Unsuitable (22 page)

“Nah-ah.
I promise.”

“But
what if they do?”

“You’re
brave so you’d tell them to get lost and when they’re all confused I’ll creep
up on them and throw them out of the house.” He said that with a flourish and
Audrey could imagine him throwing his arms out wide.

“Okay.”
Mia sounded more convinced. “I might vomit.”

Audrey
went to get up, but Reece had it.

“You’re
not going to vomit.”

“I
might. Like in your car.”

“You
vomited because you ate your lunch too quickly.”

Audrey
grimaced and lay down, her hand involuntarily coming to rest on her stomach.

“Your
car smells stinky.”

“It
does now.”

“Like
dog poo.”

“No.”

“Like
Nanna.”

“Mia.”

“I
didn’t vomit the water I drank after.”

“No,
because you’re not sick. You were just a gobble guts.”

Mia
repeated gobble guts and giggled, then she shouted, “Vomit!” making it a lusty war
cry. Audrey loved it. Like she loved Mia enjoyed dolls and dress-ups as much as
she enjoyed building things and taking them apart.

The
sound of movement. Reece standing. “Are you going to be a handful when you’re
sixteen?”

“No.”

“You’ll
be like all my sisters rolled into one. Smart, too good to be true, tricky and
a gobble guts.”

“Can
I play with your sisters?” Mia’s feet were on the floor too.

“They’re
a bit big for you.”

“No.
They aren’t. You’re a bit big for me and you play with me.”

Reece
laughed. “You’re smart already.”

“Can
we wake Mum now?”

“I’d
be surprised if she’s not already awake.”

Reece
was moving towards the kitchen. Audrey lay on her bed looking at the ceiling,
her face a wreath of smiles. Mia followed Reece and the last thing Audrey heard
was, “But we were quiet.”

That
night Reece cooked steak. Mia was overtired and crazy. She knocked a full carton
of milk into the fruit bowl, and had a tantrum when she wasn’t allowed biscuits.
She wouldn’t talk to Audrey during her bath and went to bed with the sulks.

When
Audrey finally closed Mia’s door, the kitchen was clean and the house was
empty. She showered, dressed for bed, tried to read. It was still early. She
heard Reece come in from his run and go to the guest room. His runners squeaked
on the floor. She heard his bedroom door open and close, the shower in his
ensuite turn on.

Minutes
later, during which she did nothing except picture him standing under the hot
water, soaping his ripped body, it turned off. She heard him go to the kitchen.
He unstacked the dishwasher. He opened the fridge. She had no idea what the
book on her ereader was about, but she knew Reece was drinking ice-cold water
in the kitchen, wearing old track pants washed silk soft. She was acutely aware
of every movement he made.

He
went back to his room. She went back to the start of the chapter, but she might
as well have gone back to the start of civilisation. She was a prototype person,
crawling out of the mud, climbing the trees, losing her wings. Inexorably
pulled towards a biological destiny that insisted she’d found a mate, and he
was down the hallway waiting for her.

She
got out of bed. She was wearing a set of pyjamas Esther bought her for
Christmas before Mia, when they still did Christmas as a family. The elastic
around the waist was dodgy and there was a tea stain on the front. She changed
into a pale coffee coloured silk nightgown. She’d owned it for years and worn
it once, for herself. It had spaghetti straps and a lace insert in the bodice. It
was elegant and sexy at the same time, though it had once fitted much closer. She
thought of Les because she didn’t want to think about what she was about to do.
Les, who was prepared to risk humiliation in the name of her physical self. Audrey
would make no such risk with Reece.

She
ducked through a spray of floral scent. She didn’t have a headache. She felt
rested. She felt warm with anticipation when she didn’t have a temperature and
the night was cool. She put her hair up in a messy bun held by a soft band. There
was still a faint tingling in her legs, but then her whole body was alight with
sensation. She remembered she needed to take control at the last moment and
that was almost the end of the adventure.

