r /> He had to make things right by her. Maybe he should buy Avocado. Tiptoeing towards insolvency, it was going cheap, Jamie said, but the thought of a blind mute owning a sound studio made him dizzy. And Georgia didn’t need him to buy her a job. She’d taken a redundancy and was talking to Trent about possible freelance jobs.
He should’ve known how she felt about Hamish too, not just the fact of him writing to her shaking her, making her rethink her marriage and her time with him. That was a different kind of avoidance; that was the dark fire of jealousy, the rising spectre of the ex. He was not immune to it; not stronger than it, and it was made worse because they’d changed hats. Now Hamish’s was white and his was distinctly charred.
Maybe he should let her go back to him.
It would be light now. Georgia slept still, curled against his arm, her breathing a series of soft sighs. He’d exhausted himself running from his love for her and now learning her anew in a reunion that should never have been needed and never should’ve happened. He was still a coward, and so much worse a one for how he’d taken her heart and how he’d leave it.
He’d had words while he explored her, like songs, like poetry in his head while he held the planes of her body, the dips and swells of her flesh, silky on his tongue, fragrant on his lips. And he couldn’t shut them up, stuff them back inside. But the cost of them was high. Each one was a staple of his heart to hers, a wound he’d leave behind, because no matter how much he loved her, how much she sang to him, he still needed to let her go. It would be like losing another of his senses, but he couldn’t take her where he was going, a private hell of adjustment, of silence and rage.
The kind of hell she’d already walked through.
Rage is what turned him from her, from the rest of them, and he didn’t have it under control. It burned in him. He was like Georgia’s Hamish in that. Too ready to blame, to lash out, incapable of stopping it happening. He felt that way now, lying in this comfort, his gut a watched pot of boiling muck ready to spill and scald. It would only get worse, and by the time he adjusted, worked out how to live as a man with different limitations, he’d have ruined what they had together, ruined her worse.
He breathed her in. The night had been an act of insane selfishness. He should’ve let Jamie steer him away, better, let Taylor take him home, rather than walk him to Georgia’s door.
He felt the swell of Georgia’s ribs, the languid heaviness of her limbs and tried to memorise those parts of her he’d be without. All her colours, all her sounds. Georgia forever on his mind. When she’d stirred, clutching at him, nuzzling him as she woke, he found the strength to do what he needed to do to give her back her freedom.
He cleared his throat; he could get decent tone and control for those first few hours of the day. “Hello, beautiful.”
Her lips to his. Her mouth so warm, so effortlessly capable of arousing him. He kissed away the morning taste of her, till she was pure addiction sprawled across his chest, till there was no sleep left in her and he felt energy tweak in her limbs.
She put a finger to his cheek, to his dimple. “I am going to mess you up.”
He smiled. “You don’t think you might have already done that.” He was messed up about a lot of things, but utterly scrambled about her.
“You’re so good at making sex about me, but not this morning.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“When we’re together like this, it’s always you pleasing me. You never ask anything of me for you.”
He trailed a hand from her back to her neck, around its column to her cheek. “Is that what you think?” He felt her nod. “You’ve got that so wrong.” He brought her face closer for a kiss and got lost in it. When she broke it he said, “I ask everything of you and you give it without question.” Emotion was a steel bar across his chest, making it hard to breath. “You make me selfish for need of you.” She was quiet, still and it unsettled him instantly. “God, baby, talk to me.”
“You really think that?”
“I know it.”
“You don’t have to impress me, you’ve got me. I lusted after your voice, but you had me the moment you used it to show me who you are. I’ve already forgiven you all the things you’ve done to push me away and all the things you’ll do in the future.”
A wounded sound poured from him. He tightened his arms on her. She was a witch with extra sensory vision. She could see into his black soul, into his panicked psyche.
She put her fingertips to his throat, her breath on his face. “Now who’s speechless?”
They came together with all the fire and fury of a star being made. She was the elemental one, the atom of light. She’d learned his body and knew its secrets, knew to keep her hands on him, move them in a pattern that soothed, that to touch him suddenly outside that anticipated flow could surprise, madden, delight. She fused those approaches with hands that stroked then stopped to change position; a sneak attack, to squeeze or pinch; lips that dragged, then wet, then stung. She was everywhere and nowhere, absence and pressure, gasp and twist and compressed desire so intense he was flattened by it, unable to do anything but receive her hands, her mouth, the sucking slide of her heat, the ache to have, have more, have all.
He gave up trying to predict her movements; gave over to the pulse of his blood, the gravity of her, drawing him into a place where his thoughts dissolved like scattered space dust, and only his body remained, a housing for energy so concentrated, so brilliant he was unbalanced, unearthed and fused to her.
She used her mouth, her tongue, her excited breath to stun him, take him higher, make his back arch off the bed. He fisted her hair, the sheet, to try and ground himself, prolong the moment.
He didn’t want to finish in her mouth, but she wasn’t giving him a choice. “Come with me.”
Here he could have what he couldn’t have in life. He curled off the bed, his abs bunching, his legs shaking, and caught her under the arms, raised her over him. She would be wide-eyed and wild, her hair all over the place, her lips red and plumped up. There was a sheen of moisture on her skin and she tasted salty, tangy from her feast on him. She pressed him down and centred over him, her heat, her juices shockingly beautiful, loosening his tongue.
“Slide hard, baby. Take us there. Show me the sun.”
She picked a new pattern, a new rhythm, this one punctuated by rolling hips and clutching thighs, her hands on his chest, her song a string of verbal tics and moans, high pitched hitches and low exhales.
She raked her short nails down his sides and dripped sweat on his stomach. “I hate you for shutting me out.” Her voice shook and her body trembled.