The Lover's Children novel Chapter 58

GEORGIE

When we touch, it is the lightest of contacts. A feather’s touch. A butterfly’s touch. A kiss lighter than the flicker of sunlight on grass. Or water. Or green leaves.

He presses his mouth to mine. Still softly. His warm flesh on mine. And his touch is sweet. So sweet. He slips a hand to my face, his palm on my cheek. The other slides behind my shoulders, glides down to settle at my waist, coaxing me closer.

His lips part, but oh, so slightly, tasting me as I taste him. Electricity sparkles through me, leaving me breathless. Borje kisses me as I have always wanted to be kissed, as I have dreamed of being kissed. He kisses me as though I were the only woman he had ever kissed. As though I were the only woman in the world. As though we were the only two people in the world.

It is euphoric. Ecstatic. Everything stops. Everything in the world stops. There is no one but we two. My head swims. Every detail, every emotion, every sensation is heightened.

Is this me?

Is this really me?

It. Is. Incredible.

If he were the air I breathe, my very oxygen, the moment could not be more intense, more sensual…

More beautiful…

His tongue flicks over my lips, the merest suggestion of what might be to come. There’s no sense of intrusion or invasion. I shudder as his teeth catch my lower lip. He plucks gently at the flesh, then releases it as the hand on my cheek slips around to cup behind my neck. Tightening his hold on me, fingers twining into my hair, he opens his mouth over mine.

I thought I felt his passion before.

I was wrong.

The hand behind me shifts, slipping over my waist and around, gliding upward to settle over my ribs, under my breast but not touching it.

My heart races and my breathing accelerates, as though he were a musician, playing me, some composer penning the score: subito accelerando.

The touch, the caress, the moment, is passionate, utterly sensual, utterly sexual, and yet at no point does Borje touch any part of me that a teenage girl, with Love’s first caress, would think amiss.

Perhaps I moan. Perhaps it is only my breath escaping.

He leads me on a dazzling dance. No, not a dance. A flight. A soaring escape to freedom. It’s intoxicating. Mesmerising. I have never felt so aware. So alive.

Borje breaks away.

And it’s gone. Done.

The kiss that rocked my world…

As I blink open, his gaze is locked with mine. “You still wonder if there is something wrong with you?”

“Um… no. No.” I’m high. Giddy. The utter clarity of a few moments ago has evaporated. Everything is vaguely hazy, fuzzy almost. I’m so hot I can’t think clearly. Nerves jabbering, heart hammering, the blood fizzes through my veins, yammers behind my ears.

What just happened?

Borje still holds me, hands resting loosely at my waist and shoulders. “So, Georgie…” his voice is soft. “… Where do we go from here?”

*****

KLEMPNER

His hand in hers, Borje leads Georgie to a bench, and the pair sit, loosely embraced, heads close, talking quietly.

Beside me, Mitch Hmmms. “Now that's a kiss...”

I can’t disagree.

“… You think that’s a man who’s not seriously interested?”

“Perhaps I was wrong.”

“I don’t think Georgie needs your protection. Not from Borje.”

*****

BORJE

The kiss still warm on my lips, I keep my hold loose on this beautiful but bewildered woman.

Her eyes, as dark as her father’s, hold something that I’ve never seen in his: some sense of turmoil. An utter tumult of the emotions.

Georgie’s long dark hair breaks loose in the slight breeze and she finger-combs it back into order, then winds a long lock around her fingers. “I’ve never been kissed like that before.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. I’d hate to think I had competition.”

The eyes rise to mine, pits of woe and tragedy. “No. There’s no competition…” She swallows hard… “No one stays with me long.” The eyes sheen, then fill, then fall.

Is all my good work of the last few minutes about to be undone?

Fuck that…

I pinch her chin, shaking her head gently one way, then the other. “I will. I’ll stay with you. If you want me.”

She nods. “I do. I do want you to.”

“Well, then.” She’s shivering. I’m not sure if it’s arousal, or nerves, or chill. Or all three. But we need to be somewhere warmer. “How about a nightcap?”

Her smile grows like some unfurling blossom. “I’d like that.”

*****

PAT

A knock from the front door.

Damn…

Who the hell’s that?

The knock repeats.

Ah, fuck it…

And I’m about to go answer when… Michael’s voice. “I’ll get it.”

Footsteps down the hall…

Michael again. “Hi. Were we expecting you?”

Then another voice…

More footsteps, followed by Michael’s head poking around the door. “James, a visitor for you.”

“Oh? Who is it?”

But before he can answer, a figure enters behind him: tall, Scandinavian-blond, well-dressed and well-scrubbed. “Good evening, James.”

“Borje…” I start to rise from my seat, swinging my leg down, then curse under my breath as a spiteful little nip of pain skitters up my thigh. A slow breath, then, “Georgie's not here. So far as I know she's in the hotel.”

He gestures me down. “James, please don’t get up. And it’s you I want to see. If you have a few minutes, I’d like a word.”

“Oh? What about?”

He pauses, glancing to Michael.

Michael dithers, then, “I’ll, um… I’ll catch you in a while.” He exits, closing the door quietly behind himself.

I wave Georgie’s beau to the settee. “You’d better sit down.”

Borje takes a seat, tugging his trousers up at the knee, a reflexive movement I’m sure he doesn’t even realise he’s making. Leaning back, casual, he drapes an arm over the back of the couch.

I sit back myself, easing my leg back onto the stool, letting out air as the discomfort subsides. “So, Borje, what can I do for you?”

He speaks slowly, the words measured and deliberate. “You’re aware, of course, that I’ve been seeing Georgie?”

Resisting the impulse to growl, “I’m aware of that, yes. For several months, in fact.”

Another pause. Borje measures me with his eye. “James, you’re not quite friendly to me over this, are you?”