He loved her for this. For the thrill; for the trust. “Not till you’re limp and I have to carry you out of here.”
Two fingers, adding his thumb to her clit. He closed one eye as she yanked his head up. “This is madness.”
They stared at each other, frozen in the moment. If she’d let him, he’d kneel at her feet, he’d make her feel free and safe and loved like this forever.
He put his teeth to her hip and she jerked against his hand, the sound of her breathing coarse, rasping. He could make her come like this easily, but she’d tire and he was too greedy to miss coming with her. He kissed his way up her body, lingering on parts that made her gasp or twitch; her belly button, the bottom edge of her ribs, the underside of her breast. He filled his hands with her softness, took her mouth. He had so much to learn about what she liked, what turned her body on and her mind off, but the only thing he wanted to catalogue now was how she felt wrapped around him.
Electricity sparked in his lower back; his spine was a blue streak of sensation. This woman affected his limbs, tissues and organs; altered his brain chemistry like no one else. He backed off to look at her, to see her greed as he unzipped, rolled the condom on. His hands shook but he’d never felt so steady. Hands to her waist, he lifted her and she wrapped her legs around him.
Her hands went around his neck. “How’s this going to work?”
He could hold her effortlessly, hands under her thighs. “Like this.” He moved her into position and stroked across her core.
“Oh God.” She curled her upper body, dropped her head to watch as he seated her, tugged her hips down, drove up inside her. “Oh. Oh.” Her head dropped forward to rest on his chest.
He gave her a few seconds to adjust. “Hold on, baby. This is going to be hard and fast.”
She lifted her head. “You wreck me, Reece.” She kissed his throat. “You take me apart with the love in you. Wreck me again.”
He bent his knees, tilted his pelvis up and lifted her; reversed it, set a rhythm and punished them both with the rocking, thrusting ache of it. Audrey moved her hands to his arms and leant into it, using her own hips as leverage.
He had white light in his eyes, a laser beam carved heat up the shaft of his spine. She muffled her screams in his chest, but he roared his own release. She wrecked him too. Stripped the skin off him and tore his nails out, fritzed his senses.
He loved her. She made him violent inside with the vulnerability of it.
He didn’t know what she needed from him beyond caring for Mia, beyond this, and this was where he wanted to live.
He held her till their breathing settled and Audrey lifted her face to his. “You’re unbelievable.” She stroked his face. He saw wonder in her eyes. “Why did it take me so long to meet you?”
“Why did it take you so long to seduce me?”
“I need my head examined.” She pulled at his neck and he bent to kiss her. “I’d stay in your arms all day.”
“I’d keep you but if kids or fisherman don’t catch us, the tide will.” And if he didn’t detach them, he’d be ready for round two.
Her face reddened. “I can’t believe we did this here.” She laughed. “What have you done to me? I’m Audrey Bates, serious corporate woman, responsible single mother, celibate by lifestyle choice, boring vegetable.”
He lifted her, set her on her feet. “No, you’re not. You’re naked sex on the beach, baby.”
She swatted him as he cleaned up, zipped up. “I don’t know if I should be appalled or congratulated.” She clipped her bra on, her singlet and jacket, moving quickly. “I can’t find my underwear.”
He yanked her to him. He didn’t want to leave, go back to the world. He kissed her, hands over her butt. It would be so easy to lift her again, or turn her, let her brace against the rock fall and take her from behind. He groaned as her kiss told him she’d go for that. He took her hand put it on his butt. She laughed against his lips as she found her pants in his pocket.
Dressed and back on the path, they walked back to the beach. The closer they got the more Audrey tensed. They’d been gone a long time and it’d be longer if he added a coffee run.
She took his hand. “I don’t want them to know.”
“They know. I didn’t say a word, but they know.”
“We’ve had one night and whatever that was—”
He pulled her off the path and into his arms. “That was a hot fucking mess and I can’t wait to do it again.”
“I need to think. I didn’t expect you to be so...” She frowned and started again. “I didn’t expect you to be so...I propositioned you, but you’re overwhelming.”
He watched her carefully. Had he been too rough? Now that the adrenaline was gone, had he risked too much? He’d shoot himself in the dick with a nail gun if he saw fear in her.
She squeezed his hand. “This is a big change.”
“Don’t hesitate on my account. I know what I want.” He’d never been clearer.
“How can you know?”
She closed her eyes tight. They’d both forgotten their sunglasses. It was hard to remember she had a more complicated life at stake. That not long ago she’d been sick enough to die.
“I’ve had time. I’ve watched you, feared for you. I know what I want. I want us. I don’t care who else knows about us.”
She put her fingertips to his lips, traced them, stood on her toes and pulled his head down. She kissed him hard, fingers dug into his arm, and that made the need for secrecy easier to take.
“Can we have just this—let this breathe before we need to be anything else?”
He kissed her soft. “Just this.”
It wasn’t a skywriter. It wasn’t a Property of Audrey tattoo, but it was enough for now.
