AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes.”
“You’re not, but don’t worry. That’s what tonight’s all about: unburdening, sharing. Women together, secure in our own company.”
It sounded like something that would have made Justin stick his fingers down his throat, and I had to concur, though by the end of the experience I was more irritated than bilious. I stormed back up the stairs a couple of hours later. Sun and Holly had urged me to go to bed. They would put away all the food things and clean up the kitchen. Talk about me, more like.
Outside Will’s door, annoyance intensified into something positively visceral. I wanted to shout at him, to throw things around, to shock him how he’d shocked me. To be, in short, totally obnoxious. My hand turned the handle, but… I had no right. He hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I didn’t own Will.
Shutting my eyes summoned an image of a square black crossroads. I could either go through this door, or go upstairs and talk to Aleks. Both wouldn’t happen. I didn’t see why not. But my anger was senseless. I was being stupid.
I took the stone steps two at a time.
His door was open, and he smiled. “Look at you,” he said, touching my hair as I stood in his glow. There was a slightly bemused look on his face, and a quick glance in the wall mirror showed why.
The glass itself was struck dumb by the sight. My hair was bedraggled and wild, my face darkened by smoke. Tears had cut little trails of cleaner skin down my dirty cheeks. “I’m going to have a shower,” I said, making for the door.
“No.” He held me back, gently as if I might break or scare. “Stay. I will make you a bath. You are cold. Come, you will like; there are bubbles,” he said as if this sealed the deal. “While you bathe, I will go downstairs and make hot chocolate. You like this also.”
It was comforting to be cajoled by Aleks. I sat on the side of the bath as he prepared it. He then left on his chocolate-making mission, and I deposited my clothes on the floor and sank into the almost unbearable heat of the water.
I used his face cloth and his shampoo and then borrowed a T-shirt and a pair of trunk-style underpants.
“Everything else smells of smoke,” I explained, when he returned. “It was either this or go up to my room and get—”
“No, you did completely the right thing, but you still need socks. Come sit.”
Bossed around again, I let him put thick warm-up socks on my feet as I sat on the bed. He tucked the blankets round me and handed me a mug, all with a terribly serious expression. He got into his side of the bed. We sat about a foot apart, hands firmly on the hot mugs of chocolate.
“It’s good,” I said. “You make it so much better than I do.”
“Is very difficult. The kitchen was full of bad-tempered people.”
“Holly and Sun?”
“Yes. Holly she say, ‘Two cups?’ So, I explain you are cold. ‘And you’ve taken it upon yourself to warm her up,’ she says. Tone is very judging.”
“Welcome to my evening.”
“This is how they were? They are knowing of our relationship?”
“Holly did. Then they compared notes.”
It had been excruciating. Sun had encouraged me to speak about the snowy morning in the circle with Will. I’d described how we had both wanted to feel the sun on our skin, and that we’d hugged in a half-naked state. Holly had been askance, and all, ‘I thought you were still smitten with Aleks?’ Cue Sun’s turn to be agog.
My chocolate was finished. Only a thick dark cream remained. The white china touched the polished wood of the bedside cabinet with a muffled clink. I heard him carry out the same action at the other side of the bed. I held on to the handle of the cup for a second, giving myself time to note my senses enliven like they had that day on the train. I was aware of the cold hard china, the soft warm blankets, his scent, the warmth of his body so near mine… I turned.
Our teeth clashed in the force of the kiss. I climbed onto him, hands feverish under his clothes.
“Angel, we can take it slow. We hold each other and sleep only, tonight. I have miss this so. Our closeness. Our love.”
A negative sound hummed in the back of my throat as I shook my head in desperation. “I need you, Aleks. I need you so much. I physically ache for you, every morning. I never remember what’s happened at first.” A thought, a realisation, and I was angry. “I was never like this before. You did this to me, you made me need you, need sex.”
“No,” he said, taking hold of my hands. “I think, with one another, we have found our true natures. I have walked around my whole life not knowing who I am, who I could be.” He linked his fingers through mine. “And you could have come to me at any time. For anything. You must know this.”
I kissed his mouth, and his neck, and then down a shoulder, having succeeded in removing his T-shirt, but he was still determined to talk.
“You are getting the clothes? The thermals?”
“I knew they were from you.”
