LATER THAT EVENING, after the crew had all insisted on popping their heads upstairs to say goodnight to Aubrey, who had plied them with coffee—and coffee art—all day long, Sean found Aubrey sitting at the small table on the balcony by the lounge, arms wrapped around her knees, feet tucked up on the chair, as she looked out over the city.
The sun was slowly sinking lower in the sky and the gauzy heat of the day was gentled by a cool breeze.
He could have offered her a lift home, at any point. But he hadn’t.
He could have insisted, using work as an excuse. But he didn’t.
He’d kept her near. Aware that his crew had fed off her quirky energy in a way he’d never seen in the workshop before. They were jovial. Chatty. Including him in their ribbing, which they never did, ever.
He thought of the South African couple at the café in Piazza Della Signoria the day before. The security guard at the Galleria dell’Accademia.
Aubrey had a way of drawing people out. In following Aubrey’s lead, his crew had found permission to be themselves.
Which was on him. He knew that. He’d fostered that sense of distance. Of work and no play. He’d not moved to the other side of the world on a whim. It had been a huge risk. A massive undertaking. Yet he’d had no choice but to create a new foundation for his life after his last one had been ripped out from under him.
Sean’s eyes drifted closed as his sister, Carly, once again snuck into his subconscious. Memories bobbing up like treasures weighed down below the surface. The kind incessant tides eventually set free.
Only one thing had changed in his landscape to make those weights no longer function as they had. One person causing him to lose that grip.
If he was smart he’d have said, “Big day tomorrow. I’ll take you home.”
Instead he said, “Hungry?”
She turned, her face relaxed. And so very lovely in the dwindling evening light.
If she was smart she’d yawn and say what a lovely day it had been but she needed her beauty sleep. Instead she gave him a long, direct, discerning look, before saying, “Famished. What does the palace cook have in store for us?”
He leant his forearms along the back of the chair beside hers. “Coffee first? Then pasta. I’ll make both.”
Hands locked behind her head, she watched him from beneath her lashes. “Got anything stronger?”
“I remember seeing a bottle of wine somewhere. Left behind by the last people who owned the place. Might be vintage. Might be vinegar.”
“Stronger,” she said, her eyes not leaving his.
“What’s the thing these days? Aperol Spritz?”
She scrunched up her nose. “Too dry.”
“A Bellini? Negroni?”
“Now you’re talking. You have the goods?”
“The crew think I haven’t noticed the gear they’ve snuck into my pantry over the years. Serves them right if we clean them out.”
Aubrey let her feet drop to the ground, before unwinding herself from the chair. She lifted her arms in a stretch, swaying as if moved by the last breath of the light evening air.
He’d picked up such a strong sense of vulnerability, seeing her sitting on the floor of the gallery, sketching away. Now he saw grace and gall, straightforwardness, doggedness, kindness. There was more vitality, more life, in her little finger than he’d lived in a year.
When she sashayed past him and headed inside she left him feeling restless. As if he were ruled by currents. Stormy winds. Eddying and swirling. Begging for release. Release in her.
But he held back. Years of self-denial had left his willpower strong. Burnished to a sheen.
Moving to the kitchen, looking to the world a normal man, he found what he needed. Poured the gin by eye. Campari. Vermouth. Mixed, then poured into two glasses over ice.
“You’ve done that before,” she said.
“You worked in cafés, in between times. I worked in bars.”
“Of course you were a bartender. I’ve always had a thing for bartenders.”
He grabbed a fresh orange one of his guys had no doubt picked from one of the trees in his orchard out back, adding a spritz of zest at the end. He licked a drop from the palm of his thumb, made eye contact, and said, “Because they’re good for a chat-up line?”
“Because they’re good at making cocktails.”
A smile. He felt it start in his throat before it hit his mouth. A tightness and a release. “True. I made my fair share through uni.”
“Chat up lines?”
“Cocktails?”
“Ah. You were studying…?”
