It was still dark when I woke up but there was a definite lightening in the sky towards the east. Much too damned early to be awake when we didn't have to present ourselves in Cowley's office until early evening and I turned over querulously, grabbing my share of the duvet back for the nth time and pulling it up over my head in an attempt to cut out reality and go back to sleep right away.

It was no good, my bladder wasn't going to let me relax. I'd had enough beer during last night's darts match to float the QE2 which was why I'd stayed at Ray's place instead of driving myself home even though sharing a bed with him is a bit like trying to sleep in a freezer -- I've never known anyone with such an ability to hog all the bedding. Complaining doesn't do any good, he just shrugs and looks at you with a self-satisfied smirk all over his ugly mug and when I was once stupid enough to ask him what his girl-friends did about it his answer struck me as unlikely and physically impossible. I mean, imagine sleeping with Ray Doyle on top of you all night!

Eventually I had to give in and get up: it was bloody freezing as I stumbled across the hall to his bathroom in the dark, the first severe frost of the year had arrived unexpectedly as always, so after I'd relieved my bladder of its burden I went into his kitchen to put his central heating on. We may as well be comfortable when we finally got up.

Tiled kitchen floors have always seemed a silly idea to me; nothing bounces when you drop it and they are damn' unforgiving to bare feet. I was hopping up and down so much, trying to relieve the discomfort of one foot by resting it on the calf of the other leg that it took me twice as long as need be to assimilate and adjust the controls before I tiptoed my way back to his bedroom trying to touch as little of the floor as possible as I walked.

I shut the windows in there too: fresh air is all very well in its place but right now its place was outside!

Of course, when I went to get back into bed that so and so had got most of the duvet tucked underneath him and was sleeping like a debauched baby. I tried tugging gently to retrieve my fair share but stood about as much chance as a worm under a steam roller and I was beginning to shove him over ruthlessly when I noticed he was starting to twitch and thresh about a bit.

It didn't worry me at all that I might wake him up, after all I was up and suffering and didn't see why he should be sleeping so deeply -- particularly under my bit of duvet, so I rolled him over happily and wrenched the quilt out from under him.

It moved easier than I expected and I sat back heavily on my heels with most of it in my hands and him half exposed just as he gave a sort of quivering sigh and an instantly recognisable groan.

It shook me a bit, hearing that sound, and I started to giggle as I looked at him, lying there all sprawled out and relaxed with a soppy half grin on his face, but being the evil-minded sort I wanted to make sure of my facts before I started in on the teasing so I twitched the cover back just that little bit further.

Sure enough, there was an unmistakable, sticky patch already darkening the front of his pale-blue pyjama trousers and I giggled even harder and leant across, intending to wake him up but those squashed greengage eyes were already open as I bent over him.

"Good dream?" I asked him.

He blinked at me in a stupefied sort of way for a moment and then his face crinkled into a beatific smile and he sort of purred at me, "Bloody good, thank you."

"All right for some," I grumbled, shivering and rearranging the covers to my satisfaction. "Shove over a bit and let me get where it's warm. It's cold enough to freeze your balls off out here."

I bumped myself against him but he lay like a log, refusing to move and grinning at me in the most fatuous way before he let out a yelp of dismay as my feet hit his, and tried to get away.

I grabbed hold of him, finding him lovely and comforting against my coldness and not caring a bit about sticky patches so long as I could leach some of the warmth from his heat.

"Gerroff! You're like a bloody icicle!"

"Blame your kitchen floor," I told him, running one foot up his leg while I pinned him down with my thigh. "It's ruddy freezing."

He gave in and lay still, just letting out the odd squeak as another cold bit of me touched him. "What were you doing out in the kitchen in the middle of the night anyway? Having a sneaky feed?"

"Having a pee -- all that beer," I told him, sleepily snuggling down.

"What -- in the kitchen? Dirty bugger!"

"After I'd been to the bathroom," I said with dignity, "I went 'n put your central heating on. Trust you to be too mean to switch it on before November 1st!"

"So why use me as a radiator?" he demanded, trying to tug an arm out from under me.

I wouldn't let him. "'cause you feel good," I told him, pulling him in even closer. "Now shut up and go back to sleep."

But I couldn't drop off myself, I'd got thoroughly awake by this time and I opened my eyes to look at him and found him looking back at me.

