His voice is direct when he addresses me. I can’t write his accent, because I can’t speak the accent. It comes from within him, visceral and connected, as if he grew out of the ground on which he stands, and it is laced with lilt and twinkle that I can only marvel at. My reply jars in comparison. My voice is schooled, not grown in nature but perfected and corrected, glass-house propagated until each vowel is tight and clipped, no word left abandoned by its final consonant, the last of which tucks every sentence neatly in.

I scooch in under the awning to avoid the curtain of water cascading from the tarpaulin behind me. It puts me closer than I’m comfortable, so I buy time with flustering of my umbrella, and the noises and bustle that English people make to convey their managing in wet weather. He stands calm until our familiar charade begins.

“Please may I have six figs.”

“Ripe now, or ready in a couple of days?”

“Ripe now.”

He assembles his wide right hand and its squared-off fingers into a delicate bird’s head shape and tenderly pinches the top of each fig, feeling for just the correct amount of yield. He moves methodically from fruit to fruit. I breathe in long slow breaths, in and out, to fill the time in which I have no words. The time in which I become aware of my breasts, warm inside my wet outer clothes, my nipples tightening as he moves between each pointed fleshy apex, our silence heavy around us. I’m unable to look away of his deliberate manipulations.

“…and I’d like 4 pears please. Are they good? Sometimes they can be so disappointing”

You see? I’ve used conversation to diffuse the situation. I have brought it back out, out from my warm clothes, and from my erect nipples ticking in my bra. Back into the street in the rain, back to the safety of groceries and quality and value.

“Mine are always good. Have one.”

He passes me a pear, and takes one for himself. It’s a moment of shared appraisal so we stand, facing each other like wine tasters.

There isn’t a polite, disinterested way to eat a good pear, and this is a really good pear. We both sink our mouths into the flesh and quickly the whole fruit is wet and soft. It is so good that we don’t want to waste a single drop, of which there are many. They roll down our chins, our hands too wet to effectively address it. There is only the sound of lips and sucking wetness.

To sidestep I decide to convey my positive review before I’ve finished. I use words like MmmMmmm, and Uuuungh and produce a sort of frown/smile to show that it is seriously good. He just eats and watches, a half smile on his face and his head tilted a little in observation. He seems in no hurry to get to the part where he puts fruit in a bag.

It is always like this. Soon I will leave with my fruit and vegetables, out from under the awning back into the rain. My skin charged and ignited by his touch when he gives me my change, (one giant, gnarly hand cupped lingeringly under mine to catch wayward coins). I will politely chime “goodbye”, and “thank you” in my Kensington tones, with perhaps, a jaunty observation about the weather. But as I walk away I’m still thinking about his pinching, cupping hands, them sliding up my dress to my soft and yielding flesh. Up my legs, to the softest skin between my thighs and to the apexes of my breasts. I think too about juice dripping. He is tender and efficient, arrogant strength metred out with deliberation, knowledge and care. The muscles in my thighs and back feel tense and watery at the thought of it. I picture how he leaned forward to reach the furthest fruit, and I’m imagining myself, bent at the waist beneath him, pressed into the vegetables, a frown/smile on my face and saying “MmmMmmm” and “Uuuungh” into the apples and pears.

Everything she thought she knew dissipated when she saw him. She tried to bring back to mind the picture she had built up over the months of chat and photographs but it was gone now, replaced entirely in her mind by the reality in front of her. She grasped at the old images, but with diaphanous ease they slipped away just beyond reach as dreams do on waking.

It wasn’t at all that he fell short of her expectations, or had misrepresented himself, but she had given her imagination free rein to fill in some of the gaps and there was a lurching gulf between what she had envisaged and the reality. But the envisaging had been so good; she’d played out this scene in her head so often since he’d told her of his taste for watching, and of how he’d love to watch her come. As the weeks passed she’d shared her thoughts about coming for him, somewhere hidden in plain sight. The fit of their kinks was so right that this meeting was a delicious inevitability.

She sat down on the bench opposite him as they’d planned. He’d already ordered and the food lay on the narrow table between them, though they both knew they weren’t here to eat. She did however, take a deep drink of wine in the hope it would steady her hands and her heart which she could hear pounding in her ears. They smiled their hellos; hungry anticipation was almost tangible around him, his eyes taking her in and already closely observing her reactions and movements.

