the dazzling white of an operating theatre and boasted a stand-alone bath that had been placed against the wall, ruining the effect.
Karen arrived at ten to eleven, having cried off from the singles’ night. No one had questioned her, but Erin had raised her eyebrows and checked her phone for the time. On the way to the Bellstone, she’d had the strangest feeling she was being followed, and spent the entire walk checking behind her surreptitiously, as though she had her gran’s antique silverware in her bag instead of her toothbrush.
She didn’t have to wait long for the rap at the door of the suite. She glanced at her phone: three minutes past eleven. Had he spent the last three minutes waiting downstairs, not wanting to appear too keen? Her heart hammered a hole in her ribcage as she opened the door, half expecting to see Erin and that irritating presenter of You’ve Been Framed. But no, there he was, Mr Hawaii, that eager smile fixed to his face.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here,’ he said. ‘Thought you might have been having a laugh, a bet or something with your mates. They looked the type.’ His cheeks coloured. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to slag your friends off.’
‘’S okay,’ she said, opening the door wider to let him in. ‘They’re not real friends. I barely know them any more.’
‘So what were you doing out with them?’ He stepped into the room and she saw him clock her handbag, no luggage.
‘I’m sorry, did you come for a chat?’ She stepped closer to him, watched him try to swallow without being obvious. She hooked her fingers underneath his T-shirt and began to lift it slowly, revealing the waistband of his jeans and a canvas belt.
‘No, I just … don’t you want to talk or something first? I mean, before …?’
‘You can talk if you want.’ Her lips were inches from his now, her hands working to unclip his belt buckle. ‘But I hoped our mouths would be too busy for that.’
She leaned up to kiss him, breathing in the faint smell of lager and cigarettes that he’d tried to mask with chewing gum before he arrived. She closed her eyes, drawing the smell inside her, the fingers of her free hand reaching up to lace through the short dark hair at the back of his head. She moaned slightly into his mouth, just the smallest of sounds but enough to make him stiffen against her. The belt buckle released and she flicked open the top button of his jeans and unzipped his fly as their kiss grew more urgent, more intense. He pushed her away slightly and pulled the hem of her top from inside her jeans, lifting it over her head and letting out a groan at the discovery that she’d already taken off her bra. He pushed his jeans down over his hips and yanked at the zip of hers, both of them stumbling backwards towards the bed in a waltz choreographed over the years by lovers everywhere. His lips were on her breasts, his tongue circling her nipples and his fingers tracing the path of moistness it left behind. She pulled at his shirt and he lifted it over his head, what had started slow and unsure now urgent and feral.
‘You are fucking gorgeous,’ he murmured against her breast, flicking his tongue against her nipple and sending flashes of desire to her groin. ‘You are so beauti—’
‘Ssshhh.’ She grabbed his hair, not roughly, but hard enough to pull his mouth away from her skin. ‘You don’t have to keep saying that. Just fuck me.’
He didn’t seem offended, or if he was, he was too turned on to let it stop him. He pushed her shorts down to her knees and they fell the rest of the way. Grabbing her hips, he turned her roughly around and shoved her forward so she was leaning over the bed, then spread her legs with his knee and shoved himself inside her with a moan of ecstasy. Now he was getting it.
The harder he thrust, the more she moaned, gasping out for breath when it felt like he was as deep as he could get. He wrapped her hair around his hand and pulled her head backwards so she could feel his breath on her face as he fucked her, his thumb rubbing her clitoris in slow, rhythmic movements, then faster and faster as he struggled to hold back.