Love & Freedom (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she gasped, scared that thinking might wake her conscience.

  He kissed her again, urgent, almost savage. Then pulled back. Slowed down. ‘I’ve wanted you since that first day.’ He let her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor and then he was stooping over her, fingers busy as he unknotted her shrug and slid it down her arms. Touching her with his eyes as well as his hands. ‘I’d love to undress you slowly but I don’t think I can bear to. This dress has been begging all night to be whipped off over your head.’

  She reached for the hem.

  ‘Don’t! That pleasure’s mine. Lift up your arms.’ And as she did, the dress whooshed up past her face and her hair flew around in a blast of static. For several moments he held the dress around her wrists, just looking. Then he let her hands down and turned her so he could slide open the catch on her bra. He slid the bunched fabric off her arms and she found herself in nothing but her panties.

  ‘Whoa,’ he breathed. ‘You are beautiful.’ He wrapped his arms around her, gave a quick breath out and suddenly she was standing on the end of the bed, her breasts level with his mouth. A mouth that was hot. She forgot to breathe as he used it to explore her, plucking gently at her nipples with his teeth then sucking them hard, making her jump and thread her fingers through his hair, just in case he had any ideas about getting away.

  His hands ran up and down her back. ‘OK?’

  She gulped. ‘Sure am.’

  He stroked her waist, her hips, her buttocks; his fingers against her skin awaking her to almost unbearable sensitivity. His fingertips ran around the high leg line of her underwear. ‘What do you call these? They leave so much of you uncovered. I love them. If I’d known they were all you had on under that short dress, I think I would have exploded.’ His breath shivered across the wetness left on her breasts by his tongue.

  ‘Cheekies,’ she gasped. ‘Cheeky panties. Don’t you guys have Victoria’s Secret, here?’

  ‘I don’t know but it ought to be made law that we do. We don’t have panties, we have knickers.’

  ‘Knickers?’ She didn’t mean to make it a question, she knew perfectly well that the British called them knickers, but his prowling hands made her voice somehow squeak up at the end of the word.

  ‘Mmm. As in, “I’m going to take your knickers off.”’ His fingertips hooked themselves in the elastic, drawing them down.

  ‘But you’re getting all behind,’ she protested, shakily, making her fingers, which had been gripping his shoulders, move to the top buttons of his shirt.

  ‘Let’s catch me up.’ He began working up the buttons as she worked down, his mouth keeping up a deliciously damp contact with whatever came close enough, her wrist, her nipple, the inside of her elbow, until he could shrug the shirt on to the floor. Then, in the impatient way of men, flicked open belt, button and zipper and somehow the beautifully cut trousers hit the deck, and he was running his tongue up and down her abdomen as he swung her up and fell with her sideways on to the bed. ‘Height difference more easily overcome when horizontal.’

  In college, Honor’s roommate had invariably referred to sex as ‘rolling around in the sack’. Until now, Honor had never been able to equate the phrase with the act, but Martyn was so relentlessly physical, hauling her around until she hummed with excitement, that she totally got it. The pillows scattered and slid, the quilt joined their clothes on the floor and Martyn complained, ‘This bed’s way too small,’ as his long limbs kept ending up in thin air.

  Then, suddenly, he changed gear.

  The night went into slow motion.

  He stared into her eyes. He positioned himself. And began a slow slide, hot, hard, until he was inside her. Transfixed by his gaze and by the sensation of him taking her over, she stilled. And just allowed herself to feel.

  ‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long.’

  ‘Yes,’ she croaked. ‘Oh, fuck. Oh, wow. That’s good.’ Her muscles flexed around him, accommodating, feeling, wanting.

  His eyes flickered as his breathing increased. ‘Yeah. Do that again.’ He dragged in air. ‘No, you’d better stop! There’s only so much–’

  But then he was moving, helplessly, ‘You’re still doing it! But don’t stop.’ And his eyes closed as slow became fast, then faster, and she held on tight as she was picked up and carried on his wave, and they crashed, together, into a whole new world.

  During the night, when they’d made love again, slow and intense, he curled around her on his side, hooking her legs over his so that he was snuggled nicely against her behind, his chest rising and falling warm against her and joked, ‘I was right, you’re hot, Freedom Lefevre.’

