Chapter 45
Aria stood back to watch Nic work. He rolled up his sleeves, tensed his thigh muscles, lifted a foot, and put gentle pressure on a spade she’d handed him.
As he dug into the ground, she was left in no doubt of how capable he was.
Although he said he never got his hands dirty, from his dexterity to his work ethic he was designed to build and change landscapes.
Aria felt the familiar butterflies in her stomach and tried to remember when they first appeared.
Then she firmly put that out of her mind.
‘You don’t have to dig a grave, you know. The acorn is only this big.’ She held up the germinated seed between her finger and her thumb.
‘When you told me we were planting a tree, I envisioned a ten-foot-tall oak with ancient rings around its circumference.’ He threw down the spade and held his hand out for the seed. ‘I didn’t imagine a specimen jar. You collected the acorns last autumn?’
‘My dad did, I guess. I found them in a bowl and put them to work. You are planting his legacy.’
‘No pressure, then.’
Their fingers brushed as she transferred the pod into his palm, and he glanced down at fluffy sliders he’d chucked soil over twice. ‘Did you kill a squirrel for those?’
‘Why do you think all the red ones have disappeared around here?’ she grinned. ‘Listen to that owl! And there was a woodpecker doing its stuff earlier.’ They stood in silence, listening, as a small creature flitted by. She’d always loved bats.
He picked up some soil and rubbed it between his fingers.
‘I only ever considered a garden as a space to build a conservatory or to increase the value of a house. But I’ve watched you and felt envious.
You fit here, like one of those sunflowers.
’ He pointed to a plant that was shooting up.
‘You understand the earth and the water and the relationship we have with them much more than I do.’
A sunflower! That’s what he’d affectionately called her when she was chucking her guts up.
But Aria didn’t want to reconnect with a time where there was possibility between them.
‘Everyone intrinsically understands and connects with nature.’ She brushed Nic off by parroting one of her father’s lectures.
‘They just blind themselves to it as they develop other priorities and live in places where there’s a deficit.
’ She squatted, picking up a palmful of the rich, dark soil.
‘A handful of dirt is the key to everything. It doesn’t have a fancy name, and it looks a bit rubbish.
But the wise appreciate its beauty and its value.
Every home your company develops starts here.
Pubs, offices, tower blocks, hotels, cottages, or simple huts like mine.
They are all built on this. We move in and slowly put our roots down.
We become connected, consciously or unconsciously, to the land beneath our feet.
And our experiences push the roots deeper and feed the earth more.
Some of us have families and they put down roots of their own.
And over generations the goodness passes from nature to humans and back again.
’ She pushed the earth together in her palm and it formed a clump.
‘It’s at the centre of everything. The most valuable thing we all have, and the thing we most neglect.
’ She looked up at the sky, as though searching for something.
‘I was annoyed when Dad gifted me the hut. I wanted a house. I thought I had no roots here at the lake, believing I was a product of the town. But now I think maybe this is where he planted me, all those years ago. A little belatedly, I’ve begun building my own foundations.
Of course, I can’t live here so it’s temporary, but I’ll always come back.
I know that now.’ Her chest tightened. ‘And when we die, like Dad, our bodies become part of nature. Wherever we bury or scatter them.’ She didn’t fight him when he walked forward and enveloped her in his arms. After a few moments absorbing his warmth, she raised her head, and he cupped her chin in his hand.
Was he going to kiss her again? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
But he let her go. ‘How long before we have an oak?’
‘My dad always said three hundred years.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die.’
‘Be quicker to grow a new generation of humans,’ he said.
And she could have sworn he was the one to blush.
***
It was dark when they returned to the beach.
‘I should grab some sleep,’ he said.
Aria wanted to agree, but found herself inviting him to stay, her earlier worries overtaken by their easy companionship this evening. ‘It’s an unusually clear night. I read that you can see Mars,’ she told him.
Nipping indoors for blankets, she spread a couple out on the shingle, and they sat, slightly apart. ‘The house was tidy – you’ve been busy,’ he ventured, but she didn’t volunteer a reply.
