Chapter 38 Getting Lucky
Getting Lucky
The front door of Matt’s renovation opens into a plaster-dust-covered, bare-boarded hallway that stops almost immediately with another makeshift, stud-wall door with a heavy-duty padlock and chain securing it.
Matt is staring at me, amused.
I’m going to ruin this if I keep thinking weird things, I remind myself, and shake it off.
Matt leans past me and flicks on a clipped-up construction light, and the hall bursts into focus, its plaster dust, jagged edges, and all immediately exposed in one narrow beam.
Matt shuts the white front door behind us, sealing us into the small vestibule between both doors. He wordlessly plucks a large ring of keys out of his coat pocket, angling one up into the light to check it’s the one he needs.
The jangle of the keys, the wine in my system, and the thick steel lock conspire to send a shudder through me. I try to pry my thoughts away from basements, and bruised skin.
Matt looks up at me, catching my gaze as it lingers on the heavily chained door.
“Yeah, no, I just—” I mumble, aware I am a little giddy from the wine. “Safety first.”
He leans past me to reach the large padlock, slipping the key into it, and for a second he is so close I have to push my body back into the wall, plaster dust powdering the shoulders of my coat.
The padlock pops open, and Matt slips it from the door, releasing the heavy chain to dangle, scraping against the wood of the door as it swings from its mooring. He stores the padlock in one of his pockets, the weight of it pulling down on the coat’s fabric.
Then he turns back to me, placing one hand on the wall beside my head, and leans his lips close enough to kiss.
I move to do just that, but he pulls back, teasing me.
I let my head rest once more on the wall, and he slips one arm back inside my coat, his hand finding the gap between my legs and pushing aside my panties.
I gasp, my body arching in pleasure, my eyes batting closed, his lips finally finding mine.
I moan in ecstasy as his fingers slip inside me.
“Oh God,” I gasp, and he delicately moves his hand from the wall and places it over my mouth, my eyes immediately batting open at the dominance of it.
“Shhh,” he tells me, his eyes holding mine, letting me know I am safe. “I haven’t soundproofed the hall yet. The walls are paper-thin out here.” He holds my gaze steadily, but the pleasure is too extreme.
“If you want to make noise, we’ll have to go inside. Do you want to go inside?”
He moves his hand from my mouth. “Okay,” I respond, my voice cracking, a shiver rippling through me.
It has been a while since anyone has touched me like this, and even then, Ben did not know how to do what Matt is doing to me with such seeming ease.
He unlatches the makeshift door and turns to me with that ridiculously handsome smile, his eyes taking me in. There is nothing dangerous about him.
But then he stops and looks at me, suddenly unsure.
“I need to tell you a secret,” he whispers, his arm still holding the door shut. “I’ve never shown anyone inside here. Do you promise not to judge me?”
The question pulls me up short, a trickle of fear inside me.
I stare at the door and suddenly I wonder if Matt is Simon Hughes. If he is the one who has Anna locked up, here, downstairs.
There is a world in which Matt is a murderer, I realize, a world in which he is about to show me a hundred rooms, each with a padlock, each containing a girl. And yet surely I would get a feeling, an inkling. It just seems so unlikely.
“I won’t judge you,” I say.
He grins. “You know what? I really believe you wouldn’t,” he tells me, then opens the door and takes my hand, leading me into the darkness.
Matt bends every now and then as we go along, flicking on more high-wattage clip lights angled through the hallway. Sections of brickwork and plasterboard burst into vision, the darkness beyond them instantly darker by contrast.
“I haven’t made a start on the living room yet. I want you to see the back, though, which is pretty much done?” he asks, his hand tightly around mine. I feel safe, held by him, protected in the shell of this dusty transitioning building.
We descend three steps and Matt pulls back two thick layers of plastic sheeting that block the doorway into the kitchen.
I try not to think of American Psycho as he reaches through the plastic, and suddenly overhead lights burst on.
An enormous, brand-new, immaculately designed kitchen pops into view.
The vast extension is finished, everything in it still plastic-wrapped, but I can see how beautiful it is—will be—regardless.
It is much larger than his current house, the design of the glass box sharper, more sculptural, the budget clearly much bigger. I remind myself not to compare it to his current house, as Matt has no idea that I’ve seen inside that one.
