He wanted to.
So at quarter past eleven a.m., Daniel arrived at The Fort in his best navy blue suit with the silver-mint checkered vest, freshly shaved and carrying a plastic bag with two egg salad sandwiches. He didn’t think it was the kind of lunch that lent itself toward the mouth-to-mouth contact he longed for, but Agatha swore it was Elspeth’s favorite, so egg salad is what he brought.
From inside he heard the sound of opera. He knocked, but she probably couldn’t hear over the rising vocals and cello. After knocking again, he tried the knob—open.
Daniel pushed through the door, sure to let the green man make its usual announcing thump. He didn’t want to startle her. Stools were up on the bar, chairs and other stools piled on the tables and booths. He began to call her name, but she was there in the middle of the pub, on her hands and knees in cut-off sweats, scooting backwards toward him.
He started to sweat.
Elspeth was mopping with a wide rag, singing as she stroked the long wooden panels, shoulders strong and ass in the air. It was the floor of a pub. Foul for sure, but all Daniel wanted was to drop everything and grab her. Pin her face to the floor and with his other hand pull off those tattered gray sweats. In his imagination, she wasn’t wearing anything under them. And she was wet.
Choking slightly on the overwhelming desire, Daniel closed his eyes and sucked in air through his teeth. “Elspeth,” he said, but it hardly made a dent in the opera.
“Elspeth,” he nearly yelled.
She yelped, spinning hard to land on that fine ass, and brought the rag up in front of her like a shield.
They stared for a moment: Daniel tight and hot in his body, clenching the grocery bag like a lifeline; Elspeth’s eyes huge and her mouth open, cheeks rising pink. Her hair was falling out of a high ponytail and her arms held out still, warding him off with the rag.
Then Elspeth started laughing. Her entire face transformed and she dropped her hands, shaking all over with mirth.
Daniel let out a relieved sigh and felt a smile creep over his own mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said loudly. “I knocked, but . . . ”
“But the music!” she yelled back, waving him off when he offered her a hand to her feet. She darted to the bar for her phone and turned the volume low enough they could talk.
Swallowing, and trying not to walk weird because of his hard-on, Daniel joined her at the bar. He leaned against it and pinched a wisp of auburn hair that curled beside her cheek. “I brought you lunch.”
Her eyes flicked down, and she tilted her head closer to his hand. Daniel cupped her face, and her skin was hot in his palm. Then he kissed her.
Like a lying bastard.
Elspeth darted her tongue playfully against his lips, then pressed her entire body against him. She didn’t touch her hands to him at all, only using her mouth and body. Just as Daniel raised his other hand to her hip, she danced away. “Good, I’m starving,” she said. “Ginger ale?”
Breathless, Daniel nodded. He dragged a stool one-handed off the bar, and thunked it down, then one more. He sank onto one, needing the support, and with careful focus unloaded the sandwiches, napkins, and bags of vinegar potato chips. The crisp sound of pop-tops alerted him to her standing directly across the bar from him, and she set them down.
Daniel removed his jacket, folded it over the rungs of another stool atop the bar, and unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt. As he rolled the sleeve, he realized Elspeth had gone perfectly still. Worried, he looked, and caught her staring with her bottom lip in her teeth. Staring at his forearm.
He unbuttoned the other cuff and held his arm toward her.
Her startled eyes flew to his.
Daniel gazed at her, giving her whatever permission she liked.
Taking a deep breath, she held his upturned hand, sliding her fingers to his wrist. Carefully she took the cuff and folded it over, then again. Her fingers skimmed his, the chipped purple nails delicate on his inner wrist. It was too light, too careful, like the promise of kisses or blazing eye contact across a crowded room. Daniel felt his pulse pop under her hand.
Elspeth leaned nearer and nearer, bent at the waist across the bar as she worked.
Each fold felt like it ricocheted into his chest cavity, and each flick of her knuckles against his forearm made him more desperate to grab her. Standing there, unmoving but for his quickened breathing, was the most erotic thing he’d ever experienced. She pushed the sleeve over his elbow, caressed the soft flesh on the inside, and Daniel gave in to a shiver.
