Her steps halt, and she turns. My stomach drops into my balls and hope blooms for a second in my chest.
“Does she have a favourite colour, your little girl?”
I regard her for a moment. Her robe is pulled tight around her tiny waist, outlining her perfect round tits and the curve of her hips. Her hands are buried deep in the pockets at the front.
Her hair was down earlier, she must have put it up when she showered. When she showered and waited for me to join her. And now, here we are. All awkward and one-word answers.
Maybe she’s right. Tonight’s clusterfuckisfor the best.
“Purple and pink. Like your hair.” I point as I mention her hair. “That’s why I said she’d love your hair and your ink.”
She gives me a small smile and another nod and turns, this time not stopping her ascent of the stairs.
IWAKE WITH MY NECKbent sideways, a dead arm, and dribble in my beard. I also have a raging fucking boner.
I open my eyes and groan as I sit up straight from where I must’ve passed out on my sofa last night.
A three-quarter empty bottle of Jim Beam sits on my coffee table, and an empty glass is wedged between my thigh and the side of the sofa, which is where I apparently dropped it. Good thing I’m not a smoker, I would’ve set myself on fire and burned the fucking house down if that had been a cigarette.
I slide my hands inside my sweats and attempt to force down the evidence of the hot dream I was having about Gracie before I woke.
I swear the little witch has cast some kind of magic spell and turned me back into the horny fifteen-year-old boy I once was.
In my dream, we were sitting right where I am now. My cock buried deep inside her as she straddled my thighs and rode me. I watched her tits bounce with the force of our actions, and her nipples continuously brushed against the hair on my chest.
I close my eyes and attempt to conjure the sight, taste, and smell of Gracie Elliott like they were in my dream, like they were for real when I almost had her last night.
I let out another groan and press the heels of my hands into each of my eyes.
I’m so fucking confused. Gracie is just so easy to be with. Yeah, it’s only been a matter of days, but I’m a grown ass man, almost forty. I know exactly what I like and what I don’t like, and I like Gracie so damn much it has me all twisted.
Thisis not what I need.
Sheis not what I need.
Notnow. Noteveragain.
I repeat this to myself while I shower and jerk off to images of how Gracie looked as she came apart on my hand and fingers last night.
It does nothing to ease the confusion in my head, the tightness in my chest, or the knot in my stomach.
I’m totally fucked and have no clue what I’m gonna do about it.
GRACIE
ISTARE AT THE CEILING. It’s not a particularly interesting view, a mass of white emulsion covered plasterboard, the light rose surrounding the lighting fixture is pretty, though, and the coving that runs around the edges of the ceiling where it joins the walls is lovely, too. All straight lines and angles.
It must be my designer’s brain that makes me notice things like this whenever I walk into a room. Colours, corners, angles, textures. They’re what I notice before I take in the furniture or the layout.
I’ve never had any formal training as a designer, I can’t sew for shit and never studied art at school. I always thought I couldn’t draw. Put a vase full of flowers, a bowl of fruit, or a human hand in front of me, and I’d come up with something that resembled a painting by a drunk and high Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso that had been left out in the rain and then melted in the sun just a little bit.
But give me a pad and a pencil and ask me to design you an outfit, and I can seriously shit miracles. I can also do the same when it comes to designing a room. My brain just takes over, and I don’t even think about the direction the pencil goes, I just let it work its magic.
I don’t know if there are other designers who work the same way, I’d never researched it. I just go with what works for me.
When I went to bed last night, I had planned to draw for a while. I had a few ideas about what I wanted to do with Koa’s daughter's room, but I needed to see the space to know for sure that they were gonna work. I didn’t fancy going back downstairs to ask him to show me which room was hers, in case he thought I was being needy and desperate, or it was just an excuse to get him upstairs, so I curled up on my bed.
I thought I might cry, but I didn’t.