by Anne Calhoun
This time his hands tightened in her hair, pulling just enough to make her gasp and rub into his hand. He forced his hands to relax, forced his mind to stop cataloging all the ways their touches turned possessive. Milla was like molten silica and small concentrations of gold blending together to produce the rubino oro or cranberry glass he favored. Tart, sweet and a deep color he couldn’t stop looking at. She wore a halter dress with a plunging neckline that tied behind her neck, baring her cleavage and her shoulders, a very ‘50s look she wore with combat boots on the weekends. That was Milla in a nutshell—pretty as a pinup and taking no shit.
She nuzzled into his shirt and nipped at his collarbone, and his brain shut down when a wave of lust crashed over him. He reached for the bow securing the top of her dress, untied it and dragged the backs of his hands over her collarbones, then her breasts as he let the fabric drop. Then he pulled her hair forward, so the blunt-cut ends just brushed the tops of her breasts.
She peered at him from under her heavy fringe and pushed his shirt off his shoulders. Her fingers smoothed back up his abdomen, pausing at his nipples, then sweeping down his arms to lift his hands to her breasts. Her tight nipples pressed against his palms as he cupped the soft, pale flesh. She traced the collection of scars and burns flecked over his hands until he pinched her nipples and bent to kiss her again. Her mouth was soft, open under his while she worked at his belt and zipper.
“Take me to bed,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Absolutely,” he said, and wrapped one arm around her waist, hoisting her right off her feet. She giggled, then whooped when he dropped her on the bed. His jeans sagged low on his hips when he went to his heels to slip off her shoes. Braced on her elbows, she watched him, completely unself-conscious about being half-naked with her skirt rucked up around her thighs.
He squeezed each foot and watched her sigh with pleasure, then slid his hands up her calves, over her knees to the tops of her thighs, taking the skirt with him. When he found the elastic edge of her knickers, he curled his fingers into it, and, eyes fixed on hers, tugged them down.
Without blinking, she lifted her hips and let him bare her. It was maddeningly sexy. The dress had to zip somewhere, the back, or the side, maybe, but he didn’t care. He tugged her knickers to the floor, then stood between her legs at the foot of the bed, his gaze irresistibly drawn to little glimpses of her sex as he pushed his jeans and pants to the floor. He scooped her up in one arm and shifted her higher on the bed to reach for the condoms in his nightstand. He tore one off the strip, opened the package, then hissed in his breath when Milla took it from him and rolled it down.
He made himself wait, pouring all the tension and longing into kiss after kiss, until she was lifting her hips and digging her nails into his shoulders. The next time she arched into him, he slipped just a little bit inside, and inhaled her shuddering exhale. Slowly but surely, he let her draw him in, until he met her searching hips with his first full thrust, powering her back into the bed. She arched her neck and moaned, shivering under his touch as he trailed his fingers over her breast, down her ribs to gather her skirt and grip her bare hip.
“You like the dress?” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said, too far gone to say anything more eloquent. It was feminine and sexual, enticing and powerful, all at once.
She wrapped her leg around his and used her hips to roll him to his back. Her hair curtained her face as she bent and kissed him, her mouth hot and sweet against his. “How about now?” she asked as she lifted off him, then slid back down.
He looked down. The loosened top and full skirt hid their joined bodies until she took all of her weight on one hand and gathered the fabric with the other, giving him teasing glimpses of his slick cock gliding in and out of her body.
“Oh, fuck, yes,” he said.
He gripped her ass with both hands and shifted with each thrust until her eyes drooped closed and her head dropped back on her neck. A deep flush bloomed on her cheeks and collarbones, then spread along her throat and chest as he lifted his hips into hers. He dug his heels into the bed and held on to his control by the skin of his teeth until she came apart above him. He closed his eyes and gave in, release sweeping through him in sharp, pulsing waves.
The first thing he heard when he recovered his hearing was Milla’s satisfied panting breaths in his ear. The second thing he heard was laughter and a door slamming downstairs.
