Chapter 13
Lando
Harry Ellis sleeps naked. Not “pretty much naked” as he’d claimed to last night, but completely nude.
Nood, bare, starkers, full moon, birthday suit, buck naked. Dick and balls flapping everywhere.
In fairness, he didn’t start off that way.
We’d got into bed together, me in a sleep tee and PJ bottoms, and Harry in his underpants.
That didn’t last long at all. I’ve never known anyone to toss and turn so much.
The man was clearly uncomfortable. He’d somehow dislodged my bottom sheet from all four corners and kicked me several times with his crusty, callousy rugby talons. Also, he wouldn’t fucking stop moaning.
“Just take them off!” I’d shouted after about twenty minutes of being assaulted. “If they’re bothering you that much, just take off your damn pants.”
“You don’t mind?” he’d asked for the eightieth time.
“It’s either take them off and get your junk essence all over my blankets, or fuck off and sleep next door with Hooke Manor’s other resident, Mary. Though she died in seventeen eighteen and isn’t corporeal, and she has a habit of lowering the room temperature by about ten degrees too.”
“Yeah, no. Nothing against Mary, I’m sure her death was tragic and all . . .” Harry said, whipping off his underpants without any shame or self-awareness and climbing under the covers. “But to fuck am I sharing a room with a ghost.”
Four and a half minutes later—I’d timed it—he was snoring.
Now it’s Saturday morning—no wait, afternoon—and Harry is stretching beside me, the duvet pushed into the middle of the mattress, and yes, he’s still completely naked.
“Your bed is so comfortable,” he says, letting his hand drift softly over his chest and tummy.
“Please, can you put some clothes on now?” I ask.
He hops out of bed, heads straight to my bathroom, and pees with the door wide open. I can’t see him, thankfully, but it’s fucking loud. Who does that?
“I forgot to ask you yesterday if anyone else was home. You don’t live on your own, do you?” he says when he returns, still stark-bollock naked.
Last night I would have been mistaken for thinking Harry Ellis was shy, but I guess that had only been in relation to his sexual prowess. He’d been nervous, I realised, but never shy.
A part of me is impressed by his utter disregard for self-consciousness, that he’s so immediately comfortable being his full self in front of me.
I’m still a stranger to him. I can only assume he didn’t google the living daylights out of me as I had with him, and therefore only knows me from what I’ve told him.
Is it his upbringing? Growing up with four boys in one house probably contributed to his warped view of personal space. Or is it his sixteen years of playing rugby with its communal showers and locker-room culture and lads, lads, lads, that have made him so uninhibited?
He does have a nice body, though, I’ll give him that.
He’s thick and muscular, and the softer flesh around his hips and waist is begging me to dig my fingers in.
I refrain. He has enormous thighs and glutes, and his biceps do in fact bulge.
Freckles cover his skin like a blanket of stars.
They’re everywhere, including his feet and foreskin, but they seem especially concentrated on his shoulders, arms, and lower legs.
“In theory, my dad and stepmum live here too, but in practice . . .” I try to remember the last time I saw my father and give up mid thought.
“Sometimes Dad will let his friends stay here for a week or two. Most of the time he forgets the heads-up text, so I’ll often find randos milling about the house. ”
Harry sits his naked, freckly ass on the edge of my bed. “Doesn’t that bother you? I think that might weird me out if I kept finding strangers in my house. Like, how do you know they’re not burglars?”
“Well, not that I’m being classist or anything, but generally burglars don’t wear Prada slippers to breakfast,” I say.
“I don’t know, I kinda like it when there’s people about.
” I shrug, hoping in that one gesture Harry will understand just how mind-numbingly lonely it can be to live in a Grade II listed, eight-bedroomed manor house in the middle of fucking nowhere pretty much by yourself.
“Where’s your dad and stepmum?” he asks.
“Right now, or in general?”
“Either. Both.”
“Right now I believe my dad is in Paris, which I think is the closest to home he’s been in a few months, and Juliette is . . . I actually have no idea. She’s twenty-five. My dad’s fifty-five. She’s wife number four. I’ll let you decide what to do with that information.”
“Oh,” he says.
“I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.”
“Hey,” Harry says after a few moments of looking off into the distance. “Can I use your shower?”
“Sure. Towels are in the top cupboard, the one next to the bath,” I reply.
“Wait, there are cupboards in there?” He’s already on his feet, heading towards the bathroom.
