Cruise Control

by Sarah Mayberry

  “You could still call him, see if he’s up for round two,” Danny suggested.

  A wave of mortification raced through her at the very thought. Probably after the evening she’d had, she should be feeling a little more liberated about her sexual needs, but old habits died hard. There was no way she could be that blatant about what she wanted.

  She tried to articulate her feelings.

  “You know, Danny, I think I’ve kind of gone from zero to a hundred here pretty quickly, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to slow down a little. Yes, I had a good time last night. No, I am not going to go home and put my hair shirt on and kneel on a bed of nails. But I think some baby steps might be called for from now on. Maybe I should just go out more, socialize with my friends a bit. Meet some new people. Then I can find someone to have some fun with. When I’m ready.”

  “Why can’t you have fun with Marc Lewis?” Danny asked stubbornly.

  “No,” she said very firmly, flashing back to the out-of-control, can’t-get-enough greediness of last night. “No. Marc is out of my league.”

  “But—”

  “Danny—baby steps,” she said over the top of him. “I’ve got my training wheels on, remember?”

  That seemed to get through. “You’re right. Sorry. I should pull back on making you my new hobby, eh?” He slung his arm around her shoulders, and she winced.

  “Don’t tell me you’re sunburned already?” he asked as he peeled his arm off her.

  “No. Last night…we might have moved venue from the trunk of the car to the wall at some stage. There’s this rash on my back….”

  “Ah,” Danny said, nodding sagely. “Concrete burn. Bit of vitamin E cream and a couple of days will clear it up.”

  She stared at him. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “I’m not real good on where the female G-spot is.”

  She laughed. “And long may it be so.”

  She raised her glass, and he clinked his beer against it. “Amen.”

  A WARM BREEZE WAS BLOWING across the harbor as Marc padded down the steps toward the pool. Ripples raced each other across the pool’s surface, and he executed a perfect jackknife dive, slicing right to the bottom. The water’s chill embrace banished the last traces of sleep from his system, and he began powering along with his economical but effective freestyle stroke. Ten laps, fifteen, twenty. At lap forty he switched to an energy-consuming butterfly stroke, racing up and down the pool until his arms were leaden and his lungs on fire.

  By the time he dragged himself from the pool he was breathing heavily, but he felt great. Relaxed for the first time in ages. He toweled himself down, gazing out across the ocean toward the Harbour Bridge. He couldn’t quite see the opera house from his terrace—the promontory off Double Bay blocked his view—but the sweep of harbor and bridge that met his gaze was stunning enough to satisfy any man’s lust for the picturesque. For a second he allowed himself a small fillip of satisfaction at how far he’d come. From a state-provided house in the hot and dusty outer suburbs of Sydney to one of the most desirable pieces of real estate in the world.

  A bitter smile twisted his lips. Tara would have loved this view. She would have invited every single person she had ever met to the house, ensured they’d taken in every one of the five bathrooms and four living areas, then casually led them down through the garden to this pool terrace. She would have fed off their gasps of amazement and delight, just as she had always fed off others’ envy and jealousy.

  Marc turned abruptly away from the view. Deep inside, he knew that there had been much more to his wife than the pleasure she took in his achievements. Was he any different, standing here gloating over what was now his?

  He was in no mood to be generous toward Tara, however, even if it was only in thought. Slinging the towel around his neck, he strode up to the house. Showering quickly, he pulled on jeans and a polo shirt, then padded barefoot across to his study. His laptop glowed welcomingly from his desk, and he sank into his office chair with an absurd feeling of relief. Work had been his one solace over the past six months, accepting all his focus and energy with open arms.

  As he flipped the screen up, his gaze was drawn to his knuckles. He’d grazed them last night, he saw, and suddenly a hot flash of memory surged over him: Anna Jackson, her head thrown back as he pounded into her, holding her braced against the wall. She’d been so tight and wet, so responsive. The way her nipples had puckered under his fingers and tongue. The way she’d tensed her thighs around him and groaned deep in her throat as she came….

  He shook his head to clear the memory. But it was too late. The loose, relaxed feeling he’d gained in the pool was suddenly gone; he had a raging hard-on, and a taste for Anna in his mouth.

  He frowned. It was one thing to be haunted by fantasies about a woman that he’d seen half-naked in a dark corner of the world, but he’d had her. He’d touched her and filled her and spent himself inside her. The fascination should be over. He wanted it to be over.

  All his life he’d prided himself on being a man in control of his more basic desires. He ate well, he exercised, he didn’t indulge his temper. And he’d been faithful for the ten years that his marriage had lasted. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been tempted. There had been times. There had definitely been times. But after what his father had done to his mother, he’d never found it hard to push desire away and remember what he stood to lose if he gave in to his baser needs.

  Yet here he was, Anna Jackson still holding center stage in his mind. Having her last night was supposed to have scratched the itch, purged the urge, as it were. But his body remembered the feel of hers. The heat of her skin. The fullness of her breasts. The curving slope of her belly. The long length of her legs clenched tightly around him, mimicking the action of her more intimate muscles as she held him inside her.

