Chapter 15 Melbourne
MELBOURNE
ALEXANDER
Any good journalist is an inveterate eavesdropper, and I’m no exception. I overheard Sage telling Priya that she’d prefer to slam her car into a wall than love someone. Normally, for me, hearing that would be a relief.
But as Badrick would say, “Life’s motorway is paved with irony.
” Today I wake in the sublimely wrecked bed of a woman I want to follow around with the doggedness of an electoral register canvasser running after someone with a clipboard…
only to find that I’m about to be tossed aside like one of Sage’s helmet visor tear-offs.
I’m basking in the assault of three showerheads when I hear the bedroom door close. I turn my face into the spray and massage with both hands. There’s a small click on the marble counter.
“Brought your espresso,” Sage tells me neutrally. “Pri made it.”
“Thanks, pet. Out in a mo.”
I wipe my eyes and look over my shoulder at her. She’s perched on the countertop, bare legs swinging, ankles tangling and unwinding. I can’t read her face—the set of that petal mouth is a half-smile, but her eyes are cautious.
“Unless you’d care to join me?” I add.
She necks the espresso in her own cup and hops off the counter, picking up her toothbrush. “No time, babes. Gotta be at the paddock in point-zipshit minutes.”
She proceeds to clean her teeth, all the while bobbing her knees and humming what sounds to be the melody to Belle and Sebastian’s “Step into My Office, Baby.” She spits in the washbasin and rinses, and an image comes to mind of what I’d like to see her doing with that lovely mouth.
She leans to wipe her face on a crumpled towel—the en suite is as much a tip as the bedroom—then turns my way with a pirouette that makes her foot squeak on the tile floor.
“How was the record?” she asks.
I lift an eyebrow. “Did we set a record last night? Certainly felt like it.” Shutting the water off, I pluck a folded towel from the nearby stack.
“No, uh… the internet auction thing. In Bahrain. You spent like thirty grand on some record with four songs. Were they worth it?”
“Absolutely.” I pull the towel over my head and scrub at my hair to dry it off.
“But it wasn’t the best thing to happen to me that night.
” Uncovering myself, I meet her eye. “That would be the moment you came and sat beside me on the same chair. Or possibly when I ate cake off a fork that had been in your mouth.”
She pokes her tongue out. “Quit trying to charm me. You know you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it. I suspect it’s more the case that you don’t.”
Her brow furrows and she turns away, grabbing a hairbrush and yanking it through her aqua tresses.
“Don’t make this weird just to amuse yourself.
I’m not into dating, and neither are you.
I heard from Natalia Evans that around the ARJ offices you brag about having a ‘three-shag limit.’” She drops the brush with a clatter and twists her hair on top of her head, trapping the haystack mess in an elastic band.
I wrap the towel around my waist and secure it, then walk over and stand behind Sage.
Her arms lower slowly from her head as we watch each other in the mirror.
I skim my hands over her shoulders, and the desire to kiss the nape of her exposed neck is intense.
It doesn’t escape me that her nipples tighten into rosy pebbles as my touch explores her.
“Two out of three, so we’re owed another round.” One of my hands roams to the base of her throat and settles there in a reverent V, framing her, and the other glides down to breach the waist of the boxer shorts she’s wearing.
Obviously I crave her. For nearly two years now—since she was a reserve driver for Harrier—I’ve savored every sip of news about her, gone alert as a hawk at any sighting of her around the paddock. But atypically to my experience, the consummation last night has only made me want her more.
A womanizing friend of mine in New York once joked that immediately after sex, “a woman should turn into a six-pack and a pizza,” and at the time I agreed. But right now, touching this diminutive, inked goddess, I never want to let her go.
She sags back against me, and her golden eyes close. “You’re awful.”
“Too true.” My fingertips follow the path of her trimmed line of pubic hair, and she emits a pleased-sounding sigh as I circle her clit.
“Sandy…”
“Yes, my seraph?” I dip two fingers inside her, dragging their slickness back up to aid my caresses.
“You’re gonna make me late.”
“I’m going to make you come.”
She cocks her arse back against me and groans in frustrated pleasure. I move my lips along the curve of her neck, lifting her thin shirt and stroking one of her nipples.
“You won’t let me kiss that stubborn mouth,” I murmur, “but perhaps I could kiss you here?” My fingers spread to glide along both sides of her swelling clit.
“I want to bring you to the edge while you pant and beg and grind against my face.” I sink into her heat again.
