Chapter Fifteen
The next evening, Anika stares at the steam drifting up from her kettle’s spout and out of habit nudges it from under the kitchen cabinets. She’s always paranoid a bloom of mould will form if she lets damp collect there.
She’s considering whether Mo thinks it’s weird that the only booze she has is the dregs of an old bottle of wine that’s resided on her windowsill since …
Well, since even before all the stuff with her surgery.
Instinctively, her hand goes to her stomach, edging under her T-shirt to feel the subtle scars there.
She doesn’t typically keep much alcohol in the house.
To be fair, none of what’s happening tonight is typical.
This is good. This is what you wanted. What you wrote about.
It is, but nervous butterflies jumble beneath her hand, nonetheless.
She pours hot water over the teabags with a faint but real worry: what if I’m nothing like the girl he was imagining?
But she’s more interested in feeling strong arms around her, and another person making her climax.
In her mind she’s imagined Cam, but that’s nothing more than a fantasy. This is really happening.
Anika jumps as she sees Mo’s reflection appear behind her in the darkness of the window in front of her, his mass dominating the kitchen doorway. When he arrived earlier, he was even bigger than she thought he would be from his pictures.
‘How d’you like it?’ she asks him over her shoulder, pointing at the cups.
‘Dark and sweet,’ he says, raising an eyebrow, but he’s only able to keep the straight face for a moment before he laughs, his white teeth shining. His beard looks freshly oiled, soft. She hasn’t felt it yet, but as their eyes connect, she laughs too, knowing that she will. Soon.
‘Walked into that one,’ she says, turning back and squeezing out the teabags, plonking them onto the little saucer she uses specifically for the task.
She drops some milk into their cups and picks them up, moving towards him.
He’s holding a box of Krispy Kremes between both hands.
He brought them explaining that all the wine in the local supermarket on the corner looked suspect, but he remembered her joke about ‘donuts’.
Anika’s heart had sagged a bit at that – the J Dilla reference had clearly sailed over his head.
Luckily, she does also love actual doughnuts too.
She brushes past him, enjoying the feel of him towering over her.
The nerves aren’t so much about him being a stranger, powerful and unknown, in her personal space.
They are about the anticipation. Anika feels like every cell of her body is humming.
She can sense him watching her stride down the hallway to the living room.
Putting the mugs down on the coffee table, she’s bumped up a little on the sofa seat when Mo’s weight settles beside her. He leans back and assesses her for a moment before lifting the doughnut box and undoing the sticker that holds it shut.
‘At least the seal’s still on there,’ she says with a smirk that he returns.
‘Trust me,’ he says, his voice rumbling through the cushions towards her.
‘None of these doughnuts have been licked.’ He flips the box open, then clamps the lid down on her hand as she reaches for a ring, like Richard Gere does to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
Shaking her head, she lifts one out and takes a bite of the hyper-sweet, pillowy dough.
Mo takes one too, his bite large. Her eyes drift to his mouth as he runs his tongue over his lips.
‘Can I try yours?’ she asks. The innuendo is getting a bit overwrought, but Anika is suddenly flooded with confidence.
She leans over slowly and feigns to bite Mo’s pastry but then moves towards his face, pressing her mouth against his.
They kiss for a moment and then she pulls back and takes another nonchalant bite of her doughnut.
‘Hmm. I think I prefer this one.’
He grins. ‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Let me have a taste …’
He kisses her now, and, as he does, she frisbees the remnants of her doughnut lightly onto the coffee table.
The whole thing is good. The sweetness of his mouth, the strength of his hands pulling her closer.
Mo definitely knows what he’s doing, but even though the whole point of him coming over was to do this very thing, she hears that faint question again: is this what she really wants?
Or who? There’s no denying the attraction though, and she genuinely doesn’t feel unsafe – that much is true – but, nonetheless, Anika isn’t used to going straight from stranger to ‘person allowed inside her body’.
Mo seems to sense her hesitation and slowly pulls his lips from hers.
‘Everything all right?’ he asks, eyes still trained on her mouth before looking up.
She nods but moves back on the sofa and reaches for her mug, taking a sip. ‘Didn’t want this to get cold,’ she replies. It’s true in a way – she hates a lukewarm tea.
‘No chance of that,’ he says and she rolls her eyes.
Didn’t she write something about him not being corny?
He chuckles and reaches for his drink, too.
Anika finds her gaze being drawn to the flex of his sculpted biceps beneath the soft grey cotton of his T-shirt.
He notices but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he nods to her record decks.
‘Thought you said you lived by yourself?’
Anika’s jaw clenches and she regrets stopping their kiss. Maybe she should have included something in the diary about him not being patronising, too. ‘Yep. I do,’ she says, looking at him pointedly. He still looks at her inquisitively, so she says slowly, ‘Those are mine.’
‘Ahh, OK. Nice.’ Her expression must communicate that she’s not impressed because he looks away for a second.
They fall silent and she worries that this will all have been for nothing if she allows this irritation to get in the way.
The whole point is simply to get laid, Anika.
That’s what you wrote in the diary. She takes a deep breath and stands up, heading towards her records.
Bending down to rifle through a stack, she’s conscious of Mo enjoying the view and starts to feel sexier again, empowered.
Locating a Meshell Ndegeocello album, she slips it from its sleeve and nestles the vinyl over the spindle.
Comfort Woman. The whole record oozes sensuality; it’s one of Anika’s favourites.
Her muscles relax as she lets the needle rest on it.
The slow, dub-inspired baseline of the first track begins to throb out of the speakers, with the singer’s whispery, seductive vocal sliding on top.
Slowly turning around, she makes her way back across the room, playing with the hem of her sleeveless tee.
