A Brighter Spark (Xcite Romance) Read online

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Daniel agreed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever taken my kids to one – and I think that’s probably something I’d remember doing, if I’d done it.’

  ‘It’s a date, then. One day,’ decided Suzy. ‘And, in the more immediate future, once present earaches are taken care of and I won’t feel like the worst parent on earth for even contemplating having fun while my child is ill, we’ll have a proper romantic, grown-up night out. Hannah can babysit Henry, Lily, and Steven, maybe?’

  ‘Yes, I think she’d like that. And the youngsters will too, once they’ve made token protests about – well, about being called “youngsters”, for a start.’ Daniel grinned. ‘Hannah’s good at making babysitting a fun experience for all involved.’

  ‘Drew thought maybe they’d like a day out boating. Drew’s partner Joseph has a yacht, which Drew assures me is “small but jaunty”. God, on one hand I’ve got him saying “jaunty” and on the other I’ve got you saying “youngsters”. It’s a wonder I don’t start praising Lily for her gumption and pluck in the face of a jolly putrid earache.’

  ‘That was adorable. Vaguely terrifying, but adorable,’ Daniel told her with a fond tone.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Suzy assured him. ‘Anyway, when Lily’s better, that’s the tentative plan. After they’ve been out on the boat they can sleep over at Drew’s, provided none of them have an aversion to an inordinate number of Jim Henson prints on the walls. You’d honestly think that the Muppets were a decorating school, to look at that man’s house. He claims it’s ironic but I stopped believing it several Christmases ago, when he gave Steven The Dark Crystal and Lily Labyrinth.’

  Daniel laughed aloud at that. ‘Your family is a delight, Suzy. They truly are.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re OK, I guess,’ she agreed, smiling.

  He called her every night for the next week, while poor Lily slowly recovered her sharp edge and things went back to normal. With some surprise, Suzy realised that she and Daniel had spent longer apart than they’d had the chance to spend together. Talking to him every night about trivial, easy things – what work was like, what was in the newspapers, their kids (Hannah had decided to skip the pink hair; Henry had a crush on a girl in his class; Steven had given his parents the tip that My Little Pony toys were currently “totally cool and awesome” for teens; Lily had been absolutely delighted by the blue plastic pony with a rainbow mane and tail which Drew brought round for her the following day), how much they missed each other – those simple little conversations had given Suzy the opportunity to appreciate just how much she genuinely liked Daniel as a person, entirely separately from the overwhelming pull of attraction she felt whenever she was near to him.

  That intense desire didn’t abate during their time apart. Quite the opposite happened, in fact – Suzy’s whole body felt on edge with anticipation, nerve endings that refused to go back to sleep now they had been awoken by his touch. She wondered how she’d ever managed to go so long alone; it seemed absolutely unthinkable to return to celibacy ever again after discovering such deep and true pleasure with Daniel.

  Finally, finally, Lily’s health returned enough that she could spend the day out with Drew and the others, bidding her mother farewell with a cranky “yeah, see you later, whatever”. Suzy had never been more delighted to be the target of the girl’s acidic rudeness.

  She booked herself and Daniel into the penthouse suite of a rather nice hotel she’d heard good things about from co-workers. She figured that it would be a nice escape for the both of them, to spend the night somewhere special and different, and if the place turned out to be a dive or they got bored and just wanted their own ordinary, comfortable surroundings then, well, it wouldn’t be much effort for them to leave and go to Suzy’s place or Daniel’s instead.

  She left the evening entertainment in Daniel’s hands, since he was the one who knew things about wine-tasting and art galleries and proper sensible grown-up date things like that.

  When he arrived at her house to pick her up for the adventure, he presented her with a pair of tickets.

  ‘Orfeo ed Euridice. It’s the Italian version, not the French adaptation from later on.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the opera. I’ve always wanted to, but …’ Suzy shrugged one shoulder.

