1. Prologue #2
I stroke my thumb once over the back of her hand. “I should say goodnight.”
“You should.”
“You should go inside.”
“I should.”
The sensible answers sit between us, useless.
Mandy’s gaze drops to my mouth.
That is all it takes.
I lean in slowly, leaving the choice with her. She closes the last bit of distance.
Her kiss is soft at first. Almost cautious. Then her fingers tighten around mine, and the sound she makes is small enough that I might have missed it if I had not been listening out for her all evening.
I let go of her hand and cup her face.
Her skin is warm beneath my palm. Her mouth is warmer. The kiss deepens in the close dark of the car, rain closing us in, the world reduced to fogged glass, the brush of her breath and the impossible fact that she is still here.
I forget the rain. The wedding. The fact that I have known her for years and should have had the sense to keep this purely platonic.
All I can think about is Mandy.
When I pull back, it is only because I need air.
“Mandy.”
Her eyes open and meet mine. They are dark blue, and this close I notice a fine grey streak running through her left iris.
“Not here,” she whispers.
She glances towards the neighbouring houses. “I am not giving Mrs Higgins something to discuss over sherry for the next six months.”
A laugh slips out of me. “That is what you are worried about?”
“I am trying to preserve some dignity.”
“Bit late for that.”
Her eyes flash. “Peter.”
I grin.
Then she opens the car door and gets out.
For a second, I sit there like an idiot.
Mandy turns back towards me.
“Come inside.”
That’s all I need to rush after her.
Her cottage is warm when she unlocks the front door and flicks on the light.
It opens straight into the kitchen, the way old cottages sometimes do, with no hallway to soften the arrival. One second we are in the rain; the next we are standing beside the little table, the old cupboards, the mug tree by the kettle and the bowl where she drops her keys.
The room smells faintly of lemon cleaner and the floral air freshener she insists makes the place welcoming.
I’ve been at her cottage a number of times over the years but tonight it feels different.
Mandy turns around and steps closer.
The next kiss is nothing like the one in the car.
There is no carefulness left in it.
Her hands slide into my hair. Mine find her waist. I step back, hit the worktop and knock a spoon onto the floor.
Mandy laughs against my mouth.
“You are ruining my kitchen.”
“I am improving it.”
“You are ridiculous.”
“You invited me in.”
Her answer is to kiss me harder.
My fingers find the buttons of her blouse. Hers find mine. A button pings against the counter and vanishes somewhere near the toaster.
“Was that yours or mine?” she asks.
“Does it matter?”
“Not remotely.”
I lift her onto the counter.
Her breath catches, and she grips my shoulders. I kiss her neck, then the soft place beneath her ear, and she tilts her head back with a quiet sound that makes me lose the last bit of sense I have left.
“Mandy.”
“Yes?”
“You are sure?”
She looks at me, cheeks flushed and eyes dark. She hooks one leg around my hips and pulls me closer.
“As sure as your dick. It’s clearly already a few steps ahead of us.”
The heel of her foot presses into the back of my thigh, anchoring me against her, and I can feel the heat of her through the layers that remain between us.
That is answer enough.
I kiss her again, slower this time, my tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opens for me with a sound that is not quite a moan but heading in that direction. My hands push the blouse from her shoulders, the silk sliding away with a whisper.
She reaches for my shirt with the same efficiency she brings to everything, tugging it free from my jeans, her palms flat against my stomach. The touch is cool against skin that is running considerably warmer than it should be.
I pull her closer, standing between her thighs, and the friction of fabric against the hardness in my jeans draws a hiss from between my teeth. She rolls her hips forward, deliberate, and I can feel her smile against my mouth at the sound I make.
"You are doing that on purpose," I say.
"I am doing everything on purpose." She leans back on one hand and gives me a cheeky wink.
I kiss the laugh off her mouth. My hand slides up her thigh, pushing the skirt higher, and the skin beneath my palm is impossibly soft.
She shivers at the contact, her leg tightening around my hip, and I trace the edge of her underwear with my thumb.
Lace. Of course it is lace. The woman wears silk blouses to surgery and fancy earrings to breakfast. The underwear was always going to match.
I hook my thumb under the lace and pull it aside. She is wet. Unmistakably, gloriously wet, and the sound she makes when my fingers find her is something I am going to think about for weeks. Her head drops forward against my shoulder, her breath hot, and her hips shift to meet my hand.
"Peter." My name in her mouth sounds different than it does across a pub table. Stripped of banter, stripped of irony. Just the syllables, fractured by breath.
I stroke her slowly, finding the rhythm as she moves against my hand.
She is responsive in a way that makes me want to take my time, to learn every shift and hitch and catch, to file away each reaction like something worth keeping.
My fingers slide lower, pressing into her, and her thighs clench around my hips as her back arches.
"More," she says, and the word is not a request.
I give her more. Two fingers now, curling upward, my thumb working in tight circles around her clit that make her grip the counter edge hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
The earrings swing with every movement of her body, catching light, and I watch her face as the tension builds.
The composure she wears like armour fractures piece by piece.
Her mouth opens. Her eyes close. The tendons in her neck stand taut.
"Stop," she says, and I freeze. She opens her eyes, grabs my wrist, and pulls my hand away. "I want you inside me when I come."
I have to close my eyes for a moment. The sentence lands somewhere below my stomach and detonates.
She unfastens my jeans with hands that are not entirely steady, pushes the denim down my hips, and wraps her fingers around my cock with a grip that is firm and knowing.
I am hard enough that the first stroke of her palm makes my vision blur at the edges.
She strokes me twice, three times, her thumb sweeping over the head with a pressure that is absolutely calculated to make me lose what remains of my composure.
"Condom," I manage.
"Handbag," she groans.
I step back and grab her handbag from the table where she dropped it, then hand it over. Going treasure hunting through the contents for one foil packet feels like a terrible use of time.
She reaches straight into a side pocket and pulls out a condom. The bag hits the floor without ceremony. She tears the foil open with her teeth and rolls the condom onto me with the practised efficiency of a woman who has absolutely no patience for fumbling.
I pull her to the edge of the counter. She guides me to her entrance, and I push forward slowly, feeling her open around me, the tight wet heat of her drawing a sound from my chest that I do not recognise as mine.
She exhales against my mouth, her fingers digging into my shoulders, and her leg locks around my hip with a pressure that says do not stop.
The rhythm starts slow, controlled, each thrust deep enough to make her breath stutter.
The counter is at exactly the wrong height for comfort, which means I have to angle my hips in a way that presses me against her with each stroke, and from the sounds she is making, the geometry is working in her favour.
Her nails rake down my back through my shirt, which is still half on, which is absurd yet perfect.
"Harder," she says, and her voice has lost its polish entirely now.