She held still, worried if she moved she’d call more attention to them. He found the bottom bow, strategically located and ran this thumb in a circular movement around it. She couldn’t stop a breathy Oh. He used his other hand to turn her face so he could kiss her. He said he word, “Two,” just before he did.
By the time he found the middle bow, she was a quivering mess of need and they’d been out of the house for ninety minutes, half of which included travel time and they’d had one drink and a chocolate-covered strawberry each. She was ready to skip dinner, and let him eat the damn bows off her body.
She put her hand dangerously high on his thigh. “I’m not wearing a bra.” He had to know that already, his hand had been up and down her back. But it was worth saying aloud. He slammed his hand on hers and gave her a playing with fire look that made her glad for the surprise of the net camisole she had on. He wouldn’t be expecting it.
They walked hand in hand, a short distance from the bar to a restaurant fronting the harbour. Modern Chinese and so elegant she hesitated a moment before walking inside. This night was costing him a small fortune. She’d have loved him for takeaway on the beach. She adored him for this.
They sat across from each other, but his legs were so long he managed to get a knee between hers. No one could see beneath the long white starched tablecloth, she felt comfortable slipping off her shoe and playing her toes under the cuff of his pants and against his shin and the back of his calve. He didn’t pretend not to notice. He closed his eyes and she had to reach across the table and put her hand to his face to stop him from looking so lust drugged.
“We should talk, or we’re going to embarrass the staff,” she said.
They talked about Mia, about how she’d gotten hesitant about swimming for no particular reason, then Audrey’s work, how she felt about starting again Monday, how difficult she thought the week would be. She told him about Barrett being in town and that he wanted to see Mia, and about Cameron’s broken engagement and arrival home heartbroken.
She talked, he listened, he watched her closely and he asked insightful questions. He was in turn concerned, supportive, carefully noncommittal and saddened. She didn’t have to question or puzzle his feelings out. He put them on a plate for her, a simple serving, devoid of fancy ingredients but unconsciously designed to be nourishing.
They ordered and the food came quickly and was fragrant and delicious. She realised how hungry she was and how skilled Reece was at deflecting conversation away from himself. Now was the time to ask him about being videoed, when he was relaxed, when he was secure.
“I want to talk about you.”
He topped her glass with water from a carafe. “I’m listening.”
“I want you talking. You’re very good at making the words come from someone else.”
He inclined his head. “I’ll tell you anything.” But mischief played beach volleyball in his eyes. She needed to beware, he might catch her out. She ran her up foot the inside of his calve. She’d done it a number of times and he didn’t see the next move coming, clamping his knees together too late. She’d already gotten her stockinged toes to the edge of his chair just under his groin. He looked down, and wrapped a hand over her foot to hold her still, to stop her touching him.
“Was it a sex tape?”
His chin shot up, the surprise she’d counted on in his expression. “What?”
“The recording that got passed around, the thing that made you so mad I’d recorded you.”
He frowned. Then, in a grand move to distract her, brought his other hand to her foot and began a massage. His eyes were down. He wasn’t going to answer. She wouldn’t force it. She’d do nothing to ruin the date and anything to enhance it.
“It wasn’t a sex tape.” He smiled. “I can’t believe you thought that.” He looked up and he wasn’t mad or embarrassed. He lifted her foot and centred it over his erection. They both stilled in anticipation, then she pressed gently, his sitting position widened and they both gasped.
“I wish it was a sex tape,” he said.
She moved her toes against him. “I wish it was too. I kept thinking about it. I kept wondering if you still had it.”
He flexed his hips into her foot. “Shit no.”
His hands were still lightly wrapped around her foot. Now he used them to guide her, to bring her instep and heel into play.
“Oh God, Reece.” She could hear her own breathing. He closed his eyes again. She was a thirty-four year old woman who’d been celibate for six years with no prospects for breaking the drought and no intention of looking for a rainmaker. She had a healthy daughter who was bright and cute and everything she’d schemed to have. She’d fought a life threatening disease and won. She had a job she loved and was about to walk into a promotion with more scope, power and money.
She had a twenty-seven year old lover and she was going to make him come in an expensive Chinese restaurant with her stockinged foot. This was the best date she’d ever been on and it was nowhere near done yet.
As abruptly as he’d started using her foot he lifted it away with a groan. He gave her a look that was pure filtered sex. “We have to have dessert whether you want it or not. There is no way I’m fit to walk out of here.”
She laughed and he stopped her with a thumb to her instep. “Behave, Audrey.”
“You started it.”
“You with your nothing under that dress started it. I’ve had a semi since then. I know where Mia gets it. That you won’t see me coming till I’ve already got what I wanted thing. It’s utterly you.” Audrey laughed. “She’s going to be hard to handle when she’s Etta’s age.”
She almost said, but you have experience with sixteen year olds. You’ll manage her better than I will, but she stopped, gulped at her wine instead. That was altogether too much, in a way that making him come in a posh restaurant was the more acceptable alternative.
And he’d done it again, turned the conversation back to her.
“What do you want to be doing in five years time, Reece?”