Her eyes rose, and she smiled. “I’ve wanted to lick your tattoo since the moment I saw it—just that tip of it, peeking out.”
Throat dry, Daniel nodded. She could color the tattoo in with green and purple stripes if she wanted to. He hoped his voice sounded deep and sexy rather than helpless when he said, “Maybe after lunch.”
Casually, Elspeth shrugged and let his arm go, moving away.
Daniel had never felt less casual in his life.
He couldn’t lose this. Lose her. If he told her about Pella, he would.
For the first time in years he wanted something. Didn’t he owe it to himself to follow the road?
He drank a third of the ginger ale in one go, then she was beside him, arms raised as she retied her ponytail. It put her chest on display; she was wearing a sports bra again under her worn T-shirt. Her nipples were hard.
Daniel cast about for a topic of conversation as he distracted himself unwrapping his sandwich. “Do you have, ah, merchandise?”
“Merchandise?” She reached for her sandwich.
“Like, T-shirts with The Fort logo?”
“We don’t even really have a logo,” she said with a wry smile.
He didn’t suggest she have one designed. This was dangerous territory already; he was an idiot.
“Pella will make one, if I sell, I’m sure.” Elspeth opened her sandwich. “Egg! How did you know?”
“Agatha,” he said quickly, grasping the change of subject. He lifted his sandwich in a toast. “She told me a lot.”
Elspeth winced cutely. “Oh?”
“About your singing. She told me about the time she and some of her friends drove to Cardiff to hear you. I wanted to brag that I got a private performance.”
Her giggle was a good reward. She took a bite, and so Daniel did the same. It needed hot sauce. Or to be a hamburger.
Elspeth’s smile faded, but not with upset; it just slowly tilted down into a gentle, old sorrow. “She told you why I’m not a famous singer already? About my dad?”
“Yeah.”
“He wouldn’t have liked you,” she said.
Daniel’s brow shot up. “I’m very likable.”
“Not if he noticed how you look at his daughter.”
Thank God for the egg in his mouth tamping down his lust, because she’d lowered her lashes as she said it. Daniel swallowed, washed it down with ginger ale, and pushed his sandwich away. It wasn’t worth it. He leaned toward her. “And how do I look at his daughter?”
“Like you want to eat her for lunch.”
Nodding slowly, Daniel said, “As soon as she finishes her own meal, maybe I will.”
Chapter Eight
Elspeth had become a sex monster, after merely the slight encouragement of two erotic encounters on the same day. Days ago. But here she was, flirting at the expense of her deceased father, because she couldn’t contain herself.
Here she was, sweaty and eating egg salad, just thinking about how to get his hands between her legs. She didn’t even recognize herself.
All weekend she’d been distracted with anticipation of him appearing in The Fort, and it was a physical ache sometimes. Not just in her pussy, but spiking in her brain, too, and at first she’d been irritated that a day without him could make her so addlepated, but as Sunday went on and she still hadn’t seen him, she realized it was hope.
When she imagined seeing him again, it made her smile.
Elspeth hadn’t ever been a sad
person, and she knew the difference between sadness and grief. But she’d gotten used to being just a little bit sad all the time, in addition to the clarifying moments of intense loss, intimate regret, light nostalgia that plagued her grief. And anger, too. It was better this year than the one before, and certainly the year before that, but Elspeth realized she’d taught herself to expect to be sad.
That hope, that longing to see Daniel again was the first time she remembered expecting not to be.
Daniel made her want to remember what happiness felt like.
And also to have constant sex for at least a week.
Elspeth said, “I hardly saw you this weekend. Which was fine!” She smiled encouragingly. “I . . . What were you . . . up to?”
He leaned his elbow on the bar, clearly finished with his barely eaten lunch. “I learned everything Evan Hughes knows about the ruins over the river on Saturday, and on Sunday I hiked Snowdon Mountain.”
