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He straightened up. He had a headache: hunger, thirst. Fear. It was tight in his clenched fists and fisted in his gut. This frightened him more than it should. Other than Lina, no one else would even know it’d happened. His life was organised around his blindness, nothing changed. Once he’d lost his backlit twenty-four point, he’d had so little remaining functional sight left to lose anyway, but there was power and control in light and dark, and security in being able to see movement. He couldn’t help but find permanent blackness a crippling threat.
His threat, not Georgia’s penance.
He’d deal with it alone now that it was here; get training to use the long cane and finish that research on how to travel with a dog, put himself on a waiting list for one, work out how he could retain the independence, the life he’d prospered with.
He heard Georgia say his name, once, then louder, before he was ready to face her. He closed the door softly, made the short journey down the hall to her bedroom doorway. Her feet hit the floor and she rumbled around, he’d lay money on finding something to wear.
Her hands a shock on his chest, he couldn’t stop the flinch. “Where’d you go?” A brush of cotton, bet paid off. “Looking like that?”
He pushed his hair off his forehead. “Bathroom, used your spare toothbrush.”
“Oh.” Her arms wrapping around him. “If I use mine I could kiss you.”
He stroked her tangled hair. “I’m not the least bit fussy. You can kiss me without the requirement for a toothbrush.” Inside her kiss the darkness wouldn’t matter. He’d had coloured visions last night in her arms.
“But my teeth have fur on them.”
He tipped his head up, face towards the ceiling. “No one told me you were a were-sound engineer.”
She bit his throat and he laughed, snatching her closer. If he could still his racing thoughts, he’d be okay. He had money, resources, professional assistance. He was thousands of times better off than most blind folk without his earning capacity. He had faith in his ability to work through this new phase of darkness. He had Georgia. She was his leading lady and he wasn’t scaring her off because today he could see less than yesterday.
He captured her jaw, but she squirmed to get away and he let her. She went for the bathroom. She didn’t try the light and he didn’t catch his sigh before it was out, but she was busy splashing water about and didn’t remark on it, instead she laughingly closed the door on him, shouting through it, “I’m not weeing in front of you.”
There was the flush, the tap again, the plink of a handtowel rail against a tile, the door opening and she threw herself at him, backing him into the bedroom.
He let her push him till his calves hit the bed and then he took over, dropping back on it, dragging her down with him, taking her minty mouth and her warm skin and dissolving his truckload of dread in the luscious weight of her body and her soft sighs and murmurs.
What he could touch and taste, what he could smell, sense and hear, held no trepidation. And Georgia filled his senses to overflow.
Her t-shirt was gone and there was only the slide of skin, the stimulant of kisses. She shifted till she was braced on top of him, sitting astride his thighs.
“On top.” It came out of her in a hiss, though there were no S sounds to make it so, only the sibilance of her desire, slippery and sensate.
He forgot the vacant, aching black in the blinding flash of the moment she eased him inside; in the hot, hard gasps she made as he filled her, and the wet heat of what she was made of and gift
ed him. He rolled her hips, helped her move, tilted his own, gave her an anchor. She folded forward for kisses and connection and he only let her upright again when he knew she was set to ride, primed to let go. He lent her his hands to brace against, gave her his voice to guide her and he lost his heart entirely.
“You’re so beautiful, so, so God. So right. Georgia. Let me hear you.”
She didn’t have words, but she had nails dug in the back of his hands, thighs clenching and easing on his hips, tremors wracking through her body, moisture coating her skin. She had her head thrown back and her back arched, hair flicked across his hips and fell over his hands in turn, but her stuttered breath, her moans and sighs might be pain, until she shuddered, jerked down hard on him and shouted her ecstasy.
It released his. His head slammed back, he went rigid, but inside he was a kite or a fish, a fleet thing made of speed and sailing on air, tethered to Georgia, as the fish to the rod, as the kite to the runner. Collapsed, shuddering on his chest she cast him out and held him firm, rode the currents and soared with him.
He called her name and she answered with tender kisses. He was earth to her sun; seconds to her minute, coasting, gliding, rotating on visions wrought in shades of reds and blues and knowledge greater than any sight that he was incapable of being separate from this woman.
18: Freefall
Georgia thought they’d spend the day lolling around her flat. She’d hoped they’d spend it proportionally; maxing out in the bedroom, with occasional forays to the kitchen for sustenance. She could hardly believe Damon was sitting at her kitchen counter wearing nothing but a towel and a few random water droplets from the shower on his shoulders, nodding yes to more toast and chatting about the weather.
She’d nod yes, she’d shout it till her lungs burned to anything he suggested. But he’d suggested parasailing and he thought she was going to chicken out. The toast popped up. He knew a guy who could take them, only a half hour drive. It was safe and fun. She buttered the bread. She wasn’t going to wimp out, but she puzzled at the idea. More specifically at the notion of coaxing him to bed and keeping him there, and the depressing realisation he didn’t want that.
She looked at Fluffy, making O mouths from the tank on the counter. They were the perfect shape for her own disappointment.
Damon had almost made Fluffy fish finger fodder with his elbow, sending the tank skidding across the laminex counter, slopping water, before he snatched it from the edge with a shocked shout. He was making her just as seasick with his desire to tip their new intimacy on its head by inviting the whole world in.
She put the toast in front of him. She poured him more coffee from the French press. She ate her yoghurt and watched him. His hair was damp, slicked back. He’d seen some sun, a light tan over his chest and arms, but he had muddy smudges under his eyes. They hadn’t had much sleep, but his face spoke of more than one night’s worth of being short-changed and his voice was still cloudy, instead of its usual sultry heat after a storm.
And yet, parasailing instead of an afternoon horizontal.
