Читать книгу Modern Romance October 2018 Books 5-8 - Люси Монро, Trish Morey, Люси Монро - Страница 18
ОглавлениеROSE HAD FANTASISED about those nights when she and Art had made love. She’d delved deep into her memory banks and closed her eyes and tasted, in the emptiness of her bed after he’d disappeared in a puff of treacherous smoke, the touch of his mouth on hers, the feel of his hands tracing the contours of her body, the heavy weight of him on top of her and the way her legs had parted for him, welcoming him into the very core of her.
Now, touching him again, she realised that no amount of recall could ever have done justice to the reality of him.
Running her hands over his lean, hard body was like tasting nectar after a diet of vinegar.
He felt so good.
She traced the corded muscles of his back and then squirmed so that she was taking charge of proceedings, flattening him against the bed and angling her body in such a way that she could devote all her attention to his vibrant arousal whilst, at the same time, he could pleasure her between her legs.
She’d forgotten how well their bodies meshed, as though created to fit one against the other. She moved against his questing tongue, her breathing fast and furious, making little guttural noises as she licked and tasted him, feasting on his hardness and playing with his erection while she explored it with her mouth.
Her long hair was everywhere and she flipped it over her shoulder and then arched up, her whole body quivering as ripples of an orgasm began coursing slowly through her.
‘Art...’ she gasped, not wanting to come.
Not yet.
This time it was Art who took control. With one easy move, he flipped her so that she was now facing him and he edged her up so that there was next to no pause in his ministrations.
She was sitting over him, allowing him the greatest intimacy as he continued to flick his tongue over the stiffened bud of her core. Hands firmly on her waist so that he was keeping her in position, he teased her with his mouth and when her breathing quickened and her body began to stiffen he concentrated on bringing her to a shuddering explosive orgasm.
* * *
She spasmed against his mouth and he revelled in the honeyed moistness of her orgasm.
He’d missed this.
He’d missed more than this. It felt so good that he had to reach down and hold his own erection firm because he felt on the very edge of tipping over even though he wasn’t inside her, which was where he wanted to be.
Rose subsided, temporarily spent. She lay down next to him and wrapped her legs over his and, as one, they turned to one another so that their naked bodies were pressed up tight, hot and perspiring.
‘Not fair,’ she said shakily, but there was a smile in her voice as she wriggled against him, nudging her wetness against his arousal.
‘No, it’s not,’ Art murmured indistinctly. Decidedly unfair that she had this dramatic effect on him, that she was capable of derailing his life the way she had. Just as well that he was putting it back on track. ‘Dump the hotel,’ he heard himself say, ‘and move in with me for the rest of your stay in London.’
‘Dump the hotel?’
‘It’s inconvenient.’ He’d never asked any woman to stay in his penthouse apartment but he was comfortable with this decision because a precedent had already been set. He’d shared her space with her so no big deal if she were to share his space with him.
He wanted to be able to reach out and touch her in the middle of the night. He wanted to feel her, warm and aroused, lying next to him. He curved his hand between her thighs and stroked her soft, silky skin, nudging up to feel her wetness graze his knuckles.
He stepped away to fetch a condom from his wallet.
‘I guess I could,’ Rose murmured as he slipped back into bed to pull her against him. ‘I guess it could work...’ She parted her legs and sighed as her body began to get excited all over again. ‘I mean,’ she continued, voice hitched, ‘I hadn’t banked on any of this happening.’
‘That’s been the story of my life from the second I saw you,’ Art agreed with heartfelt sincerity. ‘You may well have converted me to the pleasures of the unforeseen.’
‘We both have the same goal.’
Art caressed her breast then levered himself into a position where he could taste it. He flicked his tongue over her nipple and then took it into his mouth so that he could suckle on it while he played with her other nipple, teasing it into tight arousal.
‘The same goal...’ Her words registered and he slowly kissed his way up to nuzzle against her neck before settling alongside her in a lovely, comfortable position where he could carry on teasing her nipple between his fingers.
