Chapter 12
DANNY
I don’t know how many times we make love. Yes – make love. It doesn’t feel like fucking. Like something recreational and unimportant. It feels hella important. Like there’s an added layer beyond the physical that deepens our frantic joinings.
We roll around in the money all night until, much like cookie crumbs in the bed, it ends up everywhere. Not that we care. We just doze off for a bit and wake again for more.
We are insatiable.
It’s not that we don’t have plenty to say – we both know there’s a lot to talk about – it’s more that this is the first time we’ve had such continuous access to each other and neither of us wants to squander the opportunity.
She’s not on shift or studying. I’m not at a gig or hundreds of miles away in Reno.
Those pesky things that have kept us from each other don’t have any place between us tonight, and knowing I can just put my hand out and feel her next to me is a reassurance I never knew I was missing.
I think maybe she feels the same way. Because there’s an intensity to how she kisses me, touches me, looks into my eyes.
As if she’s trying to convey solidarity with her body.
Trying to convey that although life is full and fast and busy, she’s here for me.
I know it’s what I’m trying to convey with mine.
Amongst other things.
There’s a lot of miles between here and Reno, and all that quiet time helped crystallise my thoughts.
This thing between us has been unexpected.
And a whirlwind. But not, at least for me, unsurprising.
I knew there was something different about Holly from the start.
Stupidly, or maybe cockily, I thought it was her shyness, her coyness.
The way she avoided my gaze. Avoided me.
Not something women usually do.
But it didn’t take me long to realise it wasn’t that she was different to other women – because she’s not. It’s the way I feel about her that’s different.
As much as I sing a bunch of songs that talk about love at first sight, I’ve never been a true believer. Until Holly. Because the truth is I don’t just want to be her boyfriend and see how things go – I’m falling in love with her. And if I didn’t know before I went away to Reno, I know it now.
And I think she feels the same way. I think that’s what she’d been trying to say with her body all night long even if her brain isn’t quite there yet.
The clock tells me it’s twelve minutes past ten when my eyes finally open, which is not surprising considering how very little sleep we snatched in between the sexy times.
The room is quiet apart from the soft cant of Holly’s breathing.
She is lying on her stomach, her head turned away from me, her dark hair spread across her shoulder blades having come loose from her ponytail many hours ago.
The sheet is half pulled up, covering one soft, rounded ass cheek only.
The other one is as exposed as the rest of her, that leg twisted in the sheet, tugging it down, and I give my eyes free reign to rove and wander.
Over the dimples just above her ass, down the slope that forms the dip of her back, up the other side to the notches of her spine and the flare of her ribs to the steady rise and fall of her chest.
Her skin is white. Unmarked by tan lines or tattoos. But it is the perfect canvas and I can imagine it all inked up, a piece of art so intricate and fascinating I’ll never be able to get enough of looking at it. What would she choose, I wonder? To decorate her skin?
She’s not a skulls and crossbones kinda woman. No anarchy tattoos for Holly. Flowers, I reckon. Or maybe something medical related. Something a little nerdy.
There’s a ten-dollar note stuck to her upper arm and my smile broadens.
Most of the money is on the floor now having been pushed off as we greedily used the entire mattress surface for our sexual shenanigans, thrashing our way through multiple orgasms each.
But I can still see a bill here and there as I gently peel the one off her arm and toss it over the side.
It’s going to be much harder to collect and roll and bag the notes than it had been to free them from their rubber-band confinements and let them flutter over the bed.
Holly stirs, lifts her head, looks over her shoulder. She pushes her hair off her face as her gaze meets mine. ‘Good morning,’ she murmurs, her cheeks pinking up.
I grin. ‘Good morning.’
How she can blush after the debauchery of the lift and the frequency and intensity of last night, I have no idea. But I love that this thing between us is still new enough for her to feel that coyness. And also that she’s not casual or flippant about sex.
I’ve been too casual and flippant about it throughout my life and suddenly wish that last night had been my first time. That it had been Holly who had popped my cherry, not my junior prom date when I was fifteen.
‘What time is it?’ she asks as she rolls onto her back.