“Architecture.”
“Of course. All the hot, upright guys study architecture.”
He’d known this woman a day and a half. years to feel comfortable enough with one In his world—private schools, old money, parents on the board of the Opera Foundation, dinner at the dinner table every night at seven—it took people another to be that honest. If ever.
Ask him and he would have said he preferred those people. Found ease in the aloofness. Yet his truth was that he found every single thing about Aubrey as refreshing as all get out.
“What gave you the idea that I’m upright?” he asked, holding eye contact, his voice a little rough.
“I… Well…” She swallowed. Rendered speechless for a brief moment.
He slid her drink across the counter. Waited till her fingers wrapped around the glass before letting go. “Sit. Drink. I’ll have dinner ready in fifteen.”
He pulled out the sauce he’d made the night before, and popped it back on the stove. Filled another pan with water, salt and penne.
Then smiled, feeling unusually good about the world, as he watched the water come to the boil.
* * *
A half-hour later they sat next to one another at the round table, digesting.
Candlelight flickered over Aubrey’s face, creating hollows in her cheeks, picking out flashes of red in her hair. It was romantic as hell. Till Elwood groaned as he rolled over on his bed in the corner.
“So architecture wasn’t for you in the end?” Aubrey asked out of the blue.
Sean picked up his drink; a fine local red she’d somehow had delivered to the villa during dinner using an app. “My mother’s father was a cabinet maker. He taught me how to hold a chisel before I could hold a pen. After the first couple of years of uni, I…decided the hands-on part of design—shaping, honing, pushing the envelope—was where I fit best. It made sense to shift.”
Aubrey gasped and sat forward, eyes wide and delighted. “You mean you didn’t graduate. That so doesn’t fit with the Sean Malone aesthetic. Why?”
Sean looked into the swirling shadows of his drink.
“Well, that was a longer than normal pause, even for you. Meaning you have no intention of telling me.”
He looked up to find her watching him. No accusation in her warm gaze. Just interest. A seeking of truth.
The truth was that that was the time his sister, Carly, was getting into real trouble. His parents, people whose lives were built around how things appeared, let her get to the brink before admitting they’d lost control.
The instant he’d found out, Sean had deferred uni and moved home to help. To reconnect. To talk some sense into his little sister. It seemed to help, too. Carly moved back home. Stopped seeing her boyfriend. Seeing progress, Sean, who’d not been raised to sit on his hands, had leapt at the chance of a side hustle to fill his time. He spent all his time brushing up on his woodwork skills and took up where his grandfather had left off.
First product show he’d entered he’d hit the market with a splash. The success a counterpoint to the desperate quiet of home he’d sought to escape. And he’d lost sight of why he’d come back at all…
The sense of weight back in his belly, Sean shook his head slowly.
Aubrey’s smile twisted. “You’re deeper than you look, you know.”
“You have no idea,” he said, hoping she might take heed. Realise how very different they were.
Instead she shivered, as if the thought of hidden depths was delicious.
He’d known she was trouble the second he saw her. A sixth sense warning him of danger. It had never occurred to him she was the danger. That he was the one in trouble.
“Fine,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I won’t go rummaging around in your shadows, so long as you know that means you also get zero access to mine.”
“Your shadows.”
“Baby, I have shadows like you wouldn’t believe.”
Her voice was pure sass. But a flicker behind her eyes told him she wasn’t all quips and lip. That there might be something hidden there after all.
He lifted his drink and took a sip. Was he okay with that? With not knowing? When he’d worked so hard to keep his life simple. Disconnected. No deep connections meant no drama. Meant no heartache. No loss.
Aubrey nibbled on her bottom lip and his concerns became muddled. “If I can’t ask why you didn’t graduate, or why hearing from your father’s friend has you in such a tizz, or why you clearly love red wine but had none in the house, then what can we talk about?”
He leaned back. “The weather.”
