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I’ve had quite a few jobs in my time, in order to support a fledging (and failing) literary career. It’s the curse of the insufficiently successful author that the hope of a breakthrough is never quite dashed. We find ourselves believing that our big break is always just around the corner, our enthusiasm buoyed by the occasional magazine article, or piece of proof-reading. My writing provides no kind of useful income, leaving me always in the position of needing to earn a little extra on the side.

Of all of these little diversions, the one which is possibly the finest yet was the time I spent working for Mrs Dupree. Sandra, to her friends, and to me in the last days of my employment with her, was a rather eccentric old lady. She earned the right to that appellation, rather than the less complimentary ‘mad’, by virtue of being rich in the old money sense of the word.

I was, at the time, living and sort of writing in south London, near the less-than-beautiful borough of Croydon, working for a door-to-door charity collection company – I’m sure you’re familiar with the sort if you live in the UK. They ask all sorts of innocent questions and fifteen minutes later you’re sending £10 a month to starving African children, who, let’s face it, probably need it more than you do. So I won’t apologise for what I did, even if sometimes it make me feel like a bit of a weasely little bastard.

I had the pleasure of working in one of the more affluent suburbs, with pleasantly large 1950s townhouses set back from the roads behind tall laurel hedges, BMWs and Mercs casually scattered across their driveways. Mrs Dupree lived in one of these, having already ceded the country estate to her eldest son – I met him on occasion, and though he was a bit of a toff at times, he was a ‘thoroughly decent chap’, in the parlance of the upper classes.

My employment with her began in the strangest fashion. I had knocked on her door ready to start my usual patter, which didn’t typically involve the homeowner getting a word in edgeways until they’d signed the forms. But before I had the chance to utter my first syllable, Mrs Dupree had spoken.

“Ah, perfect. Yes, you might just do. Now, come in here, and see if you can get used to the filing system. Come on!”

She turned on her heel and stalked into the house, and I was left with little choice but to follow her across the diamond patterned tiled floor and into a small office.

“Uh, excuse me,” I started, but was immediately cut off.

“Now, there won’t be any of that ‘uh’ and ‘er’ business when you’re working for me, young man. If you can’t think of the right word to say, say nothing until it comes to you. Now, sit down, and let’s see you pay these bills and file these receipts.”

I remained standing, and desperately tried to explain my position.

“Mrs Dupree,” – I had used a little detective work to find her name on the bills she had handed me – “I think there’s been a bit of a mistake. I’m here from a charity organisation, Kids of Africa.”

Nothing, it seemed, was capable of rattling the inestimable Mrs Dupree.

“Well, that hardly matters if you can do the job properly. Go on, do your best.”

The tone of her voice suggested that she did not expect to be disobeyed. It wasn’t as though she thought she could bully me into it, but that she simply could not imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t agree to her demand. And so I did.

Half an hour later I was on the phone to my supervisor, handing in my resignation. For whatever reason, Mrs Dupree had taken a liking to me and had employed me in some capacity or other. I’m still not sure what my job title was. I supposed I combined the qualities of an old-fashioned companion, with a modern PA-cum-secretary, and to a certain extent a butler. Or general dogsbody, perhaps. Either way, I was required to do whatever Mrs Dupree asked of me, which included a large number of secretarial duties made necessary by her ownership of several of her late husband’s companies.

In fairly short order I had moved into the townhouse. We both realised that with my early morning activities (breakfast and newspaper) and late night duties (walking the walls) it hardly made sense for me to continue living in my rented flat. I terminated the lease and moved my scruffy possessions in with Mrs Dupree.

I won’t say the job was easy, and there were certainly occasions when Mrs Dupree’s temperament made my position somewhat less enjoyable than it might have been, but by and large we got on and I didn’t have to work too hard. I was pampered, too, taking my meals with my employer and Pauline, her housemaid, and being outfitted by a rather fashionable (if somewhat traditional) local tailor at no expense to myself. We made rather a pleasant little trio, and it is one of the mostly fondly remembered times of my life.

All of this ambling monologue is intended to paint a picture of the kind of life I was leading, which can amply be described as ‘charmed’. I was so useful to Mrs Dupree, in fact, that she decided I should holiday with her, even though a large part of my daily business would be left behind, a fact which didn’t seem to concern her.

