Chapter 26
There was something fragile in the set of her shoulders, the position of her chin.
But her fingers were greedy and there was no way Rhys would deny her anything right now, especially not when everywhere he touched her made her gasp and shudder.
Even as the contact of his skin on hers seemed to break something in her, she kept demanding more, giving more.
It took a long time to actually reach the bed.
He found countless places on her body he wanted to explore and commit to memory: the base of her throat; the knot of bone on the end of her shoulder; her hairline at the back of her neck.
There was a little dimple on her lower back that he returned to over and over with his gaze, his fingers and even his lips.
He couldn’t tell whether that spot fascinated him because of the shape and the shadow, or because every time he touched her there she sucked in a hitched breath.
Then she surprised him with her eagerness to touch in return, making her own discoveries about him.
Being the subject of her desires lit a fire in him that burned uncomfortably, even as it fed the pathological need for her that was growing out of proportion.
So, he let her touch and kiss and have her way with him, even as he worried she was taking ownership of essential parts of him and could leave him as a worn-out husk when she was done.
It wouldn’t be such a step down from where he’d been before.
He took her at her word and let her see how much he desired her in return. ‘Is this okay?’ he had to ask, as he curled his body around hers on the edge of the bed.
Her answer was a whispered, ‘Yes,’ as she climbed up onto the mattress. ‘Yes,’ she repeated on a soft, beautiful moan, her back bowed as he took the most intimate privilege of her body.
He would never remember her face, but he doubted he would forget the details of her like this, bearing up under the force of desire, this raw need that perhaps neither of them should have admitted, if they wanted to keep things light.
There was nothing light about the way he felt when the sensations sank their claws into him and his instincts took over. With no small amount of relief, he felt her shudder, the gratifying signals of her body reaching that high point a bare second before his vision blurred and he got there too.
He pressed a kiss to the centre of her back, then another.
The soft hotel room lighting wasn’t enough to appreciate the shine on her skin.
He needed a reflector or two – anything too harsh would lose the gentle contrast of shadows.
He’d use the Nikon, not his new Sony. She was an epic landscape photograph, not a portrait.
She stretched and shivered and he froze, belatedly realising he should have got off her several seconds ago.
As he eased up, she flinched and the action sent something like panic through him.
Quickly tossing the condom, he returned to find her sluggishly rolling over, her hair mussed and her skin blotched with subtle red marks.
‘Pull yourself together, Rhys,’ she said weakly. ‘You look like you broke your favourite toy.’
He kind of felt that way.
But then she put him out of his misery – as she had a habit of doing – in a croaky, overused voice. ‘I’m not broken. I feel… better.’ That was something at least.
‘Do you want some water?’ It wasn’t one of the many questions spinning in his head, but it was what came out.
‘Sure,’ she answered.
He noticed her looking at her clothes, strewn on the floor by the door, and he collected them for her while she sipped from the glass.
‘Is this a request for me to go?’ she asked and he stared at her for a moment, finally hearing the hurt under that dry tone.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I just thought you’d like your clothes.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
He swallowed and continued with the question he’d been weighing up asking. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Ah,’ she said, her shoulders hunching. She picked up her bra, but set it down again with a frown.
Leaping up, he fetched his biggest, softest T-shirt and slipped it over her head, enjoying the way she tipped her face up in thanks.
‘I might not give this back,’ she said.
‘I was prepared to make that sacrifice before I gave it to you,’ he said as he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, still not sure how much space she needed.
‘You’re really making me think I don’t know shit about men,’ she declared suddenly.
‘Well, you’re—’
‘Young – I know. You keep reminding me. I’d think you were nearly ready for your seniors’ bus pass, the way you go on about eleven paltry years.’
‘It’s not just the years,’ he muttered.
He expected her to disagree, but she sighed. ‘Yeah, I’m beginning to get that.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Reshma is divorced. I didn’t know.’
‘That would explain a bit about her relationship with Will,’ he answered thoughtfully.
‘Her “situationship”,’ Ginny said drily, but something made her smile fade almost as soon as it blossomed. ‘We’re all frauds. Toni said we’re just as bad as the team at Great Heart and I’m struggling to disagree.’
‘But… there’s still you.’
She threw up her arms and shifted on the bed.
