Unsuitable

She laughed. He was too much. “I need to call your mother and tell her how wonderful you are.”

He grunted an objection and she sympathised. No man needed his mother in the room when he was about to kiss a woman who was closer to her age than his.

He nuzzled her hair. “Don’t think that, you’re not.”

She lifted her head, appalled at being so obvious, at being so scared. “I can’t afford for this to change anything.”

“It’s a kiss. It’s not a new employment contract. I don’t want anything to change either.”

“This is a bad idea.”

He frowned, but his eyes weren’t in it. “Shut up.” If there was a power imbalance between them it was tilted fiercely his way.

His breath was on her chin, then his lips were on hers and she sucked in a surprised nose-full of air. He did nothing but hold still, letting her get used to him. And it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t a kiss, it was a form of torture. She put her hand to his hair, finally, its shine in her fingers and that made him wrap her tighter before he sucked at her bottom lip, before he sealed his lips over hers. He moaned and she lost the sensation in her legs, but it didn’t matter because everything was about her lips and her mouth and the flick of his tongue and the heated salty chlorine smell of him and the sounds he made.

It was a kiss to grade all other kisses by. An asteroid to wipe out the history of past kisses, a jolt to change the weather of all future kisses. It was a wrecking ball of a kiss, demolishing her house of incidental celibacy to its rocky foundation. His tongue swept her mouth, his hands held her back. He didn’t let her breathe, or worry or judge, and when he finally drew away she chased him, because if she was going to be destroyed it would be by gluttony, not starvation.

They kissed till they got good at it. Till it stopped being a shock and started being the most exotic dance, where she trusted and anticipated, and he lead and fulfilled, and still it wasn’t enough, but it was too, too much. He lifted her when she slipped on the stool rung and broke away when he placed her on the floor. His hand shook when he pushed back his hair and she was the one to lie first.

She pressed herself to his chest. She needed the wall of him to hold herself upright. “That was fantastic.” Her voice warbled.

“It was.” His was honey gravy on gravel.

“I remember how to do it.”

He laughed and hugged her. She couldn’t let him know how hard it was to make light of it; to make nothing of it. “I won’t be so worried now about doing it on a date.” She pretended not to notice the way his body stiffened. “Thank you for helping me relax, for making me feel good.”

She knew she should add something about it being a one-time thing, about it changing nothing, but the words failed her. She needed him to leave because she didn’t want him to see her come undone because every impulse she had was to take him to bed and let him reteach her how the rest of this dance went.

She walked him to the door instead. And they kissed again. This time with the sharp lust cored out, with the ripeness of affection dripping through, soaking both of them.

Audrey slept fitfully, her mind a crisis of weird dreams woven with waking wonder. At four in the morning she got up and checked on Mia. Her neck was so stiff, she was going to need to see someone about it. The headache was back, she was definitely coming down with something. She only hoped she hadn’t given it to Mia and Reece. She turned her alarm off. She was going to need a genuine sick day. She’d wake with Mia, call in sick at work, and go back to bed when Reece arrived. Her last thought before she slept again was of the way he’d looked at her after the kiss.

As if she’d crash landed him on Saturn, a gazillion light years from home, and he was ecstatic about it.

13:

Crisis

Reece could hear Mia crying. Last night his head was so full of Audrey, the sucking gut-awful panic she was going to play his bluff and order him to the nearest building site, then the way kissing her short-circuited his brain, he’d left his copy of her keys somewhere inside the house.

Normally it wouldn’t matter. The front door usually stood open when he arrived in the morning. But now it was a huge problem. Mia wasn’t just crying, he could hear her distress, and he was locked out of fixing whatever it was, and it might make Audrey run late.

He rang the bell, feeling like a right berk. He wasn’t sure whether to play it cool with Audrey or...yeah, there was no other option, he had to be cool.

Mia’s crying got closer till he would see her form through the frosted glass panel in the door. “Good morning, Mia. Silly Reece forgot his keys, can you open the door for me?”

“Mum won’t wake up.”

He played the door handle again. It didn’t shift. “Mia, can you open the door for me.”

He heard her scrabble at the handle too. “Mum won’t wake up.”

Fuck, yeah he’d heard that right. What the fuck was going on? “Where’s Mum?” He punched the bell and called. “Audrey. Audrey.”

“She won’t wake up.”

Oh fuck, fuck. “Mia, where is Mum? Can you find the keys and open the door?”