Undone

by Kristina Lloyd

  I shake my head. ‘That’s your guilt, Lana. It’s gotten you a bit obsessed about the towel. We should have a burning ceremony one day. Get rid of it for good.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she replies. ‘I keep meaning to throw it out.’

  It’s my first sign of hope, like a green spear in wintry ground. Spring. Growth. Renewal. Life.

  I knock back my bourbon and set my glass on the ground. Inside the blanket, she ruffles the twist of hair she’s made on my chest, erasing it, and rubs across the breadth of me. She butts into the crook of my arm and her hand sweeps lower. She tips her head back, looks up at me, and cups a hand over my groin.

  ‘Make me remember, Sol,’ she says. ‘Make me remember how good we are together.’

  Present tense. Present fucking tense.

  I twist around and clasp her face, staring at her, at those China-blue eyes. I can scarcely believe what she just said. I’m getting another chance here? The blanket tangles around us as we shift position, and I’m patterning her face with kisses. I grab a handful of hair by the nape of her neck. Instinct. Habit. She groans deep and low. Her body slumps as if my strength depletes her of energy. Her reaction makes my cock jump. She closes her eyes.

  Briefly, I wonder if I should be touchy-feely and tender. It’s been a tough night, after all. Then I remember what she wrote in the beginning. He understood me; understood that I didn’t find comfort in the usual places.

  I’m on my knees on the sofa and she’s leaning back against the padded arm. I tighten the fist in her hair, arching her neck, and I shove her thighs wider with one knee. Her foot drops to the floor. She wriggles and whimpers but she’s wide open and glistening for me. I cover her mouth with my hand. Her hot breath pulses in my palm. Her eyes are locked on mine and she’s looking a touch alarmed. I lean towards her face.

  ‘You might regret asking for that,’ I say, putting on a dark, snarly voice, ‘when you can’t walk tomorrow because I’ve fucked you to hell and back.’

  She moans into my hand, wriggling more violently, but her eyes are playful, hungry. I’d recognise that glint anywhere.

  ‘Sshh!’ I murmur. ‘There, there. Just try and block it out till I’m done.’

  My dick is bone hard. I release her mouth and her hair. She pants for breath beneath me. I grab her arms, push them higher, one behind her head, the other squashed against the cushions. She squirms, hips lifting. Greedy, greedy. God, how I love that about her. I straddle her hips, half off the sofa. When I release one of her arms, it stays in position, flung back against the sofa as if I’ve moulded her into that pose. I slap her tits a little. She flinches, writhes, gasps. I take a nipple between thumb and forefinger, and I squeeze as slowly as I can. I keep one arm crushed into the sofa. I watch her face, and I realise I’m grinning. I increase the pressure, loving how her cries increase too. When I think she’s at the limit of her pain tolerance, I squeeze a little harder.

  ‘Please, please,’ she wails, head thrashing, legs kicking behind me. ‘No more, please.’

  That’s the part I love, when it slips into the real. She’d safeword me if she meant it. I hold the grip a while longer, pull her tit higher.

  ‘No!’ she gasps.

  Coolly, I let go. I smile down as if I’m bestowing a great kindness upon her. ‘You remembering yet, Cha Cha?’

  ‘You bastard,’ she breathes, and there’s the snatch of a shocked laugh.

  I edge back and hoik her ass in my direction. Then I change my mind and flip her over. She’s very flippable, always is, and, hot damn, how I love that ass. I slam her upper body against the sofa arm and paste a couple of blows on her pale cheeks. Well, OK. I apply more than a couple of blows. Enough to make my palm sting. When she’s nicely reddened and leaping like a landed fish, I guide my cock towards her pussy. Her wetness pretty much pulls me in, and her heat is wrapped around my dick.

  The sound she makes is music to my ears. Her flesh hugs my shaft as I ease back and deep again. We’re fucking without rubbers just as we did in the forest. It’s like being licked by a choir of angels. Dirty, horny, cock-loving angels. I figure skin to skin is safe since we’re not fucking anyone else. I plunge harder, faster, keeping her crushed to the sofa. I look at her ass, rosy pink and split, and below that my dick shunts in and out, glossy with her milk-white juices. I wish I could get closer than this, could get past the membrane separating her from me. And then we’d know each other wholly, the way you never can.

