My Clocking In System

DANNY FIRST PERSON POV:

Actually, one of them may be.

I read it twice at the lights with the engine going under me, and then I put the phone face down in my inside pocket and left it there.

Three weeks Naomi Adeyemi had waited. She could do one more night.

Green.

Ninety seconds to her street, fifteen up her stairs, and I’d been in some version of this state since twenty to eight that morning and by the time I got to her door I’d stopped pretending otherwise.

Knocked.

Something went over inside. "Shit." Bolt.

She opened it in a t-shirt with nothing under it and a tea towel over one shoulder, pencil through her hair, face pink off the oven, and got as far as "You’re early, I’ve got..."

I kissed her.

"Mmph..."

Hands under her jaw, walked her back over her own threshold, door shut with my heel, and then both hands down and full of her arse and I pulled her right up onto her toes against me.

She made a noise into my mouth. Broke off. Didn’t go anywhere.

"Right," she said. "Hello."

"Hello."

"That’s a hello, is it."

"That’s a hello."

I squeezed and she pushed back into my hands and said "mm" against my jaw, and eleven days ago I’d have apologised for a hand doing that and Sunday I’d have thought about it first and tonight I just did it and she just let me.

"You’re keen."

"You sent me a photo in a staff toilet, Jodie."

"I did do that, in my defence I’ve had a very long day and you’ve been unbearable since Sunday..."

"I’ve been unbearable."

"You know what you’re like." Her hand came down between us, flat against the front of my jeans.

Stopped.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That’s not from the photo."

"Some of it’s from the photo."

"Danny." She looked up at me, eyebrows going, half scandalised and completely delighted. "How long have you had a cock like that on you?"

Twenty to eight. On a mat. Third floor.

"A while."

"A while."

"Long enough."

She started laughing at me and then she didn’t, because I’d got my hands up under the t-shirt and up her bare back and pulled her in so there was nothing between us.

"There’s dinner," she said into my neck, not moving an inch. "I’ve done a proper thing. It’s got vegetables in it, Danny."

"How long’s it got?"

"Twenty minutes."

"That’s plenty."

She pulled back with her mouth open. "Plenty? Is that what you think of me?"

"Twenty for you. Then dinner. Then the rest of it after."

She went pink from the collarbones up and shoved my chest to cover it. "You’ve got a mouth on you these days."

"You said leave the mystery outside."

"I did say that. Right. Well." Breathing like she’d run up the stairs, hands still fisted in my coat. "Get it off then, you’re not doing anything in that, you look like an estate agent."

The coat went on the floor with the tea towel and neither of us gave it a second’s thought, and then I picked her up.

She yelped. Grabbed my shoulders. I got her the three steps to the sofa and dropped her on it and she landed laughing so hard she had to lie there with a hand over her face.

"You absolute... I was making a casserole..."

"I know."

I went down on the rug in front of her.

Same rug. Sewing table over my left shoulder, the Carter dress still half-made on it, and eleven days ago I’d been on my knees on this exact patch of floor with her hands braced on that table finding out for the first time what she sounded like when she stopped being able to help it.

She clocked it. I watched her clock it.

"Oh," she said. "We’re doing that, are we."

"We’re doing that."

"On the same rug."

"On the same rug."

"Well." Head back. "Go on then."

Hands into her waistband.

She went quiet, which from Jodie means a great deal.

"Up."

Hips up. Leggings and knickers off together, over her feet, gone somewhere behind me, and she was bare from the waist down on her own sofa with the lamp on and her t-shirt shoved up over her stomach and her knees together out of some last scrap of shyness that had no business surviving a Sunday like that one.

"Jodie."

"What."

"Open your legs."

"God." Head right back into the cushion. "Say it like that again and I’ll do anything you want."

"Open your legs."

She opened her legs, and I put both hands on the inside of her thighs and pushed them wider, and looked at her.

Her pussy flushed and swollen and shining wet, the dark blonde curls, her clit already standing up out of the hood of it, the slick of her smeared down the inside of one thigh where she’d been sitting in it since half ten that morning.

She let me look. Went pinker. Didn’t cover up.

Eleven days ago she’d have been shy for four seconds and then decided not to be. Sunday she’d let me and gone red. Tonight she just watched me look at her cunt and let it happen.

"Don’t look at me like..."

"Like what."

"Like that."

"You’re beautiful."

I said it so flatly she stopped arguing.

"Oh," she said. Small. "Well. That’s..."

Mouth on her pussy.

"AHH..."

Hips off the sofa. Hand straight into my hair.

Soaked. Absolutely soaked, hot and slick and swollen against my tongue, and she tasted like nine hours of folding jumpers and thinking about this, and I dragged my tongue up through her cunt slow, all the way, over her clit.

"Oh God. Oh God Danny..."

Again. Slower.

"Ah! That, do that..."

"That?"

"Yes that, don’t ask me questions, I can’t do questions..."

I laughed into her cunt and she swore at the ceiling and I settled in and stopped being funny.

Flat of my tongue on her clit. Slow circles. No hurry in it at all.

Her thighs came up either side of my head the way they had that first night, heels in my back, and she started making noises she wasn’t deciding to make.

"Mm. Mmh. Ah. Danny..."

I hummed against her clit and she jolted like she’d been shocked.

"Don’t... that’s... oh do that again..."

Did it again.

"Ahh."