Chapter 13
“Fuck’s sake, Joe, you’ve barely left your house all summer. A quick pint, that’s all I’m suggesting.”
I stood at my sitting room window, gazing out at the garden.
The dog roses that were in bud when I started looking out for Dave’s yearly return were long over.
We’d had a solid week of rain, so the lawn hadn’t turned fully brown, but even in the softening light of evening, everything seemed hard-edged and summer-tired.
“I don’t know,” I hedged.
“I do. Come on. It’s a lovely evening, me and Patrick have got one of the picnic tables, and if you get over here in the next thirty minutes, pint’s on me.”
My garden slipped slowly into shadow as the sun moved behind the house.
It was July in the north of England and the sun wouldn’t set for a long time still, even though it was eight o’clock and I’d had supper two hours ago.
At this time of year, unless it was cloudy, it never even seemed to get fully dark.
Not in the way it did during the endless winter nights when I curled up by my fire, waiting for Dave.
I hadn’t expected to be waiting for him now.
“Throw in a bag of kettle chips,” I said to Jerry, “and I’m there.”
“Deal.”
When I arrived at the pub I went straight around to the beer garden, where Jerry and Patrick were lounging at a picnic table, a few empties before them. Also before them was a huge plate of chips—I could smell the salt and vinegar from here—and a sweating bottle of pale ale.
I sat beside Patrick, knocking his shoulder in greeting.
“You good, Joe?” he said.
“Yep. You?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Here you go, mate.” Jerry pushed the chips at me.
I didn’t hesitate. “These aren’t kettle chips,” I pointed out through a mouthful of hot, salted, battered heaven.
“Knowing you, you had something like a poached egg on wholewheat toast for supper. You could do with building your energy up.”
The poached egg was on sourdough toast, with a portion of steamed spinach on the side. I didn’t share that with Jerry.
I did share the chips, however, and spent a good couple of hours enjoying the uncomplicated company of the Barnes brothers—minus Vinny, who preferred haring off to the clubs in the city to coming to the pub, and Sam, who was still running around the world working on oil rigs, although he’d done a full one-eighty and these days he was decommissioning them and turning them into coral reefs.
Jerry, as usual, had been right.
Spending a summer evening with friends in a garden that came with beer and chips was infinitely better for my mental health than sitting in the oppressive silence of my kitchen, listening to my wall clock tick and poking half-heartedly at an undercooked egg and a blob of wet spinach.
He was also right about needing to build my energy up, as I was soon to find out.
I pulled up in my drive, climbed out of the car, beeped the locks, and stilled. Everything in me went on high alert. My skin prickled, the hairs on my arms lifted, and my heart threw out a triple beat.
Dave was here.
I couldn’t see him, but I felt him. Oh god, I felt him.
“Dave?” I said shakily, taking a slow turn and looking all around, peering into the shadows. It was a new moon and the sky had clouded over on my drive home. The only light came from the small security light above my front door, and it did very little to illuminate the surroundings.
Even if my garden had been lit by stadium lights, I wouldn’t have seen him. He was a predator, after all, and right now, I was under no illusions. I was the prey.
My harsh breathing was loud in the quiet of the night. Very distantly, I heard the high tide crashing down on the beach. A soft breeze rustled the leaves of the apple trees.
“Dave?” I said again.
He didn’t show himself.
I waited for another couple of seconds. Nothing. I turned and stuck my house key in the door. Before I could turn the handle and go inside, I sensed a rush of movement behind me. Large hands hit the wood to either side of my head, and a large body bumped mine flat.
The night was still quiet, but now I heard Dave’s harsh breathing laid over mine.
I blinked at the door an inch from my eyes; my forehead was pressed into the wood. Dave surrounded me entirely. I made a soft, nonsense sound as he bent to nudge my head aside and put his mouth on my neck. I’d expected a gentle kiss, a teasing suck.
I got a hard, uncompromising nip.
“Ow,” I said, and reached back to swat at his thigh.
I never made contact. He snatched my hand out of the air and slapped it back against the wood.
I tried to push back and lever him off me.
All right, I pushed my arse into his groin and had a little writhe.
He vibrated at me—it was one of those seductive, simmering sounds that rippled over my skin like a wave, like a physical touch. I loved Dave’s sounds. All of them.
I loved his obnoxious, seal-bark laugh and the quiet, satisfied purrs that he made when he’d put me in the middle of a nest he’d made out of my bedding.
I loved his possessive growls, his low, companionable murmurs. His sighs, his moans and his pants.
“I love you, Dave,” I said.
He hummed again and rubbed his hips into my arse, knocking my dick into the door.
I groaned. “Let’s…let’s take this inside. Okay?”
His mouth came back to my neck. This time I got all the kissing and sucking I’d expected. My legs went weak.
“Come on,” I said, fumbling for the door handle. “Inside.”
He caught my hand again, and once again placed it flat to the door.
“Dave,” I growled.
He growled back and humped me.
“Really? Right here? You wouldn’t rather do it in bed?”
His breath shortened to harsh pants as his fidgeting hips picked up in speed and power.
Really. Right here.
Holding both my hands in one of his, he dragged them up over my head. He slid his other hand between me and the door to press between my legs, cupping me almost too hard.
He didn’t stop rocking into me, stroking me with his whole body.
“Dave. Dave.” I twisted my neck to rest a cheek against the cool wood, doing my best to push back and meet his thrusts. “I want…I want…please. Inside. Want to be naked with you.”
I wanted to feel his skin sliding against mine, that incredible carved smoothness of his body massaging me from head to toe. I wanted to look into his face when he came—when I came—and hold him.
On the other hand, that would involve stopping, and this was…this was good. No, this was great. Mm-hmm. Oh god. Yes. It was great, and I—
Dave’s breath caught and he let out a long, loud, throbbing moan of delight in my ear as he came all over my arse.
He also let go of my dick, meaning that unless I wanted to hump the front door—I did not—I lost the friction I needed to take me over the edge with him.
He made happy sounds into my neck, and sagged.
“Well,” I said crisply. “That was both romantic and worth waiting a year and change for. Thank you very much.”
He peeled himself off me, gave my bum a loving pinch, and reached around to turn the door handle, pushing it open without warning.
I stumbled in.
“Okay.” I whirled to face him, and whatever I’d been about to say fell clean out of my head.
He hadn’t followed me.
He was gripping the doorframe at shoulder height both sides, his big hands white-knuckled and biceps bunching. His chin was dipped and his long indigo hair hung over his shoulders and down his chest to brush the tiny, tight nipples.
The small reading lamp in the sitting room was on a timer, and it had come on while I was out at the pub with Jerry. Its soft glow was muted. It cast just enough light from across the room to illuminate his face.
His burning eyes were fixed on mine. Holding onto the doorframe, he flexed his body in a long ripple of movement. It was the way he moved through the water as a merman, and it was equally arousing to see him do it on legs.
“Oh,” I said softly. “Are we…? Are we doing the thing again?”
We’d played this game before, once or twice. I’d never known what it was about. I suspected that it was Dave being romantic.
Dave’s lips were parted. He slowly, pointedly, licked out at the tip of a fang before biting into his bottom lip.
“That’s a yes, is it?”
His eyelids lowered as he gave me a thorough, smouldering, up-and-down body scan.
I returned the favour, and grinned. If we were doing the thing, I was about to have some fun.
Because the ‘thing’ meant he wouldn’t come into the house without an explicit invitation.
And I was going to make it very explicit.