“Great. It’s bloody hot, right? Okay, now we’ve exhausted the weather. How about…? The Malone Mark. I’m going to be indelicate here.”
“Big shock.”
“I know, right? The pieces you are working on downstairs are seriously lovely, but unless you sell each for tens of thousands, how can you afford this place? Not to mention the car. And that pretty window right in the centre of town.”
“The Malone Mark—”
“Carries weight. Yes, you did mention that, in a rare yet refreshing brag.”
“I was going to say, is only a small part of my business. The custom pieces are the wow factor. Perfect for Instagram. Creates name recognition. Desire. That trickles down into my wholesale business.”
“Right. I get it. Like the way car manufacturers release drool-worthy, futuristic concept cars that make we poor slobs go out and buy their regular street version in the hopes of having a little of that lustre rub off on us. Smart thinking, Malone.”
“Exactly.”
His family had never understood. Telling friends about his big commissions but not the fact they probably all plonked their backsides daily onto his wholesale stools in their kitchens. The same way they’d talked up his big accomplishments, over Carly’s smaller ones. Not that he’d ever called them up on it. Not in time, anyway.
Sean shook the thought away. Said, “It was all fairly organic really. Once I became focussed. One chair in particular found traction. Became a bit of a thing when it was featured heavily in a popular TV show—”
“Oh, my God. You designed the Iron Throne!”
“What? No. It was used by the hosts of a morning show in the States. My designs are based on form and function. Not fear and pain.”
“Right. Sorry. Go on.”
Laughing now, relaxing, and rather amazed at both, Sean kept talking. Talking more than he remembered talking in years.
It was all due to her. Her gift was born of genuine interest. But after the “you’ll never know my shadows” comment he wondered if it was also a way of not having to reveal much of herself.
“Several manufactures tracked me down after that chair. Offered to buy the design. Never much wanted to work for someone else, so I took a risk. Went into manufacturing it myself. I now have three plants building reproductions back in Australia.”
“Hell of a commute.”
“No commuting. This is my base now. The operations back home are run by highly competent people. I oversee remotely.”
“You never go back?”
“I never go back.”
She gave him that gaze, the one where all the shimmer stilled. Where she focussed. Every part of her direct. Where he felt like a fly caught in her amber.
“Did you run away from home, Sean?”
“I thought we agreed not to touch on that.”
“So that’s a yes. And I agreed. You didn’t. Tell me about your family.”
“Tell me about yours.”
“Are we going to do this now?”
Were they? Before he could form a thought, Aubrey leant forward, challenging. Said, “My dad, Phil, is a panel beater.”
“Old news.”
“You want more? Okay. In his spare time, Dad paints. Abstracts. Wild gorgeous colourful things. He’s the one who gave me my love of art. He’d give anything to come here, to see the greats. But he busted his knee a few years back and wouldn’t be able to handle the travel. He’s so thrilled I’m finally here, that I’m doing this—”
At the last, her voice cracked. Just a little. A hint, perhaps, into the shadows she made him promise not to nudge. Only now he knew they were there, they reshaped his understanding of her. Made her feel less like a flash of light blinking in and out of his existence. And far more real.
“Mum, Judy,” she said, pulling herself back together, “is a homemaker. I have three brothers, all older. Have I mentioned that? I tend to, pretty quickly. They do loom large. I’m twenty-six and I’m sure our mum stays up till she hears we’re all safe and sound.”
Her next breath was deep and shaky, the challenge with which she’d started the conversation having dulled from her eyes. Sean felt a strong need to put a stop to this, whatever it was.
“Aubrey,” he said, his voice unexpectedly raw.
But she stilled him with a look. As if she wanted to get this out. Wanted him to know. To see her. To understand her. To know that this—whatever it was that was happening between them—wasn’t normal for her either.
“So,” she went on. “My brothers have produced a zillion children between them, each of whom I could eat up in one gulp, they are that delicious. I miss them all desperately. And have no doubt they miss me as I am the most amazing auntie there ever was.”
