Page 5 of Read My Lips

The silver car with tinted windows pulling in to idle on the other side of the street exactly six and a half minutes after his message had to be Simon. But what if it wasn’t?

Posh car company was him all over. But it could be drug dealers. It could be anyone. What if I got in the back and it was an airport transfer? I’d end up at Terminal Five, and some poor family would write to the Daily Mail about taxi fraud and their ruined Magaluf all-inclusive. And I’d have to fork out to get back again.

Looking-not-looking, I squinted at the rear windows, trying to make out who was inside. The suited-up driver stared at a fixed point in the road directly in front of the car.

My phone buzzed.

Simon

Stand there much longer and you’ll get done for soliciting.

What a bellend.

The rear window hummed down and he poked his head out, already laughing.

“How much for a Happy Ending?”

I scowled like a gnarly old tom cat. He didn’t need me confirming I’d give him anything he wanted. “Pretty sure that’s sexual harassment, mate.”

Simon blanked me, like I knew he would. Experience told me the harsh puddle of orange-toned light from the streetlamp cast too many shadows for him to follow my lips across the distance. I restrained myself by dropping into British Sign Language instead of flipping him off.

“Do you have to be a cock about everything?”

His smile split wide in all its breathtaking glory as I signed the dick in question like it had flopped right out into the air between us.

He cleared his throat. “Oh come on, I’m not the one who tossed you out onto the streets barely dressed.”

Nine times out of ten, when we were one-on-one, Simon spoke instead of signed. His BSL was a bit pants to be honest, so fair enough. I didn’t mind a bit of back and forth, but this was cruel. Even when he spoke in a bored, drawled monotone, throwing out polite words like orders instead of requests, Simon’s slightly imprecise vowels kicked my pulse up a gear. I did not need him talking about me lacking clothing.

“What?” Wrinkling my face up, the half shaped word stilled on my lips as I wagged a finger side to side.

And Simon tilted his head. The weight of his warm-dark gaze stilled on my hip where the tail ends of my shirt flapped free, refusing to line up, like half of it had shrunk in the wash.

“Shit.” I hadn’t even got dressed in the dark.

Stalking across the road, full on flashing him as I fixed it, I fumbled the so-many-more-than-one button I’d missed. Hopefully he didn’t see me blush. I had nothing he wanted, anyway. Simon did not cross professional boundaries. Not with me. Even though I wanted to taste his stubble and suck love-bites down his neck like a rabid teenager with a vampire obsession.

Simon was immaculate, as always. Something expensive and subtle wafted over me as I buckled up in the back seat. Citrus and wood and all three kings, barely there against the sweet, clean humanness of him. Shower gel maybe? Lingering dampness in the moss of his dark hair conjured steamed up glass and water droplets beading down the line of his back. Just one of twelve billion fantasies I was Not Supposed To Have.

“Honestly, Ben, you should have taken your time.”

“You’re not funny,” I muttered. Clearing my throat almost banished the hallucination of the taste of his body.

He sighed, wearily. “You’re going to have to repeat that.”

Right. The light was rubbish in the back of the car, too. As we sped off, his warm tawny skin streaked with shifting shapes of yellow orange from the streetlights lining the road. Darker shadows tumbled under the brightness of glancing headlights. The red of brakes strobed over him through the window, all colour and shade and nothing useful unless you counted his devastating gorgeousness. He could have read my filthy gutter-mind like a tabloid headline if he paid any real attention at all.

Tugging my seatbelt, I twisted back against the door to better face him.

“He thought,” I started, signing a fraction slower because of the shifting shadows, never mind the too much beer, “we were trying for a remote threesome through a camera phone.” A lot of signs he wasn’t going to have stumbled across in the middle of your average business meeting. “And then you rejected him and assassinated his communication skills. So, taking my time wasn’t really on the table.”

Simon’s whole body shook with the strength of his laughter. At least he thought it was funny. I scowled.

“Why have you interrupted my Friday night then?

“Saturday morning, technically.”

I didn’t soften. “What do you need?”