Some Marvellously Uncensored Text

I think it's maybe a bit too tonally different to the first part, and not entirely sure I really like it, but here's what I've got (obviously still unfinished!)

“Do you have everything you need?”

We had left the party immediately, and Sebastien had driven me home to snatch up some belongings. I had stuffed a random assortment of clothing and my laptop into a rucksack and practically skipped back to the car where he sat waiting, not daring to stop and think lest my nerve left me.

“I think so.” I dropped my bag into the back seat and resumed my spot in the front passenger side. Of Sebastien Fae’s car. Me. My stomach vaulted.

“Good. This is where we’re going.” He showed me a map on his phone. “This may sound odd, but uh...” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, wincing slightly. “Would you send the address to someone? Or turn on location sharing on your phone?”

I raised a brow.

“Even though I do feel that I’ve known you for an eternity, realistically we have only just met, and I’m aware that you’re a woman, in a car with a man who is really a stranger-”

He was rambling. I smiled, pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a link to my phone tracking to a friend with a brief explanation, mentioning no names because I knew I’d get a barrage of responses and there was only one person I wanted to be sharing my time with right now.

“There. Though I feel I should also remind you that you’ll be spending the weekend with a porn writer,” I hissed the words with feigned distaste, “and you should probably let someone know. We’re an uncouth bunch, you see. You could be heading into a weekend of debauchery, only to emerge thoroughly corrupted.”

I glanced across at him; his cheeks were flushed, a nervous smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “That sounds awful. Shocking, shameful behaviour. Whatever have I done to deserve such delight?”

“Rescued me from a shitty party, at the very least.” I eased back into the seat as the car turned onto the highway and we picked up speed. The roads were mostly empty at this hour – my favourite time to travel, while the world slept.

“I think we rescued each other.” He moved his hand to rest palm up on the gear stick, and I, throwing caution to the wind, took it. His fingers curled up through mine and squeezed tightly. “Forgive me if I’m cloying. I’m getting more sentimental with the years.”

“Usually it would be, but from you I rather like it. I don’t know why. You’re sincere, despite you professing that you’re a clown.”

“Clowns are sincere.” He took his eyes away from the road a moment to meet mine. “We like to make people smile because we know the tedium of existence. Bringing joy is serious business.”

He still held my hand tightly. There was something in his expression, some almost tangible feeling where the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes met, the laughter lines that were almost too quick to appear, right on cue.

“What were you doing at that party? I know I don’t know you well, but... It seems like the least you place to be.”

“I could say the same for you. You stuck out like a...”

“Sore thumb?”

He laughed. “Non. Like... Like the first flower of spring, bright and vibrant against a blanket of featureless snow.”

“Oh.” My turn to blush.

“If I don’t go to at least some of these parties, I become ‘the weird recluse’ and nobody wants to hire me. So I make an appearance, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. I usually sit in a corner and try to look as unapproachable as possible until it’s an acceptable time to leave.”

“That’s shit.” I frowned. “You should take up writing, we’re practically expected to be weird recluses.”

He laughed. “Which brings us back to you...”

​ “It’s part of my contract.” I sighed. “I have to attend any events that Dean feels will ‘amplify’ my career, meaning, his career.”

​ “And you are in the hole that is comfortable, because it is familiar, but it is still a hole.”

​ “Yup.”

​ “Is there a termination clause?”

​ “For the contract? There’s a fee. It’s extortionate. It expires soon though, so I’m just riding it out and trying not to think about it too much. Besides – for once, it seems to have worked out in my favour.”

​ “I could say the same.”

​ His fingers pressed into the back of my hand and I looked down at our hands entwined, marveled at the impossibility that I was being whisked away to a country cottage for a weekend with someone as deliciously delectable, both outside and in, as Sebastien Fae. My word-brain barrier broke.

“This is surreal. I’m in a car with you at 2am going to your coastal cottage and we’ve known each other for a sum total of some 180 minutes. 180 minutes! This is unreal!”

He shuffled awkwardly in his seat. “Did you want to go back? There’s an off-ramp coming up – it’s fine if you do-”

“No!” I shook my head and clung to his hand. “Don’t you dare. I’m in one hundred and eleventy percent. It’s just – this is me, weird misfit loner who drinks water at parties she’d rather not be at and tries to avoid talking to anyone and has panic attacks deciding what to wear, and-”

“And you danced with me – with me!” He took the reins of my monologue. “The man who has his back to the room hunched over his own depressive thoughts because even that’s more enjoyable than socialising. Who wears sneakers and no-name jeans to a house party in the Hawthorns even though he knows people will sneer at him for it and he’ll hate it there even more, but goes anyway. And have you seen my hair? It’s not like this on purpose.”

