Page 76 of Crazy Spooky Love
He presses a button and the sunroof slides back, revealing thestars, then he flicks his seat down to almost horizontal. He nods at me to do the same with mine.
I know. Iknow.Yet still I reach down the side of my seat to find the handle.
“It’s toward the back,” he says.
I feel around but can’t find it. “Where?”
He sighs and leans across me, his face unexpectedly close to mine. “Let me help,” he says.
His mouth is so close, I can taste him, and my nipples spring up when his chest brushes mine, and then my seat jerks flat and he’s a foot away, looking down at me against a star-studded sky. His eyes drop to my clearly-not-wearing-a-bra chest and then back up to my face, and we both swallow hard.
This is the moment. The one where I call a halt to things, where I tell him to take me and my Haribos back to Chapelwick. He bites his plump bottom lip, and the look in his eyes is so blatantly filthy, I forget the Haribos and lift my T-shirt over my head instead.
“Holy fuck,” he breathes, yanking his shirt buttons open as he leans down and takes one of my nipples inside the heat of his mouth.
I stare at the stars and gasp, then shove his shirt off his rock-star shoulders until we’re both naked from the waist up. His hands are all over me, stroking, cupping, and I explore the cowboy-worthy bunched muscles of his back. He pushes his fingers into my hair and kisses me like he’d die for me, and I hook my leg around his thigh and kiss him back like he’s the Haribo king.
He lifts his head and looks me in the eyes as he slides his hand down the front of my pj’s, his eyes widening when he realizes I’m not wearing anything underneath them. He shakes his head, laughing raggedly under his breath.
“I’ll never get over this,” he says.
The eye-sex is almost as hot as what he’s doing with his fingers. He’s otherwise still, intentionally focusing all of our attention on what’s happening between my legs.
“What do you fantasize about, Melody?” he says, dropping barely there kisses against my temple, my cheekbones, my jaw.
“Superheroes,” I whisper-gasp as he pushes his fingers insideme.
“I fantasize about you,” he says. “I always start with other women—you wouldn’t believe how hot Margot Robbie is for me—but it’s always you at the end.”
His thumb draws circles, and he bites my bottom lip, and honest to God, I think I’m going to die of pleasure. My whole body is as taut as an elastic band, and I want him in a way that scares me stupid.
“Not enough,” I pant.
The answering animal noise he makes in his throat is almost enough on its own, and then he contorts himself round to kiss my stomach and buries his face between my thighs. I reach down and push my fingers into the back of his hair and screw my eyes tight shut, because I’m losing it before he even does anything. His hot breath on my inner thigh, the intimacy of his tongue, the upward drift of his hand to find my nipple as if my body is a map only he understands how to read. He knows all of my secret roads and shortcuts, and Jesus God, he’s just driven me straight off a cliff edge into a fathomless lake of bone-shaking bliss. I think I might have just screamed his name at the moon, and now he’s kissing my clitoris in a slow, reverential way that probably means we’re actually married in several countries around the world.
I don’t slam back to earth with a thud. He drags his open mouth up my stomach, my rib cage, his kiss against the space between my collarbones, showing me the kind of care that has me reaching for the zip on his trousers.
“Tell me your fantasy again,” he whispers, pressing his forehead on mine, shutting his eyes when my hand finds its way inside his boxers and closes around him. Our mouths rest together, his breath and mine, a kiss so slow and drenched in intimacy that I can taste myself on his lips.
“Superheroes,” I say, enjoying the effect I’m having on him. He’s hard and struggling to keep himself in check, and he pauses for a second to pull a condom from his wallet in the central console.
“I’ll always protect you,” he says.
I know it’s a pun, a play on words, but they’re just the kind ofwords that tick my superhero boxes and I spread my legs to let him settle as best he can in the confines of the car. It’s awkward and he’s breathing hard, and I almost come again when his knuckles press into me as he reaches between us to put the condom on. He doesn’t take it slow, and I don’t want him to. I know for a fact that he’s not thinking about Margot Robbie, because he’s saying my name like a goddam prayer as he slams into me. I’ve never been a double-orgasm kind of a gal before. My body is generally satisfied with one and would prefer a Mars bar chaser, but I feel that delicious glitter chasing wild through my veins again and I’m totally here forit.
“I’d choose you over Haribos,” I say, and he almost laughs at the same time as he comes, and the sight of him undone is enough to shake that violent second orgasm out of me too. In that moment, I don’t see ghosts. I see stars.
Chapter
Twenty-one
“I was only joking about the gherkins,” Artie says bright and early the next morning, stashing his lunch in the cooler Marina staggered in with five minutes ago. She’s approached the idea of a road trip like a true Italian: food first. There’s enough food in there to throw a street party when we get to Hull.
“Where’s Lestat?” She checks around the floor for the dog.
“I’ve just settled him down in Mum’s kitchen with his bed, his bowl, and a note saying I’ll pick him up tonight. I was too chicken to ask them to babysit in advance in case they said no and we had to bring him with us.”
I go through my rucksack one last time. Artie’s mum has come up trumps on the evidence side of things; he arrived this morning armed with a clutch of photocopied birth certificates, printed photos, and newspaper details from the time. I haven’t had time to go through it all but it’s more than I could have hoped for; I can only pray Isaac’s grandson is convinced too.
