by Lee, Miranda
“But will you let me?”
She stared straight at him. “Not if I can help it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to get hurt.”
“Are you two coming inside?” Betty called from where she was holding open the screen door.
“We’re on our way,” Aiden returned.
“I won’t hurt you,” he claimed as he took her arm and propelled her through the gate. “I promise. I won’t do a single thing you don’t want me to do.”
She laughed. Because that was the problem. There wasn’t anything she didn’t want him to do.
14
“HERE,” ZOE SAID, HANDING Aiden a hose. “You can help with the cleaning up. All the concrete areas in the milking shed have to be hosed down.”
Aiden gave her a look of mock surprise. “You mean you actually trust me to do something, instead of just stand around like a useless lump while you do everything?”
Zoe shrugged, determined not to bite. “Sometimes it’s quicker to do everything yourself than to explain things to someone else. It’s not as though you’re ever going to be milking cows again, are you?”
“I guess not.”
“I did tell you I didn’t need your assistance,” she reminded him tartly. “But you wouldn’t listen. You had to play Mr. Macho Helping Hand. You could have still been in bed, sleeping.”
“And miss watching you work in that highly original but incredibly sexy little outfit?”
Zoe winced. She’d been forced to wear the short shorts and top she’d been wearing the previous day before the party, since that was all she’d brought down with her and all her old clothes were miles too large. No way was she ever going to let Aiden see how fat she’d once been, by donning any of those awful baggy things she’d once worn.
The shorts did look a bit risky, however, when combined with knee-high black rubber boots.
Zoe had been fiercely aware of Aiden ogling her backside every time she had to bend over to attach or detach the cups from the cows’ udders. She’d pretended not to notice, and also pretended to herself that the beads of perspiration on her forehead were courtesy of the summer sun, and not her traitorous body being revved up by Aiden’s presence once more.
“I had nothing else to wear,” she snapped. “You’re lucky that some of Dad’s old things fitted you. Now stop trying to get a rise out of me and start hosing everything down.”
“If you insist.” Without any warning, he turned on the nozzle and directed the spray straight at her. She squealed, her hands flying up to protect herself, waving frantically from side to side.
Thankfully, the water wasn’t cold. It was actually very warm from where the hose had been lying in the sun. But it was still wet, the hot stream quickly soaking her minimal clothes.
“Stop that!” she screamed.
When he didn’t stop, she spun away and ran into the first milking stall, but that didn’t help at all. The spray easily found its way through the widely spaced wooden slats. She whirled back but found herself cornered, Aiden having moved to block her path, still spraying her with water, and grinning his head off. By this time her hair hung soggily around her face and her top was plastered to her skin.
“Stop it, Aiden,” she choked out, spitting one long strand of lank hair out of her mouth.
He laughed. “Never. Not ‘til you beg for mercy.”
One part of her wanted to laugh back, to play physical games with him as was natural for men and women when in the grip of a fierce sexual attraction.
But she couldn’t find the courage to let herself relax with him in such a fashion. If she did, she knew she was lost. Instead, she lunged for the end of the hose and tried to wrestle it away from him.
“Wait ‘til I get that away from you. I’ll…I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” he said, calling her bluff by dropping the hose on the concrete where it weaved and danced like some water-spitting cobra.
His action took her by surprise and she just stood there, panting with exertion, her chest rising and falling. He just stood there too, staring at her, his eyes hot on her explicitly outlined breasts and shockingly erect nipples.
“Zoe,” he said thickly, and her stomach curled over.
“No…”
“Yes,” he insisted, his face and voice vibrating with the most seductive desire. She felt her nipples harden even further, puckering up for him in the most blatant way.
“No, I said,” she croaked out again when his hand reached out to touch where his smouldering gaze was riveted. But it was a futile protest, and she didn’t really mean it, not once he made skin contact.
She sucked in, her shoulders stiffening, not daring to move a muscle as his fingertips traced the various shapes and outline of her breasts through the wet top. Shivers ran up and down her spine, but not with cold. When she moaned and swayed on her feet, he grabbed her upper arms and spun her ‘round, yanking her back against the hard warmth of his own relatively dry body. Once there, his hands were soon busy on her body once more, smoothing down over her ribs and stomach, then sliding up under her top.
She gasped when he reached her bare breasts, the sensations sharper now that there wasn’t any material between him and her. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her head. But this was one of the things she’d thought about endlessly. One of the things she craved. His hands on her naked flesh once more.
“Say you’ll come away with me,” he whispered in her ear, one hand cupping her left breast whilst his right slid down over her stomach and dipped under the elastic waistband of her shorts.
“Take a few days off work,” he urged, that knowing hand zeroing in on exactly the right spot.
Everything inside her crunched down hard.
“Tell them you want stress leave,” he went on even as she began to spin out of control. “Tell them anything. Only come away with me, Zoe. This week. Back to Hideaway Beach. Promise me.”
At that moment, she would have promised him anything.
