Читать книгу Boardrooms of Power - Heidi Betts - Страница 12

WORLD WAR THREE could have been happening outside. In terms of the weather, World War Three probably was happening outside, but Rose was unaware of it. Gabriel pushed the mattresses back together and then turned to her.

‘Don’t take anything off. I want to undress you. It’s been my fantasy for a while.’

‘Has it?’Now that, Rose thought, was a truly sexy remark and not one she had ever thought she would hear, least of all from Gabriel, the object of her own fantasies for as long as she could remember.

‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured. ‘You have no idea how erotic some of your buttoned-up suits can be.’ He circled her waist with his hands and then, slowly, oh, so slowly, pushed up her T-shirt, savouring every minute of her gradual exposure. First her stomach, silky smooth and flat, then, he drew his breath in swiftly, her breasts, full and perfectly formed with big rosy nipples that begged to be taken into his mouth.

He thought of her, sitting in front of him in his office, legs crossed, notepad on her knee, the epitome of sensible efficiency. When he equated the image with the woman standing in front of him, half naked now as he carelessly tossed the T-shirt on the ground, groaning as he took her breasts in his hands, he had to will himself to go slowly.

He led her towards the makeshift bed, wishing that he could make love to her in his own king-sized bed in his house. Then he thought that there were lots of other places he would like to have made love to her, not all of them feasible, so a couple of mattresses on the ground was no big deal.

And the storm outside lent a certain something to the ambience.

He got undressed when she was lying on the mattress, gazing up at him. He had never been the sort of man who gloried in his good looks but it was a hell of a turn-on to be performing a strip tease of sorts in front of her.

She was still wearing her panties, white cotton ones. He liked them. In fact, he preferred them to the raunchy, lacy numbers he had encountered in the past, the sort of knickers that left very little, if anything, to the imagination. For the first time ever, he wondered why women seemed to think that obvious won over simple when it came to underwear.

He lowered himself gently on to her. He would take this very slowly. He would savour every leisurely minute of it. And he would start with her mouth, her full, inviting mouth.

Under him, her breasts were soft. He would get there later. The anticipation was excruciating.

Having him lie on her, feeling him hard against her thighs…Rose knew, without a doubt, that she was doing the right thing. At least for the moment. The years, she could now see, had tipped her infatuation into something much, much deeper, and while for him this would only be a physical act, for her it was everything. She moaned softly as his mouth found her neck and he trailed feathery kisses down to her shoulders. When he reached her breasts she squirmed and then sighed blissfully as he began suckling on one aroused nipple, drawing it into his mouth, tasting it the way someone would taste an exquisite morsel of food.

The storm inside her was raging. Even with the savage noise of rain and wind, she could hear herself groaning as she writhed under his exploring mouth.

He was in no hurry. He seemed prepared to linger over her breasts for ever. Rose had always been self-conscious about her body. Her face was average, which was something she could handle, but her breasts were too big. She had been an early developer and had never quite recovered from the shame of being the first in her class to get a chest, and a sizeable one at that. That she had been slim at the time had only made matters worse. So she had put on weight. What couldn’t be hidden could at least be camouflaged. Her weight had, in turn, made her self-conscious in front of men and she had never really relaxed or enjoyed sex with the partners she had had, all two of them.

She was making up for lost time. She didn’t feel an ounce of shame or modesty as Gabriel continued his attentions to her breasts and when he raised his head and told her that she had the most beautiful breasts he had ever seen, she felt heady with pleasure.

‘Fantastic nipples,’ he murmured, rising up to kiss her and at the same time pressing himself against her sensitised, swollen clitoris so that she shuddered in swift, immediate response. ‘I could lick them for ever. Did you like me doing that?’

Rose nodded and he nuzzled into her ear. ‘Then why don’t you tell me…?’

‘I did. Like it. You know I did.’

‘Do I?’

‘You should and in case you’re in any doubt…I loved you licking my nipples, teasing them, playing with them with your tongue…’

‘Good.’

Rose felt him smile against her neck.

‘Now I’ll just go and do a bit more exploring before I get you to talk dirty to me again…’

He did. He massaged her breasts, enjoying the weight of them in his hands. Women tended to be too skinny. Rose had lost weight, yes, but she still maintained her curves. There were no ribs showing and she was magnificently well endowed. He hadn’t been lying when he had told her that he could spend for ever playing with her breasts. He could.

