Chapter 8
Ty sat down on the edge of Middleton’s bathtub and tried not to laugh like a crazy man. He’d spent years—decades—picturing scenarios like the one he’d just partaken in, and what he’d just done had eclipsed every fantasy. When he came, Middleton’s silky plait wound around his fist, the word ‘daddy’ ringing in his ears, he felt like all the DNA in his body was being teased apart. He’d had, objectively speaking, a lot of sex, but he’d never had sex like that. Not even close. It was the difference between looking at a painting of a feast and sitting down at the table.
He met his gaze in the bathroom mirror. He looked strange; younger and kind of goofy, like a guy who’d just won his girlfriend the biggest stuffed gorilla at the carnival shooting range. He grinned at himself like an idiot until he felt self-conscious, but he still couldn’t make his face go back to normal. He gave up, rubbing a palm over his still-elated expression. “Jesus, this fucking girl.”
Middleton had been even more perfect than he’d imagined—both obliging and unwilling, sweet and so fucking filthy. Her nipples were the most sensitive things he’d ever had the pleasure of putting his mouth on, and that snatch? When she came, she’d clenched so tight around him, he’d thought he was going to pass out. Ty shook his head, stupidly proud of himself, then noticed something that made his smile fade. He’d sweated right through his t-shirt. There were damp circles under his pits and a triangle down his back like he’d just finished a spin class.
He probably should have taken his t-shirt off before they got down to it, but he hadn’t wanted to show her his scars. They’d be too hard to explain and a complete fucking mood-killer.
And you don’t want her to see them. Didn’t want her to know she’s fucking an old man with a Frankenstein back, did you, Big Daddy?
Ty scowled, his face returning to its usual state in the mirror. He shook his t-shirt in a weak attempt to dry out the sweat, then gave up. He showered before he’d come over, and he didn’t smell too bad. All he needed to do was go back into the living room, kiss Middleton’s cheek, thank her for the shag, and then clear off.
A little callous maybe, but it was up to him to set the tone for what this was and was not. This was not the start of a relationship; this was not even the start of a friendship. As far as Middleton was concerned, he was cock for hire, a daddy for rent. His job, now that he’d fucked her brains out, was to go home to his cold house and reminisce about the fact that he’d came so hard it had probably shaved a year off his life. Middleton could stay here and knit bobble hats or bake scones or whatever she did in her eerily opulent apartment.
He’d been surprised when she’d given him her Elizabeth Street address. Not a lot of twenty-somethings could afford an apartment in the inner-city unless their folks were the one percent kind of rich. Knowing what she got paid he’d assumed it must be a share house or a tiny one-bedroom flat where flushing the toilet made the walls shake. Before now, he’d dimly acknowledged this place was the furthest thing from a share house, but he’d been too focused on Middleton’s pussy to do more than that. Now her housing situation seemed especially bizarre. Her apartment didn’t contain a trace of her bubbly, children’s TV show host persona. It looked like it belonged to an extremely wealthy hipster who had a particular fondness for nude Amazonians—judging from all the statues and oil paintings.
The place was huge with a newly renovated kitchen and an incredible view. It had to be worth a million bucks, maybe two, maybe three. How in the hell could Middleton afford to live here? Was she supplementing her income as an escort? A drug dealer? Did she live with roommates he’d yet to see any evidence of? He decided it wasn’t any of his business, dried his hands on an Egyptian cotton towel, and headed back to the living room.
