And I know that in that moment there is nothing more that I can do. I know when to admit defeat. I know when to walk away.
I leave Florian to his room, closing the door to the terrace behind me and returning to the security of mine. Something smashes on his side of the wall but I don’t react; instead I exist in this haze of anaesthesia, numbed by the knowledge that this is over.
Chapter 35
Iam woken upabruptly by the sound of hammering on the patio doors. I look at my phone. It’s two in the morning. Sleep hadn’t been a conscious choice. I had slumped myself into bed, fully clothed, drunk the last of the room cocktails and cried for a bit until clearly my body couldn’t handle it any longer.
I look up to see a dark figure shadowed by the gauze curtains. It takes me a while to adjust to the light, to recognise his figure, the slim, effortless athleticism of his body, his hair, wild from an evening spent nervously fussing his hand through it in an attempt to keep himself busy.
I pull myself from the bed and make my way to the door. I slip the bolt free from the lock and it swings open.
‘Say it now,’ Florian thunders, a murderous look in his eyes.
‘What are you talking about?’ My eyes are still stinging from sleep, head raging from the cocktails I consumed just to be able to stop thinking about him.
‘Just say it out loud, not reading it from some fucking book. Say it.’ His intensity is terrifying, his chin trembles slightly as he speaks and his fingers rap on his thigh like rain.
‘That I love you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I… love you?’
‘You don’t sound sure.’
‘I love you.’ I say it again, this time without the question, this time with all of the confidence and assurance I have. His eyes meet mine. I watch as they narrow, scan from one iris to the other as if he might be able to read me, be able to tell if I’m lying. I step towards him again and when he doesn’t immediately jump back, I take my hand and press it onto his shirt, his heart pounding under my palm.
My fingers brush up the side of his neck and come to rest on his cheek. I pull his head down to face me until his forehead is resting on mine.
‘I love y—’ I don’t have a chance to finish.
Florian grabs me, his mouth is on my mouth, one hand is on the back of my neck, pulling me to him, the other on my hip stopping me from leaving. Not that I would want to.
He kisses me hard, I kiss him back harder until we are tripping back into my room. My hands work quicker than my head. I strip him of his shirt, and he sheds it like some useless second skin.
‘You look so fucking beautiful,’ he gasps in my ear as he plays with the straps of my dress. ‘All night I just couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to take this dress off of you.’
‘Why rush?’ I challenge. Part of me wants to talk, wants to see whether this is forgiveness or some last-time, one-time thing. I don’t think I’m strong enough to endure that.
‘I’m not risking losing you again before we do this.’ It is the sexiest thing that I have ever heard come from a man’s mouth. I reach for his belt, run the leather through my hands until he’s free of that too, but just as my fingers start on the buttons of his trousers, he pushes me back onto the bed with a thud. I look up at him, standing there over me until he sinks to his knees. The sight of him, prostrate at my feet, sends something inside of me throbbing. He bites his lip and slips his hands up my knees pushing my legs wider apart.
‘Fuck,’ he mumbles, pressing his lips against my knees in short little pulses.
‘What?’ I gasp, scared that at any minute he might pull away, leave me here waiting for something that might never happen. I would take death by firing squad over not getting to experience him here between my thighs.
‘You’re not wearing underwear,’ he groans, his lips moving up and up until I can feel his breath, the warmth there at the very centre of me. I think he might just need to touch me and I might lose it. ‘I fucking love that you aren’t wearing underwear.’ And then he’s there, and I let out an immediate, guttural groan. He works slowly, methodically, as if we have done this hundreds of times, as if he knows where to plant every kiss, where exactly to put his tongue in order to send me somewhere that I think only he could ever take me. I reach down for his hair, run my hand through it and grab a clump between my fingers. He swears under his breath again and moves harder, longer. I am forced to lie back and he hooks my thighs over his shoulders, his hands on my hips, pulling me into him until something starts building, something I haven’t felt in a very long time. I start to groan, protesting every time he pulls away, clenching my eyes shut, one hand still in his hair, the other tugging at the fabric on my dress until a heat starts to spread through me in waves.
‘Yes.’ I manage to splutter out an affirmation. ‘Fuck yes,’ I repeat but instead of this encouraging him, he slows down; his kisses move back down my thighs. I prop myself up on my elbows and look at him aghast. He is acting like nothing has happened, like we normally do this. ‘I’m not done,’ I protest.
‘Oh, I know,’ he smirks, starting to unbutton his trousers, stepping out of them and kicking them to a chair in the corner until the only clothing on his body is a pair of boxers, satisfyingly tight in the crotch.
‘You know, it’s good practice when you have a girl trembling at your tongue to let her finish.’
‘That’s not how this is going to go.’ He shakes his head and then peels off his final item of clothing. I feel slightly cheated. I had hoped to be the one to do that. He comes to the end of the bed, takes my wrist in his hands, pushing my back into the mattress again. ‘The first time, we finish together.’ He kisses me hard on the lips. The heat starts to spread.
‘And the second time?’ I grin.
‘I’ll let you choose.’ He starts to press his lips into my neck and down the straps of the dress, pulling them below my breasts and exposing my nipples. He takes one in his mouth, and I arch my back to him, just in time for him to catch my thigh in his hand, pressing it to the bed and pushing himself down onto me.