Over the years I holidayed with Mrs Dupree on several occasions, and not once did we leave the UK. She was deathly scared of flying, and quite unbelievably prone to seasickness, and so it was by far the easiest path to find somewhere in the south or south-west where the summer climes were at least reasonably warm.

I won’t say exactly where we went in the summer of that first year, because there isn’t a huge selection of holiday homes for rent in Cornwall in the art deco style with half-Olympic-sized swimming pools in their grounds. It would be rather easy to see past the false name I have given my employer, were you so inclined, and to therefore identify me, and for the sake of what follows I would rather avoid that.

It was only on the way down to Cornwall, with me driving the car and Mrs Dupree sitting alone in the back, a herbal cigarette curling question marks of smoke into the air, that I discovered we would not be alone during our two-month-long stay. I had heard of Jessica, her granddaughter. She was the little red-headed, freckle-faced thing glimpsed in a handful of photos around the house, often associated with some variety of equine creature. I knew little more than her name, but all of the details I could possibly want were made available by Mrs Dupree, who prattled on all the way down the motorway to fill the time.

Jessica was to join us for the whole two months, her rather exclusive girls’ boarding school having broken up for the summer a few weeks before. Her father would deliver her on the following Saturday, giving us a few days to settle into the house before her arrival. It would mean the opportunity to go out for a pint with David, as well, one of the few male bonding activities in which I had the time to partake within the bounds of my job.

I should, I suppose, admit to a certain proclivity for the younger female form, specifically at that age when the first signs of impending change are showing.  Jessica’s presence in the life of my employer had been a cause of some interest for me, and in the course of normal conversation it became apparent that she was of an age I would find tempting. I had steeled myself to resist as strongly as I could the thoughts which threatened to ruin my reputation. I had spent years carefully compartmentalising my emotions in this regard, not letting them master me. I understood before we even arrived in Devon that this would be a frightful test of my willpower. I would have to confine the devil within me, suppress it, control it. In my mind’s eye I imagined failing these tests of my resolution, shuddering in lonely ecstasy at my coarsely woven fantasies. When release had found me, I felt the cold steel of self-revulsion rush through me like a knife in my heart, bending me double beneath crisply starched sheets.

The house was a revelation, as beautifully rendered as the day it had been built, hardly seeming to have aged at all. It was set in sumptuous, well-grown grounds, and gave the impression of genuine luxury supported by limitless finances. It could hardly be called a holiday let – this was a summer retreat for those not vulgar enough to use the ‘h’ word. Vacation, leave, a spell by the sea, anything but ‘holiday’. Mrs Dupree, who had seen it all before, settled straight into her old routine, ordering a long gin and tonic and asking me to arrange a table and chairs on the terrace, informing me that since this was her time away, I would do as she told and join her in having a drink.

As quickly as I was able I had us both seated on the decked terrace overlooking the swimming pool, clinking glasses and toasting each other’s health. The tension which seemed to sit heavy on her shoulders had evaporated as soon as we left London, and I casually wondered why Mrs Dupree didn’t move to Cornwall permanently. She sighed and looked across at me.

“The silly thing is, I can’t leave that house. John’s buried there, or at least his ashes are. I couldn’t leave him all alone.”

For the first time since I had knocked on that door one fateful spring morning, I saw a little of the human inside the old girl. She’d shown me grit, determination, bluff and bluster, but never heart, or soul. We sat in silence, a happy silence, watching the golden sun light up the horizon as another day left us behind.

The routine at Twelvetrees – so named for the six pairs of poplars which lined the driveway – was similar in many respects to our London existence. Each morning I would retrieve the Times for Mrs Dupree, and though in Cornwall I was required to make breakfast as well, since the housemaid was three hundred miles away, so many of my other responsibilities were absent that in fact my life was far quieter. So much so, in fact, that I found I had several hours a day to myself, as Mrs Dupree contentedly read (or rather, dozed) by the pool.

Until Jessica’s arrival on the first Saturday of our stay, there was little to do with myself. I kept in shape as best I could, making good use of the pool, and discovering a path which ran around the perimeter of the grounds, something which I mimicked by running around the property once a day. Once she had arrived, however, the place came alive.

She and her father arrived late on the Saturday afternoon, and almost before I had helped them in with the bags, she had found a bikini and headed for the pool. I was dismissed as nothing more than the help, leaving me with a rather bruised ego, but David did his best to console me by sitting down and taking an interest in what I was writing at the time. As I said before, a thorough toff on occasion, but also a nice guy to the core of his being.

