Chapter 37
Violet
I started to speak, but he raised a finger to his lips.
‘Hush,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t say anything.’
I swallowed.
The tap was still running, and as I stood, stock still but with my heart hammering, Henry strode across and reached behind me, turning the faucet down to a trickle. I could feel his breath, warm against my throat. Droplets of water were running from my hairline down the sides of my face, where they dripped down on to my chest. Without taking his eyes off me, Henry picked up a towel and began to dab them away. His touch, though soft, was deliberate; and I wanted to pull the rough material from his hands so I could experience the sensation of skin against skin, those fingers that had explored me so entirely, turning me liquid with the merest graze. I started to speak, but again, he shushed me, this time by pressing his forehead against mine. The towel dropped to the floor, and for a moment, his hands hovered, one on either side of me.
He was still wearing a shirt and smart trousers, but his feet were bare. Keeping my gaze level, I raised my hands and began undoing his buttons. Henry watched on as if entranced, composed but paralysed.
‘What are you doing?’ he murmured, though he made no move to stop me.
‘Undressing you,’ I said, sliding a finger along his exposed collarbone, then down, my knuckles trailing through the dark hair on his chest. As my hands reached his stomach, the strap of my bra slipped from my shoulder.
‘Oops,’ I breathed, making no move to put it back. Henry lowered his eyes as my hands worked his belt buckle.
‘Vee.’ It was almost a whimper.
I unfastened the button of his trousers but left the zipper in place. His need for me was restrained, but one movement from me would unleash it. Instead, I brought my hands up behind my back and snapped open the clasp of my bra, letting it fall between us. He didn’t protest when I moved forwards to pull the shirt from his shoulders, nor when I allowed my breasts to press against him, but when I moved my fingers lower once again, he seemed to flinch. There was so little barrier now, sensation a promise that thrummed with want, my own for him and his for me.
‘Are you sure?’
He’d posed the question before I had the chance, and my answer came easily.
‘Yes.’ I said the word not only with my voice but my eyes, my lips, my breath, my whole body. Henry hesitated, eyes widening with what felt like wonderment, and then his hands were on me, pulling me against him, and his mouth, searching and seeking, tasting, and gnawing. He bent his head and sucked at my breasts until I cried out with pleasure, his fingers finding the waistband of my knickers and yanking them down as he kicked his way out of his trousers. There was no part of me he didn’t reach, no pocket he wasn’t probing, the two of us a tearing mess of mutual longing. I snaked my hand through our tangle of limbs, wanting to find him, to close my fingers around the hardness and guide him into me, but Henry pulled away, lifting me by my bottom on to the edge of the basin and dropping to his knees.
The back of my head collided with the mirror, and several of the bottles I’d propped above the cabinet came crashing down. I registered no pain, because Henry had opened my legs and buried his head between them, his fingers jabbing as his tongue flicked back and forth. There was no time to feel anything other than rapture, great soaring waves of it that flooded my body with heat. Dazed, I fell limply into his arms, aware of little more than the thudding of my heart and the heaviness clouding my mind as he carried me through to the bedroom.
Laying me down on the mattress with infinite care, he stood back to remove his boxer shorts, eyes never once leaving mine as I smiled up at him. It was my turn to devour him as he had consumed me, but when I shuffled up on to my knees, he shook his head. Henry wanted me properly, fully; I knew it because I yearned for it, too. For him, inside me, the two of us united as one, the rightness of it, of us together.
‘Come here then,’ I breathed.
He did not have to be told twice.
It was many hours later that we finally broke apart, sweaty and satiated. Henry rolled over on to his back, one arm flung out across the pillow, the hand of the other tightly grasped in mine. We hadn’t spoken much, save for whispering well-practised phrases to each other during our lovemaking, and now the silence came like a blanket.
I decided to start with a compliment. ‘That was nice.’
Henry paused in the process of wiping his brow. ‘Nice? Is that all you’ve got?’
‘Fine.’ I squeezed my fingers against his. ‘It was nicer than nice. How about lovely?’
‘Lovely? That’s a bit PG, don’t you think?’
