Page 57 of Crazy Spooky Love
He runs an experiential thumb across my bottom lip. I consider biting it, but he might be one of those people who gets excited by rough stuff and will drag me upstairs by my hair, or something. So, instead of biting him, I sort of sigh and part my lips, which to him probably looks like an invitation to carry on, when I intended it to signal boredom. It surely doesn’t signal boredom, because as he’s already observed, I’m a terrible liar, and I’m not bored at all.
“What about my mouth?” It sounded forthright and challenging in my head, but it slides from my lips on a breathy whisper. Fletcher Gunn just turned me girlie. I am Marilyn Monroe on my own doorstep, and he’s just splayed his hand on the small of my back and swayed me into him. Oh my God! My body is against his, and he’s dipping his head, and I know I should call a halt to this, but readingAgnes’s diary has left me raw and vulnerable, and right now this gentleman definitely does not prefer blondes in white, flippy dresses. He favors short, snarky brunettes in jeans andFlintstonesT-shirts. I’d stop him, but he’s holding my face between both of his hands now, and it is so suddenly incredibly sexy that I feel as if all of my bones have just melted into my Converse. I want him to kiss me. I want to kiss him. He’s so close his breath mingles with mine. I close my eyes and lay my palm flat over his heart; I can feel its steady beat beneath the smooth cotton of his shirt.
He’s quite a lot taller than me, and there is something in the way he bends his head to my level, in how the muscles of his shoulders bunch as he cups my face that makes me the one who closes the space between our lips, not him. I stretch up on my tiptoes to meet him, and the kiss he gives me in reply is so very, very slow and sensual that I slide my other hand around the back of his neck and stroke his hair. He barely moves, as if he is containing himself. It’s the stillest of kisses; he opens my lips with the briefest brush of his tongue and lowers one warm hand to cover mine on his chest. His heartbeat quickens, and when I slide my tongue between his lips he makes this little moan in his throat that is hands-down the hottest sound I’ve ever heard. It’s guttural, and primal, and he isn’t so still anymore. His fingers slide around my head and fist in my hair, and the uptick in tempo makes me want to climb him like a tree, to wrap myself around him and stay there. He tips my head back to drag his lips down my neck and—there’s no other word for it—it’s masterful. I’ll think of a better word for it later because that is entirely too bodice-ripper for a badass businesswoman like me, butmasterfulcovers it perfectly because he overwhelms my senses with his mouth and his hands and his low, sexy moans.
“Bittersweet?”
He says my name and I sink my teeth into his bottom lip. From the way he cradles my head I’d say he liked it, and his shallow breathing tells me that he’s just as into this as Iam.
“Hmm?” I can’t form words, because he’s kissed them all away.
If he asks me if he can take me to bed, I am absolutely going to say “Yes please, do it right here and now, my bedroom is just this way.” I’m already pulling him upstairs in my head.
“Your dog is humping my leg.”
I open my eyes, my lips now bereft of his kiss, and I repeat his phrase in my head until the words make their way through the kiss-fog he’s breathed into me. “Your dog is humping my leg.”My dog is humping his leg.Fucking Lestat! I slowly look down and, sure enough, there he is, on the cobbles, merrily banging away at Fletch’s shin, his beady eyes rolled back in his flat face in pure, delirious bliss.Get off him, you hair-shedding, one-eared monster-mutt from hell! This isn’t a bloody orgy, this one’s mine!I belatedly notice that the office door has swung open behind Fletch, and I vow to kill Lestat in a really nasty way. I’m going to stake him through the heart with silver while he sleeps, just for the pleasing literary symmetry ofit.
“I’ll let you get away with kissing me this one time, but only because that onion-chopping competition clearly made you overwrought.”
I put my hands on my hips and curl my just-kissed lips into a sneer as I look up at him.
“You kissed me. You could see I was vulnerable and you took advantage.”
He pushes his hand through his hair and laughs, looking toward High Street and shaking his head. “You are the least vulnerable woman I’ve ever met.”
“And you’re the most annoying man on the planet,” I say as I shove Lestat’s fat ass back inside the office and slam the door. The dog’s interruption had a similar effect to a bucket of iced water being thrown over me from a great height; it’s well and truly broken the sex spell and made me wonder what the hell I was doing.
“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted. You’re tough as nails and I’m irritating as hell. I still think we should lay our hostilities aside for the evening and have crazy sex, because I can still taste you on my lips and you’re delicious.”
I stare at him. Who says stuff like that, really? I’m reminded ofmy conversation with Marina, about Bazza and never meeting your heroes. It’s a shame we didn’t also cover what to do when a man you think you can’t stand unexpectedly becomes your sex hero for five glorious but inappropriate minutes on your doorstep.