He nipped the tip of one nipple between his teeth, drawing a pleasingly vocal response from her, and then he felt her gasp as he edged his way lower, circling her belly button with his tongue.

He placed both his hands firmly on her hips and then he was there, breathing in the sweet, musky scent of her womanhood through the cotton briefs.

Rose grasped his hair and tugged him to look at her.

‘You can’t…’

‘Have you never…?’

‘I…No…’

‘I promise you, I’ll do nothing you won’t enjoy…’Gabriel focused his mind. He was so close to the edge that he had to physically pause for a few seconds just to get a grip. Never before had he felt so out of control in bed. He gazed up briefly at her. Her back was arched, her head thrown back and her breasts were heaving as though she had run a marathon. He knew exactly how she felt!

She was as close to orgasm. He knew that all he need do was thrust into her and they would both be there. But he wasn’t going to do that. Not yet.

He tugged the crotch of the briefs to one side and breathed softly on the fine, downy hair and Rose groaned. When he flicked his tongue along the moistened groove, she wriggled against his hands and then thrust up, offering herself to his eager, questing mouth.

Gabriel tugged down the underwear and it joined the T-shirt somewhere on the ground.

Now they were both naked, flesh against flesh. He parted her legs, hitched them over his shoulders and, amidst the noise of wind and rain, he took her to a place she had never been before.

The sensation of his invading tongue unleashed a wild, unrestrained ecstasy in her. Rose gasped and groaned and she would have come right there against his mouth if he hadn’t reared up, sensing the fragility of the moment, and entered her.

Fulfilment was not a long time coming. For either of them. Afterwards, when Rose would normally have felt the need to get back into her clothes, she lay curled into him and sighed. ‘Is it my imagination or is the storm beginning to abate?’

‘Is that, my darling, all you have to say?’

Did he just call her my darling? Was that how he talked to all his women after they had finished making love?

‘What would you like me to say?’ she teased, curling her arms around his neck and sliding against him. Even in the aftermath of their love-making, she could still feel him stir in arousal, and that gave her a delicious, heady sense of power. That she could do that to him!

‘You could tell me that the earth moved…’

‘No…I don’t think it would be morally responsible for me to inflate your ego even more than it already is…’

Gabriel laughed under his breath and brushed her lips with his. ‘So tell me now that you’re still interested in what’s-his-name.’

Rose stilled. ‘Is that why…you…because you wanted to prove that I found you more attractive?’

‘What sort of man do you think I am?’ Gabriel asked. ‘I wouldn’t be above lecturing to you on your choice of man but I would never sleep with you to prove a point. What I don’t want is for you to wake up in the morning and tell me that we have to pretend that none of this happened so that you can pretend to be interested in someone you obviously don’t care much about.’

‘I do like Joe!’ She was, however, finding it difficult to even remember what he looked like. The blond hair and blue eyes which had impressed her because of their boyish charm had been completely obliterated by a man with devilishly dark good looks and a sexy charm that could turn any woman’s head.

‘But you’re not attracted to him. Forget about how nice it is to take things slowly. Fast and furious…’he gave her a slow, crooked smile that made her toes curl ‘…is the mark of physical attraction…’

Rose would dearly have liked to disagree but how could she? ‘Fast and furious isn’t a good thing all of the time,’ she said wistfully. It only worked when it was part of a developing relationship, when the fast and the furious eventually matured into joy and contentment and all the silly little things that Gabriel wanted nothing to do with.

‘Helluva lot of fun, though.’ Gabriel stroked her thigh and then slipped his hands between her legs so that he could cup her womanhood in a gesture that was almost territorial. And, much as she hated admitting it, very pleasurable.

‘And the only reason I want you to admit what you feel for me is because I selfishly want us to carry on enjoying this…’

For how long?

‘You’re my boss.’

‘And so can tell you what to do…hmm…?’

Rose couldn’t help herself. She felt her lips twitch. ‘Only when it’s to do with work,’ she said gravely.

‘So if I tell you that we’re going to make love again…?’

‘I might agree or I might not…’ But already his fingers were gently exploring her, turning her brain to mush. She closed her eyes and reached down, taking his erection in her hand and sensuously massaging it, then she pressed it against her so that they could be yet more intimate.