She leaned back on her elbows. ‘Dad aways used to do his parental pep talks like this. Some people chat with their kids in the car, so they don’t have to look them in the eye when they answer.
My father preferred to focus on the intergalactic highway while he warned me about the dangers of growing up. ’
‘What kind of dangers?’
‘Men like you,’ she fired back, prompting a chuckle from Nic. ‘What did your mother warn you about?’ she asked.
‘Men like my dad. She never wanted me to be like him. We had a massive family crisis caused by his infidelity. He went on to have two more children after an affair that went back years.’
‘That sucks.’
‘Yep. I’m starting to wonder if they were ever happy together.’
‘Is she happy now?’
‘We haven’t spoken in a while.’ His stiff shoulders told her he wasn’t up for sharing more. ‘Do you know much about invasive species?’ he asked her.
‘That’s a surprise turn in the conversation,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I know about the types that grow around here.’
Nic reached down to his trainers and unlaced them.
‘Japanese knotweed, I’ll bet? It’s like my family was invaded by it.
Dad started the creep with his behaviour.
In that moment, where we were collectively vulnerable, the shoots grabbed each of us individually.
I thought, if we left it long enough, and didn’t feed it, it might die away naturally.
But it buried itself deeper and deeper into the foundations of our family life and almost choked us.
I fear by letting my father back in I might be re-escalating its insidious creep.
’ He turned to her. ‘I’m sorry, that doesn’t make any sense. ’
Aria turned onto her side. ‘You need to go right down to the roots with knotweed…’ she told him, ‘…and make a barrier or it’ll overcome everything.
You have to basically dig a trench around it to stop it spreading.
And at the same time, cut back the canes, here and there, trimming the bad parts.
Eventually the decent stuff wins through.
Sorry, that doesn’t sound very easy, does it? ’
Nic kicked off his shoes and silence fell between them. She knew him well enough to realise sharing had been a big deal and wondered if her answer had been unhelpful. As the sound of a strangled duck came from the bushes he leaped up. ‘What the hell?’
Familiar with the noise, Aria was a little embarrassed to brief him about its source. ‘It’s hump hour.’
‘What hour?’
‘You heard me right. Very occasionally he gets a little bit tired and overstimulated and needs some comfort. He’d prefer a human but he’s probably avoiding me because of you.’ She stood up, marched over to Tiger, and lifted him out of the bushes. The dog immediately began thrusting at her elbow.
‘He dry-humps your arm?’
‘Well, he tries.’ Tiger licked every inch of her hand, before trying to get himself off again.
‘Stop it. We have company.’ She put him down and he went straight back to the toy, pushing his appendage against it.
She frowned. ‘He’ll try to shag anything that stays still.
It’s lucky the real ducks steer clear.’ As if wanting to flex in front of the boys, Tiger carted the duck over to Nic and dropped it in front of him, before rubbing himself against his arm.
He withdrew it straight away. ‘Thank you but I’m not a sex toy.’
Aria giggled. ‘Is this the first time you’ve been objectified?’
Nic threw the duck towards the water. It landed with a splash. Realising he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from the male, Tiger ran after it, standing in the shallows.
‘The only dog on earth that won’t swim.’
‘I get you, buddy.’ Nic strolled over, picked the rubber duck out of the flotsam and gave it back. Tiger resumed the humping. ‘It’s firmly under his legs,’ he commented.
‘I don’t think it’s his legs we need to worry about,’ Aria replied as Tiger’s unfortunate bird made a desperate squeak.
‘God in heaven, it comes with sound. This is wildlife pornography.’ Nic reached down, grabbed the rubber duck from the shingle and threw it back into the woodland.
Picking up the prompt, Tiger followed the toy into the bushes.
In the moonlight, the silver carpet of lake looked like black magic.
At this time all the imperfections of nature disappeared, leaving a uniform beauty.
Maybe Nic was affected too, as he knelt before her, eyes shining, face creased into a smile. ‘So, is it unique to the Wilson family, then?’ He put one hand tentatively on her bare thigh.
She laughed, giving permission for his advances. ‘Is what unique?’