The third thing he heard was his brain reminding him that the risks were great, but the consequences would not be ignored.
“I smell curry. They must have given up on getting a table somewhere and gotten takeaway instead,” Milla said, stretching like a satisfied cat.
He rolled out of bed to deal with the condom. When he came back, Milla was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, all dark hair and red mouth against his white sheets. “Let’s not—” he started, then stopped. Shit.
“Tell anyone?” she finished, listening to the faint clink of plates and laughter coming from the ground floor. “I don’t usually kiss and tell, but sure, if you want to keep it quiet, I’m fine with that.”
“That’s fine,” he said quickly. Better than fine, actually. He sprawled in the bed and braced his head on one hand. With the creative jag he’d been on lately, the powerful, intense, all-consuming demand that he work until he dropped, he’d been able to ignore how he felt about Milla dating. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could ignore it, but he wasn’t ready to have that conversation now and potentially throw off his work.
“Just stay?” he asked. “They’ll be up for hours.”
“That works,” she said. “I’m a heavy sleeper and I left my bedroom door shut, so they won’t miss me.”
The sun had finally set, casting evening shadows across the floor and bed. He found the zipper at the side of her dress and drew it down. She rocked from side to side so he could pull her dress off and toss it at the foot of the bed. He lifted the sheet and blanket, inviting her under the covers.
“I’ll sneak in early tomorrow,” she said drowsily.
Charlie watched her drift, her face no less vibrant as sleep claimed her. The jury was still out, but he knew one thing for sure. As of now they were more than friends, and all the neat compartments he’d built for his emotions were falling apart.
* * *
When he woke up the next morning, the other side of the bed was empty. He rolled onto his back and knuckled sleep from his eyes while he took stock. Sunshine poured through the windows, heating the air enough to bring out a faint hint of Milla’s perfume. The bathroom door was open, the shower curtain dry, so she’d not risked the clanking and banging the old pipes made and had sneaked out before dawn, when everyone in the house would be asleep. He knew why. He’d been a talented scholarship student from the East End trying desperately to make his way with art-world royalty from Kensington, hyperattuned to everyone else’s thoughts, feelings, desires. Milla had spent her life as an outsider, a stranger in a strange land. With an outsider’s keen awareness, she’d picked up on his mixed messages and given him that combination of sweet heat and silence he’d wanted, and not seemed to mind at all.
So why did he feel like a tosser?
He rolled out of bed and started the water running in the bathroom. Before this combination of girls moved in, he’d set his own schedule, starting his day slowly, working through the afternoon and into the evening with only Billy for company, knocking off in time for a late supper alone, in front of the telly. Now he found himself faced with tenants who didn’t take no for an answer. Before he’d quite known what was happening, he was stopping down for breakfast, or brunch on the weekends, rounding out their table for the pub quiz, giving Kaitlin his input on logo redesigns, sampling coffee and pastries for Elsa.
Milla changed that balance. She was always at the center of things, the chemical agent, the catalyst that made it all happen. She didn’t do anything tangible, not like Kaitlin’s designs or Elsa’s pastries. She wen
t places, saw things, took pictures, posted them, and yet she brought everyone in the house together.
He toweled off and dressed in his work uniform of battered jeans, work boots and a long-sleeved waffle undershirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, then snagged Milla’s right shoe and sidestepped down the stairs to the girls’ floor. Knowing that he’d have to rent out the first-floor flat to help pay off the renovations of a house his grandparents had worked their entire lives to buy, he’d added a layer of soundproofing that almost, but not quite, muffled the steady stream of laughter, chatter and music emanating from the girls’ flat. The babble of sound grew louder as he descended. Moving quietly, he pushed open the door and dropped Milla’s shoe by its mate, then knocked.
“Morning,” he called as he pushed open the door.
A chorus of good mornings and scents reached him, the usual morning chaos. The girls continued their conversation over each other in the kitchen, Elsa in a belted robe, yawning as she opened the oven and shook a pan of granola. Kaitlin, wearing a nightie, sidestepped the open oven and set a jar of marmalade by the toaster. “You’re staying for breakfast?” Elsa asked.
