End With A Bang (Slap/Bang Duet #2)

15. Talk

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Talk

“Keep quiet.”

That was easier said than done.

“Bring your knees to your chest.”

She raised her knees and felt her come spill down her crack.

“Let me in, nice and deep.”

She bit her lip, and let out a squeak of a moan.

“Can’t even help it, can you?” Sever gruffed, “You better pray he doesn’t wake up.”

Ivy peeked out from under the covers at the bedroom wall. The noisy fan was still running in the living room, but was that enough to mask the sound?

“What would you do if he found us like this?”

She closed her eyes, dropped her head back.

“If he found me fucking you in your married bed?”

Bedsheets shrouding her quivering lips, she gasped.

“Would you stop me? Or would you let me finish?”

She huffed into her duvet.

His breath coming faster and stronger, he asked, “If I touched your spot while he’s watching, slack-jawed, would you thrash in my arms and come?”

Oh, God... Probably. She whimpered.

“I think you would, baby.”

Inhaling deep, she whispered, “Make me.”

“Oh, I will,” he promised through clenched teeth, “You know I will.”

Ivy rolled her hips in circles, arched and bowed. “ Kyah ... Keep talking.”

“...you as close as I am?”

“Closer.”

“Prove it,” he said in French. “Come on my cock while your idiot husband sleeps in the next room.”

With a muffled cry, Ivy stiffened, convulsed, and finally went slack.

Remember when there were lines you wouldn’t cross?, she pondered as she caught her breath. Now you’ll do anything for a good toe-curl.

She wiped her slippery hand on her sheets, found the phone she’d lost in the commotion and put it to her ear to whisper, “Don’t call him names.”

Sever chuckled, also out of breath. “Sorry.”

She burrowed further under the duvet, touching the sheet above her as if it was his skin. “Did you come?”

“Did I ever.” He exhaled. “Nice way to start my day.”

Day? Right, she almost forgot. He was in London. She checked her phone display. 1:30am; seriously past her bedtime. With a smile, she said, “How’s the weather?”

“Cats and dogs.”

She was so thirsty. “I hope you brought a strong umbrella. Or a hard hat.”

“Got a trampoline hat. Little buggers bounce right off.”

A husky laugh escaped her throat. “That works, too.”

Wistful, he said, “Wish you were here.”

She imagined him showing her his childhood haunts and splashing through puddles in big, yellow galoshes. “Next time.”

“Any time.”

Sliding sweat-pasted tresses out of her face, she said, “I should sleep.”

“I should wake.”

“‘kay. G’night,” she said, and amended, “Morning. G’mornight.”

“Good mornight, ma tigresse . Call me later?”

“Mmhm,” she said, nestling into her cozy pillow, then bade goodbye with: “I...” Tongue-tip frozen on the roof of her mouth, forming an L sound, her eyes bugged. Whoa, sleepy brain. Where do you think you’re going?

Gently, he prodded, “You...?”

“I will,” she said, revising that rogue sentence of doom. “I will call you later.”

Mercifully, he didn’t press. “Sleep tight, tigresse . Fais de beaux rêves. ” Sweet dreams.

“That’s your name backwards. Rêves .”

“So it is,” he said.

“That’s kind of cool, ‘Dreams’.”

“Well, it’s backwards, so.”

She smiled. “Mm. Nightmares. You can be both, so that tracks.”

His voice was nearly a whisper, “Am I a dream?”

I hope not. “You’re too real.”

He didn’t say anything. She knew she should end the call, but then she’d be alone with her guilt... and that was always depressing. “Where’s your first meeting?”

“At my hotel, just across the river.”

“Okay. Be careful of the bridge.”

“Bridge?”

“London Bridge. I don’t think it’s very stable.”

He humored her with, “You do hear about it falling down.”

“Yeah. A lot. So,” she let her eyes close again, “careful of the bridge, and the animal cracker rain... and oh, Jack the Ripper. Don’t go anywhere with him.”

“I don’t believe I’m his type, but I’ll try to steer clear.”

“No time machines, okay? No phone booths... with the… bumpy robots...”

“Baby,” he said, matching her dreamy tone, “you’re falling asleep.”

“Mm.” With a grin, she roused momentarily to say, “I love your voice. Tell me a story.”

She didn’t hear a reply, so she said, “Hello?”

He cleared his throat. “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a little boy named... Guillaume.”

“Hmm.”

“No similarities to any persons living or dead.”

“‘Course not,” she said.

“There was only one thing Guillaume wanted in all the world...”

“A golden ticket?”

“A pencil.”

“A pencil? Lame.”

“Not just any pencil. A magic pencil,” he said, “that could erase and rewrite all that ever was, all that is, and all there’ll ever be.”

Oh. Wow. “Wait. Tell me this when I’m awake.”

“This is a bedtime story, love. I’ll be very cross if you stay awake.”

The fact that he couldn’t see her coquettish smile didn’t stop her from making one.

“‘Only fifty-nine pence’, said the advertisement in the comic book, ‘and you can draw yourself a better life’.” Sever sounded as if he was moving around, getting dressed as he spoke. “Guillaume wanted this very much, but he hadn’t any money. So every night, he took one penny from his mother’s purse, and hid it in an old sock inside a floorboard under his bed.”

He’d paused, probably to check if she’d fallen asleep. “Keep going.”

“He worried that she’d find it somehow,” he continued, “but she never did. Seventy-one days on—that’s with shipping and handling—he was able to send for it. Trouble was, he didn’t read the fine print—‘please allow six to eight weeks, et cetera’—and he couldn’t understand why, one month later, it still hadn’t come. So, he gave up. He had to face life as it was: there was no magic destiny-changing pencil, it was all bollocks, and he’d risked his hide for nothing.”

He was listening for her again. “But then it came?”

“And then it came. Only he wasn’t expecting it, right, so his mum got to it first. She shouted at him, ‘Guillaume, what did I tell you about buying this rubbish?’ Then she opened it, took one look at the pencil, and snapped it in half.”

Ivy pouted. “I hope there’s magic glue in this story.”

“Close,” he said. “Magic tape.”

“Yay.”

“But the magic tape was at a shop, far across town... and Guillaume wasn’t allowed out on his own.”

Fighting sleep’s undertow, she said, “It’s got a happy ending, right?”

“Yes, Ivy,” he assured her in soothing tones, “it’s got a very happy ending.”

“Mmmn...” Satisfied with that, she drifted off with the phone propped against her ear, his storytime voice lulling her to sleep.

What came from whose imagination, she wasn’t sure, but that night she dreamt a fantastical tale in which young Sever erased his mother, drew himself a horse-and-buggy, rode a dolphin’s back across the English channel, jumped on pencil-drawn trampolines to sign his name on buildings all the way from Paris to Hong Kong, sketched a tightrope over the Pacific Ocean and unicycled across it until he crash-landed in Avalon Harbor... where he was found by Mermaid Ivy and revived with a single kiss.