She’d
stopped ovulating when she got sick, the sudden dramatic weight loss, the
illness generally, but she still needed to be careful and she still needed to
be safe, and if she was going to initiate this, it was her responsibility. At
the back of her stocking drawer there was one condom. It was like a warning
sign. One. It would be older than Mia plus pregnancy, plus some. It was a month
off expiry. Another sign. She tucked it in her palm and walked down the hall. She
cracked Mia’s door and looked in on her. She was a dark-haired cherub in a nest
of stuffed toys.

Reece’s
room was at the back of the house. There was pale light shinning underneath the
door. She knocked. When he answered she opened the door and walked in.

“Audrey,
what’s wrong?”

He’d
been looking at something on his phone screen. He sat in bed, back against the
wall, legs out straight under the covers. No shirt and the muscles in his abs
laddered from the way he was sitting. He put his free hand down on the covers and
she figured he slept naked and what she’d done by coming into his room like
this was so extraordinary he was worried she might strip the covers away from
him.

“Nothing’s
wrong.”

He
looked golden in the low watt light from the bedside table. His hair was still
damp from the shower, slicked around his ears. He took a breath and his chest
expanded to three times the size of the universe. What was she doing?

“Audrey?”
He smiled, confused, and tossed the phone on the table.

She
moved forward till she was in the middle of the room. He watched her like she
was an apparition, one of Mia’s monsters he might need to chase away, his eyes
romping over her body, her bare feet and legs. The nightdress stopped mid-thigh
and so did his gaze. Then it skipped to the lace at her chest. Her nipples were
tight furled and easily visible. There wasn’t much detail left for his
imagination to fill in.

“Ah.”
He wet his lips. “I like that.”

“I
hoped you would.”

“What
are we doing, Audrey?”

She
held out her hand, the condom square in her palm.

He
blinked, twice. “Oh fuck, are you sure?”

“I
want you. I’m sure. But this can’t be anything more than tonight.”

He
beckoned. “Come here, and tell me that, cause all I heard was how you didn’t
come in here by accident.”

She
went to the side of the bed and he held out his hand. She took it and climbed
over his legs, kneeling across his thighs. He was definitely naked under the
bedclothes. He ran a finger over her thigh where the nightdress had ridden up,
only just covering her. His mouth opened and his breath eased out slowly,
unsteady. That same finger travelled up the silk over her hip, her waist, he
flattened his palm on her rib cage. His fingers spanned her whole side. She
jerked, inhaled sharply when his thumb found her nipple in the lace.

He
sat upright, his hand now behind her head, holding her for this first kiss not
to end in frustration and dreams. He almost spoiled it by smiling, she got
teeth before he sobered up and softened, before she got his lips and tongue and
he hauled her into his chest. It took him two seconds to work out she was
totally naked under the silk. The hand not holding her head went to her butt
and his thigh muscles jumped. He inhaled and his hips flexed and his fingers
dug in and she lost the condom somewhere in the bed because she needed to touch
him, get her hands on him, slide her fingers into the muscular grooves of him,
wrap them around the thick column of his neck where she felt his pulse
hammering, hammering, echoing the knocking in her own chest.

He
groaned through the kiss, when she shifted closer still, when she sat across
his erection and her own hips flexed. His hands were so big they were
everywhere, covering whole limbs, whole days and nights of wanting. He bit her
neck, enough to make her gasp and twist, to lose one of the nightgown’s straps.
He took that hint and rolled the other one off her shoulder, breaking the kiss,
lifting his head to watch her breasts revealed.

“Oh
fuck, yeah.” He only just said that aloud, his voice hushed to reverence.

She
couldn’t catch her breath. “Don’t.” It came out harshly. She meant don’t expect
too much, don’t compare me, don’t be disappointed.

