The Personal Shopper (50 page)

‘Oh!’

Annie didn’t know what to say next, so she leaned forward to press her lips against his; her hands moved to the small of his back
and held him tightly as his mouth
parted.
She moved her tongue against his and their
teeth touched just slightly. His mouth pushed at hers and she felt the hungry tingle start to buzz through her body.

‘Does kissing help?’ she broke off to ask.

‘Think so,’ he replied
.

She pull
ed his shirt loose
and put her co
ol fingertips against his skin, feeling him goose-pimple at her touch.

He was holding her chin in his hands and kissing down her neck. Strands of
his hair were tickling her skin
and shivers were travelling over her shoulders and down her a
rms. Gently, he pushed her blouse
and bra strap away so he could kiss the top of her shoulders.

She loosened her arm from the strap and the sleeve so that the top of her breast was visible now.

Putting his nose against the fold of her arm, he kissed her there. His hand drew the fabric over her nipple, brushing past the hardening tip on the way.

Everywhere he touched or str
oked or brushed against was tingling, desperate to be touched
by him again.

Unbuttoning his shirt as quickly as she could, she pulled his warm body against hers.

They were both topless and kissing frantically at mouths, nipples, necks and shoulders, feeling e
ach other over and over
.

When her hands moved to undo
his belt buckle, his hands took hold of
hers, holding them still.

‘I
don’t want you to rush into—’
he began.

‘Well I do,’ she
said, giving the belt a vigorous tug.

‘Annie!
’ His hands held on to hers
.

‘Ed! Please!’ She began to rub against the obvious swelling underneath the fabric of his trousers, causing him to groan against her ear.

‘Ed,’ she bega
n, ‘do you have any idea how much I’d like to do this? How much I really, really need to do this?
’ She’d found the fly buttons buried in the fabric below the belt buckle and her finge
rtips were busy working
them
loose
.

‘
I
. W
ant
. You,’ she told him, ‘C’mon . . . please.’

The first button was undone, then the second, her fingers were already inside his trousers, hi
s teeth were biting
at her shoulder, but his back was arched away from her.

‘Ed,’ she said into his hair, ‘my husband died when I was thi
rty-two, I’ve
so much lost time
to make up
. . . you’ve no idea . . .’

The third button sprang open and she could fit her hand in now, move past the thin material of his boxers and feel for him. Firmly, insistently touch him, causing the bite against her shoulder to intensify.

‘I’m no
t letting you get away.
I can’t let you
 
.
 
. .’

His
back moved in no
w, pushing
his erection in towards her. His warm, bare arms closed in round her and she was squashed up against him.

He’d final
ly agreed to go with the flow. So t
hen they were busy: stripping off their clothes as quickly as they could.

He pushed her skirt up and in the following moments he transformed in Annie’s mind from the person she’d thought he was into someone much more interesting.

Before, she’d found him boyish, chaotic, incapable and needy . . . but no, no, no, it turned out he was someone much more grown up than that. Much more insistent and yet tender, much more practised and yet still so very, very kind.

In his every move against her and with her was the fine balance of intention and question. As if he were asking her over and over again, but without words: I’m going to do this, I’m going to go here, and move in here . . . but only if it’s OK. Is this OK? Is this what you want? Yes? And this too?

They took off every shred of clothing, although she’d thought she didn’t want to be so exposed to him. She moved her hands away and let him kiss her all the way down her stomach until he was kneeling in front of her and his tongue was where she’d thought she wouldn’t want him yet.

She had to let him keep on moving and touching and
 
moving there
until she felt the
rush build and knew she was going to come when she hadn’t meant to. Not at all,
she’d wanted to keep that to herself, in reserve. Hold back from him. But he hadn’t let her. He wan
ted all of her, every inch
, and deep into her mind too.

Shuddering over him
, hands sinking into his
hair, she now wanted to know all about him, everything, every little past moment, kink and detail, and definitely all about his past lovers.

‘You’re very interesting to me . . . do you know that?’ she told him with the edge of her voice.

His response was to sweep all the jumble of stuff off his bed so they could fall down on top of it together.

Tangling into him,
she sniffed at his armpits.
She’d forgotten how delicious the smell of male sweat was . . .

It hit the back of her throat and made her feel warm, dizzy and turned on. She buried her nose right against him, making him release a throaty laugh.

S
he sat on top of him and
took him inside as they looked at each other with their eyes wide open, still full of surprise.

Afterwards, she lay
stretched out on the bed beside him, utterly naked, with unselfconscious stubble on her upflung armpit, and remembered how glorious sex could be, because she’d been in serious danger of forgetting.

A long, deep silence followed.

