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r /> Damon tensed. “Yeah. You’ve—”
That wasn’t her first orgasm, but it broke the sound barrier of anything she’d experienced before. “He often didn’t—um.”
“Okay, but what about you?”
She lifted her head from his shoulder to watch his face, eyes open and brows crooked down, concern but no embarrassment. She took a steadying breath. “When Hamish was still interested in sex he was good to me, but I’ve not…it wasn’t…oh God.” She buried her face in his neck. It made absolutely no difference, even after what they’d just done, that he couldn’t see how flushed with discomfort she was; she burned with it.
He gave her hair a tug, but his voice was still that sliding, slippery ease. “Tell me what you felt.”
She nibbled on his earlobe. A delaying tactic; a delightful distraction. Maybe he’d let this pass.
He quirked his neck, half pulling away from her teeth, but his arm tightened around her to hold her in place. “Georgia.”
He’d written a new musical arrangement for her understanding of sex. He’d drummed a score on her body and a put a riff in her heart that changed her definition of sound. His lovemaking was an earworm to beat all other songs that could hook you. She was incapable of withstanding a craving for more and more of the tune they made together. She traced her nose over the circular edge of his ear, breathed him in.
She told him what she felt.
“Sonic boom.”
17: Technicolour
Damon could smell bergamot and vanilla. The candles Georgia lit while she was avoiding the whole we’re about to have sex thing, right before she disappeared into the bathroom and he’d thought about getting dressed, leaving her in peace and taking his frustration home. Damn glad he hadn’t.
It had to be late morning, judging by his hunger, but there was no light in the room. He’d get up and go for his watch but he might wake her and he could think of better ways of doing that than incidentally. She owed him eggs, or any kind of caress she cared to call eggs, bacon, toast. He’d accept them all, stuff his face with them and no matter how much she served up, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his hunger for her.
He looked up into the black of her bedroom ceiling. This was big, this thing they had together, feature-length animation film big. It had summer blockbuster written all over it: dramatic, memorable, sequel worthy. He could see the TV spin-off, book tie-in, scantily clad action figurines in compromising poses.
He could see nothing.
It wasn’t the middle of the night, and it wasn’t likely her rented flat had blackout curtains. He eased upright and she didn’t stir. Swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood. His watch was on the tallboy. He found it, 10am and it was dead dark in here. Last night he’d been able to make out the bedroom doorway and the dresser because of light in the hall and the bathroom, plus her candles. There was no light now, maybe the flat was sun starved. He felt his way to the doorway, moved into the hall, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again. He hadn’t gotten as far as her kitchen last night. It wasn’t a good idea to go crashing around in there now unless he wanted to wake her.
He reached for the doorway to the bathroom, danced his fingers up the wall to find the light switch. A click and nothing. There was light there last night, but it could be a blown bulb. He used the toilet, washed his face. Found that half-size plastic toothbrush with its tiny tube of paste and cleaned his teeth.
He knew the landing got sunlight because he’d felt it on his face waiting for her the day they’d bought the dress. So even if it was overcast, dismal, he should still be able to see the change in the light. This is what you got for waking up in someone else’s bed, in someone else’s home. You also got the elbow he whacked into the wall, the toe he stubbed on the leg of a hall table. At least that identified her door keys. He found them in a bowl on the table and used them to open the front door.
He only wanted the light to give him a sense of the day, the time, the place. He cracked the seal on the door expecting to feel the sun, hoping to blink against the glare.
Nothing.
He opened the door wider, and wider again until it was all the way open, folded against the wall, and he was standing on the stone step. He saw nothing. He rubbed a hand over his face. He couldn’t hear rain or wind, there were birds chirping. No people sounds. He listened carefully to check that, he heard a bus on the street, but no evidence of Georgia’s neighbours who’d rightly be shocked to meet a naked man on their landing.
He took a step out onto the tiles where he knew the sun would be. He felt its warmth immediately, but it didn’t make him squint and what he saw was nothing.
It made him stagger, his heel caught on the step, both hands went out to grip the doorjamb. Nothing. He saw nothing. He turned to look down the hallway, blackness, then back to the world outside and yeah, there was a difference, but it was shades of charcoal and midnight. He wasn’t seeing light.
He stepped back inside the flat and closed the door, leaned against it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Could this be lack of sleep, stress, dehydration?
Of course, it could still be a blown bulb, very stormy day. Birds still chirped in bad weather. It could still be that he’d got the angles of the sun wrong and Georgia’s flat was naturally dark. This wasn’t a place he was familiar with, so it could be a lot of things. There was no need to panic. He took a breath, let it out slowly. The next in-breath filled his lungs and brought horror with it.
There was no need to lie to himself. This was it. This was Lina’s moment. The one he’d used vain hope and insane bravado to avoid, deny, but not as he’d planned, evade.
Jesus. He’d lost his light and shade; he’d lost his sense of shape and movement. His residual sight, his jigsaw memory cheat, it was gone. He bent forward, hands to his knees; he was breathing too fast, hyperventilating.
And he did not want Georgia to find him like this: naked, in a panic sweat, coming apart. He had to buck up, get it together. It wasn’t like this was unexpected. He wasn’t sick or hurt or in need of medical attention. He was just blind. Blinder than he had been a day ago. Blind in a way there was no recovery, miracle cure or coming back from, in a way that made him less able and threatened, his romantic blockbuster from becoming the enduring classic he wanted it to be.
Georgia loved and lost with Hamish. She’d been damaged by that relationship. She’d made a plan to start a new kind of life. And then the two of them had stumbled together, and against Georgia’s better judgement she’d accepted Damon entirely for who he was and how he managed the world.
But last night he’d been more capable, more able.