‘What about if I tell you that we’re going to make love again…?’Rose murmured wickedly. ‘Would you be prepared for the shoe to go on the other foot?’

‘Absolutely. I’m a feminist. More than prepared to take orders from a woman…’

Later, after a long and lazy bout of love-making, during which they touched and caressed each other everywhere, exploring each other’s bodies with the fascination of kids opening presents at Christmas, they fell asleep.

When Rose next stirred and opened her eyes, it was to find that Gabriel was no longer in bed with her and sunlight was doing its best to stream through the wooden shutters that had blown open the night before in the high winds.

Then memories of the night before flooded her mind and she lay back for a few seconds savouring them.

Cold reality, just a heartbeat away, had her dashing to the bathroom so that she could get changed before Gabriel returned from wherever he had gone. They may have made wild, abandoned love but the extraordinary circumstances had disappeared and she didn’t want him to return, perhaps regretting his actions of the night before, to find her lying in bed dreamily waiting for him to return.

She realised that she was ravenous, though where they were going to get food she had no idea. Just as she had no idea what damage had been done to the exterior of the villa, or to the island, for that matter.

She dressed quickly in a small silk skirt, several variations of which she had purchased during her time in Australia. She had brought them with her because they could be rolled into a small ball and unrolled back to their pristine state—and a blue T-shirt. She would have worn slippers but, not knowing what sort of destruction she would find outside, stuck on her flip flops as an afterthought.

The body of the place seemed intact, as she hurriedly left the bedroom and made her way to the front door. Somehow debris had found its way in, but there appeared to be no structural damage. When she ventured out, the scene was slightly different.

Rose stood and gaped. Raging storms were not part of the English weather pattern. She had never witnessed firsthand what destruction their wrath could unleash so it was a shock to look around now and see the uprooted trees, the branches transported and scattered across the lawns, the detritus of building work that had managed to escape its confines and be blown to all four corners. It seemed incredible that the sun was now shining and the sea was blue and calm in the distance. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the beach but she could imagine that it was as littered as the gardens higher up here were.

Then, glancing to her left, she spotted Gabriel, deep in conversation with two local men who were gesticulating and laughing. He wasn’t looking in her direction and Rose took a few seconds to appreciate his immense physical appeal. He was wearing a pair of low-slung khaki shorts and an off-white T-shirt with some indecipherable logo on the back. He looked casual, relaxed but, at the same time, totally in command. The two dark men were both shorter than him and were nodding now and pointing. Even from here, Rose could read the deference in their body language.

She took a deep breath and walked over to where they seemed to be inspecting the distant horizon, not forgetting that her role on the island was one of a practical nature, even if last night had blurred it wildly beyond recognition.

She also couldn’t allow herself to forget that sex, for Gabriel, was not an indication of anything meaningful, at least not according to her definition of meaningful. He might not even want to remember what had occurred between them the night before and, even if he did, he certainly would not expect her attitude towards him to have changed substantially.

Either way, Rose was going to be braced for all eventualities.

Most of all, she was going to be adult about everything. She had slept with her boss and, yes, it had been blistering, but that didn’t mean that she would allow it to scramble her brains.

She got closer and hid her growing anxiety under an easy smile.

As soon as Gabriel smiled back, she knew that at least he wasn’t going to look at her with disgust at her behaviour the night before and, when he pulled her towards him and slung his arm over her shoulder, Rose tried hard not to read anything into it. This wasn’t about love and commitment, it was about a man whose needs had been satisfied and who anticipated further satisfaction of those needs.

She remembered just how blissfully satisfied her own needs had been met and relaxed into his casual embrace. After a while, it seemed natural to be pressed against him and she actually began paying some attention to what was being said.

It seemed that however frightful the destruction appeared to her, the island had actually only received the tail-end of the hurricane. The brunt of it had swung away from the small island, reserving its devastation for American shores. Hence no real loss of buildings and the roads, or rather the one main road and its few tributaries, were intact. Electricity would be back up and running by mid-morning, they were assured, and the clean up programme would only take a couple of days.

It was treated as more of an irritation than anything else. When she worried aloud how the gardens would be cleared of the debris, she was told that it would be taken care of. Most of the workforce would be back by the following morning and they would see to it that everything was sorted.