I can’t formed in his mouth, but then he saw Milla, perched on the counter in a pair of pedal pushers, a three-quarter-length cardigan buttoned to her collarbones, and her damp hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She looked like everyone thought the ‘50s were supposed to look, if everyone in the ‘50s had had a smartphone stapled to her hand.
“Yeah,” he said.
He caught Milla’s eye and tipped his head at the jumble of shoes, boots, flip-flops, sandals and heels by the door. I brought back your second boot, he mouthed.
Her eyes widened, then shifted to the side as she thought it through. Then she smiled. Ta, she mouthed back, and went back to her phone. “She’s experimenting,” she said casually. “No fry-up today.”
Right. This was exactly what he wanted. A wink and a smile, a totally casual attitude. A secret. But a thought bloomed, unwanted, sour amid the sweet smell of Elsa’s baking.
You feel like a tosser because you hate secrets. Always have. Always will.
Trust his subconscious to tell him the truth before he had any coffee in him.
“What’s the experiment?” he asked casually.
“I’m testing a recipe for the café, so it’s granola in ten minutes,” Elsa said, peering at him nearsightedly. No contacts in yet, and her hair still in a messy blond braid. “Or you can have morning muffins that came out of the oven fifteen minutes ago. Either way you can have sliced cantaloupe and grapes.”
“How you work with knives and a hot stove without your glasses is beyond me,” Kaitlin said, hastily spreading marmalade on toast.
“I can see the recipe,” Elsa said. “I just can’t see him.”
He couldn’t stay by the door forever. It would look weird. But he was torn between a genuine desire to have one of Elsa’s experimental breakfasts with Milla and the desire to get into the hot shop soonest. Lately he’d been working until he fell asleep on the cement floor, only to wake up and go right back at it. For months now, the work had had him in its grip.
Ever since Milla had come back from her last trip, he realized.
To cover the discomfort, he leaned past Elsa and snagged a warm muffin from the pan. “Can I have both?” he asked.
“Of course,” Elsa said, her attention focused on the oven.
He helped himself to another muffin and chucked it to Milla, who caught it one-handed. “Do you ever drop that phone?” he asked as he leaned against the counter beside her.
“Rarely,” she said, but she set it aside to peel the paper cup from the muffin and break it open. The scent of cinnamon and raisins rose with the steam.
“There’s butter on the counter,” Elsa said.
“Gilding the lily,” Milla said. A faint sheen of oil gleamed on her fingertips. Charlie stifled the urge to lick it away and instead took a bite of his muffin.
Kaitlin set her coffee and toast on the table and slid into the seat nearest Milla, giving Elsa room to work. “Continuing on with the analytics of love—”
“Analytics of love?” Charlie said incredulously. “Does anyone in this room know anything about analytics?”
“Anything more complicated than recipe fractions makes me break out in spots,” Elsa said.
“I know the golden mean,” Kaitlin said. “We’re not doing so well on love, either. It was a figure of speech. We were discussing Milla’s next date options.”
Milla wiped her fingers and picked up her phone. “Option one, yet another banker, differentiated from the others only by his tie.”
“That’s an Eton tie,” Charlie said, mock solemnly. He should know. He’d seen Chelsea’s current husband wearing one in pictures in the paper.
“Oo-ooh,” Elsa and Kaitlin chorused, eyes wide.
“What’s the big deal?”
“Public school boy.”
“So? They’re rich with history and tradition. I wish I had that kind of education,” Milla said.
“Yes, but he’s wearing the tie,” Elsa said. “In his dating profile.”
“It’s not just a tie?”
“It’s not just a tie,” Elsa, Kaitlin and Charlie all said.
“Snob?” Milla hazarded.
Watching Milla navigate the English class distinctions as if they were all fictions amused Charlie to no end, except when it came to dating. But they weren’t fictional. They were bred bone-deep, and she was too pretty, too vibrant, too alive, too quirky, too light on her feet to get tied down to someone else’s ambitions. He bit back the words. One unexpected night did not give him the right to tell her who to date or not date.
