Charlotte Ellis #2
"You are a man who drove to Oxford at eight in the morning because he could not tell me something over the phone." I spread my fingers against his chest. Feel him inhale. "That is not frightening. That is just you."
He leans his forehead against mine. Closes his eyes. And for a moment we stand there, breathing the same air, surrounded by my flowers and my tools and the sound of Oxford waking up outside.
"I should warn you," he says finally. "When Sebastian finds out about his mother, there is a possibility he will do something destructive. Something that affects the estate. Or me. Or you."
"I know."
"And you are still willing to be here?"
I think about the card in my glove compartment. About the photograph Sebastian sent. About the ways he has already tried to use me against Alexander and the ways he might try again.
"I am not going anywhere," I say. "But you should know that I keep my own counsel. I do not report to you. And if Sebastian contacts me again, I will decide for myself how to handle it."
Alexander opens his eyes. Looks at me with something that might be respect and might be relief and is definitely both.
"Noted," he says. "And accepted."
"Good." I pull back slightly. Not out of his arms, just far enough to see his face properly. "Now. You said something about showing me the file."
"I did."
"Is it in your car?"
"It is."
I step away from him, toward the door, toward the practical business of what comes next. "Then we should get it. Before Jess arrives and starts asking questions I am not ready to answer."
Alexander catches my hand as I pass. Tugs me back. And before I can register what is happening, he is kissing me.
Not like the garden. That was desperate, built from weeks of tension and the particular madness of midnight. This is something else. Slower. More deliberate. His mouth on mine like a question and an answer at the same time.
His hand is still in my hair. The other finds the small of my back, pressing me closer, and I can feel every point where our bodies connect.
The heat of him through his sweater. The strength in his arms. The way he angles his head to deepen the kiss, like he has been thinking about exactly how he wants to do this and has finally given himself permission.
I make a sound against his mouth. Not quite a word. More like surrender.
He pulls back. Just slightly. Just enough to look at me with eyes that have gone dark.
"I have been wanting to do that since you walked in," he says. "In case that was not clear."
"It was becoming clear."
His thumb traces my lower lip. "I should go get the file."
"You should."
“Charlotte.”
“Alexander.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. And instead of stepping back, he steps forward.
“Five minutes,” he says. “Before the world requires us again.”
I reach up and pull him down by the collar of his sweater.
The kiss is different from the garden, different from the bedroom.
Those were about need and revelation. This is about knowing.
I know the exact pressure of his mouth now, the slight roughness of his jaw, the way his hand goes automatically to the back of my head as if it has decided this is where it lives.
I know that he is careful until he isn’t and that the transition happens when I make a particular sound against his lips.
I make the sound deliberately.
His hands find my waist and lift me onto the workbench in a single clean motion, stems and clippers clattering to the floor, and I lock my ankles behind him and feel him laugh against my mouth.
Not a polished sound. The real laugh, the one I have only heard twice, lower and less controlled than the version he produces for other people.
“The flowers,” he says.
“Are insured,” I say. “Come here.”
He obliges. His mouth moves to the curve of my jaw, the hollow of my throat, and I tip my head back and grip the edge of the workbench and decide that the rest of the world can have five minutes to wait.
His hands push up the fabric of my jumper, find the skin of my waist, and the touch is warm and direct and I make no effort at all to be quiet about what it does to me.
“I think about you constantly,” he says against my neck. “In case that has not been established.”
“It is becoming established.”
“I have thought about this specifically.” His thumbs trace slow arcs against my ribcage, neither moving higher nor lower, simply present, and the restraint of it is maddening. “About your workshop. The morning light. You in it.”
“And?”
His eyes, when he raises his head, are very dark. “You exceed the thought considerably.”
I kiss him before he can say anything else sensible.
He responds with his whole body. That is the thing about Alexander that I have been cataloguing since the garden and have not yet found adequate language for: when he decides to stop managing himself, the decision is total.
His hands slide higher, pushing the fabric of my jumper up, and I lean into the warmth of his palms against my ribs the way I lean into heat in winter. Without thinking. Without reservation.
His mouth moves from mine to the curve of my jaw, the hollow of my throat, and I tip my head back and let it happen. The workbench is not designed for this. The edge of it bites into my thighs and I do not care in the slightest.
He raises his head. His eyes are very dark.
“You are extraordinary,” he says. Not the way people say things for effect. The way people say things when they have arrived at a conclusion and cannot not say it.
I pull him back down.
What follows is not five minutes. What follows is specific and thorough and conducted with the same focused attention he brings to estate accounts and ceiling measurements and the particular problem of a person he has decided to understand completely.
He learns what I need the way he learns everything: by paying close attention and adjusting until the answer is right.
I stop being quiet about it. This feels like the correct choice.
He finds what he is looking for more than once. This is also the correct choice.
When I come apart it is not like the garden, which was relief, or like the bedroom, which was revelation.
This is something quieter and more settled.
Like a decision confirmed. He presses his face into my hair afterward, his weight a specific and welcome fact, and I hold him there for a moment longer than strictly necessary.
He says my name once, low, against my temple.
I say his back.
The workbench is hard beneath me. Eucalyptus is bruised underfoot. The bells of the Bodleian mark the half hour somewhere across the city, indifferent to what has just happened in my studio.
After a while he steps back. Picks a fragment of stem from my hair. Sets it on the workbench with the particular care he gives to everything.
I put my hand on the counter to steady myself and breathe.
My phone lights up on the workbench. A message from Richard Ames.
I pick it up. Read it twice. Feel something cold settle in my stomach.
When Alexander comes back through the door with a banker's box under his arm, I am still staring at the screen.
"What is it?" he asks.
I turn the phone toward him. Let him read the message himself.
His face does something complicated. Closes down. Opens up. Goes very, very still.
"She is coming here," he says.
The message is brief. Professional. Devastating.
Lady Evelyn Ashford telephoned this morning requesting Alexander's whereabouts. I declined to provide details, but she mentioned knowing he had become close to a florist in Oxford. I think you should know she may attempt direct contact.
I look at Alexander. He looks at me.
"Well," I say. "That is going to make things interesting."