I laugh as she reveals two more notes stuck to her torso and a scattering of faint red marks from my whiskers. I should be mortified by them but perversely, I like seeing them in the morning light and knowing that she got them from me.
‘Just after ten,’ I tell her as I lean in and remove them with my teeth and linger for a while, nuzzling slowly north, my nose brushing her nipples as I skate higher still, intoxicated by the smell of sex and money on her skin.
‘Hmm.’ She shuts her eyes on a sigh of pleasure. ‘I wish I didn’t have to study today.’
‘So don’t.’ I lean in to nuzzle the side of her neck. ‘Play hooky for a day,’ I whisper in her ear.
She gives a half laugh as I prop my head on my hand to watch her face. Her eyes blink open as she says, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’
I grin wolfishly. ‘I can do you from behind.’
Just then her stomach, or maybe it’s mine, growls loud enough to bring the fucking ceiling down. We look at each other for a moment then burst into laughter. My bent elbow collapses and I face-plant into the crook of my neck where my laughter muffles.
‘I’m being a terrible host,’ I say as I raise myself again so I can look into her face. Her lips are kiss swollen and that, too, pleases me. ‘You’re obviously starving.’
She slides a hand to her belly which I track.
‘I could eat,’ she admits. ‘But I’m not about to fade away.
’ Her fingers rest low and while part of me wants to see them go further, delve between her legs and watch as she gives herself a little morning glory, the fever from last night has been turned to a low simmer for now so, when she raises her hand to my jaw, I drag my gaze back to her face.
‘Talk to me,’ she says. ‘Tell me about Reno.’
My eyebrow quirks. ‘About Bob? Or the money?’
She smiles as her index finger brushes my temple. ‘Bob first. Money after.’
I ease back onto the pillow, my mind crowding with all the things I want to tell her about the last couple of weeks.
I’d always known Bob was a good guy but nobody, it seemed, had a bad word to say about him, and to see the level of respect and admiration from his military buddies was something really special.
Then there were the stories about how many lives he’d touched just through his good works.
So many from so many different people I don’t even know where to start.
So I tell Holly all of them. And she listens attentively, her head on my shoulder, her thigh slung over mine, her arm across my chest, her fingers drawing little circles on my shoulder as I speak.
She interjects every now and then with an observation or a comment, sometimes a laugh, but otherwise she just listens and pets me, and I know this is what I want going forward.
Her and me together like this, our lives intertwining.
When I eventually run dry, she doesn’t say anything for a long time. We just lay there, content in our embrace. Eventually she rouses, using her clenched fist on my chest to prop her chin and look at me. ‘What are you going to do with all this money?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think we should do with it?’
She gives a half laugh. ‘We?’
‘Sure. You and me.’ If Holly’s going to be part of my life, of course I want her to help me spend it. ‘There’s so much good we can do, but we can also do a bunch of stuff that’s completely and utterly wild, right?’
Her brow crinkles a little, although she is still smiling. ‘Well, sure… that sounds great… but I’ve not got a lot of spare time the next five years.’
‘Holly.’ I laugh then. I love how dedicated she is that she can’t even see how much this potentially frees her up.
‘Don’t you see? You don’t have to worry about any of that any more.
Your days of being constantly exhausted and stressed at how little time you have for an actual life are over.
You don’t have to work. Or study. You certainly don’t have to worry about not being quick enough to dodge an incoming smack. ’
A lock of her hair falls forward and I absently twist it around my finger as I speak.
‘You’ll have the kind of financial freedom most people only ever dream of.
You can do whatever you want whenever you want.
You can go buy a house. Hell, you can buy multiple houses.
You can travel any time you want. You can buy art and jewellery and go to all the best shows.
You can sit at Centre Court at a Wimbledon grand final or track-side at a Grand Prix and eat out at the best restaurants. ’
Okay, yes, I’m getting a little carried away.
I have no idea if Holly is in to any of those things, but that’s not the point.
None of these would have been possible in my wildest dreams prior to this surprise inheritance.
I’ve not ever coveted a wealthy existence, but to be able to give one to the woman I’m falling for? The only woman I’ve ever fallen for?
I’m giddy with the possibilities.