‘Heather I don’t understand what you do to me,’ he says, ‘but my goodness, you’re beautiful.’
The wordbeautifulcomes out like an unrequited groan. She moves to the far corner of the sheeting, shifts onto her haunches, and turns to face him, the distance of the sheet between them. The bulge in his trousers is at eye level and evident even from that distance.
‘I know we said …,’ he takes a step towards the white silk sheet.
She shifts the flimsy cotton button-through dress she’s wearing. It’s stuck rather unglamorously to her thigh. She always gets hot when she works, expending energy as she tweaks, appraises and concentrates. Today is no different. But rather than seem repelled, Scott looks at her as though he might devour her.
And she can’t help it, her attraction to this man is something she simply finds impossible to ignore. And he’s come back into the room. For her. She takes two steps, still on her knees, towards him. He kneels at the edge of the sheet, his blue eyes drilling into hers. She sees his Adam’s apple sitting proud and alert beneath his lightly stubbled chin.
‘I promised myself I’d be a gentleman, that I wouldn’t try anything on tonight. Didn’t even shave,’ he says, touching his chin. ‘But seeing you, like this. Jeez, Heather. You’re just –‘
He leans forwards and Heather rearranges herself into a crouch.
What is it with this man? With the magnetism between them? She can feel the effect his words are having on her in her underwear. He could see, if he cared to look. And it seems he does care to look. He reaches forward and places his hand around her left ankle.
‘Can I -?’
She nods, muted by the frog in her throat and the desire to feel his touch against her skin.
He pulls her freshly waxed leg towards him, and latches onto her other leg when she moves it to help. He pulls her, on her bottom towards him. The silk sheet rucks up beneath her bum and her skirt rides up, beyond her thighs until, eventually, it is over her backside. If he hadn’t been aware of the moistness in her underwear before, he sure as anything will see it now. His groan is audible.
‘Heather I want to –‘
‘Yes.’
He kneels between her legs and slowly, deliberately, unbuttons her dress from the bottom up, his fingers gently skimming the skin below each buttonhole as he works. Once he arrives at the top button, he gently slips the fabric straps from her shoulders and drops onto his hands in a tabletop position.Then slowly, with his fingers, his lips, his tongue, he explores every inch of her body; licking at the base of her throat, circling her nipples, exploring her belly button. He circumnavigates the area she most wants to feel him and turns his attention to her toes, her calves. He nibbles gently at the inside of her thighs. She is practically screaming at him by the time he arrives, back where his attention was first aroused. He slips his fingers under her knickers and slowly eases them from her body. Other men, Dougie, Paul and many others before, had sought, with little success, to locate her clitoris; excavating, fumbling as though attempting to mine an elusive precious metal. Not so for Scott. He parts her and groans.
One flick of his tongue is all it takes. Her body breaks into spasm. With the second flick she’s practically gone. By the third, fourth, and fifth, Heather is coming so hard her legs turn to rubber and her body convulses as the hardest, purest, most right orgasm she has ever experienced grips her body.
The moment her shudders subside, and she’s lying spent with the silk sheet wrapped around her limbs, Scott gently reaches over and moves a strand of hair that has fallen into her mouth and then slowly, tenderly, places his lips on hers. She can taste herself on his tongue as he presses gently on her lips with his teeth and then, as he kisses her more deeply, his tongue caresses hers. She’s ready for him. She lifts her legs behind his back and uses her strong abdominal muscles to pull him towards her.
‘Are you sure?’
She nods and when he slides slowly, gently, purposefully into her, she loses herself to him all over again.
Chapter 25
HEATHER
Whenshewakes,Scottis distractedly stroking her hair with one hand whilst typing frantically on his phone with the other, his lips slightly parted. She raises herself up on her left elbow and uses her right hand to stroke his cheek. She’s just awoken from a long, dream-filled sleep where waking to the warmth of his body and his skin on hers is the norm. In the dream, Scott, Georgia and Brianna form a brand-new family unit, and this feeling of security and belonging becomes so familiar it is almost, shockingly, taken for granted.
‘Morning,’ she says, revelling in her memories of the night before, when he remembered what she likes. She thinks how he’d traced his fingers to the familiar spots that had previouslyrendered her powerless in his hands; the way his lips lingered on the places that caused her to lose control of her limbs. He’d remembered the right moments to pull, tweak, eek out and tease; and exactly the right time to relent to her cries. Wanting him, needing him. Now.
It’s a second or two before he stops tapping on his phone and turns to her.
‘Morning,’ he says. He slides his phone under the pillow and tilts his head to skim her lips with his.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks, partly because she’s uneasy about what’s taking his full attention at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, and partly because she’s afraid he might be filled with regret over last night.
‘Of course,’ he says, tousling his hair at the fringe and adjusting his position to kiss the end of her nose. ‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘Hmmm.’
Brianna often teases her dad for being a coffee snob and describes the elaborate steps he takes to produce the ultimate caffeine hit at home. Heather doesn’t want to miss out on trying this for herself.
‘Ten minutes, okay?’
Heather turns languidly onto her side and watches, appreciatively, as he extracts himself from under the sheet and pulls on a pair of close-fitting boxer shorts. The muscles in his shoulders flex as he dresses. She slumps back on the mattress and allows herself a few moments of unrealistic daydreaming. She ignores past hurts, entrenched behaviours, self-protective habits and allows herself permission to fall into a fairy tale place where she and Scott could live an existence where every Sunday morning follows a similar format.
