fast. Maybe she wasn't the sort of girl who jumped into bed on the first date. Maybe she'd need a trifle more work, a tad more time. That was cool. He didn't really mind. He was having fun. It was a bit misleading, though, all that stuff about being a writer of erotic fiction. I mean, why would she tell him that straight off if she weren't hinting at something? The thought briefly crossed Jake's mind that he might just be, well,
research.
Something about that actually quite appealed to him. On the other hand, he wondered what her writing was like. He didn't think much of the erotic fiction he'd come across. It was either, oh, wet and overwritten or off-puttingly cold and brutal.

Jake momentarily relinquished his position upon her lips. He nuzzled her cheeks with his own and nuddled her chin and rolled his head around on her neck. At the same time he managed to shift that annoying dreadlock from in front of his face. She appeared to like this change in tack; she seemed to be nuzzling and nuddling back.

Or maybe, the thought niggled him, she was just using the opportunity to stretch her neck which, like his, had grown stiff with tension and suspense. He was beginning to wonder if he'd made a mistake. Perhaps she wasn't just equivocating. Maybe she was just passive. He couldn't stand passive women. Jake prided himself in being a sensitive, feminist-reared New Man of the Nineties. He liked a woman who took an active interest in the goings-on.

His dreadlocks felt furry on her skin. She found dreads fascinating. She'd read somewhere that people lose about 6,000 hairs a year. Unlike other hairstyles, where the dead, shed hairs ended up clinging to clothing or floating in soup or embedded in computer keyboards or between the teeth of combs or in big wads down the drainpipes, with dreads virtually every hair stayed with you, matted for life.

She liked the concept. It was a bit like having perfect memory, no experience ever slipping away, each strand of the past preserved and densely interwoven with the present. She felt that sexuality was like that. Every sexual act adhered to your sensual consciousness forever. Every time you went to bed with someone, you brought along everyone else you'd ever slept with. Every touch expressed an entire history of caresses.

Practically speaking, however, she had a few doubts. According to her hairdresser, some people with dreadlocks didn't think they were supposed to wash their hair ever again. Several times, when her hairdresser had been asked to cut off dreadlocks, she'd been overwhelmed, almost to the point of fainting, by the pongy perfume of scuzzy scalps. Philippa wondered if Jake washed his hair. She sniffed. His dreads smelt rather nice, actually. And so did he. Sun-toasted flesh with a faint bouquet of young male sweat.

Philippa wondered suddenly why she had been feeling so
reactive
in all this, so passive, so sheep-like. Without further ado she brushed her mouth across his face, tasted his cheeks, with their soft down, licked the tip of his nose, rubbed her lips across the clear line of his eyebrows and sucked gently on his eyelashes. The stilettos in Chapter Five! Why hadn't it occurred to her before? They wouldn't click on rugs. She'd have to get rid of the throw rugs in that Victorian inn. She made a mental note to do this as soon as she got home, and then, with a great effort of will, she loosened her grasp on philosophical and authorial and other dilemmas, and reached out to draw Jake closer. Closer was exactly where Jake wanted to be. The unexpectedly sudden flowering of her desire allowed him to relax and float on the honeyed vibrations that her tongue and lips were setting off all over his face. She buried her face in his hair, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then focused in on his ear, probing its recesses with her wet tongue, chewing on the octopus flesh of his lobe. From his ear she worked her way slowly down his neck with big soft bites to his Adam's apple.

By the time she worked her way back to his mouth, his lips were parted and waiting for her. By now, there was no danger of rational thought interceding on either side. They drew hungrily on each other's mouths. Philippa felt sensation streaming down the tingling pathway to her sex, which was growing wet, and Jake's erection strained uncomfortably against his jeans. They were inside each other's shirts now, and then pants, and the darkness—it was not a particularly moonlit night—was their cover as they tumbled over the hard rock. They fucked with clothes half off, half on— a sleeve here, a sock there—and it was a wild, animal, bruising romp that took no account of the hard, uneven rock or the possibility of passers-by or anything else except their united, raw desire. Afterwards, they lay panting and spent in each other's arms, Philippa stretched out on top of Jake.

Jake reached out for a pair of trousers to fold under his head, and shifted slightly to find a more comfortable place for his hip, which felt as though it were being stabbed. They heard a brief skidding sound and the soft but distinct plop of a medium-size object falling into the sea below.

‘What was that?' Philippa wove her fingers possessively into Jake's dreads as she spoke. She really did not want this to be a one-night stand.

‘Dunno,' answered Jake, who was now concentrating on ignoring a pebble lodged under his shoulder blade. ‘I think I kicked a rock or something.'

‘Didn't really sound like a rock,' Philippa observed.

‘No, it didn't,' Jake conceded.

Shortly afterwards, they straggled along the darkened path, holding hands. Jake was barefoot. In his free hand he clutched one of his boots.

Far below them his other boot settled on the seabed.

The next morning, Philippa woke up first. She found herself wedged into one corner of the bed by Jake's sprawling limbs. His hair had taken over the pillows. She tried to recover some territory with gentle nudging but couldn't budge him. Funny how heavy such a thin person could be. Giving up on the thought of going back to sleep, she rolled out of bed, threw on a singlet and jeans and went to the corner shop to get some milk, fresh croissants and big purple grapes. Back at her place, she undressed again and slipped into a sarong. She parked herself in the lounge, which also served as her study, eating grapes and skimming the weekend papers while waiting for Jake to wake up.

When he finally arose, he scratched his head, stretched, and wondered briefly where he was. He looked up at the stack of books by the bed. Oh that's right. Philippa. The writer. He yawned, threw on a towel and headed into the toilet to have a piss. Then he padded out to find her, by which time Philippa, alerted by the sounds from the bathroom, had arranged herself as alluringly as possible on the sofa. He smiled at the sight. Choosing a Gadflys CD from her collection (Jake approved of her musical tastes after all), he put it on the stereo.

‘Now we're heading for the stars and shooting for the sun; it's time to rise and shine
,' crooned the Gadflys. Perfect morning-after music. Jake cuddled up next to Philippa. He popped a grape into his mouth, leaned over and, positioning his mouth just over hers, bit into it and let the sweet juices run from his lips onto hers, licking the spill off her chin. ‘
Put on a smile for me and say you are my friend
.'

‘You my friend, Jake?'

‘What do you think?'

She took a grape now, and chewed it to a pulp before kissing him with an open mouth, pushing the pulp and juice from her tongue onto his. They consumed nearly a whole stem-load of grapes like that. Then Philippa, feeling naughty, took four grapes and, one by one, inserted them into herself. She opened her legs. ‘Like diving for pearls?' she smiled, lying back against the cushions.

Jake was a very skilful diver. Still chewing on the grapes, he sat back up and reached for one of Philippa's feet. He pulled it up towards his face. Taking the foot into his mouth, he sucked moistly on each toe, licking the spaces in between them with a wet and squishy tongue. Philippa gasped and squealed with the pure sensual pleasure of it.