“This is your ex?”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Yup. Don’t be fooled by his baby face. He’s fucking ruthless.”
“Banker?”
“Wanker, actually, but yeah. He works in the city.”
“Do you miss him?”
It was a question I’d asked myself a lot until I’d met Kim, and I still wasn’t altogether sure of my answer. “I miss the company—as sporadic as it was—and the sex, but I don’t think I miss him. Even without the clichéd double-life bullshit, he was a bit of a prick.”
“You feel free without him?”
I shrugged. “Some days. Still hurts, though. Bastard broke my heart.”
Kim came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. His hands were empty, but I didn’t ask what he’d done with Rich’s nudes. Didn’t care. How could I when Kim was standing so close to me, the warmth of him making my skin tingle?
“Why have you got pictures of fairy dust?” he asked.
I picked up the images he was pointing at. “That’s not fairy dust, it’s grains of sand shot with a macro lens.”
“Seriously?”
Kim plucked a photograph from my hands and held it up to the light. His puzzled frown would’ve been comical if it hadn’t been so beautifully endearing. “Why is it purple?”
“Because itispurple, at least that handful of grains was. Sand is a weird and wonderful thing if you look closely.”
“And you have to care enough to look, eh?”
Kim didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I passed him the rest of the sand series and returned to sifting through the box. The old barn images were at the bottom, stuffed into a ripped brown envelope. I spread them out on the floor and snapped a few shots of them with my phone to send to Gaz. Hopefully, we could frame some of them and display them in the refurbished barn. I glanced at Kim. “Don’t suppose you make picture frames, do you?”
“I can make anything if I’ve got the right materials.” He appeared at my side. “What have you got in mind?”
“These.” I nodded at the barn images. “I’d like to keep as much history in the barn as we can.”
“Good job you got a pile of unused wood over there then, innit?”
I followed Kim’s amused gaze to the smashed-up bookcase. “Seriously? You can do something with that mess?”
“It’s not a mess, Jas. It’s in transition to a new life.” Kim ambled over to the bookcase and produced a foldaway sack from the bag he’d brought with him. “See these bits here? ’Bout a foot long, I reckon. Do the trick nicely.”
He started gathering lengths of splintered wood, while I stared at him like he’d suggested we collect kryptonite from the moon. He’d half filled the sack by the time I returned to the real world.
I didn’t go and help him, though. How could I when the sunlight streaming through the large Victorian windows was hitting him so beautifully? My fingers itched for my camera, but for once I’d left my precious Canon at home. I pulled my iPhone out, loaded the app that allowed me to shoot in RAW, and snapped a few experimental shots.
Kim rolled his eyes. “Always working, eh?”
“Says you.”
“Touché, I’m going to run out of wood to pick up in a minute, though. Want me to slow down?”
That he was so willing to work with me made me want to jump his bones. “No, no, just carry on. The sunlight behind you is perfect. Don’t suppose you fancy taking your top off, do you? Ink and white walls are a fetish of mine.”
Kim’s only answer was a roguish wink as he set his wood-filled sack aside and pulled his Judas Priest T-shirt over his head. He tossed it vaguely in my direction and turned around, showing me his lean, inked-up back in all its glory. And glorious it was. I snapped away, stepping closer with every shot, cursing the fact that I’d always been too busy getting off to take in how fucking stunning he was naked: his slender bones and sinewy muscles, his flawless milk-pale skin. I wanted to take a thousand pictures of him—to alreadyhavea thousand pictures of him. I wanted to touch him, to press my face between his shoulder blades and breathe him in.
I wanted to sink my teeth into his elegant neck.
Reluctantly, I settled for a quickened pulse as Kim unbuckled his belt. I’d never noticed what underwear he wore—and now I knew why. Because there was no underwear, not today, at least, only a narrowing trail of dark hair that led to the one thing Idefinitelyrecalled.