Happy belated birthday to Scription Addict. I'm sorry you had to wait, but I hope you enjoy this. :) xx
Many thanks to Joodiff for the beta and the encouragement.
Apodyopsis
…
Languidly reclined into the depths of a large, surprisingly ergonomic wicker patio chair, her head resting back against the cushions and her eyes closed as the fading remnants of twilight transition relentlessly into darkness and early evening, Grace can still feel Boyd's presence nearby as he moves across the deck and into the small, intimately enclosed space of the tiny courtyard garden.
Warm and solid, reassuring. Tall, tough and imposing on the outside, softer and gentler by far on the inside; he's a contrary mix, a fascinating blend of different traits and emotional extremes. It's a strange, twisting picture, a colourful impressionist piece composed of a combination of all these things that falls first into her mind whenever she allows her imagination to focus on him, her thoughts to stray and wander in his direction. It's unique, and distinctive – very him.
In this moment it's his steps mere feet away catch her attention; heavy, strong and muscular, he nevertheless moves with a startlingly fluid ease and quiet effortlessness. Sometimes.
Sometimes he moves like a bull, all enraged ferocity, chaotic movement and the thunderous charge of aggrieved, angered energy provoked by his short-fused, quick temper. It's by turns entertaining, exhilarating, dizzying, and infuriating. And he's athletic too, on occasion. When it suits him. More than once she's gleefully watched him chase down an uncooperative suspect, slyly appreciating the mobility and coordination of that powerful physique combined with a hefty dose of sheer, stubborn determination. Watched and appreciated, that is, from behind her professional mask of concern and composure.
Grinning to herself as memories stir, Grace inhales slowly, savouring the heavy mixture of evening scents that surround her; the mysterious, striking nectar of foreign flowers, the warm, salty tang in the sea air, the remains of the deep burgundy liquid in her glass. Senses just a little bit dulled by the heady effects of the surprisingly good local wine, she concentrates intently on what feedback is available to her, curious as to what she can learn from his movements. What she can guess or discern from the information which becomes available or apparent when one of her other senses shuts down.
It's a game she played as a child, and one she used extensively as she learned to work with people, to understand them. Sometimes, for fun, she still practices, follows him with just her ears as he potters through the house in the evenings, or during the day she sits with her door closed or music playing and simply observes his movement, his body language, the tiny clues that give away his emotional state, his thoughts. He accuses her of reading him like a book, of knowing him far too well; she tells him it's simply observation.
Maybe it's both.
His feet are bare, she knows that from the whisper his slow, easy steps make on the broad flagstones, polished smooth by years and years of existence in this very spot. He's relaxed; there's no trace of hurry in him at all, no impatience.
His clothes rustle slightly as he moves, fabric brushing against fabric, against skin. The sound reminds her of soft sheets and twilight moments. Of gentle, whispered words and the erotic kiss of his skin against hers. Of moments shared, and moments stolen; of a connection and an understanding that is theirs and theirs alone.
A low, tempered clunk tells her a glass is being set down on the small table they've taken to eating their meals at, that if she kissed him now his lips would hold the taste of whiskey. The hint of a breeze shifts, and for a single heartbeat she catches a bitter tang of the spirit in the air, caught between the brine of the ocean further down the cliffs, and the trace of wood smoke from a bonfire somewhere nearby. Impatient and flighty, though, the breeze shifts again, wafting away and taking that warm, familiar evening trace of him with it.
The night rings with the chirruping of crickets, heard but not seen. The air is warm and salty, the barest hint of a chill swallowed away by the press of warmth, the trace of humidity. Her skin feels overheated, her body too warm, and when she slips flimsy sandals from her feet the flagstones beneath offer instant cooling, their surface hard and smooth, grounding her, steadying her.
Opening her eyes, she finds him exactly where she had thought; standing not ten feet away on the other side of the small, wooden patio table, he is gazing quietly, sedately at her. The velvety darkness of the fallen evening seems to sink into him, twine around him, the soft glow of light spilling out from inside the open French windows highlights some of his features, while leaving others lost in mystery.
Dressed in a lightweight shirt and trousers as befits the hot, sunny climate and relaxed atmosphere, and clearly feeling the effects of several uninterrupted days rest and leisure, he looks far less stressed than he has in a long, long time. He's fresh out of the shower after their early evening return from a long, lazy day at the beach before they head for an informal dinner down at the town, and in the darkness she can't pick out the colour of the fabric. Experience, however, tells her that it's that shirt; a dark, gunmetal grey that looks dangerously good on him, that picks out strains of colour in his eyes, and is sleek and ridiculously well-fitting everywhere it matters. In daylight it looks stunning on him; in the shadows it looks even better.
And he knows it.
There are seven buttons on that shirt, and, she muses idly as he gazes across at her, one eyebrow slightly quirked in a hint of both question and greeting, only six of them are currently fastened. Almost automatically, her eyes pick out the first as she remembers what the rich, luxurious texture of that expensive fabric feels like as her fingertips glide over it, what she can see as the tiny slip of plastic slides through the button hole to reveal a tantalising hint of the seasoned muscularity and smooth, tempting skin that lies beneath.
She doesn't bother calling her thoughts to order as they head in a direction that is completely opposed to the quiet, late dinner they had planned. It doesn't matter, has no consequence, not here in these handful of days when they can do exactly as they please, when they have no one and nothing to answer to, no duty to abide by.
