Unsuitable

by Ainslie Paton

  “Read it again,” Mia said when he’d stopped.

  “No, my turn, you read me a story.”

  Mia laughed. “I can’t read all the words yet, silly sausage.” Audrey pressed her hand over her mouth so not to laugh aloud. .

  Reece did laugh. “I didn’t read that story, I made it up. You can make a story up for me.”

  “What will I make up?”

  “Hmm. How about funny monsters?”

  “Okay, like this. One day Princess Mia,” Mia stopped and considered. “A different Princess Mia, not me.”

  Reece said, “Not you,” and Audrey wished she could see how they were sitting together. Was Mia in his lap? She liked to do that when he read to her.

  “One day Princess Mia went to bed, and in her room there were monsters.”

  “What kind of monsters?”

  “Stinky ones.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They took Princess Mia’s mum away.”

  Audrey sat up. Mia was talking about her nightmare.

  “What did Princess Mia do?”

  “She was scared, because her nanna is mean and Mum was gone for a long time and when she came back she was sad.”

  “But Mum’s not sad now. And monsters are only made-up.”

  “But there are real monsters.” There was a wobble to Mia’s voice. Audrey held her breath. She should’ve sent Esther home, not let her near Mia.

  “No real monsters, Mia. I chased them all away for you.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Reece growled like a bear. “Yes, I can.” He’d have pulled a face too.

  “How? Will it be magic? Do you need to borrow Polly’s magic pencil?”

  “No, I have my own magic. See these arms.”

  “Strong.”

  “See these eyes.”

  “Black.”

  “They’re not black.” He laughed. “I’ll find any monster who makes you feel scared and I’ll chase them away. Always Mia. I will always do that for you. You don’t need to be afraid any more. No monsters will come in the night to get you, or Mum or anyone else.”

  “They might.”

  “Nah-ah. I promise.”

  “But what if they do?”

  “You’re brave so you’d tell them to get lost and when they’re all confused I’ll creep up on them and throw them out of the house.” He said that with a flourish and Audrey could imagine him throwing his arms out wide.

  “Okay.” Mia sounded more convinced. “I might vomit.”

  Audrey went to get up, but Reece had it.

  “You’re not going to vomit.”

  “I might. Like in your car.”

  “You vomited because you ate your lunch too quickly.”

  Audrey grimaced and lay down, her hand involuntarily coming to rest on her stomach.

  “Your car smells stinky.”

  “It does now.”

  “Like dog poo.”

  “No.”

  “Like Nanna.”

  “Mia.”

  “I didn’t vomit the water I drank after.”

  “No, because you’re not sick. You were just a gobble guts.”

  Mia repeated gobble guts and giggled, then she shouted, “Vomit!” making it a lusty war cry. Audrey loved it. Like she loved Mia enjoyed dolls and dress-ups as much as she enjoyed building things and taking them apart.

  The sound of movement. Reece standing. “Are you going to be a handful when you’re sixteen?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll be like all my sisters rolled into one. Smart, too good to be true, tricky and a gobble guts.”

  “Can I play with your sisters?” Mia’s feet were on the floor too.

  “They’re a bit big for you.”

  “No. They aren’t. You’re a bit big for me and you play with me.”

  Reece laughed. “You’re smart already.”

  “Can we wake Mum now?”

  “I’d be surprised if she’s not already awake.”

  Reece was moving towards the kitchen. Audrey lay on her bed looking at the ceiling, her face a wreath of smiles. Mia followed Reece and the last thing Audrey heard was, “But we were quiet.”

  That night Reece cooked steak. Mia was overtired and crazy. She knocked a full carton of milk into the fruit bowl, and had a tantrum when she wasn’t allowed biscuits. She wouldn’t talk to Audrey during her bath and went to bed with the sulks.

