‘Show me,’ she dared, eyes aflame. ‘Let’s see how accurate our imaginations can be.’
‘I’ve got a really fucking good imagination, Nella. But this is already more than even I could dream up.’ He brushed a strand of hair away from those eyes. ‘You’re beautiful, Nella.’
She curled her hand around his fingers, the ones that had been inside her and pushed them against his lips. He tasted her as she watched, amber eyes blinking.
‘Come here.’
They crashed together, two rogue waves, his hand behind her neck as he lowered her down on the bench, her body soft and perfect beneath him. Spanners and drivers clattered to the ground but the only sound he heard was her breath, her little moan as he pushed into her the first time. The feel of her around him. The way her breasts moved with every stroke. His name on her lips as she came.
45
Nella
‘You have to tell me now.’
Nella had conceded to the bedroom eventually – after they’d fucked against the garage wall, then again in the kitchen. They almost hadn’t made it up the stairs but eventually had reached the cool, midnight blue sheets of Jett’s bed. Nella hadn’t realised until after they’d gone a third time that these sheets were not the green ones she’d rolled around on that night so long ago.
Now she was lying against his chest, their legs tangled, his hand on her lower back, which was a sensation she doubted she would ever get used to, because it was so normal and ordinary and perfect. Somehow, though, she knew her back was always going to feel cold without it there.
‘It’s not the story you think it’s going to be.’
‘Know what I’m thinking now, do you? Do you have magical sexual powers that allow you to see into a girl’s mind once you’ve seen her—’
‘I think you know I have magical powers,’ he purred against her, sickeningly arrogant in the afterglow, because they both knew he was right. ‘All I was thinking back in the Perth penthouse was that I could make you feel better than he could.’
‘Itriedto give you the opportunity.’
‘You threw a vibrator at me. Excuse me if I wasn’t immediately hypnotised by your romantic advance.’
They kissed again, Jett reminding her, with his hands hidden beneath the sheets, that he was right.
‘You can’t distract me that easily.’ She pulled back, reaching again for his face.
‘I can though.’ His kisses trailed over the swell of her breast, to her nipple ... he could distract her for the rest of her life.
‘Jett ...’
‘Fine.’ He sighed, dragging himself away with a pained look of longing. ‘But maybe you should cover up, because I can’t think properly when you’re lying there looking like that.’
‘What do you think it’s like for me when you’re walking around without your shirt?’ She raised an eyebrow at his expression. If she had to spend the rest of her life reminding Jett exactly how he made her feel, then she would – even if they were in different cities, different continents, different planets. ‘Tell me,’ she demanded again. ‘How did you get your scar?’ She still felt a faint twinge of apprehension when she touched the raised line across his face. Not because it scared her, but because it was the only part of him she didn’t fully know. ‘Who hurt you?’
‘I did it to myself.’ At her gasp, he continued. ‘I’m not a victim, Nella.’ His fingertips brushed her chin, but his eyes were steel to match his voice.
‘I know you’re not,’ she said. ‘I know you’re a fighter. A survivor ... a ...’
‘You know how I was born,’ he said.
Her fingers stilled; even after everything, she felt like one wrong move, one wrong breath, and he’d startle.
‘I was taken away from my parents pretty quickly when it was clear they weren’t capable of raising me. I understand it now, I can see the logic now, but for a lot of years after, I knew that if I wasn’t enough to get them to stop taking drugs, then I’d never be enough for anyone. The heroin was more important than me. There was always something more important than me – foster parents’ real kids, their jobs, their alcohol, the money they got for taking me. It gave me an excuse to be a shithead of a kid.
‘I had a few mates in one placement – the one I was in before I went to Nigel and Wendy. They were older, street smart as hell, and they used to jack cars, rob rich old people. Real-life bogan Robin Hoods. I dunno if it was boredom or for the high, but I was always up for chasing a high – as long as it wasn’t something I put in my bloodstream.’
She nodded, trying not to think about how vastly different their childhoods had been. How hard it must have been for him to hear her complain about her brothers annoying her or her father demanding she came home for Christmas, when Jett would have given anything to have those simple familial irritations.
‘It was an initiation, I guess.’ Jett’s thumb traced a circle on her thigh. ‘I had to jack a car. And these guys, they caught the train from the shit area we hung out in to the western suburbs – they weren’t after Holdens and Toyotas. It was an age-old job interview cliché – I had to make a good first impression.’
‘A Porsche?’ Nella would never forget the way Jett’s eyes had sparkled the first time he’d seen Bessy. It had been more than love at first sight – it had been soulmates conjoining.