“It’s cherry lip gloss,” I say lamely, folding my arms over my chest. I’m aware that I’m one hot, open-mouthed kiss away from caving in, so my next words probably sound more hostile than they might have. “Go away, Fletch, and don’t ever kiss me again, all right? And for the record, no, I’m not interested in disappointing chipolata-sex. Not with you, or the Dalai Lama, or even with Thor.”
Also for the record, the last one was a lie. And alarmingly, it seems that the first one might have been too.
He snort-laughs and heads away, down the cobbled alley.
“You’re seriously weird, Bittersweet.”
I watch him leave, bathed as he is in the harvest-gold evening sunlight, and I can only agree. I am seriously, seriously sodding weird. I must be to let myself get kissed breathless by Fletcher Gunn for the price of a lime-green pooper-scooper.
I’m going to take myalarm clock to the charity shop. I no longer have any need for it, because Lestat licks every inch of my face at 6:00a.m.every morning to let me know he requires a pee and his breakfast. I had naively expected a dog to fit into my life, not that I would need to reshape my existence around his. In quite a few ways Lestat is an undemanding houseguest; he thankfully seems to like walking even less than I do and he’s not one of those dogs who constantly shoves a slimy, saliva-coated tennis ball in your hand. For both of these things, I’m grateful. However, I’m less enamored by the fact that he has clearly been pampered and allowed to run amok, because he’s one demanding brute of a taskmaster. He asks for what he wants politely just once and then waits for a maximum of five minutes before he exacts revenge for being ignored. I can almost hear his thoughts.
Don’t take me out for a quick piddle by 6:05a.m.? No sweat, Melody, I’ll just mosey on out into the lounge and pee on the rug. Don’t ensure I have a fresh bowl of kibble by 6:15a.m.? Hey, that’s cool. I’ll just find something else to eat while I wait, girlfriend. A banana still in its skin? Delicious. Your slippers? A gastronomic treat. A cork from a wine bottle? Shredded and ingested with pleasure, Melody, and a fine vintage it was too.
He’s like a tiny gangster. I have to keep him happy or else he flips, but as long as things go the way he wants them, we can both live in peace. It doesn’t bother me too much on a weekday because I’m up anyway, but today is Saturday and my bed is warm, and I changed my sheets yesterday so the quilt still has that “you’re actually sleeping in a warm, sunny meadow” feel about it. I don’t want to open my eyes; I feel as if they’re glued together. I don’t want to go and shiver outside while Lestat paces up and down the alley like an impatient furry general choosing his spot. I ignore him and pretend that his tongue in my eye socket isn’t bothering me. I try, but it’s futile because we both know that I’m going to give in. I bought new slippers yesterday, fancy knitted boots with fur inside, and I like them enough to sleep with them under my pillow. He knows it, of course. You don’t get to be a Mafia boss without knowing everything that’s going down in your manor, and at 6:05a.m.I feel one of the boots start to slowly slide out from beneath my head. It’s enough. It’s a direct threat.“Get up, or the slipper cops it.”I open my eyes and there he is, eyeballing me with the pompom of the boot locked firmly between his jaws.
I bare my teeth and growl at him, but he just sits there. I think he’s counting down in his head.
“Fine,” I grumble. “I’ll do it, but afterward I’m getting back in this bed for probably the entire weekend and my slippers are allowed to live, do you understand me?”
He waits until my feet have actually hit the floor before he relinquishes his death-grip on the pompom, laying it down in theatrical slow motion.
“Why, thank you, you’re so kind,” I tell him, hoping he’s sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of sarcasm. I stick my feetinside the bed-warmed slippers and wriggle my toes, then follow his furry little butt out of the bedroom, resigned to my fate as his human.
Half an hour later, I’m back in bed with a huge mug of coffee and Agnes Scarborough’s diary from 1920. I’m wearing my Marigolds again because I can’t be bothered to go down to the office for a latex pair and I’m in my furry boots—please God, don’t let there be a fire, or else Fletcher Gunn will have a field day when they carry my charred body out; he’ll have me down as some kinky fetishist before the fire’s even extinguished.
We’ve worked our way through Agnes’s diaries, and even though it’s been a riveting personal account of life during the First World War, we’ve yet to discover anything of real significance to the case. I now know that like most men of their age, both Isaac and Lloyd fought for their king and country, and that Isaac was decorated for gallantry shortly afterward. Agnes knew of this, yet she never acknowledged her awareness of his bravery to Isaac himself. She observed her estranged son from a distance, although it’s clear that she privately kept tabs on him. Even her diary entries about him are abstract—factual, stripped of maternal emotion. But they are there, nonetheless, which indicates that he was on her mind even if she didn’t allow herself the luxury of writing about him in any form other than bald fact. Maybe that’s why I am even more surprised by the entry at the end of June 1920.