  ‘But what?’ Daniel asked, puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know, it always seemed like something I wasn’t smart enough for. Opera’s for cultured people. People who know how to pronounce the titles, for a start. I never would have had the faintest clue how to say that properly.’

  Daniel shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. ‘Art is for everybody. Not to mention that, for one thing, you’re talking to a man who took you to a room of clown paintings for our first real date, so I don’t know what higher standard you think I’ve reached and you can only aspire to –’ He paused as his words made her laugh, a tender smile curving up his own mouth. ‘And for another, you are incredibly smart. You don’t give yourself any credit for all the amazing things you do.’

  ‘You know I’m a sure thing, right? Flattery is for when you don’t know for certain if you’re going to get the other person into bed or not. Trust me, you’re getting me into bed.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘You have an extremely endearing and extremely annoying habit of deflecting compliments, did you know that? Come on, let’s go see a show.’

  She loved it. Absolutely and without reservation. Suzy couldn’t remember being so moved, so transported by a live performance, not since she’d been a teenager sneaking into rock concerts with her friends. She hadn’t even known that being this moved by a piece of music was even possible except for teenagers.

  Maybe being an adult wasn’t as dreary as she’d been thinking. Maybe there was just as much passion and overwhelming intensity and beauty and excitement and disaster and silliness and joy to be found in being grown-up as there had been in her younger years. Plus, for one thing, the sex was way better now than it ever had been back then.

  A lot of things were better. Maybe getting older didn’t mean that the fireworks of her youth were gone for ever. Perhaps, in fact, maturity had even greater rewards. An even brighter spark.

  When the performance ended, the audience rose to their feet in a standing ovation. Suzy clapped and cheered as loudly as anyone, beaming at Daniel beside her and feeling as if she’d never stop.

  In the hotel room they ate strawberries, and kissed, and drank tall glasses of cold, good wine, and kissed again. The spa bath proved such an attraction that their fingertips and toes were wrinkled to pale little prunes by the time they were done with it.

  ‘Let me wash your hair for you,’ said Daniel. Even coming as it did from her lover, there was an intimacy to the offer that made Suzy blush. Nevertheless, she nodded, sinking lower into the bubbled waters of the tub so that he could more easily reach the top of her head.

  As with everything else he undertook, Daniel was measured and deliberate and gentle, massaging the small bottle’s worth of hotel shampoo into an even and fragrant lather over her scalp.

  He rubbed her shoulders too, his thumbs kneading into the tense knots of her muscles, somehow finding a way to slip between her defences and make tensions that she’d carried for years and years begin to ease.

  ‘Stop thinking so much,’ Daniel teased her in his calm, playful voice. Keeping her mind on the world and its millions of distractions proved harder and harder as Daniel managed to seek out and cure every kink in Suzy’s upper back. His hands were so warm and strong that it was impossible for her to entirely fight off the feeling that she could let go of the tight grip she held on her life, to trust him to catch her before she’d fall.

  She shaved him, when they were shampooed and scrubbed and wrapped in lush white bathrobes. Daniel’s five o’clock shadow was soft from the heat of the spa already, so Suzy didn’t have to worry about a hot towel or anything like that before she stirred the brush in shaving cream and lathered it carefully into hi
s face. He stayed completely still as she did so, his eyes closed and a small, trusting smile on his lips.

  It was an almost breathtaking sensation, to have him bare his throat to her as she held a blade. Suzy had never considered herself to be somebody who cared about power or dominance or anything like that, but looking down at Daniel … The amount of faith he must have in her, to give her access to the soft and vulnerable parts of himself like that. It was a responsibility second only to motherhood, in terms of how daunting Suzy found the whole thing.

  ‘I love you,’ she blurted suddenly, then shut her eyes and winced. Her heart’s sense of timing for its greatest revelations left something to be desired.

  The light touch of his hand atop hers made Suzy open her eyes again.

  ‘I love you too,’ Daniel told her, as if it was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. ‘And I’d kiss you right now, but you’d wind up covered in shaving cream.’