  When Audrey finally closed Mia’s door, the kitchen was clean and the house was empty. She showered, dressed for bed, tried to read. It was still early. She heard Reece come in from his run and go to the guest room. His runners squeaked on the floor. She heard his bedroom door open and close, the shower in his ensuite turn on.

  Minutes later, during which she did nothing except picture him standing under the hot water, soaping his ripped body, it turned off. She heard him go to the kitchen. He unstacked the dishwasher. He opened the fridge. She had no idea what the book on her ereader was about, but she knew Reece was drinking ice-cold water in the kitchen, wearing old track pants washed silk soft. She was acutely aware of every movement he made.

  He went back to his room. She went back to the start of the chapter, but she might as well have gone back to the start of civilisation. She was a prototype person, crawling out of the mud, climbing the trees, losing her wings. Inexorably pulled towards a biological destiny that insisted she’d found a mate, and he was down the hallway waiting for her.

  She got out of bed. She was wearing a set of pyjamas Esther bought her for Christmas before Mia, when they still did Christmas as a family. The elastic around the waist was dodgy and there was a tea stain on the front. She changed into a pale coffee coloured silk nightgown. She’d owned it for years and worn it once, for herself. It had spaghetti straps and a lace insert in the bodice. It was elegant and sexy at the same time, though it had once fitted much closer. She thought of Les because she didn’t want to think about what she was about to do. Les, who was prepared to risk humiliation in the name of her physical self. Audrey would make no such risk with Reece.

  She ducked through a spray of floral scent. She didn’t have a headache. She felt rested. She felt warm with anticipation when she didn’t have a temperature and the night was cool. She put her hair up in a messy bun held by a soft band. There was still a faint tingling in her legs, but then her whole body was alight with sensation. She remembered she needed to take control at the last moment and that was almost the end of the adventure.

  She’d stopped ovulating when she got sick, the sudden dramatic weight loss, the illness generally, but she still needed to be careful and she still needed to be safe, and if she was going to initiate this, it was her responsibility. At the back of her stocking drawer there was one condom. It was like a warning sign. One. It would be older than Mia plus pregnancy, plus some. It was a month off expiry. Another sign. She tucked it in her palm and walked down the hall. She cracked Mia’s door and looked in on her. She was a dark-haired cherub in a nest of stuffed toys.

  Reece’s room was at the back of the house. There was pale light shinning underneath the door. She knocked. When he answered she opened the door and walked in.

  “Audrey, what’s wrong?”

  He’d been looking at something on his phone screen. He sat in bed, back against the wall, legs out straight under the covers. No shirt and the muscles in his abs laddered from the way he was sitting. He put his free hand down on the covers and she figured he slept naked and what she’d done by coming into his room like this was so extraordinary he was worried she might strip the covers away from him.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  He looked golden in the low watt light from the bedside table. His hair was still damp from the shower, slicked around his ears. He took a breath and his chest expanded to three times the size of the universe. What was she doing?

  “Audrey?” He smiled, confused, and tossed the phone on the table.

  She moved forward till she was in the middle of the
room. He watched her like she was an apparition, one of Mia’s monsters he might need to chase away, his eyes romping over her body, her bare feet and legs. The nightdress stopped mid-thigh and so did his gaze. Then it skipped to the lace at her chest. Her nipples were tight furled and easily visible. There wasn’t much detail left for his imagination to fill in.

  “Ah.” He wet his lips. “I like that.”

  “I hoped you would.”

  “What are we doing, Audrey?”

  She held out her hand, the condom square in her palm.

  He blinked, twice. “Oh fuck, are you sure?”

  “I want you. I’m sure. But this can’t be anything more than tonight.”

  He beckoned. “Come here, and tell me that, cause all I heard was how you didn’t come in here by accident.”

  She went to the side of the bed and he held out his hand. She took it and climbed over his legs, kneeling across his thighs. He was definitely naked under the bedclothes. He ran a finger over her thigh where the nightdress had ridden up, only just covering her. His mouth opened and his breath eased out slowly, unsteady. That same finger travelled up the silk over her hip, her waist, he flattened his palm on her rib cage. His fingers spanned her whole side. She jerked, inhaled sharply when his thumb found her nipple in the lace.