He narrowed his eyes. “If this is like doing math in your head to hold off an orgasm, it’s okay, I’ve got it covered.”
She laughed. “It’s a serious question.”
“Sky used to ask me this all the time. She was never satisfied with my answers. She thought I lacked ambition, that I had no focus that I was going to wake up at forty and wonder what I’d achieved. The thing is, I could never give her the real answer without it coming across wrong.”
“What’s the real answer?”
“I want my own kindy, a day care centre.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not the kind of work a man should want to do, as far as Sky was concerned, but that’s not all. I want to find a way to encourage more men to feel it’s okay to want to work with kids as teachers in greater numbers, as nannies without the idiot manny tag.”
“That’s admirable.”
“I want my own family. I want to be there, elbows deep in it. Babies and nappies and teens and tantrums and moods, fights over nothing and wet towels on the floor and never a dull moment. I’m good at that stuff. That’s what I couldn’t tell Sky, because I didn’t want a family with her.”
Audrey held her breath. Was he saying he wanted a family with her? She tried to read his face. All she saw was love and it made her eyes sting.
This was how she’d lose him, because she didn’t want any of that. Pregnancy had been difficult and she had no intention of doing it again. This is where the differences between them showed up. She was further along in life than he was, and babies and nappies and a complex family life wasn’t in her makeup. She had no example of how that was supposed to work and no desire to experiment beyond Mia.
She wished she’d drunk more. Wished she’d not asked that stupid question, wished she’d talked him into checking into the hotel they’d walked past and spending the hours they had in bed, inside each other in the most intimate way they knew how
because now her heart was breaking.
And he saw it.
He sat back away from the table, slumped a little, then she saw him recover; catch a waiter’s eye, order coffee and dessert. God she loved him for that too, for not making an issue of what he’d just learned, for keeping the dream of the date alive, for preserving what they had while they could have it.
Their third stop for the night was another mood again, this one much less refined, more drunk and disorderly. It suited her frame of mind. They were dancing on the bar top in this place, the women more strategically undressed, the men very handsy and no one appeared bothered by it. It was well out of her comfort zone. She felt like a delicate hothouse flower amongst mighty robust, fire-retardant natives.
She wondered if it was Reece’s original plan or he’d changed it up. It was too loud to talk in here, the music pulsing, a raw sex throbbing beat she could feel in her chest. He kept her caged by his body while they watched the dance floor. It didn’t matter how rough it got, she’d be protected without him having to do a thing. Surprisingly, he wasn’t the biggest man in the place, but he was the calmest by far. He wasn’t drinking and she felt no particular tension in him, other than sexual. But that was enough to cope with. When he put his hand to the back of her neck and rubbed his thumb up towards her hairline, she had to lock her joints or fall. When he used his mouth on the same path she almost went to her knees.
On the dance floor he brought her against his body and used his hands on her in a way more suited to the privacy of her kitchen counter than a public place. There was no mistake he was marking her out as his territory as his hands went to places that would’ve gotten them separated or thrown out anywhere else. Here they fit right in, even when his fingers went under her dress to find the top of her stockings, to pluck the stay on the belt, to cop a quick feel of her butt cheek and the three bows strung across her sacrum.
He held her eyes the whole time. Daring her to stop him. If he’d dragged her dress off over her head she’d have let him. She was drunk, drugged, mindless over his touch, over his presence in her life. She encouraged him, giving him free access, pulling his head down to kiss him with outrageous desperation and only their height difference stopped her grinding on him.
When the song changed, the new one bringing a crowd of additional people on to the floor, Reece quit moving and simply widened his stance to wrap around her so they could kiss easier, longer, feel each other in the throb of the music and the shift and flow of the dancers around them. He sweated through his shirt, her scalp got damp under her hair. All that mattered was the pulse of the music and the electric tension between them.
He put his lips to her ear. “I can’t hear anything but your heart in my chest.”
She was sober enough to be hit hard by his words. Sensible enough to know they needed to cool off. It was so loud in here she might have missed his words but she’d understood them in her bones.
She kissed him, her own heart back-flipping, somersaulting, ping-ponging around in her chest cavity. She could take this giant man with his giant love and suck him dry, leave him lost and less than what he might be if he could follow his dreams of family, but she couldn’t be his family. Not emotionally, not practically, not physically. She’d played at it, like Mia played hospital, but she was going to have to grow up.
He found her a stool at the bar. Mostly by intimidating someone else into moving. He did it in such a friendly way, the man backed off smiling. It was wicked and Reece knew it and neither of them cared. He got them water with ice, without the bartender making a thing of it. His shirt had lost its crisp, plus a button. His hair was tousled from her hands and he kept his on her, soothing, holding, possessing.
They had an hour before they were due home. This was the Cinderella moment before the real world came rushing back at them, before she had to find a way to manage her feelings for him, to manage his expectations of her.
She wasn’t aware of the potential for trouble until Reece moved in between her and the cluster of people to her right. She saw the punch though, saw rather than heard the bottle smash on the bar top. Saw Reece move again to take a flying arm, to disable a man and hold another a bay. He moved so efficiently it was all over, security stepping in before she was fully aware of what went down. He was back at her side, a nod across heads to the bouncer before she understood how close she came to being skittled in the drunken skirmish.