Middleton was still on her couch, watching that dopey reality TV show. As he got closer, he realised she wasn’t actually watching the TV; her huge eyes were glazed, her expression dreamy. Seeing her looking so young and pretty and well fucked made him feel a little skeevy. It also made him feel a softer and an infinitely more uncomfortable emotion right in the center of his chest. He’d felt the same way when she’d looked up at him with tears in her eyes because she couldn’t come. It made him want to wrap her up in a blanket—several blankets—and put her on a very high shelf where she could curl up, safe and warm like a sugar glider in its nest and go to sleep. Ty shook his head, wondering if his orgasm had melted an important part of his frontal lobe. “Middleton? I just wanted to—”
She turned to face him, and Ty froze right in the middle of telling her that the sex had been great, they should do it again and he was leaving. Her smile was sweet. Not her GGS ‘I’m a good girl tra-la-la-la-la’ smile, but soft like a newly opened rose.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was even throatier than usual.
Was he? Ty forced himself to respond. “Uh, yeah, what about you? How are you?”
“I’m cool.” She gestured to a couple of shot glasses sitting on the coffee table filled with what looked like bourbon. “Want a drink?”
The thought of her filling up the glass for him filled Ty with a floaty kind of sadness. Like when he saw dead Christmas trees piled in people’s backyards.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
Middleton beamed as he picked up the glass and tossed the contents back like it was malaria pills. The liquor burned in his throat, and he realised it wasn’t bourbon, but rum. Being from Queensland, he was no stranger to the spirit, but this was unlike any rum he’d tasted before. It had a hot, almost fruity flavor. “What is that?”
“Sailor Jerry,” Middleton said nervously. “Spiced rum. I thought…you don’t like it?”
Ty put his shot glass down and tried not to pull a face. “S’alright. I’m not much of a rum drinker.”
“Oh, sorry, I can get you a—”
“I’m all right.”
There was a short silence.
“Um, okay then.” Middleton picked up her shot glass and sipped neatly; her overlarge eyes making him think of Margaret Keane paintings—enchanting and a little spooky at the same time. He felt a sudden rush of guilt. She’d just given him the best lay of his life, the least he could do was stay for a drink and not be an asshole about it. “Mind if I have another beer? I brought a six-pack.”
Middleton smiled. “Not at all.”
He felt another powerful tug of that ‘wrap her up and hide her somewhere safe’ feeling, and walked toward her kitchen before he could do or say anything stupid. He returned to Middleton’s enormous stainless steel fridge and freed another beer from its cardboard cage.
“What’s that called?” she asked as he sat down beside her again.
“Pepperwood Ale.”
“I’ve never heard of that.” She was still hugging her knees. Ty’s hand twitched as he imagined putting it on her shoulders, rubbing her soft, new-peach skin. He took a long pull from his beer. “Did you like the ones you drank?” he asked her.
“Not really.”
Ty nodded at the empties on the coffee table. “You drank it quick enough before.”
She went red. “That was because…you know…?”
“Because Daddy told you to,” Ty said, grinning.
Middleton smiled back at him, her face alight with the same dumbfounded joy he’d seen in the mirror.
She felt it, too, the giddy joy of having the sex you’d spent your whole life dreaming about. Ty hovered on the point of telling her how amazing it had been, then decided against it. “So, this apartment…?”
A layer of sugar crystals settled over Middleton’s smile like frost. “What about it?”
“It’s not what I expected. Is it yours?”
Middleton took another small sip of rum. “It’s my aunt’s place.”
“Shit.” Ty turned around, half-expecting to see an older woman scowling at him from the doorway. “Is she, uh, out or something?”
“No, she died.”
Fuck. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Middleton’s eyes took on the slightly hollow quality of grief. “She had ovarian cancer.”
Ty wondered what the hell he should do. He’d been good at this once, comforting people. He’d drunk beers with grieving fathers and held widows whose husbands succumbed to smoke inhalation. He’d thought it was easy, but that turned out to be pure arrogance. As soon as he had heartache of his own—an unwanted diamond in his bureau, motley burns across his back—gone was his ability to console other people. Now whenever he saw someone crying, all he wanted to do was leave the room. Still, Middleton hadn’t raised the subject of her dead aunt, he had. Ty cleared his throat. “Was her death hard?”
