Page 57 of Second Story

He takes me, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles whiten, and the chair shifts.It shifts again and again as soon as I find a pounding rhythm, and thank fuck the bar downstairs is full of chatty people. If it wasn’t, all the barman would hear is the thump of chair legs each time I fuck straight into heaven.

Isaac stops holding the back of the chair. He grips whatever part of me he can grab, and he gets vocal.

I love each grunt, eachyeah,and every singleJoethat comes with him pushing back against me. He takes and takes and takes some more, and I could do this forever.

He can’t.

Isaac pushes back extra hard, making space to get a hand on himself, then levers himself upright in more proof of strength I bet he didn’t know he possessed the first time I met him. “Fuck me,” he orders through gritted teeth, like I haven’t been already, and I’m so up for this challenge. “Faster. Harder.”

The sun set a while ago. Now that overhead light I’d usually turn off shows him slick with sweat and as wrecked as I am. I see proof when he looks over a shoulder that rises and falls in a jerky signal that he’s getting himself off, and I have to kiss him one last time.

It’s messy, our mouths barely connected, and Isaac clenches one last time.

Around me.

He also grinds back, and I fall over the same cliff with him, not caring if there are rocks waiting at its bottom.

He’s my soft landing.

I’m plastered over his back, my hands finding his, our fingers threading as we come down, and I’ve never enjoyed the peeling-apart stage of sex, especially with strangers who might only then notice what my clothes keep hidden.

I’m as bare as the day I was born when Isaac follows me back into the bathroom, and there’s no way he doesn’t get an eyeful of what made my brother close off and my dad clam up. Isaac just reaches around me to turn on the shower again, and his kiss to my shoulder relaxes something tightly wound inside me.

Who the fuck knows why I can breathe as if there’s more room under my ribs.

All I know is that I don’t have anything to hide from Isaac.

It’s a good thing the shower is already running and that every da Silva I shamed can’t see me blink away a sudden blurring.Yeah, Josh can extract hidden data and Dad can mend broken motors, but Isaac kissing me under falling water for a second time in less than an hour fixes something more fundamental.

My own motor rumbles back to life, purring as he kisses my shoulder and asks, “You had a chance to read your folder?”

Not really. “I’ll give it to the Luxtons tomorrow.”

“Then you really do have to head straight home?”

“I need to have another go at showing Kwasi around an empty courtroom.” I could curse at a promise I made before I knew Isaac and I could have the potential for...

More.

That’s what I want. Apparently, so does he. His stubble brushes my shoulder, nowhere near any messed up nerve endings. It still feels electric. “Then I better convince Luke to invite you back.”

I watch Isaac leave for a second time only minutes later, waving him off from the car park again and not giving a shit if anyone sees me stare long after his hiccupping van climbs the hill out of the village.

If anyone looks, I don’t notice. I’m in too much of a hurry to get back to my room to fire up my laptop.

The moon hangs over the sea outside my window, and maybe I should soak up that sight.

I don’t.

I’m too busy expanding a proposal to keep me here for a whole lot longer.

16

ISAAC

I’m still thinking about Joe stupidly early the next morning when it turns out that Sealife School meets only a hop, skip, and a jump from the same pub where I left him. And that’s what a growing gang of kids do—they hop and skip over cobbles, making so much noise they’d wake the dead, let alone someone who must still be sleeping if the closed curtains at Joe’s window are an indicator.

My gaze flits between those drawn curtains and Lenny, who is my silent shadow. He hangs back from the game of The Ground is Lavathose kids play, his own gaze darting, only not up to Joe’s window. His darts between me and his little buddies, so I answer his silent question. “I won’t leave. Go ahead and play.”

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