LiLiTH

The house was worse than outside.

This was the specific cruelty of a British heatwave — the houses, built for insulation, built to keep warmth in, became perfect traps for it.

The walls absorbed the heat. The ceilings held the heat. The air inside was thick and still and several degrees warmer than the air in the garden, which was itself several degrees warmer than any air a reasonable person should be expected to inhabit.

You had taken three cold showers so far.

The first at seven in the morning. The second at half past eleven. The third at two in the afternoon, standing under water so cold it took your breath, but by the time you'd dried off you were already warm again. Your body producing heat that the house simply stored, helpfully, indefinitely.

At half past three you had gone and sat in your car.

You were not proud of this.

You had sat in the driver's seat of your car in the driveway with the engine on and the air conditioning at full as your head tipped back against the headrest.

You had stayed there for forty-five minutes, which was simultaneously the most wasteful and the most necessary thing you had done all week.

The cold air had hit your face and your arms and you had felt, for the first time since the previous morning, like a person rather than a slowly melting thing.

Then the guilt about the engine and the petrol had gotten to you, and you'd turned it off.

You’d gone back inside, and the house had received you like a warm, enthusiastic relative who didn't understand personal space.

You missed the air conditioning at work with a physical, specific ache.

The office; your shitty office.

Your carpet-cleaner-scented, recycled-air, fluorescent-lit office that you had never once felt grateful for had proper climate control.

The kind that kept the temperature at a steady, glorious, life-sustaining twenty-one degrees regardless of what the atmosphere was doing outside. You had sat at your desk on Friday and felt the cool air on your arms and thought: I could stay here. I could sleep under my desk. Nobody would know.

It was Saturday now. The office was closed.

You had done what you could.

Every window in the house was open. Not that it helped, the outside air arriving with all its own heat and adding it to the existing supply.

You had frozen water bottles and placed them in front of the fans.

You had three fans; the big tower one from the bedroom, the desk fan from the spare room, and the small ancient oscillating one from the kitchen cupboard that Simon had looked at once and said needed replacing and then not replaced it.

All of them were arranged in a semicircle around the sofa, all of them on their highest setting, all of them doing their absolute best and making almost no discernible difference.

You had taken off everything except a thin t-shirt and your underwear, because dignity was a winter luxury and it was now thirty-nine degrees.

You had laid down on the sofa.

At some point, despite the heat and the fans and the general ambient misery, sleep had found you anyway.

You were asleep when Simon came home.

He smelled the heat before he opened the door.

The specific warmth of a house that had been sun-facing all day.

The smell of warm cotton and the faint electrical hum of multiple fans working harder than they were designed to. He opened the front door and it was, demonstrably, warmer inside than it had been on the pavement.

The base had air conditioning. He'd been comfortable all day, which he now registered as a kind of guilt.

The sound of the fans reached him before he'd cleared the hallway — the tower unit's low roar, the desk fan's higher whirr, the ancient kitchen oscillator doing its arthritic best — and he followed the sound to the living room doorway and stopped.

You were asleep on the sofa.

The three fans were arranged around you in a formation that he recognised, immediately, as something you had put genuine tactical thought into.

Angles considered, coverage maximised, the frozen water bottles sweating in front of each one. Your approach to problems, applied to the problem of existing in now forty degree heat.

You were in a thin t-shirt and underwear.

He could see your hard nipples through the sweat soaked t-shirt. Your legs were bare. You'd pushed the square sofa pillows to the floor at some point, presumably because fabric was an enemy today, and you were lying directly on the cool surface of the sofa cushion cover with one arm over your face and the other hanging off the edge, your fingers barely touching the floor.

There was sweat beaded at your hairline.

Simon stood in the doorway for a moment.

He was a man who had operated in desert environments. He had been in places where the heat was a physical force, a thing you moved through rather than existed in, where the air itself seemed hostile. He had acclimatised to those temperatures with the methodical efficiency he brought to everything operationally necessary.

This was different. This was you, in your living room, in your thin t-shirt, flushed and damp-haired and entirely, completely unaware of him in the doorway.

He set his bag down quietly.

He went to the kitchen. Filling a glass with cold water, the coldest the tap would give, which was not very cold, but colder than the air. He put ice in it from the freezer, the last of it, the tray almost empty. He looked at the freezer and thought about what else was in there, what could help, what you would need when you woke up.

He came back to the living room doorway.

You hadn't moved. The ancient oscillating fan turned toward you and then away and then back, doing its inadequate best. The tower unit pushed air across your legs. A small tendril of hair was stuck to your cheek, held there by the sweat.

He crossed the room, crouching beside the sofa and he looked at you the way he looked at you when you didn't know he was looking. Like you hung the moon in the sky. Like you were the best thing to ever exist.