In planning, his penchant had seemed like a weakness. The balance of power, she’d imagined would be in her favour, she knew she would come easily and she’d seen herself calling the shots, majestic and strong in the giving of this gift, him a grateful voyeur. But in the cold light of this busy lunchtime it was she was on the back foot. Him calm and planful, and she jumpy and skittish.

He spoke first;

“Are you ok? Are you ready?”

She nodded, with a half-smile and a deep breath to steel herself for what was to come.

“Let’s do this then”

She reached into her handbag for the tool she’d selected for the task, a small U-shape of sprung rubber she could discretely slip into herself under the table, one end inside her, gripping snugly on her G-spot, the other nestling in the folds around her clitoris. It slid into place easily, and she settled on the bench, readying the button on the remote. The cacophony of the restaurant surrounded them like an orchestra tuning up, the percussion of pots and pans from the open kitchen, scraping of chairs, and the discord of voices from base to soprano, each raised to be heard over the din. Noise wasn’t going to a problem; she just had to retain enough composure.

She looked at him, half expecting him to tell her to start, but he just waited. This was her choice, her action. If it were to happen she must take responsibility for it herself. She pressed the button.

Immediately the vibrations sparked, she visibly jolted, straightening her spine and twisting her shoulders. She focussed somewhere over his shoulder into the middle distance, away from the distracting lilt in his eyes which betrayed a smile that had not yet reached his lips. She fought with her breathing, shallow and catching, for control, blowing out through her lips in an O in an effort to centre herself. Then she slipped in to a familiar groove, the rippling pleasure gradually radiating into every part of her. The restaurant slipped out of focus and she regained confidence in her body, knowing again that she could rely on it to bring this fantasy home for them both. She allowed the sensations to seep and build, colour flooding her neck and chest. She leaned one shoulder against the wall as she could feel the apex approaching and closed her eyes, finding at last a way to block out the restaurant and disappear into herself.

“Hey, open your eyes. Stay with me.”

His voice was soft and encouraging, but it surprised her, everything that she’d fought to govern was shuffled and unbalanced again.

“Ride this a little…don’t come yet.”

He’d called it just right, 10 more seconds and she would have been in place from which she could no longer pull herself back. She wasn’t sure if she could now.

She straightened, looking directly at him now; she could see that he’d allowed that latent smile access from his eyes to his lips now. She liked his challenge; this is the moment they’d fantasised about, now was the time to relish it. If she could just hold on.

But the unrelenting buzz in her cunt had no respect of the change of pace that had been agreed above the table. She squirmed to find a way to diminish its impact. Leaning backwards and curving her spine so her weight was more on her bottom drove the vibrations deeper inside her, and leaning forwards pushed the vibe harder onto her clitoris. He observed her struggle closely, and reached to hold her hand.

“Hold on, you can do it, just a little more”

Beneath the table she raised her feet onto tiptoes to allow some space between the vibe and the hard bench. The muscles in her legs, tense and weak, trembled, she let them fall open slightly to rest against the insides of his thighs. The intimacy was intoxicating, he watched the fierce pleasure in her face, and felt her conflict through fingertips and thighs. She was wanton and vulnerable and delicately balanced on the edge of a precipice. Also, at the very edge of her capability.

“Go on. Come now.”

Her orgasm hung above the discord of the restaurant, like a single, pure note. She grasped hungrily on to it, allowing it free rein to resonate through her as if she herself were its instrument. It reverberated and conducted directly from cunt to brain through the taut strings of her spine, cutting through the fog like steel, through the noise and her misgivings, cleaving a clear trajectory back to herself. As she floated back down into herself, the quickness returning to her eyes, the smiling began, broad grins that tumbled into the sort of giggling that only comes from secrets shared and raw pleasure.

But within the laughing and the switching off of the button, she observed that he was twitchy and self-conscious, perhaps distracted in his seat now. Maybe she would, after all, get the chance to revel in the power and pride she’d earlier thought was to be denied her.

She took a well-deserved sip of wine and looked at the food.

“I’m ravenous, shall we eat?