‘Touch it. Touch me.’
His hand strayed closer. The promised land, he thought irrelevantly, irritating himself. Was he able to forget the Bible for one moment? Now he felt her heat radiating outwards to his fingers. She would be wet and slippery and have that strong, alluring scent. He could smell it now. He wanted to plunge himself into it, take it, take her. The tip of one finger touched the outer part of her lips, stroking the wiry hairs.
He felt her twitch beneath him. She wanted more.
He turned his hand sideways and slipped all four fingertips between the inner lips. Such warmth, such soft, giving flesh, smooth and glistening. He stroked up and down, small movements, circling her bud, watching it grow and push itself forward more prominently than before. This was a feature of female desire, he had read, all those years ago. The clitoris, emerging from its hood, engorged with blood. He felt a little detached, as if he was watching a nature documentary, but Julia said, ‘Please, Adam, use your fingers, touch it,’ and he got to work.
It was incredible to see the effect his manipulation of that little knot of flesh had on Julia. She began to moan and pant and wriggle fit to twist the sheets and pull them out of their tucks. The power she had exerted over him when she had him in her mouth had been reversed. Now he wielded it. He could give her pleasure or he could withhold it. The choice was intoxicatingly his.
Rubbing away, he watched the colour bloom in her cheeks, and a shee
n appear on her forehead. She looked at him with imploring eyes, as if amazed that he could do this to her.
He smiled.
This was what he was good at. At last he had found it.
‘Stick your fingers inside me,’ she panted. ‘Fuck me with them. Please.’
Oh, he could do that. Keeping his thumb engaged with her clit, he fed first his forefinger, then his index and ring fingers up inside the hot, tight, yielding little passage underneath. She sucked him in, her walls contracting around his digits, as if she meant to imprison them there. But he had the upper hand and he withdrew them a little way before pushing them back.
‘Oh God, you’re good, you can’t say you haven’t done this before … Oh yes.’
He kept his rhythm slow and precise, yet at the same time his thumb on her clit was merciless, driving her towards that precipice he had seen Evie on, so often. Too often.
Then something else occurred to him, and he pivoted down at the hips until he loomed over Julia. Her nipples, right there, just where he could get at them. Taking one in his mouth, he rolled the other in his free hand, still working the wrist of his other furiously. Now fully occupied with the occupation of Julia, he licked and twiddled and frigged like a man possessed until he felt the sweet surrender shudder through her. Her orgasmic cries were celestial music to him, something he was given freely, something he took as his right.
It felt like so many things – freedom, victory, generosity, connection, happiness. What it didn’t feel like was sin.
He waited for her vibrations to slow, for her movements to still, then he kissed her lips.
‘Oh my boy,’ she slurred. There were tears in her eyes, and he kissed those too. ‘I won’t let them have you.’
He lay down beside her. His cock was hard, but he wasn’t hell-bent on dealing with it, as he had been earlier. He had given to her, and that seemed by far the higher priority. His own relief could wait until he was in the shower.
He raised his fingers to his nose and gave them a curious sniff. Julia, at his fingertips. He had given her pleasure. He felt like a king.
Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.
‘Was that – all right?’ he asked.
Her low chuckle satisfied his pride.
‘All right, darling? It was absolutely all right. You are tuned in. You know the frequency, you uncanny little whore.’
He widened his eyes. She called him a whore!
‘That was uncalled for,’ he said sniffily.
‘Darling, I meant it as a compliment. You should do it professionally. You’re that good.’
Adam’s head hurt with all the reversals of his concepts of good and bad. He was good at a bad thing. Did that make him intrinsically bad?
‘I understand the lure of sin now,’ he said.
‘Oh God, don’t start with all that again. Sin hurts people. Sex doesn’t. Well, unless you like a bit of SM, of course. Does that float your boat, vicar?’
He sat up in bed. The world swam before his eyes. He couldn’t pin down an emotion or a sentiment that would describe the way he felt. Looking at Julia, it wasn’t clear whether he saw a lover or a demon, sent to corrupt him.