CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
‘Gotta go, Ottie. Congrats again and say goodnight to Seb for me.’
When he found her at the house in Barnes, she was still in her backless dress but her high heels were gone.
They stood in the dim light of the hall and neither seemed willing to speak.
Raina decided to use the language neither of them had ever struggled with and kissed him.
She pulled his mouth to hers, and every time he tried to apologize, she upped the ante.
She put his hands on her breasts. She slid her fingers beneath his waistband to feel how hard he was.
He grunted and she made a noise of surprise when he scooped her up and moved them both upstairs.
Hours seemed to pass before he finally spoke.
‘I don’t like when you leave.’
Raina could barely make sense of what he was saying.
He was on his back, her thighs on either side of his head as he languidly lapped at her pussy.
Their clothing was in a heap on the bedroom floor and she was holding his cock in her left hand as she rocked gently against his mouth, drunk on what he was doing. ‘Why?’
He reached up to grasp her waist, firmly pulling her down to his tongue. ‘You know why.’
She didn’t want to stray into emotionally vulnerable territory again, so she slipped him into her mouth and gently sucked.
He groaned. ‘Oh, fuck, Raina. Fuck.’
Her long hair fell over her face as she made her mouth as soft and wet as possible. She sucked lovingly and smiled against him as he almost came apart. When her toes began to curl, he made a guttural noise and said, ‘Sit on me, sweetheart.’
‘Where?’
‘Either. Both. Just do it quickly.’
She willingly released him from her mouth and turned to mount his cock.
They both made sounds of ecstasy and despair as she adjusted to his size.
She rocked slowly for a moment, whimpering softly at how wonderfully full she felt.
The headboard began to bump against the expensive wallpaper and the bed gently creaked.
Closing Time by Tom Waits was playing softly from the record player. Track two.
‘Raina, look at me.’
She resisted for a moment, knowing what she would see in his face. What he might catch in hers. ‘Tom.’
‘Just let me say it—’
‘I don’t’ – she rolled her hips until she felt an exquisite burn – ‘want to talk right now.’
‘Fine, I’ll talk and you listen.’
She cut him off by pressing her lips to his. She stroked the inside of his mouth with her tongue.
‘Why can we never do this at your place?’ she asked as she fucked him.
‘Because it’s tiny and I wouldn’t let you leave. At least here, you can throw me out.’
She laughed at that, but the laugh became a gasp as he sat up to suck her nipples. She felt him place both of his large hands on her back, pulling her deeper into his mouth.
‘Something you don’t want me to see at your place?’
‘Yes, the state of it. If we were in bed at my place like this, you’d be staring at my weird writer’s conspiracy-theorist board.’
She smiled. A touch of forgiveness.
He pushed her back on the bed and she tried to increase the speed of his thrusts by raising her hips and pulling at him.
‘No,’ he told her sternly, his voice a growl in her ear. ‘Take it sweetly.’
She touched his earlobe with the tip of her tongue. ‘I want it hard.’
He caught her hands in his and gave her a look so drugged with arousal, she released a throaty laugh. When he spoke, it was a gruff demand.
‘Kiss me.’
Raina snaked her legs around his waist and kissed him with insolent slowness.
‘Now do it like you love me.’
His words made her moan. She bit his bottom lip. ‘Make me.’
His eyes flashed, and to her delight, he did. His kiss was a mixture of anguish and adoration.
‘What have you done to me?’ he breathed.
Raina didn’t answer. It was something they were doing to each other. And it had never been like this with anyone else.
A few nights later, they were walking back to Raina’s house after spending the evening at the cinema. Raina was still eating from a small box of sweets as they walked beneath the cherry blossoms in the dying sunlight of early June.
When Raina caught the writer looking at her, she flushed. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re studying me.’
‘I just like looking at you.’
It, the thing between them, was starting to drift into uncharted waters.
It had surpassed ‘enjoyable long weekend in bed with a person who rubbed you up the wrong way’.
It had surpassed casual situationship. It could technically be labelled ‘dating’, but there was something deeper afoot.
They both knew it, and for some reason, it made Raina feel cut open.
‘You’re like spring to me.’
Raina almost stumbled on the pavement. ‘What?’
He gently took the box of sweets from her hands and sat it on the garden wall behind her.
‘You heard me. Whenever I see you, it’s like spring.
Like tonight. I was waiting in the lobby, and I was in a bad mood over something I can’t even remember.
Then you walked in. And it’s like seeing spring flowers and a warm sun after months of cold and shivery winter. ’
Raina blinked and sharply turned away. ‘You’re supposed to be a journalist, not a poet.’
She started walking again. Slowly. Hoping he wouldn’t see the shimmer of wetness in her eyes.
‘Raina.’
‘What’s got you all silly?’ she asked, her voice fraught with fake levity. The heavy pause that followed her question made her nervous. She knew he was being very serious.
‘You know what, Raina.’
‘Tom . . .’
‘You’re the hopeless romantic, not me. But you’ve turned me into a complete servant.’
‘We’re very sexually compatible. There.’
‘And we have the same sense of humour.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And you can’t let your guard down with anyone like you can with me. Because I can see how much you give to other people and I don’t need that show. I don’t need the performance.’
‘Hey, get my sweets. Don’t litter.’
He glared at her, clearly perturbed at her flippant dismissal. ‘And no one outruns my brain like you.’
‘Oh, I don’t outrun it, honey. It’s a leisurely jog most days, power walking the rest.’
He threw his head back and laughed. She smiled hungrily, loving his openness with her. She let him draw her closer, kissing him with a hint of desperation. He tasted incredible, and it had become familiar. Familiar but not boring or predictable.
‘How am I supposed to go back to life before you?’ he said against her mouth. ‘I used to breathe oxygen, now it’s just you. In and out of my lungs every single day.’
‘Tom,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t.’
‘You still don’t get it,’ he said, not unkindly.
‘You can count on me. I don’t need anything from you.
I want everything but it’s because I know you.
I know your nature. Even when you were trying to scare me away by showing me the good girl who gets up early for marathons, I fucking ate it up.
Loved it. I see you. I want all of you. I’m not casual. ’
‘All men are great lovers in the first six weeks,’ Raina replied gently.
‘Then reality comes back to the dinner table, and suddenly the conversation drops and he doesn’t feel like sharing sweet little declarations any more.
He can’t be generous with his time all of a sudden.
The fireworks become sad little bursts of faded light, and you think, All right, well, a firework show can only last so long.
Maybe it’ll transform into a nice warm hearth fire.
But it doesn’t. You become the candle in the window and you’re just expected to burn out. ’
There. I can do metaphors, too.
She hadn’t meant to say any of it and he gave her a look of warm compassion. She wanted to pick a fight with him just to make him stop looking at her.
‘Raina, my angel,’ he said, his voice holding only the smallest note of teasing.
‘That’s Englishmen you’re describing. I’m a Scot.
When we love, it’s like the love we have for Scotland.
It’s for ever. It’s in the earth. It goes nowhere.
Some love affairs are like visiting a country abroad.
You love it while you’re there, you learn a lot.
But you come home and the suntan fades and you only think of it with fondness. ’
He retrieved her sweets and caught up to her. ‘Raina, you’re not a holiday. You’re like my homeland.’
They said nothing more, but as they reached the house, he casually slipped a gummy ring from the box of sweets onto her finger.
And it was a long while before Raina finally ate it.