  She stilled. It made her feel toe-curly to hear him speak that name out loud, so casually, as it might have been used if her life had run along a different track. ‘I’ve always been Honor. Not Freedom.’

  He kissed her ear, then licked it. ‘I like Freedom. It’s part of you, the whole you. The you that you were born to be as well as the you that life made you.’

  She stared into the darkness. ‘I guess I’m acting a lot more like Freedom than like Honor, right now.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Alerted by the muted ringing of her phone, Honor groped for the bag she’d abandoned beside the bed last night, screwing her eyes up against the morning sunlight. Behind her, Martyn moved to close the space that had opened up between them. She held on to the edge of the mattress so as not to fall.

  And, in her ear, Ru complained, ‘So I’m here and Aletta’s here. Where are you?’

  And she was awake. ‘Oh crap, I overslept! Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be there.’ She let go of the mattress cording to touch ‘end call’ and fell from the bed, rolling on to her feet as she ran for the shower. No matter how short of time she was, a shower, after the night, was a must. With a towel turban over her hair she washed briskly, wincing as parts of her protested because she hadn’t used them for too long.

  A fierce scrub of her teeth and she was flying back through the hall to the bedroom, ignoring Karen’s best stepmom voice in her head: ‘No way can you deal with your daily hygiene routine in that amount of time, young lady!’

  Martyn still sprawled across the sheet, eyelashes resting down on his cheeks, each individual muscle in his body defined by the morning sun. She drank him in as she tried to ease open her underwear drawer. Surreal to think that the reason that he looked like something from a magazine was … because he was something from a magazine. ‘Ow! Fuck!’ she hissed, as the drawer shot out and banged her knee.

  ‘I love to hear you say fuck. Right now, it’s my favourite word,’ observed Martyn, without opening his eyes.

  ‘And if I’m not out of this door in five minutes, you’re going to hear me say it a whole lot more. I was such a hero when I sent Robina and Sophie off to their music festival and said I’d be there to open the tearoom. And now I’ve spoiled it all by being late–’ Robina. Her heart hopped to think how Robina would feel if she knew what Honor had spent the night doing with Martyn.

  ‘Fucking late,’ he augmented.

  She laughed as she pulled on her white T-shirt and buttoned her black skirt. No time to do anything much with her hair and last night’s fairly glam crimped look had, with sweaty sex and sleeping for only about three hours, turned into a haystack. She brushed it into a ponytail high on her head and jammed a black baseball hat over it, hoping it wouldn’t make the Teapot look as if it got its staff from McDonalds. Snatching up her bag, she shoved her feet into her favourite-for-waiting-on-tables flat soft sandals and dropped a kiss on his hair. ‘’Bye now.’

  He opened one eye and reached out a hot hand to her bare leg. ‘Hang on and I’ll drive you.’

  She stepped out of reach. If she let him touch her she’d never get to work. ‘In the “nuddy”?’

  He grunted a laugh. ‘That sounds so wrong in your accent.’

  ‘I don’t have an accent, honey. You do.’ She blew him a kiss.


  Although she’d made a lousy start by catapulting into the tearoom, red-faced and breathless and nearly forty-five minutes late, Honor quite enjoyed her first day ‘in charge’ at the Teapot. With no cakes cooking and no Robina taking up all the room with abandoned utensils, obliging everyone else to act like her kitchen porters, much of the stress and irritation was gone. The already cooked slabs of cake stood waiting and there wasn’t even a mammoth clean down to do, although Honor had realised with regret that she hadn’t specified Robina clear up after her middle-of-the-night bake-in. Probably Sophie had taken care of it.

  Whilst Aletta rolled cutlery into yellow paper napkins, Honor and Ru cut the cakes horizontally and sandwiched them back together with the frosting Robina had left in a huge jug in the refrigerator. A shake of chocolate flakes and even without Robina’s artistic chocolate leaves and roses on top they looked delicious.

