The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine by Krissy Kneen Read Free Book Online

fingers of that look had uncovered the
secret undress beneath her skirt. She smoothed the silk down at her thighs again
and sank back into the soft lounge and folded her hands into her lap.
    ‘I’ll watch a movie,’ she said, avoiding his eyes, staring instead at her nails.
The perfect polish was chipped, she ran her thumb over the blemish and frowned. She
would watch a movie, that was the tragedy of it. A young woman at the peak of her
beauty sitting alone at home watching a romance and fixing the polish on her nails.
    When she looked up he was staring at her ring finger, the word waits clearly written
on the band. The rest was hidden but he grinned at her, as if they shared some wicked
secret.
    Her mother turned to go. ‘If you’re sure you’ll be all right then, sweetheart, we
should get going. We’re late already.’
    Michael tipped his glass to his lips and swallowed the last of his scotch. He set
the glass down on the coffee table and walked quickly towards her parents.
    ‘You’ll be all right sweetheart?’
    Holly nodded.
    ‘Maybe you should call Jennifer,’ her father said. ‘Have a sleepover.’
    A sleepover. As if she were still ten years old. She looked towards Michael to see
if he was amused by this childish image but he had already turned towards the door,
one of his hands resting gently on her mother’s hip in a gesture that seemed halfway
between inappropriately intimate and politely affectionate. When the door closed
behind them. Holly felt herself relax immediately. She hadn’t realised how tense
she had been. She slipped off the couch and picked up Michael’s glass, the ice still
tinkling in the bottom of it.
    She filled it with scotch; overfilled it, perhaps, because some of the ice had melted.
Holly held the glass up and peered at the edge of it. There was a partial fingerprint.
She placed her own finger over it. Her hand where Michael’s hand had been. A smudge
at the rim. She put it to her mouth, tipped the glass and let the liquid settle on
her tongue. This is what it would be like to kiss someone like him, someone as old
as her parents, but not at all parental. Someone who could see right through her
clothing, through her skin and muscle, right down to the bones of her.
    She was no better than that bad girl from high school. Her friends would be ashamed.
Jack would be ashamed. She took another big sip from the glass, her mouth on the
lip-print, now more hers than his. She grimaced. Harsh. Biting, but with a strangely
warm finish that sat nicely in her stomach and, oddly, pulsed a little. It felt as
if she had swallowed someone else’s live and beating heart.
    She opened her eyes and closed them again immediately. Her mouth felt sticky as she
ran her tongue around the furry inside of her teeth. She was being picked up, by
a huge bird, it felt like. She was flying, but not on the strength of her own wings.
    ‘Jack?’
    And even her voice sounded breathless, as if she were moving up towards an altitude
where the atmosphere was thinning.
    She heard a shushing sound.
    ‘Stay sleeping, darling,’ and she let herself relax into her father’s arms as he
carried her up the stairs.
    Two things. Firstly there was a smell to him when he kissed her, picked up the sheet
and settled it up under her chin, a riot of perfumes, sharp, cheap, sweet, the kind
of perfume her mother would never wear. And below that, a deeper note, the smell
of moss and freshly turned earth and dampness, a smell of caves and oceans and weed
tossed up on the shore. When he moved away from her she reached out to clutch his
lapel. The thick fabric of his suit jacket felt reassuring beneath her fingertips.
He stepped away and the jacket slipped out of her grasp.
    She heard the door shut behind him and she opened her eyes finally. There was something
fine between her fingertips, a thread. She peered at it in the thin light from the
moon. A hair, a long pale hair. Blonde. Her mother was dark. She measured the length
of this hair