Declan
The girl that he saw standing at his mothers front door was nothing like he'd expected. Her dark hair fell around the fair skin of her face and licked her cheekbones. Her eyes, which sought his in greeting, were disarming and unusual, grey within a deep blue circumference, and when she smiled at him they crinkled up in support of her mouth. For the next hour he sat with them all in the front room and he watched her charm everyone. She was all genuine, heartfelt warmth and good cheer, and it illuminated her. Even though she had just blown in from the street, with the cold still clinging to her, and the mist shining in her hair, she lit up his mothers front room and her warmth seeped into every corner.
She played subconsciously with her hair as she talked, twisting it up into a large claw clip, exposing her smooth white neck, emphasising the line of her jaw, before letting it spill out over her shoulders and lick at her cheeks again. She did this repeatedly, taming, releasing, taming, releasing. He made himself take his eyes off her. It was quite the effort for him to appear casual. Whilst sharing stories of her travels her eyes would land on him, the sun shone out of them, and he could not bare it in a room full of people. He realised with some disturbance that he wanted her to look at him alone. He was greedy for her attention.
So when she slipped out of the room, he followed at leisure and found her fiddling with the lock on the back door. She turned on that brilliant smile that he knew had convinced a hundred men to do her bidding.
"If you help me open this door I'll make it worth your while."
"What will you give me?"
"Anything you want," she laughed uncomfortably.
"I can't believe you are trying to escape already," he said dryly as he worked the lock.
And she laughed. It made him feel wonderful in a schoolboy kind of way. He had made her laugh.
They tumbled out into the back garden and she regarded him as she dug around in her handbag for her cigarettes. Finding one she lit up and leaned back against the wall, looking around. She was uncomfortable and he could have filled the silence with inane chatter about something. But the tension between them as they stood in the tiny rear yard was entrancing, electric, confronting, and so delicious that he didn't want it to end prematurely. Neither did she it would seem. She had swapped the happy chatter of the front room for something else entirely. He expected her to try to fill the quiet void and make everything easy and companionable, try to disarm his quiet mood, push him into a more relaxed congenial humour. Perhaps they would share a joke and she'd see him laugh. That would make her feel more at ease, and by rights he knew he should give that to her. Then the light in her eyes would shine on him again, and he would bathe in it. But that would come another time.
After a while she glanced sideways at him, looking up from under long lashes.
"So, what is it we are to each other," she half whispered. She had apparently decided that attack was her best form of defence.
"Hmmm... That all depends what you mean." He turned in to her conspiratorially and made a little corner of their bodies against the wall. Though the were not touching it was an intimate gesture. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts as she sucked in some deep breaths, and it excited him that this was the effect that his proximity had on her.
She needed something to distract her and so drew back on her cigarette.
"Can I have a puff," he asked, just to watch her hand, slightly trembling, move towards him through the small space between them. He took it gently, without making contact with her, and held it between his fingers.
"Well....," she really didn't want to have to say it, and now she turned to face him and the light from the window fell fully on her face. A little crease of disapproval had appeared between her eyebrows. "We are...related," she hissed secretively.
