Chapter Nineteen
Kate
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police
It takes everything I am and everything I have to push Sharon off me gently.
“Not here,” I say.
Daylight is fading fast, but we’re still very much out in the open.
Cars pass us by every few seconds. I can see a couple of grey-haired women in headscarves approaching us from further down the street.
A bus could pull up at any moment. I don’t want to even risk some bigoted somebody beeping their horn at us, or for the two old dears on their way to have something to say.
“Right, yeah,” Sharon breathlessly agrees. “I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry, I—”
I find her hand. “I still want to kiss you, you idiot. Just not here.”
Sharon’s eyes spark into life. “Then where?”
“You could come back to my place. It’s small and I have noisy neighbours, but it’s—”
“Come back to mine. I’m in Shepherd’s Bush.”
“Okay,” I say. “But wait. Do you really want me to?”
Sharon’s eyes dip to my mouth and that gives me my answer. Still, I also want her words. I’m greedy like that.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t,” she says, her shoulders lifting.
Well, I guess that’s as good as a confirmation. I hide my smirk.
“Also, I have a fridge full of soup that I was going to add some chicken and noodles to.”
“So we are going to have dinner together?” I tease.
Sharon pouts at me. “If you want.”
“I do want.” I drop my gaze to her lips, which are still wet from our kiss. “I’m fucking starving.”
Leaving Sharon speechless may well be my new favourite thing, followed closely by turning around and seeing her bus approach.
I don’t even mind sitting next to her in complete silence for the duration of the journey.
It gives me time to realise how wet I already am between my legs, how much I can’t stop thinking about being somewhere private with Sharon again.
It was hardly right to think about kissing her when I took her to the family room earlier, but it crossed my mind, several times
It stops raining while we’re on the bus so I carry my umbrella at my side and try to ignore how much heat I feel travelling from Sharon’s body to mine, even though we are barely touching.
I battle with my desire and the fact that I need to lower my expectations for the entirety of the short journey to Goldhawk Road, when Sharon gestures for us to get off.
It’s not a long walk to the Victorian terraced house that Sharon goes up to, keys jangling in her hands, but again we don’t talk.
I wonder what Sharon’s thinking about as she opens the front door.
I wonder if she’s tight and hot in her core like I am as she leads me down a short corridor to another door.
Once that is opened, she steps to the side and shows me in.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” she says as I walk past.
Too busy thinking about Sharon’s hot mouth and the small but hungry hope of touching more of her incredible body, I hadn’t given much thought to what Sharon’s home would look like.
But as I step inside a large square living space that combines a kitchen with a dining nook and a sofa and TV, all flooded with the last of the warm orange evening light thanks to a high bay window, I see little hints of Sharon Goldblatt everywhere.
It's a neat and orderly space with some modern furniture – a marble-topped round table and French bistro-style chairs – but also more eclectic and vintage pieces, like the soft leather sofa with a hand-knitted blanket thrown over it. The kitchen is very clean and I can still smell some of the spices and herbs I suspect Sharon used for Danny’s broth – garlic, turmeric, chilli, allspice, thyme.
“What a lovely space,” I say, doing a quick twirl in it.
“I should take your coat,” she says.
I shrug it off and hand it to her. “Oh, shit, my umbrella. It’s still quite wet.”
“I’ll take it and put it in the bath,” she says, almost snatching it out of my hand. “That’s where I like to dry mine. Well, when I have one that actually works.”
I smile awkwardly. All this small talk doesn’t suit her. Doesn’t suit us.
When Sharon returns to the room, her coat is off and she has a towel that she uses to rub at her hair.
It leaves clumps sticking out in all manner of directions when she stops and I can’t take my eyes off her hair.
I want to run my fingers through it. I want to feel again just how soft the shortest hairs are at the back of her head.
“What?” she asks me when I’ve been staring at her probably a moment too long.
“You should get changed. You’re still really wet. Maybe take a shower or something.”
“I was going to take a bath,” she says. “But your umbrella’s there now.”
