Unsuitable

He held her eyes the whole time. Daring her to stop him. If he’d dragged her dress off over her head she’d have let him. She was drunk, drugged, mindless over his touch, over his presence in her life. She encouraged him, giving him free access, pulling his head down to kiss him with outrageous desperation and only their height difference stopped her grinding on him.

When the song changed, the new one bringing a crowd of additional people on to the floor, Reece quit moving and simply widened his stance to wrap around her so they could kiss easier, longer, feel each other in the throb of the music and the shift and flow of the dancers around them. He sweated through his shirt, her scalp got damp under her hair. All that mattered was the pulse of the music and the electric tension between them.

He put his lips to her ear. “I can’t hear anything but your heart in my chest.”

She was sober enough to be hit hard by his words. Sensible enough to know they needed to cool off. It was so loud in here she might have missed his words but she’d understood them in her bones.

She kissed him, her own heart back-flipping, somersaulting, ping-ponging around in her chest cavity. She could take this giant man with his giant love and suck him dry, leave him lost and less than what he might be if he could follow his dreams of family, but she couldn’t be his family. Not emotionally, not practically, not physically. She’d played at it, like Mia played hospital, but she was going to have to grow up.

He found her a stool at the bar. Mostly by intimidating someone else into moving. He did it in such a friendly way, the man backed off smiling. It was wicked and Reece knew it and neither of them cared. He got them water with ice, without the bartender making a thing of it. His shirt had lost its crisp, plus a button. His hair was tousled from her hands and he kept his on her, soothing, holding, possessing.

They had an hour before they were due home. This was the Cinderella moment before the real world came rushing back at them, before she had to find a way to manage her feelings for him, to manage his expectations of her.

She wasn’t aware of the potential for trouble until Reece moved in between her and the cluster of people to her right. She saw the punch though, saw rather than heard the bottle smash on the bar top. Saw Reece move again to take a flying arm, to disable a man and hold another a bay. He moved so efficiently it was all over, security stepping in before she was fully aware of what went down. He was back at her side, a nod across heads to the bouncer before she understood how close she came to being skittled in the drunken skirmish.

She clutched his shirt. “Hello hero.”

He grunted. “Fuckwits,” and accepted a beer the barman put in front of him.

He had enough time to finish it, they had enough time to get back to the car and get home before the Cinderella hour was over. She was glad of Reece’s arm to lean on as they left the bar; she should’ve worn lower heels, but the stilettos got her closer to being eye to eye, lip to lip with him.

They’d barely made it to the top of the laneway the bar opened out onto before the shouting started. Her ears were ringing from the music still, this noise seemed to come at her from a great distance away. Reece’s words came at her crisp and sharp as early morning cold.

“Stay behind me. No matter what happens. Don’t run. When I tell you, call the cops.” There were six of them. She recognised two from the fight inside the bar before Reece blocked her view.

“Come on, Little John. Let’s see what you got in a fair fight.”

The menace in that voice, it cleared the noise fog in her ears, the hard male laughter cleared the Cinderella dream from her head. They were being attacked. She pulled out her phone. She didn’t need to wait to call the police.

“Don’t do anything stupid, bitch.” The bottle shattered on the ground to her feet, the liquid wetting her legs. She dropped her phone and Reece turned to her. Crouching to pick up the handset she saw a man come at Reece and yelled his name, but the man was on his back before she registered Reece moving again.

“Walk away,” Reece said. He held both hands out and away from his body. “You don’t want this.” The man down wasn’t getting up, but he was moaning. “If you bring it I will make you sorry.”

Another man shaped up. “Who do you think you are, King Shit?”

“Go back inside. You don’t want to do this.”

She straightened fumbling her phone, the screen a spider web, when the second man came at Reece. He put that man down as well, one punch. Same with the third. He stood like a boxer, knees bent, loose, cool, ready. His aim was deadly; the sound of smacked skin and pained grunts, a body falling, made Audrey flinch. She didn’t want to look away to dial. She stared at Reece and could only see a different man.

The last three men came at him together. Reece had time to ditch his suit coat. He didn’t wait for them to reach him, he walked into it. She looked down, the handset was dead, the first man was getting up. They could kill Reece. Reece might kill them. She screamed.

He fought the men with fists, elbows and feet, he opened cuts on their faces and the sound was sickening, blood flicked through the air and splattered the closest wall. He danced out of their way, or absorbed what they threw at him. He didn’t make a sound, but they did, yelling foul abuse, shouting in pain, calling to each other. On and on it went and Audrey could do nothing but watch, and hope Reece would knock these men down and they’d stop getting up.

When he put the last man down for the last time he pointed to him and said, “Stay the fuck down, mate.” Then he went amongst the men, a hand to the necks of the two not moving, not moaning. He seemed satisfied everyone was staying down and no one was dead. He turned to her. His shirt was ripped open, the knee and pocket on his trousers torn, both hands were bleeding, his knuckles torn up, but he smiled.

“It’s all over. Etta is gonna be mad we’re late. Look at this shirt.”

He held a hand out and all she could do was stare at it. Her gentle giant had beaten six guys to a heap of groaning, bleeding, unconscious, and in one case weeping, in need of an ambulance.

“My phone is broken.”

Sh

e didn’t understand how he’d had done this. Reece made pancakes and spaghetti. He folded washing and vacuumed. He taught Mia to swim and played pretend games with her. He built fairy palaces out of bits of furniture and Christmas lights and he read storybooks in character voices. She didn’t know who this man was.

“It’s okay,” he pointed overhead. “That’s a security camera.”

“Oi.”