Wilson, the foreman, was neverendingly optimistic about the timescale involved in the clearing up and even more optimistic about completion of the project. While the boss man was over, he said, they could go through what was left to do, although if he had a look around he would see that there was very little. They could take a boat over to the mainland, choose some of the fixtures and fittings. By Christmas, he told them, everything would be ready. They could come and have a little holiday there, enjoy the sunshine.

Rose thought that by Christmas the chances of them still being together bordered on the unimaginable, although Gabriel, ever diplomatic, was making all the right noises.

By the time they had concluded their conversation with Wilson, Rose was beginning to feel hot. And very hungry. It was nearly eleven. They had not actually got to sleep until the early hours of the morning and she had slept the sleep of the drugged. Heaven only knew what time Gabriel had got up!

‘I’m sorry I got up so late,’ was the first thing she told him as they headed back towards the villa. ‘You should have woken me up.’ Just in case he thought that she might want to start taking liberties now that they had slept together.

‘You look very sexy,’ Gabriel told her, spinning her to face him and pulling her close. ‘Did you bring that skirt to turn me on?’

‘Of course not!’ But she barely had time to protest when his mouth crushed hers and her body reacted automatically. She thought, in a daze of sudden, fierce desire, that it was as if she had now been programmed to respond to him. He kissed her and she kissed him back, hungrily, greedily. His hand grazed her breast, like it was doing now, and her nipples became acutely sensitive, so sensitive that she had to stop herself from pushing his hand under her T-shirt so that he could touch her right here and now, in the middle of the garden and in sight of whoever happened to be around.

‘You’re wearing a bra,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Very bad. In this hot weather, the constriction to the blood circulation could be downright dangerous.’

Rose laughed huskily. ‘Would you recommend that I take it off?’

‘Without further ado. Right now, in fact.’

Rose went red and looked around her. Daring and sexy was fine in the safety of a dark room at night, but daring and sexy in the middle of the day, in full view of spectators, was a different matter.

‘There’s no one around,’ Gabriel drawled, placing both hands on her bottom and grinding her against him. ‘In fact, you could wear your birthday suit here safe in the knowledge that you would be free from prying eyes.’

‘What about Wilson and the other chap who was with him?’

‘Gone. And because we’re on a hill top, we have a commanding view of anyone coming up, not that anyone’s likely to. They’ll all be too busy cleaning up after the storm. They’ll have put their binoculars away for the moment.’ He slid his hands up, under her T-shirt, and efficiently unclasped her bra. When he saw her shocked expression, he grinned wickedly. ‘Not something else you haven’t tried, Rose?’

‘There isn’t much opportunity to strip off in my back garden,’ she told him, ‘not unless you want an audience.’

‘So you’ve never made love in a public place?’

‘No!’

‘Close your eyes.’

‘What?’

‘Close them and go with the flow…’

She did, helplessly allowing him to pull her T-shirt over her head, followed by the circulation-constricting bra. The warm sun felt wonderful against her bare skin, as did Gabriel’s sudden intake of breath as he looked at her abundant breasts.

There were a million things he should be doing. For starters, he needed to go into the town, find the local bar and a telephone point so that he could connect to the outside world and start doing some work. Life in London hadn’t ground to a halt because there had been a spot of bad weather on an island halfway across the Atlantic.

He also needed to start thinking about doing some basic clearing up. The workmen would take care of the outside, but he would have to ascertain what kind of damage had been done, if any, to the interior of the villa, see what would be covered by insurance and start working on it.

On the other hand…

He could, as he had advised her to do, go with the flow…

What harm was there in playing truant for a day or two? When such irresistible delicacies were on offer?

‘Of course, if you’re going to enjoy the sunshine, you’re going to have to apply some sun cream.’ His eyes blazed across her bare breasts, sending a shudder of electric awareness zinging through her. ‘Why don’t we have a look around the grounds, just make sure that nothing too immediate needs to be seen to, and then we can take some lunch down to the beach? See what damage has been done there. Hmm?’ The irresistible delicacies were too powerful a temptation and Gabriel flicked his thumbs over the pert nipples. Rose felt her breath catch.

‘Good idea,’ she croaked.