He
wasn’t listening. He was doing. Lips on her neck, open mouth sliding over her
throat, tongue soothing, hands thrilling. She tipped her head up and he laid
her down so he could put his face between her breasts. The first touch of his
tongue to her nipple burned like ice. She cried out. She must’ve felt these
things before, but it was like it was the first time. He suckled and she
struggled to breathe. She lay in the cradle of his arms and detached from
everything except the clean water and soap smell of him, the risk and the reward
of him.

She
could smell her perfume, smell her own arousal. Reece’s noisy breathing and murmured
groans were a wanton rhythm, primitive and pure. She shed scales, fur, her
illness, the skin of her buttoned down corporate self, the shell of her
single-mother status. She rocked against Reece’s body and clung hard to him for
deliverance. In his arms, in his mouth, in his joining, she’d be made into
something more.

She
had no fear but he did. “Slow down, baby. Slow down.”

She
put her teeth to his bottom lip. Mia was right, his eyes could go black, like
the deepest regions of ocean where evolution began. She didn’t want his
kindness now, she wanted the hulking scare of him from those depths. She got
it. He lifted her at the same time as he slid flat on the bed, the movement so
quick she had no time to make her own.

She
sat across his narrow waist briefly as he got rid of the pillow and her
nightdress before he lifted her again. Her knees rammed up under his armpits,
her feet still folded under her. She knew where he wanted her and had a second
to fear it. She filled her hands with his hair, dryer in places, wet anew from
the heat he was generating. She’d feel that hair on her inner thighs. He urged
her to kneel up, her hands slapped the wall in front to stop herself pitching
forward, to hold onto the earth while he spun it.

He
braced her with his forearms, with his hands, and then he took her safety and made
danger with it. Made her twitch and shock and moan. She was the primitive now,
unable to see for starbursts in her eyes, unable to speak for lack of
meaningful language. She was conquered by his tongue, enslaved by the suction
of his mouth, punished by the rasp of his jaw and his bruising grip. He opened
her soul, with his fingers as he opened her body, made her shudder and gasp and
strain to feel more, to feel everything born of the world. And when the rain
came, the storm rippled passed, she was drenched in the power of him.

And
he’d only begun to show her what he could make her want.

And
she wanted like belonging, like creativity.

He
didn’t let her find a normal breathing pattern. He dragged her down his body,
till she was folded into his chest. He turned his face when she tried to kiss
him. She scored his cheek with her nail when she fought him on that, and the
taste of his lips when he brought them back was a wholly erotic flavour,
timeless and new, and making her hungry to feel him again.

“I
want you on top. You’ll have more control. I’ll have more.” He repositioned her
over his length, hissing when she ground on him. “Fuck, maybe not. Audrey, take
it easy.” He laughed, but it became a groan when she licked his nipple.

He’d
watched her, eyes glittering bright, abandoned in her pleasure and he’d do it
again, but this time she’d watch him too. She never wanted to stop watching
him, the unexpected economy and grace of him. He was titanium core and diamond hard
surface, every part of him longer, thicker, wider, heavier than anyone else she
knew.

He
should’ve made her feel dainty, delicate, concerned about being crushed, split,
and joked about it in warning. She might’ve been scared of this, his bulk, her
slightness and how long it had been since she’d taken a man inside her body. That
only dawned on her now, when nothing of him was hidden, but she felt only
keening need, a hollow of expectation. He wasn’t too much, she wasn’t too little,
they were right-sized for each other, they would fit and she was impatient for
it, her whole body trembling.

“We
need.”

“I’ve
got it.” He had the condom in his hand. “I’ve got you.”

She
was desperate to touch him. “I want to do that.”

“Oh
Jesus, be gentle, baby.”

She
scooted down his legs, trailing her hands. Kissing his hipbone, making him
twist and suck in a shuddering breath. He palmed his face and held the condom
out to her. He didn’t trust her with gentle—clever, gorgeous, surprising man. She
didn’t deserve his faith, but his body was her new religion, a reason for the
sun to rise and set, the weather to change, the earth to green.