There is No Present like Time

There is, they often say, no time like the present. Alison, though, said: ‘There is no present like time.’

It was my birthday, and Alison had quite a present for me. It was her, in her birthday suit, lying there on my bed when I got back home from the office. At the time, I didn’t wonder how she had managed to get into my flat, or any detail like that, because when Alison was there I forgot everything else, especially when she had also forgotten to wear anything.

‘What do you mean,’ I said later, when she gave me a chance to get my breath back. She had got up from the bed and was walking, still in her birthday suit, back towards it, out of the kitchen, with a birthday cake. The cake had a single candle on it, the flame flickering as she walked, humming the ‘Happy Birthday’ song under her breath.

‘What? When?’ she said, placing the cake down on the bed between us.

‘There is no present like time. What did that mean?’

‘Oh,’ she said, feeding me a slice of cake, then offering me her breast to lick where a dollop of soft icing had fell on its upper curve. ‘Time…. That is your present. When would you like to go?’

‘After the cake, or do you mean where would I like to go?’

‘No,’ she said, scooping up a large dollop of the cake cream on her one finger while with her other hand she pulled back the sheet and reached for me. She looked from my mouthed ‘yes’ to her cream-smothered finger and then to what she held in her other hand. Then she smiled that smile of hers and licked her lips.

I gulped as the cold cream touched me.

Alison said. ‘No, I do mean when do you want to go, not where.’ Then her mouth was too full to speak and I lost all interest in everything else for quite a while.