Unsuitable

She’d stopped the others from watching Wiggle Time. But not teasing her about it. She’d tried to stop watching it herself, especially as her confidence in Reece had grown and her trust in him blossomed, but it was such an avalanche of cute she was helpless to resist it. Mia was so giggly happy and Reece was so abandoned, so free in that five or ten minutes where they danced to The Wiggles together, that if she was in her office she couldn’t help but check the nanny cam program and watch without the sound. She still felt like she was betraying him, spying like that, but the joy she got from watching far outweighed her remorse.

Now she could watch him that way again. She could study his extraordinary body up close for as long as she wanted. Without guilt, without getting caught out, with something harder; more rigid and pressing than joy. She’d been falling apart from lack of food and sleep when she came in the door, but now she felt refreshed. The day was finally over. Her baby girl was asleep and her shockingly handsome babysitter was laid out for her delectation.

She went to her knees on the rug in front of him. Behind her the Buffy crew were in the library doing research from sacred spell books. Her research was more visceral. She started at his toes. Squared off, the nails short and neat, the instep a gentle slope on both the top and underside of his foot. A smattering of dark hair on his instep, a rind of tougher skin on his heels. His shinbones were long and thick, like steel rods connecting a solid swivel of ankle to a hinge of rounded knee and a thigh muscle like, like...

God, the flare on his thighs, wider than his hips. She wanted to touch his quads, dig her fingers in and feel the heat and strength of him. She licked her lips. If he woke up now he’d find her ogling his groin. Trying to imagine what he was like under the denim. Not insignificant. She could see that. The outline of him, the potential. It made a shiver kick at the base of her spine and ripple out over her hips, flaring into her belly. He would be proportional. And assuming he knew how to use that equipment, he’d be potent. And she’d watched him dance, he knew how to move, he found rhythm in a kid’s song; what would he be like in the bedroom, in an adult dance?

It made the breath come out of her in one long mournful stream and she groaned aloud. She had to stop this, he might wake. Hopefully not until she’d finished her study, but before she spontaneously melted down, because good Lord, the man was made of places her fingers would fit, her hands could slide across, her knees slot against, her body absorb. He would bear her weight as if it was nothing. He could take her standing without tiring.

Heavens. She needed to stop this. She needed not to be having thoughts about wrapping her legs around Reece’s hips, over the tight curve of the butt she watched shake it on the nanny cam, and made herself not watch in the kitchen at night. She needed to stop thinking about what he’d look like naked and imagining how he might feel. It was enough to see the way his chest swelled with each breath, enough to marvel at the tight knot of muscle that was his bunched biceps. And that t-shirt, shortened at the waist, loose enough at the neck she could see one collarbone, a line of his clavicle. That soft cotton curved across the triangular flair of his lats and caressed the rise of his thick rib cage.

It wasn’t fair it got to be so close to him and she had to stay on her knees. It showed her only a narrow strip of skin at his hips, but enough to see a line of hair, marking his flat belly and the ridge of his hipbone. If he took a deeper breath, if that shirt lifted, she’d see the hard outline of his Adonis belt. As it was, his jeans were suspended slightly between his hipbones, and a ridge of black cotton showed her the edge of his underwear. The rest was a dark cavern between blue denim and black cotton. It was an invitation shaped like her hand, a place she dare not go and keep her sanity.

If she thought she was betraying him by watching him dance, by being hyper aware of his body, she was virtually sexually assaulting him now. Every one of her senses was on heat. Every breath she took was short and straining. Her hands were fists. Her centre was liquid, her core was an unsettled squirm of spinning want.

It’d been a long time since she’d been with a man. Before Barrett said yes, before Mia was conceived in a test tube. Once she turned thirty and made the decision to have a child alone, there’d been no place in her life for casual sex and no candidates for anything long-term. Since Mia, there’d been no time, no opportunity and no desire. She’d been happily sexless, because she had everything else she wanted.

On her knees at Reece’s side, she wanted.

Freshly, savagely, inappropriately. Without hope of it being reciprocal. Without shame. And until he opened his eyes and came back to life, she could have these feelings, sweat them, tremble with them, luxuriate in them.

She studied his face. High wide cheekbones that gave his face unexpected hollows. There was nothing else lacking in solidity, in heft, about him. He had a strong jaw that met at his squared off chin. Stubborn, that chin. Mia knew when he was being serious without him raising his voice. It was studded with dark stubble now. He had a surprisingly Cupid’s bow top lip. His smile was so wide, it thinned his lips right out so she’d never noticed it before. It was a good mouth for a man, wrought around happiness. He had a straight nose and neat close fitting ears. His brows sat flat until he was animated and then they arched and lifted with his smile. He could make Mia laugh just by lifting his brows. His eyes were almond shaped, narrow. They could make him look hard, dangerous. But his lashes were long and curled, outrageously girly in such a masculine setting. They were dark like his brows, like his tousled hair, and the traces of it elsewhere. When his eyes were open they were the most shocking deep green.

