Tasty, French, and melts in your mouth

...but enough of the pain au chocolat I’m currently cramming into my trap.

SCORE!

I had the date with R, The Frenchman last night. And, in a nutshell: dinner, drinks, touchy-feely-ness, back to his place, and ... er ... twice.

He met me at the tube station near his house. Even though I’d seen a photo of him and me on Facebook, which was taken the night we met, I was worried I might not spot him – faces take a while to stick in my memory! But he was easy to spot, as he walked confidently towards me, and gave me a very French kiss on both cheeks. Mais naturellement. He’s taller than me even when I’m in my heels (always good), has thick, messy dark hair, eyes that are so dark brown they’re almost black, and a slightly upturned, pixie-ish nose. Me like.

We started off at a pub, then moved on to dinner. Conversation was fine, only a couple of tiny lulls, but that’s to be expected, I guess. He could have asked me more things about myself, I felt like I had to ask him more things, just to keep the conversation moving, but then I don’t think anyone’s at their conversational best on a first date, so I’ll cut him some slack. Anyway, I’m hardly about to complain about him talking too much, because oh. My. God. His voice! He could have spent the evening just reading the phonebook out loud, and I wouldn’t have given a fig. The sexy French accent is one of the biggest cliches going, but it was absolutely spine-tingling.

After dinner, we walked to a pub and he smoked as we walked. The cold suddenly hit me, and I shivered suddenly and violently.

  ‘Are you cold?’, he asked, putting his arm around my shoulder, and placing his lips on mine, in a kiss that tasted of smoke.

At last!

My stomach now doing happy little backflips, we carried on to the pub. Once there, we flopped down on a large sofa, and that’s when he started putting his arm around my shoulders, squeezing the back of my neck, drifting his fingers through my hair, and occasionally softly kissing me. Before this point, the whole evening had felt a bit strange. The last time we saw each other, we were all over each other, and so far this evening, it had all been polite conversation and getting to know each other with pretty much no physical contact whatsoever. It was like rabidly gorging on an entire chocolate cake, then very gingerly nibbling on a lettuce leaf. And yes, that really is the best analogy I could come up with at this present time! Feel free to invent your own.

Soon, the pub started kicking out, so we left and I asked which way the tube station was. He put his arm around me and softly said ‘Come back to my house’.

Now in all honesty, I had kind of intended not to, despite the contents of my handbag and I would like to think I’m able to exercise at least a modicum of self-restraint. But quite honestly, he could have said ‘Give me one of your kidneys, and your firstborn child’ in that accent and it would have been a done deal. So off we went. His flat is really nice. His room was strange, it was quite small, and didn’t look very permanently lived in. It looked like it could all be packed up and cleared out in half an hour.

He pulled me onto the bed, kissing me, and at some point his top was removed, then my dress, then the rest, then ... mmm. Once his shirt was off, I couldn’t keep my hands off him. Slight cigarette breath aside (whatever, he’s French...), he was gorgeous. Quite slim, broad shoulders, some sort of tattoo on the side of his back, and the most incredibly soft, smooth skin. The sex was good, but not great. I think the couple of glasses of wine I’d had, and my nerves were working against me though. I ended up sleeping over (not much choice really, as the tubes had finished, and a taxi back to my house would have cost God knows how much).

I didn’t have the best night’s sleep – he doesn’t half fidget. And I practically had to lie on my hands to keep them to myself – seriously, his skin feels amazing. A few times, he’d shift, or roll over, but he’d throw one arm across me, or he’d lie it by his side, so it was touching my leg. By around 7am, I was absolutely gagging for him. He got up to get a drink of water, and while he was out of the room, I seized my chance, quickly whipping off the T-shirt he’d lent me to sleep in. He got back into bed to find me significantly less clothed than he’d left me. And then .... whoah. This time was much better, much softer and slower. I didn’t have, as DH Lawrence would have it, ‘a crisis’ , but I wasn’t far off. Disappointing, but I’m rather hoping practice will make perfect.

The rest of this morning was a little awkward, with the customary ‘You have the first shower’ / ‘No, YOU have the first shower’ (he had the first shower), and with me not really knowing what to say. Weirdly, when he was getting changed out of his dressing gown and into his underwear, he asked me not to look.

  ‘Yes,’ I said drily. ‘Goodness knows what I might see.’

We left the house together, the awkward silence still ringing in my brain. When we parted to go our respective ways to work, I asked if he’d like to have dinner before he travels abroad with work in two weeks’ time. He said he’d like to, and asked me to call him. I thanked him for a lovely night, he gave me a few kisses, and off we went.

So in a nutshell – not bad. He could stand to keep the conversation a little more balanced, and ask more questions, and there are a couple of things he could improve on in the boudoir department, but all in all, I’m quite satisfied. I don’t think anything particularly significant is going to happen (good really, else this blog would come to a pretty abrupt end!), but hopefully we’ll meet up a few times, have some good food, some drinks, and some more touchy-feely-ness.

And, with any luck, no end of crises.