Her arms encircled his waist, moved up to his shoulders, back down to his buttocks, pulling him against her, sinking her fingers into the fleshy parts. Her knees rose on either side of his thighs and she hooked her heels around his calves, using her legs to pull him in tighter.
His mouth encircled a nipple and he drew his breath in, making the nipple erect and angry red. He sought her lips, his hand giving the abandoned breast rough comfort. Soft moans of pleasure were escaping her now and he had to control his own murmurings, not wanting to make too much noise just in case there really were others in the forest. But as their movements became more frantic, so their appreciation grew louder.
Babs reached down for him, wanting him inside her, no longer prepared to prolong the foreplay. She found his penis and heard him groan, then she pulled it towards her, her legs spread wide, heels off the rug now and making indents in the earth. He jerked his hips back, when he felt the lips of her vagina, and kept his organ there, teasing her with its touch.
"Alan, please," she implored, and he was smiling in the darkness and she was smiling too, wanting him inside but wanting the game to go on.
He deliberately pushed himself away and changed her small cry of disappointment to one of delight when he sank his head between her thighs and thrust his tongue into the deep moist passage. Her hips rose from the rug, her whole body moving frenziedly, and he had to hold her in a tight grip so he would not lose her. She thrust her body out to meet his teasing lips and tongue and he brought his knees forward to support her weight more easily. He lifted one thigh so it was over his shoulder, then the other, her legs closing around his head in a grip he thought might flatten his ears permanently. He was finding it difficult to breathe, but she refused to loosen her hold, using her hands and the backs of her legs to draw him in further, her neck and shoulders supporting the weight of her upper body.
Alan thought he might suffocate and was ready to panic when he felt her body go stiff and taut in the last paroxysms before orgasm. Her hand, reaching beneath her buttocks and finding his penis erect in his lap, encouraged him to make the final effort and he plunged as deeply as he could, stretching the retaining tendon at the base of his tongue until he thought it might tear, her moving hand causing the pleasure in his lap to mingle with the pain in his head and lungs, the pain somehow enhancing the pleasure, the pleasure somehow nullifying the pain.
She failed to hold back her cries and, at that stage, didn't care; Alan's flesh-enclosed ears did not even hear. Her arched back became wet from him as both bodies convulsed with their separate releases, and their figures created a bizarre, trembling sculpture in the moonlit clearing. They became locked rigid for the last dying seconds of orgasm, then their bodies slowly crumpled to the ground. Lying there breathless, chests heaving, they allowed their frantic hearts to slow before moving together again.
Alan pulled her coat over them and they huddled together, their bodies warm but aware that the chill would soon bite its way in.
"Alan, Alan, thank you," Babs said when her breathing had become more controlled. "It was lovely."
Alan could only grunt, the sound muffled, for his head was snuggled against her breasts beneath her coat. He felt utterly exhausted and his lips were sore.
Babs ducked under the coat and lay her head close to his. "Didn't you think it was lovely?" she said.
Alan stretched his legs down and the grass tickled his feet. He quickly drew his knees up again. "Yes, Babs, terrific." But now, satiated and beginning to feel cold, he thought about getting home; he'd told Marjie he wouldn't be too late.
Babs lifted her head to kiss his cheek, then turned and lay on her back, limbs stretched akimbo, a contented smile on her face. Her body was still warm from their lovemaking and even her exposed feet refused to acknowledge autumn's frigid presence. Something prickled one foot and she moved it away, closer to the other.
"Darling," she said, watching a cloud swallowing the moon, 'have you ever wondered why it's so good with us, I mean." She lifted the edge of the coat and looked down at him, waiting for an answer.
"No, Babs," he replied.
She returned her gaze to the heavens. "It's never been this way with Reg, not even when we were first marrried."
The top of Alan's head appeared as though he were testing the air before emerging fully. "I suppose we're just physically compatible,"
he said. "Some people are. Some are compatible mentally, others physically. Me and you are physical."
"Not just that, Alan." She was a little hurt at the suggestion.
"Oh, no, not just that, Babs," he quickly assured her. "It's just that some people are more, er, more energetic than others. But I think our minds are tuned in as well. We do seem to understand each other." He wondered if he could sneak a look at his watch without her seeing.
Babs tucked her arms beneath the coat, the chill beginning to reach her. Why fool herself? Alan wanted one thing from her and she wanted one thing from him. Sex was also a thing of the mind, and that was where they both tuned in mentally. She wondered if Reg had given the boys their dinner yet.
Something prickled her foot again and this time, her senses beginning to lose their dullness, she became alarmed.
It might not just be a leaf, or grass, or a twig touching her; it might be an animal.
"Alan!" she said sharply and began to sit up, the coat falling and revealing her ample breasts. It took a fraction of a second to register the pain, then she screamed and jerked her leg up, reaching for her injured foot, and she screamed again, louder, when she felt the two bloodied stumps that were left of her toes.
Alan jumped up, frightened by her cries, and looked around, trying to see what had happened, what had hurt her.
"Babs, what is it?" He grabbed her shoulders and tried to hold her still. What happened? Tell me!' His own voice had risen to a shriek.
"My foot! Something's bitten my toes off!" she screeched.
"Oh God! It's all right, Babs. Calm down. Let me have a look!"
But there was no time to look, for the rat, excited by the blood, ran forward and attacked her foot again, sinking its incisors deep, through the hand that clutched the injured limb, and into the foot itself. Alan shrank away when he saw the black creature, not knowing what it was, thinking it must be a wild dog because of its size. The moon suddenly burst from its cloud covering and dread hit him as he recognized the beast. The pointed nose, the long sleek body with its hunched lower back, the stiffened tail it was a Black rat!
Babs' screams startled him from his paralysis; he grabbed the rat at a point near its neck and pulled. The screams reached a new pitch as Babs' flesh was ripped and Alan fell backwards, the struggling creature still in his grasp. It twisted its head and bit into Alan's thigh, gnawing at the flesh and swallowing blood as it burrowed deeper. The main artery was severed and more blood gushed into the rodent's throat, almost choking it, forcing it to withdraw its head. The blood jetted from the wound in a high arc and the air was full of its smell.