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‘Yeah,’ she said, running her fingers through the spring of hair on his chest, ‘but I can hardly call myself experienced. There’s more to learn, I know there is. And you’re only here a couple more weeks anyway. Why shouldn’t we take advantage? I won’t tell if you won’t.’
He shook his head. He really should get her up and dressed and drop her home.
‘It’s madness, Holly. You’ve had sex. You’re no longer a virgin. That was the deal.’
‘Only that thing you did with the wine.’ she ventured.
Dio, he shouldn’t ask. He knew he shouldn’t. ‘What about it?’
‘I’d really like to try that on you.’
And his growing erection twitched and bucked and he knew he was lost.
Hours later he woke with her in his arms. Soon, he knew, the grey fingers of dawn would work their way through the curtains. The night had been long and full of the pleasures of the flesh and he knew he had to get her back to the house. It was madness that she was still here. But she was warm and relaxed in his arms and he thought, just a few minutes more.
And then she stirred and stretched and he pulled her in tight against him, pressing his lips to her hair, and she responded by turning in his arms and winding her arms around his neck. He felt her breasts against his chest and the curl of her hair against his belly and it was enough to stir his half-ready body again.
‘Are you hurting?’ he asked.
‘I feel wonderful,’ she said against his mouth, and he felt her smile on his lips. ‘I feel like I’ve been liberated from what was starting to feel like a life sentence. Thank you.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said, his own smile on his lips when they met hers. One of her hands skimmed down his side, hesitating at that raised cord of scar tissue, and he stiffened, waiting for the question he knew was coming.
‘What is this?’
‘Nothing,’ he answered, the way he always did.
‘Were you in a car crash?’
‘No.’
‘Then—’
‘Dammit, Holly,’ he said, shoving back the covers as he strode from the bed, any sense of wellbeing demolished. They’d shared great sex, sure, but that didn’t mean she had to know the intimate details of his life. His private life was private and he intended to keep it that way. She was temporary. Whereas his scar—his reminder—was permanent. ‘Does it matter?’
‘I was just asking.’
‘It’s time I took you home.’
‘Fine,’ she said, collecting up underwear and shimmying into it coyly in the bed like he hadn’t already explored every inch of her naked body. Women were mad, he thought, pulling on his trousers. ‘I just don’t know why it’s such a big deal.’
And the control he’d once prided himself on, the control he’d found sorely tested ever since he’d turned up and met prickly Ms Purman, threatened to blow.
‘I donated a kidney to—’ my five-year-old daughter ‘—a friend. That’s all. End of story. Satisfied?’
She looked up at him in the watery light of predawn. ‘That’s all? But that’s an amazing thing to do.’
His lips pulled tight into a grimace and he shook his head. ‘It might have been,’ he said, as empty as the day she’d left them. ‘If she’d made it.’
‘Oh, Franco. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said, pulling his jumper over his head, wishing he’d taken her home after the first time they’d made love like he’d intended. Like he should have and would have if he hadn’t been blindsided by sex. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
He pulled on shoes and his jacket and grabbed his keys, wondering how it was that every time they talked she seemed to remind him of his mother or his siblings or his daughter, always dredging up the past, always digging up things he wanted to stay buried. ‘Are you coming?’
She lay unsleeping on her bed in the short space between dawn and morning proper, after twenty-eight years, no longer a virgin. She wouldn’t go back in a heartbeat, not after the pleasures Franco had introduced her to this night.
She clutched the sheets around her chest. She would never forget this night. She would never forget Franco. She just wished it hadn’t ended so badly. He’d dropped her home with barely a word, his chiselled jaw rigid, his grey eyes as cold as the clouds that dropped icy fat drops on her as she ran inside.
He was hurting. He’d tried to make out that his scar meant nothing, but she’d felt his pain in the struggle he’d had to even acknowledge it.
He’d donated a kidney to a friend. He’d given a part of himself to another. What kind of man did that? Not the kind of man she’d thought Franco to be when he’d blown into her world those few short weeks ago. He wasn’t that man. He was so much more.