  That made her laugh, and she put the straight razor down on the edge of the sink and climbed onto his lap and kissed him, not caring about the shaving cream getting all over their faces and into their hair, not caring about anything in the world except how happy and complete she felt.

  They made it to the bed, eventually, but not before Daniel had found the light-blocking eye masks provided for them along with their bathrobes and chocolate mints.

  He slipped the satin mask down over her forehead, onto her eyes. Suzy’s vision was completely blotted out; she couldn’t even see the shift of light and shadow that would have been possible if her eyes were simply closed instead of covered.

  She gave a nervous, self-conscious laugh. ‘This is silly.’

  ‘Shh,’ he hushed her, kissing a light line down her throat and collarbones, his breath ghosting hotly over her nipples without his lips touching them.

  Daniel guided her steps back to the edge of the bed, then laid her out atop the silky cotton sheets. He used his fingers, lips, teeth, tongue, nose; nuzzling up and down Suzy’s inner lips as they plumped with heat and parted, moist and slick. He teased her clit with the very tips of his fingers, light enough and slow enough that after a while of his attention her thighs began to shake and her hips began to buck, aching for more and firmer contact.

  ‘Yes, please, oh, oh that feels so good,’ Suzy groaned out through her clenched teeth, her back arching like a tight-strung bow. Every nerve in her body was singing. ‘Oh, oh.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Let me see you, please. I have to be able to see you.’

  Not waiting for approval, she fumbled at the mask, pushing it up into her sweat-tangled hair and blinking at the sudden brightness of the world. She shifted, sitting up as best she could with her knees still up over Daniel’s shoulders. He didn’t pause in his ministrations between her thighs, nuzzling hungrily at her.

  ‘So gorgeous,’ Suzy said, her voice sex-rough, and she reached out to pet at his hair. Just as she tangled her fingers in the tousled dark locks, Daniel let his teeth brush lightly against her clitoris, and Suzy could do nothing but groan in ecstasy and pull hard on his hair, her hands desperate to cling to something, to maintain grounding in any way possible lest she fly apart entirely.

  Daniel lapped and sucked at her with an urgency of his own, one of his hands wrapped around his cock and stroking at a rapid, sloppy pace. He was moaning against her, the vibrations pulsing through Suzy like lightning and dragging a climax out of her with such intensity that she had to muffle a scream against the press of her forearm over her mouth. Daniel followed with a peak of his own just a few seconds later, panting hotly against her thigh, mouth slack with desire and swollen red from pressing against her.

  She flopped back against the bedspread and waited for him to crawl up beside her, the two of them gasping as they tried to catch their breath. Suzy could tell by Daniel’s satisfied, satiated expression that he would have been content to stay exactly where he was for the rest of time. She felt that too, but at the same time there was still such a flickering flame inside her, a compulsion to touch him again and again, to feel every place his skin could touch hers, to drown in the pleasure they created together.

  She began to kiss at his chest, slowly and gently at first, knowing he’d need a little while to recover before they could begin again in earnest.

  At some point it had started to rain outside, the sound all but completely muffled by the thick windows and drapes of the hotel room. It made everything even cosier, more intimate and whole and perfect. They were here together, in this little bubble of light and comfort, protected from the dark beyond.

  When Daniel began to grow hard again, Suzy climbed atop him, straddling his thighs and working his penis slowly with her hand. He hummed happily at the attention, the pleased, lazy sound turning to a hiss when she pinched his nipple between her thumb and forefinger. Suzy crawled further down his body, pausing along the way to collect a condom from the box on the dresser. When her face drew level with his cock, she rolled the sheath on, then went down. She pressed her tongue up against the thick vein on the underside, loving the way the latex and the skin between her mouth and Daniel’s pulse shifted together at the movement. She inhaled deeply through her nose, chasing the smells of his body and the smells of how turned on he was by her, how she was pushing him closer and closer to the edge of climax with nothing but this simple motion, these little ripples of her throat and the movement of her hands.