She clutched his shirt. “Hello hero.”
He grunted. “Fuckwits,” and accepted a beer the barman put in front of him.
He had enough time to finish it, they had enough time to get back to the car and get home before the Cinderella hour was over. She was glad of Reece’s arm to lean on as they left the bar; she should’ve worn lower heels, but the stilettos got her closer to being eye to eye, lip to lip with him.
They’d barely made it to the top of the laneway the bar opened out onto before the shouting started. Her ears were ringing from the music still, this noise seemed to come at her from a great distance away. Reece’s words came at her crisp and sharp as early morning cold.
“Stay behind me. No matter what happens. Don’t run. When I tell you, call the cops.” There were six of them. She recognised two from the fight inside the bar before Reece blocked her view.
“Come on, Little John. Let’s see what you got in a fair fight.”
The menace in that voice, it cleared the noise fog in her ears, the hard male laughter cleared the Cinderella dream from her head. They were being attacked. She pulled out her phone. She didn’t need to wait to call the police.
“Don’t do anything stupid, bitch.” The bottle shattered on the ground to her feet, the liquid wetting her legs. She dropped her phone and Reece turned to her. Crouching to pick up the handset she saw a man come at Reece and yelled his name, but the man was on his back before she registered Reece moving again.
“Walk away,” Reece said. He held both hands out and away from his body. “You don’t want this.” The man down wasn’t getting up, but he was moaning. “If you bring it I will make you sorry.”
Another man shaped up. “Who do you think you are, King Shit?”
“Go back inside. You don’t want to do this.”
She straightened fumbling her phone, the screen a spider web, when the second man came at Reece. He put that man down as well, one punch. Same with the third. He stood like a boxer, knees bent, loose, cool, ready. His aim was deadly; the sound of smacked skin and pained grunts, a body falling, made Audrey flinch. She didn’t want to look away to dial. She stared at Reece and could only see a different man.
The last three men came at him together. Reece had time to ditch his suit coat. He didn’t wait for them to reach him, he walked into it. She looked down, the handset was dead, the first man was getting up. They could kill Reece. Reece might kill them. She screamed.
He fought the men with fists, elbows and feet, he opened cuts on their faces and the sound was sickening, blood flicked through the air and splattered the closest wall. He danced out of their way, or absorbed what they threw at him. He didn’t make a sound, but they did, yelling foul abuse, shouting in pain, calling to each other. On and on it went and Audrey could do nothing but watch, and hope Reece would knock these men down and they’d stop getting up.
When he put the last man down for the last time he pointed to him and said, “Stay the fuck down, mate.” Then he went amongst the men, a hand to the necks of the two not moving, not moaning. He seemed satisfied everyone was staying down and no one was dead. He turned to her. His shirt was ripped open, the knee and pocket on his trousers torn, both hands were bleeding, his knuckles torn up, but he smiled.
“It’s all over. Etta is gonna be mad we’re late. Look at this shirt.”
He held a hand out and all she could do was stare at it. Her gentle giant had beaten six guys to a heap of groaning, bleeding, unconscious, and in one case weeping, in need of an ambulance.
“My phone is broken.”
Sh
e didn’t understand how he’d had done this. Reece made pancakes and spaghetti. He folded washing and vacuumed. He taught Mia to swim and played pretend games with her. He built fairy palaces out of bits of furniture and Christmas lights and he read storybooks in character voices. She didn’t know who this man was.
“It’s okay,” he pointed overhead. “That’s a security camera.”
“Oi.”
They both turned, and Audrey gasped as two more men came into the laneway, then she saw their black shirts, the bar logo on the chest.
“What the fuck happened here?”
Reece stepped forward. “Tried to jump me.”
“You take them all out?”
Reece bent down, pulled a wallet out of the pocket of an unconscious guy. It was stuffed with money.
“Dude, you took six guys out,” the bouncer’s eyes slid to Audrey then away, “by yourself?”
His partner was talking to someone through his ear tech. He asked for an ambulance and the police.
Reece took two fifties out of the wallet and tossed it to the bouncer. “Bastards can pay for my parking and a new shirt.” Then he went for his own wallet put the bills in and took something out. He stepped over the pile of arms and legs and held it over his head. He was showing the camera his driver’s license. “Cops can find me if they want me.”
“Wait. Who are you, Chuck Norris? What the fuck happened here?”
Reece put his foot against a body and rolled it over. “This is the guy who broke the bottle. Don’t think he liked me interfering.”
The guy’s face was a mass of red bruised skin and blood smears. His nose clearly broken. He moaned and flailed an arm.
The other bouncer said, “Is everyone still breathing?” He pointed at Audrey. “Do you need medical attention? You’re bleeding.”
Did she? Bleeding? She looked down, there was blood on her leg. “That’s not mine.”
Reece was there, with a torn piece of shirt. “Yeah, baby, it is from the bottle. It’s not bad.” He spat on the cotton and wiped at her leg. “It’s only a scratch.” He called over his shoulder, “We’re fine.” Then he took her hand and stood.
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