* * *
‘I don’t want to want you.’ Rose imagined that his next girlfriend might have brains, might have more staying power, might be the woman he let into his life because he had now seen for himself that being in a kitchen together and sharing a meal and then doing the washing-up whilst talking about anything and everything was not something to be feared and reviled. She had done him a favour in pointing him in a different direction and her heart twisted because when he left her behind and walked away it would be into a relationship that might prove to be the one.
‘And,’ she continued, tugging him up because she couldn’t focus on anything when he was doing what he’d been doing, ‘I know you feel the same.’ She paused, a fractional little pause during which he could have jumped in with a denial or said something that might have indicated an interest in more than just getting her out of his system. He failed to take the bait. ‘So, yes, perhaps if I moved in with you for a couple of days...well, while I’m here, then this thing we have going on...well, we can get it out of our systems faster.’
Art frowned. ‘My way of thinking,’ he said, on cue.
‘There’s something about familiarity...’
‘You certainly know how to massage a guy’s ego. In a minute you’ll start comparing me to a virus.’
‘Well, it is a bit like that.’ Rose laughed shakily.
‘And what if it doesn’t conveniently blow over in a couple of days?’
Rose knew that he was playing devil’s advocate. ‘It will,’ she said firmly. ‘We don’t have anything in common, Art. We don’t have what it takes to have a proper relationship, which is the only thing that would stop this thing from blowing over.’
Art frowned. ‘Define a proper relationship. Is there a checklist for something like that?’
‘More or less, if I’m being honest.’
‘So now you’re saying I tick none of the boxes.’
‘There’s still one box that gets a very big tick.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘But for me,’ Rose said on a sigh, ‘a relationship is so much more than just sex.’
‘And yet sex, like it or not, is so much a part of any relationship. Too much talking. I get the picture. We’re here and this is something we have to do and I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy doing it.’
* * *
He’d just never mentioned a timeline...
Rose lay in bed, half dozing, drinking him in as he strolled through the bedroom of his penthouse apartment, completely naked, hunting down his laptop computer because, even though it was still only six in the morning, he was up and ready to work.
She was warm and replete and contented. He’d roused her an hour earlier, nudging her into compliant wakefulness, and they had made love oh, so slowly. Caught in that hazy, half asleep place, Rose had let him take her to places that had left her crying out with pleasure. When, after touching her everywhere, after exploring her soft, warm body, he had finally thrust into her, filling her up, she had felt tears leak down her cheeks and had had to surreptitiously wipe them away because that definitely wasn’t part of the deal.
The package deal had kicked off three days previously, when she had fallen into his arms like a starving woman deprived of food who suddenly found herself with a ticket to an all-you-can-eat banquet.
They had made love and then, after a handful of hours’ sleep, had made love again and the very next morning she had moved in with him.
They hadn’t discussed how long this arrangement was going to last. How did you talk about something like that? How did you work out the length of time it would take for one person to get sick of the other?
How long would it take for him to get bored with her?
Rose knew that that was the way it was going to play out because she wasn’t close to getting him out of her system. Indeed, with every passing minute spent together, he became more embedded in her bloodstream.
They’d talked about sex. He did that a lot. When they made love he would whisper things in her ear that made her whole body burn. He would tell her, in a husky, shaky voice, how much he wanted her and what he wanted to do with her.
He was ruled by lust. He couldn’t keep his hands off her and the more he showed that want, the more she needed something more. Something more powerful than want.
But that was off the cards and it was always going to be off the cards.
Except...now...looking at him and his careless elegance, Rose felt her heart twist and she knew with an awful sense of despair that she was powerless to initiate the necessary break-up.
She was held in place by something far bigger than lust.
Somehow, against all odds, she had fallen in love with him and she was as powerless now as a speck of flotsam being tossed around this way and that on an unpredictable, fast-flowing current.
She could only make sure he never saw her vulnerability because if he did he would run for the hills.
Love was not on his radar. Not with her. And it never would be. The novelty value that had drawn him to her might not have yet released him from its hold but, now that she was immersed in his life, she knew with dreadful certainty that she was only ever going to be a distraction for him.
He didn’t do love. The highs and lows of emotion were things he would seek to avoid. Above everything, he enjoyed the power of control and that included control of his emotional life. He would find someone but she knew in her heart that he would not want someone who was as emotional as she had turned out to be.