She could touch the hair that swept across his temples, a kind of cowlick from an informal side part. It was glossy. It would be silky. If she touched his hair, he might wake, and she wasn’t ready to give up this inert but so utterly powerful form of him yet, because he lit her up in places, in ways she’d forgotten about; with feelings she’d suppressed or denied, or lost to the hibernation that was single parenthood.

She could put her finger to his belly and maybe his breath would quicken. He might dream he was being touched. She touched him in their daily life, but it was more often accidental as they moved around each other. Here, she could put her hand on his chest and press, lean into him, her ribs to his side so she could bring her face close, breathe him. He usually smelled of soap and salt when he arrived in the morning. He had wet hair and a damp beach towel he’d dry on her line. He ran every morning on the soft sand and showered at the surf club before he came to her and Mia, bright eyed and big voiced with the morning. In the evening he smelled of tomato sauce, or magic marker, fruit juice or milk.

Sometimes of sugar, often of unidentified kid grunge. He was softly spoken then, wound down by the toddler marathon of the day, but just as sharp eyed and ready to act.

When she woke him would his voice be gravel and grit? Would he wake violently with the shock of having fallen asleep in a strange place? Perhaps he’d have that mortified little boy look on his face. He’d worn it almost the whole first month. It was a look that told her too much about how much he cared what she thought of him. She didn’t need to remember that right now.

Four years ago if she’d come across him at a party, she could’ve kissed him awake. If she’d had enough to drink and he kissed her too, she could’ve climbed over his hips and tested those handholds, those places on him she thought would fit to places on her. She could’ve claimed him for the night. It was doubtful she’d have wanted to give him back. She might’ve let him do anything to her, because everything he did would be about her pleasure. That was so easy to imagine. Reece opening her mouth with his lips, with his tongue, his big hands on her, swamping her face, firm but gentle, his bulk beneath her, above her, all around her teasing, tempting, anticipating, unmaking her with his deep voice and his steady humour and his want to please.

Could she make him happy too, make his body come alive to sensation? Ridiculous. She was older, settled, a stress-head single mother of zero interest to him, who already had stray grey hairs. His employer. His salary deposit. And otherwise irrelevant to him. He saw her hassled about getting out the door on time in the mornings and replete on the way to exhausted when she arrived home.

And yet, sometimes the way he looked at her, the things he did for her. She couldn’t help but let that fuel her imagination. It built the lust fire that burned inside her now.

Ah. Who was she kidding? Even four years ago, she was that stress-head person, so focused on work, she’d probably have left him where he lay, an unclaimed prize that some other woman, a Carrie, a Junna, would’ve rumbled all over.

She didn’t want to think about Carrie or Junna touching him.

She wanted him to yawn and grumble and stumble awake and leave her alone with her wicked feelings, all too soon with no knowledge of what he’d done to her.

That would be best. She’d shake him awake. He’d apologise for falling asleep. He’d mention Sky while he hunted for his shoes, and he’d be gone inside five minutes, and she’d barely be breathing normally again with only half a night to compose herself before he was back bringing the sea and the torture of wanting what she could no longer keep hidden from herself, what she could never have.

She lifted a hand towards him, then put it back in her lap. It would be better not to touch him at all, not to always want to from this moment forward.

“Reece.” She said it softly, barely competing with the TV. “Reece.” Louder. She came up off her heels so she was just that bit closer. “Reece, wake up. I’m home.”

He didn’t stir. The underside of his bicep was closest to her. She put a finger out and traced a raised vein that ran from under his sleeve to behind the pillow where his hand was. She kept her eyes on his face. His skin was warm, so smooth. His body twitched and she snatched her hand away. But he slept on. “Reece, are you awake?” He might as well have been drugged.

This time she moved her finger to the strip of skin across his middle, ran it hip to hip slowly across his body in the slash between his jeans and his t, in the intimate dip of his belly. It made her gasp to feel the heat of him there, the flat trail of hair. She had to close her eyes to handle the surge of feeling that made her hand shake. She was wet and he was comatose and if he caught her she had no explanation to give him. They’d need New Reece. And he could probably take her house in compensation when he sued her for assault.

That brought a new kind of chill. What was she doing? This wasn’t who she was. Sensible, practical, organised Audrey didn’t spy on people, didn’t sexually harass her sleep anesthetised employee.

She sat back on her heels. “Reece. Wake up. You need to go home.” She said that loudly. Then reached for the TV remote and turned the set off. He took a deep breath and brought up one knee as if he was about to roll over onto his side. She put her hand, palm flat to his chest. “Reece.” She pressed down, got sternum and the curved half of his pec and she splayed her hand to feel the muscle of him. “Reece.”

He opened his eyes, closed them, opened them again, looked at her and smiled. She didn’t move her hand so she felt the rumbly groan he made start in his chest and the flex of his torso as he stretched. “Hi.”