Protected

Chapter 4

I woke up to the growling in my stomach, initially a little confused as to where I was, smiling as I remembered. I must have closed my eyes for a moment and dozed off, sunken into the thick duvet on the giant bed. I checked my phone for the time realising it was nearly 2pm, I'd been asleep for about 3 hours, clearly the excitement of the morning was all to much for me.

I opened my bag and took my things through to the bathroom adjoining my room, having a little freshen up before heading downstairs. I brushed my teeth and added a little fragrance, smiling to myself at the surreal nature of this whole situation. My stomach protested again, so I popped everything back in my bag and made my way onto the landing and down the stairs.

As I moved through his house, I was struck by how beautiful it really was. Delicate thoughtful touches everywhere, interesting words, beautiful photographs and prints on every wall.

I walked through the kitchen and into the space where the large dining table sat, abandoned on the wood surface was a black leather notebook, bent corners, thick pages crumpled, with sheets that had been pulled out and scraps of other paper tucked inside the cover. On one of the scraps sticking out I could just make out soft black ink words, seemingly jumbled with crossings out, and arrows pointing to other unseen parts of the page.

A black ink pen sat abandoned next to an empty coffee cup. He must have been sitting doing some writing and while I slept.

The large glass doors were open letting in a little of the warm spring breeze. For early May we had been very lucky and sun was shining and warm, I could hear noise floating in from the garden and so stepped out on to the raised deck, the house seemingly built on a slight hill as I stood above the level of the garden below.

My eyes scanned, following the sound, I hadn't noticed the pool earlier, nestled into a hidden corner of the garden below, and there he was, moving quickly under the water, the shadows from his many tattoos just visible through the ripples. He was moving towards the far end of the pool, turning slickly before heading back towards me.

He came up through the surface, rubbing the water from his eyes and pushing his shoulder length hair back off his face. He looked up and smiled as I waved at him gently. He hopped out of the water in one movement and moved across the patio below, flicking his hair from one side to the other, trying to remove some of the excess moisture, disappearing into a door below where I stood, I guessed this must be some kind of changing area and continued to stand on the deck looking out at the view, I can imagine you would never tire of this view.

A few minutes later he jogged easily up the stairs to my left, leading from the garden below, redressed in his jeans and T-shirt, which was sticking slightly to his still damp torso. His hair was scraped back into the Alice band with tendrils dripping excess water down his neck. I couldn't help but stare as the wet T-shirt clung to the shape of the muscles across his damp shoulders.

Snapping myself out of my daze I said

"Sorry, I fell asleep. Clearly all the excitement of this morning was all too much for me. have you eaten?"

"No problem, I popped my head in earlier and saw you were sleeping but decided to leave you to it, you looked so content. And no not yet I figured you'd have to wake up eventually" he smirked

"Perfect can I raid your fridge? I'll make us something."

"You don't need to do that you know, I can cook or order in something if you prefer" he said as we walked back inside the house toward the kitchen

"I want to. Call it a kind of thank you. Sit. Relax."

He smiled and nodded as I skipped over to the fridge searching the shelves to start coming up with some kind of plan. He went back and grabbed his note book and came and sat at the island in the kitchen, he flicked through some of the pages looking for where he'd left off earlier as I popped a cup of black coffee in front of him.