Degrees of Intimacy Ch. 03

Eventually they collapsed, one on top of the other, sweat running through the sparse hairs on Paul's chest and streaming into the pool of perspiration between Marla's breasts. Paul tugged off the condom and dropped it into the huge pottery ashtray, a blob of semen captured in the swollen nipple. Like all men after the event, Paul was exhausted, wanting only to rest in Marla's arms, which she was happy to let him do. Her mind conversed silently with itself as she wondered whether this impromptu sexual encounter had actually proven anything to her.

In the commune in Kristianer where she lived, it was relatively easy for Marla to find sexual partners whenever she chose, but she was always reluctant to take full advantage of this license. Although she didn't want to make this too clear to her friends, this was less the fear of earning a reputation for promiscuity than a kind of fastidiousness. She didn't find all men attractive. In fact, it was really only a minority who really attracted her at all. And it was men with the same kind of faint vulnerability she recognised in Paul that were most attractive to her.

She bent over and kissed Paul tenderly on the cheek.

He started and looked up.

"Eeh, lass!" he exclaimed with a laugh. And then, he asked the question Marla had been secretly dreading. "Will we be seeing each other again, like?"

Marla pondered over this. What had been good about her encounter with Phillippa was partly its briefness, that it hadn't been spoiled by any later less memorable reprises. Although now this current lovemaking served another purpose, to reassure her that her sexual identity was still secure, she wasn't sure she wanted to spoil this encounter with the memory of later ones. Particularly, Marla reflected, if this entailed having to meet Paul's friends who by the evening might well have recovered sufficiently from their alimentary ailments to accompany him. She wasn't sure she wanted to entertain more than one Geordie in one day.

"I need an early night," Marla lied. "I've got a bus to catch tomorrow."

"Oh!" said Paul, clearly disappointed. "Where are you going?"

"Erm..." Marla said, wondering what plausible destination she could invent. "Tetouan. I've not been there before. I've heard it's worth a visit."

"Tet Wan? Eeh aye! I guess you've got your travels to do," said Paul bravely, but disguising his disappointment badly.

Marla took his face in her hands and swivelled it round toward her. There was a kind of moistness in his eyes that confirmed the strength of his newly awakened emotions towards her. "But that's tomorrow, Paul. We still have time today."

"We do?"

"You may have noticed that I have more than one condom on the bedside table," Marla announced with a smile, placing a finger on the unsheathed glans of Paul's visibly stirring penis.