‘All right, OK …’ Mo says in a low, appreciative rumble.
She smiles, but she’s not interested in any more attempts at banter – or any talking at all.
She goes so far as to put her fingers to her lips, and he quietens so that it’s just the sultry music swirling around them.
Placing one hand on his shoulder to steady herself, Anika feels the muscles ripple underneath her palm.
A moment later, she’s nestling herself into his lap, her thighs straddled over his and her lips back where they were a few minutes ago, tasting the lingering sweetness and the warm scent of tea mingling with the toothpaste or mouthwash he probably hastily used before heading to her place.
An hour earlier she held her phone in her hand, debating whether to hit send on her message.
It was edging towards a full twenty-four hours after writing in the diary, and, since Mo only made a few flirtatious comments earlier, nothing more, she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands.
I think you should come over.
It was that simple. She followed it up with her address and waited.
Roger that, he wrote.
And now here they were.
This is good. Anika blocks everything else out and concentrates on Mo’s thickness straining against her leggings through his jeans. She feels in control even as Mo cups her bum, manoeuvring her over him in a manner that already suggests she’s going to have no complaints.
In one smooth movement, she removes her top, raises herself up and eases onto her back on ‘her’ half of the sofa, motioning with one finger towards him.
Mo moves over her until Anika can straighten out her legs.
He holds his weight above her, his strong forearms on either side of her ribcage.
Smiling, Anika lifts her hips up. ‘Give me a hand with these?’ Her fingers are starting to ease her leggings down and Mo rolls them off swiftly with a grin, those perfect white teeth of his beaming at her in the soft light of her living room.
She plucks at his T-shirt. ‘And maybe help yourself out of this?’
Mo stands, watching her watch him strip off.
Then she bites her lip because holy shit that body.
A moment later, he’s undone his jeans and pulled them off, flexing unsubtly.
She lets out a puff of mirth and reaches for the waistband of his navy boxers to pull him back over to where she lies half reclined on the sofa.
Mo complies, moving over her again and shuffling his boxers off completely.
There’s only the cotton barrier of her underwear between them, and the thin sheen of sweat that’s starting to gather on their skin.
Anika’s hand hovers over his erection between them, and she meets his eye.
‘This OK?’ she asks, and he smirks.
‘Fuck, yeah.’
Her hand curves around it and it springs to life in her palm, hardening further. He glances down at her underwear and raises an eyebrow.
‘Mmhmm.’ She’s a little breathless at the feel of him.
He strips her panties off, slowly skittering the light material down her legs.
He leans over to pull a condom from his jeans pocket and flashes it at her between his fingers, then moves up onto his knees to put it on, slipping out of her grip as he does so.
She reaches for him again once the condom is on, licking her lips in anticipation and straining her damp mouth up to kiss his as she guides him towards her, widening her legs.
She positions him at her entrance, then moves her hand away to hold her arms up above her head, wrists crossed.
Her eyes flick up towards them, indicating, and Mo grips them in one strong hand.
Anika nods, grinding her teeth eagerly. She feels powerful, in control. Then …
Yes.
They’re loud, impolite. Anika is happy for him not to be a gentleman.
After a few sweaty minutes, though, she decides she’s not going to get there this way.
She pushes Mo away momentarily with one hand on his collarbone.
‘Bend me over this.’ Her other open palm slaps dully against the sofa to indicate what she means.
A moment later, her knees hit the laminate floor as he obeys, sliding her off the seat and angling her hips, entering her from behind.
Her fingers claw at the velvety material as her muffled screams diffuse into the sofa cushions.
It bashes against the wall in time with Mo’s grunts, and she works her hips in a circle that she can tell is driving him wild, rejecting any passivity she used to feel during this act.
The sensation is incredible and Anika’s orgasm stuns her into a loud, borderline-embarrassing shout.
Mo’s fists hit the cushions beside her ribcage as he crashes over her, cumming a moment later, his trembling body slick against her back.
They rest like that for a minute, their panting easing, and eventually he pulls out of her.
Anika turns to sit on the floor, leaning one elbow on the sofa and unashamedly watching Mo as he slips the condom off, knotting it with aplomb.
‘Mmm,’ he murmurs, looking at her. There follows a beat of silence before he asks, ‘Loo?’ It’s a far cry from the filthy things he was growling moments earlier.
‘Just down the hall on the right,’ she says, matching his casualness and meaning it.
He grabs his clothes and Anika pulls her underwear and T-shirt on, then she curls back up on the sofa and starts scrolling her socials.
Just what the doctor ordered, she thinks to herself smugly.
Well, he didn’t, but maybe he should have .
. . She feels elated, set on a path to a freedom she only ever imagined before, her muscles and bones humming with liquid energy.
It feels gratifying to have taken it for herself.
She notices the time on her phone – three minutes to midnight – and her mind goes to the words she projected on the diary page. It worked. I got EVERYTHING I needed.
Hearing the toilet flush and the sound of the tap running, she ensures she’s not looking too dishevelled before Mo ambles back into the living room.
‘You good?’ he asks, his tone genuine, but with a hint that he expects – rightly – that there’s not much more required of him. Anika already can’t imagine ever seeing him again.
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Thanks for the doughnuts, Mo,’ she says with a wink, and then glances down distractedly at a notification on her phone screen.
‘No worries, gorgeous.’ He pushes his hands into his pockets. ‘Listen, I’ve got an early one tomorrow morning, so …’
‘Course, course. Seriously, though, that was fun. Thank you,’ she says, and he gives her a small salute, then spins on his heel and heads out.
Anika waits until she hears her front door slam shut, then heads down the corridor and drops the chain into place.
Well. That was new.