As we sat by the poolside watching Jessica gleefully enjoying the cool water, I reflected on the terrible luck which had brought this demon of a girl to taunt me. She was perfection, her body a tonic to my eyes, each gentle curve and graceful limb a targeted insult to my weaknesses. I wish fervently that I didn’t have the mind which could recall with the utmost clarity the obscenely brief yellow bikini she wore, the way that its rear panel crossed the mounds of her shapely backside at only three quarter mast, leaving exposed the beginnings of the deepening valley between rounded hills. Or the near transparency of the garment, clinging tightly to her pale skin, upon which beads of water gathered like delicate pearls scattered upon a satin cloth. Or the languorous way she draped herself upon her towel on a lounger not far from where we sat, surely aware of the impact on me of her impish form. She was the devil incarnate, sent to torture me for the improper thoughts I already harboured for her.

Thank the Lord for adult diversions, the good old English pub, the art of lone exercise, the realities of a working life. For there were things to do which took me far away from Jessica, removed me from temptation. Looking after Mrs Dupree still took up a goodly part of my day, and for the first few days at least David was present, hauling me off to the local hostelry each evening to slum it with the locals, playing pool and drinking glorious local scrumpy.

I could never allow myself to forget that I was here to work, however, and by that I don’t mean time spent with my laptop trying to write. As Mrs Dupree’s sole employee in this neck of the woods, I had a serious responsibility for her care, as well as for those aspects of the job I had not quite managed to leave behind in London. Although the house enjoyed the luxury of a maid service twice a week, there were still household chores for which I had responsibility, including, as unpleasant as it might be, the cleaning up of any night time accidents. My employer, in her advanced years, had lost control of certain important faculties, a fact which she chose studiously to ignore. Mary, the housemaid, had informed me before leaving London that it would be my responsibility to check Mrs Dupree’s sheets in the morning for any signs of an incident, for the old lady herself would never admit to there having been a problem during the night. She would merely expect it to be dealt with and nothing said.

About half way through the second week of our stay, I had to deal with one of the accidents. Having been the responsible older brother to two younger siblings, I wasn’t unused to changing wet sheets in the morning. I had had plenty of practice as I grew up, with an absentee father and an alcoholic mother no help at all in the hygiene department. The particular stench of Mrs Dupree’s sheets, however, was somewhat worse than I remembered from either my brother or sister, and unable to shake the feeling that I should have been outfitted with a full chemical suit, I set to work removing the old sheets and bundling them together ready for collection. This, of course, still left the issue of the now denuded bed to see to.

The sheets were, I had been informed, secreted in a hard-to-find cupboard in the guest wing of the house. I should explain that, although the whole house qualified as guest accommodation in its current guise, it had originally been laid out on the principle of master and guest wings. The master suites, which numbered three, were all grouped around the living quarters, with the guest rooms, all six of them, in what amounted to an annex to the building, shooting off into the trees, a tall, angular accent to the otherwise rather rotund appearance of the main house. With the swimming pool also jutting out at an angle, the house must have appeared from above like a clock with its hands at ten to two. For the most part we lived comfortably within the master accommodation, though for reasons of her own Jessica had declined the third room on our side of the building and instead taken up residence in the guest wing, perhaps for the luxury of her own bathing arrangements.

It was into this forsaken territory that I now ventured, armed with nothing more than a vague set of directions given to me over the phone by the letting agent, who seemed more interested in the dog grooming service she also appeared to manage at the same time. I had left her to the howling, barking hell she seemed so taken with, and accepted less than perfect directions. It is a testament to the size of the house that I had already been wandering from room to room for more than ten minutes.

Rounding a corner which looked suspiciously like one I had seen not two minutes before, I caught the slightest hint of a melody in the air. Intrigued, I followed it along the corridor and round another corner, and face to face with a Moment. The capitalisation is deliberate.

Every so often in life, you are greeted with a sight which is so astonishing that it literally freezes you to the spot. It may be a stunning mountain vista, or a moment of sheer audacity, or perhaps the expression of a supreme skill. Whatever its cause, the temporary paralysis induced has a lifespan roughly equivalent to the scale of your shock. It is worth noting, then, that for the entire duration of the scene which I am about to describe not a single muscle, not even that ever-beating lump in the core of my being, made the slightest movement.

