‘I’ll be there in ten,’ he repeats my words back to me.
I go straight to the bathroom and brush my teeth.
In the couple of minutes that I spend waiting by my open apartment door, listening for Tom’s footsteps, I experience the surreal feeling of struggling to remember what he looks like. But then I see his gorgeous face appear through the glass panels on the front door and my stomach does backflips.
He gives me a small smile, his maple-syrup eyes regarding me with slight wariness as I step forward to let him in. He hasn’t shaved since he left me three days ago, his dark blond hair is dishevelled, and he’s wearing the black rucksack and charcoal-grey hoodie that he had on when he was no morethan a stranger to me. I should feel daunted by his height and breadth – he’s so tall, so strong. I should be practising caution, knowing how closely he guards his secrets. I still don’t know why he’s in Cornwall, why he’s not currently working as a helicopter pilot and why he has no driver’s licence. I still don’t fully understand why his relationship broke down or why he seemingly wants to leave Wales. He’s an enigma in so many ways, and yet, as he stands here before me, I can feel my heart reaching out to his, aching to eradicate the space between us.
It feels like a physical wrench to back away without touching him, but I move into the area at the bottom of my staircase to allow him to close the two doors quietly behind us.
I don’t go straight up the stairs as I usually would, perhaps because Icravebeing in a too-small space with him. In the darkness, with no lights on and no windows, the air around us feels charged.
I slide my hands up over his chest and shoulders and he brings his own to my waist, gradually drawing me flush to his hips. My heart takes off at a sprint as he lowers his mouth onto mine.
Our kiss is slow and deep. Shivers roll up and down my spine and my legs turn to jelly. I try to push the rucksack straps off his shoulders, but it’s too heavy. He breaks away from me abruptly in an action that feels like a magnet being prised apart from another and shrugs his bag onto the floor. Then we’re sucked back together again, our two bodies aligned.
There’s barely enough room for me to attack the buttons of his jeans, but I’m determined. As his hands glide up mythighs, gathering up the hem of the summer dress I threw on, I’m vaguely aware of grit on his fingertips, but then I’m only aware of his fingers and his hot gasp into my mouth at the realisation that I’m not wearing any underwear.
He takes full advantage of the situation and after surely no more than a minute I’m uttering a desperate cry into his mouth: ‘I want you.’
‘I don’t have any protection.’ His reply is guttural, jagged, and he’s still touching me.
‘I’m clean. Are you?’ My words come out sounding garbled. I’m losing my mind.
‘Yes. What about birth control?’
‘I’m covered.’
It vaguely occurs to me to wonder why he asked if he can’t have children, but then I’m distracted by his strong arms lifting me up and turning me and laying me gently on the stairs. A moment later, we are one.
I struggle to catch my breath afterwards. That was so hot, so unexpected. He’s still inside me and I feel as much as hear his quiet laugh against my neck.
‘I hope your guests wear earplugs to bed.’
‘Oh shit!’
The staircase runs right over the end wall of the master bedroom, so my guests are directly beneath us.
‘That’ll get them back for all the early-morning wake-up calls we’ve had to endure,’ I whisper, stifling giggles.
The family who have been staying for the last ten days have two particularly noisy youngsters, but it’s their dad’sbooming voice and sudden bellows that have set my teeth on edge.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’ Tom murmurs.
I nod against him. I don’t want him to let me go and to my surprise he doesn’t. He picks me up and carries me right up the stairs and into my room, leaving his rucksack where he dropped it. His strength is such a turn-on.
‘I could do with a shower,’ he says, kicking the door shut behind us.
‘Me too.’
So he takes me into my en suite before placing me gently on my feet and reaching past me to the tap.
In the minutes that follow, I take great pleasure in soaping up his body and washing the sand off him. He seems to get just as much pleasure in taking care of mine.
‘That’s not how I imagined seeing you again,’ he says to me afterwards, when we’ve returned to bed, naked, our limbs entangled.
His voice is surprisingly quiet and contemplative.
‘No?’
