Freya said, ‘Orwe decide what we’re cooking and just buy the right ingredients? For an easier life?’
I said that was a good point and she placed a supermarket order online to be delivered to my house.
So here we are, in my little-used (but very well-equipped; it was refurbished straight before I bought it) kitchen, about to cook.
‘Okay.’ Freya fishes two navy-and-white-striped aprons out of her bag. ‘Do you remember how to chop an onion properly?’
‘For a usually very relaxed woman you’re very fussy about your vegetable-cutting,’ I tell her.
‘If you’re going to do something, do it properly,’ she says severely.
‘Harsh,’ I say.
‘Excuse me.’ She nudges me in the ribs and I – obviously – catch her in my arms and plant a kiss in the nape of her neck, and she – obviously – turns and winds her arms around my neck, and I kiss her on the lips, and next thing I have her lifted and sitting on the kitchen counter, her legs round my waist, and from there we do things that should probably never be done in a kitchen. It’s a good job I keep almost nothing out on the worktops.
Some time later, I pick her up in my arms and carry her through to the big sofa in the living room next door, and we carry on there.
It’s amazing. This is the first time we’ve had sex since the team-building weekend, and it’s even better in some ways, because now we know each other so much better, and this isn’t a frenzied one-night stand, pure passion thing; there are – from my side, anyway – definite feelings involved. Okay, it’s still quite frenzied, but there’s laughter and there are terms of endearment, there’sknowledgeof each other, there’s… well, maybe there’s something that could definitely turn into love. It’stenderalong with the frenzy.
It’s pretty bloody amazing basically.
Eventually, Freya – stark naked (as am I) – sits up from the sofa and then dives back down on top of me (which I’m startled by, because it does not seem particularly amorous, but am not complaining about).
‘It’s the middle of the day,’ she hisses. ‘And the curtains are open.’
‘Hmm.’ I think about the angle of the window and the back of the sofa, and the tree between the window and the road. ‘Hopefully no-one will have seen anything.’
‘Where are our clothes?’ Freya lifts her head and looks around the room.
‘I think they might be in the kitchen.’
‘Okay. I’m going to crawl to get them.’ And she slides off the sofa and commando-crawls naked towards the door before standing up and scuttling into the kitchen. She emerges with her clothes clutched around her. ‘Bathroom?’
‘Upstairs, first on left.’
And off she dashes, still naked, holding her clothes.
The whole thing is one of the sexiest things I have ever seen in my entire life. Possiblythesexiest.
I think I’m in love.
Too soon to mention it, though.
21
FREYA
‘Mmm, something smells good,’ Lizzie tells me as we hug when she and Dan arrive.
‘Thank you!’
We (I) had to improvise quite a lot when it became apparent due to an afternoon ofwonderfulsex that we weren’t going to have as much time as we’d thought for the cooking and baking.
Today is the first time we’ve had sex since the team-building weekend – we’ve been taking things slowly (by unspoken agreement – I think we both felt the same way) – and it was unbelievable. Likeamazing. Just… It’s definitely ruined me for all sex with all other people for the rest of time, for a start. I just don’t think you could have better than that. And if I’m honest, I don’t think it was entirely because we do – clearly – gel physically; I think it was also because we now have an emotional connection.
‘Freya?’ Lizzie’s staring at me. Whoops. I’d drifted off into a little thinking-about-sex-with-Jake haze there.
‘Sorry. Little bit tired.’
