Page 31

Adriana wakes to the smell of freshly made coffee.

She opens one eye. Someone places a mug carefully on a marble coaster on the bedside table beside her. Then they get back into bed next to her, slowly and gently, leaning against the luscious pillows.

Adriana lets herself linger in the halfland between dreaming and waking for just a moment.

Did she dream it? Did she really break her one-night-stand rule last night, and end back here with Jacob again? And was the sex as unbelievably brilliant as she dreamt it was?

She’d thrown her arms around him when he’d found her last night, like he was her real-life knight in shining armour – well, a surprised businessman in an expensive suit.

And he hadn’t pushed her away, he’d just dropped his things to hold her, and sighed, not in displeasure but in something closer to relief.

After they’d laughed together about the strangeness of their paths overlapping, it had felt like the coincidence threw all their previous conversations about maintaining distance out the window.

‘I’m just finding it so hard,’ Adriana had said, tearfully on the street. ‘I hate being distant with you.’

‘Well, I hate it too,’ he’d said.

‘Really?’

‘Of course I do! I was always clear with you Adriana, when we met I told you I wanted to see you again, but you were the one who said it could never be something serious, and then with the whole complication of my role at the club, I just thought, I didn’t want to make anything difficult for you, even if I hated it.

And then I arrived at Honey thinking it was a date, when you kept insisting it was some business meeting.

Isn’t this what you wanted, for us to avoid each other? ’

‘No,’ she had said, boldly. ‘What I want is this–’

And she had kissed him. After that, they had just been unable to stop smiling at each other in disbelief.

‘My teammates are all–’ Adriana had gestured back to the club. ‘Can we go somewhere… else?’

Her eyes had of course been wide and suggestive in the dark night.

He’d called them a taxi with one confident gesture of his arm in the road, seeming to magic one out of thin air.

And then they’d kissed the whole journey back to his, hands grasping at each other’s bodies eager to make up for what they’d denied themselves over the past few weeks.

When he’d let her back into his apartment it had been like déjà vu, like reliving the memory Adriana had played so many times in her head since their first encounter.

They had been kissing against his front door, and she’d been pulling his shirt off there in the hallway, undressing him fast at first, and then, when it got to his belt, very, very slow, until he’d groaned with the delay.

They had made it to the bed eventually, but had avoided sleep all night, prioritising instead the positions that Adriana had wished they’d got round to the first time.

There were still so many more she wanted to see him in, to feel him in, to taste him in…

She closes her eyes tightly, making a wish before turning round to face the man beside her hoping that this morning will be different and she won’t mess up this second chance.

‘Good morning, Addy,’ Jacob smiles. ‘Are you any good at crosswords?’

Adriana buries her face in the plump linen pillowcase, trying to hide the outrageous size of her huge grin.

‘Woah, woah, it’s okay, you don’t have to, but I’m afraid I do have to do the daily quick crossword, it’s a sacred part of my morning routine…’

Adriana brings her face back up, but still can’t quite look at him. She still can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.

‘It’s not– I love crosswords! I’m absolutely terrible at them, mind you, but…’

Adriana peeks back up. Jacob is sat upright, leaning against his pillows, with a paper newspaper open before him, open to the puzzles section.

His hair is – in a way she could never have previously guessed it could ever be – messy , sticking out in all directions, from what, she realises proudly, was her own hands mussing through it so much last night.

He’s wearing a pair of glasses she hasn’t seen him in before which she guesses must be his ‘home’ pair, their frames tortoiseshell and rounder than his usual slick rectangular frameless ones, and a blue checked pyjama shirt.

She looks under the duvet to see – yes – it’s a matching set.

‘W-what are you looking at down there?’ Jacob laughs.

‘You are wearing a pyjama set.’

Adriana didn’t know guys could wear elegant pyjama sets, she thought that was something only old men in Victorian times could do.

Normally when she hooks up with men, the next morning they stay naked or in their faded boxers with holes, which often look like they’re about a hundred years old themselves.

‘Of course,’ Jacob frowns. ‘It’s Sunday morning. We’re relaxing in bed. What else could I be wearing?’

Adriana buries her face in her pillow again and screams.

‘What?’ Jacob asks, sounding worried. ‘What’s wrong!’

‘You’re just so… so… cute! I can’t deal with it! You’re not meant to be able to be this adorable!’