"Too wide awake," I said ruefully, answering his smile.

"Whose fault's that?" he demanded morosely. "I was doin' all right until you came along and woke me up just as things were gettin' interestin'."

"After, you liar!"

I felt his smile against my shoulder. "Trust you to notice."

"Trained to," I pointed out. "Cowley'd flip his lid if I missed anything as obvious as you threshing about and coming all over the bed."

"Was I?" He sounded curious and I smiled to myself.

"Only tellin' half London you were in the throes of a wet dream," I said smugly. "Come on then, give us a bedtime story. What was going on?"

I've always enjoyed poking into Ray's sex life -- he can be a secretive little bugger though sometimes, reluctant to come across with the real facts, but I can always tell when things are going well in that direction because he gets that sort of sleek look, like a cat with a bird's feather twined in its whiskers.

He had it now -- in spades, and gazed up with a particularly seraphic look as I prodded him.

"Nah, you don't want to hear about it," he said dismissively, "very borin' things, other people's dreams."

"Not these sort aren't. Come on, cough up the goods. I'm all ears."

"Noticed that," he told me, as one in duty bound not to miss an opportunity for insult, so I scrunched up the tiny amount of spare flesh I could find on his skinny little ribs and then tickled him a bit until he was squirming and pleading with me to stop it.

"Never knew you were ticklish," I said, warmed up nicely now but too lazy to move back over my own side of the bed into the cold. Besides, he felt surprisingly pleasant in my arms for someone so skinny, bony and muscular, so I stayed firmly where I was.

"Tickle you some more if you don't get on and tell me what you were dreaming about," I said, blowing delicately into his jug- handle ear. Very sensible of him to hide them under all that hair if you ask me, it's only pink and shell-like ones like mine that can stand exposure!

"OK. OK." He shook his head so hard it caught my nose one hell of a clunk and brought tears to my eyes.

"If I bleed all over you," I said thickly, clutching myself with pained fingers, "you'll only have yourself to blame."

"I like that," he started to say indignantly, but I interrupted him.

"Revenez," I told him, "a votre moutons!"

Well, it's a nice cheap way to feel superior, blinding someone with a foreign language they don't understand and I was pretty certain I'd got that one right and anyway, if I hadn't, an ignorant little sod like Ray Doyle wasn't going to know the difference.

"Or in other words," I added succinctly, "get on with it." And I pushed my leg over both his thighs so he couldn't wriggle about.

"I was on this island," he said in a dreamy sort of way.

"All by yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't sound like much fun to me."

"At first."

"Oh, I see. Man Friday turned up did he?" I chuckled.

"D'you want to hear this?" he asked severely, "'cause if you do, stop interrupting all the bloody time."

"Sorry," I said humbly, pushing his curls off my nose with two fingers and leaving my hand lying on his shoulder afterwards. "Go on!"

"I was on this island..."

"You said that bit before."

"Bodie!"

"OK. OK." I put my lips together and tried to say, "Go on," without opening my mouth.

Surprisingly, he obviously speaks strangulated grunt because he obeyed me.

"...and I'd been there for years, all by myself but I was quite happy with it -- there was a house there where I could get meals anytime and it had a telly and all mod cons -- a bit like Beauty and the Beast, you know? Invisible servants 'n all that. It all seemed quite logical at the time, you know how dreams do."

"Yes. Go on. When did you meet Beauty?" I grinned.

"I didn't. Not there anyhow. I was watching the telly one evening, all alone, and then all of a sudden I was part of what was going on and I knew I'd left the island and I was sort of sad because it had been a nice place to be, but I looked around and found there was some sort of panic on. I could hear an smg in the background and then we were running for dear life down an alleyway..."

"You sure you're not making this up?" I demanded suspiciously.

"No. Why?"

"Doesn't sound like one of those dreams to me. Odd things you get off on."

"It improves in a minute."

I could feel him grinning away again so I believed him.

"Get on with it then. You can hurry through the boring bits."

"I had to dream them slowly."

I sighed elaborately. "God, you're a bore, Ray Doyle."

"Oh -- all right then."

And he shut up -- until I tickled him again, and then he said, very quickly and all in a rush, "Down the alleyway there was a door and we went belting through it and on the other side it was all different -- fields, sunlight, birds singing and a bed."

