Janine Ashbless - Red Grow the Roses

Ben’s tongue was in her mouth now, smooth as cream liqueur and just as sweet. Not boorish, not greedy. She wondered what it would feel like between her pussy lips and, catching herself at that thought, she squirmed beneath his hand and broke the kiss with a little gasp. His teeth caught her lower lip, gently, and she froze.

He let her go. He looked, with a faint but pointed smile, down at his hand on her thigh, as if surprised to find it there. She looked down too and they both watched as her legs eased apart to grant him narrow passage between thighs barely illuminated by the distant flicker of the dancefloor lights. Slowly his hand disappeared under her skirt, following that warm cleft. His cold fingers tickled their way, like water running underground, to the mound of her sex. His nail caught on the threads as he flicked it, quite accurately, over the hidden spot where her clit burned – and Sophie nearly left her seat, trying in vain to mask the spasm of her arousal. Ben scraped his finger up and down on the coarse weave, and smiled as he looked into her eyes. Sophie couldn’t grin; her mouth went slack instead as he played with her, her eyes glazing over.

Then he stopped and sat back, without haste. Sophie shook herself from her trance and realised that that faint bloom of light had been the door of the Ladies opening and closing, that Netta was on her way back over to their table. For cover she lifted her cocktail to her lips and sipped from the glass, crossing her thighs. There was a bubble of heat between them that glowed as she squeezed her legs together.

‘This might be a flash place but they’ve still run out of hand-towels in the loo,’ announced Netta cheerily as she sat down.

Ben casually rubbed his fingertips together and lifted them to his face as if inhaling the bouquet; the gesture was smooth and almost unnoticeable. ‘Hey, it’s always best when the girls are a little … damp.’ The weak joke made Netta squeal and pretend to slap him and he played along.

‘My turn then,’ said Sophie, rising. She’d had more to drink than she thought, it occurred to her as she staggered slightly. Or maybe it was just that her legs were wobbly.

‘Careful, love.’ Ben placed a hand lightly on her thigh to steady her. It didn’t help.

In the ladies’ toilet there was chill-out music playing and a row of mirrors a mile long for the customers to examine their make-up in. Sophie larded on another layer of lip-gloss and stared at her reflection, wondering if Ben was making a pass at Netta while she was away. She wouldn’t put it past him; he seemed the sort to try anything and his flirting was aimed in every direction. A critical examination of her reflection didn’t make her feel too bad, though. She was slimmer than Netta at least, though she’d never manage to match those fabulous tits. With a slight frown she undid the top button on her dress and tucked the cloth down to reveal more of the valley between her own, imagining Ben’s head nuzzling between them, his tongue lapping at the silky skin of her breasts. Even the thought made her wetter. God, he’d turned her on. She wanted more of that. She hadn’t particularly come out to get laid tonight – she didn’t count herself as that sort of girl – but now that it was looking like a possibility her pulse was running faster. She didn’t want Netta to snatch him from under her nose – and Netta was so much brassier than her and more likely to get what she wanted.

Maybe Ben was hoping to pull both of them, she thought suddenly. In the mirror her reflection blushed and her eyes snapped. ‘Oh,’ she mouthed with her bright fresh lipstick. That sort of implied he had a place of his own, if he was planning anything that elaborate. She’d never done it before but the novelty had a certain trashy sort of appeal – and she and Netta were good enough friends that it might work. They’d seen each other undress often enough, and talked about sex without any restraint. She wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of Netta.

It could be fun. Ben looked like, no matter what, he would be fun.

Making up her mind, Sophie returned to the toilet cubicle and pulled the skirt of her dress up so she could grab the top of her floral lace tights. It was a warm end-of-summer night after all. She could go barelegged.

By the time she left the Ladies she was wearing nothing beneath that short skirt at all.

Back at the table, she wasn’t surprised to see that Netta was sitting up close to Ben’s side and that his arm was resting down the back of the padded bench behind her shoulders. Nor was she surprised at his cheeky smile. But his words weren’t what she’d expected: ‘I was telling Netta here that I have a friend who’s an artist. A really good one. Sculpture mostly. You want to see his work?’

‘Now?’

‘What – don’t you mix work and pleasure?’

‘I just … well … it’s pretty late.’

‘Oh, he’ll be in his studio. He likes to work late. It’s not far, if you want to take a look. And he’s … a really interesting bloke. You’ll like him. He’d like to meet you two, I’m sure.’

Oh, thought Sophie: that’s how it is, then. He was pulling on his friend’s behalf too. She tried not to consider whether she was disappointed or not.

It wasn’t actually all that late by the time they emerged from the Rose Garden; not that late if you were out on the lash on a Saturday night, that is: late for everyone else. Bars and takeaways were doing a booming trade but the only vehicles on the streets were taxis and buses and police vans. Ben slipped an arm around each of them.

‘Ooh,’ said Netta: ‘you’re cold.’ She was right, thought Sophie: he wasn’t icy, but there was none of the heat she’d been expecting from his body. That white cotton T-shirt might as well have been draped over a mannequin’s torso: toned and unyielding and cool.

‘Yeah, I am. I need you two to keep me warm.’

Netta giggled and pressed herself up against him in a hug that only looked innocent.

So Ben walked through the night streets with them flanking him, his arms around their shoulders, their arms about his hard waist. He steered well clear of loud and dangerous-looking revellers, but kept to the lighted main roads as if to reassure them. And he kept up a stream of chatter all the way, all about Warhol and Lichtenstein and other names Sophie knew she should have paid more attention to on her art-history induction course, until they crossed under a flyover and followed the road in a curve and there were suddenly trees and a big black building looming over them. A church. It stood in a little island in a whirlpool of main roads and it wasn’t floodlit like some of the city-centre churches. Victorian Gothic in style, its stones were black with soot dating back to the Industrial Revolution and it was close-grown with big dingy sycamores.

‘Here we are,’ said Ben, suddenly grabbing their hands and skipping them across the road under the nose of a taxi. They reached the pavement beneath a white streetlamp that made the building beyond look even more shadowed.

‘A church?’ asked Netta, pulling out of his hand. She wrinkled her nose. ‘It looks derelict.’

‘It’s an artists’ centre now. Naylor’s studio’s inside – see the light?’

They peered into the gloom, and Sophie was relieved to see that there was a glow high up in one of the tall stained-glass windows – though it barely showed through the encrustation of soot and the thick protective wire lattice over the exterior of the glass.

‘Looks spooky,’ muttered Sophie.

‘Looks like a place for freaks to hang out,’ Netta grumbled.

‘Aw,’ he mocked softly. ‘Are the little girls scared?’

Netta cast him a sharp glance. ‘Hey – how old are you?’ she asked. It sounded like a change of subject but Sophie knew where she was coming from. She’d assumed all along that Ben was their own age or thereabouts: mid-twenties at most. That’s how he’d looked under the indoor lights. But out here under the harsh white light of the streetlamp he looked suddenly older. It wasn’t wrinkles; he didn’t look wrinkled. It was something less definable, something about the way the shadows fell or the look in his eye as he derided their squeamishness. Something about his eyes, for sure – as he turned his face down to them he looked almost blind for a second.