“I’m still having the window. I spoke to a friend who’s a structural engineer and he’s agreed it can work. And I’ve added an ensuite onto that room too. I think the plan’s finally complete.”
“You’re happy with it?”
He nodded, looking out to sea. “I think it has everything.”
“What changed your mind about the ensuite?”
I’d suggested it. He’d not been happy with the idea.
“You.”
I laughed, mainly to cover my surprise and uncertainty as to what to say. “Me?”
He nodded. “I know how much you hate the walk to the bathroom after we’ve fucked.”
His choice of words surprised me. We passed the fucking stage, kind of. We still went for it hard sometimes, especially if one of us was trying to flee from the grief demons that still lingered, but there were more of the times when sex was slow and deep and reached parts of me that hadn’t existed before. Nights when I didn’t know where I ended and he began were frequent and I was too used to having him in a bed, mine or his, or sometimes in a quiet corner of the beach. It didn’t matter.
“It’s just such a long way when you have semen trailing out of you.”
He choked back a laugh.
“It’s true. And cleaning up is important. UTI’s are nasty mother-fuckers.”
“Hence there will be an ensuite.”
“For all your future girlfriends?” The words were out there before I’d had chance to think.
He fell quiet, his eyes focused on the gulls above us, the ones that never quietened even when darkness had blanketed the island.
“No. My days of sleeping round have gone. I know you’re heading back to London, but I’ve really enjoyed this summer. Our relationship.”
Relationship. Because it was. “We’re not just fucking, are we?”
“No. Although I’m good to fuck your brains out tonight. While we have the chance. We should make the most of it.”
“You’re right. We should.”
We headed back to the barn, the construction work now well under way and making good progress. The barn was the same as it had been the first night I’d gone there, paintings lined the walls that led to the mezzanine floor where the mattress was. It smelled of paints and fresh air and the summer.
I would miss this.
I would miss Gabe.
I kissed him after he’d dimmed the lights, tasting him, needing that closeness. His hands roamed, fingers flicking over skin that had been reignited by him. He knew where I liked and how and what, he would take me to the edge and never let me fall.
His muscles tensed as I ran my hands over his skin, pressing and touching, trying to memorise every inch of the body that hadn’t been my sticking plaster. He’d been my life saver, bobbing besides me in the sea, there when I needed but letting me believe that I could handle the current myself.
We lay in the bed, facing each other, hands eating up each other lazily. This was a banquet that we couldn’t rush, because time was now limited. We had an end date and it was now on the horizon.
He cupped my breast and dipped his head to take my nipple in his mouth. I fell to my back, allowing him access, our clothes already lost to the floor below us. His fingers sought the space between my legs, delving into my tight heat, fingering me hard, demanding. He wanted to make me come before he got inside me, as he sometimes did. These were the nights when he considered three orgasms for me as too few and my body would sing for the following day.
I came quick and hard, bucking against his hand, his mouth still full of my nipple. He didn’t let up, shifting his attention to my clit, bringing me back from a simmer to a full on boil.
“I want you to remember who made you come like this. Who fucked you so you didn’t know your own name. I want you to think of my dick inside you when you’re lying on your own in bed and I want,” he paused, still his actions and his words, “you to remember how you came for me tonight. How you were mine.”
He pressed down hard and I spasmed around him, shouting his name, my hands in his hair, grasping as if he was the only thing keeping me afloat.
I broke apart again, barely aware of him pushing apart my legs, spreading me wide. He pushed into me with controlled force, all the way in in one go, filling me completely.