Instead she abandons her game, and begins another.
He's already tanned to a light golden brown by the late summer sun, and as she sees almost through the fabric, traces her eyes over the visible lines and contours of his upper body, Grace lets her mind fill in the details, conjures an image of him from less than two hours ago as he reclined back on his beach towel wearing only a pair of dark blue swimming trunks, his bare feet and toes absently digging through the pristine white sand.
It's a sweet torment, and it's not nearly enough – the second button goes, and then the third follows almost immediately after, baring more skin to her inner eye. There's plenty to see now, plenty to kiss. The ridge of his collarbone, the hollow beneath it… a place to get lost in languid kisses of exploration. A place to begin a slow, lazy meander along to his throat and then up to the strong contour of his jaw, the sensitive line of his lips.
Still standing there as she watches him, utterly oblivious to the direction her thoughts are heading in, Boyd shifts his weight and fabric tugs snugly against the wide, powerful shoulders that fascinate her time and time again. The remaining buttons are swiftly dealt with, and then Grace is free to think about what it's like to run her hands up along his chest and out across those shoulders, how the heat of his body radiates out into her palms as the shirt slips away, slides down past the definition of his biceps and leaves her with exactly what she wanted.
The power in those shoulders has always fascinated her, entranced her even. She's seen him in the mornings, sweat beading across his skin as he forces himself through a series of press ups and pull ups, the exercise driven not just from a need to work off some of his excess energy, but also partly, she suspects, out of vanity. Grace isn't complaining though, far from it – she knows exactly what it's like to clutch tightly at those shoulders, to dig her fingers deep into the muscle there as the two of them tumble together in a haze of passion, losing themselves in a tangle of heat and sex, of love and lust.
Taking another sip from her glass, she lets the wine linger on her tongue, savours the heady combination of strong and subtle flavours, enjoys the sight of him standing there, watching her quietly, his eyes unreadable in the near darkness as a growing edge of arousal catches hold of her and begins to build steadily inside her. The crickets now form a muted, background orchestra, the exotic scents of local flowers tickle her nostrils as the sounds of the evening wash over her, around her; it all mingles tightly with what she can see, what she can feel. What she wants.
There's a tiny, almost imperceptible movement of his chest as he breathes, and for a moment it catches and holds all of her attention; the skin there is almost bronzy in the glow of the single, woefully inadequate outdoor lamp.
Another shift of his feet and her eyes slide lower, drawn first to his waist and hips, and then to the belt buckle that's helping to obscure her view. It's an infuriating buckle, that one, and somehow she's never mastered the art of quickly and easily unfastening it. But this is her daydream, and, as she watches in rapt fascination, it obediently releases and pulls free, leaving her with only one remaining button and the zip to conquer.
Boyd rests a hip against the table, one hand braced on its surface as he leans casually against the heavy wooden frame. The button gives up without a struggle; the zip slides down slowly and smoothly and then Grace is left with the entrancing view not of the loose shorts worn in dark or muted colours, but of the more fitted black trunks he occasionally favours and she definitely prefers. Her eyes are just skimming along the waistband, admiring the contrast between dark elastic and lighter skin when his voice breaks through to her, distracts her.
"Do you want to go for a walk?" he asks, because a slow, lazy meander, hand-in-hand along the quiet lanes and through the village has become a nightly, pre-dinner ritual since they arrived in this peaceful, idyllic paradise. His voice, deep, clear and wonderfully mellow, descends up on her, pushes straight through the haze of her daydreams and the tide of erotic images that are slowly but relentlessly building behind her eyes and banishes in an instant the vivid picture, the intensely sensual scenario her mind had created for her.
For a moment Grace is unable to answer; fleeting anger, though only a hint of it, flares at the interruption of her thoughts, the way she is pulled from her imaginings. It disappears though, as she looks at him – really looks at him – and sees just how truly relaxed he is, how much of the stress of running the unit and unending rush and chaos their professional lives has fallen away from him. It takes years off him, turns him back into the much younger man she met in an old-fashioned, messy incident room one bitterly cold winter night nearly twenty years ago now. The younger man she was infuriated by and tried desperately hard to dislike on principle, but was almost instantly powerfully attracted to.
Grace shakes her head, and the action is slow, lazy even, though her dismissal of the idea was instant.
"No," she tells him softly.
He looks surprised. "No?"
"No," she repeats her tone stronger, clearly decisive.
He looks slightly perplexed, but he'll catch on quick enough, of that she has absolute faith. Reaching out she transfers her glass to the table and then gets gracefully to her feet. "No," she says again, her voice taking on a slightly husky edge as she approaches him, simultaneously reaching out.
Halting a mere few inches in front of him, Grace tilts her head, smiles up into eyes that gaze steadily down at her. She sees the exact moment he reads the edge of desire in her, the hint of that bold assertiveness that he finds so intriguing, she sees the way it tells him everything he needs to know about her intentions, the way his eyes, already so impossibly deep, darken even further.
They reach for each other at the same time; Boyd's hands settle on her waist as hers venture up across his torso, fingers tracing lightly over everything she feels beneath the fine texture, and, just as easily as it did in her imagination, that first button yields effortlessly at her command.