“Oh? How was it?”
Daniel paused, and Elspeth started to flush at the inane question, but his posture relaxed slightly, and when he spoke it was gentle. A little . . . sad. “I probably shouldn’t do it alone again.”
He wasn’t flirting, though with a different tone, he might’ve been.
She skimmed her hand against his knuckles in sympathy, though she did not truly understand. She wasn’t sure she needed to. In her experience, nobody who hadn’t lost a parent they loved quite understood even if they perfectly empathized, and if his anxiety had to do with war, it likely didn’t matter what he said. She couldn’t understand. “Well, you won’t be alone tomorrow, and the castles sometimes require a lot of walking.”
“Sounds good.”
They each smiled tightly. Daniel watched her as she finished her sandwich to the rousing aria of Isolde’s Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, gradually realizing what a bad omen it was, despite the violent beauty of the singing. She reached over and tapped her phone to pass it. Skipped the next from Madama Butterfly, and it landed on “Song of the Angel” from the Children of Men score. The song that had made her a singer.
“Listen,” she said, sliding the volume up.
Elspeth closed her eyes. She knew so much about the song, the composer John Tavener, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, and she knew how this song affected her. She wasn’t sure she could bear to see Daniel dismiss it, yet she had to let it play.
First Connolly’s voice began low and wide, moving up through alleluias, and gradually the violins pierced her voice. The two wove in and out of each other, sewing a gorgeous, chilling duet. There had been a time in her life when Elspeth’s only ambition was to have this control, this ability to take her voice and ruin someone with only an alleluia.
The song was just over four minutes, and Elspeth did not move, nor did she hear Daniel so much as shift on his stool.
When the music trailed away, Elspeth gasped herself out of her trance and paused her phone. It was kind to give Daniel a moment to craft his reaction; he couldn’t possibly have missed how much the song meant to her.
Elspeth looked at him, schooling her expression as best she could.
His eyes were on her, dark and sad, but something in his brow or the lay of his lips gave her hope. He said, “That was beautiful. And . . . disturbing.”
Though it was not a word she’d have used, she appreciated that it was clearly a genuine reaction. She nodded to encourage him.
“It was so wistful,” he said. “I don’t think she gets what she’s reaching for.”
“She’s praying, so probably not,” Elspeth whispered.
Daniel stood. “Put it on again. On repeat.”
Elspeth caught her breath and stared at him. He moved so his hip touched her bent knee. Then he took her phone gently and his quick fingers did the work for her.
Then he smiled his slow wolf smile. “Are you done with your lunch? I’m ready for mine.”
“Oh,” Elspeth said, or rather moaned softly.
Daniel abruptly strode away. She squeaked disappointment, but he only turned the bolt on the front door, dropped the old-fashioned slide lock down into the hole in the floor.
Elspeth pressed her hands flat to her belly.
Alleluia, she thought.
She didn’t know what to do as he returned. She still didn’t have any condoms or she’d have invited him upstairs. A droopy, wide, old sofa slouched up there still. And a shag rug. She pressed her lips shut around a bubble of laughter.
Returning, instead of touching her, Daniel cleared up the remnants of their lunch, pushing it all aside. Then he took his lovely suit jacket and spread it on the bar like a picnic blanket.
Elspeth’s eyes widened.
Daniel glanced at her, smirked a little, and slid one finger inside the waistband of her cut-off sweats. He tugged and she stumbled against him, lips parted eagerly.
Dragging that one finger along her hip, he put the forefinger of his other hand down the other side. Elspeth leaned up to kiss him, and he met her with his mouth open, breathing her in, keeping the kiss as tentative and promising as the song rising around them.
Their tongues touched lightly, and he glanced his nose to hers, a sweet gesture belying the dig of his fingers on her bare hips. He walked those fingers down and grabbed her bottom, pulling her against his very hard cock. Elspeth hummed happily, in tone with the song as it quieted and started over.