‘Well, how would you describe it?’
‘Hot,’ he supplied. ‘Scorching.’
‘You make it sound as if I was feeding you spicy chicken wings.’
‘It was finger lickin’ good.’
‘Very funny,’ I droned, laughing as he pulled me towards him. When I raised a hand to his cheek, however, Henry jerked his head away.
‘Sorry.’ I faltered, unsure of myself.
‘No,’ he said, expression turning suddenly grave. ‘I’m sorry, it’s a reflex. I’m still getting used to the idea of someone other than me touching it.’
By ‘it’, he meant his scars.
‘Can I?’
He bit down on his lip. ‘All right – but here, let me.’
Lifting my hand, he guided my fingers to his jaw, closing his eyes as I traced the puckered flesh that spread from there to above his cheekbone. The surgeons had done their best, but the damage he’d sustained had been extensive. The corner of his lip remained a deep, bruised purple, and I could see the faint pink line where doctors had stitched his ear back in place.
‘Does it hurt?’
His fingers closed around mine. ‘Not any more.’
‘Do you ever think about it? I mean, obviously you do, but...’
Henry looked at me steadily with the eye that was still fully functional. His other drooped in its socket, cursed to gaze forever downwards.
‘Less frequently than I used to.’
‘What about the other dreams?’ I murmured, nestling myself more closely against him. For many years after Luke’s near-fatal accident on the boat, Henry had suffered from terrifying nightmares, often thrashing himself and me awake in the small hours.
‘I still have them, occasionally.’
I had been so angry with him on the day it happened, and for so many of the days that followed. It had trickled out of me for years, the resentment at what could have been like a slow poison.
‘I still think about it all the time,’ I whispered.
‘The fishing trip?’
‘The accident. It’s stuck on a loop in my head.’
Henry stroked my cheek, gazing at me for a moment before turning away with a reluctant sigh.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, as he scooted into a sitting position and lowered his feet to the rug.
‘To the spare room.’
I sat up, wounded by his words. ‘Why?’
Henry reached for his discarded boxers. ‘I need space to think.’
‘About what?’
He rubbed a hand through his hair, agitated by my badgering. ‘It’s been a long day – a long and difficult day. We both need to sleep.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
Henry disappeared into the en suite and closed the door behind him. I heard the toilet seat being raised, the sound of the flush and the tap running. When he came back into the bedroom, the rest of his clothes were bundled up in his hands.
‘We can talk in the morning,’ he said. ‘I have to be up early, there’s a meeting with my father’s albacea.’
‘His what?’
‘The executor of his will.’
‘Oh. It’s not— I thought it would be Mateo?’
Henry shook his head slowly. ‘Apparently not. He asked Juan to do it.’
‘You’re joking?’
I could see that he wasn’t. ‘What the hell? So, Juan is who you’re meeting?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘What about Luke?’ I said, not caring that I was tearing open the laceration we’d gone some way towards healing over the course of the past few highly charged hours. ‘He needs you here.’
I need you here.
‘I’ll only be gone for an hour or so.’
He was being so rational about it all, about the prospect of inheriting an enormous amount of wealth and property, not to mention the fact that he and I had just crossed the boundary from bitter adversaries to passionate lovers once again. Getting to my feet, I ran across the room, cutting Henry off at the door that led out on to the landing and wrapping my arms around his neck. I was still naked, and I felt the vulnerability that came with it, this show I was making of giving myself over to him so entirely. The dynamic of our relationship had always been balanced, and I knew as I begged him to stay, to hold me, to kiss me, to make love to me ‘one more time’, that I was throwing us off kilter.
‘This isn’t you,’ he said, as he gently but firmly prised away my hands. Guiding me backwards until my calves connected with the bed frame, he lowered me slowly down. ‘Get some sleep. For me. I promise we’ll talk tomorrow.’
I slumped. ‘Well then, goodnight, Henry.’
He waited until he was through the door before he turned, a faint smile on his lips that did not quite reach his eyes. To me, it felt a lot like pity; only a little like love.
‘Buenas noches, Violet,’ he said.
And then he was gone.