  He didn’t understand it. He didn’t want to understand it. He just wanted her gone.

  Resolute, he pulled up a new window on the computer. Gradually, thoughts of Anna Jackson slipped away as he lost himself in concentration. The tension eased out of his body, and the dull throb of desire tapered off as he held himself to the discipline of work. When he next looked up from the screen, two hours had passed, and he saved his notes and flicked the computer off hastily. Distracting himself with work had been so effective that now he was late for lunch with his sister.

  Not many minutes later, he was tooling along the leafy streets of Point Piper in his Jag convertible. Traffic was light, and it didn’t take long to make his way to the Woolloomooloo wharves. Tossing the keys to the parking attendant at the W Hotel, he strode inside, blinking in the relative darkness of the foyer.

  He spotted his sister reading a newspaper on a bank of couches to his left. She didn’t look up from the article she was reading, and he walked across to stand in front of her.

  “Sorry I’m late. Although it doesn’t look like you were exactly champing at the bit.”

  “Can you believe the rubbish they put in the social pages? This Katie Menski woman is a poisonous viper, if you ask me. The things she writes about people!”

  “Good afternoon to you, too.”

  “I just don’t understand why it’s allowed,” Alison said as she allowed him to lead her out onto the promenade, where there was a range of restaurants for them to choose from. “Why doesn’t someone just sue the newspaper? That’d put a stop to the viciousness.”

  “Mmm. What do you feel like? Italian? Seafood?” Marc asked, mildly amused by his sister’s rant.

  “I want pastries after reading that stupid article. Some nice calming saturated fats.”

  Marc let out a bark of laughter and led her into a wood-paneled patisserie. They found a seat by the window, and both pulled out their sunglasses to tame the bright midday sun.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” he said as they picked up menus.

  “Of course. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you,” Alison warned him.

  “Don’t read
the social pages if they annoy you so much,” he said.

  She opened and shut her mouth a few times. “But it just irritates me that so many people lap that stuff up like it’s gospel!”

  “Yep. And you can’t do a damned thing about it. So…don’t worry about it,” he said, spreading his hands wide to illustrate his point.

  Alison stared at him a moment, an arrested expression on her face. “I guess that’s why you’re the millionaire in the family,” she said grudgingly.

  “Just common sense, Ally,” he said drily.

  “Still.”

  She smiled at him, and reached across to squeeze his arm. “You’re looking better, you know. More relaxed, less stressed. Last time I saw you I thought you were developing a permanent frown.”

  Instantly his thoughts turned to the spectacular bout of stress relief that he’d enjoyed the night before. He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair.

  “What are you going to have?”

  Alison lifted dark eyes to him. Anyone seeing them together would have no doubt about their relationship, Marc thought. They shared the same olive skin and dark hair and eyes. She was tall for a woman, too. Almost as tall as Anna Jackson.

  “Damn it,” he cursed under his breath. Why did he keep thinking about her?

  “Sorry?” Alison asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking of something,” he said, waving a hand to signify the thought’s irrelevance.

  “Work?” she asked sympathetically.

  To his everlasting amazement, he felt a blush heat his neck and cheeks. He kept his gaze firmly on the menu, avoiding his sister’s eagle eyes.

  But she’d already caught on. “Why, Marc, I do believe you’re blushing!” she said archly.

  Marc raised an eyebrow imperiously, trying to brazen it out. “Am I?”

  “Oh, yes. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on now, you know that’s not going to cut it with me,” she said mockingly. She cocked her head to one side and studied him. “Looking relaxed…slightly rumpled…running late…”

  She sat up straighter and clapped her hands together. “You’ve met someone!” she squealed.

  Marc frowned. “Alison….”

  “Tell me everything. Where did you meet her? What’s her name?” Alison asked, almost rubbing her hands together with anticipation.

  Marc signaled for the waiter to come over. “I’m having the croissants. What would you like?” he said, drawing a line under his sister’s nosiness.

  “The quiche and salad, please. And a slice of the gâteau.”

  “We are lashing out,” Marc commented sardonically.

  “Absolutely. And don’t think you’ve changed the subject, mister.”

  “Alison, as much as I love you dearly, you are not getting a free pass into my private life. So just leave it, okay?”

  She must have heard the warning note in his voice, because she bit her lip and began fiddling with a sugar straw.

  “I’m not being gratuitously nosy, Marc. It’s only because I care about you. I know you loved Tara, I know you’re still upset about what happened. But life goes on. You’re thirty-five, ridiculously good-looking, disgustingly wealthy—you should be having a good time, not having lunch with your sister on a Saturday afternoon.”

  “At this stage I feel honor-bound to point out that this lunch was your idea, to discuss Sally’s progress with the job,” he reminded her drily.

  A wave of Alison’s hand dispensed with this consideration. “You know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t. Life goes on, Marc. There’s still plenty of time to meet someone else, have a family.”

  “Perhaps I don’t want a family,” he said coolly.

  “Which is why you bought a six-bedroom home.”

  Marc could feel all the familiar anger and hurt welling up inside him. Tara had thrown away so much when she’d betrayed him with another man. All their plans for the future…He wasn’t going to risk that happening again.