  Honor washed her hands, looking around to see what had been left undone. ‘So, Aletta you concentrate on waiting tables, clearing tables and sanitising, me and Ru will fill orders and clean dishes, OK? We should be able to dash out and clear or take orders sometimes, too.’ Aletta, looking incredibly wholesome and apple-cheeked, was too dreamy to be let loose in the kitchen, where teamwork and organisation was the way to a right mind.

  Aletta agreed with a smile and a wave of her pen and order pad.

  Honor’s eye fell on the potato oven, cold and empty. ‘The baked potatoes! Can you wash some, Ru, please?’

  His ball hat on back-to-front, Ru stuck his head around the corner to inspect the potato rack. ‘Only got two.’

  ‘Damn,’ Honor groaned. ‘One of us better take some money from the cash register–’ She dived into the pantry and fetched the wooden cash drawer from the shelf where it usually spent the night. Every compartment was empty apart from those containing small change. ‘Oh.’

  Looking as if he was trying not to laugh, Ru patted her shoulder. ‘I suppose Mum needed some spending money.’

  Reaching resignedly for her purse, Honor sighed. ‘Your mom can be a real pain in the ass, do you know that? We better hope the first customers have change.’

  By the middle of the day, in between thinking about the night before and wondering where the thing with Martyn was going, Honor had cried, ‘Holy crap!’ more times than she could count – especially when Kirsty made it downstairs, looking like a nightmare, to order a white china pot of peppermint tea and point out that the potatoes might only be meant to take an hour-and-a-half, but took at least two so a blast in the microwave would be helpful, the frosting should have gone back into the fridge and that Aletta was letting half the neighbourhood youth hang out around one of the tables outside without buying anything to eat or drink, behinds on table and feet on the chairs. ‘And it’s frightening off the paying tourists.’

  ‘I thought we were goddamned quiet, all of a sudden.’ Abandoning a stack of clean plates noisily on the counter, Honor marched outside, flapping her arms and shouting, ‘Get off that table! Go!’

  The teenagers laughed and scattered as if they were used to being shooed away like a flock of seagulls. Even Frog just grinned, ‘Chill, Yankee Doodle,’ and mooched away down the street without getting in her face about it.

  By six o’clock, Honor was dead on her feet. Aletta had left on the dot of four-thirty, evidently feeling no need to pitch in and work extra. ‘Let’s put up the closed sign,’ Honor yawned, when she saw the time. Staying open till six easily fulfilled her end of the deal, as Robina’s usual policy was to stay open until she felt like doing something else.

  Honor definitely felt like doing something else. Almost anything. Her feet burned, her back ached, her eyes watered from massive, uncontrollable yawns. She had had way too little sleep, which was fabulous in some ways but pretty damned hard in others.

  Ru vanished the moment they’d cleaned down, leaving Honor to count the takings and retrieve what she’d paid for the potatoes, throwing a tea towel over the drawer and locking it in the pantry – Robina’s idea of overnight cash security.

  The sun was still shining as she locked up and the salt air tasted so delicious that she filled up her lungs over and over. Setting off down The Butts, she saw Martyn instantly, perched halfway up his metal staircase in the shade. As she drew near, he came down to intercept her. His hair was shower-damp and he looked great, as if he’d slept all morning and run all afternoon.

  His smile was a caress as he tipped up her face and kissed her. Taking his time. Deepening the kiss, settling her against him so that they touched in the maximum number of places. ‘You look seriously cute in that hat.’

  ‘I feel seriously exhausted and icky. I’m going home to shower, then sleep until it’s time to get up in the morning and open the Teapot again.’

  Horrified eyes opened wide. ‘That’s a terrible plan. I have a better one – come upstairs to my place. I have to be at a shoot in Paris at dawn on Sunday, which means setting off Saturday afternoon. Tomorrow.’ He kissed her again, a gently coaxing kiss that sent such a tingle through her that she half-expected a shower of stars around her head, like a fairy waving her wand in a Disney cartoon. Turrrrrring!

  ‘What’s so good about your place?’ she mumbled, leaning her cheek against his chest to feel the steady bmm-bmm-bmm of his heart.

  ‘Big bed,’ he whispered.

  ‘Mm?’ She pretended to be considering.