Far from being the level-headed woman she’d imagined she was, love had turned her to mush and she wasn’t ashamed of it.
Even though she knew that hurt was lurking around the corner, waiting for her.
He produced the laptop from where it had been residing under a bundle of discarded clothes on a chair in his bedroom with a grin of triumph and turned to her. ‘First time this hasn’t been at my fingertips.’
‘You were in a hurry last night.’ She forced herself to grin back, keeping it light.
‘So I was,’ he murmured, dumping the computer and making his way back towards the bed to lean over her, then dropping a kiss on her forehead. ‘You do that to me.’
‘Make you want to run?’ Rose teased, playing with words.
‘I can’t get to you fast enough.’
Art looked at her for a few serious seconds and Rose had the feeling that there was something he wanted to tell her. A cold chill spread through her but she kept smiling, keeping it light. There could only be one thing he could have wanted to tell her that would have put that serious expression on his face and those words were not ones she wanted to hear. She swallowed down the nasty lump of desperation.
‘Stay in bed with me,’ she urged. ‘Surely work can wait.’
‘Not this.’ He was still looking at her with that expression on his face.
‘Big deal you have to close? I can’t imagine there’s any deal big enough that you can’t ignore it for a few more minutes.’
His expression lightened. ‘And to think I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of guy who can hold out for longer than a couple of minutes...although,’ he mused, ‘fast and furious does hold a certain appeal, I have to admit.’ He sighed, glanced at his cell phone and looked at her again with that pensive expression, thinking thoughts she couldn’t begin to fathom. ‘Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with work, as such...’
‘Why am I getting the feeling that you’re speaking in riddles?’
For a few seconds Art remained silent and during those few seconds Rose felt her heart clench tightly, painfully in her chest. Now was the time for her to voice her thoughts and either give him permission to walk away or else pre-empt his departure by announcing hers first.
She was spared any decision because just at that moment his phone buzzed. He looked at the number, then at her.
‘Private call,’ he said lightly, turning away.
He’d never done that before. Fighting down a wave of nausea, Rose hurriedly leapt out of the bed the second he had left the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. She flew into the bathroom and had a very quick shower. She was dressed and ready for the day and he still had not returned.
Was the call so important that he had to take it at this ungodly hour, without even taking time out to get dressed?
Was it another woman?
She knew that he had conference calls at strange hours from people in a different time zone, but he had always been fully prepped for those. He’d always conducted them in front of his computer, accessing information while talking to whoever might be on the line.
This was...different.
Rose couldn’t credit that he might sleep with her whilst having something going on with someone else. He just wasn’t that kind of guy, but then maybe, quite by chance, he had met someone in the last day or so. Was that so tough to believe? Hadn’t she already come to the conclusion that he was a changed man, even though he might not see it for himself? A man more open to the possibility of letting someone into his life? A suitable woman.
People gave out vibes without even realising it. Had he projected some sort of availability-to-the-right-woman vibe?
Tense with anxiety, she stood back and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was nothing special, however much he might wax lyrical about her sexiness.
She was tall and rangy and her looks, such as they were, were unconventional.
Was his private call with a woman with more to offer in the looks department? Was he returning to his comfort zone after his brush with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks?
She found him in the kitchen and he was no longer on the phone. He was also no longer buck naked but had a towel slung around his lean hips. He must have nabbed it from the spare bathroom while he had been strolling to the kitchen.
Coffee was on the go.
He was so drop-dead gorgeous. So sinfully sexy. So horribly addictive. She remembered that she had fallen for him within five minutes of meeting him. So much for her much-prized defence system when it came to the opposite sex!
‘What was that about?’
Art stilled. He’d been reaching for a couple of mugs and he paused for a fraction of a second.
‘Coffee?’
‘You’re not going to answer?’
Rose was dismayed at the shrill, demanding tone of her voice. She had aimed for banter mingled with amused curiosity. She had ended up with shrewish nag but she couldn’t claw her way back from the question and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. If he was going to break it off with her because of some other woman then he should have the decency to come right out and tell her.
She shouldn’t have to second-guess.
‘I didn’t think that sharing my private phone calls was part and parcel of what we had.’
Rose flushed. ‘Who was it?’ she was horrified to hear herself ask.