“No, well, it was awful losing her, but we knew it was going to happen. She had enough time to say goodbye properly, and her friends hosted this weird, amazing funeral. It had fireworks and vodka shots and everything.”
“Sounds interesting. So how’d you end up with this apartment?”
Ty had seen Middleton blush before but this was in a league of its own. She looked like someone had thrown boiling water on her face. “That’s, erm, kind of a long story and you’re probably going soon, right?”
It was the perfect out. All he had to do was agree, chug the rest of his beer and head out into the night. But the fact that she was nudging him out the door only made him more curious. “I’ve got nowhere to be. If you want to tell the story, I want to hear it.”
“Okay, hang on a second.”
She stood and walked off, returning with a cheerful red and yellow bottle of Sailor Jerry. She topped up her shot glass and downed the lot in one swallow. Ty watched her, fascinated. “Tricky subject?”
She nodded her eyes bright with rum.
“Should I be worried about you blacking out again?”
Middleton flinched. “No. I’m sorry, by the way. I’m so embarrassed I did that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Tell me about your aunt.”
She cast the bottle a yearning look, then seemed to think better of it and sat down beside him.
“So it’s the fifties,” she said, holding up her hands as though she were framing the scene. “And my grandparents are Calvinists who hate everything, especially women and having fun.”
Ty grinned. “Sure.”
“My Aunt Rhonda is born and straight away they know she’s different; she’s loud and reckless and she never wants to wear clothes. She was also ugly, that’s her word not mine, and she always said that when a girl’s ugly, most people think she’s pointless.’”
Ty found this statement depressingly accurate and didn’t know what to say. He drank some more beer.
“Anyway, when Aunt Rhonda was sixteen, my grandparents tried to make her marry this guy whose farm bordered with theirs. He was gross and like, twice her ag—” Middleton glanced sideways at him, her expression mortified.
“It’s fine,” Ty said, amused. “I know you didn’t fuck me because I have the adjoining farm. What did your aunt do?”
“Well, that’s the cool part,” she said, brightening. “She ran away to Melbourne and became a photographer. She was hired by Rolling Stone, and she spent like, the next thirty years travelling the world taking pictures. She never got married, never had kids, she just did whatever she wanted.”
Ty stared at her. So Middleton thought it was impressive her aunt never settled down. He’d never imagined that was something she’d find impressive. Would she—
A danger sign flashed in front of his eyes. Unstable line of enquiry. Avoid. “When did your aunt buy this place?”
“In the eighties. It cost a mint even back then, but she never wanted to live anywhere else. Melbourne was her favourite city, the first place she ever lived on her own and all that.”
Ty remembered his own escape to Melbourne. Stepping off the plane at eighteen and knowing with his first breath of chilly air, that this was a place where he could be happy. “Your aunt had good taste.”
“She did. She was a hipster before that was even a thing.” Middleton waved a hand toward the gleaming hardwood bar. “Every inch of this place is designed exactly the way she wanted it, sometimes I feel like I’m just squatting.”
“So she left you this apartment?”
Middleton’s smile hardened again. “I…kind of. That’s the other bit of the story.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I will, just…” She glanced at the Sailor Jerry. “Could I maybe have another?”
“Go ahead.”
Middleton poured herself another shot of rum and took a sip. “So, you know how I’m from a big family?”
“Youngest of nine, right?” Ty didn’t like revealing he knew things about her, but coming from a family with that many kids was just one of those things everyone knew—like if a family had twins or a child in a wheelchair.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of us. But then most of my brothers and sisters have kids and my parents have a lot of siblings, too. Aunt Rhonda died with seven brothers, fifty-nine nieces and nephews and twenty-three great nieces and nephews.”
Ty whistled.
“Yeah. Our Christmases are messed up, but the problem was that when Aunt Rhonda died, all her brothers thought they were going to get so much stuff and then I was…”
Ty read the rest of the sentence in her darting eyes. “You were the only one she left anything to, weren’t you?”