Something dark flickered in her eyes then. Something so big she swayed with it. Heartache? Sorrow? No, it looked a lot like defeat. But, it couldn’t be that. He couldn’t imagine Aubrey allowing it. She’d look it in the eye and say, not happening.
And while pressing back, asking questions, opening up, letting her in, was miles outside anything he’d done in a while, in years, watching this woman flounder was enough for him to say, “Their names?”
“Hmmm?”
“Your brothers. What are their names?”
A light flickered in the darkness. “Adam. Craig. Matt.”
“They good to you? When they loom?”
“Phenomenal. And annoying.” The pain in her eyes eased. The light returning. “They could take down the likes of you with their little fingers.”
He leant forward. Putting his glass next to hers. So close it clinked. “Left or right?”
A muscle twitched under her eye, and the edge of her sweet mouth curled into a devastating smile. The kind that took a man’s legs out from under him. “Take your pick.”
“Mmm.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
Sean’s next breath burned. Helping her play was one thing, but it wasn’t a game to him.
Yet something in her face, the slight tremble still wavering beneath the bravado, fractured something inside him. Shearing away a great chunk of the wall he’d built up inside, like the edge of an iceberg falling into the sea.
“Margot,” he said, speaking his mother’s name out loud for the first time in nigh on five years. He held eye contact as if Aubrey were a life preserver and he a man who’d suddenly found himself lost at sea. “My mother’s name is Margot. She’s a lady who lunches. And sits on charity boards. She was an interior designer. A very good one. Inherited my grandfather’s eye for shape.”
“And your father?” she asked, her voice unusually soft, her gaze rich with empathy. “The one with the friend.”
“Brian.” Sean felt his head squeeze as he tried to push away the vision of the last time he’d seen his father. Broken, in utter shock, a shell of the man he’d once been; sitting in their big cold house, Carly’s wake going on around him while he held tight to a photo of his only daughter when she was just a little girl.
“He was—” Sean stopped, cleared out the frog in his throat “—is a financial advisor. Straight-laced. Clear morals. When I decided to throw every cent I had at the chair that made my name, I was sure he’d try to talk me out of it. But he supported it all the way.”
“Of course he did,” said Aubrey. “If he’s anything like you he’s both savvy and intrepid. If he saw the light in your eyes when you talk about your work, I’m sure supporting your idea was a cinch. How about siblings? Any brother or sisters who drove you crazy?”
Sean shook his head. He wasn’t going further. He wasn’t going there. In fact he’d gone a mile past his limit. Carly wasn’t something he talked about. To anyone. No single person he’d met since moving to this country had heard him speak her name.
Yet this slip of an Australian had him on the verge of divulging the whole sordid story. And his part in it. His deep, cavernous sense of shame…
No. Just no.
Sean pressed himself to standing. Fast enough his chair rocked.
While Aubrey sat, knees together, hands clasped on her thighs. So still. So slight. Her face a blend of delicate curves and tiny freckles and warm, pretty eyes that belied the strength beneath. The furious energy. Determination. Grit.
She sat there as if she hadn’t just come achingly close to tearing him open with nothing but soft words. Her refusal to back down.
He glanced out of the window, where Florence glowed in the valley below. The River Arno was lit up along her banks, the Duomo a glowing golden beacon.
“I should take you home,” he said, several hours—and two drinks—too late.
“Generous offer, but Sydney is miles from here.”
“I meant your hotel.”
“Ah,” she mocked. “I’m following you wherever you go today, remember? So are you going to my hotel?”
He opened and closed his mouth, like a fish out of water. Then he ran both hands over his face and growled.
She was impossible. And sublime. She terrified him. How she made him feel. How she made him smile even when he didn’t deserve to smile.
And he didn’t want to see her go.
“Look,” she said, tipping forward, before stretching to her feet. “I don’t know what happened to you, Malone, to send you so far from home. And it’s okay if you don’t tell me. But I’m a really good listener if you ever need to talk. Right now, though, I’m just going to hug you, okay?”
