His Lolita.

The role fell strangely into my lap, as though it was my destiny.
I was just eighteen- my waist was small and delicate, my skin was still fresh and soft and my manner, he told me, was haunting- and sent shivers down his aching spine.
So, we existed side by side, a strange duo- he with his jaded eyes and me with my curiosities.
He was tall and strong, with greying hair and a sensual voice.
He was a Scot, and I a southern girl, and he frequently called me 'soft' and I liked it, knowing full well he was wrong.
His hands were tough and his life had been tougher and I was seduced by the idea of this unlikely Humbert Humbert who watched me like I was something to consider and savour.
We had stumbled across each other one humid day in June, at the foot of the Eildon Hills- he a little breathless, a cigarette in his hand- and me, barefoot and slighly drunk, searching for the way to fairyland.
"Oh!," he had exclaimed, and stared at my naked feet.
"Do you know how to get there?," I had whispered.
It had all seemed very profound, and he said not a word, just beckoned that I follow him.

We did not find fairyland, but we discovered something else.

So it began.
The days stretched out before us, long and languid, relentless with intensity.
The desire was like warm honey, it dripped from our
pores, pungently sweet; pervading our senses.
He worshipped my youth, and I admired his experience.
He pinched at my flesh, laughing as I flinched. He marvelled at my breasts, and kissed them solemnly, whilst his hands traced patterns on my stomach.
I, in turn, explored his body- the fine structure of his shoulders, the shape of his arms, the solid grace of his being.
We moved like serpents, coiling around one another, shifting this way and that, our bodies and souls glued together with sticky lust.

One day, he told me his story, and I listened, wide eyed, still as statue.
He had been in love, he said, when he was a boy of thirteen. Her name was Kitty and she was twelve, and she lived by the meadows that he trespassed on. He had come across her one afternoon in August and watched as she danced in the grasses- naked but for a daisy chain in her hair- all golden limbs and carefree laughter.
Her first words to him that fateful day had been sharp and crude:
'What are you staring at? Never seen some tits before?'
Oh, he had loved her then.

They had formed a great bond, experimenting with love, experimenting with each other.
She was beautiful and stubborn; a wildflower.
She touched her body with clumsy hands, and slithered her rose-pink tongue over his.
She picked blackberries and kissed him with stained lips and stole his heart with childish glee.
She had moved away one year later. He had listened, as she screamed obscenities at her mother, and wept. He never saw her again.

Time passed and he grew up, into a man.
He was aware he was odd in some way, but could not decipher the code that his own mind spoke to him in.
Then, one Saturday, in a chaotic bookshop in Edinburgh, he came across a book called Lolita, it's pages tatty and worn.
He read it all that same day and cried until he could cry no more.

He had looked at me then, as though he was expecting me to slap him and run away.
I did neither.

I went to him, and gathered him in my arms, and felt his wretched frailty.
I judged him not, for he had committed no crime and he had not strayed into dangerous territory as an adult- and I knew he would not.
I recognised at last, what I was to him, a substitution for something lost, and yet it was I that he loved.
We collapsed on the floor, pulling at our clothes, ripping them with fury and need. He stabbed at me whilst the grief and ecstasy wrenched at him in powerful bursts.
"Oh, my Lolita," he moaned, and I knew he meant me.