His knees needed to bend, so he carefully set her down, going with her, and with an arm around her waist he sat on the cold earth, back to the stone. Elspeth tucked against him, and let out a great sigh. Her hand fluttered at his chest, then down his stomach, pressing to the muscles. She wrapped it around his waist so they held each other.
As the cold seeped into his back and ass, Daniel became too aware of the sticky cum in his briefs and wrinkled his nose. “I haven’t done this since I was a fucking teenager,” he said, huffing a laugh.
“I didn’t think I could do this,” she said, face against his chest so her words were muffled. “I didn’t even—we didn’t even . . .” Elspeth giggled. She tipped her head up, and he kissed her forehead.
“Next time, I’ll bring a condom on our run.”
Her eyes got huge. “Oh, my God, if I buy condoms without going fifty miles out of town, everyone will know why.”
Daniel snorted.
Elspeth burrowed closer. “It’s cold now,” she whispered.
“We could race back.” He didn’t want to get up.
“I think I’m too—um. Wet. To run.”
“Christ,” he knocked his head back against the stone to sabotage the renewed lust at the thought of her wet and hot, and what he could do with his fingers.
As if reading his mind, she slid her hand slowly down his stomach to his hipbone. Hesitated, and when he fell still, she dipped her fingers under the band of his sweats.
Daniel clenched his jaw, but couldn’t quite stop the twitch at how cold her skin was.
Elspeth laughed and pulled her hand up to her own stomach.
With a sorry groan, he began to sit up.
“Wait.” Elspeth leaned away and faced him. Her hair fell out of her pigtails in such a mess, and her mouth was raw pink. She stared earnestly at him, licked her lips, then said in a rush, “I promised you a song.”
Warmth blossomed inside his chest, and he felt an honest smile soften his own mouth. “Yeah, you did,” he said. He lifted his eyebrows expectantly.
She moved onto her knees, leaning back on her ankles, posture straight and her hands flat on her thighs. Her fingertips were pink in the cold, and Daniel nearly told her to keep the song for later. But he was too damn selfish.
Elspeth took a long, preparatory breath and sang.
At first, her voice trembled, and she kept her eyes closed. Daniel stared at her lips and hints of her tongue, taking her all in as her voice grew stronger, lifting on waves of melody.
It was Italian, and distantly familiar, like he’d heard it in a movie maybe, since he’d never purposefully listened to opera in his life.
She was gorgeous, and her voice was filled with passion. It rang out in the cold morning, and Daniel felt . . . new. Sweaty, sticky, cold, nowhere near satisfied, but wanting more because this was perfect.
Elspeth opened her eyes, and at the sight of him staring her words faltered and she smiled with a little embarrassment. The shape of her mouth changed the tone of the song, and she schooled herself again, lifting her face slightly for the swell of music.
The final note swept up, and she held it out, softening so that it drifted in the air, finally fading as she blinked quickly. Looking down, she took another shuddering breath before glancing at him with obvious vulnerability and flushed pride.
“Beautiful,” he said, and brushed his thumb along her bottom lip. “What was it?”
“Mozart.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Daniel said.
It worked to make her laugh, chasing away the vulnerable sheen in her big hazel eyes. “I haven’t sung for an audience in . . . quite some time.”
“Thank you,” he said seriously.
She got to her feet. “We should go.”
Standing, he nodded and offered his hand. It felt like more—like offering her more than he could know.
Elspeth slid her fingers along his palm until they wove with his.
Chapter Five
Elspeth’s heart hadn’t stopped pounding for hours.
It was mid-afternoon and the Friday rush had begun, but she barely felt it, having been high on sex, singing, anticipation, and emotional clarity since leaving Daniel at the guesthouse this morning. And not just emotional clarity, but shared emotional clarity. Elspeth was certain he understood why she sang only on her morning constitutional, and she understood the rippling confusion and grief an anniversary could compel.
