“But then you’ll tell me?”
“Of course.” He moved above her and suddenly she was filled again.
She whimpered and bent her knees, letting him deepen the penetration. Sometimes it felt raw, sometimes it stretched her, sometimes she feared it was more than she could take, but none of that ever detracted from the sweetness of the sensation. Nothing felt more natural than having Milan inside her.
She crossed her ankles underneath his bottom and dug her heels into his upper thighs, in a gentle encouragement of each new thrust. The fact that it was their second go lent the coupling a delicious languor. The first fuck was always frantic, the subsequent ones relaxed and luxurious, revelling in every decadent moment.
They kissed greedily and messily all the way through and rolled around the mattress, pulling the sheet out and grabbing at the pillows. They changed positions half a dozen times, now with Milan on top, now with Lydia, now on their sides. They grabbed at each other’s limbs and locked tongues and pinched and stroked until the steam covered them and their second, gentler but more sustained, orgasms released them from their exertions.
Beached together on the rumpled, ruined bed, they dozed off for a while. They awoke to find the room dark and the day gone.
“You didn’t finish your story,” Lydia accused.
“Ah, no. Where was I?”
“Shagging Sophie in your student garret.”
“Uh-huh.”
Milan had to take a few moments to unpeel himself from the bed and shake a bit of energy into his limbs.
“My God, I am dead,” he said. “And I need a shower. No. A bath.”
“Story first.”
“You are a hard taskmaster
.”
He found ‘taskmaster’ hard to pronounce, which always gave Lydia an extra little stab of love.
“Taskmistress,” she corrected.
“Don’t make me say that. Okay. So. Sophie and I, we had this secret affair which went on for a few months. She kept saying she would finish it with Hackmeyer, but she was afraid of her father and it was harder and harder.”
“I know that feeling. Well, similar.”
“You do? Right. We didn’t know that Hackmeyer knew about us. He knew for a week or so and said nothing. He waited until we were going to meet, and he brought Mallelieu up to my apartment.”
“Uh-oh. Busted.”
“Yes. We were in bed, of course. We pretended we were not there, but soon we realised that they were not going to leave. We got dressed and we had to let them in,” said Milan.
“I bet that was an awkward conversation. Poor Sophie. She must have been mortified.”
“Well, yes, poor Sophie, but her life carries on as before. Mine…”
Milan made a gesture of sweeping everything away.
“What happened?”
“Well, nothing much. I had a fistfight with Hackmeyer, right there, after Mallelieu and Sophie left, until my landlord called the police and we got arrested.”
“Christ. This gets worse.” Lydia’s eyes were saucers.
“There were no charges. And no repercussions at the Académie either. I thought I had got away with it. Until I left and started trying to make a career for myself. No agent would work with me. I found that I was on a blacklist. All I could get was very small, provincial gigs with unknown conductors and orchestras.”
“That’s awful! Just because you had a fling with Sophie?”