He’d run out of things to do when Audrey re-appeared. She sat at the table and pointed to the chair right angled to her. He sat. He could tangle his feet with hers. He could touch her hand resting on the table without any effort. He waited.
“I’m sorry about my mother. I forget how bad she can be and then she’s worse and I wonder how I manage to block out her inexcusable behaviour, but I always do. Oddly, growing up with Esther was good training for work; I’ve never met anyone quite so passive aggressive as my own mum. This time though there was Mia to consider, and there was you.”
He started to object and she put her hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “You matter, Reece. I keep thinking about what would have happened if you hadn’t found me.”
“But I did. And you’re going to be well again.”
“Les said she would’ve called when I didn’t show at work, but I wouldn’t have heard the phone and she wouldn’t have thought to come and check on me till much later and that would’ve been too late.”
He’d thought about this too. About what might’ve happened had it been a weekend. “Mia also knows how to ring triple O.” He used his other hand to make a sandwich of hers.
“She does? Oh.” She frowned taking that in. “I should’ve told you about Merrill and Joe being Mia’s guardians. I should have talked to them about something like this happening. Barrett too, he had a right to know.”
“Audrey, stop.”
“I should know what Mia’s giraffe is called. I shouldn’t have kissed you. But I did and I nearly died and now all I want to do is kiss you and it’s wrong, it’s a horrible cliché. I’m your boss and you’re much younger and I’m—” He pushed the table aside. “What are you doing?”
He hooked his foot around the rung of her chair and dragged it towards him. “It doesn’t matter about Merry and Joe. I’m not angry about what they did. They were thinking of you. If I never see the stony expression you get on your face when you’re dealing with your mother again, I’ll be a happy man. The giraffe’s name is Harold, but it’s also Paula. It just depends.” He put his knuckles to her cheek. “I couldn’t give a stuff about cliché. I wanted you to kiss me. I want you to kiss me again. I want that a lot. I get that it’s confusing and you’re still recovering. I’m here. For Mia, for you, for whatever it is you think is us, for as long as you want.”
“I don’t know what to say?”
“Say you’ll rest and eat and get well. Say you’ll enjoy time off work with Mia. Say you’ll let me care for you.” He almost said love. He closed his eyes. The old Audrey would’ve taken control now, told him where his place was; prevented him from doing anything terminally stupid. The Audrey in front of him was weary and hurting and scared.
“I want that.”
He pulled her off the chair, stood her between his knees, holding her at the waist. He gave her back her control. “You lead. You tell me what you want. I’ll take my cues from you.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s fair.” He patted his knee and she sat. “It’s fair because I trust you.” And he couldn’t rush this. If it was going to happen at all, it had to be because she wanted it, not because she was confused or he pushed too hard.
“Reece, I...”
He kissed her. Firmly, deeply, so she understood what he wanted. She’d already led him to kisses, to touching, to wanting more and holding off. He stepped up. For the rest he’d wait. It had to be her choice. She had everything to lose and he had nothing he wouldn’t trade.
Those next few days, they established a routine. Audrey slept late. Reece got Mia out of the house early to give her quiet. They met up for lunch. The afternoon was for games and stories and learning things, time for mother and daughter to cuddle in front of a Disney movie. As if to make up for her initial disinterest in Audrey, Mia clung to her, followed her around, climbed into her bed at night, stood outside the bathroom till she came out. The only place she wanted to sit was Audrey’s lap. The only person she wanted to play with, or hear a story from was Audrey. She tolerated him because she loved swimming, got hungry and he was better at fixing things. He was otherwise odd man out and that left him free to run the house.
He watched Audrey relax, sleep away the dark patches under her eyes and lose the fearful expression, the oddly hesitant quality she’d had. They didn’t kiss again, but she accepted his casual touches and she initiated her own, touching his arms and chest, his hair, walking into his embrace, reaching for his hand. If she was testing him, it was working. He was the one who was tense. Now he knew how to read her eyes, to see the desire in them, and it was a form of torture not to be able to act on what he saw, to wait for her lead, like he’d promised.
A week after she was home that changed. It’d been raining nonstop. Playgroup was cancelled because half the kids had the flu. Mia was bored and cranky. She wanted a fairy palace. It had to be pretty. And it had to be different to the treehouse.
He used the mattress from the garden daybed, every scatter pillow in the house, a standard lamp, a portable beach igloo, a pink sheet and a long string of Christmas fairy lights. Mia was never ever coming out of there. She was going to live there. It fixed rainy day misery and caused an argument over where meals would be eaten. Reece carried to Mia to bed when she fell asleep in her palace.
When he closed her bedroom door, Audrey took his hand. She led him to the fairy palace. He thought she might want him to dismantle it, but she crawled inside.
“You’d have made a mean fairy architect.”
He laughed and squatted at the entrance. Audrey had settled on the mattress with a mountain of pillows at her back. On top of the pillows was a jumble of soft toys: snouts, tails, paws, ears, piled high in all shapes, sizes and colours. The way he’d rigged the light meant a soft pink glow illuminated the space and the fairy lights winked on and off in a slow rippling pattern. It smelled of lavender laundry detergent, and in her loose casual clothing Audrey looked young, healthy and happy.