‘Hump hour.’ He stroked her leg with his fingers, making her shiver. ‘Or is it a wider Lakeland tradition I don’t know about.’ Despite her reservations, it was delicious to feel his touch, and she put her hand over his, hurt and fury dissolving as the butterflies in her stomach beat their wings.
Nic’s features were arresting in the moonlight. On impulse, she ignored her doubts while he widened the area of his massage. ‘Is there a reason you ask?’
‘Well, for scientific purposes, I’m interested to see if the locals can go for a whole hour without actually…’
‘Finishing off…?’ Aria mirrored his Joker-style grin.
‘Exactly.’
She put her finger on her chin as though thinking as his stroking became more intense. ‘With a person you were attracted to, a whole hour could be…’
‘Difficult?’
‘If not impossible.’
‘How would it traditionally start?’ he asked, his fingers travelling further up her thigh and dipping under her shorts, where all the longing of recent days started to culminate in a pulse she couldn’t ignore.
‘Well, pretty much like that. But perhaps there needs to be less space between us to, you know, increase the friction?’
‘You want more friction and less space?’ he enquired, his voice as light as his fingers. She watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat and wondered if his mouth was as dry as hers. Her breathing was shallower now as his finger and thumb circled her clit, touching and teasing.
‘A lot less space,’ she panted, lifting her hips to meet his ministrations.
Keeping his hand where it was, he gently pushed her back on the rug and lowered himself on top of her.
She felt herself flush as her body absorbed his heat.
He smiled, catching her gaze and holding it.
The spark travelled down her body and when she ground her pelvis against his she almost set her knickers on fire.
They needed to lose the clothes. Nic obviously had the same idea as he deftly unbuttoned her pink denim shorts and pushed them down her legs before pulling off her hoodie.
She had no bra on and he looked hungrily at her chest where her nipples were hardening with the cold and desire.
Then his lips were on hers and he parted them with his tongue.
They worked each other’s mouths like a dance they’d been practising for.
She grazed his teeth, lips, anything she could find while he caressed her breast until there was barely an inch he wasn’t stimulating.
Her longing intensified and she clawed at the buttons on his shirt, her kiss moving from urgent to furious.
She groaned as her clit pulsed, wanting more.
Perhaps understanding this, he rolled onto his back, cursing as his shoulder came off the rug and the shingle bit into his skin.
Straddling him now, Aria unzipped his jeans, tugged them down and grabbed at his underwear.
With the waistband clear, she saw a lightly haired stomach and a tight erection.
She fisted his hardness with her palm, feeling his heat as she dragged her fingers to the tip.
His eyes darted to her enthusiastic work, and she wondered how often this businessman gave up control.
Aria let him fully take her weight as she ground rhythmically against him, keeping her hand on his shaft and massaging the tip with her thumb.
Their breathing matched as he moved his attention to her other breast, waking it fully, tempting the nipple to pebble further.
Running his free hand down her side, he gave her buttocks a squeeze as she thrust against his cock, feeling a familiar sensation build.
And then his warm hand cupped her between the thighs and she squirmed with pleasure.
One finger was joined by two and it was too much already, yet not enough.
She wanted to taste him, get him off and release the sexual energy she’d been carrying around like a weight.
More than anything, she wanted him inside her.
‘Back pocket,’ he said and she reached for the jeans they’d discarded.
‘It’s stuck, no, I’ve got it.’ She freed a condom from his wallet.
He was stiff and substantial, and she swallowed with anticipation as they smoothed the protection on.
Now she felt a calm sense of her need and their purpose as he put his hand on her shoulder and guided himself into her.
She moaned softly as his length pierced her, feeling him from the inside out.
As they moved as one in steady rhythm, Aria became highly sensitised to everything around them.
The ripples of the water, the breeze against her bare skin and the darkening of the sky.
Entwining their fingers, he slammed into her, his strong thighs dominating hers.
With a groan, she came, and felt him follow in uninhibited release.
They lay, in a moment of blissful security, fused to each other.
He was careful when he pulled out, an appreciative smile tugging at her lips for his gentleness.
‘I think hump hour needs to go in the brochures,’ he said. ‘Beats a happy hour any day of the week.’