The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths. Freya North

can you think?’ she continues with a humble shrug superseded by a sorry slump. Ben tilts his head and closes the book, clasping his hands loosely, sitting back in the chair, relaxed.

      ‘Please forgive me,’ Cat says, now sitting very tall, her hands demurely in her lap, her eyes cast down.

      ‘You’re fucking gorgeous when you’re angry,’ Ben says, deadly serious and with no jest.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Cat says, looking straight at him, ‘I hope I didn’t offend you.’

      ‘On the contrary,’ says Ben.

      ‘And I really hope,’ says Cat, very measuredly, eye-locked, ‘that I haven’t gone and ruined any prospects here.’

      ‘You’re also very sexy when you’re meek,’ Ben tells her.

      Cat can’t hear the compliment, her concern to appease Ben, to undo any wrongdoing, her sole focus.

      ‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ she says.

      ‘I’m pretty flattered, actually,’ Ben says, ‘that you should have thought me such a gigolo and so in demand.’

      ‘What can you think of me?’ Cat laments, looking at her lap but immediately yearning for Ben’s gaze.

      ‘I think you’re a feisty girl who won’t tolerate any crap,’ Ben says openly. ‘Fuck, what a challenge!’

      They regard each other in the fading light, the soft tones, the hush of the evening, enhancing their reciprocated allure. Cat flops herself backwards on to the bed, her arms above her head, and scours the ceiling. She hears the Loom chair creak. Her heart is beating fast and goes into overdrive at the touch of Ben’s fingers on her knees. Goosebumps tingle their way over her skin as she feels her dress being lifted up and then lowered back.

      ‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben marvels in a low voice, leaning over her, his hands either side of her torso, ‘where are your knickers?’

      ‘Obviously, they were in a twist!’ Cat jests softly. Ben sits on the edge of the bed and Cat runs her hand lightly up and down his back. She pulls at his shirt, gently at first, then with an insistent tug. He lies next to her. They look up at the ceiling and then, with film-worthy timing, they turn and look at each other. The shared gaze, the mutual desire caught in a sealed second of fabulous intensity before they are at each other’s mouths; kissing and tasting and biting and uncontrollable.

      Ben flings Cat’s dress up so that she is naked apart from one breast and her shoulders. He has a hand enmeshed in her hair. The other is everywhere and fast. Trickling over her legs, brushing her bush, sweeping over her stomach, up her waist, into her armpit, over her exposed breast where he stops awhile. She wants to taste every part of his mouth. His body feels so tantalizing behind his cotton shirt. Off. Off. She pulls at buttons, at the tails, she slips her hand underneath and finds his flesh. Warm, prickling under her touch, a strong body, a little hair to the chest, to the lower stomach. His skin is so soft, almost incongruously so for his defined musculature and masculinity. She straddles him, she has to get that shirt off. As she is unbuttoning, he runs a hand up her inner thigh, cups it over her sex and inserts his finger effortlessly, deep inside her. She’s gasping, he’s glazed. He’s moving his finger and she’s moving on it. His thumb is stroking her clitoris. She wants the shirt off his back. Get it off. She wants to come. Fuck the shirt. Her whole body wracks with the orgasm, her voice comes through her gasping. She’s coming on his finger, his thumb, in her stomach, through her nipples. Her body crumples with the pleasure of it all. She lies beside him, her leg slung over his, her sex grazing his jeans. He brings his finger to his mouth and sucks it and then he takes it to her mouth and she sucks it too. That’s me. That’s you.

      ‘I’d like to have sex with you. Now. Please. Now,’ Cat says, easing his shirt away and gazing desirously at his torso. She unbuckles his belt, her eyes drawn to and delighted by the bulge in his jeans, her fingers tracing the shape of him, her sex anticipating the feel of him.

      ‘I’d love to have sex with you,’ Ben says, his hand up the back of her dress, softly feeling her buttocks and tracing the crack down and under to her damp mound.

      ‘Now,’ Cat implores, leaning over his face and licking his lips, ‘I want to have sex with you now.’

      ‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ says Ben, stroking her face and tracing her lips.

      ‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ Cat bemoans. Then she smiles mischievously, eyes his insistent bulge and regards him with delight.

      ‘There are plenty of other ways I can think of,’ she says.

      ‘And,’ Ben reasons, unpopping his jeans, bucking his hips to wriggle free from boxer shorts too, ‘there’s tomorrow. Come to me when you’ve had Luca.’

      ‘Metaphorically speaking,’ Cat chides, walking her fingers tantalizingly up his shaft.

      ‘Come to me then,’ Ben murmurs, closing his eyes with the pleasure of Cat’s hand encircling his cock; gasping as he feels her lips at the tip of him, can sense them opening, anticipating her mouth taking him deep.

       I want you to come in my mouth, Ben.

       I’m coming, Cat. Jesus. Fuck.

      STAGE 7

      Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres

      ‘Rachel – help.’

      Vasily Jawlensky entered the Zucca camper van.

      ‘Oh dear,’ his soigneur said from behind an architecturally intriguing tower of energy bars. ‘Och Jesus – look at you!’

      She looked at him. Vasily Jawlensky, her team’s key rider on whose shoulders the hope of the yellow jersey was today firmly placed. And yet, unlike the brooding Fabian Ducasse, currently barking and snarling at everyone, Vasily’s comportment was no different than if he was merely going out on a training ride. His tall body, on to which lycra had seemingly been sprayed, dominated the interior of the camper van. He regarded his soigneur steadily and shrugged at her almost apologetically. Rachel saw that his skinsuit was split from underarm to hip and was aware that his Time Trial start time was in half an hour. She helped peel her rider from the lycra and assisted him in slithering his way in to a pristine suit.

      ‘I go back to the blocks now,’ he said graciously, focusing so intently on her neck that Rachel found herself cupping her hand against it. ‘With thanks to you, Rachel.’

      ‘That’s good,’ his soigneur replied. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘Tight,’ Vasily replied, ‘tense – you know?’

      ‘I can imagine,’ Rachel said. She stood in the doorway of the van and watched Vasily place himself on his stationary bike. He clipped his feet in and started to pedal, soon leaning down to take the handlebars. Rachel winced. The skinsuit had torn again, this time around the shoulders.

       Fucking supplier – I’ll kill them.

      Vasily calmly dismounted, feeling the ripped material, his skin. He looked at his soigneur.

      ‘You have another, Rachel?’ he asked.

      ‘Sure,’ Rachel replied, closing the door on the fans craving every last glimpse, any glimpse, of the great Russian. Again, the two of them freed Vasily’s body from its colourful sheath and he stood naked and contemplative whilst Rachel delved around a bag for another.

      ‘Have you grown?’ she asked Vasily, eyeing him objectively, or as objectively as such a particularly fine specimen of masculinity could be viewed by a young woman.

      ‘No,’ Vasily said, ‘I am as I always am. No change.’

      ‘Bloody suppliers,’ Rachel elaborated with a thunderous frown.