Polly. Freya North

in night light, still smelling divine.

      ‘Hey! You came.’

      ‘Mikey.’

      ‘You came.’

      ‘I can’t do this.’

      ‘You’re here.’

      Mikey was leaning against one of the corner posts of the house. Polly climbed on to the platform and walked over to him. He was still in jeans and now wore a polarfleece top to ward off the chill of the September night. He had her locked into his eyes. She could not get away. Not even if she had tried.

      ‘I,’ Polly said, as Mikey straightened up and walked over to meet her, bang in the centre of the house, ‘can’t do this.’

      ‘Do what?’ he asked softly, his lips parted and damp. ‘Do this?’ he enquired as he stroked her hair and brought her hand to touch his. ‘Or this?’ he asked, pulling her closer and breathing a kiss on to her forehead. ‘Or is it this,’ he wondered aloud as he tipped up her chin and lowered his face over hers, ‘that you can’t do?’ Their lips were less than an inch apart. She could feel his breath over her cheek. His eyes were so close, so dark and deep. She could hardly breathe. ‘Is it this that you can’t do,’ he said, without the question mark, as he sank his lips against hers. He flicked his tongue. It was surprisingly cold against her top lip. She really could not breathe. As she gasped for air, he plunged his tongue deep into her mouth where it immediately leapt about, sweeping across the underside of her teeth, pressing at the roof of her mouth, searching out her tongue and pulling it into a frantic dance with his. Her arms were about his shoulders.

       How did they get there?

      She was kissing with a hunger that umpteen apple pies could not diminish. Mikey pulled away and placed his hands on his hips.

      ‘Well, girl, it sure looks like you can, indeed, do this.’

      Polly could not speak, let alone protest, because her voice, it seemed, was only for gasping and her heart was in her mouth anyway. Simultaneously, it was also beating hard and fast between her legs. Mikey came close again, encircled one hand around Polly’s waist and pushed the other up under her crotch. He pressed and rubbed and as he did so, the seam of her jeans massaged her clitoris. She could have fainted. Instead, she moaned and swayed, closed her eyes and tensed her thighs as he grazed her neck with his teeth. He took his hand away and cupped her right breast, suddenly pinching hard at the nipple. Now they weren’t kissing. They weren’t saying anything. They were breathing heavily, gorging on each other’s faces.

      ‘Christ,’ Mikey said hoarsely, scooping Polly against himself, bucking his groin gently against her. Automatically, she travelled her hand down his body and felt his erection defiant through denim. She rubbed him and squeezed along the impressive length of his cock while they stared at each other. They ate at each other’s mouths again.

      A noise. Footsteps.

      ‘Hallo?’

      Jojo! Quick! Into the trees.

      ‘Hallo?’

      They watched as Jojo clambered aboard her new house and walked round it in a slow waltz of sorts.

      ‘Hi there, little house!’ they heard her repeat over and over as she circumnavigated her domain. She didn’t stay long. They neither resented nor blamed her for coming. They’d have done the same, they agreed, if it was their house built on this beautiful plot of land. Jojo walked away, singing and skipping as she went. Mikey had his back to a tree and pulled Polly against him but facing away from him. She pushed her arms back so she could hold on to the belt loops of his jeans and steady herself. It caused her body to arch forward and gave unlimited access to Mikey’s hands. He felt along her stomach, slipped his fingers down the front of her jeans as far as he could reach and then slid them under her knickers. He could not reach far enough, despite her wriggling, so he cupped and fondled both her breasts instead and then encircled her neck with his hands, squeezing, quite tightly. It felt dangerous. It was. Wasn’t it?

      The ground was unbelievably soft. Mikey had laid her down on it, removed her boots and jeans arid placed his fleece and his shirt under her body. He was stepping out of his jeans, looming over her in white jockey shorts, his erection holding out the fabric like the mast of a marquee. He straddled her, kissed her and then set to work on each of her nipples in turn, while she tried to reach his cock which was tantalizingly beyond her stretch. God she wanted him. All of him. Inside her. She bucked her body up and sat with her face against his stomach, his cock stiff between her breasts. She had a hand on each buttock and started, teasingly slowly, to inch his underpants down. The shaft of his penis sprang out of the fabric, his balls still concealed.

      ‘Polly,’ he murmured, ‘God, you’re something else.’ Slowly she lowered her mouth over his cock, making sure he could feel her hot breath over it before her lips touched down.

      ‘Polly,’ his voice was rising with his excitement. She kissed the very tip of him with the lightest of lips. Then she gulped down as much of him as would reasonably fit.

      ‘Polly.’

      Gosh, his voice was high. What power!

      ‘Polly!’

      Hang on, that’s not his voice at all. That’s Kate’s.

       Kate?

       What’s going on?

       Where’s Mikey gone?

      ‘Come on sleepy head, it’s school time.’

      If fantasy is fiction, does it preclude reality entirely? Dreams may not be real but they are genuine; truth often contained therein.

      Was the reality really only that Mikey had merely done no more than greet her, introduce himself and ask if she was from England, and all briefly at lunch-time? Was that really all he had done?

      Polly felt quite sick. Sick with dismay that it had only been a damn dream, sick with worry that she should be thus dismayed and sick at herself for her perceived infidelity. That she had had the dream at all deeply distressed her and yet she was also troubled by her disappointment at being woken. She worried that she had been writhing as Kate tried to wake her. Had she said anything revealing in her sleep? Why had she never dreamt about Max in such a way? Had he ever dreamt so explicitly about her? About anyone else? But it made her feel sick that he might have done; about someone else. And yet how could she have done this? To Max? Would she even have noticed Mikey had she not felt so uneasy about the phone call with Max?

       I haven’t fantasized like this at all. Haven’t ever needed to. Hang on, it wasn’t a fantasy at all – it was but a dream. Phew! I can’t determine what I dream. I’m innocent.

      She lay in bed, her hand resting gently over her pubis. The hair there was damp. She tunnelled between the lips of her sex; she oozed wetness. With an ear peeled and eyes clamped to the slightly ajar door, she masturbated. She didn’t think of Max. She didn’t think of Mikey. She thought instead of a film star and closed her eyes as she came.

      Dominic’s party was OK, Max supposes, as he settles at his drawing board and leafs through the briefs clipped at the top.

       Quite good, actually. Except for being lumbered with the clearing up because Dom’s hangover rendered him immobile all day. Shame that Polly phoned. I can’t believe I forgot, that’s not like me.

      Max must work on the design for a media agency’s Christmas party invitation, and comes up with an idea to manipulate the text into the shape of a wine glass. Because he must perfect the design first, he ignores the precise wording the client has ordered. A letter to Polly will provide the perfect practice vehicle. He doodles wine-glass shapes quickly and then commences.

      It’s a good design, Max is pleased with it. He can’t show the client this particular one, of course, not least because