I felt her nod.
“I don’t either. How about we start with dinner? And I’ll not think about work or Katie or whatever happened before.”
“I can do that.” I had to let go of her but I didn’t want to fucking leave her, not again, never again.
“Killian, let me shower, get ready. Give me an hour.”
I pulled away and stood up, the early evening sun blaring through the window. “I’ll bring you a glass of wine.”
The sound of the shower taunted me, reminding me that she was naked in the room nearby and I wasn’t there. She was still the girl I had fallen for back when I was twenty and had no idea how to plan for a future I didn’t fucking understand would exist, but she had become a woman who was wiser and had experience she didn’t have then. She was still petite and delicately put together, but her strength was formidable and it wasn’t her I worried about breaking: it was me.
I left her a glass of rioja in the spare room and went to shower myself, my cock still hard from feeling her close and remembering how it felt to be inside her. No one else had been the same; they hadn’t filled the space that she had and I had never understood why. How could one person fit me like a jigsaw piece so perfectly made?
My hand grasped my cock, thinking of how her tits had felt in my hands, how her nipples puckered under my touch, in my mouth, how her pussy tasted and I wondered how the fuck I was able to back away from her when her eyes had asked me to take her away from reality.
Reality was what we had to deal with if we were to survive.
I thought about how I would make her come now, how she might react to hands that were more skilled, fingers that knew where to rub, to press, to feel. I exploded thinking about her face as she came, how her eyes would gaze up at me and her lips would gasp my name.
My palms rested on the tiles as I gathered my breath, thankful for the release and needing something more than my own hand, but the need to fuck her and claim her back as mine was overwhelming and my brain thankfully was leading that push.
Tuesday nights were usually reserved for some sort of rugby practice with the Callaghan brothers: Max, Jackson, Seph and Callum, now he was back from saving rhinos somewhere. This one was different, one of those evenings when you knew you’d look back and remember everything in perfect clarity. I felt as if I was about to take a step off a high point and descend into something unknown that I hoped was soft and kind.
“Will this do?” Claire’s voice came from the doorway from the hall into the kitchen where I was sitting with a beer. I turned around to see her wearing a fitted dress that made me notice every curve to her slim body.
“You’re perfect.”
“You’re biased.”
“How’s that a problem?”
“It isn’t.”
“So, accept the compliment. Why isn’t my opinion important?”
“Because you’re biased.”
“Why am I biased?”
“Because… I don’t know. Why are you biased?”
I stood up and moved towards her, her presence larger than her tiny size. “I’m not. I’ve seen you for what you are since you were sixteen.”
“Does that make you a pervert?”
“I was eighteen.”
“I’ll let you off.” She stood on her tiptoes even in heels to kiss my chin and I smothered a smile.
“Padella?” I said, naming a restaurant that didn’t take bookings and was one of the best pasta places I knew. “We can walk there and it’s early enough that we should be able to get a table.”
“Sounds good. I don’t have an early start. Mediation starts at ten. I’m meeting Katie at nine-thirty. I do need to sleep tonight.”
“What would help?”
She shrugged. “I think I’ll be fine. That bed is comfier than the one I have at home and it’s at the top of the house…”
“So, you feel safe?”