‘And I’ll take my shirt off as well, to keep you company. Now we’ll both need to apply the sun cream…’

Rose thought that the trip was developing into some kind of wonderful, surreal experience. Having sun cream smoothed over her bare breasts by Gabriel was beyond even her wildest imaginings, and she had had a few of those over the years. She didn’t have an idea where the experience would take her but, for the first time in her life, she was living in the moment and for the moment and relishing every second of it.

They strolled around the grounds, which had been damaged by the high winds, but not substantially so. Gabriel pointed out what would need to be done and filled her in on his plans for the place, pointing out what was intended to go where, asking her what she would choose for this place or that place, seemingly interested in everything she had to say.

Her own private preferences spilled over into her professional advice. How could she remain the consummate secretary when she had slept with her boss and was now walking side by side with him in nothing more than a slip of a skirt? How could she be clipped and businesslike when every so often, as though he couldn’t help himself, he would turn to her and kiss her, then touch her breasts, caress them, tease her pouting nipples into peaks? Impossible.

And the scene was almost domestic when they prepared a light lunch together to take down to the beach. They chatted as though they had known each other for years, as indeed they had, Rose reflected. Four years of picking up all the bits and pieces that comprised someone’s personality. They had never shared an intimate moment in all those years, but she still felt as though she knew him intimately and she was surprised how much he knew her even though she had never allowed him entry into her private life.

The beach was much as they had both expected. On the walk down, Gabriel pointed his plans for converting the rocky ledge halfway down into a sunbathing patio.

‘With the perfect view of calm blue sea,’ he said.

‘Provided the calm blue sea decides to behave itself.’ She had become used to her breasts being bared to the sunshine. It felt wonderfully free. Ahead of her, Gabriel was holding a makeshift box in which they had packed some corned beef sandwiches, some water and a packet of biscuits. It was the best they could rummage up at short notice, not that he seemed to mind. For someone who could afford caviar and champagne on a starched linen cloth with a butler to pour, Gabriel seemed surprisingly happy with the scant offerings from the cupboard.

Rose thought that no picnic could have been better. Even the clutter of branches and coconuts on the beach, not to mention the seaweed and coral that had been dredged up from the storm, was enough to ruin the perfection of the experience.

They had managed to unearth a huge blanket of sorts from a cupboard that contained various assorted items of linen, presumably used by the workmen. To Rose, this was as close to paradise as she could possibly get.

‘Now,’ Gabriel said, settling down next to her on the blanket, ‘I think there’s still a spot of sun lotion to be applied considering you’ll have to take off that very impractical skirt you’re wearing.’

He whipped the sun lotion out of the box and squirted a generous amount on to the palms of his hands. Rose gave herself over to the smell of the salty air, the warmth of the sun and the expertise of Gabriel’s hands as he stroked the cream onto her breasts, paying a disproportionate amount of attention to her nipples, which were standing stiff and erect. She felt like a luxuriating cat. Whenever she stirred, he told her to lie back and relax. He needed her, he told her huskily, to remain perfectly still if he was to do a thorough job.

‘And close your eyes,’ he commanded. His need to possess her, mentally and physically, was overpowering. He worked his way down her stomach, massaging the cream into her skin. She was silky-soft and warm from the sun.

But this time, before he could get her to that mindless point of no return, Rose scrambled up and pushed him back on to the blanket.

‘I’m going to make love to you this time,’ she told him. ‘You’ll do everything I tell you to do…and the first thing is to keep absolutely still…so that I can rub this lotion over every inch of you…’

Rose thought that she could easily get used to making love in a public place, or at least in a deserted cove on an island in the middle of the blue ocean. With this man. The man she loved and always would love to the ends of the earth.

She didn’t want to think beyond the feel of the blanket under her, the sound of the sea, gentle and docile now as it lapped against the sand, the sensation of the salty breeze on their bodies.

If Rose could have captured that moment in a bottle and hung on to it for ever, she would have because she knew that, once it was lost, it was lost for all time. They would never recapture it again.

And neither could she exist in a bubble, living from one moment to the next.

‘…much as I’d like to…’ she finished explaining to him. They had just finished having the most amazing sex and a long swim in water that was so transparently blue and calm that it was mind boggling to think of it churning against the rocks the night before. The sun was rapidly drying them. Staring up at the cloudless azure sky, it was hard to believe that she was having this conversation.