"A bed?" I hadn't been expecting that so quickly. "What -- in the middle of a field?"

"Yup. Didn't seem to matter though. We just sort of floated onto it." He sighed reminiscently. "I wish it was always that easy -- one minute we were fully clothed and the next we hadn't a stitch on and were lying on that bed goin' at it like ferrets on heat."

"Convenient that," I agreed. "My birds always seem to be wrapped up for the Arctic just when I'm in a hurry. So what were you doing?"

"You want all the disgustin' details?"

I could hear the laughter in his voice although he tried to sound shocked.

"Of course. I want a blow by blow account."

"Funny you should say that..." He tailed annoyingly into silence.

"You mean -- "

"You did a marvellous blow job on me."

His voice was so matter of fact, ordinary, that the sense of what he'd said didn't sink in at first. When it did:

"What did you say?" I asked, stunned, shifting up so I could look down at him.

His eyes looked up at me, clear and childlike and yet as old as sin itself.

"I said, 'You did a wonderful...'"

"That's what I thought you said." I pulled myself together. "So what happened to the bird?"

"What bird?"

He was all innocence now.

"The bird you were with at the begin..." This time I was the one to let my voice die away. "You said 'we' and I thought..."

"You thought because it was that sort of dream I had to be with a bird."

I could feel him sort of quivering under me and I knew he was laughing at me. I wanted to pull away from him, get out of that bed and go out into the frost to cool off: I was burning hot -- twitchy with it -- but I didn't dare show him the effect he was having on me.

Then, abruptly, embarrassment was gone and I was calm, calm and more than a little pissed off with him.

"You bastard, pulling my leg like that."

I lay back down again, grinning. Little devil, he'd really got me going that time. Still, I suppose I deserved it, trying to talk him into telling me what he'd been dreaming about. I mean, I've had some pretty weird wet dreams myself -- well, would you believe Norah Batty? Dead sexy those stockings were -- at the time!

"I wasn't pulling your leg."

"Come off it, Ray," I began uncomfortably.

"I wasn't," he protested. "It's all right, you know. Having dreams like that about fellers isn't all that unusual..."

"It may not be for you..."

"Oh, I've not had one before," he said sunnily, "at least, not for years anyway, but I shan't mind if I do again. Christ, the things you can do with your tongue..."

I still didn't believe him but he was getting to me just the same, sighing in that soulful way. I desperately wanted to move my leg off him but I didn't dare because I knew he'd accuse me of getting worried at being that close to someone who'd just been dreaming very peculiar dreams about me. If he really had, of course.

"Shut up!"

"You were the one who wanted to know all the disgustin' details."

"How was I to know they'd be that disgustin'?" I said shortly.

"It was beautiful actually." He sighed again, shifting suggestively under me.

This time I decided to let him up and I moved my leg and arm hurriedly and rolled onto my back, only to find him leaning over me instead.

"Scared?" he demanded, grinning down at me. "Afraid I'll jump you? How'd you think I felt just now then, when I woke up and found you leerin' at me with that filthy look on your face!"

I gathered my scattered dignity. "That filthy look as you so inaccurately describe it, was a spirit of innocent research. Nothing more."

"Rubbish, it was positively lecherous, libidinous, lascivious and lickerish. Not to mention priapismic!"

"Priap..." He'd caught me on that one before. I still hadn't got round to looking it up.

"I told you not to mention it."

I groaned. "God, that's old."

He lay back again, close to me but no longer challengingly so.

Ray and me. It was certainly an idea to conjure with even if he'd only been having me on. All of a sudden I found myself wondering what he'd be like -- I already knew he was good to hold and the few times I've seen him getting really carried away with a girl he's looked rather gorgeous, all eyes and mouth and very, very sexy.

I turned my head on the pillow, eyeing him speculatively and found his gaze already on me with a very thoughtful look on his face.

"Are you," he said slowly, "thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I couldn't possibly be," I said weakly. "I don't have those sort of thoughts. I leave them to you!"

"You were. You were wondering what it would be like, weren't you?"

"No, I..."

"Liar!"

He said it very softly, his eyes holding mine, and they were moving closer and I was paralysed with fright -- anticipation, hope... I didn't really know, I only knew I wasn't going to move and that he was going to kiss me and that if he did...