Plus, thanks to his T-shirt, she’d gotten a good look at the tattoo curving up from his inner elbow along the strong line of his bicep: it was a wicked-looking knife. The military kind with a serrated spine. Elspeth had never particularly noticed blades other than to avoid slicing herself open chopping veggies, but she still wanted to suck on his. In fact, she was developing a quick obsession.
She’d put on a pop music internet station when she opened up The Fort, and still danced around as she poured and served and wiped up spills, grinning, flirting with the regulars and even accidentally with Asra when he arrived. He instantly dragged her into the kitchen and demanded to know if she’d fucked the American. “No,” Elspeth had said, then laughed. “Not yet. Not quite.” And she’d twisted her lips into a thoughtful frown, wondering what exactly counted. Maybe she had? “Maybe?”
As she worked through the exact series of events at the burial site, her skin grew warm again, and her breath shallow, and Asra pushed away from her. “Nasty,” he laughed. “If my dad marries your mum, we definitely have to stop having conversations like this.”
“You brought it up,” she reminded him.
“My mistake, sis.”
“Don’t tell anybody!” she hissed.
Asra eyed her with the intense skepticism of a twenty-year old. “Your whole . . . aura . . . is telling enough.”
He vanished out to the bar, calling a greeting to someone, and Elspeth closed her eyes, knocking her head back against the wall. She drew a few long, deep breaths to calm down.
It took three rounds of frying chips before Elspeth was certain she could smile like a sane person and allowed herself to reemerge.
Of course, he was there.
Her heart started back up again, and she felt her cheeks flush. Daniel had tucked himself into the farthest booth, with his back to the wall beside the cubby of books. He already had a pint of lager, and wore another three-piece suit, sans tie, jacket hooked on a cleat beside the booth. This suit was black and crisp, with a dark pink shirt. Elspeth tried to smile plainly at him, but the corners of her mouth curled too slowly, too wide, and when he dipped his chin in acknowledgment—not with a smile, but hard eye contact—she felt the heat snap straight to her pussy. She spun away, tingling all over, and ducked behind the bar to hide.
The rhythm of her life took over.
Elspeth lost track of time in her business, teasing Asra as they danced around each other behind the bar, taking the day’s pies from the Morgan sons—five extra for Friday night—answering the phone once or twice, glad when Rhys arrived to wash dishes. Because Asra had started Daniel off, it was Asra who took him another beer and reported back that the American was charming Mr. Griffiths and Evan Hughes, who’d served in the Welsh Guard until retirement. Evan sometimes gave informal tours of the old fort ruins down at the river and was in the middle of lecturing Daniel on the entire marshal history of the region. Asra promised Elspeth her American seemed into it.
It made her happy to think of him interested in local history, which made her think about the standing stones, which made her think about his mouth and tongue, and the feel of his hips between her thighs as he pinned her to the stone. The feel of his cock right there against her, the friction on her clit, and his aching whisper when he said he wanted to be inside her. God, the things she’d said in response! She’d never been so bold before, though at the time she’d only felt eager.
Elspeth had to stop and clench all her muscles, pressing her legs together behind the bar. She laughed a little at herself, and was relieved when Cat
hy Lewis and Thomasina Bevin popped in, sidling up to the bar.
Contemporaries of her mum, Cath and Thom were a pair of old white lesbians still pretending they were roommates, with separate bedrooms in their pristine cottage halfway up the mountain where they offered rooms and quick breakfast during the peak season. Cath, her silver hair swept up in an elegant chignon out of step with her track pants and bulky hoodie, ordered a Pimm’s, and Thom, who liked lipstick and sweater dresses, asked Elspeth to make her something purple.
While she played with creme de violet, Elspeth listened to the pair tell her about the married French couple who’d just checked out, the wife who never got off her phone, using an app to lead her husband around and get odd little tidbits about trees and street corners and ruins and all manner of random facts. At first they’d been dismissive of the technology, but then the woman told them the year their own cottage had been built! Can you even believe it, Elspeth?
