CHAPTER ONE: Father’s best friend
After the Rain
The house still smelt like him.
The old, cosy combination of his tobacco pipes, wet wool coats, and the subtle citrus of his aftershave used to signify "Daddy's home", rather than the hospital odour that had permeated everything during those final months. The smell was now dissipating, as if breath were leaving a space.
Three weeks after the burial, Muna turned twenty-three. She cried later in the laundry room, pressing her forehead against one of his unwashed shirts until the fabric was wetter than it had been in the washing machine, even though she hadn't cried at the graveyard, where everyone had commented on how calm she was.
That was where Matt found her.
In reality, he wasn't her uncle. Just the man who had attended every Sunday lunch, Christmas, and birthday since she was little enough to ride on his shoulders. She learned how to replace a tyre, how to whistle through a blade of grass and how to drink single malt without looking foolish from this man. More than anyone, her father had trusted this man.
He knocked softly on the open doorframe.
“You don’t have to keep doing all this alone,” he said.
She didn’t look up. “Someone has to.”
Felicia suggested that Muna go to live with Matt so she would be able to move on, and Matt agreed.
Two months later
Even at forty-eight, Matt still had the broad, thick muscles of a man who worked with his hands on a daily basis, with silver running through the dark hair on his chest and disappearing under the jeans waistband.
Mina’s mouth went dry as she looked at her father’s friend that she had always dreamt of.
He could see where her gaze went. He simply observed her with the unwavering, blazing gaze he had concealed for years.
"You've been staring at me like that since you turned twenty-three," Matt replied in a gruff, low voice. "You thought I was blind to it."
Muna rose from the carpet. Cool tiles with bare feet. The humid air is already causing her thin cotton nightgown to stick to her thighs.
She said, "I stopped acting like you didn't notice."
After three steps, she was up against him, heat colliding with heat, damp skin colliding with dry cotton. Without any preparation or gentleness, his mouth slammed down on hers. The tongues wrestled, the teeth clashed. He tasted like scotch, rain, and something deeper that had been kept in a cupboard for too long. In order to bite along the column of her throat—sharp enough to pain but not quite enough to break skin—one large hand clenched into her hair and pulled her head back. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as she gasped.
Against her pulse, Matt hissed. "Bedroom."
She wasn't carried by him gently.
As he pulled her up, she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist. As he went down the corridor, she felt him—thick, stiff, pressing insistently against her through moist cotton and jeans. Her back struck the bedroom doorframe so forcefully that the hinges rattled. For a minute, he held her there, grinding against her centre till she whimpered into his mouth.
He flung her onto the bed inside. The mattress twitched. Her nightgown reached her hips. He didn't wait for her to take a breath. Suddenly he was kneeling on the mattress, pulling her by the ankles to the edge, spreading her thighs wide, and burying his face between them.
No teasing licks. No soft kisses.
He devoured her inside.
His tongue was broad and flat at first, then unrelenting and sharp, slicing viciously across her clit in little strokes while two big fingers thrust within her without warning. Her back arched off the bed as she let out a cry, half shock, half pleasure. He continued. Her thighs trembled fiercely around his ears as he sucked hard, curled his fingers against the swollen area inside, and stroked deep and fast until she came with a broken cry, "Matt", she screamed as she gushed on his mouth.
He didn’t stop. Matt licked more slowly but no less viciously as she continued to feel the aftershocks, attempting to push him away while yet drawing him nearer.
She shouted, "Fuck me, Matt."
Then, in a matter of seconds, he stood up and undressed. Heavy, veined, and already flowing, Cock leaped free. His gaze was fixed on hers as he fisted himself once and again.
“On your knees. Ass up.”
Before her intellect caught up, she obeyed. Knees apart, back arched, face down. With one hand directing himself to her entrance and the other pressing between her shoulder blades to keep her chest flat against the mattress, he knelt behind her.
He was completely buried with one vicious thrust. Sharp pleasure that verged on anguish, she shouted into the pillow. He didn't hold back. Nearly pulled out, then shoved back in. Once again. Once again. Rain was not as loud as the moist smack of skin on skin that filled the room. Her arms gave out, and she fell forward, her ass still high, dragging him deeper as each stroke tugged at every delicate inch inside her.
His weight pinned her down as he leaned over her, chest to back. One hand slipped between her thighs and rubbed vicious circles over her clit, while the other wrapped around her throat, gripping but not squeezing.
He growled into her ear, "Cum again." "Cum on my cock the way you've been longing to do for years."
She did violently. Her entire body seized, and the walls clamped down so forcefully that he muttered a curse. Harder, faster, he fucked her through it until his thrusts sent the bedframe crashing against the wall. There was a guttural grunt that sent shivers down her spine as he finally arrived. His hips jerked wildly as he unloaded into her, thick pulse after thick pulse, driving deep one more time.
They remained that way, both of them trembling, he wrapped around her back and still buried inside. His thumb caressed the bottom of her jaw as his hand moved softly along her throat. He kissed the back of her neck slowly and with an open lip.
With a broken voice, he whispered, "You okay?"
She nodded, her legs still shaking. Reaching up, he traced down his back the crimson lines her nails had made. "More than okay. ”.
Then he gave a tiny, genuine, weary smile. Put both arms around her as if he would never let go, pulling her against his chest.