Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [158]
He helped her out of her dress but, with silent, mutual consent, they left her underwear on. Joe knelt with one leg between both of hers as he snapped on a condom, then he pulled her lace panties to one side. As he slid into her and lowered his heavy weight down on top of her, Katherine thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
Afterwards he was full of wonder. ‘I never thought this would happen,’ he declared, looking down at her.
‘Didn’t you?’ she asked neutrally.
‘I was crazy about you for so long and I can’t actually believe…’
In silence they lay in each other’s arms, until Katherine began to feel his hands moving over her again. Gently he snapped open her bra, unhooked her stockings, took off her suspender belt and panties then, leaving their clothing strewn all around the already shambolic living-room, they went to the bedroom where they made love for a second time.
Afterwards Joe showed no sign of wanting to go to sleep, which suited Katherine.
‘Come on.’ She poked him.
‘Come on where?’
‘The bathroom, we’ll have a shower.’
‘Why? Do you have to go home to your wife?’
‘Come on.’
Giggling, they tumbled into the bathroom, where they climbed into the bath and Katherine handed him a sponge and a tube of shower gel. ‘Wash me.’
‘OK,’ he said, eyeing her slender body, then the sponge. ‘But we’ll have to get you wet first.’
He turned on the jet of hot water and pulled Katherine under it. The silent, speculative way he looked at her body, at the shower water sluicing down the curve of her breasts and over the peak of her nipples and the appraising way he squeezed the shower gel on to the sponge, was charged with eroticism.
‘You’re filthy,’ he said, sternly.
‘I know.’ She could hardly speak.
Slowly, he began to apply the sponge to her shiny-wet body, to circle it over her stomach, her arms, her legs. Then her breasts, soaping them until her skin was slippery. ‘Particularly grubby here,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she gasped.
He moved the sponge to between her legs and she squirmed with desire. ‘Stand still,’ he ordered.
She tried, but the firm, relentless massage was irresistible. The warm water, his wet body, her slick skin became too much for them both.
With her back against the cold wall tiles, her legs around his waist, Joe entered her again. For a few blissful moments they clung together, teeth gritted from desire, while he rhythmically stroked himself into her. Until he lost his footing on the wet bath and they both tumbled to the floor where, sprawled and tangled, still clinging to each other, they laughed their heads off.
The morning after, Katherine woke early. She turned to the pillow next to her and there he was. Joe. Joe Roth. Joe Roth from work. Without his suits. In her bed. Asleep and beautiful, his eyelashes thick, the beginnings of stubble poking through his jaw, the room filled with the smell of his otherness.
The thrill was like waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa has been.
I won’t mess this up, I won’t mess this up, I won’t… she repeated over and over again in her head.
She knew this was the trickiest moment. Tara assured her it was difficult no matter who you were. But Katherine felt it was especially hard for someone like her, whose most alluring feature to men was her aloofness. Which disappeared as soon as she’d slept with them – it was kind of hard to have sex with someone and remain untouchable and icy. Not if you want to enjoy it, in any case. But, very often, men who’d chased Katherine for weeks and even months, maddened by her unattainability, found that after they’d screwed her, they lost interest. Her mystique dissolved and she was suddenly just an ordinary woman. Toppled from her pedestal and fighting for her man on the same terms as everyone else.
Worse still, the contact would have