Dancing with Elliot, my head inching closer to his pecs, his head bowed over me and his mouth so close to my temple… it’s a lot to process.
The track changes, Billy Paul starts singing about ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ and Elliot’s palm spreads flat across the base of my spine. I feel him inhale sharply close to my ear through clenched teeth and I know I really am in trouble, and I let my head drop onto his chest.
I thought people only heard other people’s hearts beating in books, but against the soft fabric of Elliot’s shirt and the hardness of his body beneath, I hear it and feel it, and it is pounding.
‘Is this still OK?’ he says, and his voice rumbles deeply through his chest wall and the whole thing makes me a bit swoony.
I close my eyes and I nod, just the once. Yes, this is definitely still OK.
I hear my brain excitedly whispering something about how I’mjustlike Scarlett O’Hara when she comes out of mourning and dances with Captain Butler in her black crepe dress inGone with the Wind, and why haven’t I read that book recently, it’s so darn good?
We’re hardly moving at all now, and the whole world seems to slow around us as Elliot draws his knuckles lightly up my back, over my dress, until he reaches skin and he turns his hand so I feel the soft, searching sensation of fingertips trailing upwards following the undulations to the top of my spine, achingly slow, coming to rest against the nape of my neck where all my nerves prickle and fizz like a bonfire night sky.
I pull my head from his chest, letting him cup my face and I drowsily open my eyes long enough to see him bring his mouth down, and as his lips press lightly against my cheekbone just below my eye, I lean my body closer into his. After a slow moment our mouths touch at last and his breathing hitches and that’s all the sign I need to let my hands travel wherever they want to along his body.
This is kissing. This is what it’s supposed to be like – like it is in books – but this isn’t a book, it’s happening tome.
Elliot lifts me onto the counter like there’s nothing easier and I wrap my legs around him, pulling him close, letting the world outside dissolve away entirely until there is only the wine racing in our bloodstreams, the tattoos on Elliot’s shoulders as I push his shirt off, and the sound of my name on his lips moaned against my throat.
Chapter Seventeen
We spend the next three days like this (when we aren’t working in our shop or café) and in all that time Elliot never once drags his mattress down onto the bookshop floor at night.
We’ve barely set foot outside the shop and Elliot’s forgone his morning run to stay here with me each morning instead. Watching him doing core crunches on the bedroom floor, one hundred reps every morning, is probably one of the nicest sights I’ve ever beheld.
Oh, and that tattoo? It’s a fox bursting through red flames and trailing black stars and swirls in its wake all across his shoulders, up his spine to his hairline and over the backs of his upper arms. Perfect.
The one thing wehaven’treally done much of is talking, so I was thrilled this morning, a bright and sea-breezy Saturday dawn, when we managed this exchange before going our separate ways for the day – him to the bookshop, me to my early morning spot by the ovens:
‘I’m getting up now,’ I said.
‘Should I look away?’ Elliot replied, sleepy and half-smiling under the sheets.
‘Bit late for that.’ I slipped out from under the covers, totally naked, and unhurriedly made for the door. Elliot sat up a little in bed to watch me.
‘Aww, hell,’ he said in a low voice, clutching his hand to his bare chest.
I panicked immediately and flew back to his side on the bed. ‘Oh my God, what is it? Are you all right?’
‘It’s just, it’s just…’
‘What? You’re worrying me!’
‘It’s just we might have a problem here with, like, how much I’m attracted to you.’
‘Shut up,’ I cried, smacking his arm, and the muscle didn’t yield at all.
‘I’m not kidding. You’re so beautiful and I’m just so…’
‘Stop being daft,’ I warned, hoping he’d never stop.
His eyes trailed over me and it made my skin prickle like it did the first time we undressed after our café picnic and Marvin Gaye.
‘It’s not my fault,’ he said, mournfully. ‘It’s these eyes of mine. They can’t help it. But every time I look at you it actually physically hurts, right in here.’ He jabbed a finger between his pecs, making me laugh. I made a show of pretending to push him away when he reached his arms around me. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Jude. It’s a problem.’ He tilted his head to kiss me before breaking off. ‘Listen, I’ve got an idea.Maybemy eyes will get tired of you if they just stare at you for, say… the next fifty years or so? And one day they’ll be like, OK,meh, I’m over it.’
Pushing Elliot onto his back, I clambered on top of him, only the cotton sheet between us. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘The fifty years bit?’