  But, yeah, even though we can’t get to that place, I thrust harder and harder, as if fucking her might make it so. Below me, she starts strumming her clit. Still makes me wild to see how frantically she goes at it. When she comes, I feel her ripple around my shaft like rivers of velvet. I can’t take any more. Warmth’s rising inside me and I’m too full of pleasure. The pressure valve needs to blow. I pull out, whack off like a madman, and then I’m coming all over her back and ass, showering her perfect skin. And I’m euphoric. It’s as if all our time together is distilled in this moment of coming, all the bliss we ever tasted compressed into the here and now. I’m complete and I’m boundless. My come is on her body in stripes and splatters, no longer inside me, clamouring to get out.

  I mark her in so many ways. Because she lets me.

  I gaze down at her, at the dip of her spine, the curve of her ass, the breathless lift of her ribs. I’m dazed. I swear, I just touched the stars.

  I am instantly fucking wrecked, exhausted. Gasping, we collapse into each other, clinging tight because the sofa’s as narrow as a life raft. I burrow into her hair from behind, kissing her neck as we spoon, and she reaches back to fondle my thigh. My come smears between us, wetting my chest, and I wish it were glue to bind us together.

  At length, she murmurs, ‘I remember. I remember everything.’

  ‘Damn right you do,’ I say. ‘And I’m going to make sure you keep on remembering.’

  She wriggles her butt against my tingling cock. ‘That a threat or a promise?’ she asks. It’s one of her cute lines.

  ‘Both,’ I say.

  She laughs gently. ‘Thank God for that.’

  We kiss and caress with lazy tenderness. I drape my arm around her, cup one of her breasts, and simply hold her there. It’s deeply comforting. Before long, we’re drifting off together on our cushioned life raft. I listen as her breath slows, feel her body softening in my embrace. And as I slip towards sleep, I picture dangerous waters lapping at our edges.

  Dream logic tells me to hold on tight to her, to keep her safe from harm. And that the wisest thing we can do is stay here forever, taking care of each other as best we can.

  Part 7

  Wednesday 12th November

  Ilya Travis came to the bar today, shortly after five. My hand hovered over the panic button we’ve had installed behind the counter.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Lana,’ he said, strolling towards me. ‘I just wanted to thank you for getting lover-boy off my case. And I wanted to return this.’

  He placed my lipstick in the silver tip saucer on the hazy blue bar. Fairy lights strewn around the oak and leather dimness cast reflections on the little dish. I picked up the lipstick.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ I said, and I dropped the tube into the nearest bin.

  He grinned. ‘Guess I won’t stay for a drink, then.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  He turned and sauntered out. I wasn’t even interested in looking at his arse. Well, not much.

  Sol clattered in the adjacent kitchen and staggered into the bar carrying two crates of bottled beer, biceps taut. He lowered the crates to the floor and slid open the glass door of the cooler.

  ‘You OK, Cha Cha?’ he called cheerily. He squatted by the fridge and began removing bottles from the top shelf. ‘Thought I heard a customer.’

  I smiled down at him as he restocked, pushing new bottles to the back of the shelf.

  ‘No such luck,’ I said. ‘Some guy just popped his head round the door. Wanted to know what time
we close.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ He lined up the chilled bottles along the front of the shelves. ‘Going to be another quiet night,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Bad time of year. Cold and dark. Christmas on the horizon.’

  He stood and sidled towards me, wrapping an arm around my waist from behind. He dabbed kisses on the back of my neck. ‘So what say we warm it up?’

  I laughed, pressing my buttocks against his crotch. Sometimes I feel as if I can’t say anything without him twisting it into an opportunity to seduce. I adore his deliberately heavy-handed approach, the way he acts like some cheesy throwback with terrible chat-up lines. I’d wondered how much of the old Sol would remain when we decided to give it a shot, and thankfully, it’s quite a lot. As Sol said, a lot of what I got was him all along. He’s good at compartmentalising, sure, but he’s human. He leaks. The divisions aren’t hard and fast. So there were lies, yes, but a lot of truths, too. If he’d been made of lies, as I once accused him of being, I’d have seen right through him. He was pretty much like my diary. A few lies. Many truths. Sol Miller is part of Sol Revivo, and vice versa.

  ‘It’s gone five o’clock,’ I said, a mild reproach in my tone. ‘Happy Hour’s here and we’re open for business.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He ground himself against me. ‘I wish you were open for business.’ He started hitching up my skirt, a wiggle skirt, so he had to force the fabric over my thighs in the way that excites me.

  ‘I could always put a note on the door downstairs,’ I said. ‘Saying we’re opening at six.’

  He stepped back from me, surprised. ‘Yeah?’

  I shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  He raised his brows. ‘Hell, so what are we waiting for?’

  I moved to fetch paper from the back room, smoothing out the wrinkles in my skirt. Sol grabbed a bar towel and cracked it across my buttocks, making me yelp.