Jessica was a ballerina, apparently of some skill, though still far too young to be considered fully fledged. She had been to selection for the Royal Academy, however, and had been accepted for a scholarship in two or three years. In the meantime, her grandmother’s proudest memories were reserved for her little Jessie’s performances, few such as they were. I had heard talk of an interruption to the holiday plans should Jessica need to attend some course or other.

That she had grace and poise I was to discover for myself that very moment, because when I rounded the corner and came to stand in front of the wide open door to her room, she was holding a perfect arabesque, perfectly naked, her outpointed toe facing me, the wrinkled skin on the arch of her raised foot the only part of her form which was not smoothness itself. She appeared carved of beautiful white marble, the shock of red hair at her head the only contrast, serving to highlight the statuesque perfection of the remainder of her. Oh, the bikini now seemed so unjust. To cover such small parts of such a wondrous form served only to ruin it when attempting to protect. There is an allure to the teasing partial cladding of a young girl, oh yes, but it is as nothing to the draw of her utterly naked form, with its lines and creases and folds and dips, bumps, valleys which are so very much a part of the whole.

I unfroze and stole away on mouse-feet.

My thoughts became ever more scattered, especially so in the presence of the young elf who had penetrated my defences. All of the barriers I had put in place prior to her arrival had been weakened by her appearance and then utterly destroyed by the briefest glimpse of her natural state. Cringing, I came to the realisation that I was going to attempt to take her to my bed, no matter how wrong I knew it to be. To believe that I was capable of resisting that temptation was to make a fool of myself. I needed to know her, know the feel and flavour of her, become absorbed in her scent, become so entwined with her that there was nothing between us, no sign of where one body finished and the next began.

Oh, the drudgery of an ordinary day, a day when there was no vision of perfection before me. How I longed for an excuse to visit the guest rooms of the house, to have a chance at all of repeating that precious moment. Yet I was thwarted day after day, Mrs Dupree’s continence returning as if to offer some little degree of protection for her granddaughter’s virtue.

I was tortured ever more by the sight of Jessica and her series of desperately inadequate bikinis. None of them used more material than the yellow one she had worn on the first day, and it was a week before I saw any repeats. Why she should have a full wardrobe of such couture was well beyond me. I thought, in my darker moments, when common sense was in short supply, that perhaps it was nothing more than another means by which to torment me.

It should not be difficult for you to understand, therefore, why it was that one morning, with my services no longer required by Mrs Dupree, I found myself relaxing on a sun lounger as Jessica frolicked in the water. I watched her none too discretely, allowing my eyes to drink in her form, which was today enhanced by a turquoise number which on any other girl would have almost been sufficient to be modest. On Jessica, with her sumptuously curved physique showing the first signs of swelling into womanhood, it was thoroughly indecent.

She came to sit with me on the terrace, leaving a polka dot trail of water droplets on the wooden boards. I imagined each to be delicately scented with the flavour of her, and wondered if I had had the nose of a blood hound whether I would be able to tell which part of her body each had fallen from as I snuffled along behind her. Back in the real world, I could do nothing more than watch them fall to the ground and quickly evaporate in the heat, forever lost.

She draped herself across the lounger to my right, propped up on one elbow so that I could be observed. I raised an eyebrow questioningly, and she took the bait.

“Do you want to know a secret about yourself?” she asked.

“OK. Tell me.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a breathy stage whisper.

“You want to have sex with me.”

I hoped my silence came across as mysterious, neither admitting nor denying. It was nothing of the sort. I had been rendered, in the most literal sense, utterly speechless.

“It’s OK, though, I won’t tell anyone.”

She smiled at me and lay back, her eyes closed, apparently at ease. I was not past appreciating her form, legs like rolling golden dunes, a stomach without the barest hint of puppy fat, the gentlest swelling of her freshly budding breasts, the ridge of a collarbone defined by the shadows it cast, the gentle sweep of her neck up to the delicate, translucent shell of her ear. Her face, serene, relaxed, would have comfortably graced catwalks the world across, even despite her tender years.

I returned to myself a little as my heartbeat subsided. Her revelation was startling, but hope lay in her collusion, her willingness to keep the knowledge of my infatuation to herself. How had she come to know? Women’s intuition come early, perhaps. I searched through my past behaviour, hunting for clues to what might have given me away, finding little or nothing, though my ability for introspection might itself have been on the wane, especially when the greater part of my consciousness was absorbed with the wonder of her.