  ‘Sleeping all night in my arms after hours of sizzling sex. I’m feeling very … attentive.’

  ‘Mmmmmm.’

  ‘Creative.’

  ‘Mmmmmm.’

  ‘There’s wine chilling.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Fish and chips for supper–’

  She pushed herself away and planted a kiss beside his mouth. ‘OK, you got me. I’ll be back in an hour, when I feel clean.’

  His eyes gleamed. ‘So that I can make you feel dirty?’

  With that thought whizzing around her head, she needed less time to recharge her batteries than she’d anticipated and it wasn’t even the hour she’d promised, when she returned with a smile and an overnight bag.

  The instant that she stepped inside his front door, he trapped her between his body and the wall. She turned to spaghetti. And his kisses were the boiling water.

  Slowly – because he didn’t seem inclined to unwrap himself from around her or to stop with the kisses – he guided her to one of the big, squashy sofas, pausing briefly in the kitchen area for chilled white wine and glasses. His big, swanky laptop stood open on the table, ticking away to itself, demonstrating how busy it was with a download or an upload or something as a blue line grew slowly across the screen.

  He poured the wine then swooped her up and on to his lap, nodding at the screen. ‘I’ve been doing a revamp of Ace’s agency site. I’m uploading files. Now I’ve started I need to stick with it for a while.’

  ‘Sure.’ She smothered a yawn and tucked her cheek against the hollow beneath his collar bone.

  ‘Tired?’ He traced her jawline with a fingertip. ‘It’s damned Robina’s fault. You could have stayed in your bed all morning. Like I did.’

  She widened her eyes, fighting their demands that she should let them close. The first sips of wine, however crisp and chill on her tongue, had let fatigue press down on her eyelids. ‘You slept all morning while I slaved? I knew it, you rat bastard.’

  ‘I’d had a hard night.’ His lips touched butterfly kisses to her forehead.

  ‘You bet.’ Despite her best efforts, she heard her voice fading into the distance as sleep began to melt her. Then jumped awake when his doorbell rang.

  He sighed. ‘I really hope that this is someone I can either get rid of quickly or push down the stairs. Not a sister. Sisters are like limpets when you don’t want them around.’

  She let him pour her into a corner of the sofa, where she curled like a puppy. But her eyes reopened when she heard Ru’s voice. ‘Ru? What’s up?’

  He slouched across the carpet towards h
er, hair falling over his face and hands so far in his pockets that it looked as if his jeans were going to slide off over his bony hips. ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged, aimlessly. ‘I just saw you coming up here so I thought it would be OK if I said hi to Martyn, too.’

  Martyn, she could see from the frustration burning in his eyes, wasn’t totally appreciating Ru’s neighbourliness. She smiled at him, hoping she was telegraphing, don’t throw him out; he’s just an insecure kid.

  Ru dropped on to the sofa, next to Honor. ‘Cool laptop. Your download’s finished.’

  Martyn took the remaining place, on the other side of Ru, with only a tiny sigh, lifting the computer on to his lap. ‘It was an upload. I’ve been working on someone’s website and the image files are so big I’m uploading them one at a time.’ His fingers moved over the keys and soon a new blue line began growing slowly across the screen.

  Apparently hypnotised by its progress, Ru nodded. ‘Is it Front Page?’

  ‘No, that’s old hat now, it’s Dreamweaver–’ But then Martyn’s voice began to dissolve and, like syrup sinking into the dents in a waffle, Honor sank into sleep.

  Swimming back to the surface, a couple of hours later, she found the computer had changed laps and Ru was tapping away happily, while Martyn kept one eye on him at the same time as watching a documentary about snakes on the enormous TV.

  She yawned and stretched. ‘I fell asleep.’

  Martyn turned a slow smile on her. ‘You certainly did. Ru’s raring to get the fish and chips.’

  Ru shoved the laptop aside with an accusing, ‘Yeah, we’re starving, Honor.’ Clutching twenty quid from Martyn, he disappeared through the front door like a man on a mission.

  Martyn regarded her sternly as he slid up the sofa towards her. ‘I’d better get some good hands-on reward for being nice to him while you slept our evening away.’