Chapter 27 #2
“You didn’t hear it.” I waggle the vape at her. “I’m just gonna go downstairs. Be back in a couple of minutes.”
The air outside the hotel is brisk, and I huddle next to one of the manicured topiary trees that frame the building’s glass doors.
A couple of pensioners nod at me as they head inside towards the restaurant, and I smile back.
I suck in minty vapor and tilt my head back, watching the first stars emerge in the early evening sky.
They’re so bright here. It feels like I haven’t seen stars in forever, not with the late nights in the bar.
When Tristan and I were young, our parents used to bundle us up early in the morning for the winter solstice, before Matariki became a proper holiday.
They’d drive us out to Clark’s Beach, where they’d scattered my grandpa’s ashes.
All our other grandparents had wanted to be buried, but he had left very clear instructions about how to handle his remains.
We’d sip Milo from a thermos, and mum and dad would tell us stories about family members who’d passed while the sun came up over the ocean.
We’d wrap ourselves in a big mohair blanket and listen to tales about relatives fighting the council over cherry trees, or the time the racehorse escaped the track and they found him on the highway.
Little snippets of the people who’d come before us and shaped how we saw ourselves and our place in the world.
The stars always remind me of that. The way stories get told after loved ones have moved on. I suck down another lungful of ElfBar. I used to hope my stories would be good ones. Now I know it’s up to me to make sure they are.
A car swerves into the hotel parking lot, its lights sweeping over me before pulling to a stop nearby. The driver’s door flies open, and then Davis is there, in the space where he wasn’t a second ago. My heart expands ten sizes. “Davis? You came?”
“Of course I came.” He strides towards me, long legs eating up the ground between us. “Your message. Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Because you don’t get to take it back.” His eyes glitter dangerously, his jaw tight.
He looks on the edge of madness, and it’s delicious.
He comes to a stop in front of me, chest heaving.
“Don’t you dare try to tell me this isn’t something in the morning.
You say you want me, then you get me. All of me. ”
My insides clench at the thought of the morning, at the implication of what might happen tonight. “I won’t tell you this isn’t something tomorrow. I don’t even think I can.”
“Good.”
I gasp as he reaches out and runs one calloused finger along my jaw.
“What changed your mind?” he says, hazel eyes glowing in the headlights of his still-running car.
“I woke up,” I whisper. “Realised I was trying so hard to tick all the boxes I thought I should that I couldn’t see you were right in front of me… And I was afraid everyone would think I was a mess. Some sad, old lady predator taking advantage of her staff.”
Davis shakes his head, a wry smile playing on his lips. “I wanted you to hire me, remember? Ever wondered why that was?”
“Um, not really?”
“Guess.”
“You… liked me?”
He nods, his eyes locked on mine. “I think you’re the strongest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
His words all but knock the wind from me. I want him. That’s what I want. It’s all I want. The realisation makes me dizzy, and I grip Ada’s vape like it’s a lifeline. “Really?”
He nods again. “You still care what everyone thinks about us being together?”
“No. I don’t care what anyone thinks except you.”
“I can handle your mess, Cece. It’s a privilege to handle your mess. And I’ve been dying for you to make a move on me.”
“Seriously? That’s what you want?”
His groan rumbles around us. “Seriously. Prey on me all you like. Fuck me into extinction.” One hand slides down my back, and then I’m pressed up against him, that lovely, rangy body warm and hard.
“Then let’s do it,” I say.
With one arm, Davis lifts me, and I’m in the air, wrapping my legs around his waist.
“Fuck yeah,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine. “Stay just like that.”
“Just like this?” The pressure between my legs that started when he stepped out of his car is rising. Spreading outwards through my limbs like caramel cut with cocaine. I wriggle, settling my pussy more firmly against the front of his jeans. “You don’t want me to move? At all?”
“Jesus,” he gasps. “You horny little tease. You’re gonna kill me.”
“I thought you said I could fuck you into extinction?”
He laughs, his dick thickening beneath the denim. “God, yes, please do it.”
“Where?” I pant. “You’re parked out the front of a hotel?”
“Who cares?” he says, cupping my ass and letting me ride his bulge with every step he takes towards the eighties Mercedes he restored all by himself.
“The cops might?” I manage as he piles me into the passenger seat. “But there’s a spot just on the hill where people sometimes—”
“How far?”
“Two minutes?”
Davis swears as he gets behind the wheel. A second later, we’re there, hands still all over each other as he parks in the old lover’s lane.
