CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
He laughed. ‘Well, good thing I brought all of this.’
‘Come in.’
She stepped aside and he loomed over her for a moment as he moved into the hallway. They glanced at each other silently as the proximity reminded them both of what had happened. What they both wanted to happen.
‘You remember the kitchen?’ Raina couldn’t help saying.
He raised an eyebrow at that, smiling in disbelief. ‘I very much do.’
They moved into said kitchen and he placed the heavy bag of supplies on the counter she’d been pressed against the night before. He began to unpack, and Raina smiled a barely there smile as she picked up on a slight nervousness in him.
‘All right, beautiful,’ he said. ‘Roast chicken with lemon, sage and parsley.’
‘Nice.’
‘With some Italian salad and the expensive bread.’
‘Oh, the expensive bread. Holy fuck.’
‘You’re not the average groundling, Miss Lewis. Only the best for you.’
Raina smirked. ‘Want me to document you trying to find your way around a very specifically organized neurodivergent kitchen?’
‘So you can humiliate me and expose me as a boring neurotypical for your followers?’
‘Look at you, learning the lingo. I have other names for you, Alice.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
She took pity on him after he searched in befuddlement for a salad dish, by pulling out all of the cookware he was going to need. She hoisted herself up onto the island and poured two drinks, sipping her own while she watched him work.
He was good. More than good, she noticed. He was adept. He diced and prepped and moved about her kitchen with a comfortable confidence.
‘This is rather impressive,’ she remarked. ‘I thought it was all a weird ruse but you actually seem to know what you’re doing.’
‘I’m very serious about impressing you.’
Raina enjoyed watching him. ‘It smells good.’
He turned to look at her and it was slow and deliberate. He stepped closer and she moved her legs apart to accommodate him. He pushed her long fall of hair over her shoulder and pressed his face into her neck.
It took all of Raina’s discipline for her to lean back and smirk. ‘I never do anything, or anyone, on an empty stomach.’
Heat flashed in his eyes but he threw his head back and laughed. It was an unbelievable sound, one Raina could never have thought possible of the cagey, sardonic person she’d met in the museum.
She laughed as well, the sound only faltering when his face grew serious and his hands were on her waist. She let out a breath of air, which caused a stray strand of hair to fall against her face. He tucked it back.
‘Happy birthday, Raina.’
Raina looked at him. Staring in the way you were always told not to.
She’d loved watching people as a small child.
Meggie had been astronomically strict about it, fearful of Raina doing anything that might signal to others that she was different.
But she loved observing people’s different ways of being.
The way their body language changed when they were listening to music with headphones on.
The way they changed when coming into contact with other people.
Raina was fascinated by behaviour, mostly because she’d been told she was doing it wrong her entire life.
Now, as she stared openly at Tom Branimir’s face, she was grateful more than ever for being neurodivergent. It meant seeing every detail in bright, beautiful clarity. It meant feeling every touch a thousand times more intensely.
I can see every beautiful bit of you. In a way so many others can’t.
‘What is it?’ Tom asked.
‘Nothing,’ Raina said. ‘I’m just . . . remembering you.’
She didn’t know how else to put it, but the words made his face crease into a smile.
‘I’ve never known anyone like you.’
He said it so quietly. So full of incredulity. Raina said nothing. She’d heard it before. In many different tones. Horror. Confusion. But never with the slight tinge of wonder and desire she could now hear in Tom’s voice.
‘I’m actually very ordinary.’
‘Ah, Raina, I just don’t get it.’
‘What?’
He was examining her. His eyes drank her in with hunger and amused disbelief. ‘I’ve spent the past few years chasing people who pretend. Ordinary, small people who told extraordinary lies in order to manipulate and extort.’
Raina hummed a noise of disapproval. ‘You’re so uncharitable, Tom.’
‘Maybe,’ he acknowledged. ‘But you . . . You, Raina, I just don’t get.’
‘Yes, you’ve mentioned.’
‘Let me just get this out.’
For the first time, he seemed incapable of formulating his thoughts. It was unlike him. Raina slid off the island and made her way through to the living room, taking her drink with her. He followed, sitting beside her on the sofa with a gaze that was too intense.
