“Let me touch you, please.”
He scraped his teeth along her jaw, flicks of tongue, glide of lip, a command. “No.”
The sob broke from her in the form of a moan. She was a sacrifice on the altar of his authority. She couldn’t make her body stop shaking. She couldn’t have stood up and walked away if she’d wanted to. She couldn’t fight him. Whatever he wanted to do, she wanted it more. Secure in his hold, she lifted her arms out straight to her sides, a T-bar, a crucifix, her offer of submission.
“I want to make you come.”
She gasped and before there was air to breathe, he flipped her onto her back. He lay across her, pinning her down, rocking his pelvis against hers. Now his button eyes blazed with raw purpose.
“That okay with you?”
She’d have answered, but he stole the comment from her lips; the notion of doing anything other than his command from her judgement. His weight was a heavy blanket of heat. His hands played musician, tuning her body, making it stretch, vibrate and sing with a lustre of feeling so intense she could almost believe he could make her come with his voice alone.
For a while he let her touch and her hands met hard muscle on his arms, and shoulders too wide to hold over layers of clothing that kept them separated. When she touched his face his breath shuddered. When she pulled his hair, he growled against her throat. When she put her hand over his heart, his hips pumped fast into hers and his kiss deepened. For all his play at dominance, he was as much affected by her as she was by him.
Her fingers under the back of his shirt meeting the tight rod of his spine ended her freedom to explore. He pulled away, sat back on his heels, his fight to steady his breath echoed in hers.
This would’ve been a good time to call a stop, to slow things down. This would’ve been a good time to pray for mercy. Not that it would’ve mattered. Whatever deity the man from Tara revered didn’t do compassion. It was the last coherent thought she had.
The way he shifted their bodies, laying by her side, his pelvis jammed against her hip. The way he kissed her, while he popped the stud at the top of her jeans, and slowly tugged the zipper down, and searing heat of his palm on her abdomen overwhelmed her. She forgot to touch him, she went rigid with expectation.
His fingertips played with the edge of her underwear, flicking the elastic so it pinged her skin, making her body jump. “Tell me I can do this to you?”
He wanted an instruction and she couldn’t remember the question.
“Ah fuck, woman. What a time to pick to make me stop.”
A voice said, “Don’t stop.” It didn’t sound like hers. It was drunk on desire.
“Not even when you beg.”
His fingers were under the trim of her underpants, and then they were inside her. She arched off the couch. She so wanted to move, to shed her jeans to spread her legs, to give him greater access. He was having none of that. Constriction was his design. He made her squirm, sharp sounds of shock and longing coming from her throat. He made her jolt in his arms, knocking against him, shuddering in answer to the thrust and roll, drag and twist of his fingers.
His kisses were deeper, longer, wetter. His rhythm rocking her closer and closer to an all encompassing implosion. It was passion as punishment, lust as leverage, a skilled gift of release from the turmoil of inner tremors that built and built to shattering proportions.
He made her come, a rolling wave of sensation that peaked and fell and peaked again. And when she thought it was over, and she was safe from the seismic shift of it, he moved. He changed the nature of his clever play, and she rose and fell again with shouts of surprise and relief, murmurs of incomprehension and wonder, her face hooked in the curve of his neck drinking in his heat, his scent. Revelling in his mastery.
She thanked him on a slow, soft, languid kiss and reached for him. It was his turn, her way.
He caught her hands. “No.” More instructions, but not said in game mode, he was the boss again. “That was for you. You don’t need to return the favour.”
She swiped his top lip with her tongue. “But if I want to? And I do want to.”
He pulled away, rolled her so she was on her side, spooned into his body. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“What happened to asking for it?”
His stubble caught her cheek. His voice was low in her ear. “I’m one of those rich bastards who takes what he needs and fuck what anyone else wants. And I need you to sleep now. I’ll wake you before they come for us.”
