 In this place he could say without thinking “You think we sort of knew each other before then lass? Is that what it means?” Emmy could hardly even bear to turn her head to meet those eyes, blue or brown they ripped into her “I don’t know Jamie, maybe, I only know what it feels like now. Fuck just kiss me will you?” He smiled and closed his eyes while soft lips opened beneath his, his tongue slipping deep into her mouth at last. Swirls of desire and relief all in one. This time it would be different, now they had time and he had patience, if she really had waited a century to find him again, to find comfort from a body now warm and whole again then she would have it. Jamie resisted her hands searching for his skin, kissing her finger tips and returning them to the bed as he moved to sit, straddling her legs, his mouth drawing moans from hers. His hands held hers outstretched and despite that Father Donahue would send him to hell twice over he moved from her mouth to her breasts in turn, a benediction that would end with her divine ecstasy. Soon…Emmy soon…With warm skin on his lips, tickling against his tongue Jamie wondered about those men, Michael for one, for whom this was all a means to an end, a necessary precursor to a fuck. He wondered if they had ever looked up from the nipple in their mouths to see that mix of lust and wistfulness that connected everything, earth and past and now, a look that sent floods of aching for wholeness, approval and desire to every part of him. And there it was, in the dark black brown of her eyes as she watched him between gasps of holding on. “Jamie…Jesus…” he relented with her hands and smiled against her breasts as she tugged at his hair pulling him harder into her body, his mouth filling with her and he felt himself sink. Alright so he had shagged and loved and stolen women all over the south east. From teenage weekends in some dodgy roofed caravan in a hellhole campsite outside Ramsgate with Danny, when they’d take the tinny camp disco by storm, all done out in their sharpest clothes from the market, drunk on cider and Thunderbird and doing their best to avoid a fight with the local lads. The girls would be hunting in packs with enough cheap perfume and hair gel to poison a small nation, giggling and blushing and taking to the toilets seven times an hour, emerging with brighter shinier juicier lips. He’d see one that caught his eye, perhaps not the most obvious, the brashest, though sometimes them too just because he could, but instead usually the quieter one, the one who he knew would love him and give him everything and defend him when the others slagged him off for being a bastard while they pouted and smiled at him all the same. They sent him cards sometimes, little snippets of life with babies and marriages and dreams It had been a long way from Ramsgate to South Kensington and the rich apartments of the Jocelyn’s and Harriet’s, those women with impeccable cheekbones and expensive underwear, where he had drunk all the best brandy from the exquisite drinks cabinets and messed up their Daddy’s beds. These women, every last one of them from that first kiss behind the bike sheds at Kilburn Comp to Katie just a few days ago, had left a scratch on his skin, or a swell in his cock, or a pang in his heart, and now here he was kissing down the belly of a woman who had braved the coppers to touch him one last time, washed away his blood and hurt and was now crying out with desire for him, his body answering with a resonant thump. Moving between her legs his hand reached down along the silk soft of her thigh, he was surprised for a second that there weren’t layers of rough cotton and bloomers to navigate as his head swam on the edge of a creek, water running over flat stones, and the smell of gum trees in the heat. The river mud and sand was soft under his knees and musk drenched eyes looked up at her, her mouth open with heavy breaths anticipating the touch of his tongue, his voice all there was in the room “Thank you” and it was all about giving back, his thumb stroking up into wet heat, slipping through skin and into her body as he bent to take a long slow lick. Her modern curse brought him back to the barely sprung bed, watching her hands hovering, unsure how to keep from coming right there and then, but settling on grabbing fistfuls of cotton as her hips rose to his mouth. He could slide his hand under her ass now, hold her steady while he circled and sucked and made her legs strain against him, fingers slick and slippery pressing an advantage he was unwilling to let go of, her cries and whimpers filling his ears and his cock and taking him back to the buzz of insects and wind quivering tall grass. He knew she was about to fall when she held stock still to feel just the tip of his tongue flicker one last time “Holy Mary mother of God! Joe…” and he took her shudders gratefully with his mouth and his fingers, every last suck making her shake some more till she wrenched his mouth from her and sat up panting, staring and apologetic “Fuck...I am sorry...I didn’t mean to call you that” her voice was dry and thin “Jamie I am sorry..” His gentle hands brushed her cheek “Emmy, there is no need yer know? Seems as like we are all messed up anyhow” Her slightly sheepish smile preceded a kiss that took him by surprise at least for a moment, hard and happy and ‘Jesus that was good, where the fuck have you been these last 7 years, oh right- in my dreams, least that’s what I thought they were’, in a moment she was in his lap, her wetness slipping down his thigh. His turn to moan. Strong hands covered his back pushing against muscle and squeezing groans into her mouth as she kissed him, a quiet mutter of ‘where was I?’ between their tongues and her fingers slid down his belly to draw circles with her palm in sweet satin warm. Jamie McGuire in her hand and his heavy kisses now engulfing her, she gasped as he pulled back and leant to reach over to the poorly upholstered chair for his jacket. Funny enough, he had remembered his mum’s words as he took a piss in the urinals on the ferry, something about the Pope still being a stickler for multiple births as an essential and enduring tenet of catholic philosophy. Anyway he had fed the coins he had into the battered machine and stuffed whatever came out into his jacket pocket just in case Dublin’s old traditions clung fast and so he was, this time at least, prepared. She wasn’t letting up though, as he leant back her mouth tickled over his chest and his bone, and he struggled to remember what his own were supposed to be doing. A spill of coloured foil though on the threadbare counter pane had her stop moving and his blood pulsed in her hand “What is it Emmy? Christ- what? You don’t want to…ah...is alright…” he swallowed hard “Is alright”. The intensity of her reply however had him stop quite still. “Not with a condom Jamie, I want to feel you like she did” His