‘Raina, you said yesterday that you knew exactly why I crossed the floor at that dinner. But you were wrong.’
‘Please,’ she said quietly, placing her drink on the coffee table with a slightly shaking hand. ‘You saw a story.’
‘No. That was an excuse to talk to you. An excuse to shut up everyone at my table. I told myself it was work; it was professional curiosity. Told myself that for some time.’
Raina finally turned to look at him properly, the two of them still sat side by side on the couch with only a dinosaur cushion between them. ‘What was it?’
‘I saw the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life. I saw her laugh. The most stunning laugh. And I thought I need her to look at me like that. I need her to look at me, full stop. Or I’ll go mad.’
Raina made a small sound of misgiving.
‘No, I know,’ he said hurriedly, his accent thickening a little. ‘It sounds hideous. It sounds dramatic and stupid. But that was it. The whole room went away, Raina. All I could think was, I have to talk to her. She has to look at me. She has to see me. And I’ve never felt that in my life. Never.’
‘You’re a writer,’ Raina said, more to herself than to him. ‘You know what to say.’
‘Not about this stuff.’
His use of the word ‘stuff’ made her soften. He did look a little frantic. His eyes kept falling to her lips and her breasts and she was edging closer.
‘I felt like one of my old subjects,’ he added. ‘I finally got it. Understood the weird compulsion they all have. I thought, I’ll do anything. Say anything. Be anything. So long as she’ll look at me. And never look away.’
The words undid something in Raina. She let out her breath in a rush, while his hand slid into her hair.
‘I’ve wanted you,’ he said, his mouth almost on hers, ‘since the first moment I saw you.’
She fell into him, crawling into his lap and straddling his hips.
He groaned and she sighed. She put all of her doubt and hard-earned experience to one side as she kissed him.
The way she’d wanted to during that very first meeting.
She’d thought about it. Fantasized about it.
And often considered it to be the most likely and effective way of shutting him up.
That theory was being proven.
She slipped her tongue into his mouth as he moved his hands beneath her dress.
There was no pawing from him; he was attentive as he cupped her breasts in his palms. He took control of the kiss as he caressed her, and when he finally brushed a deliberate thumb over one nipple, she shuddered and gasped against his mouth.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, his words spoken on a breath. ‘I’ve never wanted anything like I want you.’
Raina moaned and leaned back. She pulled his hands to the zipper on her dress and he instantly understood the silent command.
He dragged the small piece of plastic until it hit the end of the line, and the straps of her dress slid down her arms. She shrugged herself free of the garment and his mouth immediately moved to her breasts.
His gentle drawing of her nipples into his mouth, as well as the occasional and intentional scrape of teeth, made her whimper and writhe in his lap.
The sting of need between her legs had now turned into a powerful ache. She rubbed against him and he made a muffled sound of euphoria. When she writhed again, purposefully trying to coax him into taking her, he gave her a very gentle bite on her neck.
‘Be good,’ he ordered gruffly.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘We’ve waited long enough. Fuck me.’
He groaned, as if he were in agony, and pulled her mouth to his.
He drank from her while she moved her hands to his belt.
She’d always found men removing their belts erotic and now, as she undid his, she felt too aroused to speak.
A first fuck was always exciting, but this was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
She was fighting to breathe and they’d only just started.
She fell back against the sofa and pulled him on top of her.
She watched as he used his hips to urge her legs apart.
He was steadying his own breathing, clearly trying to seem in control.
She slipped a hand beneath his waistband and he made the same helpless sound she’d heard the night before.
She smiled. His control was only an illusion, and she wanted to shatter it.
She draped her legs around his waist and pulled him against her.
‘You have no idea,’ he bit out, as she undid his shirt, ‘how often I’ve thought about this. Dreamed about it. Fantasized. Imagined it in vivid detail.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Kiss me.’
She did, losing herself in the heat of his mouth.
When his fingers gently slipped beneath the lace of her underwear, caressing the most sensitive part of an always sensitive body, she bucked her hips and made a desperate sound.
For hers was a body that felt everything all at once.
The rush of every other living thing and every sensory atom in the air.
So when Tom touched her, it was almost too pleasurable to bear.