Darcy’s whole body hummed with fatigue. He’d found his jacket and draped it over them. In the comforting heat of his arms, and the heaviness of her exhaustion, she closed her eyes and slept.
7. Shangri-La
“To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.” — Confucius
Darcy stood in the entrance hall of the suite with her mouth open. This was Shanghai, not Shangri-La. A city of twenty-four million people, not an exotic mystical paradise. But so far everything about China was an unearthly dream.
She’d been detained in a room inspired by arctic blandness. Released suddenly with no explanation or apology, and now she had a suite that was bigger than her rented Surry Hills terrace. She’d arrived in a chauffeur-driven top of the range Audi after spending five hours with a man she’d bantered with, shared dinner with, danced with, and who gave her the most erotic experience of her life.
Her adult promiscuity had gotten the best work-out it’d had in years.
And she didn’t even know his name.
Of course she’d asked his driver, a man of indeterminate age and no apparent English. She might as well have asked him for the secret to eternal life. He’d have smiled at her the same way, like he had all the answers, but she was unworthy of receiving them.
Tara had to be behind the suite. The paper had flown her cattle class and the only reason she was booked under the paper’s name in this five-star hotel at all was because it was walking distance to Parker’s head office on the Bund. They’d have had her in a laundry room if that was the cheapest possible option. So when the clerk on reception mentioned she’d have her own butler, she knew a mistake had been made.
Much confusion, rapid computer screen toggling. No mistake. The Palace Suite had been fully paid for. Her butler had drawn a bath and awaited her instructions about unpacking and refreshment.
Men you meet in visa irregularity detention didn’t normally go around arranging suites for fellow detainees, did they? They didn’t normally make you writhe with sexual tension and give you a rolling series of body rocking orgasms either, did they?
They certainly didn’t do all that without expecting something back.
Darcy ordered a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and a pot of Irish Breakfast tea, and watched to see if her butler would flinch at the ordinariness of the request. His expression made her ready to believe he thought her taste in food, cheap crumpled clothing and grubby battered luggage was the essence of privilege and good breeding.
She wandered around the suite barefoot on thick, creamy carpet. You could wander, that was the right word for it. It had a dining room that would seat eight easily. In another room a baby grand piano stood ready to play. There was a dressing room. In the expansive wardrobe her paltry clothing was already arrayed on four padded coat hangers. The butler had even hung t-shirts, placed her work shoes in a special rack. Somewhere in this room he’d stowed her wheelie bag. There were so many cupboards and storage spaces she might never find it.
The bed was frighteningly big for one person, bigger than a king—a whole royal family of a bed. The bathroom was black marble. The huge bath sunken in front of the floor to ceiling windows faced the Huangpu River. She could see the Pearl Tower and the lights of the economic zone of Pudong.
She opened the doors to the balcony, grinning into the heat of the midnight sky at the sheer luxury, the absolute inappropriateness and the fait acompli of it all. She shouldn’t be in this room, but she had no wa
y of finding the man from Tara to issue a protest. If he thought he could buy her he was in for a surprise.
So for tonight she’d play princess. Tomorrow she’d have them shift her to an ordinary room and swap his credit for hers. This might get tricky when it came to claiming her expenses, though Mark was unlikely to care if they were less than budgeted for. There’d be one night’s less accommodation to pay for.
When she stretched out in the jasmine scented bath she recognised the tune in her head was Green Day. The song she’d once thought in a dark mood of sarcasm to be her deflowerer Ben Tucker’s theme song. Now it seemed to be a signature tune for her Shangri-La experience.
She sang the chorus aloud, the bathroom acoustics making her singing voice sound vaguely Celine Dion. Right at this unpredictable moment she was having the time of her life.
An hour later, wearing the hotel’s cream silk robe, she considered the bed and the eight pillows across its headboard. It was entirely too beautifully made. It seemed criminal to muck it up. It was hard to know whether to choose an end or shoot for the middle and sleep starfish just because there was all this space. It was hard to know if she would sleep in any case. Despite the bath, she was too keyed up. The suite was one thing, but the man? The man was another.