She reached out with both hands. Moved in. Sliding around his waist, slowly, as if she was giving him every chance to refuse her touch.
Then one hand slid up his back, the other moved between them, clutched at his shirt. She kept moving until she was pressed up against him. Her cheek turned against his chest. Her head fitting just under his chin.
What was he to do, but slide his arms around her too, cradling her close? She smelled of warm days and cool nights. Of citrus zest and sheets just off the line. Her hold impossibly soft, yet at the same time it was as if she was holding him upright. As if she were his very spine.
He tilted his head to rest his lips upon her hair. “Aubrey—”
“Shh. It’s okay.”
Sean laughed, even while his chest felt tight and his head was swimming. Caught as he was between the urge to put space between himself and this rare creature who deserved far more than the shell of a man he’d become, and the instinctive, survivalist need to soak up whatever life force she could spare.
“You can stay. There is a spare room in use. Staff have crashed here once or twice when a commission neared its end date and they weren’t yet done.”
“I’m not staff.”
“No, you’re not. In fact you’re the first person I’ve let in the front door whom I don’t pay.”
“Hey, whatever gets you through the night.”
It took him a moment. “Jeez, Aubrey, I didn’t mean—”
“Mocking!” She lifted her head, her big whisky-brown eyes soft with desire. “God, you’re easy.”
No, he wasn’t. He was hard, and stubborn, and fractious. He’d created a life in which he gave away little and asked for less. “Aubrey—”
She snuck a finger to his lips. Pressing so he had no choice but to hold his breath.
“Just shut up, okay?” she said, her eyes bright. “Stop trying to get rid of me. You might think you’re all that, that you can out-stubborn me, but you have no idea who you are dealing with.”
“Neither do you.”
Her head tipped to one side, her breath leaving slowly between soft lips, she said, “You knew what you were doing when you ‘let’ me follow you around today. You knew what you were doing when you ‘let’ me jump in the car with you. You know what you’re doing now. Now prove it.”
Her words were big, calling him out in order to elicit a reaction. But he could feel the quiver beneath them. The fear that he might deny her. That she might yet be made to look a fool.
She was feeling this too. The speed of it all. The sense that it was out of their control.
But Sean was all about control. It was his anchor. It had saved him when he’d not been certain he deserved to be saved. And he was done letting anything take him places he wasn’t ready to go.
So he reeled it in. And held on tight.
He lifted a hand to Aubrey’s chin, cradled it, looked from one of her bright beautiful eyes to the other. “Come to bed.”
She stilled. “Which bed?”
His thumb ran down the side of her cheek, the feel of her skin—warm and soft and giving—creating whorls of heat inside him. “This is not the time for mocking. Come. To. Bed.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “It’s the perfect time for mocking. Otherwise you will totally fall in love with me and we can’t have that because I’m on holiday so will be gone before you know it. And you’ll be stuck here, pining, and—”
Sean quieted her with a kiss.
It was the only way.
It was a soft kiss. No more than a meeting of the lips. Breaths held, eyes open.
Then, with the sweetest moan ever known to man, Aubrey softened. All over. Her hand flattening against his chest, her body melting into his.
The kiss, so sweet, so soft, soon turned into something more. A flood of relief. Of release. Of reckoning.
No more tiptoeing around the escalating attraction that had been brimming between them from the moment they met. It was a tidal wave, no holding back. He bore the full force of her want. Her need.
Her words echoed in his head.
“You knew what you were doing when you ‘let’ me jump in the car with you. You know what you’re doing now. Now prove it.”
He lifted her into his arms, shocked to find how little there was of her. Her delicacy hidden by the sheer force of her personality.
Kissing her still, he carried her into his bedroom. His curtains were open, an eerie mix of moonlight and the final breaths of daylight falling over the room.
He kissed her once, then, holding her tight, helped her onto the bed. And followed.