  He sat upright, his hand now behind her head, holding her for this first kiss not to end in frustration and dreams. He almost spoiled it by smiling, she got teeth before he sobered up and softened, before she got his lips and tongue and he hauled her into his chest. It took him two seconds to work out she was totally naked under the silk. The hand not holding her head went to her butt and his thigh muscles jumped. He inhaled and his hips flexed and his fingers dug in and she lost the condom somewhere in the bed because she needed to touch him, get her hands on him, slide her fingers into the muscular grooves of him, wrap them around the thick column of his neck where she felt his pulse hammering, hammering, echoing the knocking in her own chest.

  He groaned through the kiss, when she shifted closer still, when she sat across his erection and her own hips flexed. His hands were so big they were everywhere, covering whole limbs, whole days and nights of wanting. He bit her neck, enough to make her gasp and twist, to lose one of the nightgown’s straps. He took that hint and rolled the other one off her shoulder, breaking the kiss, lifting his head to watch her breasts revealed.

  “Oh fuck, yeah.” He only just said that aloud, his voice hushed to reverence.

  She couldn’t catch her breath. “Don’t.” It came out harshly. She meant don’t expect too much, don’t compare me, don’t be disappointed.

  He wasn’t listening. He was doing. Lips on her neck, open mouth sliding over her throat, tongue soothing, hands thrilling. She tipped her head up and he laid her down so he could put his face between her breasts. The first touch of his tongue to her nipple burned like ice. She cried out. She must’ve felt these things before, but it was like it was the first time. He suckled and she struggled to breathe. She lay in the cradle of his arms and detached from everything except the clean water and soap smell of him, the risk and the reward of him.

  She could smell her perfume, smell her own arousal. Reece’s noisy breathing and murmured groans were a wanton rhythm, primitive and pure. She shed scales, fur, her illness, the skin of her buttoned down corporate self, the shell of her single-mother status. She rocked against Reece’s body and clung hard to him for deliverance. In his arms, in his mouth, in his joining, she’d be made into something more.

  She had no fear but he did. “Slow down, baby. Slow down.”

  She put her teeth to his bottom lip. Mia was right, his eyes could go black, like the deepest regions of ocean where evolution began. She didn’t want his kindness now, she wanted the hulking scare of him from those depths. She got it. He lifted her at the same time as he slid flat on the bed, the movement so quick she had no time to make her own.

  She sat across his narrow waist briefly as he got rid of the pillow and her nightdress before he lifted her again. Her knees rammed up under his armpits, her feet still folded under her. She knew where he wanted her and had a second to fear it. She filled her hands with his hair, dryer in places, wet anew from the heat he was generating. She’d feel that hair on her inner thighs. He urged her to kneel up, her hands slapped the wall in front to stop herself pitching forward, to hold onto the earth while he spun it.

  He braced her with his forearms, with his hands, and then he took her safety and made danger with it. Made her twitch and shock and moan. She was the primitive now, unable to see for starbursts in her eyes, unable to speak for lack of meaningful language. She was conquered by his tongue, enslaved by the suction of his mouth, punished by the rasp of his jaw and his bruising grip. He opened her soul, with his fingers as he opened her body, made her shudder and gasp and strain to feel more, to feel everything born of the world. And when the rain came, the storm rippled passed, she was drenched in the power of him.

  And he’d only begun to show her what he could make her want.

  And she wanted like belonging, like creativity.

  He didn’t let her find a normal breathing pattern. He dragged her down his body, till she was folded into his chest. He turned his face when she tried to kiss him. She scored his cheek with her nail when she fought him on that, and the taste of his lips when he brought them back was a wholly erotic flavour, timeless and new, and making her hungry to feel him again.

