Page 68 of Slow Burn Summer

He slid his hands into her hair and lowered his mouth onto hers, achingly slow and sexy. He said her name, and he let his tongue slide over hers, and he tipped her head back and pressed her body into the sofa with the weight of his own. She closed her eyes when his mouth moved over her neck, her hair bunched in his hands. And then he straightened and stroked his thumb over her lower lip, watching her eyes.

“Or we could just stay here,” he said.

She reached for the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, and he finished the job and dragged it over his head. “Let’s do that,” she said, swallowing hard because he was a lot without his top on.

He sucked in a breath when she stroked a hand down his chest, the smoothness of his stomach, and she gasped when he reached for her and pulled her on top of him as he lay down.

He dragged her dress down to her waist, exposing her breasts, making her gasp again and cover her face with her hands. Hereached up and moved her hands away, holding on to them as he looked at her body and then slowly back up to her eyes.

“Don’t hide from me,” he said.

She shifted against him and enjoyed the way his body responded, the lift of his hips, the groan in his throat. It was heady to be wanted with such blatant need.

He let go of her hands to hold her breasts, the intimacy of his thumbs on her nipples making her squeeze her eyes shut. She opened them wide again when he reached down and rucked her dress up her thighs.

She bent close to him, searching for the press of his skin against hers, sucking in a breath of almost panic-desire when his hand slid between her legs, because she’d never felt such out-of-control intensity before. His mouth found hers, urgent now as he rolled her underneath him and looked down at her with undisguised lust, dragging his mouth over her skin in a way that melted her bones.

He moaned ragged in his throat when she reached between them to unbutton his jeans, her eyes staring into his soulful ones, his hands pulling her underwear down her hips until they were both naked and breathless. He pushed her knee outward with his own, and she made space for him between her thighs and wrapped her arms around his back. He stopped to give them both time to be in the moment, then held her jaw and kissed her with sudden gentleness as he pushed his hips down.

“Oh my God, Charlie,” she whispered, overwhelmed by the shock and pleasure and relief of him inside her. “I’m so glad I didn’t die without having sex with you.”

He half laughed, half moaned, thrusting deeper, harder. “Don’t tell me you’re going to start one of your speeches,” he said, and she wrapped her legs around his thighs and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

“I can’t remember any words,” she whispered as he smoothed her damp hair from her face, his other hand between her legs. He watched her eyes, knowing when it was too much, sliding his fingers into her mouth when she stroked her hand down over his ass and pulled him over the edge with her.

They stilled afterward, hearts banging, his head on her chest. She held him to her, her fingers smoothing his hair.

“She wrote that it felt as if they’d danced, and been to the movies, and he’d given her all of the flowers,” she whispered.

He moved so she was in the crook of his shoulder and wrapped his arms around her, and she closed her eyes and slept.

36

They packed their bags onSunday afternoon and left the apartment exactly as they’d found it, except for one new addition. The midnight-blue bowl with lava-orange marbling, now sitting in pride of place on the coffee table beside the matching vase in the lounge. It was the closest Charlie could get to giving a birthday gift to his father.

They sat side by side on a bench beside the river, car loaded ready to go, neither of them sure what to say. As they’d turned the key in the lock of the apartment, the door inside Kate’s head had cracked open under the weight of reality piled against the other side of it.

He turned to her with a quiet sigh. “Kate…”

She put just enough space between them to allow for the conversation they needed to have. “Can I go first?” she said. “The thing about a deleted scene is that it isn’t supposed to knock on to the main story, is it? It sits between the pages unseen, informing the story in ways no one else can know.”

He watched her and waited for her to go on.

“We’re grown-ups with crazy lives. Responsibilities, people who are relying on us. Can you imagine what would happen if we rolled back into London now and decided to make this, us, part of the plot?”

“I had the KISS acronym framed on my office wall in L.A.,” he said. “Keep it simple, stupid. It’s an old military saying, but it works for script writing too. Don’t overcomplicate things. Don’t make your characters TSTL.” A resigned half smile ghosted his lips. “Too stupid to live,” he explained. “Don’t have them run upstairs to escape danger instead of out the door.”

“I hate it when that happens,” she said. “It makes me want to throw things at the screen.”

They fell silent, watching a family of ducks emerge from the riverbank.

“It wasn’t stupid to come here,” he said.

“But it would be stupid to let it define the story when we leave,” she said.

“There’s something else.” He turned his mobile over in his hands, looking at it. “I had a text last night, while you were sleeping.”

He’d been quiet over breakfast. She’d assumed he was recalibrating, as she was, because they needed to press “reset,” but perhaps there was more to it. She waited, knowing he had something else to say.

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