Page 88 of Untether

His smile is glorious then. He drops his forehead to mine. ‘Me. Fucking. Too,’ he whispers, and then he kisses me. It’s slow and deep and intimate and perfect.

‘I’m not claiming to be the expert between us on relationships,’ he says, pulling away from our kiss but keeping his hands on my face. ‘You’ve been married, I haven’t.’

‘After what I told you last night, I think we can agree I’m far from an expert either,’ I say drily.

‘Fair. But, as far as I can tell, everything we’ve just admitted to is as good a fucking start as any. We click. The sex is off the charts. We can’t get enough of each other. We make each other happy, don’t we? So far, anyway?’

I nod. ‘We do.’

‘Well I hate to tell you, sweetheart, but all the other shit is stuff we can work out in good time. It doesn’t have to feel like falling off a cliff—we can take it day by day. But if wewantmore of each other, it sounds like you’d better agree to be my girlfriend like a good fucking girl so we canhavemore of each other. What do you think?’

‘I think that sounds… sensible,’ I say slowly. ‘It sounds good.’

I’m still computing in real time, but this man and his proximity and his touch and his words and his eyes are conspiring to spin me into a surreal vortex of happiness and hope. Could this really be achievable? Could we really pull this off, Cal and me? This unlikely, energising, fledgling relationship?

‘Promising start,’ he says, shimmying down the bed and tugging me on top of him. ‘We’ll get there. I’ll just have to overachieve on being a boyfriend like I overachieve at sex. I said it to myself when you first walked into Alchemy. You’re a tough fucking customer.’

57

CAL

‘You have a great voice,’ Aida tells me as I lather up her hair in my cavernous shower.

I pause my exuberant rendition ofJerusalem.The acoustics in here are excellent, and I’m slightly addicted to the added richness the echo gives my decent baritone. ‘Why, thank you. I love a good hymn. Not that this is a hymn.’

‘It’s not?’ She tilts her head to one side so I can massage the nape of her neck.

‘Nope. It’s actually considered pretty blasphemous by a lot of Catholics. The priests would never have let us sing it at school, which is probably why every school mate of mine has had it at their wedding.’

She laughs. ‘Such rebels.’

‘Yeah.Jerusalemand kinky sex were our main ways of acting out. Shocking.’

‘Why is it blasphemous?’

‘I think because Blake based the poem on some bullshit legend made up by monks in Glastonbury about Jesus having visited Somerset when he was a kid. It was all a loadof bollocks to make their mead, or ale, or whatever the fuck they were brewing, seem more authentic, basically.’

She giggles. ‘Jesus at Glastonbury is a pretty trippy visual. And who knew medieval monks were into mis-selling?’

‘Right? Dodgy fuckers. Anyway, Blake ran with it, and Parry put it to music, and it’s a fucking good tune.’ I angle her head back with my thumbs on her jaw so I can rinse her hair and resume my singing, rolling therofbringwith gusto.

‘Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire.’

‘I don’t think you need any arrows of desire,’ she points out.

‘You’remy arrow of desire. You hit me, good and proper, and I’m completely fucked.’ I smile down at her as I gently coax my fingers through her hair, washing out the last of the shampoo.

She smiles back at me, catlike. ‘You’re adorable.’

‘I am. When do I get to meet your kids? Now that I’m your boyfriend.’

‘Funny,’ she says, ‘I recall you saying you wanted to audition to be my boyfriend, but Idon’trecall me saying you’d passed.’

Tough fucking customer, this one. Aida Russell isn’t the only eye-roller in town. I give her one of my best. ‘Was that not an excellent breakfast in bed?’

‘It was.’

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