Chapter Thirty #2
His mouth instantly opens to hers and his hands snake around her body to hold her to him.
India lets out a little moan as she leans in to his body, letting her fingers get tangled in his dark hair, smelling whatever cologne he put on after his shower earlier.
It’s gingery mixed with vanilla, and perhaps patchouli? India knows and loves men’s fragrances. She’s bought enough of it for boyfriends.
‘This is …’ he mutters.
‘A bad idea,’ India replies.
‘The worst.’ Dan keeps kissing her, his mouth roaming over her jawline, into the curve of her ears, his hands holding her as if she’s a bit of precious china.
‘Not limerence, I promise,’ India says.
Instantly, Dan pulls back. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I can’t do this to you. We can’t do this, you’re a vulnerable person, India—’
‘I’m not in love with you,’ she says firmly. ‘Not. In. Love.’
And she isn’t, she’s sure of that. He’s seen her at her most real and she doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind that he isn’t looking at the fake, fragile unicorn-butterfly India.
To show him how important this is, she kisses him three times.
‘Not limerence, not full-on romantic fantasy where I have a wedding dress in mind. I am thinking with my body not my mind. This is sex.’
Their mouths are entwined.
‘This is a mistake.’ He’s still holding her, kissing her.
‘Why is it a mistake?’ India arches her back as Dan leans in to her. She feels molten everywhere.
‘Rose will kill us,’ Dan murmurs.
‘We don’t have to tell her.’ India makes a growling noise as one of Dan’s hands finds her right breast, nipple erect under her silky T-shirt.
‘She’ll know.’
‘I don’t see why? I’m not going to tell her.’
‘She’ll just know. She knows stuff.’ Dan can’t seem to stop himself even as he protests Rose will be furious.
Somehow, he manages to extract himself from the embrace and stands, breathing heavily, a few feet away from India.
‘This is wrong,’ he says. ‘You’re vulnerable, I mean, and …’
‘I’m not!’ protests India. ‘Would you stay if I tell you I want this and I don’t care what Rose thinks? This is not me doing the limerence thing – this is …’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Because I want to have sex with you.’
She doesn’t call it making love on purpose.
Confusing love and sex has got her precisely nowhere.
‘Truly?’
‘Truly,’ she replies and holds out her hand.
Dan waits a beat then takes it.
She leads him to her bed and pulls him down onto it.
And in the tangle of limbs and pulling off of T-shirts, there’s no more thinking. Just bodies, skin against warm, sunburned skin, melting mouths and their bodies arching together.
India wakes up early to the sunrise because they never shut the curtains.
She’s deliciously naked, spooned against Dan and she wriggles closer, loving the feeling of his hard body against hers. He’s taller than her, which she likes. Guys get so stressed if a woman is taller than them. Which is a sign, definitely.
She is going to be on the lookout for signs of the wrong sort of guy from now on.
Upset because she’s taller than them – red flag.
No job – a red flag.
Taking her to sporting events she would have no interest in – a very big red flag.
Rich parents and therefore no job – a huge bloody red flag.
She yawns and wonders if she might get up and grab a juice from the minibar. She doesn’t want to wake Dan because it’s nice having him here.
Which is a good sign.
She’s not wearing make-up, probably looks a bit shattered and never did her night-time face routine, so her skin will be rank. But weirdly, India doesn’t care.
She pauses to test if she really isn’t bothered.
She gets out of bed and opens up a bottle of juice from the minibar, then goes into the en suite to pee.
Miraculously, her face looks good. She brushes her teeth, cleanses her face and rubs some after-sun face cream on.
Her hair is a tangle but she looks happy. India beams at herself. She likes this new her, the one who can say what she thinks, who doesn’t self-edit to please a guy.
Dan is half awake when she returns to bed.
He enfolds her in his arms and India wonders if they can skip the morning session to snooze, but then Dan begins kissing her again.
‘If Rose is going to kill us,’ he says, his mouth moving over the curve of her collarbone, ‘then we might as well do it again.’
How do you catch a big fish? You reel it in very slowly and gently.
At the start, he seemed to understand everything about me. He loved me for who I was. This had never happened before, not with my parents.
I was the grown-up in that house, took care of my mother, fixed things, made her cheer up when she fell into the hole of depression. It was my duty. Since I’d been able to toddle and bring a tissue to a crying woman.
Now, staring into my own daughter’s little smiling face, I realised that my mother had raised me to meet her own needs.
So that when he came around, I thought he loved me. My experience of love was so very flawed.
I saw none of the red flags.
Others had never understood him.
Marta, his first wife, was a bitch.
That should have been the first red flag.
I sailed past all the flags until it was too late.
Now, when it was terrifying, I wondered how I was going to get out of it alive.
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know.
Nobody would believe me.
Nobody. It was the simplest crime. None of the people who thought they were our friends would believe it for a second.
Because he was a shape-shifter. Not the nice kind, the kind that shifted from one type of decency to another.
No, he was the dangerous kind. Society never noticed them. They were predators and they could kill.
They certainly knew how to destroy women, that was for sure.