I Saw a Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

weeks later that their sex became a conduit for something else. It was another night marked by rain. Michael had already given Caroline a set of keys to his flat by Hammersmith Bridge, but he was working late at the library that day, so rather than have her come round he’d agreed to meet her the following morning instead. As he’d cycled home a storm that had been threatening all day finally broke. By the time he reached his flat London was polished under rain, the Thames either side of the bridge pock-marked by the deluge. Wheeling his bike into the hallway, he’d stripped off his coat, shoes, and socks, then gone through into the kitchen. As he did he’d noticed the message light was blinking on the phone. Hardly anyone used his landline anymore, so as he pressed play he’d half expected to hear Nico’s voice following him from across the Atlantic.

    But it wasn’t Nico.
    “Hello, Michael.”
    She sounded as if she were sitting there in the kitchen, raising her head from a book to welcome him home. He could tell she was smiling.
    “Guess who’s upstairs? Want to come and join me?”
    He’d found her in the bathroom, its steamed air scented with amber, the water drawn to the rim and tea lights balanced around the sink. She was sitting up in the bath, her knees against her breasts like a shy girl. Her shoulders and arms were sheened in the heat and the mirror above her was an oval of mist.
    She’d watched him undress, the faintest of smiles playing across her mouth. As he stepped into the bath goose bumps broke out on his arms and legs. Slowly, he’d sunk into its warmth. Neither of them spoke. As he went farther, submerging his shoulders and head, she’d lifted herself to give him room, revealing her breasts, rising slick above the water. When he rose again he drew her towards him, sending splashes swilling over the bath’s rim. Which is when she finally spoke. “What took you so long?” she said, speaking into his neck. “A girl could get bored up here all alone.”
    Afterwards they’d stumbled into the bedroom, wrapped in half-undone towels and each other’s limbs, their wet bodies imprinting patterns of their embrace across the duvet and pillows. Drugged by the warmth of the bath, they’d moved slowly, as if they’d just woken. Caroline’s hair was damp, and felt as heavy as velvet when Michael wrapped it about his knuckles. She’d turned over so he could enter her from behind, her back, hips, and arse making the shape of a cello as she rose onto the heels of her palms and pushed herself against him. But she wanted to see him as well as feel him, so, pulling away, she’d turned round and drawn him on top of her. The friction of their bodies released the amber perfume of the bath oils still on their skin. Michael travelled steadily inside her, inching himself deeper until she held his full length and he came, powerfully and suddenly.

    For a moment they’d lain in the wake of his climax, the full weight of his body pressing her into the bed, their hearts working against each other. But then, before he began ebbing from her, Caroline rolled Michael onto his back and sat astride him. From that position, with his hands cupping her breasts, she’d looked down at him, her hair swinging about her face, obscuring then revealing her fool’s-gold eyes as they held his. Grinding her hips with a heightening tempo, she’d pushed herself down against the firmness of his stomach. As she’d worked faster and harder her head began to rise until, showing him the full tautness of her throat, she, too, came, crying out over the sounds of the rain-loud city beyond their window.
    When Michael woke the next morning it had been as simple as a single thought repeating in his mind, a voice belonging to both his past and his future self. “I don’t want this to stop.” But with it came a fear he hadn’t experienced so purely since childhood. It was the trepidation of happiness, a spreading sensation in his chest