I have, for the sake of the narrative, compressed and dilated time throughout the narrative thus far. I beg your forgiveness as I do so again, to some significant extent, for there was a time, a blissful, wondrous time where for a two week period we were without Jessica. She received a late call to attend a ballet summer school, and just three days later, Mrs Dupree and I were alone once more. You may think me harsh to revel in her absence, but without her there I was able to operate as a normal human being once more, able to discharge my duties without fear that she may appear at any moment and utterly derail me.

Her return was a confusing, unsettling barrage of emotions, not helped by her own apparent excitement in seeing me. She rushed forward, enfolding me in her spindly arms and planting a hot little kiss on my cheek. Once again, as she had managed more times than was reasonable, she had left me entirely stumped.

I was glad we were alone. Had we not been, perhaps I may have been called upon to explain why Jessica felt so at ease with me. I was, lest we any of us forget, merely an employee. Indeed, there was nothing in my job description which said that I had to look after Jessica in any way, though of course I did so.

Her attitude to me appeared to have changed in its entirety. Gone was the over-confident, worldy-wise young lady, replaced with an excitable, un-self-conscious tween who had a ready smile lacking the slightest trace of irony. If the change in her had any effect on me, it was to lessen the extent of my longing for her. The childish element which had come into her personality was an anathema to the sexual being she was on the verge of becoming, and it dampened my ardour.

That, perversely, played a large part in the events which followed. Our roles had reversed in some indefinable way. She was the young, infatuated girl with a crush on the older guy, and I was the self-assured beau in question, not needful of her attention. I realised that I could live without her, and that gave me the confidence to be simply someone in her life, rather than the desperate letch I had threatened to become. I saw her bathing suits for what they were: a childish attempt at looking adult, rather than a calculated attempt at looking sexy. I began to unravel the mystery of Jessica, and found little deeper than a typical young girl, though one who was undoubtedly a little smarter than most of her peers.

That effectively left us back at the beginning. We had a month of our holiday left, and it felt almost as though we had just met, and it was – for any number of reasons – entirely wonderful. This was principally because the Jessica I found hiding not far beneath the surface was a joyful, wonderful child, with a warm sense of humour and a gift for conversation. That she was so much a little girl now, rather than a young lady, made what follows so much the harder for me to look back at and believe.

It happened by moonlight. The blood drawn on my shoulder was made black by the insistence of monochrome. It came there by her action, and I wore the wound as confirmation of everything she had given to be with me. It was a price so insignificant compared to the end for which it was drawn as payment. We came together naturally, without it needing to be arranged, least of all by my hand.

Why she was in my room, on my bed that night I cannot recall. It was not unusual, in the new relationship which had sprung up between us, for her to come to talk to me. About anything, really, though often it would be a series of questions and answers. She was fascinated by my writing, by the stories I created. They were too adult for her, my books, but she argued with me until I gave in, and then grinned salaciously as she read the more explicit passages. That I had written anything of the sort would have shocked her grandmother into terminating my employment, I’m sure, but Jessica was too discrete to let it slip.

This night’s meeting took place in my bedroom. Others had occurred by the pool beneath the stars, or on the sweeping sofas of the open-plan living space, but never in so intimate a location. My heart hammered against my ribcage as if wanting release. She was dressed in a young girl’s nightie, a soft cotton garment of little shape, and apparently nothing else, judging by the soft, unbroken line of her hip beneath the fabric. We lay facing each other, heads resting on hands or arms. Her bent lower knee was perilously close to my leg, and I almost imagined that I could feel the heat it radiated.
Our conversation came to her balletic ability, of which she was justifiably proud. Hard work, it seemed, and more than a little natural skill, was required to excel. She had stronger legs than all of her contemporaries, and lifted the hem of her nightgown to demonstrate. She insisted that I lay a hand on her thigh to feel the strength of muscle beneath. The feel of my desperately shaking hand on the silken smoothness of her skin was more than enough to set my head spinning. She smiled at me and blushed, a deep pink which spread to her delicate white neck.

No comment was passed when my hand moved to the other leg, the lower leg, the one whose inner thigh was exposed to me. Oh, but the skin there was even softer, smoother, lighter, warmer. She continued to speak, as though nothing untoward was happening. As though my hand, almost unbidden by my conscious mind, was not creeping ever upwards on her thigh. As if the hem of her nightgown, bunched around the knuckle of my thumb, was not being pushed ever further back, to reveal ever more of her to my eyes. Oh, I had seen that acreage of skin before, have no doubt, but always at a distance, always with the knowledge that the satiny material of her bathing suit would prevent my eyes from viewing the most sacred square inches of her skin.

