Free The Magic Cottage by James Herbert Page A

little rear. Although there wasn’t an ounce of unnecessary flesh on Midge’s body, there were delicately sensuous curves there that never failed to delight and absorb me. I wanted her back in bed.
    She cooed at the birds and began a conversation with them. Even when she tapped the glass on this side, they didn’t fly away. Instead they cocked their heads and chirped all the more loudly, while others fluttered above them, their wings brushing against the panes.
    ‘I think they’re demanding breakfast,’ Midge called back to me. ‘I bet Mrs Chaldean fed them all the time.’
    ‘Well, tell ’em Gramarye is under new management. No freebies any more.’
    I’d closed my eyes for a few moments in case sleep wanted to snuggle back in, and the next thing I knew, Midge’s weight was sprawled across me.
    ‘You pretend you’re so mean,’ she said, tweaking my exposed nose painfully, ‘but underneath that rough grizzled exterior lies a heart of pure . . .’ another tweak ‘. . . granite.’
    I twisted onto my back and she straddled me, her eyes gleaming with mischievous pleasure. It was hard to protest with the pink tips of two small but beautiful breasts hovering only inches away from my lips.
    ‘You’re embarrassing the wildlife,’ I told her.
    She ducked her head to kiss me, her tongue a soft-stabbing probe, her mouth moist and sweet. My hands broke cover and reached out to grasp her hips.
    The vixen was only toying with me, though. ‘We’ve got a lot to do,’ she whispered in my ear, not forgetting to dampen that orifice with her wayward tongue, just to ensure all my senses were fully alert. ‘I’ll go down and start the breakfast while you shave and generally make yourself civilized.’
    ‘Hey, it’s early,’ I whispered back, not wishing to make the birds blush. ‘And anyway, we’ve got a whole month to get ourselves organized. This is our very first morning and it should be celebrated.’ By now my tongue was doing its own persuading.
    False coyness wasn’t part of Midge’s nature: what she enjoyed, she embraced. She embraced me.
    Lifting the sheets, I pulled her in and her body, cold from the early-morning air, was delicious against mine. Now Midge and I had always been compatible in the fullest meaning of the word – our bodies, not just our personae, seemed to have been made for each other (and I mean that literally) – and our love-making had always been beyond this side of heaven; but the mutual ecstasy we experienced that first morning in our new home was far greater than anything that had gone before. Don’t ask me why, just call it magic. Yeah, just call it Magic.
    Later, dressed in old sweater, faded jeans and sneakers (my usual uniform), I followed Midge down and found her in her dressing gown crouched on the kitchen doorstep, feeding the multitude. The birds – wrens, blue and great tits, wagtails, chaffinches, a real multi-racial gathering it seemed – showed hardly any caution, a few of them actually pecking food from her hand, while others advanced within touching distance. I noted that size had nothing to do with boldness.
    Midge was gently encouraging them with words I couldn’t hear, and I chuckled when a wren perched on her wrist and dipped into the palm of her hand with its tiny pointed beak. I waited until the last slice of bread had been broken up and the pieces devoured before I stepped from the stairs into the room. An invigorating freshness breezed into the kitchen from the open front door and, although it was still early morning, there was no intrusive chill.
    ‘Heeey, what’s this?’ I pointed to the table where the breakfast setting included a bottle of champagne and a glass jug of orange juice.
    Midge looked over her shoulder and smiled up at me. ‘Another part of our celebration. I smuggled the bottle inside a packing case yesterday.’ She stood, brushing crumbs from her hands. The birds outside continued their chatter, perhaps demanding a second course. I