Page 71 of Read My Lips

“It does, actually.”

Then we were standing side by side looking out onto the street, cradling our mugs. As if hot drinks and conversation were the only reasons he’d brought me home. What was this? I didn’t want him bloody well serenading me. I didn’t want coffee either. I wanted his hands on me the way they had been last night, and to taste the salty-sweet tang of his skin. I wanted to know what he’d do when he didn’t think he had to hold back.

Simon studied me. “I didn’t really bring you back here to drink coffee.”

He clunked his cup onto a bookcase shelf. My skin prickled.

“Thank fuck. Me neither.”

Every bloody piece of Simon’s clothing had buttons.

Right when I wanted to unpeel him there in the window like an easy-open delivery box from an evil conglomerate internet company making a mockery of competition law, there they were, getting in the way.

His eyes flashed at me, shimmering with amusement as I wrestled the hundred thousand down the length of his shirt front with my sweaty sausage fingers.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to bonfire all your suits.”

Simon laughed, voice all husky and burred. “Please don’t.”

He pushed my hands away, deftly flipping down the line of his shirt front, undoing two and three at a time with a flick of his thumb.

His smile made me glow. The way he watched me, I couldn’t breathe. His was the close-in focus of sun-rays intensified under a magnifying glass. I always knew I was an ant. Sometimes it felt like he wanted to eat my words right off my face, but what if he was reading my lips the whole time?

What if⁠—

He ducked to kiss me.

“Mmnngh.”

His mouth. Devastatingly soft, slow, like he wanted to take his time, take me apart, take everything he could get. Fuck me, I’d let him. Arching up against him like a line of iron filings, I’d let him take whatever he wanted.

Teeth grazed my lower lip, my brain blue-screened.

Error.

Input not detected.

System offline. Reboot required.

Sucking in a shaky breath, I yanked my shirt off over my head before he changed his bloody mind, stripping off like he’d hit a timer on a naked race.

Simon’s laugh rang loud and clear between us.

“Slow down.”

I goggled at him. “Why the hell would I do that?”

Last time was a fluke. This was back to reality where quick sex was good sex. Orgasms all round, so no one complained when my bit-of-rough act collapsed under its own weight. So they didn’t get the chance to notice my outside only matched what they expected of me, not who I really was, or what I really wanted. No one cared. Simon was not the exception.

We had to get on with it. Before he changed his mind. Before it turned to a repeat of everything at Luke’s place. Before Simon remembered he had a billion and fourteen reasons not to go there with me. Ever. Including deep frying my testicles.

Simon squeezed my wrist. “I’m serious, where’s the fire?”

I froze, midway through unbuttoning my fly, far too conscious of the weight of his hand so bloody close to my crotch. I grimaced with the effort of squashing my daft grin down. “Oh come on.”

He blinked at me – the face of innocent confusion. “What?”

“You know I’m about to tell you it’s down my pants.”