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“You’re good, Charles, you know that? I’m not going to last.”
I reached to cup a hand around his neck. “Don’t come yet. I need you down here, I need to kiss you.”
As the hard surfaces of his body stretched out over mine, I lost myself in the slide of tongue on tongue, matching the slide of his slick cock against mine. My skilful lover took over; his confident hand surrounded us both as we rocked together, silk on silk, enclosed by his work-roughened skin. His hot panting breath swallowed my moans, my insides turned liquid. Like mercury shooting up a thermometer, my orgasm gathered pace, unstoppable. Every thrust against him brought me closer. I closed my eyes, dazzled by a host of crystal fireworks raining down from above, a myriad of silver shards, spearing my parched green desert lands. Florian, my silvery man, made a needy sound.
“Are you there, mon chéri? Are you there?”
His voice tipped me over, freefalling into the void. “Christ, yes, yes.”
“Then come for me, Charles. Like that, mon chéri, oh yes.”
“Ça va, Charles?” Are you okay?
He spooned me afterward, tucking me into him, uncaring that we were sweaty and covered in spunk, knowing it was everything I needed. An indescribable colour wheel of emotions hit me, all at once, and for a moment I had a dreadful feeling I would burst into tears. His lips traced a soothing path on the back of my neck, as if he sensed it.
“I’m… yes, thank you.”
God, so formal. As though he’d passed me the sugar bowl across the breakfast table.
He gave a soft laugh. “Why silver, Charles? Why, when you look at me, do you see silver?”
Because the stars were the brightest constellations in the sky? How much more did I want to scare him away?
“I don’t know,” I replied instead. “I don’t choose the colours; I think they choose me. For instance, I see anxiety and stress as a glaring orange, I always have done. Disappointment is brown. Red is anger, of course, and black is… well, everything you would expect. I experience a deep navy blue when I’m working, and my mother was a pale yellow—she still is. I could go on.”
I sensed him digesting my words, his silver dimming, even as it lapped against my green. Then he chuckled against my skin.
“What colour is the sky?
“Blue, you idiot.”
“Wednesdays?”
“Murky, all the days of the week are murky. I don’t really notice them.”
“And is winter a brilliant white?”
“No, luminous pink, with yellow spots.”
Sharp teeth nibbled the back of my neck. “Putain, Charles, I’m asking very serious questions here! Is Christmas strings of sparkling fairy lights stretching across your mind?”
I huffed a sleepy laugh, imagining it. Imagining waking on Christmas Day next to someone like Florian, instead of alone. Wrapped up in his silver, more radiant than any twinkly artificial incandescent glow. “Of course,” I answered. “Why wouldn’t it be? They even make tinkling bell sounds too.”
“Mon dieu, that’s beyond cute.” He rolled me onto my back and planted a smacker on my mouth. “You’re beyond cute. And funny and sexy and like no one I’ve ever met before. And I’m here for all of it. Just so you know.”
CHAPTER 16
FLORIAN
I woke to a sound that would stay with me forever, maybe even haunt my own dreams. A low, despairing keening; at first, I wondered if an animal—a fox or a cat—had got itself trapped in the garden, tangled up in some twine, or left for dead by a bigger creature. And because your mind plays tricks at three a.m., especially in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar house, a cold sweat prickled over me as the keening worsened. Had someone broken in? Or something, because oh, fucking merde, that did not sound human at all.
Bolt upright, I clutched the duvet to my chin, blinking in the dark and trying not to behave like a jumpy fucking idiot. Which was when I realised that next to me, Charles’s body was soaking wet and shaking like a damned earthquake, and that the spine-chilling noise piercing the very depths of my soul was coming from him. And that monsters weren’t imaginary and hiding under the bed at all, but one hundred percent real and torturing Charles’s mind. When he followed the keening with a shrieking scream, so violent and petrifying it curdled my bones, I nearly shat myself.
“Charles. Hey. Hey, wake up!”
I shook him, hard, my heart galloping as though I’d sprinted the length of the island. “Charles, wake up. Wake up! You’re here with me. In bed with Florian. You’re safe.”
I flicked on the bedside light, bathing him in a yellow glow that I hoped cast his skin in a much ghastlier shade of chartreuse than it actually was. He took forever, but bit by bit he blinked awake, clawing big noisy breaths as if there was a vice clamped around his neck. Glassy and unfocussed, he stared up as if he’d never clapped eyes on me in his life before flopping an arm over his face with a groan.