‘Oh yes, silly Ginny with her shiny ideas about love. I’m starting to realise that’s all they were: ideas.
I was setting myself up to fail, by disconnecting what I wanted from reality.
I think that bloody hypnotherapist was right.
I’m scared no one will love me, so I created this complex delusion that would give me a convenient excuse for relationships that continually fail to make it out of infancy. ’
He wanted to contradict her, but he remembered too well what she’d told him about her parents. That kind of trauma couldn’t be undone with a platitude.
‘I’m the worst of us all, pretending all this time.’
‘Ginny, I don’t believe—’
She skewered him with a sharp look before he could finish. ‘Even you’ve actually loved someone before.’
He stilled, staring into his lap, chastising himself for not accepting earlier that this conversation was inevitable and he should just prepare an explanation.
‘You did love her, right? Your ex? I mean, before you… called it all off. It wouldn’t be so difficult for you to talk about it otherwise, right?’
‘I never planned to marry her,’ he said, worried by that gaze of hers that saw too much.
‘That part I know. Kira has a bigger mouth than she thinks. You were “partners”. You know in Australia, they have legal recognition of relationships like that. It sort of gives the same legal status as being married.’
‘Access to family law and inheritance without requiring the embarrassing public declarations of love and all the trumpets and confetti and the expensive meal?’
‘Are you making a statement about the modern-day role of marriage in society when I’m trying to get you to spill the truth about your ex?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
Moving slowly, she came to sit next to him, her bare legs hanging off the bed. Her shoulder pressed into his arm, her hip to his, he could have believed he was part of her.
‘That’s okay,’ she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. ‘But I would like to understand.’
‘Even if it’s a red flag?’
‘Especially if it is,’ she replied gently, peering up at him. ‘I don’t need to rehabilitate you in my mind when this is just casual, right? I think it’s good for me to come to grips with shades of grey.’
He snaked an arm around her, feeling faintly ridiculous, like a teenager making that yawn-and-stretch move in the cinema. But Ginny practically purred when he gave her a squeeze and left his arm there.
‘I think we were good together,’ he began, his thoughts swimming. ‘Her name’s Annie,’ he said as an aside. ‘We got together when I was twenty-nine, did a few long trips together, but she was putting off her law career, so, at some point, I had to go away and she couldn’t come with me.’
‘Wow, she’s a lawyer?’
He nodded. ‘Corporate solicitor. We were always keen to keep some things for ourselves, so it worked out okay that I was away, sometimes for a couple of months, on an assignment. I imagined things continuing that way. I didn’t want anyone else and neither did she.
We circled back to each other when we needed to, but we had our space. ’
‘I’m not very good with space,’ Ginny mumbled.
Rhys glanced pointedly at their thighs, squashed so close together they could have been conjoined. ‘I’ve worked that out.’ In that moment, he didn’t mind.
‘What happened then? She decided she did want more?’
He shook his head. ‘My accident happened.’
‘Oh no.’
‘We’ve been over this. I’m okay now. You don’t need to get upset for me.’
She nodded with a sigh. ‘I know. What I feel is irrelevant at best and possibly unhelpful, but it was awful thinking of it today.’
‘Today?’
‘Yes, when you were dangling from a rope!’
He turned to her. ‘That’s what my job is – or a big part of it. You can’t get the shots I get without being up there yourself.’
She swallowed visibly and he tried not to let it mean something that she was worried about his safety.
‘What did Annie think about it?’
‘She does some climbing – well, she did back then. Maybe you wouldn’t be so worried if you knew about the knots and anchors and fixed lines.’
Ginny wasn’t reassured. ‘Did you use knots and anchors and fixed lines when your accident happened?’
‘Yes,’ he had to answer. ‘One of the cams wasn’t placed properly and it ripped out. Someone else had set the line for me and I didn’t check it.’
‘Are you… going to tell me it could have been much worse?’ Her eyes were red at the edges.
‘It could have been,’ he insisted.
‘Was she there? Did Annie see you fall?’
‘Annie wasn’t there when I fell. She was still in the UK.’
She breathed out through pursed lips – in relief? For his ex-girlfriend? Surely even Ginny couldn’t be so empathetic. But she proved him wrong again.
‘Good. I imagined today that she’d witnessed it and… I don’t know how I would have coped.’