My Clocking In System

Chapter 23: Eleven Years

DANNY FIRST PERSON POV:

The door clicked shut behind us on the cold and the city.

Her stairs smelled of somebody’s dinner and fresh paint and she was going up them ahead of me two at a time, my hand in hers, her grip tight, not looking back, like if she looked back she’d lose her nerve or I’d lose mine.

I didn’t lose mine. That was the strange thing.

I’d been frightened of this all day, more frightened of her than of any marble lobby, and now that it was happening the fear had gone somewhere quiet and what was left was just want. Old and bigger than I had room for.

Her flat was on the second floor. The landing was small and narrow with a window onto an air-shaft, the kind of communal space that smelled of nothing but other people’s lives. Two doors off it. Hers was the green one.

"It’s a tip," she said over her shoulder, fishing her key out of her coat pocket. "I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t think you’d actually."

The key missed the lock.

She let out a breath that was almost a laugh and was mostly at herself.

"God. Look at me. I’m nervous. I’m never nervous."

"Me too," I said.

"You don’t look it."

"I’ve had practice not looking it."

She got the door open on the second try and I followed her in and pushed it shut behind me.

The flat was small. Warm. Lamplit, because she’d left a lamp on this morning before work and that small fact hit me harder than I expected.

She’d known she was coming home tonight to her own quiet space and put the lamp on to come back to. Fabric everywhere. A sewing machine under the window with a half-made thing still in it.

Her whole secret life laid out in a room. It smelled of her, the same clean cotton and steam-iron and old soap I’d caught at the helmet strap, and coffee that had gone cold hours ago in a cup on the table, and old wool.

She dropped her keys in a bowl by the door. Took off her coat. Hung it on a hook.

Then she turned in the middle of the room to face me.

The last of the joking went out of her face. The half-smile gone. Just Jodie Carter in her own front room, in her own flat, the lamp on the table behind her putting warm light along one side of her face.

"Eleven years," she said quietly.

"I know."

"Don’t make me wait any more of them."

I didn’t.

I crossed the room and I kissed her, and my hands were on her before I told them to be. One on the back of her neck.

One already at her hip, pulling her into me. The door was shut. The city was somewhere outside the window. I wasn’t thinking about money, or doors, or the thing on my phone, or any of it.

There was just her.

She kissed me back with her whole body. Her hands fisting in the front of my jumper. Her hips grinding up against mine.

My cock was already hard from the Vespa, from the pavement, from the whole fucking day, and she felt it against her stomach and she pressed into it. She made a sound against my mouth, low and hungry, a sound that had been waiting eleven years to come out.

Mmh.

I grabbed the hem of her shirt. I didn’t go slow. I couldn’t.

I’d been half-hard since the café and fully hard since the pavement and my hands were moving faster than my brain. I pulled the shirt up over her head and she lifted her arms and it was gone, landing somewhere behind her on the floor.

I’d known the shape of her tits from the café. I had not been ready for the rest of it.

Full and heavy and pale in the lamplight. Pink nipples stiff. The freckles were going further than I’d thought, dusting her collarbones and the tops of her tits and disappearing into the shadow between them.

I hadn’t seen a woman’s tits this close in years. I hadn’t had a woman standing in front of me half-naked and wanting me in so long I’d forgotten what it did to my chest.

Fuck.

Eleven years of wanting and she’s standing in front of me with her tits out and her mouth swollen from kissing me.

I didn’t move for a second. Just looked.

She saw me looking.

"Danny." The half-smile, back at one corner of her mouth. "If you’re going to chicken out a second time, I want a written apology."

"I’m not chickening out."

"Good." She took my wrist. Put my hand on her breast. The soft weight of it filled my palm. Warm. Heavy. Her nipple hard against the centre of my hand. "Then catch up."

I caught up.

I lowered my mouth to her nipple and sucked.

"Ah!" Her back arched hard. Her hand found my hair and gripped. "Yes. Fuck."

I sucked slowly. The full pull of it. Her nipple tightened harder against my tongue. I closed my teeth around it lightly and she gasped, a sharp sound, her stomach contracting against my forearm.

"Mmh. Danny. Harder."

I sucked harder. I cupped her other tit with my hand, rolling the nipple between my thumb and forefinger, pinching, and she was pushing her chest up into my mouth, her breathing gone ragged against the top of my head.

"Don’t stop. Ah. Fuck, don’t stop."

I switched sides. Took the other nipple between my lips and worked it with my tongue. Slow. Deep. Her hand in my hair was tight enough to hurt. Her hips were grinding forward against my thigh, searching for friction.

"I’ve been thinking about this since maths," she said. Breathless. "Since you used to stare at me with that face."

"What face."

"That one. The one you’re making right now. You absolute prat, Danny Flynn. I noticed everything."

I kissed down between her tits. Down her stomach. The muscle there shifted under my mouth when she breathed. I went down with her. To my knees on the rug in front of the sewing table.

I unbuttoned her jeans. Pulled the zip down. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her jeans and her knickers and pulled both down together. She stepped out of them. Kicked them away.

She stood in front of me bare.

I looked up at her from the floor.

Her thighs were trembling. The flare of her hips. The dark blonde curls between her legs. The smell of her hitting me, sweet and sharp and wet, and my cock throbbed in my jeans so hard it hurt.

"Don’t go shy on me now," she said. Looking down at me. Her voice unsteady.

"I’m not shy."

I parted her thighs with my hands. I put my mouth on her pussy.

"AH! God."

She grabbed my shoulders. Her knees buckled. She caught herself against the edge of the sewing table behind her, both hands braced flat on the wood, her hips canted forward into my mouth.

I licked her once, slowly, from the base of her opening up to her clit. The taste of her hit my tongue. Salt and sweet and the sharp tang of a woman who had been wet for an hour. The taste went straight to my cock and I groaned against her.

She was soaking. Dripping. The wet of her was on my chin before I’d been there ten seconds.

I sucked her clit into my mouth.

"Fuck! Danny! Fuck!"

Her hips started moving. Grinding into my mouth. I slid two fingers inside her pussy. She was tight. Hot. Drenched. I curled them forward and found her g-spot, the ridged swollen place inside her, and pressed.

Her hips jerked off the table.

"Oh god, right there, right there, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop."

I worked her with my tongue on her clit and my fingers inside her. Her thighs clamped around my head.

Her hand in my hair pulling so tight my eyes watered. The wet sounds of my mouth on her and my fingers inside her filling the small room. Her moans were getting louder. Less controlled. The bold girl dissolving into something raw.

"Danny. Ah. Ah. I’m going to. I’m. Danny I’m."

Her body went tight. Her thighs locked around my head. Her stomach went rigid under my forearm.

And then it broke.

"DANNY!"