No, she barely could. Elspeth had widened her eyes appreciatively as she set down a coup glass for Thom to try, with gin, violet, lemon, and splash of a weird herbal simple Mary had concocted.
“How long until you have to decide about that offer for this good old place?” Cath asked.
Elspeth’s spine stiffened. “Ah, end of next week. Or as soon as I like,” she managed through a dry throat. She hated that it was her choice. Mum thought she was being kind, putting Elspeth’s future in her own hands, only it wasn’t only her future. Caerafon itself had a huge stake in it. Over the decades a few hotels and shops had accepted corporate sponsorship, but nobody was outright owned by outside business. Much less a multi-national drug corporation trying to shine up their reputation with a ready-made sustainability façade.
Bitterness drained into her stomach. She wished her dad were here.
“Your mum showed us the proposal, and it looks a delight—and all that money!” Cath said.
“It’s only what The Fort is worth,” Elspeth insisted.
Thom raised her coup glass. “That it is.”
“Once they own it, they don’t have to stick to the proposal. They could level the building and put something” —Elspeth flapped her hands in the air— “I don’t know—modern!”
“And you could go back to school, or travel, and your mum could marry that Pakistani man from London without a worry for you. It would be good for her to go on an adventure,” Thom finished mildly.
“I know.” Elspeth nodded. She did know. “And his name is Kam.”
“You’d still have roots here, sweetheart, and nobody will forget your dad,” Cath said, expression drooping into sympathy.
“I know,” Elspeth repeated. She fought against the fluttering threat of tears, pressing a smile on. “I have to go clear a table.”
They let her flee, and Elspeth made a beeline, shining eyes and all, for Daniel’s table.
“Hi,” she said, plopping down on the edge of the booth bench. She let her smile spread to old Evan Hughes—Mr. Griffiths had moved to a tall table with some other locals. Evan patted her hand and lifted his nearly empty pint glass.
“Hi, El. Good chatting with you, young man,” he said, his accent thicker, as usual when he performed for foreigners. It lightened Elspeth’s heart a bit, and she said, “I didn’t mean to chase you off, Evan.”
“No bother!” he declared. “You’re much prettier company for the lad.”
With that, he hobbled with his glass to Mr. Griffith’s side.
Elspeth turned to Daniel, expecting a flirting comment about Evan being right about the prettiness of his new company, but instead Daniel leaned in so his arm brushed hers, and dipped his chin.
“You’re sad,” he murmured, then his gaze flashed past her. “What did those old birds do to make you sad?”
Opening her mouth to put him off, she stopped. He smelled like some earthy hair product and she really wanted to press her face to his and stay there. With somebody who didn’t care if she sold, somebody who didn’t have any stake in Caerafon, only in getting into her pants. That’s what she needed. So she grabbed his lager and took a drink.
Then Elspeth said, “They think I should sell The Fort.”
Daniel hesitated, and then he frowned. “Thinking about selling it makes you sad?”
She drew a hard breath, and pushed it out, nodding. Her fingers played along his pint glass. She should get him a new one. “Yes. But . . . so does thinking about not selling. I’m a mess.”
He smiled softly and reached for the lager, wrapping his hand around hers. Her entire body reacted, longing for more, as he shifted to face her, and murmured in her ear, “You don’t seem a mess to me.”
Elspeth shivered and did not lean in, or she’d melt into his lap in front of the whole pub. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “What you think I seem like isn’t to be trusted.”
A soft intake of breath alerted her to his surprise, and Daniel’s hand fell away from hers. He started to speak, but she interrupted.
“I mean,” she said, only as loud as necessary to be heard in the lively room, “that when you’re here, what I’m feeling changes. Like that physics thing we learned in school—just observing particles maybe changes their behavior?” Elspeth wrinkled her nose. “Or maybe it was atoms specifically. But that—that’s you, looking at me, changing how all my atoms behave.”
“Exciting your elements,” he said, slowly, like each word was dragged up his throat. “Christ, Elspeth.”