When Adriana resurfaces again, the tips of Jacob’s ears have gone pink.

‘Ah, well, if that’s all, I can only apologise for surprising you,’ he says. ‘Don’t forget your coffee, by the way. Coconut milk mocha right?’

This time Adriana is rendered speechless.

Jacob bites his lip, holding back a smile. ‘You converted me at Honey. I’ve been drinking it myself. It’s like drinking a bounty.’ Then he clicks the end of his pen. ‘Now, what do you think might be 2 down, five letters, with the clue–’

Adriana leaps up onto him, straddling him in a hug, ducking through his arms to be buried next to his chest, under the newspaper.

‘Hey!’ he says, though he doesn’t sound cross at all, ‘I was about to crack that one.’

‘You can keep doing it,’ Adriana, nuzzles into his neck, ‘I’ll just stay here. I’m helping.’

‘Oh sure, I’m sure that will be very elucidating,’ Jacob teases.

‘Read me the clue again,’ Adriana whispers in his ear.

Jacob coughs, his voice breaking a little as he gamely reads another crossword clue.

‘Five letters, hopefully beginning with C, “how to drink fruit; avoid falling in one”.’

Adriana repeats it, in between kissing his neck. Through her lips, she feels him laugh low in his throat, and feels him get hard between her legs.

‘Oh, hello,’ she teases him. ‘But I thought this pyjama set was only to be worn for “relaxing in bed?”

Jacob sets his crossword aside and takes his glasses off. ‘I personally can think of some very relaxing things we could do…’

And strangely, it is. They kiss playfully at first, but then there’s a softness and tenderness that she doesn’t remember being there last night.

Adriana sighs contentedly, her body relaxing into his, and Jacob responds by holding her even closer to him, pulling their bodies so that they are entwined.

They lie on their sides facing each other, her body tucked into his, so that she feels like she can feel him all around her.

She feels turned on, sure, but she also feels…

something else, something she didn’t even realise she could feel with someone in this way.

She feels safe. She feels cared for. She feels at peace.

Jacob moves her gently into position, her back against the pillows. ‘Are you comfortable?’

‘Mmhmm,’ she nods, her face flushed with warmth and desire.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Because I want to stay here for a very, very long time.’

Adriana leans her head back into the pillows as Jacob slips down under the covers between her legs, his hands stroking her thighs, pulling down her underwear and bending his head to reverently kiss her.

He licks slowly, so slowly, like he’s savouring every trace of her.

Adriana’s toes curl in pleasure, and her back arches into blissful relaxation.

Jacob makes the same motion again, like repeating a favourite line of a poem.

Then he circles her clit, tracing mysterious patterns that unlock something in Adriana, taking her to another realm entirely.

He teases her, alternating his fingers and his tongue on the surface of her, when she’s begging for him to be inside her now.

‘Please,’ she gasps, ‘Please.’

He teases another finger, just the tip of it, and Adriana feels herself burning with desire.

He doesn’t keep her waiting for long. He kisses her clit again, as he pushes two strong fingers smoothly inside her.

Adriana cries out. It feels even better the second time, and the third, and the fourth, and as he keeps fucking her with his fingers, Adriana can just let the sensation build and build in her, losing herself in how good it feels.

When she comes, she comes in his mouth, long and hard and slow. Jacob keeps his mouth pressed close to her, like he wants to taste her every pulse.

Adriana blacks out a little, seeing constellations of stars swirling, and as she’s coming back to earth, she rouses to find Jacob has moved back up the bed to wrap his arms around her.

She flops onto his firm chest, and lets herself be held.

He strokes her hair, and runs his thumb along her bare shoulder, tracing the edges of her collar bone, her shoulder blade, her neck. Every nerve in her body is tingling.

When she’s recovered, she feels light, bubbling, amazed, and starts giggling. Jacob, instead of being surprised, laughs along with her. They remain like that for a while, just holding each other, laughing, like they’re high.

Adriana is just enjoying the feeling of their warm bodies this close to one another, and is just on the edge of having a thought, of wondering if she should talk to him about…

well, this – them – what are they doing , but also not wanting to say anything that could burst this bubble when Jacob speaks.

‘I’m so sorry, Addy,’ he says, his voice low and Adriana feels a swell of panic at what he’s going to say next. ‘I think your mocha will have gone cold.’