He reached out and moved the tendril of wet hair from your cheek. Gently.

You stirred.

Your arm came off your face. Your eyes opened, slowly, the way they did when sleep had been deep rather than light. You blinked and the first thing you saw was Simon Riley crouched beside your sofa in the fan-stirred heat of your living room, holding a glass of iced water and looking at you with that expression. The one he kept for you.

"Hi," you said. Your voice was thick with sleep.

"Hi, sunshine."

He held out the water. You sat up slowly, your body registering the heat again immediately, the brief mercy of sleep evaporating and took it. The glass was cold against your palms. You pressed it to your cheek before you drank it.

"How long have you been home?" you asked.

"Few minutes."

"It's horrible," you said, with great feeling. Not at him. At the general situation. At England and its thermal inadequacy and its forty degrees and its houses that were essentially slow cookers. "I sat in the car for forty-five minutes this afternoon."

"The air con," he said with quick understanding.

"Don't judge me."

"I'm not judging you. Could never judge you love," he said. He was doing the almost-smile. You were too warm and too newly awake to be properly affected by it, but the potential was noted.

"The shower doesn't even work anymore," you said. "I mean it works but by the time I'm dry I'm already…” you sigh, “it's pointless. It's completely pointless. The house is hotter than outside. I checked. I stood in the garden and then I came back inside and the garden was cooler. Our house is generating its own heat. We're basically a radiator."

"I'll look at getting a unit," he said. Meaning an air conditioning unit. Meaning he had already, somewhere in the last thirty seconds, decided this was a problem to be solved and had begun solving it.

"It'll be winter by the time it arrives," you said. Which was probably true. British logistics and British weather and the specific comedy of their intersection.

"Probably," he agreed eyes tracking you and your movements. Something you’d had to get used to when you moved in.

You drank the water. The ice clinked against the glass. Outside, through the open window, the light was going golden in the particular way of a summer evening that would have been beautiful if you had any capacity left for beautiful.

Simon was still crouched beside the sofa.

You were in a thin t-shirt and underwear and you had been asleep and you had sweat at your hairline and your cheek still held the cold print of the water glass and your hair was doing something you were fairly certain wasn't its best work.

He was looking at you like you were the best thing he'd seen all day.

Which, given that base had air conditioning and he'd been comfortable, probably said something.

"Simon," you raised a brow.

"Yeah." He replied tilting his head to the right slightly.

"It's too hot," you said.

"I know," he nodded.

"Whatever you're thinking," you spoke carefully, "it's too hot."

The almost-smile became the real one. The rare one. The one that you had spent years of your life engineering because it was so completely, unreasonably good.

"Cold shower," he then said.

You looked at him. "What?"

"Cold shower," he said again. He stood unfolding from the crouch with the ease of a man whose body did whatever he asked it to and he held out his hand. "Come on."

"I've had three," you sighed. "They don't work. By the time you dry off—"

"You won't need to dry off."

You looked at his hand. You looked at his face. The real smile still there, and turning into a smirk. Certain and warm and very, very aware of exactly what it was doing to you even in forty degree heat.

"Simon Riley," you scoffed.

"Sunshine," his eyes tracked yours and damn it you gave in.

You took his hand.

He pulled you up from the sofa in the way he did everything; without effort, without ceremony, your weight nothing to him. As soon as you stood the heat hit you immediately, the brief mercy of the fans falling away as you moved out of their range.

“I’m sweaty,” you said. A statement of fact. A mild protest.

“I know,” he nodded.

“And disgusting.”

“You’re not disgusting.” He frowned.

“Simon, I’ve been lying on that sofa since two o’clock—”

“Sunshine.” He looked at you. That look. “Come on.”

He kept your hand and he moved and you followed, through the living room and into the hall where the air was slightly cooler, marginally, just enough to notice, and up the stairs where it was warmer again because heat rose and your house was committed to the bit.

The bathroom was stifling. The small window was open and doing nothing.

The mirror above the sink had a faint fog to it that wasn’t steam, just the heat, the ambient, inescapable heat.

You caught your reflection briefly and confirmed that you looked exactly as you’d suspected: rumpled and hair doing several things at once.

Simon reached past you and turned the shower on. Cold. The pipes took a moment and then the water came through.

He looked at you.

“Still too hot?” he asked.

“Still too hot,” you confirmed.

He reached for the hem of your t-shirt and you let him pull it over your head. It pealed away from you like a second skin.

Simon repeated his actions with your underwear, getting down on his knees, still in his uniform, pulling the damp cotton down your legs and chucking them in the washing basket.

You squealed hands pushing against his buzzed head, since he was called to his last mission he had to cut it again, as he pushed his nose right against your crotch.

“Simon! That’s gross!” You whined. He slid his hands up your ass and squeezed to keep you in place as he breathed you in.