Daniel carefully, purposefully, pushed her sweats down her hips, leaving her in only her cotton knickers.
She kissed him again, letting him trace the lines of cotton gently pressing her hips. He slid his palm along the curve of her lower belly, two fingers and thumb dipping under the knickers to brush the top of the fluff of her hair. “Yes,” she whispered against the corner of his mouth, tasting along his jaw.
He fell to his knees, leaving her bereft of a mouth to kiss or a neck to nuzzle, and with him he took her knickers.
With a gasp, Elspeth looked down at Daniel, crouched so his face was flush with her pussy, her shorts and knickers around her ankles. He leaned in and brushed his lips to the top of her mound, breathing in slowly enough to tickle. She put her hands in his hair, digging into the layers, and watched him.
It is obscene, she thought lazily, standing half naked in my own pub. In her family’s pub. But his nose traced a line along her belly to the indent where it met her hip, and she thought maybe it was romantic instead. Daniel helped her hop out of her knickers. Then he stood up, his body skimming along hers.
“Hold on,” he murmured against her cheek, and she grasped his shoulders as he hefted her off her feet and set her down on his spread jacket there on the edge of the bar.
He’d pushed between her knees before she realized what was happening, opening her up to display.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, embarrassed, her thighs squeezing his hips. Cool air directly on her most intimate parts was shocking. And his attention! Her nipples ached as they tightened, as her whole body flushed with need. She took a deep breath, her ribs pushed at the tight binding of her sports bra, and even as she wanted to cover herself up, she wanted to bust out of the bra and arch her back and just be naked and free.
“No?” Daniel asked her, catching her eyes. His hands were on her thighs.
She stared into his bitter-chocolate irises and said, “Yes, please.”
His wolfish smile appeared, with all its teeth.
Elspeth moaned, her head falling back, and the ripple of motion rolled her hips forward; she’d have tumbled off the edge of the bar if not for his grip.
Then his breath touched her inner thigh, and his lips grazed the sensitive join of leg to torso, and she felt like heat was just pouring out of her. She melted toward him.
Fingers spread her apart, and she shuddered, knees closing around his shoulders, and he kissed her right on her clit—a tease only—before licking softly, following with little circles.
Elspeth gasped. She thought of health codes suddenly, and that Asra had a key! She
panted, mind spinning, and leaned back on her elbows, body taught with holding herself up and the intense joy zipping up her spine from his kisses. Then Daniel’s mouth pressed down, and his tongue entered her, and there were no more thoughts in her head.
The song started over again, and Elspeth opened her mouth, breathily crying out and the music and his lips and tongue mingled together in a hot ache that rang in her ears, echoed in her chest, and burned to her core.
Daniel slid one hand under her thigh, holding her tight against him as she struggled to contain her need to move, to beg him to put something inside her, to relieve the desperate ache: he sucked at her, swirled his tongue in long strokes, and she panted, “Daniel, Daniel, please.”
She was so ready she barely felt the slide of his fingers entering her, until he moved them, pushing inside, still kissing her and sucking at her clit, and she pushed back, trying to fuck his hand and face, gone in the need, entirely gone, but the crescendo of her song—her favorite song— pierced her low moan, and when she came it was to a thrill of violin.
Daniel did not let her fall back across the bar, but kissed up her belly and wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her as she shuddered and sighed. Elspeth wrapped her legs around him, and as her heels knocked into him she realized she was still wearing her trainers.
Chapter Nine
Given the nature of their relationship thus far, Elspeth was glad to discover on Tuesday that she could enjoy hours in Daniel’s presence without either of them having an orgasm.
They began their castle adventure that morning at Beaumaris, in an adorable seaside town on Anglesey with sweeping green marshes and a view of stark, low mountains across the strait. The castle was one of Edward I’s, like most of the castles in Elspeth’s part of Wales, built in the late thirteenth century. That was most of what she knew about it, but she still babbled random facts she suddenly remembered about Welsh princes and certain revolts as they strolled hand in hand along the curtain wall.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 42