Middleton looked relieved. “Yeah.”
Fucking hell. “I take it your family wasn’t happy about that?”
“No. I thought they were nuts before, but I had no idea. Aunt Rhonda was the only person in our family who had any money and when she left it all to me…” She swallowed. “Everyone was very surprised.”
“Why? Weren’t you close?”
“Oh, we were so close! She saw a lot of herself in me because we both have…” Middleton cleared her throat. “We had a lot in common.”
Ty watched her pick at the neck of her leotard. If he had to guess, he’d say what Middleton’s unattractive free-spirit aunt and her dainty, soft-spoken niece had in common involved taking Ritalin, but that was so far from his business it was in another galaxy. “How old were you when you got this place?”
“Twenty-two, but I didn’t move in until I was twenty-three. A few of my uncles…” She tugged hard on the edge of her leotard.
“Yeah?” Ty pressed.
“They contested the will,” she said without looking up. “They said I didn’t deserve the place and it should be split between all of them.”
Ty frowned. “What did your parents do?”
“They contested the will, too,” she said with a brave attempt at a smile.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, they were pretty mad at me, so were my brothers and sisters. I mean, I get it, they had no money and they thought they were going to get heaps from selling this place and then they didn’t get any. I understand.”
“Still, that’s really shitty, Middleton, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, picking at a small scratch in the couch. “Aunt Rhonda must have known it would happen. She put aside money to defend her will. Everyone’s claims were dismissed, and I went from being a student with two pairs of shoes to owning this place.”
It was a happy ending but there was no note of triumph in her voice. Ty watched as she pulled her knees into her chest and felt a hot burst of anger toward her mother and father. What kind of people begrudged their daughter the break of a lifetime? Money talked, he got that, but wasn’t the point of being a parent to take pleasure in your kids’ victories? Ty reached out to rub Middleton’s arm, then pulled back as though she were an open flame. Some inner metronome told him if he held her now, it would fuck everything up. He grabbed the blanket on the back of the couch and wrapped it around her, tucking the material into her sides so that only her head remained uncovered.
There, he thought. Much better.
Middleton peered out at him from her blanket-y confines. “Erm, Mr Hender—Ty. Why am I wrapped in a blanket?”
“You were shivering. Anyway, I’m glad you got this place in the end.”
Middleton smiled at him, painfully adorable in her swaddling. “Thanks. I hope you don’t think I’m ungrateful. Getting this apartment changed my life. I could intern while I looked for a job instead of waitressing. It was probably the only reason I got hired at GGS.”
Ty didn’t want to talk about GGS in any way shape or form. He was almost done with his beer and knew he should think about leaving, but now that she was smiling again, all he wanted to do was kiss her. Whether it was a distraction or his body had just hit its peak recovery time, he could stand to get laid again.
Middleton caught his eye. “What’s up?”
“Just thinking about what we did.”
“Oh.” She ducked her head. “I thought you might be mad at me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got a very stern face.”
He put a knee on the couch and leaned toward her. “Really?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s intimidating.”
“Do you like it?”
“I…maybe?” She looked away and just like that, they were playing again.
Ty moved closer, crowding her body with his own, much larger one. “Are you going to do what I want or do we have to perform the whole seduction song-and-dance, again?”
“Please,” she said softly. “You said it would just be once.”
“We both know I was lying.” Ty tugged the blanket from her body and she cringed, covering her breasts with her arms.
“Uh-uh,” he said, pulling them away. “Daddy needs a little something, sweetheart, and you want to make him happy, don’t you?”
Her brown eyes narrowed. “You’re not my—”
Ty kissed her, cutting her words off at the source. Her mouth was sweet with spiced rum, and he found he much preferred the flavour when he was sucking it from her lips. He also found more evidence that kissing was to Middleton what blow jobs were to him; she couldn’t get enough. In a couple of minutes of kissing she was as squirmy as she’d been when his dick was planted firmly inside her. When she was good and needy, he asked if she wanted more and she said yes.
