Humid air clung with slick silken fingers to our skin as we sat on the cement that lead up to the small room I lived in. Overhead, the purple fingers of twilight touched the horizon, and darkness descended, but not silence as the multitude of night sounds rent the sky. The settling of the cockies in raucous chorus and the crickets scratching their legs in that unique sound that is their night-song.
We could see the local mob of kangaroos come out from the scrub and start grazing down by the river, the unusual shapes I had only ever seen on flat screen or photograph before I came to this strange country, barely discernable. And we could hear the cattle lowing in the yards, brought in only this afternoon on the muster.
Jessie sat beside me. Not touching though, it was too hot to touch. Her long tanned limbs stretched out before her, her right hand holding a cold beer that dripped condensation onto the step to quickly dissipate into the still-warm air. She took a sip, and I could see the tender lines of her neck work to swallow the mouthful. My eyes traced a droplet of sweat as it trailed along her cheek, sliding down her neck and into the hollow between her breasts.
The bottle was set to the ground with a clink on the cool concrete and there was a moment of contemplative quiet, as we seemed to search something to start up a stilled conversation.
"We should go for a swim," her Australian drawl was startling, and I jumped for a moment, its huskiness striking me low in the groin as it always did.
"Where? The river?" my own South London accent was incongruous in this place I had only ever seen while watching movies like Crocodile Dundee.
"Unless you want to share the horse trough with Cola and Trotsky?" she raised a cynical brow in query, the faintest quirk of a smile at her lips taking the sting from the comment. I could not resist bunching my fist and giving her a small punch on the shoulder. The pale rose of her lips broke into a smile, lighting her gorgeous features with a serious beauty.
She flipped one long blonde braid over her shoulder so it hung down her back like an arrow pointing to the smooth curve of her backside, toned by years of horse-riding and cattle mustering. With a curious grace, she stood like a cat unfolding its limbs into a stretch. She held out one calloused hand, and I grasped it. With a grunt she hauled me to my feet.
"Come on," she did not release me, just tugged me toward the path leading down to the sluggishly moving river. The small branch of the Mullaby River ambled around the homestead in a graceful arc, providing bare respite from the dryness that cast up clouds of red dust with the barest puff of wind everywhere else.
"Shouldn't we get our swimming togs?" I asked in naïveté.
All I got was a snort in reply and a firmer tug.
The air changed a little by the river. It was slightly cooler, and carried the aroma of the water, that particular faintly metallic scent. I jumped as a scuffling sound heralded the departure of one of the unseen denizens of the dark.
"'Roo, likely," Jessie uttered in vague comfort to this rather foreign South Londoner. I was grateful. I still had not gotten used to this place, despite the month I had already spent.
"Come on, white boy. Strip," she gestured at my clothing, and demonstrated by grasping the hem of her shirt and drawing it over her head in one swift motion.
I am fairly certain my heart stopped in the moment that revealed the flat plane of her stomach above the shorts she wore, brown and smooth, then to the perfect orbs of her breasts, rose tipped and fragile, unlike the smooth muscularity of the rest of her.
She didn't stop there. My hands stopped at the waistband of my own shorts as she tucked her thumbs into the elastic at her waist and slid them down those amazing legs. Toe to heel levered first the left, then the right shoe off and with a mischievous glance thrown my way, she strode into the water and dove beneath the moonlight dappled inky black surface.
I broke out of my reverie only God knows how, and stripped as fast as I could, leaving my clothing beside hers in the grasses that grew on the shallowly sloping banks. I stride into the water, hindered by the slick mud underfoot and the knee deep, sluggish water that swirled around my legs.
As the cool environ touched my balls, I tucked my chin to my chest, hands above my head to dive beneath the surface, toward where Jessie would likely be.