It takes a second, but I realise she’s joking with me.
“My umbrella is happy in a sink too. Or even out in your corridor.”
“I’ll just get changed quickly,” she says. “Make yourself at home. Or a cup of tea. Or whatever.”
She keeps mumbling to herself as she leaves the room again and I smile once more at how cute Sharon is when she’s nervous.
And then I actively wipe that smile off my face.
I’m not here to go gooey inside about Sharon Goldblatt.
I’m here to kiss her. To show her how good a woman’s touch can be.
And to scratch the almighty itch of fancying this woman who has crawled under my skin.
But a cup of tea wouldn’t hurt. And maybe Sharon would like one too. So I fill the kettle, find some mugs and tea bags and sniff the milk in her fridge to check it’s still in date.
Sharon emerges just as I’m pouring boiling water into mugs.
Her hair is dry and sits flat on her head, somehow changing her whole appearance and blunting some of her hard edges.
She’s wearing jeans and a soft, faded plaid shirt that hugs every inch of her full bosom and round stomach.
It’s an effort to drag my eyes away from her.
“What are you doing?” Sharon asks as she steps closer.
“Making tea.”
“But you’ve already put the milk in,” she peers over my shoulder.
“Well, yeah,” I say and start stirring with a teaspoon, encouraging the tea to brew. “That’s how you make tea.”
“That is not how you make tea,” she tells me, full of scorn.
I turn and fold my arms, leaning my back against her countertop. “How do you make tea, then?” I challenge.
“You do not put the milk in first,” she says and maybe my ears are deceiving me but I’m pretty sure she tuts at me. Tuts!
“What difference does that make?”
“All the difference. How can it brew properly when you have milk in there already?” She points accusingly at the mugs.
“Well, how do you know when it’s brewed enough without milk in there?”
“Milk has nothing to do with the brewing process. It’s completely separate from it. Hence why you put it in after the tea bag has done its thing and been removed.”
I shake my head and bite back a disdainful laugh. “Spoken like somebody who has all the time in the world to make tea and doesn’t run a busy ward where you don’t know how long you have uninterrupted to make tea for a team of nine.”
Sharon puts a hand on her hip, a juicy full hip.
“You wouldn’t believe how many cups of tea I have made in my lifetime.
For demanding, overprivileged, overpaid white men who think nothing of insisting I re-make their tea if I don’t put in the exact three-quarters of a spoonful of sugar and stir anti-clockwise.
According to them, it’s quite literally my job to make tea and to make it the right way. ”
Her seriousness tips me over the edge. I start to laugh. I laugh so hard I bend at the middle and prop my hands on my knees for balance.
“What?” Sharon asks after a moment of just staring at me.
“This is the most British argument I think I’ve ever had.” I straighten up, still laughing.
Her earnest expression melts and a small smile appears. “You’re right. I didn’t even know I was that British.”
“Says you.” I point my finger at myself. “If only all my patients who tell me to fuck off back where I came from could hear me now!”
Sharon’s smile creases into a deep frown and our laughter stops, almost as suddenly as a tape cassette getting chewed up.
“People really say that to you?”
“All the time.”
“Even when you’re looking after them?”
“Especially then.”
“Wow.”
“Are you really surprised? You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
Sharon looks momentarily stunned. “How did you know?”
“Your surname,” I say. “And something Danny said. I mean, I don’t know if you’re practising or—”
“I’m not.”
“No, well, that doesn’t make a difference to somebody who is going to seek out all the ways you’re different from them rather than all the many more ways we’re similar.”
Sharon pulls her top lip into her mouth and chews on it. “No, you’re right. But I guess, if people don’t know my surname, they’re none the wiser, right? Much to my mother’s chagrin, I hardly look like the perfect Jewish princess. But you…”
“Yeah, my differences are a lot more obvious.” I turn back to the tea that is now close to becoming stewed, regardless of what role the milk is playing. I take our tea bags out, stir the tea and turn around to hand a mug to Sharon, but she doesn’t take it.