I tap the wall between the sink and the bathtub, and the marble-coated panel springs open. A light flicks on inside the cavity, and I grab a towel from the top of the pile. It’s black, like every other piece of fabric I own.
“Oh my days, what the heck? I’d’ve had no idea there were towels behind there.” Harry starts randomly pushing sections of the walls. “Are there cupboards everywhere?”
On his third random push, a door springs open, revealing my collection of everyday skincare products like serums, moisturisers, eye creams, et cetera. Another lucky push on a wall opens the small cleaning supplies cupboard, and another reveals my toilet paper stash.
Harry is laughing deliriously, absolutely giddy with the notion of all this hidden storage. His dimples pop on both cheeks, and his dick bounces in time with his laughter.
I shove the towel into his hands because I’ve been holding it out for at least two minutes now and he still hasn’t even acknowledged it. “You can cover yourself up, you know.”
Harry looks down at his body as though only just remembering he’s still naked. He raises a single brow and accepts the towel, but instead of wrapping it around himself, he simply holds it folded. “Didn’t expect you of all people to be prudish.”
“I’m not, it’s just . . . distracting. It’s very .
. . bouncy,” I say, and Harry snorts. I turn the shower on for him and crank the heat down to a normal person’s tolerable temperature.
“Right, this one here is the hot-cold, and this toggle here will change the setting on the head, and you can put the rainfall on here.”
He’s laughing again, the towel nowhere near his junk. “Holy shit, this is about to be the fanciest shower I’ve ever had.”
I hand him two bottles, one shampoo and the other bodywash. “Do you need any other products?”
Harry shakes his head, hangs the towel up on a hook, places the toiletries on the shelf, and steps under the stream. His hair bleeds from bright ginger into a dark burnt orange, and water rushes over his face, spatters his shoulders, and sluices down his abdomen.
I realise two things. One, he’s just going to shower right in front of me, without waiting for me to leave, and two, I’m staring at him.
The TV is a welcome distraction while I wait for Harry to finish washing.
It doesn’t quite drown out his off-key rendition of “It Feels Like Christmas,” though it helps a little.
But when he starts squeak-singing about mittens, I have to smother my smile with a pillow.
It smells of Lumière du Fant?me and stirs some very weird, very alien, and very discombobulating emotions in my gut.
He’d been in the bathroom for over fifteen minutes when the overwhelming urge to check on him, like he might have become lost, forces me off the bed.
The water switches off the second I step foot onto the black marble floor, and Harry steps out of the shower, dragging the towel down over his face, once again failing to cover his freckly penis.
“I need one of those in my flat. Oh my god, I’d never leave it,” he says, now pulling the towel over his head and spiking his hair up in random directions. Does he not feel the moisture on any other part of his body?
“Do you want some breakfast?” I ask. I’m not staring at the pools gathering around his feet. Or at the droplets of water that have landed outside the perimeter of the bath mat.
“Can I move in here?” he says instead of answering my question.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. I’ll meet you in my kitchen after you get dressed. Do you remember the way?”
He shrugs. “I’ll find you.”
I hand him another towel, pointing to the mess on the floor. “Don’t slip over, okay? See you in a bit.”
When Harry finds me in the kitchen ten minutes later, I’m pacing. I’ve already laid out a variety of items on the counter along with cooking instruments, so I’m ready to go as soon as he tells me what he’d like.
It’s probably just that I’ve never had anyone besides Daisy stay over before, and I’ve never had to make breakfast for anyone besides Daisy and me.
I’ve also never been in a situation where I’ve woken up with another guy and not immediately wanted to escape.
Maybe it has more to do with the fact that we never fucked rather than the peculiar Harry thoughts swirling in my head.
I’m just not used to this scenario. That’s all. It’s not like I’m having any physical cravings for Harry either. Nothing sexual, because there never are sexual thoughts, but like why . . . is he just there in my mind?
“Do you like eggs?” I ask as Harry slots himself right behind me. He’s used my shampoo and my shower gel, so why does it smell different on him? And why am I sucking in the scent as though I’m on a plummeting plane and the oxygen masks have dropped?
“Depends on how they’re cooked. Scrambled? Ew, fuck no. Too rubbery. But I do like them when the yellow is runny. Want me to help with anything?” He picks up my Le Creuset cast-iron skillet. “Jesus, fuck, that’s heavy.”