  “If it will make you happy, we can put a lid on this topic for all time right here and now. Listen very carefully—I am not interested in marrying again.”

  Alison opened her mouth, and he headed her off at the pass. “Or having a long-term relationship without marriage. Any future woman in my life will be there for one thing and one thing only. And right now, I’m not even particularly interested in that!”

  Just to make a liar of him, an image of Anna flashed into his mind—the one he’d been obsessing about all week after he’d caught her changing before their opera house meeting. The slope of her breast, the curve of her butt in lace, glimpsed for just a second before she pulled her dress on….

  “Are you telling me that you’re just going to fritter away the rest of your life having a series of affairs with women? Do you have any idea how empty that sounds?” she asked.

  Marc saw that there were actually tears in his sister’s eyes.

  “Ally. Don’t cry for me. I’m a very happy, very contented man.”

  But she just shook her head. “I’m really going to need that gâteau now. That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.”

  Marc tensed his jaw and looked off into the middle distance. She didn’t get it. Perhaps if her husband had pulled the rug out from beneath her, destroying everything she’d built around them to make their lives work—perhaps then she’d understand the pain and anger he’d been through in the last six months. And why he was never going to put himself in a position where it could happen again.

  ANNA PUSHED THE COUCH another few inches forward, then stepped back to admire her handiwork. Perfect. She took another couple of steps back, eyes running approvingly over the soft chocolate leather of her new couch. It was accented perfectly by the rich burnt orange of the newly painted feature wall behind it, and by the luxuriously thick ruby red rug in front of it.

  She knelt and ran her fingers through the rug’s soft, velvety tufts. Silk and wool, the man in the shop had said. In winter, she could steal cushions from the couch and curl up on the rug with a book and a glass of red wine. And it would be great for yoga—if and when she ever got around to watching the exercise DVD she’d bought recently. And, of course, it would really come into its own for making love. Instantly she pictured Marc, naked, hard and hot for her, stretched out across the rug like an offering to the gods.

  She snatched her hands off the rug as though she’d just been electrocuted.

  “Damn it!” Pushing her hands against her thighs, she exploded to her feet in a burst of frustrated energy.

  She had done everything in her power to forget the man, and still he kept popping up in her subconscious. What was it going to take?

  Gathering the plastic wrap that had protected the couch during delivery, Anna stuffed it into a garbage bag. It had been a week and a day since the encounter on her car. A good week, too, she told herself. She’d decided to learn from her lesson with Marc, to see it as the next, if maybe slightly extreme, step in her new life plan.

  Hence the new couch. She’d always secretly longed for a colorful, comfortable nest to come home to. Her previous furniture had been a mixture of hand-me-downs, practical acquisitions and loans. Clean, neat, tidy. Boring. She’d always planned to invest in something more dramatic and interesting. But somehow, like so many other things, she’d never gotten around to it. So when the catalog came in the mail, she’d stared at the gorgeous couch in classic Art Deco clubman style and decided to just go for it. Life was short, right?

  Two hours and a drive to the furniture outlet later, she’d dropped a large chunk of change on the rug, the couch and a number of other accessories for around her home. Then she’d gone straight to the hardware store and picked a delicious deep orange paint to accent her new purchases. The whole lot had come together today, and it looked amazing—her own take on Morroccan nights.

  She was changing, she really was.

  Now, if she could just get Marc Lewis out of her head!

  Even if s
he succeeded in going a whole day without indulging in a flashback fantasy about her time with him, she couldn’t stop him from stealing into her dreams. As soon as she was asleep she was with him again, each touch a flame on her skin, each caress urging her toward an orgasm that she knew was going to be so intense, so mind-blowing that she’d never be the same again. In her dream she’d strive and hold her breath and strain…but the orgasm never came and she woke each morning feeling damned cranky and damned horny and knowing full well that there was precious little she could do about it.

  Because calling him was out of the question. She wanted to. She dreamed about making that call. But she couldn’t. She just…couldn’t.

  What had happened had happened. But it was a one-off. Definitely.

  She’d been over his side of the city many times since that fateful Friday night a week ago. Twice she’d even driven right past his corporate headquarters. Both times her skin had prickled and she’d felt ridiculously self-conscious—just from driving past a stupid building! It was too much. Too ridiculous.

  But no urge this strong could sustain itself. She’d reassured herself of that fact every morning as she stepped under the cold spray of her shower. It was just a matter of time. And of distracting herself from obsessing about him.

  So as well as giving her apartment a new look, she’d reconnected with a number of her girlfriends from her lawyer days. They’d been flatteringly pleased to hear from her, and she’d been surprised at how much she’d enjoyed catching up with them. She’d cut a lot out of her life after her cancer diagnosis, and some of it had been good stuff. A case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, perhaps.

  Checking her watch, Anna pulled a face. She had to hustle if she was going to be ready in time. Dropping the garbage bag by the front door to take out when she left for the evening, she padded barefoot into her bedroom and pulled open her underwear drawer. Tossing a bra and panties onto the bed, she turned to head into the bathroom, only to find her attention caught by her new dress.