Chapter 9 #2
I hold him there. Could keep him in my throat forever, only Dair arches.
Tries to stop himself from bucking. Fails, shouts, and lets out the kind of noise I know I’ll replay later.
It’s pleasure, for sure, and I chase it, blowing him until he’s rigid.
Shaking. His hands do find my hair, and I get real tears of my own in my eyes when he tugs me off his dick hard and fast to come.
Dair shoots for a second time because of me, this time to stripe his own belly. I hear relief then, and I get some of my own while he’s still shaking with post-climax shudders. He pants a rough-sounding, “Come here,” and I do.
First, I kick out of the jeans tangling at my ankles and climb up on the bed to kneel over him, my hand on my own dick.
“Fucking gorgeous.” He really is, all flushed and filthy.
I straddle his hips and add Dair watching me get myself off to a list of things I need to repeat before he leaves my city.
“Do it,” he tells me, nothing soft about his order even as he strokes my balls with trembling fingers. His hold firms. So does his command. “Come on me.”
I want to. So much. I also want this to last. My fist slides over my still wet dick too slowly for him. He takes over, and his hand on me is so much better. So is his mouth after he props himself up again and wets his lips for me.
I slide my dick in, and yeah, this time I do hold two handfuls of hair to keep him where I need him, but he holds my arse too. His fingers dig in hard, and like so often since I met him, that makes us equals.
I fuck into his mouth.
He grasps me even tighter as mid-February sunlight finds its way through a fifteenth-floor window. Just like that, I’ve got more than fire between my fingers. It fills my whole fucking chest at what Dair doesn’t try to hide from me.
He lets me see his tears spilling, and I come my fucking brains out.
It takes a while to come down.
I’m on the struggle bus all over again, this time to recover, which is wild.
I’ve done more with strangers and walked away within minutes.
Today, I collapse beside someone I’d do this with a hundred more times, given the option, and fuck me, that’s fatal.
He’s streaked with my spunk and smiling, and my heart doesn’t only stutter.
It snaps closed like a padlock locking around how right he looks in my bed.
The ring of my phone shocks it into rebooting. “Yeah, Maz?” I listen, end the call, and tell him, “Marilyn’s on her way back.”
And that’s who Dair meets a short while later when both of us are cleaned up and dressed, although we’re still on my bed.
Our backs are to the door, both of us sitting near the closest outlet where my aunt’s laptop charges and runs through endless Microsoft updates.
I look over my shoulder and make introductions.
“Ohhh.” Her eyes widen. “So, you’re Vince’s private client.” She waggles a wave at Dair from the bedroom doorway, then homes in on me. “What are you two doing?”
“Looking for the spreadsheet Stacey kept of all her mudlarking finds. Dair’s got a lot of china patterns to identify.
She researched so many, I thought it might speed up the process for him.
” I watched my aunt boot this laptop so often, I’m pretty sure I’ll know the right file to click on when I see it.
I look over my shoulder again to see my cousin’s wife wreathed with smiles, which comes with her usual nosy teasing. “What do you think of your surprise?” She tugs on the bedding. “I saw it and thought of you right away.”
Dair is still a little flushed from getting off. The breeze from the window I cracked open ruffles his hair as he traces a firefighter’s bulging biceps. “Because he’s so strong? No.” He quickly revises his opinion. “Because he saves people with your husband when they do midnight flits for free.”
Marilyn is old-school. Born and bred here, like me. She’s as hard as nails, a human version of Kitty who won’t take anyone messing with her nearest and dearest.
I can’t remember the last time I saw her warm this quickly to a stranger, but that’s what she does. She warms to Dair, and how much I’ve missed her slams me hard in the chest.
So does hearing her tell Dair, “I met Kev at a party for his twenty-fifth. Vince’s cousin, yeah? That was the same year Vince first came to live here. Means I remember his Fireman Sam era.” She aims this at me. “You still love a man with a long hose, don’t you?”
She cackles.
Dair does too, and I give up on trying to pretend that I can find that old file.
I close the laptop and set it aside to dig in the tote instead for the other resource my aunt used to leaf through.
The reference book I find predates Google.
Would be worth fuck all if I tried to sell it.
Dair reacts like I’m trying to give him something worth a real fortune.
“I can’t take this.”
“Why not? I’m never gonna read it.”
Marilyn changes the subject. “Am I cutting your hair, love?” She isn’t talking to me. Her head tilts. “Maybe just a little trim to get it out of your eyes?”
Dair flicks his fringe to one side. “I would, but I’ve got to go to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Caring,” Dair tells her. “Picked up some late shifts.” His eyes laugh about what doesn’t sound too much like fun to me. “I’ll be a zombie all next week.” He sobers. “It will be one of my last weeks here.”
Fuck.
Marilyn doesn’t notice both of us lapse into silence.
She’s too busy revisiting her own caring era.
“I remember those zombie shifts.” They chat about a job role Marilyn left behind for hairdressing, sharing stories about messed-up sleep schedules and body clocks demanding meals at weird times until Dair stands.
I see the moment Marilyn notices that his arms are full.
Not with a laptop or the book I’ve offered.
He holds a purring Kitty, who doesn’t show any sign of shifting.
She’s still snug in his arms when we’re back in the hallway where Dair says, “Wow.”
I see why—the living room door is open.
Dair’s gaze darts between the contents of that room and me. “It’s like a wee palace in there.”
“Didn’t Vince already show you?” Marilyn opens the door even wider. “Come take a quick look. Just ignore the sofa. Kitty claws it every time I’m not looking.”
My chest has prickled for plenty of reasons over the years. Seeing Dair’s reaction provokes warmth I actually like.