Her face was fully turned to him, now, and her knee pressed on his. She parted her lips. She had to breathe through her mouth, to taste the flavor of his presence. “Uh-huh,” she murmured.
“So you behave differently around me.”
“I most certainly have never behaved like I did this morning ever before. Next to a Neolithic burial site, no less.”
“Do you go for a run every morning?” Daniel asked with a very distinct insinuation.
“No,” she whispered, eyes lowering to his mouth.
“Then when do I get to kiss you again?”
Elspeth watched his lips form the words more than she heard them, feeling them brush against her neck, down between her breasts, trailing imaginary kisses along the inside of her thighs. “Tuesday,” she said too loudly.
Daniel fell still, vibrating sudden tension as if her word had been lightning and they awaited the thunder.
Her gaze flew to his, and it was his turn to seem sad. Devastated, more like. Because of the anniversary. She nodded; she’d remembered. “It’s my day off,” she said lightly. “And I hear you like local military history, so I thought I could take you to see a few castles.”
His jaw clenched briefly. He barely moved to say, “Okay. Tuesday.” The date sounded like a death sentence. Then with a marshaling of will she could trace in the muscles relaxing around his dark chocolate eyes, he gave her that wolfish smile from the moment they’d met. “No kissing allowed on the weekend?” he teased.
Finishing his beer before answering to give herself a moment to compose, she said, “The weekend is the busiest here, most of the year. Day-trippers, hikers, you name it. I’ll be busy constantly.”
“And Monday?”
“Inventory and weekly deliveries. And cleaning. The Fort isn’t open, but I’m here dawn to dusk.”
“Alone?”
“Sometimes—usually. My dad liked to be alone for it, to fill the place up with just him, he’d say.” Elspeth twisted and pointed at one of the photos at the end of the long cluster of them, next to the bar. “That’s him, with me and my grandad. Then above it, Dad, Grandmum, and Great-Grandad. His father opened The Fort, but we don’t have a picture of him.”
She felt his fingers light at the nape of her neck, there and gone, a comforting, teasing touch before he said, “That’s why it makes you sad to think of selling. When you’re alone here, you’re alone with him.”
Nodding, she turned back to him. He understood her so easily. It was soothing, like she wasn’t bizarre for thinking it if he cou
ld understand. “Yes. It’s my family, and it’s good here, you know? I like it: the people and this place. It’s a good life,” she added firmly.
Daniel tilted his head in acknowledgement, and his eyes riveted her in place; his whole physicality drew her, the broad angle of shoulders and the tight black waistcoat narrowing his waist, crisp slacks and lush pink shirt. It should’ve been pretty, but instead they were dangerous—he was dangerous. Her sad, hungry wolf.
Elspeth thought she should change the subject, sneak out back with him and tear his waistcoat off, maybe, see if she could snap the buttons, when Daniel very softly said, “But it’s not the life you want.”
Her breath caught painfully in her throat, and she got up from the booth so quickly she nearly stumbled. He knew her. How was it possible he knew her so well? She wanted him to tell her more about herself, dive deeper into her depths, but it was impossible. Something she wanted so badly couldn’t be real.
“Elspeth,” he said, reaching for her.
“I’m fine—I’m fine.” Elspeth turned on her best customer service smile and plucked his glass off the table. “You need a refill.” She spun, and felt his eyes on her the whole time. Even when she was behind the bar again, choosing a new pint glass, setting it under the spout, he watched her, and she flicked her eyes up to his once, saw his regard, felt her insides melting, and like a coward sent the lager over with Asra.
Chapter Six
Elspeth changed the streaming music to her usual classical music station, welcoming the familiar as she poured and flirted and cut a fresh batch of lemons and limes, and changed the tap on the always popular Guinness, glad Monday would see new kegs—and that Asra was coming by to help clean the lines.
She avoided looking at Daniel, ate a sandwich her mum brought by, chipped a fingernail, and resigned herself to not having time to reapply polish until Wednesday. She could at least scour it all off first thing in the morning.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 40