She shook her head, her hair all spread out around her like squid’s ink on the white bedcover. “I only have the idea of you.”
He undid his belt and pants. “Then you know I’m a bad one.”
She tried to free her arms and he pressed his knees into her sides to stop her. She howled in frustration and he bent forward to run his nose over her jaw, her cheek. She turned her head looking for a kiss and he sat upright denying her. He wanted to be skin to skin with her. He wanted the taste of her under his tongue. He had to let go to get rid of his pants but he didn’t trust her. She had wildfire running through her limbs and chaos in her eyes.
He captured her hands and raised them above her head, grasping them both in one of his and she bucked underneath him, slamming into his hips in a way that made him tense and his breath come hard. He slid a hand around her back and pinched her bra open, pulling it off her shoulders and she stilled momentarily, her lips parted, as his eyes went to her breasts, small and high on her chest.
He curled forward to take her wet bottom lip between his and she fought to free her hands. He gave her teeth, enough pressure to make her moan. He ran his tongue along her top lip and she snatched a kiss and there was no more teasing her, he got focused on the warmth of her mouth and the sounds she made.
He wasn’t conscious of releasing her hands, only that her fingers were digging into his skull. The flower petal softness of her, the scent of her, expensive perfume and a fragrance of the long, disappointing day and the seedy bar filled his head.
He did what he promised, he held her and kissed her and undressed the rest of her, carefully, slowly, making her tremble. That was a shock, a buzz. Whatever they had together was shredding her control. It was testing his, almost unbearably. His whole body felt strung out like a faulty code. He’d thought she’d be reserved, contained, the sex efficient, pleasant enough but routine, forgettable. He wasn’t prepared for her to shed her skin and let him see into her heart. He hadn’t been sure she had one, but now he saw it, bright and deep and filled with longing.
She wasn’t going through the motions. She wasn’t riding the alcohol, the hormone high, she was stripped down to her most basic programming and inviting him to overwrite her. He saw it in her eyes, blown wide and clear. Her open abandon, the radiance of her, spun him out and he couldn’t tell how much of it was the lack of food, the shock and disappointment of the day, or the woman, and he didn’t care. He let go too, buried himself in her and took the drag of her nails down his back and her sharp gasps as confirmation she was getting what she needed from him.
She was rigid and liquid, straining and tremulous, and he was the same until the glass ceiling disappeared, and the room went away, and her fire went out and they were drunk on each other floating in the stars and the clouds.
3: Half Light
Whirring woke him, or was it the sun, or the crazed woodpecker in his head? He opened his eyes to see the glass wall turn opaque and block out the sun and the skyline. A fancy bit of window tech that beat curtains. He needed water. He needed a pistol for the woodpecker, and the bathroom.
Jacinta was curled on her side, with her back to him, but close enough he could feel her warmth. Her breathing had an exhausted quality to it, like a length of sighs strung together. Gingerly he launched an experiment in sitting upright without disturbing her and found it disorienting. The room wobbled, his eyes wouldn’t open past slits and his tongue had become a pineapple overnight.
Technically it was morning, a squint at his watch confirmed 6am. He could wake her, say goodbye and go. He could leave a note and disappear. Practically, it felt like it should be the middle of the night and he didn’t have it in him to do more than stumble to the bathroom, guzzle water, find his bag and hope there were headache tablets there, then flake out for another couple of hours.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tested the floor. Felt solid even if he didn’t. Standing produced stumbles, then sharp pain under his instep and involuntary hopping that flooded his head with seasickness, but not enough to drown the woodpecker or stunt his curses.
She rolled over and he froze as though she might not see him if she woke and he was standing still instead of lurching about. There was a pool of blood under his foot. Last night’s glass embedded in it. Shit. He wasn’t equipped for a bleeding emergency. He snagged his briefs off the floor and hobbled into the corridor leaving a blood trail. In the bathroom he pulled a piece of glass from the fleshy part of his foot and dripped into the bath.
The look of his red blood in her huge white tub made his stomach lurch. And now he had to clean up. It was an easy decision to turn the rainwater shower on and let the water pelt over him. He stood there till the blood flow slowed, then borrowed a towel to dry off and put his briefs on. He needed something more substantial over the cut; it was going to bleed again when he put weight on it. She didn’t keep bandaids in the bathroom. She didn’t keep anything there that looked like regular male visitor either, though she’d had a supply of condoms in a bedside drawer, which was lucky, because he’d never been that kind of a boy scout. He only carried tools when he was hunting in grounds likely to hold easy prey. And he only hunted rarely and never at work.
He hobbled up the hall to the kitchen. Worst case scenario he could tie a tea towel around his foot, take some drugs and go back to bed.
The kitchen was a wormhole of cupboardry with no visible access and too posh for a tea towel over an oven rail. He tried pushing; he tried to find an edge to get his fingers under a door and gave up. He went to his bag and dug out his gym singlet, that’d do. And there were headache tablets and half an energy drink, not cold, who cared.
He sat on the exploded chair and tied up his foot and then he saw what he should’ve seen five minutes ago.
“Who the fuck are you?” Whoever this was had watched him bleed, stumble about and fail at cupboard opening 101.
“That’s my question.” There was a towelling robe over a thick bare chest and legs. A cleft chin under a distinct pout. “Where is Cin?”
She’d been hot like a bad deed last night, but who was this intruder to call her that? Was he the one who wouldn’t hold her? The one who dished out kink she didn’t like? “I’m telling you because?”
“Funny. Have you been here all night with her? That’s a, well, right. She’s okay?”
Mace stood. The guy was big and puffed up with whatever he thought entitled him to an answer. Did he live here? The place was certainly big enough; there were doors he hadn’t seen behind. But she’d said she lived alone. It was morning, she wanted him gone. He’d go. Jacinta, this dude, it was more trouble than he needed and he had things to do. He bent to his bag and ignored the way his head felt too big for his body.
“What are you doing?”
He pulled on his jeans. “Getting the fuck out.”
“You don’t have to. You’re bleeding.”
He did have to because he wanted to go back to Jacinta’s bed too much, and it was less about his throbbing head than the idea of waking with her, being with her again. He looked at his feet; he wasn’t going to be able to get his runner or his work shoe on over the makeshift bandage.
“Let me get you a plaster to put on that.”
Mace swallowed three of the headache tabs and watched the guy navigate the kitchen with the ease of someone who knew not only how to open the cupboards, but what was inside each of them.