Peaches shook her head sadly, but an ardent little wicked streak moved within her. ‘Definitely not.’
‘With a biker lad in leathers?’ he was saying through curling lips. He was enjoying this too.
‘Unforgivable behaviour,’ Peaches said, the bubbly well and truly working in her bloodstream.
‘Some rough lad with a shaved head?’
‘Imagine the scandal!’
He ran his hand over his buzzcut sides, the whisper of it setting off tingles in her own scalp. She imagined what it would feel like to reach out and find out if his shorn hair was as soft as it looked.
‘A troublemaker?’ He was shifting closer, his expression drowsy.
‘I’m tired of always being good,’ she told him, her eyes sinking to his mouth.
‘I should tell you,’ he said, his voice falling dizzyingly low and his hand coming up to cup her cheek, ‘I can be very, very good too.’
He could have been saying anything to her in that husky whisper and it would have had the same effect, setting off a deep feeling of excitement in the pit of her stomach, but the sensation of him tilting his head to bring their mouths closer and hearing him breathe a sigh as he closed the gap between their lips turned her brain blank with wanting.
She pressed back against his mouth, surprised at the soft sound the feeling elicited from her throat. He kissed her harder, and the same sound escaped her a second time.
‘You’re going to have to stop doing that,’ he whispered, their lips still together.
‘I don’t think I can.’
The way he kissed her in response stole her breath and, without knowing how, she let the empty bottle fall from her hands. The glass broke with a crack at the same moment she was lifting herself up off the chair, swinging her leg so she sat astride Euan’s lap.
He gasped but he didn’t stop kissing her, running his hands around the small of her back, pulling her even closer, making her brain tingly and numb with every moan that escaped his mouth, sending her thoughts far away from all the things that bound her to the world.
Peaches felt the heat rising within her even through their layers of clothes. She had zero intention of stopping now, pulling Euan in his leathers closer still, making the chairlift sway back and forth on its cables suspended off the ground. They may as well have been fifty feet in the air and rising into the clouds on a wire for all they were thinking of the ground beneath them now.
Her hands strayed over his velvety soft prickly hair just as he journeyed his open mouth into the spot beneath her jaw that no one had ever kissed before, her entire body sparking with electric impulses.
‘Euan!’ she gasped, feeling the rhythmic pulsations begin below her belly, and refusing to break away from their kiss.
‘I knew it,’ he gasped, holding her fast to him, letting her roll her hips however she wanted, knowing she was seconds away from shattering completely while he fought to stay in control of himself. ‘I knew we’d be good together.’
Down below the ski slope, the town slept on as Walpurgisnacht came to its heated conclusion.
Only the wildcats from off the hills prowled the stony margin between the mountain range and the human world.
There wasn’t a breeze stirring the budding trees in the gardens, and not a soul abroad in the streets, when, one by one, lanterns were lit and doors opened and closed softly.
The elders had their secret work to do.
Padding down footpaths in soft shoes and through their recently oiled gates to avoid detection, they made their way into the moonlight. When any pair converged amongst the shadows they said not a word of greeting, only tiptoeing onward to the meeting point alongside the calm river Nithy, then out under the old footbridge, skirting the flood-meadow and the edge of the Knowe until they came to the great heritage oak that had stood in its spot and watched this valley grow from a scattering of steadings to a populous small town.
In a circle the elders stood, their lanterns swinging and, having observed the tradition of washing their faces in the Beltane morning dew, each revealed their folded papers drawn from inside their long dark cloaks.
One by one they posted these slips into the teardrop-shaped knot in the gnarled tree trunk.
When their task was done, each nodded solemnly and made their silent progress back to town.
By the time the first hints of rosy dawn in the east streaked the sky, the elders had dispersed, slipping back into their beds, their cloaks hidden away again until next May Day morning.
No one knew how the elders were selected, but rumour held they were people especially observant and well placed in the town to notice all the romantic goings-on, and yet, not one of them now asleep in their beds had been even remotely aware that, as they’d crept homeward, they had passed within a few feet of a sleeping couple, curled up together under the open sky, wrapped in a vintage tartan rug, their heads resting together contentedly on the gently swaying twin seats of the broken-down old ski lift.
18
