The Office Party

Part 39

The weekend of the meal out comes round quickly. Luckily, Paula and Martin have gone away again, so Diana and I arrange to be at our house that weekend. The day before, I happen to catch Diana in the corridor at work and I remind her that she suggested having a bath together, and we could do that this weekend, maybe as part of getting ready for the meal. I like the way her eyes light up as she grins.

On the Friday night, we leave work together and don't even bother going for a drink before heading back. She kisses me behind our front door, even as I'm still leaning against it and trying to turn the key in the lock. She catches me as I'm turning and slides a hand round my waist under my thin cardigan, to pull me towards her. I feel my body melt into hers instinctively, and love the way her hand slides up the back of my blouse while her knee pushes at the hem of my skirt. It's a good kiss: a sensual, eager, involved kiss, that makes me hope that Diana will want to kiss me like that after work for a long time yet.

I haven't got an awful lot to do to get our dinner ready – which is just as well, because she keeps distracting me with little kisses to my neck and hair and arms, and touches of her hand to my hips and bum and tummy. At one point, I tell her to leave me alone for a bit, just while I finish cooking, but that she can have me all to herself once we've eaten. She smirks and promises to hold me to my word, planting a lingeringly sexy kiss on my neck. I shiver slightly as she threatens to pull at the zip of my skirt, but turns her hand instead and just brushes the curve of my bum suggestively.

After eating, we curl up on the sofa together to watch our usual Friday night TV, and hold hands on my navel. Without really realising, I rest a hand on her thigh and stroke it absent-mindedly, while she does something similar with her lips on my hair. Eventually, we both notice our unconscious mutual arousal and she reminds me I made her a promise. We go up to bed and I happily let her hold me to my promise until we curl up together in a state of satisfied happiness, and drift off to sleep.

***

The next morning, I wake up quite early, earlier than normal, too early for it to be properly light. I turn round gently in bed, careful not to wake her, and gaze at Diana in the gloom of the very pale pre-sunrise light, and suddenly have to close my eyes as a wave of deep emotion washes through me. How silly to want to cry over her now, when she's stretched out against me in my bed, safe and contented in her sleep, and I can't imagine anywhere either of us would rather be.

Perhaps I have an unconscious sense that this happiness is more temporary than it seems.

I lie in bed and gaze at Diana as she sleeps, and wonder if she has ever woken early and gazed on someone and known with such deep-rooted certainty that she loves her to the exclusion of anything and anyone else. Because as I lie there in the early morning and look so lingeringly on my lover, I do feel that I should drink every inch of her in now while I can. The merest thought of how perfect everything has been between us for the past few weeks makes me realise how much we now have to lose: the deep easiness of how we are with each other; the comfort of knowing that we can always search each other out for support and affection and respect; the heart-stopping wonderfulness of our lovemaking...

I stretch myself along the bed, alongside Diana's body, and know that I could never again want to give myself so fully to anyone else. Deep within myself, I know that as we allow ourselves to get closer, it will kill me if we ever had to separate. The way our legs and arms and bodies entwine as we make love helps our souls to entwine and pulls us closer together emotionally. Even as I take in the lovely sight of Diana's naked body against me in bed, I know that it is the contact with her that is so important, the fact that it is her (and no-one else) who's beside me; the realisation that to love Diana and be loved by her in return is pretty much the main thing that gives my life a sense of worth. Nothing else now really seems to make sense or be important, if I don't have Diana.