“You okay with rough again?” he said. “Nothing from before turned you off?”
“Not at all,” she said with an eagerness that was as hot as it was endearing.
“What’s your safe word?”
“Roses.”
“Good girl.” Ty kissed her, taking it deeper than he had before, glorying in the feel of her lithe body shuddering against his. His cock was hard as a railroad spike, slightly sore but more than willing to go again.
“Let’s get something straight,” he said when he came up for air. “When we play like this, you’ll call me Daddy, understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
She looked down at her hands. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good, because we’re going to play like this a lot.” Ty pulled her onto his lap, arranging her legs so she was straddling him. “I need pussy like most men need water and your new job is making sure I never get thirsty.”
“Why don’t you find someone else?”
Ty seized the front of her leotard with both hands. “Because other girls aren’t half as sweet as you, baby and they don’t live with me, either. Trawling bars takes time, and I’m not a patient man, now hold still.”
He braced his hands and as he’d hoped, the material gave beneath his fingers, exposing her from tits to hips. She gasped and tried to cover herself, but he shoved her hands away and pressed his mouth to hers, all but forcing his tongue between her lips. She fought him, but within seconds she was moaning again. He played with her cunt through her leotard, rubbing her folds without giving any particular attention to her clit. In a few seconds she was panting and after a few minutes, her hands had tightened around the collar of his t-shirt.
“What’s wrong, Katie?” He teased. “Getting turned on?”
She shook her head.
“Well, if that’s the case….” He withdrew his hand and she whimpered. The neediness in her voice made him laugh. “Sorry, sweetheart, should have said yes when you had the chance. Now, get on your knees in front of me.”
“But—”
Ty lifted her up and placed her on the floor in front of him, a tangle of smooth limbs and bare skin. He grabbed her now-battered plait and wound it around his hand in a way that made her eyes go wide. “Let me make something very clear, baby. I let you give me attitude when your mother’s around, but you do that here and I’ll spank your ass raw. I don’t let little sluts talk back to me and when they do I find ways to occupy their mouths so I don’t have to listen to it, understood?”
She nodded and Ty opened his jeans one-handed, and pulled out his cock. Middleton—god bless her—eyed it like she’d never seen one. “It’s so big.”
Ty grinned. He’d heard that before, but women telling you that you had a big dick was one of those things that never got old. “Ever sucked one?”
She shook her head, her eyes the size of planets.
“Then today’s your lucky day. This is part of me showing you what men like. When I’m too tired to fuck, or you’ve got something to apologise for, you’re gonna take me into your mouth and suck me, understood?”
She looked down at his feet. “Yes, Daddy.”
She was nervous, he could tell. She’d done this to him before, but he imagined it was different in the dark, thinking it was Buddy’s teenage cock she was sucking on. Ty picked up the bottle of rum she’d left on the coffee table and pulled the cork. He took a swig, then held it out. “Open wide, baby, it’ll help you relax.”
Middleton hesitated, then opened her mouth. He poured a little rum between her lips, and watched her visibly relax. It wasn’t the alcohol, Ty knew, it was the order. She liked him exerting power over her, liked him being a prick. That was good, he was more than happy to be a prick. He took another swig from the bottle, then cupped the back of her head and pulled her face towards his lap. “Time for your lesson, sweetheart. Suck me.”
“But I don’t—”
“Just open your mouth and do it. And keep your goddamn teeth out of the way.”
Middleton bent her head and began exploring him with suckling kisses and tentative licks. Ty groaned his satisfaction, slumping back into the couch so he could watch her lap clumsily at him. Considering how competent he knew that mouth to be, he appreciated all the more what a good little actress Middleton was.