“Oh my God,” I sigh in admiration. He smiles and releases my hand, letting me wander the vast floor space. My fingers trail over the cool, swirling marble. “It’s huge.”
At the back of the building, the double-height glass orangery yawns out into the darkness of the garden.
I look up, and above us hangs a mezzanine level suspended in the air, its glass rail glinting in the light of a sculptural chandelier.
Out of the back windows, there is only darkness; trees must block out the neighbors’ lit windows here, because none are visible.
I catch my own reflection in the glass, and Matt behind me watching me, studying every move I make.
“It’s beautiful, Matt,” I call back to him. “What you’ve done here is astounding.”
His expression is unreadable in the glass. “You like it?” he asks, forearms resting on the plastic-covered marble island.
“I like it. Very much,” I say, turning back to him. I take him in, his muscular frame, his rumpled sweater, and those brown eyes with their hint of sexy sleepiness.
“Do you want to show me the rest?” I ask. He smiles.
“Don’t tempt me. I’d show you everything,” he says, moving away from me, hand stretched out. “Come on,” he coaxes.
Upstairs, on the first floor, he pulls back more plastic sheeting from a doorway and flicks on a light to reveal the large open-plan mezzanine level.
On the floor here lies a large picnic blanket, spread out. The walls are festooned with glimmering fairy lights, and velvet cushions dot the blanket’s edges.
Beside the blanket is a bucket of chilled Champagne, the ice long melted but the metal still beaded with condensation.
He planned all of this. He knew I’d come back with him before I even knew.
The sexual confidence is oddly refreshing after nearly two decades of Ben, if not a little exposing.
At the blanket’s center a ceramic platter is covered in blood-red, gleaming strawberries. I cannot hold back a smile.
“Matt, look what you did!” I turn to look at him. “Not sure how you knew I’d come back with you,” I add.
“Oh, a man’s gotta be prepared,” he jokes, with a boyish smile. He pulls me close into him, eyes locking in before he silences me with his lips. I melt into him.
When he pulls away, he makes himself busy with the Champagne foil and cork, popping it deftly and filling two glasses.
I take in the room, something about it sitting oddly with me, until I realize what it is: the walls are not plasterboard; they are textured, ribbed, the fairy lights only dimly revealing their contours. I wonder for a moment what the thick material is before Matt’s words from earlier return to me.
Soundproofing.
“Why have you soundproofed the house, Matt?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
He looks up at me, surprised by the question.
There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes; either he’s realized I’m an absolute mess of anxiety and intrusive thoughts, or he’s a psychopath and now he has to kill me.
I push the thought away because Matt isn’t called Simon, and I’ve seen Matt’s online presence going back all the way to university, and people would know if Matt had changed his name or was pretending to be a Simon.
He hands me a glass. “All the old Victorian and Georgian terrace-house renovations around here have soundproofing,” he tells me, gently helping me down onto the picnic blanket.
I sip the Champagne, the crisp shot of it oddly steadying as the tart bubbles fizz against my nose and across my tongue.
He touches my face, and I turn toward him.
He slips his thumb between my lips, gently parting my mouth until I open it for him. He places a perfect red jewel of a berry on my tongue. “We don’t want them hearing us, do we?”
I shake my head and bite down into the fruit, a burst of sugar filling my mouth.
I swallow the strawberry and take another swig of the Champagne, my eyes wandering out to the glass balustrade of the mezzanine and the drop beyond it into darkness.
I look down at my drink. It’s already half gone. I down the rest of the glass and hand it back to him, curious to see what comes next.
“Thank you,” he says, placing my empty glass down on the hard plasterboard flooring.
I sit down on the blanket, then slide back, looking up at the ceiling, as if I’m lying on the grass looking up at the stars, my coat falling open, my knees raised.
But there are no stars here, just a bare light socket in a sea of white plasterboard.
I shiver, the cold of the unheated house now working its way through my open coat.
He leans over me, taking me in, his hand pushing my coat fully open.
I shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“No,” I reply gently, unwilling to break the moment.
Then, with one hand, he traces along the buttons that run down the front of my dress, my body arching toward him with each point of contact as he delicately undoes them.
My entire dress now loosely open, he brushes the fabric to the sides to reveal my warm skin beneath.
He leans back and looks at my half-naked body, lit by fairy lights, the delicate cream lace of my underwear only slightly obscuring my modesty.