The interior of the cafe was a rather sad, musty place that could have been transported from the 1960s, heyday of the bucket-and-spade holiday for families on a budget – and the menu was like that, too. Cheese and tomato sandwiches on white bread with the tomato having lost its sharpness through being sliced hours ago and exposed to air, which did something detrimental to it. Tea was served in those flap-lidded steel pots that never poured properly, always dribbling down so it missed the cup and made a pool on the table..
Outside in the sun, that didn’t seem to matter so much, and I would usually have a Diet Coke anyway, with a piece of cake or apple pie.
But it wasn’t the food or the drinks that drew me back to this odd little timewarp of a place; it was a waitress. She was Latvian. Pale of skin, blonde of hair and inscrutable of demeanour. She spoke good English and was friendly in a detached, professional way. I had never had a real conversation with her, but we had an unspoken relationship. She knew I only went there to see her and I got the impression it made her feel good when this male admirer turned up once a week or so.
I knew her name was Joanna, pronounced with a y sound instead of an English j, because the other staff yelled it from the kitchen and across the fifty yards of tables. It upset me a little that they knew her better than I did, because they probably didn’t realise she was wonderful, as I did.
Joanna’ standard attire was plain black trousers that fitted her snugly but decently, and a royal blue fine cotton sweater that accentuated her generous but firm-looking breasts. She smelled clean rather than perfumed and with her natural, slightly imperious dignity, I had little trouble casting her as a member of some long-lost royal family. Her neck was long and strong and her face as smooth as a baby’s, with that velvet, milky skin and pure blue eyes. Her nose was on the long side of average and her lips were full and pristine. She probably considered herself overweight, as women tend to, but to me she was perfect. To be in bed with her would have been like being naked with an angel. I should have asked her out, I know, but the place was always busy and somehow I never got round to it.
Eventually my spell of self-employment came to an end through lack of income and I was forced to take a job in a bar, which I had done several times before and quite enjoyed. But it did oblige me to be in a certain place at a certain time and, as a free spirit, I preferred to go where I wanted when I chose to. But such is life. I had a little money in my pocket for a change, and I was meeting people.
One day, about eighteen months into my unwanted new career, one of the early-evening regulars, Barry, appeared with a sturdy, shapely blonde on his arm, and they sat at the bar, where the regulars who liked to be engaged in conversation sat. It was Joanna. I could see her looking at me in the same way I must have been looking at her, full of questions and wondering how to go about getting them answered. I caught her eye and we stared at each other helplessly for longer than was advisable, so eventually she had to tear her gaze away from me and look at Barry, to see if he had noticed. He was otherwise engaged, though, talking to another man who was often in at seven o’clock. Having registered this, Joanna and I looked back at each other and permitted ourselves a half smile.
“So, now you serve me,” she said, and Barry took that as his cue to order the drinks.
The bar was quiet, as it always was at that time, which gave me the licence to lean on the highly-varnished timber and shoot the breeze with my crowd. This in turn enabled Barry to introduce me to his girlfriend and Joanna and me to mumble about knowing each other vaguely from the New Moon.
“I have often wondered what it would be like to have my head up between Joanna’s thighs,” I felt like saying, but what came out was, “Lucky man. Do you speak Polish?”
Barry flinched almost imperceptibly at this, because it was a compliment that would have been harmless if she hadn’t been present, but she was, and that made it a potential flirt. In these unchivalrous days you can get punched for less, but Barry was a successful tradesman with a good lifestyle, while I was a mere bartender who couldn’t really be of interest to his girl. And I was the other side of the bar.
As the evening went on, Barry became engrossed in conversation with other people and was clearly glad to be able to leave Joanna in my care. Having been handed this belated opportunity on a plate, I made the most of it. It turned out she was still working at the cafe and had now been promoted to assistant manager. She had been with Barry for two years and had recently moved into his house, while keeping the small flat she had been allocated above the New Moon. They planned to marry next year, because he wanted to and although he was 20 years older, it made sense for her because she would then be treated more like a local than a foreigner and wouldn’t have the constant sense of being a second-class citizen. The Latvian community had poured in over the past twenty years, initially to work in the greenhouses because their country’s horticulture industry was struggling. In that way, they had inherited the mantle of the Madeirans who had done much the same decades earlier.
Joanna was in her late thirties and had had enough of feeling like an uninvited guest; she wanted to settle down and have a house and a family like her mother and all the previous generations had. She didn’t talk about her feelings for Barry because it was a public place and if he overheard her making pleasant conversation about her life, that was one thing, but there could be nothing really personal.
Joanna wrote her phone number on a napkin while she was in the ladies’ room and slipped it to me discreetly when she returned.
With that safely negotiated, I eased up on the conversation and allowed myself to be drawn to other areas of the bar. By eight o’clock Barry and the Latvian princess had gone.
I phoned her in the morning and we made arrangements for the Friday night, when there was a private function at the cafe starting at five and which should be over by eight but she could plausibly tell Barry it was going on later. I could turn up towards the end, have a few drinks and wait for her.