He let the blowjob go on for much longer than he normally would, tugging her hair out of its loose plait and playing with it as she tongued him. He tried to memorise the way her mouth looked stretched over his cock, the way her eyes pleaded with him to take her again. She was horny, he could tell from the way she was rubbing her thighs together, but a little suspense never killed anyone and he was busy fulfilling a fantasy he’d had ever since he first laid eyes on her. He stopped meeting her gaze, instead he drank rum and pretended to be watching TV. Intense pleasure-pain glazed over her eyes whenever she caught him and she sucked harder, as though determined to earn his attention. She had a big old taste for humiliation, something Ty was more than willing to work with.
“You enjoying this?” he asked.
She moaned her ‘no’ onto his cock.
“Glad to hear it.” He tugged her hair hard, pulling her mouth deeper onto him. “See, you’ve got a lot of making up to do for all the prick teasing you’ve put me through.”
Her protest hummed down his shaft.
“It’s true, sweetheart. If Daddy let you keep going until you paid off your debt, you’d be sucking his dick until the end of the year. Now blow me harder.”
She made a garbled angry sound and he laughed. “Forget what I said before. You can talk all you want while you suck my cock. It feels good in my balls.”
Her look of hungry mortification was so satisfying Ty barely wanted to come, but that was hardly fair to Middleton’s jaw. After a few blissful seconds, he fisted her hair. “Time to get me off, sweetheart. Put your mouth around as much as you can and suck like you’re getting paid for it.”
She obliged, taking him deep into her mouth. Her delicate fingers wrapped around the base of his cock and began to gently tug.
“Harder,” Ty grunted. “Jerk me harder and stick your ass out, so I’ve got something to look at besides this stupid fucking TV show.”
She glowered at him, but the excitement in her bright brown eyes was evident. Ty tilted his hips towards her and prepared to finish when he realised he was wasting a golden opportunity. He loved blow jobs, but who knew how many times he would get to sleep with Middleton? He should be making the most of it. He pulled her hair. “That’s enough.”
Middleton released him, wiping a hand over her swollen lips. “Did I…? Was I bad at it?”
Ty had to fight the urge to smile. She really was a fucking dream come true. “No, baby, I wanna put it in you again.”
“Okay.” She bit her lip. “I, um, don’t know if I can finish again.”
“Why don’t you let me decide that?” Ty tugged another condom from his pocket and patted his thighs. “Come sit up here.”
Ty was glad she’d told him she was struggling to get off the first time. He’d paid a lot of attention to what worked and what didn’t, and it paid off handsomely. A little licking here, a little grinding there and Middleton was shrieking like a madwoman, babbling a stream of compliments, disbelief and prayers to the lord above. By the end he was hardly doing anything, just watching her bounce up and down in his lap screaming his name. She should have been calling him Daddy, but he felt like he owed her a pass. He didn’t know who the fuck she’d had sex with before now but it was clear they weren’t worth a wank in a sports sock. She looked like she was tapping into another dimension.
“Does it always feel like that?” she asked, when she was done.
“With me, it will,” he told her. “On your back.”
He fucked her in missionary, her ankles up by his ears, her tight cunt spasming around him. “Know what you are?” he snarled.
“Yes.”
“Say it out loud, bitch.”
He’d never come as hard as he did when she whispered that she was a whore, a dirty, filthy slut, Daddy, so do it harder, please do me harder.
When they were done, Ty went to the bathroom and realised he was too drunk from all the blowjob rum to even think about riding his bike home. Middleton offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted. She brought it out along with a tray of homemade French vanilla slice. Ty ate three huge slabs of it and probably would have eaten more if he hadn’t asked Middleton to put it back in the fridge under the guise of giving a fuck about bacteria.