Somehow he’d known when they’d be released. He’d woken her fifteen minutes before the official arrived, with enough time to straighten herself up and splash water on her face. He’d obviously been working while she slept, a laptop, its screen glowing, open on the table.
He’d held out a hand to help her to her feet and smiled at her like she was Christmas morning. He’d had the devil in his eyes when he asked if she’d slept well, making it sound like an invitation to further debauchery, and he’d laughed richly when she’d blushed from the sudden awkwardness of the scene.
The young immigration official who came to stamp their passports and release them copped a tongue lashing from him, making him colour and duck his head. There’d been lots of pointing at the ceiling so she figured it had something to do with the air-conditioning.
When they’d cleared the airport, his car and driver were magically waiting. He’d insisted she take it. He handed her into the back seat, and she thought he was going to go old world gallant and take her hand to his lips, but he half climbed in, pushed her into the soft, yielding leather and kissed her hard on the lips while the driver watched in the rear-view mirror.
She’d grabbed his shirt. “What’s your name?”
He laughed. “More fun without names.” He pulled away, giving incomprehensible instructions to the driver, the only word of which she understood was ‘Peninsula’, the hotel she’d told him she was booked in.
He was rough, commanding. He was oddly graceful; he was impolite, brusque even. He was unexpectedly charming. He was utterly intriguing, with his hard eyes and big toughened body, and disarming with his quick wit, brutal honesty and deft, practiced touch.
Darcy lay in the centre of the big bed, and despite the long cleansing soak she could still feel him on her skin. The stroke of his palms, the bite of his fingers, the slow teasing circle and fast, tense rhythmic thrust that made her body flex and tighten and shudder.
Her brain wondered what it would be like to have him properly inside her. Her body knew it would be good.
He’d kissed her like it meant something to him. He’d held her like she was important. Though that couldn’t be right, that was her imagination. That’s what having no male attention for months on end could do to a girl. Make her have Bill Clinton style sex with a complete stranger. She’d done a reverse Monica Lewinsky. It was sex and danger, and all about the thrill though God, she’d have taken it even further if he’d let her.
In the temperate dark with Shanghai sparkling outside the glass wall, Darcy’s body was flooded with heat at the memory of what the man from Tara did to her. She pulled a pillow from the top of the bed, jammed it between her knees and rolled on her side, as longing swept through her.
She was ensconced in a room he’d paid for, in a bed made for play and she had no idea who he was or how to contact him. She had the number plate of the Audi but no knowledge of how to trace it. She’d already been refused the information about how her room was paid from reception and the hotel duty manager. Her butler’s impeccable, American accented English had also failed her.
He was either a mirage or a magic trick, and she wasn’t sure if she was meant to feel romanced by the fantasy or lost, stupid and cheap. Bought and paid for. It was an uncomfortable feeling, made more so when she woke and discovered a breakfast buffet laid out for her in the dining room and understood the butler had been in the suite while she slept.
He’d left an envelope on the table. Inside was a typed note. ‘Please allow me to join you for an informal dinner in your suite tonight. The chicken won’t be virgin.’ It made her swallow a grape whole. It was unsigned, but it had to be from him, and the arrogant bastard had left her no way to refuse.
She considered the idea of making a fuss with the hotel manager until she got his contact information. She measured the idea of teaching him he couldn’t control her by getting her own room. Simply not being here when he showed up.
She was unsurprised to find herself ambivalent about both those ideas.
Out on the street, Darcy forgot about Tara. She scoped out the old world European style buildings lining the Bund. Twenty-six in all, built from 1897–1948 with Parker Corporation headquarters in the 1920s-built Jardine Matheson building on the corner of Beijing Road.
