Free I Take You by Nikki Gemmell Page B

smiles,
life
, each has brought the other back into it. Mel’s touch and his smell are threaded into her fingers and giggly, tremulous, she holds them to her nose, her mouth, and breathes deep.
    All smiles, filled up like a glass. Feeling unshadowed at last.
    And so it begins.

33

    She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, ‘It is enough! It is enough!’

 
     
    Through April, through May, Connie’s days are newly oiled, she is sprung into wakefulness. Mel’s smile is rangy in her, loosening her gut. But she must wait, all the time wait, for the day’s softening, for the residents to depart the park, for Cliff to be late home from work.
    He’s entertaining a client tonight, it’ll be a lap dancing club of course, he revels in it, none of them knows how much, all that look but no touch. So, today, a possibility! An afternoon of sprightly sun, warm and replenishing, uncurling the world from its long winter sleep as if it is life itself.
    Swiftly Connie looks around and enters her bower of wild branches overhanging a fragment of path, almost swallowing it complete; swiftly she is enveloped by a distant wind roar and birds somewhere close and the scurries of low animals; swiftly she flits by the peak of an old greenhouse, askew, its beautifully carved wooden apex straining from nature’s clutching like a man reaching from quicksand or an earthquake-sunk church. Every gardener has left it untouched, Mel has told her, it’s like a secret code between us, not to disturb it, to let the earth take over and every one of us has respected that. Cliff wouldn’t, Connie had remarked in reply, if he knew he’d have it cleared, bulldozed without a thought, he’s so disconnected from nature, from the earth. Can’t bear it.
    Flitting to the clearing, to the shed. He is there. Waiting. She pauses, cusped. A slow smile. Skittery breath.
    ‘No one would ever catch us, would they?’
    ‘No one ever bothers with these parts. Except wild women far too greedy for their own good,’ he chuckles, gathering her up, her want. ‘But no, you can relax. You just have to be careful.’
    ‘We both do, mate.’ She waggles a finger at him.
    Mel giggles her to a tree, giggles her to the ground. ‘Not here,’ Connie laughs him away. ‘Yes,’ he says urgently, ‘oh, yes.’ His hands. A knowing, practised gentleness. As he unpeels her clothes, lifts her whole and slips off her panties, unhooks her bra at the front and exposes her breasts, softly trickles his fingers across them as if he can’t quite believe it, any of it, and she surrenders to the ritual baring in silence, the lovely ritual, with all the familiar tugging and the wet. Then his hands scoop up rich, moist dirt and he rubs it over her, laughing and stroking it vast across her belly, down her arms, along her cheeks and her cunt, blooding her, cleansing her, wiping her clear of her sullied other life and then he buries his head in the very depths of her and breathes deep, deep, as if he needs her returned to this sky, this earth. Trembling, he positions himself over her. Smiles deep into her, drops; nudges, expectantly, trembles her wider and wider as she clutches him tight and as he comes, and comes, a vast peace blooms through them both. All is quiet, in the softening hour of the fading day, all still, all spent.
    But no. Not yet. Who knows when next. So now Connie’s hands, fresh, fevering him. Floating her lips over his body, gathering him in the wet cave of her mouth. Nudging her tongue into his ear, finding the pale clearing behind his ears, breathing a moth of a kiss, can’t get enough. His smell, his breathing, the heavy heat of him her blanket, his