Jon Grimwood - redRobe

That it wasn’t the silver monkey showing this to Axl didn’t occur to him.

‘You all right?’ Kate mumbled.

And lost beneath Kate’s hair Axl nodded and wrapped his arms tight around her, feeling her relax as sleep set in again…

Morning mist really did fill the valley like froth, leaving visible only the highest branches of nearby trees. Axl saw it from Kate’s window, cold air rolling over his naked chest. Another hour of sunlight had made the mist thin and wispy but still Cocheforet was hidden beneath its morning shroud.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ The voice was sleepy, almost petulant.

Axl Shook his head and kept watching the valley. Wondering what it was he was meant to see. Besides, he’d spent the night facing down temptation, which was all very noble but it could be overdone…

Arms reached round his waist and the warmth of Kate’s breasts pushed against his bare back as the brush of dry lips on his neck made him shiver.

‘It gets even colder in winter,’ Kate said and then said nothing else, because nothing was necessary. Axl knew what she was asking. The question hung unspoken between them. Would he still be here then? And the silence was Axl’s answer.

Kate nodded sadly and dug her chin into his bare shoulder.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘why would you?’

Why indeed, thought Axl and was worried to discover that he already had one answer. Rinpoche was still up there circling somewhere. Water cascaded down to the foss pool. The scent of pine carried in through her bedroom window and at his back stood Kate Mercarderes.

All it would take to remix his life was to turn round and swap the resinous scent of pine for that of Kate. Her smell was warm, almost childlike but he could change that too, if he tried, for the musk of semen and secretions.

His call, but her party. Axl turned.

Kate looked into his eyes and didn’t smile. Not then and not when his hand went up to touch her bottom lip, sliding down her perfect skin to rest lightly against her jaw. ‘Who are you, really?’ She asked Axl.

‘Me. I’m broken.’

Kate’s lips twisted and she smiled. They kissed then, her arms up around his neck until Kate broke free and stood at the window. ‘Do you see what I see?’ Kate asked him over her shoulder. ‘Do we look at the world through the same eyes?’

She stood with her back to him, her body visible like a shadow through the thin cotton of her white nightdress until Axl moved in close and wrapped his arms tight around her. It was a small step from there to letting his fingers stray to one full breast, the memory of her nipple coming erect staying with him as his fingers touched her throat and Kate’s head went back, eyes closing.

He could kill her, or not. He could admit this was the first woman he’d really loved, or he could just go. Leaving was always an option. Axl was good at that.

‘What would it take to make you stay?’ Kate asked softly, then froze when she felt the sudden tension in his body. Only by now Axl knew her well enough to know that if she was cross it wasn’t with him.

She didn’t protest when he kissed her neck, just below her left ear. Letting his hand smooth its way back down her body, brushing once more over her nipple.

‘Again,’ she said and so he did, fingers tracing a soft circle around the fullness of her breast, spiralling in until his fingertips just brushed the puckered flesh around her nipple, then closed in, tugging gently.

Kate sighed.

Somewhere around the age of twenty-three Axl gave up notching. Partly it just felt too childish, but mostly it was because he couldn’t decide if his tally wasn’t enough or was way too many. Plus around then his quality control got fucked over by 4-MDA, not to mention crystalMeth. And once ruffioes and zidifel got jacked into the mix, it was keep it up all night, crash out come dawn and wake not remembering whether or not you’d just had the fuck of a lifetime.

But now…

Very slowly, so slowly that at first Axl thought he imagined it, Kate pushed back against him, softly rocking her hips so the muscles of her buttocks tensed and relaxed as he pushed against her.

She said nothing when Axl reached round to undo the pearl buttons on the front of her nightdress, not touching her body as he slipped the light cotton over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. And as Axl slid his fingers softly down her bare stomach, Kate kept silent, only raising her right leg slightly to let his hand twist into her silken body hair and gently trap the hood of her clit, softly closing on the tiny fold of skin and the swollen bud beneath.

There’d been a kid back in Alphabet City who used to take her knickers off, and not just for Axl. T-shirt too, if you could afford it. That was where he’d learnt how to touch and where. Fifty cents let him stand at the end of a foam slab as she wanked herself with glistening fingers. A dollar bought viewing space between her open knees.

It didn’t matter that her nails were rimmed with half moons of dirt and her wrists decorated with dark slashes of scar tissue, those were never what Axl was looking at. She’d been thirteen, maybe fourteen, certainly older than him. He couldn’t remember her name now, but then Axl wasn’t sure she’d ever told him.

Part of Axl could have stood like that forever, with Kate’s head rested back against his shoulder as she bit at her bottom lip, not quite muffling the sigh that rose to a gentle moan. But that part of him didn’t win. It never did.

‘Kate ...?’

She opened her eyes, then closed them again as Axl’s fingers slid free and smoothed between wet and swollen lips.

Between her simple wooden bed and the window was five steps, and with each step Axl kept waiting for her to tell him to stop, to protest, to do anything but let him walk her across to the white cotton sheets and the thrown-back quilt.

But Kate didn’t say stop and she didn’t object when he pushed her gently back onto the narrow bed and poised himself over her. Instead she pulled up her legs and opened her knees to rest her heels on the edge of the mattress. With her eyes wide open and her long hair spread around her head like a fan, she looked more vulnerable, more naked than any woman he’d ever seen. So naked, it was hard for Axl to remember that she’d been head of intelligent resources, VP and deputy CEO of one of the world’s biggest metaNationals.

Her hips moved up to meet him and Axl closed his eyes, feeling for that tiny electric jolt which came as her swollen lips closed around his glans, entrance muscles tightening around him. Pulling slowly back out, Axl slid into her again until he could feel himself fill her completely.

She looked at him then, mouth slack with sex, her eyes distant and unfocussed. What the look meant Axl didn’t know. A memory maybe, or nothing. Because nothing was all Axl had in his head as he dropped his mouth to one swollen breast and tugged at Kate’s nipple like a child.

It was over fast for both of them after that. One second they were ploughing against each other with that sodden slap of urgent sex and then suddenly Kate’s legs twined around the back of his and she ground her hips up into him, mewling like a kitten as her arms locked round his shoulders and he pushed down into her.

There was just time for Axl to suck his right index finger and reach under her buttocks and then Kate’s low broken mewling segued into steady grunts that rose to a triumphant howl. If anyone at Escondido hadn’t already known what Axl and Kate were doing from the frantic creak of her wooden bed, they did now.

‘Well,’ said Kate as she puckered her lips into a mocking kiss. ‘That was a first.’

Axl looked incredulous. ‘Orgasm?’

‘Penis.’