I sat in a corner and watched her going about her business in the cafe, chatting to the guests and tidying up as they left. I loved the outline of her knickers beneath the tight black fabric, and the way her breasts jiggled as she worked. When she was finished, she came over and said,
“Okay, I’m going upstairs I’ll be about ten minutes. I’ll text you, okay?” With that, she walked up the stairs and the door closed quietly behind her. I helped myself to a large cognac and sat impatiently, wondering what she was doing. A quick shower perhaps, and tidying up the room.
Finally the text arrived and I tried not to race up the stairs.
Joanna was sitting on the bed as I entered the room. She was wearing an aquamarine silk dressing gown with a Japanese scene on it, all pagodas and trees. She blew up her nostrils, looking at me sheepishly. There was no chair for me to sit on, so I perched next to her on the bed. We kissed awkwardly in our sitting position, then subsided onto the mattress. I slid my hand inside the robe and felt those wonderful breasts. She slipped the robe off to reveal stockings and suspenders.
“Wow,” I said in genuine surprise. Women didn’t usually make any sort of effort in that regard, so I felt honoured and it put a different complexion on the occasion. She clearly wanted it to be special, even if it was to be a fairly brief dalliance, stolen at the end of her working day.
Joanna unbuttoned my shirt and took it off. Then she laid me back and proceeded to kiss my chest and suck my nipples, while her right hand opened my jeans and she slid it into my underpants.
“Your cock,” she said slowly, savouring the words. “Men think it’s only them who think dirty thoughts. You have thought about my tits, haven’t you?”
“Your tits are fantastic,” I replied. “But did I make it that obvious?”
“I saw you looking at my body every time you came in,” she said. But I was looking at you too. I knew you would be beautiful down there.”
No woman had ever talked to me like that. Joanna was so special.
“Listen,” I said. “If I ask you to marry me, just ignore it. You’re just incredible.”
“You joke,” she said. “But if I had got to know you before Barry got serious, who knows what would have happened?” I stared into her eyes and felt the same pull as I had in the pub. “Stand up,” she said firmly, and as I did, she slid my jeans and underpants down so I could step out of them. She knelt in front of me and solemnly took my cock in her mouth, giving me the most intense, loving blowjob I had ever had, gently holding my balls with one hand while the other stroked my flanks. I had to pull out to stop from coming, because there were other things we had to do first.
I pushed her onto her back and carefully removed her lingerie, rolling the stockings down as if they contained a precious material, which indeed her whole body was to me, then kissed her softly and adoringly all around her pubic area and her crotch. She purred with delight and her legs parted, inviting me in. I parted her pussy lips and licked her vagina and she sighed with satisfaction at my acceptance of this gift she was giving me.
I moved to the floor on my knees and pulled her to the edge of the bed. She wrapped her legs around my back as I lapped at her fabulous blonde cunt. She shivered with ecstasy and I knew she too was close to coming. But that wasn’t an issue; she was a woman and women can come whenever they like because there is always another one just around the corner.
I pushed Joanna’s thighs up and she got the message, hooking her hands behind her knees and exposing herself to me completely. Did she expect me to lick her arse? I was learning about her rapidly and what I had ascertained so far was that everything was on the table as long as it was done with love. I gazed in wonder at her little tawny-rimmed hole and I knew she knew I was looking at it, but she didn’t flinch.
“You have a beautiful arsehole,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“I’m glad you like it,” she said. “All of me is for your pleasure.”
I moved in for that most special of acts, licking her arse and loving her through my tongue. Once again she quickly rose through the levels of excitement. I could almost feel her blood speeding up as she raced towards her orgasm, and this time she came with a satisfied grunt before rubbing her rump against my face and saying, “Mmm, bad boy.”
Then she began to think and speak in full sentences: “Now I want you on top of me, between my legs,” she said. “And you’re going to come inside me.”
It was a strange feeling for me to be instructed as to what to do next, but I was being organised in the most warm and tender way by a woman whose wish was my command. When she lay on her back I quickly got into position, my face over hers, my thighs between hers and my cock drawn into her cunt as if by suction. We were locked in the tender trap, the head of my cock deep within her and just dying to release my semen into her.
I didn’t have long to wait. We were both absolutely primed for ecstasy as we kissed and began moving together like a well oiled, soft, warm machine.
“Deep inside me,” she said urgently. “Come right up my hole.” And those few words took us both over the edge, our hearts racing as I pumped my seed into her and her vagina sucked at my rod as if she never wanted to let go.
The half hour between our finishing and my leaving the building were oddly awkward. We were both drunk with happiness, but apprehensive abut what was and wasn’t going to happen in the future.
“We need to do this again soon,” I said quietly as I kissed her goodbye, and she seemed to understand. I felt we had to see if the novelty would wear off once we had done it a few times. But the way we kissed and the way our eyes lingered on each other’s, I knew deep down that there was more to this than a few fucks.
