Page 73 of A Manny for Christmas

Sweet, practical, non-creepy, and definitely wise. I eye his bulge with interest. ‘I can work with that,’ I tell him. ‘Give me two minutes.’

I complete tooth-brushing and makeup-removing and hair-untying in a time that must be a new personal best. As I idle against the doorway of the ensuite in just my bra and jeans, I admire the view.

The book is gone.

The glasses are gone.

The briefs are gone.

He’s sitting up in my bed, naked. Already hard. The duvet’s pushed back. He pats the mattress.

‘Lose the clothes and come here.’ His voice is quiet, yet there’s no mistaking the command.

I should be more self-conscious. After all, it’s been twelve years and two pregnancies since I was in a relationship with Max, but I’m too turned on, too full of anticipation, to worry about how many new stretch marks I’ve cultivated over the past decade-and-a-half.

His monster of an erection tells me there’s no cause for concern.

As does the fist his hand is now making on the mattress.

The smiling, bookish man who welcomed me in his reading specs is gone.

And my breath hitches.

* * *

MAX

Molly slides her jeans down over her hips and bends to yank them and her socks off. When she straightens up, her hair is fucking everywhere, a golden cloud that settles in slow motion to brush the top of her bum and skim over her shoulders and graze her breasts in a way that must tease her already-hard nipples, if only a little.

I grit my teeth as she reaches behind her, through that endless curtain of hair, and unclasps her bra. As she slides it off, I drink her in as if I’m seeing her for the first time in fifteen years, or maybe ever, rather than for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Every single time with her feels new.

I’m just as dumbfounded when she does it now as I was last night, when I got her topless in the kitchen.

‘Fuck,’ I say on a low growl, jaw working, my famished eyes roving over her, my fisted hand growing white-knuckled on the bed next to me. It’s no overstatement to say I have thought about getting Molly to myself all. Fucking. Day.

‘Yes please,’ she says with a saucy smile as she reaches behind her, parting that blessed curtain of hair in two and languidly dragging each half over a breast, Lady Godiva-style. Or maybe the look is more Daenerys Targaryen. I do know that I couldn’t watch any ofGame of Throneswithout getting hard in recent years, and it wasn’t only Emilia Clark’s obvious charms that was doing it for me.

It was the memory of Mol naked and dressed only in her own long, wheat-coloured locks, like some fucking Medieval warrior queen waiting for me to despoil her that had my blood flowing south so fast it left me light-headed.

She hooks her thumb through the sides of her sexy little lace pants and tugs them down before standing.

Just hair and skin.

Exactly the way I like her.

Her hair runs in silky, regular kinks the whole way down, a function of having been up in intricate plaits all day. One of her perfect pink nipples pokes through tantalisingly; the other is hidden. I lick my lips, instantly imagining spreading the hair. Uncovering her nipple. Taking it in my mouth. Her twin drapes draw my line of sight straight down from those pink lips of hers to creamy white skin and the perfect hollow of her bellybutton and—

Jesus fuck.

Where her mound was last night, a neat landing strip now helpfully points the way to the exact spot I’m desperate to get my hands on. My mouth on.

I raise a questioning eyebrow.

She smirks. ‘I begged them to squeeze me in for an emergency wax at the Hay Barn spa earlier. I had to bribe them with banana bread.’

‘Did you now.’

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