A quick prompt from Joodiff, to max out at 1000 words. And it was exactly 1000 before editing. Woohoo! It's a load of silly fluffy nonsense, but, hey, it was fun to write it. Enjoy. :) xx
Temptation
…
Prowling restlessly throughout the ground floor of Grace's house, Boyd grumbles quietly and irritably to himself about the inability of the tiny, spiky woman who holds his so heart firmly in her hands to ever get herself anywhere on time.
She's late home, she's not answering her phone, he has no idea where she is and he… well, quite frankly, he wants her. She's been winding him up all day, and she damn well knows it. They've traipsed the length and breadth of the city looking for witnesses to a particularly grisly and puzzling decade old dismemberment of a psychotic suicide victim, and every time they got back into the car…
Deliberately and expertly riling him, no doubt perfectly predicting the reaction she's going to get when she finally arrives home. The wretched woman is so infuriatingly good at it, too. She keeps him on his toes, all the time. It fascinates him, entrances him, enthrals him, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it. She drives him up the wall, and she bloody well enjoys it, too.
But then, he concedes, he's just as guilty of needling her on purpose, as well, just to get a reaction.
It's endless fun.
So is arguing with her. Well, bantering. Real arguing isn't fun at all. Though making up afterwards almost always is. Boyd is utterly convinced that the main reason they still squabble as much as they do is purely for the incredible make-up sex they invariably find themselves wrapped up in afterwards. Intense, passionate; mind-blowing.
Every. Single. Time.
Christ, the things she does to him…
They haven't argued today, but she's late, she's been artfully and subtly teasing him all bloody day, and thinking about her is definitely not helping pass the time until she gets home.
When she does…
Growling under his breath, he stalks out of the comfortable, cosy living room and into the study where she spends far too many hours poring over books full of nonsensical words that make him mutter in irritation and impatience whenever he tries to peruse them. Three whole walls of bookshelves. A cosy armchair in the corner, and beside it her desk, cluttered with bits of paper, open books, reams of scrawled, messy notes, and her laptop, open but displaying a blank, dark screen, the tiny light on the base of it blinking to indicate sleep mode.
Highlighters in various colours are scattered across the lot, and so are endless torn scraps of paper adorned with scruffy, indecipherable squiggles; even her pen is uncapped and lying haphazardly in the middle of a page.
It's so like her. Bloody woman.
It grates on his nerves, and he hasn't got a sodding clue how she can work in such chaos, but that's yet another of the differences between them that draws him towards her, that holds him fascinated.
She is the mess to his obsessive tidiness and order; the calm composure to his stormy anger.
Balance. That's what makes it work for them. Opposites attract, and all that nonsense. Except…
Is really is nonsense, he muses, fingers running over the spines of the books that fill out one of the many shelves of fiction. After all, they have their commonalities, places where they meet in the middle; good food and wine, travel, reading, history, intelligent conversation; the thoroughly hedonistic enjoyment of passion and sex, of lazing in bed on weekend mornings.
But no, it's the differences he finds in her that spike his curiosity so, the challenge she offers him, because she is not meek and mild, eager to please. She is… Grace.
His finger catches on the ridge of something sticking out between the books and he pauses, pulled out of his thoughts. It's a single sheet of something thicker and sturdier than paper, but of a similar texture. Easing it out from between the books, Boyd sees it's a photograph.
Summer, 196… is scrawled on the back in pencil, the last number too smudged to determine the precise year it was taken. Curious, he turns it over, and nearly chokes.
Grace gazes back at him; Grace in her very early twenties, and she is… hot. It's the very first word that springs to his mind as he stares open-mouthed and in stunned silence at the image.
It's not that she's gorgeous, the reason for his reaction, because that thought goes through his head every time he looks at her. It's not the long, dark hair that's blowing in the breeze, either. It's not even the expanse of creamy, inviting skin and the array of very nice curves on display.
No, it's the look in her eyes, the air of sexy confidence about her. The streak of wildness, the visible self-indulgence as she basks in the sun, and underneath it all the calm, fierce intelligence that sets her apart from all the other pretty girls that have caught his attention over the years.
Fuck.
If he'd met her then…
His life would be very different now, he's sure of it.
Eyes straying from her face downwards, Boyd finds himself shifting on his feet, the jeans he changed into after dumping his keys and phone on the hall table suddenly far less comfortable than they were. Damn her.
Damn her and her inability to get home at a reasonable hour, and her hidden photos left in strange places for him to accidentally stumble across. And the apparently rather skimpy bikini it seems she used to own.
The front door rattles and he straightens, though his eyes don't leave the image still clasped in his hand.
"Peter?"
It's just his name, and Boyd couldn't swear to it, but he's almost sure there's a hint of something just as tempting and taunting as earlier in her tone. A shiver runs down his spine, quickly followed by another.
Grace calls to him again, and this time he knows he's not imagining it. He glances at her desk, at the mess and the chaos. Takes one last long look at the photograph, and then drops it on the pile of papers and turns, heading purposefully for the door. He's just a man, after all, and he's not about to try and resist such powerful temptation.
Of course he's not.