18: Wonder Drug
When she’d been pumped full of drugs in hospital, Audrey’s brain turned to cotton wool. Her thoughts were fuzzy blobs; her emotions were thick and fluffy one minute and torn apart and insubstantial the next. Later the headaches and tingling, the overwhelming relief about her recovery, and bone deep exhaustion drowned her in soft focus days and frighteningly disturbing nights.
Now she felt clear-headed. Better than headache free, better than well slept and properly rested. Every synapse in her brain fired sharp with excitement, every cell in her body was ready to do sand sprints without tiring. She was still too thin, but she looked good, colour in her face, bright eyes, shiny hair and a bounce in her step.
Because of Reece.
He was a new kind of drug, one that made her feel younger and stronger and more capable. She’d never trusted anyone like she trusted Reece. Her parents once, in the way kids had no choice, and theirs was a trust tempered with obedience. You got it when you conformed. She’d had it with Barrett, but it had limitations, and the fact he lived in New York and had no interest in being a father, or intention of returning, was the foundation of it.
She had it with Merrill and Joe, with Les. The trust that came with long friendships proven over good and bad times, but with Reece it was a whole lot more complex and a whole lot more simple at the same time.
He saw everything she was and what she’d forgotten how to be. He saw all the ways she failed and when she feared to try. He saw her stripped down to pure vibrating want, desperate grasping need, calculated caution and naked ambition, and he held out his hand and hoped she’d take it. He offered his heart, as big and careful as the rest of him, for her to do whatever she wanted with, and he trusted her to choose well.
She chose him all the way from his boat size feet to his quiet domestic heroism. She made a cocoon of them, an alternate world for the two of them and Mia to exist in. Which meant days in the company of his ready smile and steady humour, and nights in thrall to his body, and what he could do to hers.
It was a holiday she didn’t want to end. He should’ve moved out, but she couldn’t bring herself to suggest it. He did though, testing, doing what was right for her and Mia.
She stuck her head
in the sand she could newly sprint on and played at paradise with Reece while she waited for the rest of her life to unwind, for the email or the call that’d tell her not to bother coming back to work and how much her last pay would contain. She needed to tell him about that. But talking about it with anyone but Les made it real and she wasn’t ready for real when she had Reece and the fantasy of a beautiful life.
Because it was a fantasy. The high of a different drug. Too, too good to be true. Too true to survive. Reece looked at her like he was in love with her. He touched her like he wanted her to know it. And everything he did was designed to prove it. And that couldn’t possibly be right.
What did she offer him, a woman with a kid, older, single by choice, and focused on a job that was about to disappear, a career in limbo?
But she dreamed about it, waking dreams. While she sat reading and he played with Mia. While she played with Mia and he cooked. She watched him manage a tantrum or stand right back so she could, and she knew they’d created a family, the structure too interwoven to ever go back the way it had been, even if she could afford to keep it.
Once the money went, broke them up, was it fair to make him wait until she got a new job and could afford to have him back? If he wasn’t here as her carer, would he want to be here as her lover?
She heard the TV go on in the other room. She knew he’d settle Mia and come to her. He didn’t know their time for this was going to run out, or how anxious that made her.
Mia whined. He placated. Mia threw her fire engine on the floor, a clatter of bells and metal, incoherent screaming, and he spoke a little sternly. His no nonsense voice, deeper with authority, but never menace. She imagined him using it on her in bed and pressed her legs together.
That’s how he found her, ridiculously turned-on by the man who’d just disciplined her daughter. She was a bad mother, a shocking employer, and a redundant employee, but if he touched her that would all go away and she’d feel drugged with happiness again.
He came straight for her, miraculously as strung-out for her touch as she was for his. The look on his face was pure determination, those beautiful green eyes gone dark. His hand went to the back of her neck, fingers sifting through her hair. He kissed her with enough force she heard imaginary bells ringing through her head.
Real was the sound of Mia talking to the TV in the next room. Real was Reece’s hand over her breast and his tongue tipping the roof of her mouth. Real was the smudge of texta on his jaw and the smell of banana in his skin.
He groaned into the kiss, his arm tight around her back, pulling her to her toes. “I want to take a bath with you.”
She laughed. They would never both fit in her bath and he had to know it. He wouldn’t fit on his own, but she’d like to see him try.
“I want to spend a whole weekend naked in bed with you. We’ll only get up for bathroom breaks and to answer the door to the pizza guy.”
That wasn’t immediately possible either, but it sounded like heaven.
“I want to give you ten orgasms in a row.”
She gasped. She’d be back in hospital needing oxygen, but with a little concerted effort he could probably pull that off.
“I want to eat chocolate off your skin, lick whiskey off your lips.”
Now that they could do.
He ran his tongue around the edge of her ear. “I want to be with you and Mia always.”
She pushed him away. “Reece.” She shook her head; he rattled her senses. He couldn’t want that.
He said, “I want that,” like he knew her thoughts, and he could because her doubt was all over her in creased brows and shivers and rigid arms holding him back.
“I love Mia.” He dropped his hold on her and let her have her distance. “I am in love with you.”
All the heat left her body. “You can’t love me. It’s not real. This is just a, just a, holiday romance, just a, look it’s obvious we might, that it’s proximity, and you can’t.” She stopped babbling and looked him in the eye. “You can’t.”