He tucked her in under his arm and then they lay side by side looking at the ceiling, not wanting to break the silence.

But Annie couldn’t resist lifting her head and leaning over to kiss him again and the kiss broke the spell.

He smiled broadly, crinkling the skin round his eyes, and told her: ‘Parent–teacher relat
ionship . . .
really
, really overstepped
this time.’

‘Did you know you liked me?’ she asked him, feeling with her hand for his and running her fingers across it. It was a broad hand with big thumb joints and fingertips hardened with guitar playing, not that this had roughened his touch in the slightest.

‘Did I know I liked you? Let me see . . .’ Ed began, eyes fixed on the ceiling, a fresh smile on his face, ‘I’ve considered taking up smoking for the first time in five years, I’m playing Elvis ballads till two in the morning, not to mention “My funny Valentine”, I can’t think about anything else except your face and the way you flick your ponytail and walk very, very fast and call everyone around you “babes” . . . yes, I think we can safely say I knew I liked you . . . but you’ – he put his finger on the tip of her nose – ‘you didn’t know you liked me, did you?’

‘I liked you, Ed,’ she told him, running her hand across his stomach. ‘I just hadn’t realized until today that I fancied the pants off you.’

‘What about that kiss?’ he wanted to know. ‘Before, on your stairwell. The one I’ve been thinking about maybe ten, twenty times an hour ever since.’

She let out a shriek of laughter at this then told him cheekily: ‘I put that one down to hunger. I was on a detox that week, it can have strange effects.’

They turned, rolled into one another and began to kiss again.

‘It’s after two p.m.,’ she told him, raising her arm to catch a glimpse of her watch behind his head.

‘You’re going to be very late,’ he warned her. ‘Better phone Lana, tell her to walk over here with Owen very, very slowly.’ He was licking at her again.

She put her hands against his cheeks and pulled his face up to look into it properly: ‘Do I really know y
ou?’ she asked him. ‘You seem
different in bed.’

‘Do I?’ he asked.

‘Yeah
,’ she nodded. ‘But I like you. I do, definitely, like you.’

After the second time came not a spellbound silence, but tears.

Annie curled away from Ed in the bed and couldn’t stop herself from crying.

‘What’s the matter?’ He leaned over her, stroking her arm, desperately concerned.

‘Please don’t go away now,’ she heard herself say,
 
although she hated how small and sad her voice sounded. ‘Don’t leave me now . . . You’re going to be away for ages and what if something happens?’

What was she saying? Suddenly, she was going to pieces! She wanted to stop herself but instead, found she was wailing, ‘What if I lose you too?’

But Ed’s arm was around her, holding her together through this, just as it had done before. What was it about this man? Without ever asking, he seemed to bring her defences down every time.

He got to her. Got through to her. Connected. Got past the shell she’d built tightly around herself and saw how she really was. Drew the inner Annie out and made love to her. In a way no-one had since Roddy. That’s why it felt so breathtaking. So private and close. So real.

‘I’m away for four and a half months,’ he was telling her gently, kissing her hair. ‘I’ve always wanted to do this trip and I think I should. I think it’s good . . . for . . . us.’ He said the word as lightly as possible, hardly daring to use it. ‘You shouldn’t be rushed into anything, Annie,’ he said and tightened his grip on her. ‘You should take things very slowly. ‘I’ll come back and visit you at half-term,’ he added. ‘That’s just ten weeks away. No time, no time at all. You can come out and see me . . . if you want to.’

‘But I’ll miss you . . . we’ll miss you so much.’ She was still crying. Still feeling great confusion about why she suddenly cared so very much about this man. This morning she’d have waved him off happily at the airport: now she felt prepared to lie down in front of the plane.

He brushed her tears carefully away and held her close for several long, quiet minutes. Then he got down from the bed and went round the room retrieving her clothes.

‘Time to get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Come on – I want to show you where Owen and Lana can sleep, before they get back here.’

‘I’ve already planned it,’ Annie told him as she pulled on her clothes and tried to sound brighter than she felt. ‘Owen and I will share your room, Lana can have a sofa bed in the sitting room.’

‘No, no,’ Ed told her. ‘There’s some space upstairs.’

‘Oh.’

This was obviously one of those wonky conversions where neighbours had done deals in the past and a cupboard full of stairs would lead to a stairwell converted into a poky little room.

Once they were both in their clothes, Ed un-shyly led her by the hand to a door in the sitting room: the cupboard full of stairs, as she’d guessed.

He opened the door and a stone staircase, lit by a window from above, was in front of them.

‘This connected the basement kitchen to the dining room, back in ye olde days,’ he explained.