We’re still in the kitchen – we’ve barely moved a few paces from the front door. For a moment he just looks down at me. His eyes are wide, lips parted. My breath hitches. Then he moves, backing me up, his hands shifting down to my waist, his lips closing in on mine. My back hits the door hard just as our tongues touch.
This kiss isn’t a first kiss, it’s foreplay. I lose track of time, of everything, drowsy with wanting, hearing myself moan, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt until he breaks away from me to yank it over his head. When my bare skin touches his we both gasp.
‘Christ,’ he says, pushing my hair back with one hand as he lowers his lips to mine. ‘You’re killing me already.’
I writhe against him, one leg lifting, pyjama shorts ruching. I’m unbuckling his belt when the knock comes at the door behind me.
I jump so much my teeth knock into Dylan’s with a jolt. We stumble away from the door, tangled together. Dylan spins just in time to shield me from view as Uncle Terry pokes his head around the door.
For God’s sake. Terry is absolutely the sort of man who knocks right at the same time as he turns the door handle, isn’t he?
‘Yoo-hoo!’ he calls. ‘Maddy? Oh, well, hello, you two!’ He chuckles. ‘Am I interrupting?’
I cringe back into Dylan, burying my face in his chest. His arms close around me. Maddy. I get called that one a lot, and Ali, and Annie.
‘Go away, Terry,’ Dylan says. ‘Go outside until the lady’s decent, for God’s sake.’
‘Whatever you say, Dylan!’ Terry says, chortling, and I hear the door click shut again.
‘Oh, God,’ I say into Dylan’s chest.
‘Fuckity bollocking arsehole Uncle Terry,’ he says, moving to fetch my camisole and his shirt off the kitchen floor. He’s breathing so heavily his chest is heaving. I’m not much better.
‘I can still hear you, my boy!’ Terry calls.
‘What are you doing knocking on her door at two in the morning!’ Dylan yells so loudly I jump.
‘What are you doing knocking on her door at two in the morning, that’s what I’d like to know,’ Terry calls back.
‘I think it’s pretty obvious what I was doing,’ Dylan says, running an exasperated hand through his hair. ‘And her name is Addie. Not Maddy.’
I snort with laughter. This is obviously horrifying and not at all funny but also . . . It is a bit funny. That yoo-hoo as Terry stuck his head around the door.
‘I heard a commotion,’ Terry says. ‘When I came down for a snack. Thought I’d better check the lady was all right!’
‘I’m fine, thanks, Mr Abbott,’ I call, then cover my face with my hands. ‘Oh God,’ I whisper.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Dylan says beseechingly. His hair is sticking up all over the place and his lips are swollen. The bravado is gone. He’s even sexier this way. A little lost-looking.
I stand on tiptoes to press a slow kiss against his neck. I feel his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows back a groan.
‘Another time,’ I whisper. ‘You know where to find me, now.’
Dylan
She’s mesmerised me. I’m Odysseus at Circe’s island, I’m Shakespeare’s Romeo, I’m – I’m nursing an almost-permanent erection.
It’s been four hours since Addie pressed that single, burning kiss to my throat in the clutter of her little kitchen, and I’ve barely slept an hour since. My brain is rammed with rushed, heated poems, borderline erotica; they look even worse when I write them down. In a moment of insanity at around six in the morning I decide to fold them and post them under her bedroom door, but thankfully I stop myself just as I head out of my room, realising that this will almost certainly make me look creepy, or – perhaps worse – desperate. Instead I return to my bed and imagine reading them to her here, naked, then I have to take a cold shower.
It’s ten in the morning before I see her again. She arrives on the terrace where Terry and I are taking our coffees – she’s fresh-faced, wearing a patterned little dress that flirts around her upper thighs with each step. In her hand is a paper bag dappled with buttery stains: fresh croissants from the nearby village. Her fingers graze mine as I take the pastries. Never has patisserie been so sexually charged.
‘Thank you,’ I murmur.
‘You look a little peaky,’ she says, and that mole on her upper lip shifts as she tries not to smile. ‘Didn’t sleep so well?’
‘I owe you an apology, my nephew tells me!’ Terry calls. ‘I’m sorry for barging in, it was very ungentlemanly of me.’