Suddenly she lowered her arms, holding her breasts in each hand weighing them like melons. ‘They are brown. You see? The sun is good for them.’ She knelt upwards, her hair falling about her face and shoulders in a red torrent. Impatiently she shook her head, throwing her hair wildly about. The vigorous movement made her whole body judder and tremble. He stared transfixed with fright, then she slowly stretched towards him, her face inches from his shoulder, breasts resting on the fans of her spread fingers, an offering of ripe fruit.

‘Poor Sylva,’ she murmured and removed one hand from her body she placed it deliberately on his, smoothing it gently across his chest. ‘Yours are pretty too. Firm … you see? Each one will fit my hand?’

‘I really wish you wouldn’t, please…’

‘But it is nice feeling, isn’t it? You have no hair, so smooth … I like. Grottorosso has so much hair there … is not attractive.’ The hand slipped down his body, over his tense belly, to the top of his thin blue slip: and over.

‘Don’t.’ His voice a whisper. ‘Please don’t. Now stop it it …’

The hand caressed him relentlessly, his eyes glazed.

‘No don’t, Sylva. If you don’t mind.’

He unfolded his arms and tried to sit up; she pushed him back with her free hand, leant on him firmly.

‘“He” doesn’t mind, this one. “He” doesn’t say “don’t”, does he?’ She said it in the hideously cloying voice of the District Nurse who had given him his first Blanket Bath at fifteen. Memory galvanized him, he struggled under her weight, but she stayed firmly in place.

‘Stop. I beg you stop. Now Sylva, look here …’

With a sudden move which took him completely by surprise she knelt across his body and straddled him, trapping his thighs between her massive ones, crushing them together tightly.

‘Oh Christ!’ he gasped and tried to sit up again, but was pressed firmly backwards by the superior weight of her body which she folded over him, her lips close to his, her hair falling about his head like a heavy, fragrant, curtain. ‘Oh no …’ he moaned. ‘Oh no, don’t. I…’

She silenced him with a wet mouth, her tongue thrusting and probing between his stretched lips. It was a long and searching kiss. She broke it, kissing the tip of his nose, licking his upper lip, his chin, his throat, down to his breasts where she lightly bit his nipples, and then bit harder, so that he yelled out, throwing his arms wide, arching his body upwards with her full weight upon it, thumping the palms of his hands on the hot stones at his side.

‘Not any more! No more! Stop … you’ve gone mad!’

She knelt back, her heavy buttocks crushing his knees, fingers pinching his belly and the insides of his thighs.