Page 14 of The Ghost of Exes Past

‘I’m the awkward one, who keeps making stupid jokes to impress you,’ he admits.

‘I hadn’t noticed they were stupid.’ She grins.

Everything goes quiet. Even the birds seem to have muted their calls. Belle and Jake stand there, very close, neither of them moving. The lavender is warm around them, and she is acutely aware of every inch of the distance between them. How much of it remains and how little it would take …

Jake breaks, his voice deeper than Belle has heard before, almost pained, whispering, ‘I don’t think I can keep pretending that I’m not—’

She doesn’t let him finish; she can’t contain herself anymore. She closes the space between them, wraps her hands around his neck and kisses him. The dampness between her legs grows. Their breathing gets increasingly heavier, and Belle pushes herself against him desperately. Jake senses the shift and pulls back.

‘Do you?’ he whispers.

‘Yes,’ she moans.

He takes her hand and leads her just off the path, through the rows of lavender to their side.

She watches as he removes the light shirt he has been wearing and places it on the ground, making a bed in a patch of lavender, surrounded by blooms but hardly hidden. He plants himself down, hungry eyes staring up, and says, ‘Come here.’

Belle crawls on top of his lap and straddles him, kissing gently at first and then more hurriedly, hungrier. Her hips begin to move against his without her realising. She feels the swell of him through the layers between them – her skirt, his jeans – and she doesn’t even care about acting desperate now; she can’t contain herself as she rocks against him.

Jake slides his hands under the trim of her top and lifts it slowly, over her head, and in that moment she’s the freest she’s ever felt.

Jake kisses her chest, holding her breast in his palm, circling her nipple, which she feels harden under his touch. Without warning and with an arm still around her waist, Jake flips her around and places her on her back, her hair tangled in purple lavender. Her skirt has risen and Jake looms over her, planting kisses on her chest. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispers as she stares up at the sky, feeling exposed yet without a care, her fingers running through his hair.

Jake’s kisses reach her stomach and his eyes find hers as his hands brush her inner thighs. She watches him, wide-eyed, has to hold back her moans as he cups her with his palm, feels the heat of his hand through the cotton of her knickers. He pulls the fabric aside. She hears his breath catch as he lowers his head and kisses her, slowly at first, then slips two fingers gently in – and her eyes roll back, mouth open, back arching as he works them deeper.

‘I want you,’ she whispers.

He doesn’t surface. She feels the groan against her before she hears it, low and deep, between the licks and her stuttered moans. She reaches down, latches on to a crease of his top with her fingers and pulls. He emerges from between her legs, lips wet, eyes dark.

‘I want you now,’ she whimpers.

He moves over her. She watches him unbuckle his jeans, watches him emerge, and the sight of him – finally, all of him – makes her breath leave her entirely.

He lowers his body and enters her, slowly, and then … Belle feels whole.

His elbows find the ground either side of her quivering body, his hands cradle her face and they look at each other, eyes hardly blinking. He moves deeper and she comes apart underneath him, her legs shaking, the lavender crushed beneath them, the scent of it enveloping them.

Belle thinks it’s ironic that the most passionate sex of her life so far is happening surrounded by lavender, a scent set to soothe. She worries it’ll evoke the feel of Jake deep within her, but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s something she’d like to be reminded of forever.

He collapses next to her, hair stuck to his forehead, and she curls towards him, skirt still lifted, her womanhood throbbing, still catching her breath.

‘I love you,’ she whispers as he pants beside her.

CHAPTER SIX

Jake

I know where we are before I even open my eyes.

Lavender. Fucking lavender. Not the old-lady soap kind or the stuff you’d find in the moth section at the back of a garden centre, but the real stuff – wild. Growing in the fields outside our town. The kind that used to stain my white shirts purple and that I’d pick out of my hair for days after. The kind that reminds me of her.

I can still feel the heat on the back of my neck, still sense the sun going down around us. I’m reminded of the feel of her bare skin under my fingers, how soft she was, how I kept finding excuses to touch her arm, her shoulder, the back of her hand. I wasn’t subtle about it, but I was certain my hands hadn’t truly felt before that evening.

Obviously, I’d had a lot of sex before Belle. Loads of it. I never kept count, exactly, but it was … loads. I had a lot of fun, but when I met Belle, I realised what I’d been missing with all those bodies in the dark, and the awkward hellos come morning.

This felt different. This was the kind of sex where you’re driven by pleasing the other person, needing to satisfy her more than you need the pleasure yourself. The kind where you’d want to stay the whole night, make sure she fell asleep okay, and be there when she woke up. I’d turned into the kind of guy who wanted to know what she was thinking; I’d walked home that particular evening, convinced I’d never need to sleep with anyone else ever again, ever. Embarrassing, really.

The lads took the piss out of me for weeks, but I didn’t even care because … Well, I didn’t care. That’s how far gone I was. I even googled ‘men’s aftershave with lavender in it’ – which I’m still embarrassed to admit – purely because I didn’t want to forget that evening, the feel of her, the taste of her … I wanted to be reminded of her, always.