concerned eyes met hers and he touched her hair, his cock not knowing whether to dance for joy or hold up the white flag and sound the retreat for both their sakes, he shifted a little with the ache of it “I can feel it too Lass, him and her and then us right here, and Christ knows where all this is going to end up, but all the same babies might be something a bit too...” what did he mean? Too much? Too complicated? Too soon? Fuck knows. Luckily she shook her head to all of that. “Jamie do you use them, normally I mean?” A sparkle of Jamie in the pub with his mates fizzled in his smile “Aye well I happen to be on first name terms with the girl at the chemist” and they chuckled together for a sharper moment, kind eyes and an ease of knowing that had him want to take her right now and it seemed that the white flag might be rolled up for another day as she touched his lips with soft fingers “I don’t doubt it for a second, but that being the case. I want you just like this, naked” Christ she would have him undone in her hand if she didn’t stop that, her thumb catching in the ridges as her touch seduced him “It isn’t that time of the month for me Jamie...no babies...ok? I promise” He could feel himself losing the battle without much of a fight, and closed his eyes not to watch her hand and her legs and mouth for one more second before he abandoned the standard to the spinning silver softness Perhaps they always know, there is a thought, and Jamie opened to see the dark orange yellow earth and the sharp brown grass under her head. Without losing contact with her hips his arms wriggled from his jacket, folding it to make for a cushion against the stony ground under her head and she smiled broadly back at him “you are a gentleman so you are Joseph Byrne!” in a pretend polite voice as if he had just opened a door for her rather than her legs If he had still been wearing his hat he might have tipped it, instead he kissed her full on the mouth “Aye well I am sorry ma’am it isn’t The Commercial or The Hibernian” And as much as he would have feted her even in the grand hotels of Melbourne if he could, drinking champagne and lying on the plush down filled mattresses he heard about, all the same he knew, they both knew, that this was their place. She would come here, most times knowing he would not, but to sit with her toes dipping into the rivulets between pebbles, hugging her knees and warming at the thought of his kisses, squinting at the ridge when she thought she heard hooves and waiting for the first stomach lurching glimpse of his wild curls and his body silhouetted against the sky. She would be on her feet smiling at his descent of the steep gully until he fell into her arms almost before he could dismount. In the months of those years she would hear news of the Kelly Gang ‘rumour has it they are running the coppers ragged in New South Wales,’ or the quickening excitement that would herald that the boys were back in town, and she would smile into the pastry she was rolling for the supper upstairs or sway against the planks of the pantry door at the thought of his body covering hers. Well not now, now there were open buttons and cloth, dusty and worn and dishevelled, her hair escaping from it’s knot and tangling in the buttons of his jacket Threads of Dublin slipped away as he looked up at the sky for confirmation, dark cobalt blue rather than misty November grey, “Christ Brenna it has been a while, I missed yer Lass” From somewhere an opaque shadow of discovered recognition poked at his mind but his hand reached between them pulling open buttons all the same, a sigh at the first touch of his fingers and her curls against his body “Aye it has! I thought you had yourself another woman, you aren't plannin' to leave me now are yer?” she was laughing a bit but her teeth dragged a sharper thought against his lips, breathing his name into his own mouth "Joe..” He had ridden hard to get here, feeling every bump and every mile, hot, exhausted and grimy in the hope she would be exactly where she was. She had been bathing up to her knees in the cold creek water, pale bare legs under a dripping hem, her dress loosely buttoned and hopeful when he had seen her from the ridge. His body had stirred against the saddle before she even knew he was there, and Joe could almost taste the cool river moist of her thighs against his parched mouth, his fingers tingling to push those yards of cloth up and revel in the soft roundness that his soul yearned for. Jesus he hoped it was time, his cock protesting against even the thought of denial, but being him, well, he held himself still, they had to be careful. Truth was he always was careful, maybe he had seen too many women enslaved by too many babbies and too many mouths to feed to entertain adding his own, even if he was about to be settling down with one of them rather than concentrating on keeping one step ahead of the coppers, so despite the ache that pulled at him he would hold her close to his chest and she would whisper sorry’s and touch him with her small hands, caress him until he spilled all over her and back to the earth, quietening kisses of apologies with his own. “Aye well they all gave up on me and went off to marry a selector” he was sparkling at her, his hips pressed against hers, the tip of his cock teasing as much as his words “And so you thought 'ah well that Brenna she will be waiting fer me' is that it? Nothing else to do with her time I shouldn’t think except for lie around on the banks of the creek waiting for an outlaw to come, and all the while there he is rambling around the countryside easy as you please” “Ah yer have me there- because you was doing nothing of the sort, just came down to wash yer drawers, is that right?" the feel of her hand on his ass by way of an answer made him groan "...ah Jesus…” he wanted to be inside now, the warm wet he had coaxed from her slipping over him as he pushed just gentle, painful with anticipation and pleading. The last of her giggles died down with the look of him, intent now on more with a passion she had never seen in another man, nor wanted to. “Yes” and that was all he needed to hear, a long, deep, ends of the earth surge that sent him through to her heat. His eyes pressed shut for a moment to feel her stretch and envelop him, feel the grate of lean summer hard hips against his and thud of his own blood in his ears. She always took him whatever way he wanted, slow and lazy, desperate and quick or like now with long deep strokes that had him almost unable to believe it could feel any better, not until she tilted her hips and made him come “Jamie….Fuck…” Emmy’s hands were all around his face kissing him hard whilst her legs shook, spasms of her body clenching around him and Jamie just whispered ‘Brenna’ to eyes that knew it could never be anything else in the moment before he tumbled, hard and fast and white sticky magic swirls in time. |