  Her jaw was aching, in the good bone-deep way she knew would linger. She’d feel it in the morning when she brushed her teeth, when she yawned on the train ride. She’d move her mouth just that certain way and feel that soreness, and her body would be flooded with the sense memory of being on her knees before him, of how much she wanted him and how much he wanted her.

  Oh, oh, she loved him so much.

  This orgasm was like fizzy champagne in her, bubbles and brightness, sparks on every nerve.

  Suzy was resting her cheek against Daniel’s thigh and panting raggedly when she came back to herself. She slipped the condom off him and tied it, tossing it into the trash and crawling up his body, pushing him back until his shoulder blades hit the mattress and she was half-sprawled on top of him, their gazes meeting with twin expressions of exhausted happiness.

  They slept then, just for a little while. Enough to regain a little bit of the energy they’d completely drained from one another.

  Daniel was still dozing when Suzy drifted back from the light sleep she’d fallen into. Gentle and slow, so as not to wake him, she reached her hand down and began to play lightly with his body. At first all she did was card her fingers lightly through the thick, dark nest of his pubic hair, loving the slightly wiry, springy texture of it. Everything about her body seemed to adore everything about his body, every element and movement. It was like finding her complimentary half, opposite but a perfect match, a perfect counterweight, a perfect fit.

  When he’d hardened enough, Suzy leant over him as carefully as possible to reach the open box of condoms on the nightstand beside his side of the bed. She was retracting her palm, small prize between two fingers, when Daniel stirred beneath her and caught her wrist with his hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly, leaning up to kiss her. Her lips smiled against his.

  ‘It’s my pleasure, honestly,’ she answered playfully, and moved to roll the condom down his length. She knew this was important to him, at least for now – that, even if they had a lot of trust in one another, there was just too much at stake for them to be anything less than absolutely careful. Suzy loved him for it, for the responsibility that never left him even when he was dazed with passion.

  Before very long at all he was scrabbling helplessly at her shoulders, his mouth open in a perfect loose-jawed “o” of pleasure, a little sound escaping with every slow roll of Suzy’s hips. She kept the rhythm as slow and steady as she could manage to make it, tides of warm, deep pleasure welling up in her. Suzy kept her attention focused on Daniel’s face and body. She locked her gaze to his, searching those kin
d, bold eyes for the tiny tells, the momentary blink of a lash or the widening of expression, every shadow and glimmer telling her how to move next, even more than the press of his palms clutching at her thighs. That was because his hands and body, those were half-governed by Daniel’s wish to please her and so his own most primal wants and lusts were mitigated by his overriding desire to make her feel good. But his eyes were honest and forthright, just the same as always, and kept no secrets from her.

  And so Suzy took her cues from his face, from the stripped expression there. She leant over his torso with her own, pressing her hips down hard as she did so. As his hips bucked up, pushing his length even deeper into her wetness, Suzy fastened her mouth against his nipple, grazing her teeth against the nub and wringing a broken groan from him. One of his hands came up to tangle in her hair, and she could feel the tremble in his fingers against her scalp.

  When he pulled at the handful of damp locks hard enough to sting, Suzy grunted in surprise at how good it felt, the pain sharpening the pleasure rippling through her body. She suckled harder at his nipple, determined to give as good as she got.

  ‘God, you’re beautiful,’ Daniel said in a coarse voice. It was wrecked, husky on the vowels and cracking on the consonants. Suzy squeezed her body tight around his penis, rocking up and down on him faster and faster as the bright, blinding wave of her orgasm began to build up inside her. With a cry, she threw her head back, arching up and back away from his body as her climax slammed through her. Daniel followed the movement of her body with his, sitting up so that she was straddling his lap.

  ‘You’re so lovely,’ she gasped against his mouth, lifting herself up and pushing down, trying to mould her body as close against his as she could, aching for every touch of his skin against hers. She kept crying out, half cut-off little wails of pleasure that seemed to fragment out of her on her breath without her having any say-so whatsoever in the process.