Instead, she lifts a hand to my face and strokes my cheek. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes hold mine, steady and clear and sparkling. Heat transfers from the palm of her hand and travels down my body and settles in my core, tight and needy and hungry.
“I think you’re beautiful,” she says eventually.
I put the mugs of tea down and then face her.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her.
Panic freezes her features and pops her eyes wide open.
She opens her mouth to say something, but I don’t let any words leave her lips. Instead I take them for myself.
Pushing up on my toes, I press my mouth against hers.
I swallow a short, warm breath that’s full of shock and uncertainty but then her lips close and she’s pushing back.
She’s kissing me back. Her hands land on my hips, and mine come up to her face, keeping her exactly where I want her.
I stroke her warm skin with my fingers, overcome with just how soft and silky smooth her cheeks feel.
I can’t help but imagine if this is what her skin is like everywhere else on her body.
I moan, thinking about it, and press my hips against her.
For a split second, I selfishly wish Sharon was more experienced.
I wish she’d give me her thigh to grind against. I wish she’d grab me between my legs and take away the sharp edge of the ache there.
I wish she’d play with my tits so roughly she’d risk leaving bruises.
But that’s unfair. From what she’s told me, I’m her first. Her first kiss. The first woman to hold her like this. And maybe the first woman to touch her. God, I could be the first woman to make her come.
That makes the need for a quick, rough release disappear in an instant.
To get to be her first. To be the one to bring pleasure to her.
To get to be the only woman in the world to know what Sharon tastes like, what she sounds like when it all gets too much, what she looks like when that dam breaks…
that is going to sustain me for a lot longer than a quick orgasm I selfishly take from her thigh or her fingers.
I moan again, and there’s so much hunger in it, I’m not surprised when Sharon pulls back and looks at me.
“Are you… is this…” She doesn’t finish her sentence or her question or whatever it was she was trying to say.
“Yes.” I grip the back of her head and bring her back to me. “Just… yes.”
I start to move us and, much to my surprise, she lets me. I lead her back to her sofa, keeping half an eye open so I can ensure we dodge her coffee table, and I apply more pressure so she sits down. I then climb on top of her.
When I sink down on her body, my legs spread over her thick thighs, it feels like I’m a missing jigsaw piece finally slotting into place.
Her hands land on my waist and I think for a second she’s going to rock me like that, that maybe some sensual instinct is taking hold of her, but she doesn’t.
She holds me in place and looks up into my eyes.
I see it then – a need to be guided, a desire to be led – but I also need to hear it.
“What do you want, Sharon?” I ask and my voice is a surprise to me. Hoarse, jagged, lustful.
“I want…” she blinks at me, “I want to be with you.”
It’s not what I expect and for a second, it knocks the air out of my lungs.
She wants to be with me? Like in the all-encompassing sense of the word?
I’m breathless and confused but it doesn’t last long.
But then I realise what she’s doing. She’s using words that don’t offend or upset or horrify.
She’s shying away from saying what she really wants.
Which is cute.
But I am not cute.
“You want to fuck?” I ask her.
It’s Sharon’s turn to be breathless, speechless.
“I mean, I suppose so, yes. But I also…” She swallows and I wish I had my hand around her throat so I could feel it work with the obvious effort. “It’s my first time. I don’t know if I… can I… can we stop if I don’t feel comfortable?”
I bring a hand to the back of her neck and play with the short hairs there. “Of course. And Sharon?”
“Yeah?” She leans into my touch, her eyes half-closing.
“If you don’t tell me when something isn’t feeling good, then I will get really fucking angry with you.”
“Okay,” she says so softly she could be half-asleep, but her hands tighten on my waist and I know she’s just as awake, as alert, as turned on as I am.
I already knew I was attracted to the Sharon who gives as good as she gets when we clash, but this Sharon, who is melting like butter under my touch and is finding some kind of peace in submitting to me so beautifully, this version of Sharon could ruin my whole life.