I told her that I had seen her practising, that I had stumbled upon her open door and the girl within, stretching, naked, bared to my eyes. Her blush deepened and spread. She had not intended it, but did she mind? No, she replied, she did not mind, would not have minded, even then, when she was  less friendly to me. But it excited her to know now, I think. I asked her about the changing attitude she had taken to me, and she relented, explaining the truth, the late night whispered conversation with a fellow ballerina, of how to seduce a boy, of how to get what you wanted. My hand slipped ever further upward as I asked whether this was what she wanted.

Her reply trailed off and a gasp escaped her lips as my fingers delved into the unblemished silken cleft between her thighs. Her eyes, which had gazed so lovingly into mine as she spoke, fluttered and closed. Our congress was conducted in silence, save for those few sounds the release of which cannot be forestalled. She submitted willingly, even enthusiastically to my ministrations, though was in truth an inactive participant. My blood was spilled as the blunt sceptre of my passion drove deep into her immature pocket, forcing its way into a tight, unyielding heat. She bit down upon my shoulder to avoid crying out loud, her pain evident in the strength of her jaw. Her exercises in the practice room had at least added a little pliability to her body, but still I felt as though I had ruined her. Exhausted, sore, she clung shivering to my body with my warm seed still held inside her, and finally slept.

Our activities were to resume again the next night, and for every night after for one glorious, all-too-short month. It was a summer romance of the best kind, with the promise of something more given for those occasions when we might see one another again. After leaving Cornwall, only one more, desperately frantic coupling ever took place, in my room in the townhouse in London, in a stolen few hours whilst relatives slumbered all around us on Christmas night. It was like our first time, the pain, the nervousness, the resultant jubilation, and we repeated it as often as she and I could manage that one night, until exhaustion (or rather, depletion) overcame us both. We parted as lovers, but did not meet again for several years, by which time she was upon the stage and I was pumping out an endless string of uniformed opinion pieces on the ballet scene for a national press who didn’t appear to notice my inadequacy.

That is my tale, save for one final image I wish to leave with you. It is a memory enhanced by time and emotion, a scene which will forever be clear in my mind. One day, with Mrs Dupree insistent that Jessica should leave the house, I was charged with taking her for a picnic. By this time we had been lovers for nearly three weeks, our nightly routine fixed. But we had never yet made love during the day.

We walked randomly, taking footpaths where we liked, confident that if we were to become lost we would be able to find our way back. I even took a map, though my skills at using one were hardly well-honed. As the time to find a quiet seat for our packed lunch approached, Jessica spotted a perfect location. Off the track some way was an old, abandoned orchard, the trees having been left to overgrow for some years. They were bearing young fruit, and the last of the recently shed blossom still hung in patches like rogue snowdrops.

Our lunch consumed quickly, I glanced across at Jessica to be met by a sight I had not expected. There, between her Indian-style crossed legs, which had so demurely stayed close together until now, I was afforded a view of her naked sex, blatant beneath the pleats of her skirt. When my eyes caught hers, a little wicked smile of triumph flashed across her face – she had me, and she was going to have me, right out here in the open.
If I hadn’t already succumbed, I would have done so the moment she rolled catlike onto her knees and presented her rump to me, gently swaying it back and forth like a lioness in heat. She edged it ever closer, and with a flick I removed its flimsy covering, savouring the scent of her excitement which reached my nostrils. A thick, invading digit, my middle and therefore longest, found a welcome home in her tight, hot inner space, and for several minutes she pleasured herself upon me, without my needing to make a movement.

Clearly unsatisfied, she moved away from me at last, and span round, demanding that my shorts be lowered. They bunched around my knees, legs spread straight on the ground, as with delicate care, and in a manner quite unlike our previous lovemaking, she sat astride me. The sight of our joining was hidden by the folds of her skirt, but not its sound or scent.

My essence drained into her, she held onto me as with a final push she, for the first time, made the peak of ecstasy so desperately sought by lovers. Her cries filled that dappled glade, released at last now that we were no longer bound by the walls of the house. We were trapped in the orchard by lust, having to possess each other twice more before being willing to depart, each occasion more frantic and needful than the last.