“I like your hair. It makes me wonder...” I trailed off, faltering on the precipice of bravery.

“Mmm?”

“It makes me wonder how it would feel running my fingers through it.”

“Oh.” He grinned briefly, and then regained control of his expression. “Well... Mmm.”

“Mmm?”

“Well now I’ve pictured it.”

“And?” I turned in my seat to angle towards him.

“And if this were happening in one of your books I would ask you to perhaps consider a sci-fi setting where teleportation exists because we still have a few hours car ride to go.”

“Shame.” I was now very aware of the feeling of the palm of his hand against mine, his skin warm and soft. “Won’t you need petrol along the way?”

“No, the tank is – oh. Well, I might. I should, perhaps, stop to fill up, just in case.”

“It would be prudent. Just in case.”

“Well, wouldn’t you know.” He nodded ahead, as the lights of a tall petrol station sign glowed brightly at the side of the highway in the distance. “Kismet.”

“Clearly it’s a sign.” I was grinning; I couldn’t help myself.

“We would be fools to ignore it.” Delicious dimples had appeared in his cheeks where he grinned likewise, and I imagined how the tip of my nose might fit into those little recesses.

“Let no one say that we weren’t sensible.”

“Not a soul.” Sebastien nudged the indicator and the tick, tick, tick matched the thumping of my heart.

The high floodlights of the petrol station lit the empty lot, and Sebastien guided the car into the last slot at the far end, where the light was dimmest. He pulled up the handbrake, turned off the engine, and a blanket of silence descended upon us. At the party we’d been getting up close and personal, each touch leading to another closer dalliance, but now we’d had a distance between us and that uncertainty of first contact had returned.

Sebastien opened the door and stepped out, filling the car with the cool night air. I followed suit and walked around the hood as he watched me approach with an intense curiosity. I stopped at the edge of his bubble, and then took one step closer, into his personal space. He was a head taller than me and I was close enough that I had to crane my neck back to look up at him, and found his eyes, dark pools of mossy green, flicking between mine.

Gently he took my wrists and guided my hands to his shoulders. I stepped closer still and he moved my hands to his neck until my fingertips touched the curls of hair at his collar. I could smell his cologne again, subtle and only noticeable when my nose hovered at those top two open buttons of his shirt. I closed my eyes and drifted forward as if carried on the scent, and caught myself just before my nose touched his skin. My breath fell hot on his shirt, and his likewise close to my ear, our chests rising and falling in unison as anticipation prickled between us.

I remembered the reason for our little pit-stop and reached my hands up into his hair, thick and soft between my fingers. His breath came faster and I struggled against the urge to curl my fingers into fists, my nose now pressed hard into his collarbone. His hands found my hips, traced the curve of my waist, pulling me into him. Our faces turned inwards simultaneously, noses tracing jawlines, trailing cheeks, lips touching, pressing, parting, gasping.

We paused, caught our breath, met each other’s eyes beneath lids hooded and heavy with need.

“Is it how you pictured it?” I moved my fingers through his hair, my voice breathy. His nose nudged against mine, nuzzled at the corner of my mouth.

“Hmm, in the picture in my mind we may have been more horizontal. But the kiss was a welcome addition that I should very much like to revisit.”

“We could take it to the picnic table if horizontal is what you’re after, but I doubt the staff here would appreciate bearing witness to our transgressions.”

“Sadly.” He moved his nuzzling ministrations to my neck and then sighed and stepped back, my hands falling from his neck and into his, where he raised them between us.

“I’d like to revisit the kissing part, too,” I offered quickly, “Just uh, maybe when we can follow through. Because it was really fracking good and we’re still three hours away from a time and a place where we can, you know...”

“Where we reach the part in the story where you trail off with an ellipsis, suggesting pleasures consummated, passions ignited?”

“Oh I don’t think we need to worry about igniting passions.” I coughed, my cheeks furiously hot.

Sebastien Fae placed a gentle kiss on my forehead that made my insides quiver, and escorted me back to the passenger side door.

“Then we should resume our journey,” He paused with one arm on the open door and leaned close to whisper in my ear, “so that I can run my hands through your hair while we assume a decidedly less vertical position.”

The mental image plastered itself on the canvas of my mind and I fell heavily into the car seat with wide eyes, an uncontrollable smirk, and butterflies running rampant in my stomach.

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Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3