Gabriel propped himself up on one elbow and stared down at her, tilting her face so that she couldn’t avoid looking at him.

‘Who said anything about living in a bubble?’ he asked.

‘What do you call this…?’

‘I call it…my perfect secretary…’ He trailed his finger between her breasts, then circled first one nipple, then the other, finally rotating the sensitised nub of each between his fingers. His eyes lazily feasted on her body, the flat planes of her stomach, already turning a pale shade of gold, the V of soft downy hair that shielded her ripe womanhood. The taste of her still lingered in his mouth.

Rose turned on to her side to look at him seriously. ‘But it’s not reality,’ she persisted quietly. ‘Reality is London. Reality is me working for you, coming into the office in a suit, sitting at a desk…Reality isn’t the two of us on a beach. This is stolen time.’

‘It’s only stolen if we leave it here,’ Gabriel said, bending to place a kiss on the corner of her mouth. It beat the hell out of him how he could have failed to notice just how perfect her lips were. Full and well defined. Like her. ‘When we’re back in London things can carry on just as they were before…in the office. And just as they are now with you in my bed.’

But she wanted to spend the rest of her life following it through.

The kiss at the side of her mouth deepened into something more urgent, something that sent her body into immediate meltdown. He pulled her close and she rubbed herself against him, head flung back, nostrils flared in pure sensuous pleasure at the abrasive feel of his hard erection against her. When he rammed his thigh between her legs and began pushing against her, she let her thoughts fly from her head.

And that, for Gabriel, was the end of the conversation. It had literally gone from his mind. Rose knew that with unerring instinct and, for a short while, she was prepared to enjoy what was spectacularly on offer. They made love with an intensity and driving passion that was almost uncontrollable. And they overstayed their original four day plan! Rose was amused because, for Gabriel, it was unheard of. One of the bigger islands was a boat trip and short flight away and they made a day of it, buying clothes and various other luxuries not easily found on the small island.

They would stay for a week, Gabriel told her. Things were being accomplished with the villa and, besides, he needed the break. But the week turned into two. They filled the time with trips to other islands, with a bit of work, with lots of love-making. Together they even chose tiles and accessories, which felt treacherously good. At night, wakeful when Gabriel was asleep and still hot with the imprint of his touch on her, Rose lay awake and pondered her options.

Sooner or later, Gabriel would rouse from his unfamiliar slumber and the call to arms would sound its trumpet. He might like the idea of continuing with their loose affair back in London, but Rose had seen too many examples of what happened to the women he slept with once they had outlived their sell-by date. There was no doubt that, sooner or later, and probably sooner, she would end up sending the goodbye flowers to herself.

And Gabriel had no intention of committing to anything other than a fling. He never had and he never would, not until he found the right woman and it certainly wasn’t her.

Rose wasn’t going to wait until she became an embarrassment. Nor was she going to try and pin him down with questions of permanence. So when, after two weeks, he began making noises about regrettably returning to work, she did the only thing she could think of doing.

She arranged a phone call to herself. It was a little tricky. It involved a call to her neighbour, instructing her to call and to leave an urgent message. Rose would take it from there. Her neighbour was bemused but blessedly tactful and the following lunchtime, hurrying from the public telephone in the town and wearing an anxious expression, Rose told Gabriel that she would have to leave immediately. An emergency. She had run through the various emergency options in her head and had settled on one that couldn’t be fixed with money.

‘A death in the family,’ she told him, packing as she spoke so that she wouldn’t be able to make eye contact. ‘An aunt—’ she crossed her fingers ‘—very sudden. I must go. Mum…Well, they were close, put it like that…’

The clean break she had anticipated when she had returned from Australia was the only option now. If she didn’t take it, she knew that at some point she risked her longing and love for him to be transmitted, like osmosis, out of her and into him and her mind shut down when she tried to contemplate the humiliation of that eventuality.

She would see him back in London, she lied, flinging things into her case, knowing that she would get rid of everything, every last memory. Three days—she laughed, half turning to him—not long!

There was a bittersweet poignancy when he held her from behind, when his hand found those places that could send her soul soaring, when later they made love, enjoying each other for what seemed like an eternity.

She wanted to commit every second of it to memory because it would have to last.