They began to make love despite me. It was a kind of territorial thing for him. He knew that we were sleeping together. Whenever he came around he put his arm around her, sat with his arm in her lap. She was never wearing knickers and I would watch him hook his finger up inside her, right in front of me, as if he were marking his place. I would smell her on him at the dinner table. He tore bread from the loaf and passed me chunks of it laced with a delicate sauce that I recognised from our furtive moments of exploration. I knew that I was useful to her. I made him want her with the kind of passion that can only be inspired by jealousy.
We heard his footstep on the stairs and there was a cessation of movement. I felt her held breath against the bare skin of my breast. My nipple pulled tighter, inching closer to her slightly parted lips. I was all wound up. We would have made love. I needed to make love. Then there were his footsteps on the stairs and he was with us.
He had never seen me naked before. She had been naked with us, dripping out from a shower with her hair all dark with scent and water. He had once lifted her onto the kitchen bench and then there was that thing he did with the lebanese cucumber and the dinner party, and I suppose that is another story that I could tell you sometime. But he had never seen me even partially unclothed.
He was watching from the doorway. I sensed her turn towards him like a sunflower photosynthesising. She never turned like that in my direction. The few times that we had made love, it had been all me. She lay and sighed and demonstrated her delight by parting her thighs just a little further, making those little dove sounds at the back of her throat that made me want to bite down on the pillow, tear the sheets, force myself into the perfect peaches and cream of her skin.
Sometimes when we were walking in the street, a boy would pass us on the other footpath and she would reach for my hand, or nuzzle into my shoulder or even kiss me with her lips parted, locking her fingers into the crazy wire of my hair until the boy was out of sight and she could walk on without comment.
So, the sunflower thing, the gentle movement of her body, and there at the apex of her attentions was the boy. He saw me naked for the first time, my body pressed close to hers, my nipple almost, but not quite entering her mouth, my hands buried in my own crotch because she never lifted a finger to touch me and I was always forced to touch myself. This, then is how he first saw us together.
There was a levelling up, a squaring off. I know I settled my shoulders more firmly on the bed. It was her bed, smaller than my own but with nicer sheets and the scent of roses. I held my ground and he held his, pulling up straighter in his casual lean, filling his chest with air, tensing his shoulders just a little making him look stronger than he had a moment before. All this subconscious king of the jungle stuff that we share with dogs and lions and rats. We might have stayed that way all night if she hadn't snuggled just that little bit closer, latching on to my breast like a suckling child, but with that full red pout of her lips that both of us had kissed at one time or another.
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