‘I think this is a conversation best put on hold,’ Art said coolly.
‘And I happen to think that I deserve an answer. If it was a personal call with another woman, then I deserve to know. I realise this isn’t anything serious but I’m not interested in sleeping with anyone who’s seeing someone else on the side.’
‘Is that what you think?’ he asked quietly.
Rose hesitated but, like someone who had crossed a certain line, she was now doomed to carry on walking that road. And besides, she roused herself to a place of self-righteous justification, she did deserve to know if he was thinking about ditching her for someone else!
‘How do I know what to think if you won’t tell me what’s going on?’ she muttered.
‘I’m going to get changed.’
‘You’re walking away from an uncomfortable conversation,’ she challenged but he was already heading back to the bedroom and after a while she tripped along behind him.
Art stopped dead in his tracks and looked at her, eyes flint-hard. ‘I don’t do this,’ he said calmly.
Rose returned that gaze with one that was equally cool. ‘Do what, Art?’ She folded her arms, determined to brave out what she knew was going to be their final conversation. ‘Discuss anything you might find a little awkward? I know this isn’t about love and commitment, but it should be about respect and if you respected me you wouldn’t baulk at having this conversation.’
Rose hoped that he would read nothing in her eyes that gave the lie to that statement because when it came to love she was drowning under the weight of it. Pride would never allow her to admit that, however. She was going to leave but she would leave without him ever having cause to think that he had had a narrow escape from yet another needy woman who had foolishly disobeyed his Do Not Trespass signs and developed unacceptable feelings towards him.
He had let slip in conversation the headaches he had had with a couple of previous girlfriends who had wanted him to meet the parents, who had mentioned the possibility of making plans further ahead than the next couple of hours.
Rose had absorbed those passing comments and was not going to be bracketed in the same category, to become yet another irritating ex to be produced during some future conversation with some future woman.
Art’s eyebrows shot up but something made him hesitate before heading back to the bedroom.
‘I’m not going to have this conversation,’ he said abruptly. ‘If you feel that I am the sort of man who disrespects women, who has somehow disrespected you, then it’s clear that we should not be together.’
‘Art...’
‘I’ll be back but don’t wait up.’
‘Is that your way of saying that you’d like me to be gone by the time you return? Because if it is then why don’t you have the guts to come right out and say so?’
‘No one speaks to me like that!’
Rose folded her arms and stared at him mutinously. On the inside she was breaking up into pieces. On the outside she refused to show him just how much she was hurting. ‘Then you’re right,’ she said gruffly. ‘It’s clear that we shouldn’t be together if I’m only allowed to speak to you in a certain way!’
The tense silence between them stretched on and on and on...stretched until she could feel all her wretchedness washing over her in a painful tidal wave.
‘Like I said,’ Art drawled, ‘don’t wait up.’
Rose watched in silence as he threw aside the towel to get dressed. She found that she couldn’t look at him. Even at the height of this toxic argument, she could still be moved by his sheer animal beauty. She didn’t want to be moved.
He left the room without a backward glance and for a while she actually hoped that he would have second thoughts and return.
He didn’t.
She had no idea where he’d gone and her feverish imagination provided her with all sorts of unwelcome scenarios. Had he disappeared into the waiting arms of some other woman? Had he somehow manoeuvred a situation in which she would react in a way that would give him an out?
She wasn’t going to hang around to find out and there was nothing more to be said.
She gathered her things in record time. She hadn’t brought much with her and what little she had brought took ten minutes to toss into her case.
She paused to look at the wonderful dress she had worn for the charity event that had been so memorable for so many reasons.
No way was she taking it with her.
It took her half an hour and then she was out of the mansion block and casting one last look behind her from the back of a black cab.
* * *
Art returned to an empty apartment. Of course he knew that she would be gone by the time he got back. He’d disappeared for over four hours. No explanation. What would have possessed her to hang around?
He flipped on the lights and went straight to his computer and switched it on. In his peripheral vision, he could tell that all her belongings had gone with her. There was no need for him to waste his energy hunting for evidence of her departure.
The screen opened up and he stared at it and realised that it really was possible to look at numbers and letters and symbols and see absolutely nothing whatsoever.