  “I want you on top. You’ll have more control. I’ll have more.” He repositioned her over his length, hissing when she ground on him. “Fuck, maybe not. Audrey, take it easy.” He laughed, but it became a groan when she licked his nipple.

  He’d watched her, eyes glittering bright, abandoned in her pleasure and he’d do it again, but this time she’d watch him too. She never wanted to stop watching him, the unexpected economy and grace of him. He was titanium core and diamond hard surface, every part of him longer, thicker, wider, heavier than anyone else she knew.

  He should’ve made her feel dainty, delicate, concerned about being crushed, split, and joked about it in warning. She might’ve been scared of this, his bulk, her slightness and how long it had been since she’d taken a man inside her body. That only dawned on her now, when nothing of him was hidden, but she felt only keening need, a hollow of expectation. He wasn’t too much, she wasn’t too little, they were right-sized for each other, they would fit and she was impatient for it, her whole body trembling.

  “We need.”

  “I’ve got it.” He had the condom in his hand. “I’ve got you.”

  She was desperate to touch him. “I want to do that.”

  “Oh Jesus, be gentle, baby.”

  She scooted down his legs, trailing her hands. Kissing his hipbone, making him twist and suck in a shuddering breath. He palmed his face and held the condom out to her. He didn’t trust her with gentle—clever, gorgeous, surprising man. She didn’t deserve his faith, but his body was her new religion, a reason for the sun to rise and set, the weather to change, the earth to green.

  She licked the length of him, more surprised at her own courage than what it did to him. He made the kind of sound a man makes when he hits his hand with a hammer. A strangled cry, part pain, part frustration. She knew he’d be that way; unguarded and honest. He curled his torso off the bed to watch her roll the latex on him, to catch her face and hold her to his lips, then he lay back and offered his hands and she took them like she took his heart, because it was held out to her too. She saw it in his eyes. Nothing held back, nothing not hers to touch and lick and suck and kiss and squeeze; to hurt as she needed; to pleasure as she pleased.

  She pushed against the ache, the tightness of resistance in her body. He helped her balance, kept her steady and eased her way with slow tilts of his pelvis, with unhurried breaths. She was full, so full of him, it was almost too much, too intense. He saw it and captured her face in his hands, slowed her pulse with careful kisses, touched her so she’d soften aroun
d him, take his length and girth.

  His eyes were wide and fixed on her. “You’re beautiful.”

  She felt it. Saw it reflected in his reactions. She felt connected and wanted to go deeper. So long, so very long since she’d lived in the bliss of her body. Her brain was melting.

  “You’re so easy.”

  He laughed. His hands were on her back now. “I won’t take that the wrong way.”

  She lifted herself and reseated. She heard his teeth clack as he clenched his jaw. He was easy, to be with, to want, to trust, but those words were stuck inside the heat of her thoughts, the vibration in her body. He rocked her forward and they groaned together. She could sense his patience fraying, in the rigidity of his muscles, in the pressure of his hands and the pace of his thrusts.

  “You feel too fucking good. I gotta move, baby.”

  And yet he waited till she cried her yes, bowing her body to feel more of him. He cut loose. He thrust deep and hard and fast, and all her breath rushed out as her senses took note of his monstrous capacity, his body’s capability for causing hers to shudder, to mass-produce ecstasy, have it thrum through her limbs till she was nothing but an exploding star to his universe of motion.

  There were no monsters in this house that night, except the insatiable, shameless, lustful one they made together.

  17: Wrecked

  Reece didn’t need to look at his phone to know he had another message from Sky. He had a bunch of them he didn’t know how to answer to her satisfaction. There was no going back, especially now. He didn’t want to look at anyone except Audrey. He’d hardly slept but he wasn’t feeling it. She’d slept, and because Mia only grizzled and didn’t wake screaming, she’d had plenty. There was colour in her cheeks this morning that wasn’t the doing of hot tea and a BLT. He liked the idea he’d put it there.