I’m tired; there’s too much brandy and weariness in my blood. Whatever it is, the words are jumping and fading on the page, and it doesn’t help that flashing firelight is all there is to read by.  Starlight?  It’s no light at all. Not so as you could do much but think by it.  Maybe find your way through the bush, though a full moon’s better for that by miles.  Stretch out my legs and turn another page.  Back too cold, front too hot.  A sudden crackle and a soft thud.  There’s a branch dropped off the fire now, landing in the embers, sparks shooting into the air and then gone.  The noise made me look up though and she’s watching me. Orange light and something darker dancing across her face.  I know that look, and I put my finger on the paper so I don’t lose my place.

“Alright lass?” I ask, keeping my eye on what I was reading.

She nods but she doesn’t speak.  Just keeps on looking at me stretched out there, all the way from me big old boots to the hair on my head.

“Aye,” she says after a moment, obviously feeling some words might be called for after all.  “I’m fine.  You alright Joe?”

I glance down at the book.  Forty eight.  I close it over my finger and very slowly push it away.I was happy enough with it; for a bit I forgot the cold ground under me, the too-big sky above, but I’ve the memory of that tight little arse under me fingers, so I won’t be doing any more reading tonight.  I smile to myself.

She sees her invitation accepted – the smile or the book in the dust, not sure which - and gets up to walk around the fire and sit down with me.  I move my legs back to make room for her and she sits cross-legged, facing the fire, with her back to me.  Her back to my cock that is.  Just so as I know that there’s no way I’m mistaken here.

“What you reading Joe?”

“You interested in books then lass?”

“Some.”

She picks it up and tilts it towards the firelight to see more clearly.

“Moby Dick by Herman Melville.”  She speaks the words carefully, and I guess she doesn’t read a lot.  Not that that bothers me any.  I wasn’t planning on spending the night discussing literature.

“What’s it about?”

“A man what goes hunting for a whale that bit off his leg,” I say and I draw one finger sideways across her thigh, just in illustration.  She giggles.

“Does he catch him?”

“I ain’t finished it yet.”

“Read me a bit?”

Christ, she’s the one who was looking at me like she wanted to bite my leg off, or bite something at any rate, coming over here and sitting down, must be able to feel me hard against her back.  Read her a story?  Alright Joe.  Easy now.  Not had a woman in weeks, what you expect?  She just steps across the fire, lies down and opens her legs for you?

Now there’s a vision that doesn’t help any.

I sigh, take the book from her hands and turn to the beginning, squint at the text.

“Call me Ishmael,” I read. “Some years ago-never mind how long precisely-having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”  I pause.

“Go on,” she says.

"It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

I stop again. This time she doesn’t tell me to read on. Which is a relief, although not entirely a surprise.  After all, I don't suppose she's any more intention of hearing the whole bloody thing than I have of reading it to her.

“It ain’t damp and drizzly in November,” she says, sounding properly puzzled.

Jesus, I hope all that space in her brain there is taken up with something else.  For preference, something as might be to my advantage.

“It’s set in the northern hemisphere,” I explain, deciding I’ll not trouble her with the idea that it’s a darkness in his soul and not a spot of rain that Ishmael is feeling.

“Oh.”

There's a faint doubt in my mind as to whether she's even clear on what a hemisphere might be, but that's not my business at the end of the day.

She reaches forward for a stick that’s lying nearby and pushes it into the fire. She pulls it free and does it again and then once more, then a couple more times, thoughtful like. I think to myself that maybe she does know what metaphors are after all.  It’s not a bad joke, but it’s not one I can share with her, obviously, so I just smile to myself again and wait.

“It’s boring,” she announces, twisting around and looking at me, pointed-like.

My balls have been aching for a while now, but they suddenly get much worse because I realise just how easy this is going to be.  How close I am.

“We don’t have to read any more,” I tell her, my voice low and steady; a terrible effort.

She scrambles to her knees and lies down, facing me, a mirror of how I’m lyin’.  Her body blocks out all the heat from the fire but I don’t care right now.  She wants me to start kissing her.  Her eyes have gone big, her lips are wet and whether she knows it or not, she’s pushing her titties towards me.

I consider this.  I think how under those petticoats, her body is preparing for mine, each passing moment making her more slippery and more willing. I could make the move now, or I can wait a spell and she’ll make it for me.  I swallow and decide I can live with aching balls another few minutes. All in a good cause Joe Byrne.

“I don’t know if ye’ve any better ideas for passing the time lass.”  I pat my pockets to find my baccy tin so she knows she has to work a bit harder yet.

She doesn’t reply but she’s calling me nonetheless. Loud and clear.  And my body is calling right back too.  Just roll her over Joe and make everyone happy.  I want to reach down and just touch me cock to reassure it I’ve not gone simple.

That’s the flaw in the plan of course. I don’t know if I can keep this up, so as to speak, for much longer.

“I might have,” she says and then she makes the move.  What she does is, she puts her hand on my chest.  She uses a finger to circle the top button of my waistcoat, all the way around it then down to the next one, all the way around that one and all, then down to the next one.Jesus.

“Sure, I reckon I can see that.”

It’s a sense rather than a sight that she flushes dark at this. Careful. No woman likes to think they’re that transparent. You don’t want her to pull back at the last moment.  Not when she’s so…ready.

I smile at her to show I mean no harm. Then just so’s there are no hard feelings, I clench my fist and rub my knuckles across the front of her where I reckon those high little pink nipples are waiting for me. She blinks and curves her shoulders in and there they are, hardening in greeting, pushing against the wool of her blouse.  Right first time.

Her finger goes back to its wandering around the buttons, and my mind goes wandering too.  All the things I could do to her now with my hands, my tongue and my cock.

I kiss her at last, smiling into her mouth, suckling a faint suggestion on her lips and digging my fingers into the back of her hair. The wanting’s got her so bad now that this brings out little groaning noises.  I roll onto my back and wait. One.  Two. Three.

She swings herself over me and sits up across my legs. Then she reaches down and picks up Moby Dick.

“Ye’ve two choices Joe,” she tells me, waving it in front of me face.“You can stop teasin’ me this very minute, or ye can spend the rest of the night reading about whales in November.”

I take the book out her hand and find my place.  I pretend to consider her offer very carefully.