To my surprise, she looked almost scared. She took a deep breath. “This isn’t what you were expecting, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s …”
She swiped through her phone and showed it to me. On the screen was a picture of a boy and a girl, smiling in that slightly resentful way teenagers got when you insisted on photographing them. “David and Leah. Fourteen and Sixteen. They’re with their father for the evening, which makes tonight one of the few nights I get to myself.”
“And you wanted to spend it with me?” I didn’t mean to sound quite that shocked.
She shifted uncomfortably. “I know you said your job wasn’t as exciting and mysterious as it sounded. But I’m sure you’ve got far better things to do with your time than hang out with a forty-six-year-old divorced woman with two kids.”
“You know what? I really don’t.” That earned me a slightly confused look. “Sorry, that came out much more faint-praisey than I intended.”
She took her phone back and put it down on the bed beside her. “It’s fine.”
“I mean”—I sat down next to her and, somewhat belatedly, took my hat off—“and if you find this insulting then please slap me or something, but I think you might be a literal MILF.”
That made her laugh. It was still kind of an uncertain laugh, but it felt like progress. “I suppose that depends.”
“Depends on what?”
She looked up into my eyes, hers wide and blue behind her glasses. “On whether you’d like to fuck me.”
Before I could answer she was kissing me, hesitant at first but bolder when—I don’t know, when whatever terrible thing I guess she was worried might happen didn’t happen. There was something strange and frail about it, her lips soft and human. I’d got so used to being with women who were immortal, or the embodiment of cosmic truths, or half unstoppable predator that there was something almost intoxicating about the sheer person-ness of her. I tried not to let her remind me of Eve, and it was strangely easy—that had been so long ago now it felt almost like it had happened to a different person.
With a passion that surprised even me, I manoeuvred her onto her back and ripped her blouse open with what might have been a very slightly supernaturally enhanced level of strength. She gasped and for a second I backed off. “Was that too—shit, I’m sorry, I’ll pay for it.”
She laughed again. More confident this time. “Just surprised, that’s all. I don’t normally lose clothing that way.” Wriggling underneath me, she got into a half sitting position and with somewhat less disregard for property damage than I was used to in a lover, took off her jacket and what was left of her top. “Right, carry on.”
For a moment I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at her body. Her skin was like an essay about a life lived. There was the ghost of a burn mark above her wrist, which probably came from getting something out the oven too quickly. Her shoulders were flecked with freckles from the sun, and her eyes traced with lines from laughing. A triangle of moles sat just above her left breast like a constellation I’d never learned the name of. I wanted to taste every inch of her. “You are … you are so fucking beautiful.”
She smiled again, each time stronger than the last, and began unbuttoning my shirt with slender, dextrous fingers. And she breathed words against my lips, strange words about April and lilacs and rain on a dead land.
I stopped thinking. With teamwork inspired by mutual urgency, we stripped each other naked and fell on the bed in a mess of touching and testing and seeking and wanting. It was strange having to re-learn what it was like to be with a person who didn’t have a wellspring of supernatural power backing them up. You couldn’t push as hard, you had to react more, feel her responses more carefully. And oh did she respond. There were a whole bunch of times I thought I’d honestly broken the lady, only to have her rise up and pull me back to her. She fucked with a sincere, mortal yearning that I couldn’t help but be drawn to.
It took a while, but eventually exhaustion overcame enthusiasm and she lay on her back, panting, one arm crooked over her eyes as if she was trying to dab lying down.
“That was…” she began.
“I hope it was what you…” I tried.
“Uh-huh. I still … I’m not normally that much of a screamer.”
I reached out to stroke her stomach, and she shifted almost self-consciously. “I can’t say I minded.”
“I feel—fuck. That was—I don’t even.”
On the one hand, this was all very flattering. On the other, I wasn’t used to getting a reaction quite this intense. I like to think I’m pretty good in bed, but I don’t normally literally blow people’s minds.
“I feel like a virgin sacrifice to a pagan goddess.” She turned to look at me. There were almost tears in her eyes. “I—I still can’t believe you’re real.”
I looked at her—all the naked beautiful remarkable humanity of her. That was going to be the problem, wasn’t it? I wasn’t real, and she was. I could touch ordinary, every now and then, but I was a half-faery who’d been to hell, sworn fealty to an otherworldly queen, and been the lover of the vampire prince of pleasure. I could visit this world but I couldn’t live in it. I didn’t know what to say.
She ran her hands over my face, down my neck, across my breasts and my body. “It’s like—God it’s like I never want to stop touching you.” She laughed. “Christ on a bike, I’ve just fucked Artemis.”
And I’ve just fucked an estate agent from Brentwood. And it felt so good, and so right, and so perfect and so … small. Suddenly I was convinced I should be anywhere else but should be and was going to be were different things. Shit I wished I wasn’t so terrified of making decisions. “Should I …? How do you …? I can go.”
Her hand snapped back. “Do you want to?”
If you knew me, lady, you’d know I have no idea what I want. “No. It’s—it seems like you might want to keep this in the fantasy space. A get up tomorrow, go to work like it never happened deal.”
She flipped onto her back and covered her face with her hands, emitting a sound that was a mixture between a sigh and a groan. “Fuuuuuuuck. I fucking fucked that up, didn’t I. Can you please forget I called you a goddess? It was stupid, and cheesy, and way too intense.”
“It’s cool.” I wished I could have thought of something more eloquent than it’s cool. “It was the sex talking. Believe me, I’ve been there.”
“Then will you stay? I’d like to wake up with you. I’d like to have some proof this wasn’t a dream.”
Which was ironic in a way. Most days I would have been glad of proof that it was. “Of course. And thank you. For your help with the case and for”—I made an inarticulate gesture that strove to encompass her, dinner, the bed, and everything else that had happened that evening—“for all of it.” I kissed her again, and she moved against me like—like nothing, like a woman in a bed kissing somebody she wanted badly to be kissed by. “Besides,” I added when we stopped for breath, “you still owe me that poem.”