“The problem is I’m a giant.”
She patted the mattress. “I think you’ll fit.”
If it meant being right beside her, he’d try. He crawled in and the whole structure creaked and shifted, a bear, a cow and a gorilla fell off the toy stack. He and Audrey ended up lying on their sides, propped up by pillows. His feet and shins stuck out and it was mighty uncomfortable for the thirty seconds it took to realise he could lay flat and she’d tuck into his side. That was comfortable for about five minutes and then it became impossible. He didn’t want to be this close if he couldn’t act on it.
“Relax, Reece.”
He laughed and put his palm over his eyes. “Can’t.”
She shifted, he felt something drag across his lower back and took his hand away again. Audrey sat and tossed a stuffed octopus he’d been lying on out of the tent.
“Better?”
“Nope.”
“Why can’t you get comfortable?”
“Because I don’t know what you want.”
She leant over him, her leg over his hips, dangerously close to his chief source of discomfort. He couldn’t hide it from her and he couldn’t stop his hands spreading over her butt and holding her tight to him.
“I’m feeling much better. Much better.”
She felt incredible. “You still have the headache and the pins and needles.”
“Yes, but it’s calmed down, bothers me less. I’ve put on some weight.”
He doubted that. It gave him an excuse to check. He let his hands rove over her, measuring, weighing, not quite caressing, because the minute he thought of it as that was the point at which he’d betray how strung out he was. But she melted into his touch so it was game over.
She closed her eyes and leant into his touch. “Do I need a secret fairy spell or are you going to start this make out session?”
She started it by putting her mouth to his neck. A surprise attack. He pushed into the pillows and grasped her under the thigh, pulling her further up and ov
er his body.
She humming her approval and moved her mouth to his throat. It was going to get hot in here, she was going to give his internal thermometer an almighty shove. He touched her places he’d not touched her before: the inside of her knee, the crest of her hipbone, her fluttering stomach. She moved her lips to his face and groaned against his cheek when he filled his palm with her breast, the one part of her that wasn’t down to angles, that was plump and full. When he rubbed his thumb across her raised nipple she shuddered and surged closer to him, finding his mouth at last.
No one led. No one followed. The kiss had no owner, it bossed them both. There was nothing magical or prettied up about it. It was greedy hungry and growling. It was dangerously sly and grasping. It got deep and dirty quick and there were no more niceties or polite disguises. No more fucking dancing around each other. No one was recovering or being patient. No one was waiting. This was manic attraction, hard core want, desire so slippery with heat and heart, Reece forgot to be considerate. He took.
He showed Audrey how much he wanted from her. He teased her body and loved her mouth. He sucked her tongue and tasted her lips, stealing her breath and playing her senses out on a long line of jitters and twitches, grinding of hips and urgent touches.
He made her gasp. She made his spine tingle. When she ran her hands under his shirt, he got rid of it. She sat across his hips, her head almost grazing the top of the palace, fairy lights winking around her and stared down at him.
“I’ve wanted to see you like this.” She put both hands to the ridges of muscle at his hips, ran them up his abs and over his ribs. She leant forward and nipped his chin. “That night I was very late and you fell asleep on the couch. I watched you for ages before I woke you. I had all kinds of fantasies about where I wanted to touch my sleeping giant.”
He grinned. He’d never have guessed that. That was the first night he’d touched her with less than honourable intent. “Don’t let me stop you living those fantasies now.”
She ducked her head and licked his collarbone. He put his hand under the back of her shirt and peeled it off her. Jesus, her ribs were too prominent, the bones in her shoulders, too obvious. He touched her in all those places that needed care. He lavished attention on the column of her neck, on her clavicle, on the tops of her breasts. He kissed her jaw and her cheek and grazed on her earlobe and she laughed at him and pushed away.
“My turn.” She sat upright. He adjusted her position so she could feel him and her eyes widened. “I’d wondered if you were proportional.” She rocked her pelvis. “Oh God, that’s some proportion.” She closed her eyes and rolled her hips again and it was his turn to moan. He couldn’t let her keep doing that, he’d wreck the palace, crush the magic; he’d trash this slow, slaying sweetness of this exploration. He didn’t want to rush it. He didn’t want backward glances, morning regrets. She was worth more than the conquest, more than the ached for tumble.
“You’re beautiful, Audrey.” He arched as she slid against his length again. “But if you keep doing, oh fuck, doing that, we’re gonna kill some fairies in here tonight.” She did it again. He palmed her butt to stop her moving, lifting his head and torso off the mattress. He was wedged in, might hurt her if he tried to flip them. “Take it easy on me.”
She laughed. “As if you need easy. Look at you.”
He kissed her, broke it off sharply. “I don’t need it, but I want it, with you.”
She speared her hand through his hair and stared at him. He had no idea what she was thinking beyond giving him access to her body. He had no idea how far she’d want to push this. If she was genuinely well enough.
