There, There

[sandandwater]

06. In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape
(Radiohead – 'There, There')

People often mistook Phillipa Kerr for someone innocent and perhaps even entirely prudish. These people didn’t know her very well. She preferred it that way, truth be told. Some things were better left to privacy and the imagination. Intimacy lost all meaning if you shared the details with just anyone, after all.

It was late in the evening now, well after sunset and she was lying awake watching him sleep beside her.

Him. Rory. Her lover.

She smiled, full, generous lips curving as she turned onto her side to better appraise the long length of Irishman sharing her bed. She had replaced her clothing; silk that clung to curves and revealed teasing bits of skin. Her hair was loose; a fall of red curls spilling over her shoulders.

Her fingers lifted to lightly trace the dark and deliberate lines of ink set into the skin of his bicep. It wasn’t long ago that she had used the tip of her tongue to tease that same warm flesh, draw soft murmurs from his lips. Her hand brushed over the sheet tangled around his waist. She may be dressed, but she knew he was bare beneath the thin cotton material.

And how well she knew that body.

Pippa dipped her head to skim her lips across his shoulder, over the breadth of his collar bone, along the side of his neck. His mumbled, sleep-drenched words made her smile again. They weren’t in any language she understood but she could guess at their meaning just as easily as she could recall moments of their lovemaking.

Hands and mouths grazing, roaming, exploring every and anywhere they could reach. Hips and thighs—brushing…meeting. Backs arching. Limbs tangling. Voices thick with lust, want and need as they hoarsely, sometimes gruffly, whispered and demanded, praised and encouraged, begged and pleaded.


How well she knew him.


Pippa Kerr//Last Call//307