‘Do your worst.’ Her smile is pressed to my lips as we kiss, and we kiss, as we traverse a short landing. My shoulders bang off other bedroom doors as Miranda presses me there, fighting to strip me from my jacket. We change positions at the next door, clothes cast off like items blown from a washing line. Once in her designated room, my hands unclip her bra, the silhouette of her high breasts otherworldly, bathed in moonlight. I reach for the light, suddenly needing to see her in her entirety. To bask in her beauty and record each of her sighs for posterity, for the pleasure of playing them over and over again. Before light floods the room, her hand covers mine.
‘Leave it off,’ she whispers, but I twist it immediately, my hand on her wrist like a cuff.
‘The freedom of the dark exchanged for captivity?’ It isn’t a question I want an answer to as I press my mouth to hers and my finger to the light switch. ‘I want to love you in the light tonight.’
The rest of our clothes fall, and we tumble to the bed, though I twist at the last minute to cushion her fall. Above me, her fingers are hot points of contact searing the skin of my chest, her gaze dark and complicit and searing my heart, branding her name over it.
We roll, and she’s underneath me, my tongue tracing the underside of her breast, her heart a wild creature beneath her ribs and my hands. I work my way down her body, a graze, a lick, my lips pressed over our child, the tight spiral of our pleasure making our skins fit to burst.
‘I can’t wait to see you swollen with him.’ Her breath hits the air in a gravelly chuckle. ‘Does that sound wrong? Because that’s the truth of how I feel.’
‘Barefoot in the kitchen.’
‘No, bare and on your knees.’
And just like magic she is, her slender fingers curled around the wooden headboard, her anticipation a shiver dancing down her spine. I gather the locks of her hair to one side, her body bowing as my cock nudges her eagerly.
‘You’re wearing nothing, bathed in the light. Guess what I’m wearing?’ I tighten my fist in those luscious locks, making it hard for her to turn.
‘Your socks?’
‘Just a smile, my darling.’
Love. It’s such a head fuck, I think as I line myself up at her entrance. Yet as my hand curls around her hip, and she pushes back, accepting my body into hers, the confusion, hers and mine, our timing, the baby, our differences in life. It all falls way because she and I make perfectly chaotic sense.
26
James
Miranda’s parents’house is a mid-century detached off Somerset Road in leafy suburban Wimbledon. I’ve barely pulled onto the driveway when she comes skipping out in a pair of painted on jeans and a white shirt knotted at the waist. Yanking open the passenger door, she almost throws herself into the seat.
‘Drive!’ she demands all flushed complexion and wide-eyed grin.
‘Is someone chasing you?’ I slide my hand along the back of her seat as I slide the Vanquish into reverse.
‘Not me, you. I’ve just told Mum I’m pregnant.’
‘Does your father own a shotgun?’ I ask mildly, manoeuvring the car onto the quiet street.
‘No, but my mum was brandishing a big brush. Anyway, it’d take more than a shotgun to persuade me to get married.’
That’s a thread that doesn’t really need unpicking. It can’t be easy living in a house where the principal inhabitants seem to exist in a game of perpetual one-upmanship, just biding their time until they can go their separate ways.
‘I would’ve come with you, you know.’
‘Where?’
‘To tell your parents.’
‘Not on your life—no way. Mum would eat you alive. In fact, I left her ranting about the fecklessness of men when you pulled into the driveway.’
‘No doubt reinforced by the fact that you told her alone.’
‘James, I’m a big girl. I’m not your responsibility.’
I clench my jaw against the reply I’d like to make. Whether she likes it or not, she’s at the top of my list of responsibilities and priorities. It’s only a matter of time before I bring her around to my manner of thinking. She and I? We’re not so very different at all. Small steps. And as my father would caution,In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.While I’m sure he’d like to claim these words as his own, they are, in fact, the words of Sun-Tzu.
‘Besides, one look at her and you’d have headed for the hills. You know what they say about women turning into the mothers.’