Everything was suddenly different, changed in the featherlight skimming of his mouth and the sweet-salt taste of his tongue, the gentle pressure of his hands holding my cheek and my shoulder.

I couldn't help it. I groaned, deep in my throat and my mouth opened for him, wanting him...

All of ten minutes later I said shakily, "You're not so bad with your tongue yourself, sunshine."

"I had help just then though."

He sounded just as shaky and I finally dared to open my eyes, still not reassured I wasn't going to find him laughing his daft head off, but he was looking perfectly serious if a little stunned.

"Do you want to go on?" I asked.

His eyes met mine, worried and yet clearly wistful at the same time. The look just melted me completely inside in a way I'd never felt before. I'd never had anyone affect me before like he did that morning.

"If we do," he said rather slowly, almost as if he were afraid of what he was saying, "if we do, it'll be the whole hog. I shan't want us to stop."

"Me neither," I assured him. Christ, I was already turned on by one kiss; if he touched my body... I wanted to speak but I couldn't.

Maybe he saw my difficulty, maybe he was just as confused and yet as eager as I was, either way he said solemnly, "I want it if you do."

I still couldn't speak but I rolled towards him once more, put out an arm and pulled him to me, letting the heat and hardness at my groin touch him, finding an equal heat and a steady, throbbing pulse.

"I guess we both want it," I whispered, the chain on my tongue releasing me at last. "The whole hog."

It was rather fumbled, inexpert at first, but that didn't stop it being one of the most beautiful sexual experiences I'd ever had. It was as though for the first time in my life I had a partner for whom I came first, who was more concerned with my pleasure than with his own, and it wasn't because I didn't get to him because I know I did, and for the first time ever I understood those words in the marriage service, 'With my body I thee worship'.

Once we were over the first embarrassment at doing it together at all we became pretty uninhibited about touching each other anywhere and everywhere. There was hardly a square centimetre of me left unloved by the time he'd finished and I was ready to let him do just about anything to me, touch any part of me --

We didn't talk much, only to make sure that what we were doing was not upsetting or bothering each other, though mostly we could tell it was OK by the willing way we touched and stroked and lay back to be petted in turn.

God, just remembering it gets me all choked up; he was so tender with me and when eventually I came, held just perfectly in his hand, spilling over his fingers, I found my face was wet as well.

I'd never cried over anyone before either.

When I could collect myself enough to look at him, his face was smiling but taut, his nostrils flaring with a hungry longing.

"Please, Bodie," he said. "Please..."

So I slid down the bed and used my tongue -- as sexily as I could think how...

He tasted good too, so afterwards I let him share it, kissing him deeply.

A lot later he said unsteadily, "Thank god for weak bladders."

"What?" I was bemused, still floating, euphoric...

"If you hadn't needed to get up..."

"Oh, yeah." I chuckled. "It's nice and warm in here too, now." And I cast a lascivious eye over him, lying there sprawled out in total abandon on his sexy black cotton sheet, with his blue pyjamas still trailing off one ankle like a corporeal shadow.

"What are you looking at me like that for?"

"You look good enough to eat," I told him.

"You just did," he said softly, and then his smile widened. "Bodie, I do believe you're blushing!"

I probably was. Someone had to. He was shameless enough for twenty. But he pulled me close and held me very tightly and after a while he murmured rather shyly, "Was it horrible?"

I shook my head. "No. No, it wasn't. It... I don't think I can really describe it."

"You fishin' for me to try it?"

I laughed at that even while the whole of my gut did a double back somersault with full twist. "Not intentionally -- but it sounds like a helluva good idea if you want to. You felt... so smooth in my mouth, like... like..." I floundered helplessly but it was no good, I couldn't think of anything that really compared with the exquisite feel of him.

"I'll try it," he promised, smiling at me so that I melted even more. "And anything else you want, too. We've got the rest of our lives."

It was settled that easily. We'd both known, after all, from the moment we kissed that it was for ever.

It is always that simple? I can't believe it. We were just fantastically lucky.

Much later that morning, watching him finish drying after our shower, I asked, "Were you really dreaming about me this morning?"

And he looked up at me and laughed and wouldn't say a word so I hauled him back to bed ruthlessly.

It's always been a good place for getting at the truth of things...

-- THE END --