She met his lips with hers and he dragged her further up his body, bringing a knee up to anchor her. His hands played all over her back, down her arms, while he kissed her with enough deliberation to create a science of it. He mapped her mouth and her body and marked them out as his and the feel of her in his arms did wicked things to him. Made his head buzz, made his muscles burn, made him want time stopped, the world shrunk so everything they needed always was in each other and this magic pink lit tent.
It got hot. Steamy. They knew how to kiss each other professionally now, with expectation and denial, with all the grades and variants of wet pressure and sucking release. But she was tiring, her movements slowing. Audrey’s skin got lusciously moist. He could slide his mouth across the softness of her. Sweat beaded on his chest. She licked it. He had no idea what kind of freaking alchemy that was. Some telekinetic trick short-circuiting his inner compass. She did it again and he felt himself spinning. He shook his head and the feeling remained and he didn’t ever want it to go.
The fairy palace was temporary, this temple of lust and want and need—he would build it to last.
16: Certain
Mia’s nightmares started when Audrey thought the worst of her separation anxiety was over. She still had her own bad dreams nightly, dreams where she thought she was late for an important event, never arriving on time and in terrible trouble because of it. She woke to the sound of her own distress, heart pounding, as if she’d been running for her life.
Mia woke screaming and kicking, terrified. Horrible monsters with terrible faces were taking her away. She would shake and cry herself to sleep in Audrey’s arms.
The first night it happened was the night Audrey dragged Reece inside the fairy palace. She meant to do unspeakably degenerate things to him inside that pretty tent he’d built. She hadn’t counted on the effect attempting it would have.
She’d gone to him for the comfort of his touch, to celebrate being alive. She’d gone to him full of rationalisations and denials. It was two consenting adults fooling around. He was a more than a willing accomplice. She was a mother not a nun. And she wasn’t dead. And no one needed to know. But ten minutes in the tent with the pillows and the pink light, with the stuffed animals watching and the scent of lavender fabric softener, and she knew which one of them had their head screwed on.
Reece was so much more than she expected. He’d given her the control, but he had all the power, and he demolished her self-justification before he took her shirt off. This was more than proximity to easy sex. This was more than gratitude.
She’d have given him anything he wanted to take under those fairy lights, but he took nothing she wasn’t ready for. And he knew she wasn’t ready, hadn’t thought it through, wasn’t well enough for sex before she did. He kept her mostly dressed, he kissed her quiet, he soothed her almost to sleep and then Mia screamed.
This was the sixth night in a row since then that Mia had woken screaming and Reece carried her into Audrey’s bed. The sixth night she’d tumbled into Audrey’s arms, her face pinched and wet, her little chest heaving.
Reece resettled the covers over them and turned to go. She caught his arm. He was a shadow in the dark. Mia’s breathing was already steadying. “Stay.”
All week they’d stolen time to kiss and touch, a maddening mid-teen courtship, as much for its hint of illicitness as it was for its innocence. Reece kept withdrawing, not exactly pulling away and never rejecting her, but not letting things go too far.
She’d had headaches and the pins and needles and he worried she was too thin, while she worried about what was happening at work while she wasn’t there. They’d split up her projects, spread out the work. Would they still need her by the time she was well enough to return? It would be like starting again after maternity leave.
He knew that stressed her. He mothered her, making her eat and rest and helping her forget with kisses that were brands seared onto her lips, so hot they left scorch marks on her heart.
She’d never felt so sexually frustrated before. Abstinence had been a cupcake compared to this constant state of anticipation. Not that he was faring any easier. He was running at night after they’d settled Mia, partly to be out of the house, partly to slake his own tension. He’d come back late, lathered in sweat, smelling impossibly earthy and he’d look at her like he was scared he’d foul her b
y coming near. They’d go to bed in their separate rooms early, knowing Mia would likely wake them.
She could’ve changed the tempo if she’d pushed him; he wasn’t resisting to be cute. The wounded animal sounds he made when he broke away, dropped his hands from her, rivalled Mia’s best growling bear and lion roar. There was no mistaking he wanted her or that he was waiting for her to push the point. So why didn’t she act, nail him to the kitchen table, reverse him up against the fridge and pin him there till the rattling condiments ratted them out? She could hijack him in the shower. She could grope him in the garden. She could go to him in his room at night and stay there till Mia woke.
Mia. Of course, Mia. She was six foot of wonder, ten lengths of watchfulness, a galaxy of impressions being formed like stars. They let her see their affection, the easy, casual touches and kisses, the act of being loving, but she was also the hard line drawn, the non-compete clause. Neither of them would do anything to unsettle her.
But Mia was an easy out and Audrey had spent a week taking it. Reece was an easy mark and she was playing with his affections. This wasn’t her finest moment.
Now in the dark, Reece put his hand over hers. If he hadn’t been carrying Mia, he’d never have entered Audrey’s room while she was there. It was a hard rule he’d written himself. “You okay?” he whispered.
“I had a bad dream too. Maybe if I tell you about it, I won’t have it any more.” Maybe if she stopped having her dream Mia would settle too. That was a daft, superstitious notion, but her own recurring nightmare was sticky and without being the least bit scary, no monsters, no blood or guts, it still succeeded in terrorising her, and she was tired of being hesitant and unsure.
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