From there she checked out the famous Peace Hotel. Brian had been here in the late nineties with Prime Minister Paul Keating on some Asia Co-operation junket. The twelve storey building with its copper roof was constructed in 1929 from the proceeds of opium and guns, according to the map she’d picked up at the Peninsula. The hotel had a famous six piece jazz band, all old guys. But there was no jazz being played in the white marble foyer that morning.
She quit the cool interior and headed down the Nanjing Road pedestrian mall, which according to the pamphlet was one of the world’s busiest shopping streets. From the number of big brand hotels and fast food outlets: McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway, and the number of times she was hit on by touts to buy a fake Versace handbag alone, that stat must have been correct. She passed Zara, Chloe, Dior, Tods, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Armani. Shops she’d never think to enter at home and didn’t appear any more affordable here, even with the favourable exchange rate. One part of being a print journalist that sucked; the very ordinary pay packet. It made retreating to Starbucks for a coffee feel sensible, if just to escape the colour and clang of the street.
Watching from her outdoor table was a better option than being in the mix. Darcy sipped her Frappuccino while the free tourist-trolley car traversed the street and shoppers of all ages and nationalities, arms laden with store bags and wallets lighter, looked about for their next retail fix.
Her post-pause itinerary included a stroll through Fuxing Park, a peek at Shanghai Museum, checking out the curios on Dontai Road and a stroll through the back streets of the old French Concession. Then back at the hotel, she’d organise a room switch and Tara would find she could be just as mysterious as he’d been.
Of course that meant she’d never know who he was, never see him again. That should’ve been a comforting thought. No, more than a comforting thought. It was a smart move. Thinking about what he’d done to her was enough to make the milk in her drink curdle. And the whole hotel suite thing was beyond even the worst Pretty Woman fantasy.
Darcy didn’t do pretty. Pretty took time and consideration and while she was no bush pig, Andy’s favourite description of an unattractive woman, she’d rather be acknowledged for her thought patterns than her eye makeup. More to the point, she didn’t do kept, so the only reason she was even trying on silk dresses and considering a pair of frivolous emerald green ballet flats was because she could.
Later that afternoon, exhausted from the heat and the
amount of walking she’d done and back in the cool comfort of the suite, the first thing Darcy noticed was the music. The display on the stereo told her it was Birdy. And then there was champagne on ice and the roses. Had to be three dozen. Long stem, black-red, in full bloom and fragrant. There’d been flowers when she’d arrived as well, but nothing like this extravagance. No card, but no guesses needed.
She should pack, but a rainwater shower or another soak in the bath would be fantastic. She could ring for her butler, and he’d have to take a direct instruction to get her a new room. She should go, because the suite was so deeply seductive it did something to her sense of propriety. She should run screaming, because the idea of dressing up for Tara and then letting him strip her was so far beyond seductive as to be insanity.
She stood over the bath. It was the size of her eleven year old Honda Civic hatch, but her ordinary room would no doubt have running water. In the dressing room she searched for her wheelie bag. Packing would take five minutes, clearing the room another two. Check-out time on the suite was now. She could be safely back in her comfort zone and unpacked again before Tara arrived.
In the other room Birdy had given way to Missy Higgins. The songstress sang about unashamed desire and having nothing to hide. Darcy went back to the bathroom and ran the bath. Even with the taps running full bore, that bath would take a while to fill up, but suddenly there was no hurry.
The dress was one of those you could wear to a casual lunch, or dress up with hair, heels and jewellery for evening. With her hair out, with the flat heels and no bling she’d look cool and collected, but not like she’d tried too hard.
Not that she need to try for this man. He’d probably be happy if she wore the hotel robe. He’d wanted her rumpled, and needing a shower and a toothbrush after a ten hour flight in her comfy jeans, a t-shirt from Target, and his three sizes too big jacket.
But he made her nervous. That blend of nervous carved out of excitement, anticipation and anxiety. And fear.
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