put my face up to the sky and felt the first fat raindrop on my skin.
János powered on as if oblivious to the sudden downpour. We ignored the way our hair flattened and our noses dripped, ignored the flashing and crashing around us, ignored everything but our own mixed energies, ebbing and flowing, thrusting and retreating, bringing the peak of pleasure ever closer. His belt jingled around his ankles with every stroke. I dug my heels into his flexing buttocks, making him speed up, clinging on for dear life, loving every second of his penetration, wanting to keep him inside me forever, through rain or shine, through hell or high water.
We were drenched by the time he started kissing me in a frenzy, feeling my chest heave, my heart thump, everything join together in a rolling wave of orgasm. I sobbed into his mouth, my fingers pinching and clutching at him, and then he roared and poured into me, slamming me back against that board so that the cheap wood split.
Another roll of thunder accompanied our subsidence into bonelessness. János slumped against me, burying his head on my shoulder, panting like a marathon runner.
I ran my fingers through his soaked hair and wept into his chest. It wasn’t as if he’d notice anyway. We were drowning together, clinging to each other for our lives.
After what seemed like hours, János withdrew from me – it felt like losing him, somehow – and stood straight, peering up into the ceaseless rain.
‘Well, the place is still standing,’ he said with a self-conscious laugh. ‘I was worried it fall down.’
I tried to crush my tears with the heel of my hand and smiled at him.
‘Hey,’ he said, pulling me back into a hug. ‘You are crying. Hey, shhh. What is wrong?’
‘Nothing. I’m just being stupid. That was just so … intense.’
‘Intense? That’s not good?’
‘No, it’s good. Amazing. I don’t even care if it’s just a one-night stand … in the daytime … At least I know what good sex feels like now. Thank you for that.’
His bamboozled frown made me laugh through my tears. More lightning, more thunder. ‘What you are saying? You don’t want to see me no more? You have sex with me and that’s it, all over, bang bang bang.’
‘Well … Jodie says you’re a bit of a shagger. I thought you’d probably disappear once you’d got my knickers off.’
‘Can you please speak English?’
‘Jodie says you like to … love a girl and then leave her.’
‘Jodie says, Jodie says. Jodie says a lot of stupid stuff. She don’t know me so well.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
He kissed me, long and tenderly. ‘Not for you.’
That skipping a beat thing that hearts are supposed to do happened.
‘Oh.’
‘Look at you.’ He laughed. ‘Look at me! We will get bad influenza. Come on.’ He tried to pull up his jeans, but it took several attempts due to their waterlogged state. My skirt slapped and slopped about my shivering thighs. My shoes were full of rain. My knickers lay in a puddle, beyond hope. We left them there and passed, hand in hand, through the archway, back into the street.
Baross utca was deserted. The smoking man had disappeared from his doorstep and only a couple of people dashed past with umbrellas. Pale light flickered behind blinds and tattered curtains.
‘Where are we going?’
We seemed to be heading deeper into the Nyocker, instead of turning back to the main drag.
‘I have my home near here. I take you there to be dry.’
Five minutes rush through the storm brought us to a front door a little better presented than most of its neighbours. János hustled me into a high-ceilinged echoey hall area and up some ornate stairs to the second floor.
His flat was a little old-fashioned but clean and well-kept, if you ignored the general man-clutter around the sofa and coffee table – DVDs, a couple of books, a newspaper and some gaming equipment, wires trailing like weeds.
‘You have great honour,’ he said, chivvying me through the
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