“Voters seem to like the public school boys,” she mused.
“It’s the kind of guy you’re supposed to like,” Charlie said. “Good career, good family, a chance at the old vicarage and the Land Rover and your little nippers following in their dad’s footsteps and becoming Old Etonians.”
The words hung in the sugar-scented air of the kitchen, and for a minute, Charlie wished he could take them back.
“Maybe he just likes his smile in that picture. It’s a nice smile,” Milla said. “Option two, a barrister who’s also a keen cyclist.”
“That’s good,” Kaitlin said around a mouthful of toast. “A shared hobby.”
“Yes, there’s that,” Milla said. “Option three, IT Guy.”
“The same IT Guy? He got less than 20 percent of the vote last time!”
“I like him,” Milla said. She broke off a piece of muffin and popped it in her mouth, scrolling through the internet dating page with her thumb. “He seems nice.”
Kaitlin braced her palms on the table and peered over Milla’s forearm. “Geek,” she said decisively.
“There’s nothing wrong with geeks. Geeks are the new sexy.”
“I thought smart was the new sexy,” Elsa said as she snapped the lid back on the flour and stowed the container in the pantry.
“Smart has always been sexy,” Milla said. “And there’s lots of ways to be smart.”
Charlie looked at the image on the phone. The guy wasn’t bad looking, maybe a little earnest, with a vague, worried set to his eyebrows. He liked board games and foreign films, and was new to London. “He’s looking for someone to explore the city with,” he said. “Sounds like a good match.”
“You think so?” Milla asked, sliding him a look he couldn’t quite read through her eyelashes.
“You can’t do worse than the last git,” Charlie said, then crammed the rest of his muffin in his mouth to keep from saying anything else.
“He gets another shot,” Milla said decisively. A bit of tapping and scrolling, and she had the poll set up on her Facebook page. Charlie accepted the bowl of granola Elsa offered him. A moment later Milla nudged him with her shoulder and showed him her phone. A question was typed into a yellow notepad app.
Did I wake you up when I left?
He shook his he
ad.
She tapped Return and thumbed in more letters. Charlie watched the comment appear on the screen.
Good. You were sound asleep. Snoring.
He shook his head again, this time slowly and more emphatically.
Sawing logs. The bed was shaking.
He choked on a chunk of granola.
“All right there, Charlie?” Kaitlin asked.
“Fine,” he said, then gulped. “Swallowed the wrong way.”
Okay, maybe not shaking. Definitely vibrating.
There was the Milla he liked so much, friendly, funny, fast on her feet. He liked everything about her, except for the very public way she lived her life. “I don’t snore,” he said under his breath when Kaitlin and Elsa were both distracted by their own phones. “Besides, you look like you just had sex.”
I do not! I look like I came home early and went to bed.
The faintest hint of a blush stained her cheeks and the tops of her ears, matching the slight pink remaining from his beard chafing her neck. “Sitting on the counter, eating cereal?” he continued in the same low voice. “You definitely just had sex.”
Her thumbs flew, and the ends of her ponytail slid forward to brush her jaw.
Elsa needed the table to spread out the granola. I showered. I changed my clothes. I am as innocent as a nun.
“And I don’t snore,” he whispered into her ear, and watched a shiver chase over her skin.
She turned her face to his and smiled angelically at him. “The faintest little whistling sound,” she said, parting her lips ever so slightly, imitating his face while sleeping. “It’s pretty adorable.”
She lifted her finger as if to tap his lower lip. “What’s adorable?” Kaitlin said.
She changed the motion into a pat of her own lip, paused there as if in thought. “Check Instagram,” she said. “EmergencyOtters just posted. There’s nothing more adorable than a baby otter.”
Kaitlin and Elsa both looked at their phones. Charlie took advantage of the distraction to shovel the last of the milk-soaked granola into his mouth, lift his hand in both thanks and goodbye and beat a hasty retreat upstairs.