Marilyn gives him a tour of the very first pieces I ever worked on.
“These chairs and tables got you through lockdown, didn’t they, Vince?
” She doesn’t wait for an answer, too busy telling Dair about how I kept myself busy when the world stopped on its axis.
“Kev had a van full of clearance junk and no auction houses were allowed to open. Vince watched some YouTube videos, and this was the result. He’s got good eyes.
Must have to see what was under all those paint layers. ”
Dair sets Kitty down to run a hand over satinwood inlays and mahogany I polished. Over the burl of walnut I uncovered and the gilt I learned to apply by trial and error. I made so many mistakes with these pieces.
Like my aunt, Marilyn acts as if they’re perfect. “They all look the real deal, don’t they?” She flashes me a quick look, and this is quieter. “It’s okay that we kept them, yeah?”
“Course it is.” I should have come home sooner. She’s been worried. I see it plain as day in the held breath she lets out.
Dair asks, “Is this the kind of work you did for…” He doesn’t voice Flynn’s name. Doesn’t need to. I’m already nodding.
I bet Marilyn guesses—her snort is dismissive. “These were just Vince’s practice pieces. His last work was so good he could have made some real money.”
She’s angry on my behalf. Fuming. And so is Kitty when Dair does need to leave.
I grab our coats from the bedroom and return to find her yowling.
She does it the minute he puts her down, then follows him like I do to the front door, where he stops me from pulling on my own coat.
He takes it from me and hangs it on a hook.
“Stay. Catch up with Marilyn and get your hair cut.” He sweeps a finger through the too-long fringe flopping across my forehead.
“Only not too much.” He lowers his voice.
“It’s a little bit Disney prince. Thought so the first time I saw you.
” He holds up his phone next. “Besides, I know where I’m going.
I checked. I can catch a bus not too far from here.
It will get me straight to where I’m working tonight.
” His gaze lands on something behind me.
Or on someone. “It was good to meet you, Marilyn.”
She joins me in the doorway. “Come back soon, love.”
“Ah. Probably not. Whether I can sell my stuff or have to give it away, I’ll be home by the end of the month.
Can’t wait,” he says way more faintly than usual.
Dair tries to smile again. “Never thought too hard before about February being the shortest month of the year.” His eyes drop to my mouth.
They rise again to land on Marilyn. “Kinda wish it was a leap year. I’d get to add an extra day to how long I have left. ”
The end of the month rushing up shouldn’t shock me. I’ve always known his deadline. He rallies before me.
“But at least Vincent found a way to offload all my cabinets and chairs and tables.”
“Might have found a way,” I warn him. “No guarantees.”
Yet again, he hasn’t got the first fucking clue about hiding where he’s weakest. He might as well go ahead and show his belly.
“I was ready to give up. Would have paid someone to take it all away. You’ve given me something to work with.
” He acts like he doesn’t care about Marilyn earwigging on this conversation.
“You thinking so hard about it for me means a lot.”
No one’s ever called me a deep thinker.
It means he gets to slip away before I can give him the kiss goodbye I really wanted.
The cat cries again as soon as the door shuts between us, and I could have a little weep too at the look Marilyn gives me. I don’t know how to name it, but I’m sure some piss-taking is coming.
It doesn’t.
Marilyn gives me a hug for no good reason.
She only lets go of me to scoop up an angry cat, but Kitty hisses and spits, her claws out for the first time since I got here. She hides under a table holding plants as spiky as her while I join Marilyn at a window to watch Dair leave the building.
He heads off in the wrong direction, and I get another momentary insight to Kev. This one comes with an action replay of him pressing his forehead to mine after checking I know where I’m headed.
Because he’d already loved and lost enough people.
Someone I also don’t want to lose track of course-corrects below us before I can wrench the window open and yell, “Oi, Oi,” to get his attention.
Dair doesn’t need my direction.
Doesn’t need any more of my help or guidance.
He’ll leave soon for the Isle of Harris, and yet here I am, stamping into my shoes on the Isle of Dogs regardless.
Bless Marilyn for not laughing at me when I dart to my old bedroom to grab a reference book as an excuse to take off running. By the time I reach the front door, she’s there, holding my coat out.
“No time.”
I leave her clutching it to her heart. Who knows why her smile wobbles.
Maybe Dair’s waterworks are contagious. I quit thinking about that and bypass the lift to hammer down flight after flight of stairs, nearly falling headfirst in my hurry.
Then I run full pelt for the bus stop, where Dair looks up from his phone, surprised to see me.
“Here.”
I thrust the reference book at him, and his smile makes almost breaking every bone in my body worth it. I’ve made him happy, and he doesn’t give a fuck who sees it.
Minutes later, a bus carries that smile away, and no, I still didn’t get that kiss I wanted.
I did get to hear him thank me for a book I never would have read from cover to cover like my aunt did. Before the bus pulls away with him safely aboard it, he’s already paging through it, hunting for familiar patterns like Stacey used to.
Of course, Marilyn watched that whole deal.
She’s back at the living room window when I let myself back in the flat. This time, she does laugh. “Well, hello there, Disney prince.” She pushes my fringe back, studying my forehead before letting it fall. “Kitty liked your friend.”
I don’t tell her that Kitty isn’t alone. Marilyn doesn’t need any more ammunition for her teasing. Besides, I’m busy watching that bus disappear into the far distance, and I don’t do that watching alone. An almost feral cat jumps onto the windowsill to join my vigil.
Marilyn leaves us to it with a final comment. “Think she wanted him to stay for longer.”
Me too, Kitty.
Me fucking too.