Davis turns off the engine, then reaches down and fiddles with something beside me. My seat shifts backward, and then he’s on top of me, mouth on mine.
“I wanted this to be better for you,” he mutters between kisses.
“I just want this to happen,” I pant. “Anywhere. Now.”
He groans. “Fuck, you taste good.”
“Champagne.”
“No. You.” He lifts his head, pinning me with his gaze. He bears down with his lower half, and desire floods me. I whimper, shifting under him, but his hips keep me in place, locked between soft leather and hard dick.
“What are you doing?” I whine.
“Looking at you.”
“Now who’s being a tease?”
“Me?” His voice is rough, choked. “How can you say that? Fuck, Cece. Do you know how long I’ve waited to have you like this?”
“Since the office?”
“Fuck the office. Since I saw a plumber’s van outside the pub, and walked in to check out what was happening.
You were standing in the middle of a construction site wearing leggings that looked painted on and the biggest smile I’d ever seen.
I came back every night for a month until that dickhead had a go, and you finally noticed me. ”
My legs stop squirming. “That was a year ago.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve wanted to fuck me for a year?”
He just looks at me.
“Um...” Pieces swirl in my head, snippets of my life over the last twelve months snap into place, and I see it.
Davis, there. Through it all. Through the rebrand and the renovations, the fuckery with the landlord, and the pushback when I had to put up the prices on mixed drinks.
The time Aggie got sick, he told everyone we were only doing pizza and fries, then put on an apron and started making them himself.
Davis. There. All along.
He’s been there for me. He’s wanted me. This whole time.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” His voice is gravelly. “Oh.”
And that’s enough. With the alcohol and the emotions, and that knowledge piling on top of everything that happened, the eruption comes.
I burst into tears.
“Sorry,” I blubber. “Sorry.”
Davis pushes my hair back off my face. “It’s okay.”
“Why aren’t you running? Do women always start crying when you’re about to fuck them?”
“Nah. Just you.”
“Lucky you.”
“I am lucky.” He kisses me gently, one cheek then the other, collecting my tears. “I know why you’re crying. And so do you, Cece.”
“Because someone spiked my champagne?”
“Because this is real. You know it, and it scares you. But that’s okay. It doesn’t scare me.”
Oh my God, he really is amazing.
I reach up and kiss him, slow and deep. Something in my chest shifts, and a sense of peace settles heavy in my limbs. A quiet certainty that presses me back onto the seat as firmly as Davis’s body.
This is it.
He’s seen me at my worst—and this year has undoubtedly been my worst. He’s seen me bone-tired, messy drunk, lusting after the two-point-five kids fantasy with another man. And he’s still here? He gets it. He gets me. All of me.
That knowledge buries itself in my chest, like a golden ball.
Davis kisses the underside of my jaw, and my whole body jolts, electricity shooting through me in a thick pulse. He works his way down my neck, dropping little kisses along my flesh, each one sending another tiny wave out until my whole body is thrumming with heavy awareness.
“You’re gorgeous.” He scrapes the words into my shoulder, and I arch my back, guiding him. He buries his face in my cleavage and inhales, his back rising under my fingertips. “I’ve been dreaming of having you like this.”
“In your car?” I manage weakly, and he raises his head to look at me. The intensity in his eyes only compounds the sensation, tightening my nipples, and I wildly wonder if it’s possible to come just from the way a man looks at you.
“Anywhere.” Davis rasps. “Any chance I get.” He brushes the neckline of my dress aside and clamps those full lips around the tip of my breast.
If there were an Olympic event in tit-sucking, Davis Sanderson would be a gold medallist. A keening noise echoes through the car as he uses his teeth to build me up, and then he’s moving, tugging the tiny straps down my upper arms, pinning them against my sides.
Both my breasts are exposed, and he moves to suck my other nipple, teeth and tongue working in tandem to tighten the need ricocheting through my body.
“Davis. I need you.”
He moans and opens the passenger door, sliding off me and onto his knees in the dirt of the parking lot.
No, not away, my body screams. Here, in me, on me, all of it now. But I’m panting too hard to get the words out.
He rucks the fabric of my dress up my legs, his big hands gripping my outer thighs. “God, look at you.”
Something in his voice rings like adoration. I’ve never felt adored in my life, but right now, flat on my back in the front seat of a car while Davis kneels on the ground and grips my hips? I’m a goddess.