Her hair splayed out near his pillow. Her eyes, dark in the low light, looked up at him.
What he saw there floored him. The sheer honesty of her feelings. Her desire.
Her hand reached up to his face. Her fingers traced his bottom lip. The line of his nose. The curl of his eyebrow. Her thumb returned to his mouth, tracing his top lip this time. Her gaze following.
“I will be compelled to draw you one day,” she said, her voice husky, and low. “I’ll capture a moment, when you’re not expecting it. So you don’t pull a face.”
“Stalker.”
“That I am.”
“Just so long as you don’t compare me to him.”
“Him?”
“The David.”
A beat, then, “Who?”
“Atta girl.”
When her fingernails scraped up the sandpaper edge of his jaw, he sucked in a breath. Only to see her smile.
“You look so sweet,” he rumbled, “but it’s all an act.”
“I know, right?”
Sean laughed. Laughed. Joy flowed through him, freely, unfettered. It had been so long since he’d experienced the emotion, he no longer had the skill to temper it.
He gently brushed her hair away from her face as they drank one another in. Savouring the bittersweet ache of waiting on the brink, when their bodies, their eyes, said now.
Then he kissed her cheek. Her nose. Her chin. When his teeth grazed the side of her neck she lifted off the bed. Gripped his back. And groaned.
Needing more, needing skin, needing to assuage the heat, the joy, the guilt—yes, guilt, for it was there still, a constant companion, a bitter tang to every breath he took—merging inside him, he slid down her body. Nipping at her shoulder, her collarbone, the edge of her bra through her clothes.
She writhed under him, gripping his hair. Guiding him. Fearless. Wanting.
When he reached her belly, he nudged her shirt with his nose, and pressed a kiss to the right of her navel. Then the left. The sounds coming from her making his vision hazy, his body, coiled tight for so long, burn.
When he slid his hand beneath her shirt, meaning to ease it away, she pulled the hem back down.
When he tried again, she wriggled out from under him and flipped him over. Straddled him. Her hot wild gaze drinking him in. Eating him up.
Something in her eyes made him pause. Some flicker of doubt. But considering all the big emotions he was grappling with, he couldn’t blame her.
“Aubrey, we don’t have to—”
Then she tucked her hands into her hair, twirling it into a knot. Her hips moving against his till his eyes near rolled back in his head. Purely deliberate. Nothing sweet about it. No indecision at all.
He reached for her, his thumbs pressing into her hip bones, guiding. Slowing. Watching her. Watching her eyes, drugged and lush with desire. Rolling with her till her breath hitched, her eyes dragging closed.
Her hands fell to his chest. Nails digging in. Biting her bottom lip so tight he feared she’d draw blood.
When she called his name, a keening desperate plea, he reared up, slid a hand behind her head and captured her mouth. Kissing her slow. Deep.
Losing himself. Spiralling.
Oh, hell; the tang of salt. Of iron. He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips, finding the spot she’d bitten swelling already.
“Sean,” she gasped, her head tipping back, knees spreading, sliding herself along the erection locked in the confines of his jeans.
Then with a roar that seemed to come from the back of her throat, she pulled back, pressed him to the bed. Pointed at him and said, “Stay.” Then she rid herself of her shorts, twirled them around a finger and flung them across the room.
Before he had the chance to even think about laughing, revelling in her abandon, her hands were at his fly, unbuttoning, unzipping, and setting him free.
Fearing it would end before it had begun, he rolled her over, and said, “Stay.” He grabbed protection from his side drawer, sliding it on with a speed heretofore unknown.
“Yes,” she said, watching, relishing, as if she knew he needed to hear it. “A thousand times yes.”
And while it took every ounce of strength he could muster, Sean began to slow. His kisses, his touch, the roll of his hips. To pay attention. To be in this. Before it subsumed them both. His hands learning every inch of her body. Until she breathed when he breathed. Her eyes unable to focus. His name a prayer on her lips.