“All right,” she groaned. “Anything. Anything. Just don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop, but his fingers moved on, sliding down into those parts which had been hot and wet for him all week. When his hand began to penetrate her body, her flesh contracted fiercely, gripping his fingers as she would have gripped his penis, showing him how much she wanted just that.
He muttered something but she didn’t catch what. She could not concentrate on anything but her own feverish feelings and those devastating fingers. She whimpered when they began a rhythmic stroking, her legs moving restlessly apart as the pressure built and the craving grew even more intense. Desperate with desire, she began rubbing her bottom against Aiden’s erection, oblivious of the reckless nature of such an action. Her brain was simply not connected with her body. She wasn’t thinking of risk, or danger, just release. Her body was working on autopilot, blindly going after what it wanted and needed.
“Please,” she started begging. “Oh, please…”
Aiden muttered a four-letter word, and then something—his thumb pad, she guessed later—rubbed over her exquisitely sensitized clitoris.
Her climactic cries sounded liked the cries of a wounded animal. Her body stiffened then arched as spasm followed electric spasm. Finally, they ended and Zoe sagged at the knees, only Aiden’s arms around her waist preventing her from sinking to the ground.
It took a while before reality returned and it was a deeply shaken Zoe who gradually began to appreciate that Aiden could have taken brutal advantage of her just then, if he’d been so inclined.
But he hadn’t. Thank God.
Despite feeling mortified at her own lack of control, Zoe could not help but admire him for his. Not many men would have exercised that much control and consideration in the face of such temptation.
Or had he been looking at the bigger picture, ruthlessly exchanging one passing pleasure for the promise of many? A whole week’s worth. He’d said he was merciless when it came to games.
But surely a merciless man would have demanded more from her just then. He could have made her do anything he wanted.
“You won’t go back on your promise, will you?” he asked as he turned her back to face him.
She looked up into his beautiful blue eyes and saw an unexpected vulnerability. Amazing! Didn’t he know how much she wanted him? Couldn’t he tell?
As blinding as it had been, that one orgasm hadn’t satisfied her cravings one bit. If anything, they were stronger than before, like an uncontrollable fire, unable to be doused, still raging and racing out of control. She couldn’t look at him without wanting to strip him naked and touch him all over.
Only pride stopped her from doing just that. Pride and the desperate need to take control of her life once more. If she was going to do this—and she was—then she had to do it on her terms, not his.
“I won’t go back on my promise,” she said firmly, and he looked taken aback.
“You won’t?”
“No, because it’s what I want too,” she said boldly. “What I need. A week of sex with you. But just sex, Aiden. Nothing else. So please…don’t feel you have to fancy things up with romantic frills. I want no five-star restaurants. No sweet little gestures or gifts. Certainly no poetry or perfume or flowers,” she scorned, thinking of Drake’s tried-and-true tactics. “But above all, none of that getting-to-know-you garbage. No deep and meaningful conversations. No confiding everything about each other since the year dot. Just sex.”
Talking, Zoe suspected, was the way to a woman’s heart, not sex. Because talking led to true intimacy and emotional bonding. It was how Greg had got to her. And Drake as well. The sex hadn’t done the trick at all. If she couldn’t learn from her previous mistakes then she didn’t deserve to be happy.
And Zoe aimed to be happy one day. She just had to get Aiden out of her system first.
“Just sex?” he repeated, as though he’d never heard of the concept.
“Yes.” Her chin tipped up. “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you.” Now that she understood the basic nature of the male beast, Zoe had no doubts he’d take it.
“Mmm.”
“Is that a yes or a no?” Surely he wasn’t going to say no!
“This isn’t some kind of revenge or rebound thing, is it? You’re not just trying to go one better than Drake, or get back at him for what he did?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If I wanted anything like that I’d have told Drake about you and me when I had the chance. Believe me when I say Drake means absolutely nothing to me anymore. Tracy’s welcome to him.”
“Just checking. A man does have his pride, you know.”
“Does he?” she scoffed. “I didn’t think a man ever let his pride get in the way of a good lay.”
“Mmm.”
She did so hate those cryptic mmms.
His head cocked on one side. “Is that what you think you are to me, Zoe? A good lay?”
“You must think so. Or you wouldn’t be so keen.”
He laughed. “You could be right there. And you could be wrong. But since we won’t be chatting much, you’ll never find out.”
“I can live with that.” She had to. To find out more about him might be the kiss of death. He was already proving himself to be more than she’d imagined. But he was still not a man to be trusted with her heart. Zoe wasn’t going to be a silly female fool a third time!
“Mmm.”
“Must you say mmm like that every second?”
“Does it bother you?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll try to curtail it, but it’s a family trait.”
“I don’t want to hear about your family. Or your family’s traits.”
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot. Silly me. So when do you think you might be ready to leave for Hideaway Beach?”
“That depends on whether Betty can get someone to do the milking this afternoon.”
“What are you going to tell them at work?”
“Don’t you worry about that. That’s my problem.”