  ‘I said,’ he continued, ‘“What are we waiting for?”’

  I laughed and jabbed a finger in his direction. ‘One day,’ I replied, ‘you’ll push it too far.’

  ‘In your dreams, Cha Cha.’

  I scribbled a note on a sheet of A4 and headed downstairs. On the leaf-strewn, lamplit street, I glanced left and right, wondering if Ilya might be lurking. But, no, he’d gone. He had better things to do with his time than intimidate me. Besides, he has no need to trouble me anymore. Sol’s quit the force. His undercover colleagues have been pulled off the job, and the operation’s being scaled down. For a while, at least. Either way, it no longer has anything to do with me or Sol, and Ilya is well aware of it. The unit suspect they have an informer in their midst. Ilya knows more than he should. ‘Everyone’s twitchy,’ said Sol. ‘Who can you trust?’

  I brought the A-board in from the street and taped my notice to the street door: OPENING AT 6 P.M. DUE TO STAFF SHORTAGE. APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

  I locked the door and returned upstairs, where the blue counter’s glow illuminated the soft-lit, satin-walled room. The balcony doors were closed, the stained-glass arch catching chips of brilliance in its leaded blue-green tiles. I put on an American accent as I entered, shoulders back. ‘Hey, barkeep,’ I called. ‘Why don’t you fix me a beer?’

  He flipped the lids off a couple of bottles and poured mine into a glass. Having him around is a joy. We’re a great team. He lost the Brighton flat when he quit the Met, and lost a damn good salary too. He’s renting out his London home and living with me till we work out our plan. We’ve talked about buying a bar together, somewhere far away and hot where I can swim in the sea each day. ‘We’ll go skipping off into the tequila sunset,’ he quipped.

  I sleep well these days and my dreams are rich, dreams of snorkelling in vivid blue oceans and sleeping under cotton sheets, sweat-salt on his skin, sea-salt in my hair.

  He’s never going to read this journal again. I got Katrina to bind it in leather and secure it with a lock. A combination lock. I took my inspiration from the collar Sol once fixed around my neck. He can’t see in my mind to get the number. I’m not going to tell him that Ilya turned up today. Sol feels he can never do enough to make up for the past and win back my trust. But the last thing I want is a man crippled with contrition, a man who feels he’s in my debt and needs to be permanently on his best behaviour.

  Letting him believe Ilya might still be a threat seems a good compromise. Sol gets to feel useful by looking out for me, ensuring I’m safe, and I enjoy the sense of security he brings. If he ever becomes suffocating, I’ll rethink.

  He stood our beers on the bar and came to join me on the other side. In the aquamarine haze of the counter, we clinked a toast, bottle to glass. ‘Here’s to Happy Hour,’ he said.

  He swigged from the bottle and yanked me close with his free hand. He kissed my neck, his lips cold and wet.

  ‘To Happy Hour,’ I said, laughing. I set my glass on the counter.

  He placed his beer next to mine and inched my skirt higher, struggling against its tightness.

  ‘You stop my clocks, Cha Cha,’ he said. ‘You stop my fucking clocks, you know that? This Happy Hour’s going to last us quite some time.’

  ‘That a threat or a promise?’ I said.

  ‘Both.’

  He gave my skirt a hard, upward jerk. I heard a tiny rip. I’m hearing it again in my mind as I write in this journal, and I’m in the blue of the bar again, reliving the magic.

  With the rip, I melt. My knees weaken. My limbs are loose. He slides a hand between my thighs, where I’m swimming with desire, liquefying. Oh, Sol, how you break me and make me. I am coming undone at the seams.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks, as ever, to the Black Lace team for keeping the erotic flag flying; for making the process seamlessly smooth for me; and for giving me the chance to play at the darker edges of this genre.

  Thank you to all the friends (too many to mention and I may have forgotten your names) who, inadvertently or otherwise, have helped me with my cocktail-drinking ‘research’ over the years; and to Chris Seggerman for infectious cocktail nerdery and for directing me to the best virtual bars from across the pond.

  An enormous debt of gratitude to my wonderful sister who came charging to my rescue when my laptop went belly up.

  Massive thanks, love and respect to Lorelei for understanding when I was taking mental notes at the grimmest of times; I wish that story could have been different.

  And to Ewan, so much to Ewan, for finding extra days in the week to read the ms with insight and enthusiasm; for boundless support, encouragement and inspiration; for putting the tequila in my sunrise; and for being in this glorious sandpit with me where we get to make stuff up in our heads and tell each other about it first!

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  Published in 2014 by Black Lace, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  Copyright © Kristina Lloyd, 2014

  Kristina Lloyd has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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