She would have caught a taxi to the station and would be heading back to her house by train. He was tempted to look up the possible departure times of the trains and resisted.
He’d done the right thing. That reaction was sufficient to harden his resolve. He had been weak once, had engineered a situation because he had still wanted her and had been unable to resist the demands of his body, but that weakness was something that had to be overcome.
He had seen where emotional weakness could lead. Those lessons had been learned when he had been too young but they were lessons he would never forget.
His indecision had been getting on his nerves and so he’d killed it fast. He hadn’t signed up to a querulous woman throwing a hissy fit because he refused to be subjected to a cross-examination.
So what if that phone call had had nothing to do with a woman?
He scowled, mood plummeting faster than the speed of light. Right about now she should be winding her arms around him, warm and naked and distracting.
Right about now he should be forgetting about work and climbing right back into bed with her because he couldn’t do anything but climb into bed with her whenever they were in this room.
Art envisaged what her reaction would be in a couple of months, when the full extent of that phone call became common knowledge.
He’d deceived her once but she had returned to him and he knew that it had been something she would not have undertaken lightly.
Sex was all well and good but she would have had to square it with her conscience and he’d never met any woman with a more lively conscience. Her conscience practically bounced off the walls.
To discover what she inevitably would, to find out without benefit of any explanation...
He abandoned all attempts to focus on work, sat back and wearily rubbed his eyes with the pads of his thumbs.
He’d never thought himself to have a particularly active or vivid imagination but he was imagining now, in a very vivid fashion indeed, the horror that would engulf her were she to discover, as she would in due course, that there would be more going on that vast acreage of land than a handful of tasteful houses.
It would be the ultimate deception for her because she would know that he would have had countless opportunities to raise the issue. To be deceived once was forgivable. To be deceived twice would be the ultimate sin in her eyes.
He should have broached the subject. That phone call would have provided the perfect opportunity to raise it. Instead, the shutters had slammed shut on her. Habit. He had never been a man to be nagged or cajoled into saying or doing anything he didn’t want to say or do. He had reacted with stunning predictability.
And it had been a mistake.
The truth was that she deserved honesty—and that was exactly what he was going to give her.
The slate would then be wiped clean.
Mind made up, Art didn’t bother consulting anything as pedestrian as train timetables. Why would he? He had two options. His private helicopter or his driver. Or he could take any one of his fast cars and drive himself.
Which was exactly what he chose to do.
He didn’t know whether he would reach her house before her but it didn’t matter. What mattered, and mattered with an urgency he couldn’t quite put into words, was that they talked.
He’d say what he had to say and then leave.
Traffic was light as he left London. A Ferrari was built to eat up the miles with silent efficiency and it did.
Under normal circumstances, he would have kicked back and enjoyed the dynamic horsepower of a car he rarely got to drive but his mind was too busy projecting the conversation that was going to take place.
He made it to her house in record time and knew, without even having to ring the doorbell, that she wasn’t yet there.
With any luck, she was going to show up soon and hadn’t decided to do a spot of sightseeing before catching the train back.
Art positioned the powerful car at the perfect angle to see her just as she entered her drive. He wasn’t going to let her run away this time.
* * *
Rose was spent by the time she made it to the local outpost where trains arrived in their own sweet time. The slow journey would have got on her nerves at any other time but on this occasion she relished the unhurried tempo of the trip. Her head felt as though it was bursting with thoughts, too many thoughts to be contained, just as her heart was bursting with too many feelings.
And at the very centre of all those thoughts and feelings was the dark, throbbing knowledge that she was not going to see Art again. The void that opened up inside her when she thought about that was so big that it threatened to swallow her up like a sinkhole.
At the station she hailed a taxi, which exited the small car park as though urgency was a concept that didn’t exist. She knew the taxi driver. She had done some pro bono work for his father two years previously, and she heard herself chatting to him but from a long way away.
She was so tired.
Lapsing into silence, she closed her eyes and wasn’t aware that she was approaching her house until the taxi began to slow, until it swerved slowly into the drive, and only then did she open her eyes and stir herself into wakefulness.
Only then did she see the red car in the drive, sleek and elegant and so, so sexy.