“Shocked you there, did I?” He let his voice drop soft and low.
“You’re conflagrating care and sex into something bigger.” She sounded shrill in comparison, with a rising note of panic.
“Conflagrating?”
“Reece, you just can’t.”
He did that thing where he planted his feet wide, folded his arms, made himself an immoveable object. When he did it with Mia it was her cue to throw herself at him, climb all over him. When he did it with her he was saying, go on, prove me wrong.
“Why can’t I love you, Audrey?”
“Because I’m too old for you.”
He blinked in surprise. “Do you seriously think that’s a reason not to love you?”
“No. Yes.” It should be easy to set him straight. “Yes. Not the number, but the fact we’re at different stages in our lives. I have a child.”
“I did notice that.” He kept a completely straight face.
She scrubbed hers with her open palms. How to make him understand? “I have a career.”
“What I do might not look like much to you, but it’s important to me.”
She dropped her head. That’s not what she’d meant. She didn’t mean to sound like a bitch. She didn’t want to insult him, just help him see this couldn’t be a permanent thing. “I’m sorry, that’s—”
“That’s reality. I get it. I don’t have much to offer. I wasn’t asking you to marry me.”
Her leg buckled and her hand shot out to steady herself. He was there. Taking her arm, holding her upright.
“If I thought you wouldn’t send me packing I’d be on my knees now.”
“Oh Reece.”
She stepped into his embrace. It would be so easy to let him love her all the way like that, let him make the family a forever thing. But it wasn’t right for him. And it terrified her. What if she let herself love him that way and in five years he was tired of it, raising someone else’s kid? In five years, in ten, the difference between their ages would be more pronounced. What if he wanted his own kid? Of course he would. She had no intention of having another baby and that would be a rank injustice to a man who loved kids like he did.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry, Audrey.”
For a person who’d describe herself as stoic, she’d cried a lot this year. It made her feel weak and powerless and she couldn’t afford to be either. She tried to turn away and Reece folded around her back, protecting her like the crumple zone of a car body. She had crushed him just as surely with her reaction as if she’d run into him with a road train, and yet he was saving her.
He pressed his cheek to hers. “We have this. We have now and I won’t press for more.”
She had to tell him. “I think I’m going to lose my job. They’re making cutbacks, redundancies. I left them with problems on my projects and I’m not senior enough to avoid being targeted.”
Into his steady breathing, his enveloping warmth, she told him the rest. “If it happens, it may take me a while to get a new job. Months, at least. I couldn’t keep you on as Mia’s nanny.”
She felt the muscles in his arms, across his chest harden.
“And if I can’t be Mia’s nanny then I can’t be in your life, is that what you’re saying?”
Was that the conclusion? Is that what she wanted? Reece gone entirely from their lives. She pivoted to face him, caught his face in her hands.
“I’m not saying that.”
The only way to fix this was to tell him she loved him, but did she love him, or the idea of him, the carer she wouldn’t have to pay, the family she’d employed instead of made?
“I’m not saying that. I don’t want you going anywhere. I didn’t even want to tell you.”
She sniffed back tears because that was the truth. “We’ll work the rest out.”
She pressed her lips, wet and too spongy to form a kiss against his. He had to trust her in this. She would find a way to keep her job or get a new one quickly. She
would find a way to keep him close and a definition of that closeness they could both live with.
“I’m hungry.”
Reece pulled away. He was sombre, a shade of emotion rare to him. “Nearly dinner time, Mia. How about a jigsaw puzzle before we eat?”
Mia hugged his leg, tipping her head back to look up at him. “Are you sad?”
He picked her up, set her on his hip. “A little bit.”
Audrey pressed her lips together hard. He was so much better at this than she was. She’d have denied it and Mia would’ve learned nothing but deception. The kind of thing she’d learned from Esther.
“Everyone gets sad sometimes. That’s how you know what happy is,” he said.
Mia tucked her face into Reece’s neck. “Happy is not sad.”
He smiled and tickled her. “That’s what it is.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t be sad, Reece. I love you.”
He closed his eyes and when he opened them he looked for Audrey’s. “Now, I’m happy.”
Audrey kept Mia busy while Reece cooked. Another thing he was much better at. Then the fight to get Mia to bed, to get her to stay there. He was gone for his run when she got finished, the kitchen clean and Mia’s pile of toys packed away.
She got her laptop out and fired it up. She sent Chris an email, asking for a meeting. She explained she was due back at work and wanted to talk about her options. That was vague. She couldn’t let on she knew about the planned redundancies. He might say no to seeing her. He very likely would, but he’d been so genuinely considerate of her over getting sick, perhaps he’d give her fifteen minutes as a courtesy. This might be a wasted effort and make her seem desperate, never a good career move, but it was time to take charge again and this was one thing she could do, one step towards fixing it so she could keep Reece.
She knew when he came in the front door that he’d try to avoid her. She deserved it, but she wasn’t going to take it. She had a bottle of whiskey. She wanted his lips on hers when she drank it.
She met him in the hallway with the bottle in her hand. He was drenched in sweat, his track pants stuck to his thighs. He’d taken his shirt off, held it in his hands.
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