When he finally slid inside her, she cried out—in pleasure, in relief. The power he’d been holding in check detonated as he was sheathed in her, to the hilt.
Then her eyes found his. Locked on tight as they moved.
Lost, together, to the slide of heat. The flood of sensation. The taste, sweet and spicy. And the yield.
The way she gave of herself and the way she gave in. Accepting and following, open and accepting and demanding, till she dragged him under with her.
Under. And over. And undone.
* * *
Aubrey lay sleepily tangled in the sheets of Sean’s bed, her head up one end, his up the other. Hand over her heart, eyes closed, she checked in.
Her heart, well, it was taking its time to settle, but no wonder. It had been put through its paces. At least it felt even, and steady, and strong. In fact, it felt indomitable.
“You awake?” Sean’s deep voice crooned from the other end of the bed.
“Almost.”
“I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“When I saw you sitting on the floor of the museum. Backpack open, back to the room, I figured you were a disaster waiting to happen.”
“And now?”
“I’m sure of it.” He let out a short sharp breath, lifted up onto his elbow, the sheet pooling around his waist, arms and chest on display. And what a display. “You have a tattoo.”
“More than one,” Aubrey said.
“Words,” he said, pointing to his side. “I didn’t stop to read them. Was too busy.”
“The fact of which I am most appreciative.”
Sean nodded. “You’re welcome.”
Aubrey pulled down the sheet, and lifted her T-shirt just enough to show the words scrawled across the bottom of her ribs. The shirt she’d managed to keep on the entire time they’d made love, without him making a peep of complaint. Meaning he wasn’t a boob man, or he was a man who took consent seriously. Considering the way he’d moved around her body, she figured it was the latter.
Sean leaned over her to read, “‘Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.’”
“Jack Kerouac.”
He took a “Sean moment” before lifting his eyes to hers. “Apt.”
Aubrey’s smile started behind her ribs. “One of the kitchen staff in the—”
She stopped herself just in time. Feeling all loose and lovely, her brain still a little fuzzy around the edges, she’d been about to say, In the hospital in Copenhagen, which would only bring questions. Leading to answers that would change everything. He’d made love to her as if she was strong. As if she was whole. She wasn’t giving that up for anything.
She went with “—this place I stayed in Copenhagen, was really into quotes. She’d write them on little notes and bring them to me with breakfast. She could hardly speak English, I can’t speak Danish, so I think she found them on Pinterest and copied them out. Some were hilarious.”
“Such as?”
“Ah. ‘You are the gin to my tonic.’ ‘Coffee doesn’t ask me stupid questions in the morning. Be like coffee.’ ‘If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks why is there a light in the fridge?’” I quite liked that one too. Just thought it might be a little long for the space.”
Sean’s smile was indulgent. Delicious. What had she done to deserve ending up in this place with that face? Must have rescued ten, twenty children from a burning building in a previous life.
That’s the good. What did you do to deserve the bad?
Aubrey closed her eyes, squeezed the voice out of her head.
“You said there was more than one,” said Sean. “Tattoo.”
There was. Including one he’d never need to know about. Too much explaining to do there.
That was okay though, right? To keep things from him. It wasn’t as if they were promised. They were…having fun. And tattoos that covered scars did not—on the whole—fit into the fun category.
Opening her eyes, concentrating on that face of his, she lifted a foot to show her ankle, and the dragonfly thereupon. Super fun! “I was sixteen, pretended I was eighteen. My mother nearly had a fit, which was, of course, the point. Last of four kids, you gotta do what you gotta do to get the attention.”
Sean took her foot in hand, pretended to pay the tattoo close attention. All the while his thumb pressed into the soft arch of her foot, making her groan.
Then he pressed his lips to the tattoo, before making his way down her leg. Or was it up her leg?
Whatever.
She closed her eyes, lay back on the bed and let him go up, go down, wherever he damn well pleased.