Something you’d learned about Simon, living with him for the past year, is that he is a dirty man. He loves your slick, and sweat and spit. Loves anything that comes from you. Loves your natural musk, as he so calls it.

But right now, you’d been sweating for the last six hours since your last shower at 2pm. You knew your musk was definitely stronger than usual.

Simon didn’t reply to you, he simply moved forward and licked a strip up your slit and over your clit.

“Si get off! That’s dirty!” You pushed at his head, he moved away before looking up at you with a grin.

“Taste so fucking good Sunshine.” He squeezed your ass one last time then stood grabbing your jaw and placing a kiss across your lips, “Get in the shower love.” He ordered before unbuttoning his lieutenant jacket.

You moved on autopilot the way you always did with Simon and stepped into the walk in shower. The cold water hitting your overheated skin in the best way. You closed your eyes and let your head tilt forward against the cool tiled wall.

Simon had told you he’d had to get special guys in to make this walk in shower bigger than standard size so he could be in it comfortably with you.

The water against your back felt like heaven after being in the hot heat of hell all day.

You said a little prayer in your head that tomorrow would be cooler, unrealistically that it would rain or snow. That there would be a blizzard. As long as this humid heat went away.

Simon’s large hands slid around your body, over your waist and hips, down your thighs and back up to your arms until a shiver ran down your body.

“My poor baby,” he cooed in your ear, “stuck in this heat all day. Should’ve come to my office. Could have had lunch together in my air conditioned office-“

“Fuck you.” You scoffed.

Simon’s fingers curled in your hair and pulled your head back against his chest, too tall for your head to touch his shoulder. “Then I would’ve bent you over my desk and made you cum on my cock.” He sucked your earlobe into his mouth.

“Si!” You gasp, his fingers moving over your clit now in slow circles.

“Would’ve looked so pretty with your cheek pressed against my cold metal desk. Pretty slut for me. Fuck I love this pussy Sunshine.” He groaned into your ear, kissing up your neck. “Was kept from me too long.”

Your eyes fluttered close, the way his fingers moved around your clit and the cold water trickling down your body had you moaning. Your hand pressing flat against the tiles in front of you.

“Please Si, want you.” You try to turn round but he keeps you in place hooking his arm around your waist.

“Want you to cum like this first Sunshine.” His chest rumbles as he speaks.

“Fuck.” You gasp, your chest jutting out as your back arched, hips rolling and jerking.

“Yeah that’s it. Ride my fingers lovie.” He pressed firmer against your clit, from tight circles to rubbing side to side quicker just the way he’d watched you do to yourself last week when he came home from base to find you touching yourself. He acted accordingly by wrapping his hand round his cock and telling you to keep going until you both finished.

“Pretty girl fucking herself on my hand.” He groaned, his cock pressing against your lower back. “Love you so damn much Sunshine, always look so pretty when you cum. Can’t believe I was deprived of it for so long.”

“Simon!” Your hand grips onto his arm, the one between your legs. Your stomach tightens and then it’s gone. You don’t even have time to mourn the loss because he’s turning you, picking you up and his cock slides home with one roll of his hips.

“Oh Si! Fuck,” you moan head falling back onto the tiles, your eyes rolling back with it.

At this angle he is hitting that rough spot inside you straight away and he knows it. Simon is fucking you on his cock, moving you up and down like you’re nothing. Like you weigh nothing. You’re a feather to him.

His so big, like a mammoth, he surrounds you. His scent is in your nose, his hands are on your body, his tongue is on your neck, cock is in your cunt and it’s all too much with the previous build up too.

You cum hard, white flashing in your eyes, the edges of your vision going blurry.

He fucks you through it, thrusting until he’s wrung out every last wave of pleasure, then and only then does he pull out turning you around pushing back in, fucking you from behind. Your tits pressed against the cold tiles. The cool water washing down your back and going right between where your bodies meet.

“Fuck Sunshine not gonna last long.” Simon groaned bringing his fingers back to your clit and rubbing vigorously, “cum for me again, one more time lovie.”

“Can’t! Oh fuck Simon I-“ you moaned loudly, the sound echoing off the bathroom walls.

“Yes you can. You can do it, fuck so tight around me,” he groaned his hips snapping faster, “you can do it Sunshine, just one more for me.” His grip on your hips tightening as he sped up making you clench around him, your stomach tightening. “Yes! That’s it Sunshine, go on love cum for me!” He moaned stilling as his orgasm hit, cum spilling inside you just as yours hit too.

Your mouth dropped open, pleasure washing over you. You panted, eyes closing while his fingers pulled the last few tremors from you.

“Cooler now?” He laughed pulling out and placing a kiss to your hair.

“Not even close.” You grinned.

—