“Fingers right… here”—I go in deep and brush the border of her G-spot—“as I lap up your sweetness and send you mad.”
Her knees sag, and she turns in my arms, looking up at me from a foot below. “Okay, listen,” she whispers. “I’m not, uh… we’re not seeing each other again this week, got it?”
My heart sinks. “All right.”
“But—change of plans—it’s a solid ‘maybe’ for a date the week of the GP in Imola. I still want to fuck you. You’re, uh, entertaining.”
“A ringing endorsement,” I tease.
She takes a step back and delivers a playful punch to my abs. “You don’t need my endorsement. Your name and that smile probably get you everything you want already.”
I move an escaped coil of pastel-blue hair off her shoulder. “You like my smile?”
She inspects my face, her plump lower lip snagged between her teeth in thought. “Yeah, you’re okay. Where, um, did you get the scar that fucked up your eyebrow?”
“Fighting a dragon.” I tap her chin with a fingertip and turn away, headed for the bedroom so she’ll follow me.
Sage vaults onto the bed as I gather my clothes and starts to jump on it like a trampoline, arms over her head. Stretching high, she grazes the ceiling with her fingers and loud-whispers, “Got it!” before dropping into a seated pose. I’m once again charmed by her unrestrained physicality.
“So you’re not gonna tell me?” she asks, pointing at my face. “I’ll bet it was some pissed off husband who found you in bed with his wife.”
“You’ve a fertile imagination,” I say, stepping into my trousers. “But it was nothing of the sort. Deliver on that date in two weeks and perhaps you can coax the story out of me.”
She flops onto her stomach and props her chin on a palm. “Yeah, maybe. There are some great nightclubs in Ravenna though, sooooo… I might be too busy to hang out with you.”
“My family has a small villa in Ravenna. I wonder where you’d have more fun?”
“Ooh, big talk,” she taunts.
I hold her eyes with a wicked smile as I zip my fly. “I assure you, I can back it up.”
As I sit in the chair that still faintly radiates the scent of sex, then lean to put on my socks and shoes, Sage watches me with the detachment one has for a muted television at the gym. I stand and take up my shirt, sliding it on, and Sage bounds off the bed.
“Here, lemme fix that,” she says nonspecifically, going to her suitcase and digging about.
She locates some small item and comes over to me.
When she clasps it between her teeth to free both hands to fasten my shirt, I see that it’s a tiny round metal pin, the decorative type one puts on a jacket.
She pops it open and uses it as one would a nappy pin, skewering it through the part of my placket with the missing button.
I look down. It’s red on black, the DK symbol of the punk band Dead Kennedys.
“There ya go,” she says with a pat to my chest. “All better.”
I chuckle. “That’s a look, isn’t it? But needs must. If you happen to know where my fallen button has gone, I’ll take it—my tailor can put it back on.”
“Jesus Christ, you have a tailor.” She circles the DK pin with a fingertip. “I know where it is, but I’m keeping it. A souvenir.”
A wave of unexpected tenderness goes through me. I settle my hands on her hips. “Bloody hell, I want to kiss you, Salvi.”
“I know…” Her tone is cautious.
“Forehead?” I suggest.
There’s a beat of deliberation, and her nostrils flare. “Sure, I guess.”
I take my time with it, letting my lips rest.
“I’m not making any promises about Italy,” she warns.
“Understood.” I draw back enough to look at her.
She toys with the hem of my untucked shirt.
My hands smooth up her back. I’m afraid if I let go, I’ll never get to touch her again.
She’s the fulfillment of everything I’ve not known I was moving toward my entire feckless life.
My anticipatory dread of letting go now is like a child with a string tied around a tooth that’s about to be pulled.
“I like this truce between us, Salvia officinalis,” I say, doing my best to keep it light.
“As much as you liked the battle?”
One of my hands cradles the side of her jaw. “Far, far more.” I touch her lower lip with my thumb, aching for the kiss I can’t have. “You’re the one who was driving to win, darling. Meanwhile, I was madly waving a red flag on the sidelines, hoping to slow you down enough to notice me.”
Her brow furrows.
I can’t believe I said it aloud. Fuck, I’ve mugged myself.
Backing out of my arms, she smirks. “You’re a pile of red flags, all right.
” She goes to her suitcase and starts pulling items out.
“You’re still making me late and I didn’t even get laid.
Shove off, sailor. Text me your address in Ravenna.
” Hopping to her feet clutching an armful of clothing, she heads for the bathroom without a backward glance. “See yourself out,” she calls.