He manhandled her and turned her body and opened her with his hands. He spent so long licking her, expertly, but agonizingly too long, too precisely. He was still fully dressed, even. He needed to keep his control. She grabbed his hair, and looked into those deeply worried eyes. Wasn’t he hard? Hadn’t she made him hard for her? ‘For God’s sake!’

He looked at her as if he was convincing himself this was real. He was so unused to being wanted. Suddenly, he got to his feet.

She watched him, wondering if he was going to leave her there.

Slowly, he started to take off his clothes. When he was naked, he put a hand on his cock, showed her how hard she made him. He was shivering.

She reached into her bedside table and took out an unopened packet of condoms. She opened it; her eyes kept darting between her short-nailed fingers slipping on the cellophane, his face, his cock. She kept expecting to find laughter somewhere in all this, but, no, it was all deadly serious. She supposed this was what it was going to be like for her always now.

She had sold happiness for—

No, she didn’t want to think about that now.

She took out a condom packet, ripped it open and reached out. She held him, pleased at how hot he was, at how steadily hard she’d made him. At the feeling of him pulsing in her hand. She rolled the condom over him, and pulled it to cover him, tight. She looked up at him again and took a deep breath.

‘It’s okay,’ she said.

His lips bruised hers as he slammed her back into the pillow.

*   *   *

They lay there afterwards, feeling the cool through the open window, the sounds of summer and of distant violence still outside. Costain slowly ran a hand down her back as she lay on his chest. He felt that he should now show how gentle he could be. Here was a woman who’d just suffered a huge emotional loss, and he’d … had he taken advantage of her? He looked at her face. She looked calmly back. He already thought that perhaps she seemed different, not quite displaying all the emotions he might expect. But then she wasn’t like the other women he’d been with, and he didn’t know what was normal.

He still felt that this was … uneven. That he should somehow … pay for what he’d just done. Either guilt had become so much a part of his life now – living as he was with the prospect of Hell – that it had infested this moment too, or maybe this was something more natural, how he felt now he was with someone … for real. Maybe for the first time. Maybe this sort of guilt was what most blokes dealt with when they were in their teens.