Chapter 94

Danny Longhurst wasn’t about to head back to Alan and Yolanda’s flat after he left Harry in the club. Apart from anything else, he was worried they might still be around if he got back so early, and he didn’t want to face the inevitable questions they’d have about where Harry was.

Instead, he found a small, quiet bar and had a short coffee, determining that he’d wander back down towards Sol and see what was happening. It had easily been the most interesting place he’d seen on his tour of the city that night. It wouldn’t hurt, even, to give the club another chance, once it got later. For now, he tried to tune in to the mood of the city, very much as Alan had recommended. Harry didn’t need him tonight, he realized: but neither did he really need Harry. In fact, in the club he had been acutely conscious of their age difference, had felt almost as embarrassed as if he’d been there with his own father. It was a mercy to be able to escape from the McFry’s for a few hours, and the thought that the whole of the city was his, for the taking, excited him. He would see what the night brought – see if Harry was right, that this was a place where he could find himself. As he sipped his coffee, he wondered whether Harry would be true to his word, and devote a little more time to him during Sunday? He would have to see, he guessed.

*

That night, Harry rediscovered Ana, and she him. He knew already that he still desired her, had felt the same attraction that had taken him unawares all those years ago, when he had least expected it. Now, he could only think that he wanted her beside him again, her body close against him. He wanted more than anything to run his hand across the soft, smooth skin of her back, to kiss the back of her neck so that she writhed in the way he remembered she did, to tease her with his fingers until he heard the sharp intake of breath that made him know she loved him.

Through the early hours, they captured again the sweetness of times they had both thought long gone. Harry wanted her, just as Ana wanted him, even if part of her cried to protect herself against the kind of pain she knew he was capable of delivering.

Ana’s bed became a kingdom of yearning where she was, against her very will, warm, yielding and waiting for him. When she reached to touch him, she knew his desire was real, had not diminished at all since last they met. She knew she could never have such an affect on another man, and a little spring of sadness welled up inside her, which she tried to suppress by concentrating on the pleasure of the now.

Harry wondered that the passion he had once felt for her was still, magically, there. Lillian McFry’s words came back to him as he kissed Ana’s neck again: ‘Have you ever loved someone?’ He wanted to cry out to the world how much he loved Ana, even as he marveled how the softness of her touch roused him.
He tried to postpone the inevitable fusion of their bodies for as long as he could, the better to prolong and enjoy the sheer lust he felt for her. Yet, when he saw the fire in her eyes, he knew that any pretence of control was beyond him. He knew, at last, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, as she drew him to her. He heard her gasp and felt the beat of her heart as his hand touched her breast. Her lips tempted him to another kiss that seemed to last longer even than their first, an age of time while he lost himself inside her. He could smell on her hair the intoxicating aroma of ‘Ana’, wished he could bottle it and hold it for the times when they might be apart. The kiss continued, unending as they came closer together: Harry lost, now, in the sheer, unadulterated beauty of her love and her body, his mind at last freed from all constraints. He wanted to be with her - he had known this all along, if he had only admitted it - but in the moment he realized, too, that he wanted more than this. He wanted to be in her. To be part of her. Forever.