“You’re cute,” a low voice said, right in his ear, warm breath tickling the side of his face. He turned in her direction and looked directly into the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen in his life, cold and deep like ice floes, lined with smokey grey wings that faded as they swept up and away from the corners. Somewhere in the back of his head he thought I’m in trouble.

“Thanks!” he said, and then that inner voice said say something else you fucking dork. He looked down, eyes travelling over plump red lips, one corner gripped gently between neat white teeth. “I like your shirt,” he said. Idiot.

She laughed, a sudden throaty eruption that sent something flipping in his stomach. She looked away for a second, then back to him, meeting his eyes then flicking down to his mouth and then back up to his eyes again. “I bet you think it would look better on your bedroom floor.”

Oh, I’ve fucked it already, he thought, but that knowledge made him braver than he’d ever been before and so he leaned in, put his mouth up to her ear, his nose filling with the scent of something almost but not quite cloyingly sweet, like a memory of candy floss. “Actually, I was thinking it would look better tying your hands above your head,” he said.

And that was how he learned that it’s actually very easy to pick up a girl in a bar, if she’s already decided that you’re going to go home with her before you’ve ever said a word.

She lived close, just ten minutes away in the black cab they flagged down outside the bar, her stepping into the street and throwing out her arm with smooth confidence, him trailing along behind her, fingers wrapped around hers. He hadn’t been in a taxi that wasn’t an Uber for over a decade and he was immediately flung back in time to university nights out, to drunkenly stumbling home having tried and failed to find someone to make out with.

In the back of the car he slid across the seat, tried to kiss her, and she pushed him away with a gentle hand on his chest and a smile.

“Wait,” she said. She put her head on his shoulder, threw her crossed leg over his. He rested his hand on her bare knee, her skin warm and smooth beneath his fingers, made small circles with the tips of his fingers while she pulled herself tightly against his side. Her breath was hot and soft against the side of his neck and he could already feel himself getting hard at the intimate closeness, the unyielding fabric of his jeans creating an almost uncomfortable tightness. His heart raced in his chest.

Fall out of the taxi door, flash of a gleaming lobby, into a cramped, shuddering lift where they exchanged a chaste kiss. Her lips tasted of strawberry, let his tingling slightly as she pulled away, turned her back on him and pulled his arms around her midsection, cuddling back into him.

Anonymous carpeted corridor, identical doors with small black numbers flashing past on either side, and then her keys in the lock and the door opening into a dim hallway, shoes in lines along the base of each wall. She led him by the hand, skirt swishing temptingly in front of him, kicking off her heels to walk barefoot on the carpet.

“In here,” she said, turning to him as she opened the door, backing through it, pulling him in by his shirt.

She sank onto the bed, pulling him with her, and finally she let him kiss her properly, her lips opening beneath his, hot breath in his mouth, soft tongue flicking out to lap against his, running along his teeth. She bit down on his lit, not hard but with enough force to pull a gasp out of him, and she laughed.

“I see how it is,” he said, voice barely more than a murmur. He buried his face in her neck, drank in the smell of her, kissing up the curve of her throat. He nipped with his teeth, smiling unseen as she gasped, her hands tightening in his hair. Then the lobe of her ear was between his lips, soft and pliant, his nose in her hair. He brought his teeth together gently, felt her shudder.

He began to kiss along the side of her jaw, hunting her mouth again, but she turned her head, pushed gently with her hand.

“More,” she said.

Once again his lips found her neck, candy floss filling his nose, the skin growing slick and wet as he kissed and tongued and gently nibbed, her hand in his hair, her breath coming faster.

With his free hand, the one not pinned beneath her, he found the buttons of her shirt, began to pop them open one by one, bottom to top. Open now, and his hand found the flat of her stomach, traced the soft skin around her belly button. She gasped again and he felt her stomach hollow slightly as she sucked in breath.

“Cold,” she said, with a laugh.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand away. Hers reached out, took hold of him, guided him back to her stomach, sliding him up over her ribs.

“No,” she said. “Touch me.”

He kissed back down the side of her neck, slid his face round to run his lips down the front of his throat, finding the curve of her clavicle, licking at the hollow between bone and skin. He rolled so he was over her, resting his weight on his elbows. Her hands were on his shoulders, running over his back, and he could feel her legs pinned together beneath him.

He kissed down her sternum, feeling the swell of her breasts before he saw them. His hands came up, cupped her through the purple lace of her bra, the fabric both rough and smooth at the same time. He pushed her soft flesh together, thumbs running over nipples hardening beneath the silk, took one in his mouth through the bra, fabric rasping beneath his tongue as he licked across it.

“God,” she said, her back arching up, hips trying to rise beneath him.

He continued his journey, mouth floating down her stomach, tongue trailing slow, wet lines down her body, hands still cupping her breasts above his head. She laid her hands over his, squeezed gently, began to massage herself through his grip.

He felt the edge of the mattress beneath his knees and he slid back, lowered himself to kneel on the floor, hands coming down to her stomach and her hips. He wrapped his fingers under the waistband of her skirt, pulled down slightly so that the elastic flexed, covering the freshly-exposed skin with his lips and tongue. Pulling further, finding the lace of her pants - purple again, matched to her bra - gently tugging them to kiss the stretch of skin where stomach became private skin.

She gasped again and he released her, let the skirt and her underwear return to where they were meant to be. Her knees were pressing into his stomach and he wrapped his hands over them, parted her legs with the slightest of pressure. His mouth found the inside of her knee, trailed up to the soft skin of her inner thigh, kissing with exaggerated wet smacks, wanting to be sure she heard each one.

He made his way up her thigh with his mouth, eyes fixed on her rising chest, her hands still massaging herself, head thrown back, lips glimmering wet and dark in the dim light. Then his head was beneath her skirt, and all he could see was the soft crease of skin at the top of her leg, the line of her underwear beside it.

His mouth reached the top of her leg and again he curled his fingers beneath her underwear, pulling them from the side this time, kissing across the top of her mound, breathing in the scent of her, revelling in the soft kiss of her pubic hair on his cheek. He kissed down slowly, inching toward the small gleam of her clit that was just beginning to peak out from beneath its hood. Just as he was about to touch it he stopped, pulled back slightly, let out a breath of air that he felt reflected back onto his face, hot and wet.

She groaned, arched her hips, and he released her underwear, kneeled back to look up at her.

“Fuck you,” she said, voice thick with lust. He grinned, bent down to kiss her other knee, started his slow progress north again, eyes locked on the bright blue of hers. “Oh,” she said, “I see,” and then her head fell back onto the bed.