“I think we should still stay down here today and tonight, regardless, Zoe. We might be needed. Besides,” he added with a wicked grin. “I promised to play Scrabble with Betty, and like you, I always keep my promises.”
Zoe pulled a face at him. “Yeah, right.” Like he’d kept his promise to marry that girl. “We could still leave after tea,” she suggested.
“And drive up the coast road at night? I don’t think so. Too dangerous. We can make tracks first thing in the morning.”
“Fine,” she agreed offhandedly. But inside, she felt piqued by his plans. Okay, so he obviously wasn’t as desperate as she was to be together. He’d already won her cooperation, hadn’t he? He already had his precious week of uninterrupted sex to look forward to.
A shudder ran through her at the thought.
“Why don’t you go back up to the house?” she suggested sharply. “Betty will have a lavish country-style breakfast ready for you by now. I’ll stay here for a while to finish up and dry off.”
He gave her one of his thoughtful looks, which were just as irritating as his cryptic mmms.
“I’d rather wait for you.”
“And I’d rather you didn’t.”
When her hands found her hips, he shrugged. “All right. See you soon, then.”
By the time Zoe started walking back up to the house almost an hour later, it was way past breakfast time. The angle of the sun in the sky suggested it was at least ten, or later. But she didn’t care. She had no appetite for food. She’d lost it when Aiden came into her life, replaced by another more ravenous hunger.
Zoe still could not believe what had happened down at that milking shed. She also couldn’t believe she’d rashly promised to get this week off work. She was going to have to spin a good yarn to wangle that. Maybe she could exaggerate her father’s need for her. Family emergencies were often looked upon more kindly than just asking for time off out of the blue. She’d also have to give Mel a ring and give her an update. Maybe she’d use the same white lie on her, too.
It was difficult once you started having dirty little secrets in your life.
“Ho, ho, ho.”
Zoe’s head snapped up at the sound of her father’s deep Santa-like belly laugh. She’d just come through the back gate and was only a few steps from the open back door. Surprise understated Zoe’s reaction. Frankly, she hadn’t heard her father laugh like that in years.
She hurried in through the screen door to find him sitting at the old kitchen table, showing an equally amused-looking Aiden an old photograph album.
Her heart sank when she immediately recognized it as one which contained all her class photos, right from her first year at school, including the dreaded ones taken after her mother had died and she’d become so fat. They were the only photographs of her taken during those awful years, and then only because the school forced her to be in them. Because she wasn’t tall, she was always put in the front row, all her grossness there on open display. Not just her fat face but her fat stomach and fat legs. She’d even had fat ankles back then.
A fierce wave of humiliation seared her soul as Aiden looked up, a wide smile on his face.
“You sure were a cute little…”
“How dare you show those photos of me without my permission!” she raged at her father, racing over and snatching the offending album out of his startled hands. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve always put me down? Must you hold me up to ridicule in front of…”
She broke off when she realized the album she was holding wasn’t the one with her school photos in. It was the one which contained her baby photos, along with the photos of her parents, when they were young and happy together. That other awful album, Zoe recalled too late, had been long consigned to a dark hiding place which only she knew about. It was just that the album covers were the same…
Everyone was staring at her with shocked eyes. Betty, st
anding at the sink. Her pale-faced father sitting at the table, his broken ankle propped up on a chair. Aiden, seated to the left of him.
“Oh,” she cried, shattered at having made a complete idiot of herself and embarrassing everyone for nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and bursting into tears, she ran headlong from the room, clutching the album to her chest.
She was lying facedown on her bed, her weeping having subsided to the odd sniffle when she heard her bedroom door open. She knew without looking ‘round, that it would be Betty. Dear, kind, understanding, sympathetic Betty.
“I know,” she croaked into her pillow. “I behaved like an idiot.”
“Not at all,” a male voice answered. “I’m the one who’s been behaving like an idiot all these years.”
Zoe rolled over at the sound of his voice.
“Dad!”
“Yes, it’s me. Not that I’ve been much of a dad since your mother died. And I’m sorry, Zoe. I’ve been abominably selfish, too caught up in my own pain to begin with to see yours. When I finally did, I didn’t know how to handle you or your weight problem. Thank goodness for Betty, that’s all I can say. What a godsend that woman’s been.”
Zoe watched, too startled to speak, as her father struggled into the room on his crutches and closed the door behind him. When she went to get up and help him, he waved her back and leaned against the dressing table for support.
“Betty just gave me a good talking to in the kitchen and made me see how critical and negative I’ve been toward all you’ve achieved. She made me see it wasn’t easy for you losing weight, then getting a job and going off to the city to live all by yourself. At the time I took it as a personal rejection of me and our life here as a family. I hated the fact that you hated the farm. Much like your mom did.”
Zoe’s heart lurched. “I…I didn’t know you knew that…”
His eyes carried admission, and true remorse. “Once again, I pretended I didn’t notice. Men are good at that. Pretending not to notice the things they don’t want to face. But I knew she was unhappy, just as I knew you were unhappy.”
“She still loved you, Dad. And so do I.”