They watched some more of the idiotic British TV show. Ty had never seen it before, but high on rum, sugar, and pussy, he found himself enjoying how ridiculous it was. A few episodes passed like the blink of an eye and he stopped laughing at the fabricated drama and instead started noticing how good Middleton looked in her tattered leotard. He was out of condoms, and she didn’t have any—a fact he tried not to take pleasure in—so they just messed around. He fingered her and she gave him a long sloppy blowjob. After he came he must have fallen asleep, because he jerked awake at an unspecified time to find Middleton watching a documentary on the mysteries of the ocean. She was wearing pyjamas. They were pink and covered in cartoon hedgehogs because of course they were.
“Unicorn onesie in the wash?” he asked.
She gave him an adorable mock-scowl. “Be quiet.”
“You know I’ve never heard you swear. Not when you cut your finger on the slide-ruler, or when that client said you were incompetent for the project he fucked up. I thought that was weird but now I know you don’t even swear when I’m balls deep in you.”
“Yes I do!”
“No you don’t. You say ‘do it harder, Daddy’ not ‘fuck me harder, Daddy’.”
She blushed pink as her pajamas. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Depends.” Ty tilted his head at her. “If I was to, say, kick in your TV, would you tell me to get the fuck out? Or would you just say ‘oh golly’ or something?”
Middleton screwed up her face. “F-Fuck off.”
Ty laughed, actually laughed deep from within his belly for the first time in…he couldn’t remember how long. It felt like a rainbow refracting from his torso. His laugh made her laugh and then they were both rolling on the couch laughing until Ty felt tears welling up in his eyes. He wasn’t stupid, he knew it was a side effect of the incredible sex, but he didn’t care. It felt too good.
“Do you want another cup of tea?” Middleton asked when they were done laughing.
Ty knew he should have said no. “Yeah, and can I eat more of that slice?”
They wound up watching the deep ocean documentary together, talking about how Middleton was terrified of lobsters because one had nipped her on the ankle when she was a kid. She was different here, in her home. Sweet but slightly left of centre. Her hands flailed as she talked, and she had a habit of tapping her temples and fidgeting with any object that was close to hand. Again, Ty thought of Ritalin and came close to asking her why she took it but knew it wasn’t his place to ask. People had a right to keep their shit to themselves. Besides, he didn’t need to hear something that would make him feel even more dangerously tender toward her than he already did.
When the documentary ended, they started watching the next one she’d recorded—Secrets of the Amazon Jungle. They were halfway through it, when Ty noticed the light peering through a crack in Middleton’s curtains. He checked his phone for the first time in hours and was blindsided to discover it was seven in the fucking morning. He was due at work in less than an hour and he didn’t even feel tired.
“You’re not coming in today,” Ty told Middleton as he pulled on his jacket. “Have a nap or a swim in your enormous tub or something.”
She stuck out her tongue at him.
“That’s an order,” Ty said, working hard not to smile.
“An order from my boss or my daddy?”
“Both.”
He felt different, his barriers worn thin by hours of drinking, sex and her sweet, uncomplicated company. As she walked him to the door, Ty pulled her into his arms and kissed her again. It could have easily led to more sex but he tugged her to her bathroom and began to run the water in the big claw-foot tub for her. He left her paddling in warm water, knowing the memory of her naked and wet and happy would power him all through the day.
The sun was still rising when he left her building and it was such a beautiful morning Ty decided to walk to work. He had a change of clothes in his office, and he could use a coffee, something that was impossible to carry while steering through Melbourne’s laneways on a motorbike. He stopped by Gordano’s and found the usually thriving café pleasantly empty.
“You look a bit worse for wear, mate,” Rick, the skinny barista said as he foamed the milk for his latte.
“Yeah,” Ty said, thinking about Middleton spread beneath him, the hot clench of her cunt, how cute she looked all wrapped up in her blanket, beaming at him like he’d hung the moon.
“Like to meet the woman who put that smile on your face for the first time in about a million years,” Rick said, placing his coffee in front of him. “Must be a hell of a girl.”
Ty remembered then. Remembered how everyone at GGS came here, how everyone knew Rick. “You ever meet Charlize Theron, you let me know.”
The barista rolled his eyes.