by Flora Dain
I laugh softly, still high as a kite after his lavish attentions last night. ‘Now who’s being ridiculous? You keep me safe? You’re the most dangerous person I know. You go off to your meeting. I’ll see you later.’
As he turns towards the door I follow him. Still playful, I lean up and kiss him lightly on the jaw like a happy housewife in a fifties commercial.
Mistake.
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ His eyes flash. He glares down at me, his jaw rigid, and kicks the door shut again with his foot.
I feel the blood drain from my face. Now what? His breathing is laboured, his eyes wild. Something about me has enraged him but I’ve no idea what it is. Is he always like this?
‘Dammit, Ella. Kiss me like you mean it.’ He closes his arms around me and fastens his mouth on mine, his tongue making fresh claims, his lips hot and hard. After last night I’m still fired up and my warm, sensual shower did nothing to calm me down. Now his eager mouth reminds me that only hours ago I was stretched out at his mercy, aching and wet, while he was doing his utmost to make me wetter.
And now I’m wet again and in seconds he finds this out for himself as his questing fingers betray me. He pulls away, his gaze steady, his expression unreadable. Nervous now, I have the grace to blush but something new and determined about his manner tells me I’m not to be let off lightly.
‘Open your legs.’
He reinforces his command by forcing his knee between my thighs and pushing me up against the wall. ‘Now put your arms up over your head and lean on them. Hard. Push away from the wall.’
Startled, I obey as heat flares once more between my thighs, the embers of last night’s passion stirring instantly to life.
‘Hold still.’ He continues to hold my gaze as he pushes my robe wide open and reaches round to scoop it into a twist, coiling the thin cotton into a roll. In seconds he’s bundled it into a cushion and wedges it behind my shoulder blades.
‘Spread wider.’ His look is focused, absorbed. He could be a master arranging the limbs of a puppet, except his voice has dropped to a low growl. His tone is so deep it scares me. I look on entranced, my heart pounding with excitement, my arousal beginning to burn. I glance down as I feel his shirt cuffs brush my belly and instantly earn a reproof.
‘Don’t look down. Keep your eyes on my face. I’m simply undoing my flies.’
Heat flares again. Now? He wants to do this now?
He takes his time, like the emotions crossing my face are the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. I sense movement down below and feel the brush of fabric against my hips as he loosens his trousers, hear the light whisper of silk as he frees himself.
‘Now unlace your arms. Keep them over your head.’
As I do it his hand runs lightly over my breasts, skimming each nipple with masterly precision. He pauses to follow through with his fingers, feeling and teasing my stiffening nipples outwards a little, his touch not yet painful but tormenting as hell since I’m straddled at this unnatural angle and they’re thrusting up against him, entirely at his mercy.
‘So what happened to the meeting?’ I say, shakily.
‘We’re having one. You hadn’t noticed? Oh, that one? I’m in plenty of time. I’m never late for meetings.’
Inwardly I sigh. I bet he isn’t. Mr Control-Freak operates on a different planet from the rest of us. But then I see the gleam in his eyes and I sense something else is happening here.
‘Tell me, Ella, did you enjoy last night? Have you had it like that before?’
I gasp. ‘What a question. Never. Why?’
He reaches up to grasp my wrists, his grip strong, his fingers closing around them like a vice. He hauls my arms taut and leans into me, his face barely an inch from mine. My eyes widen as a column of hot, power-laden gristle burns against me, reaching nearly up to my navel.
‘I thought not. Now I want to watch you come. I want to see it in your eyes.’
Pinning my hands, his look burning into me, he starts to move against me. He flexes his hips with such precision I wonder instantly how often he’s done this. I hope desperately – though I know this must be impossible – that it gives him as much excitement as it’s giving me. I was already weak with lust when he pinned me here and I’m still glowing from last night. Now everywhere between my legs erupts into full-on heat as his scorching shaft grinds against me, jutting deep into the soft flesh of my rippling, nervous belly. The ridged muscle works in tiny shifting movements hard against the very apex of my thighs where my swollen, aching folds split apart. They yearn against him to push forward my eager little bud, so engorged now a mere whisper of air or fabric might set it off and tip me over the cliff he’s building …
‘Open your eyes. I want to watch.’
His voice is harsh as his hips jerk me painfully to attention. My eyelids snap open and now I’m in trouble. I’m consumed with flame and about to peak but I usually climax in the privacy of darkness or with my eyes closed. Women are coy about these things.
Under his fierce look and in bright sunlight I feel almost ashamed to show him the full force of my pleasure. As a deep blush spreads over my cheeks I want to protest and tell him this but his look is so stern and so controlling I’m helpless in it, a rabbit in headlights. I stare back at him as shame and pleasure fuse in a terrifying, heart-stopping eruption of rapture and I climax violently against him.
He holds me pinned, curving over me, his loins thrust hard up against my writhing hips, his burning erection harder and hotter than ever, so close and yet so far out of reach, its control over me now as complete as if it had surged up inside.
Emotion wells up like it sometimes does when I come as hard and as often as this. I look up at him imploringly, aching for his entry. ‘Are you going to …?’ I tail off, unsure how to ask for this. A helpless tear trickles down my cheek.
‘Hey. Don’t cry.’ Concern flickers instantly across his face as he touches the trickle with his lips, tasting gently, and then moves lower and fastens his mouth on mine. He kisses me softly, his touch light and honeyed. I shudder in his grasp as the fading echoes of my orgasm briefly intensify.
‘What do you want, Ella? You want me inside you? Is that what you want?’
I’m still pinned. His grip is still as thrilling, his look still as fierce and his hot shaft still in place. He must want relief. He held off all last night. How can he do this? It’s unnatural.
Something of this must show in my face. His gaze softens and I see his eyelids lower. ‘I’ll take that as a yes. But you’ll have to wait a while. I’ll take you when I’m ready, not before.’ He stoops to kiss my breasts, taking a mouthful of each in turn and sucking hard, drawing the blood to my fevered nerve-endings and leaving my aureoles rosy, swollen and tingling. All at once he straightens up and kisses me full on the mouth.
‘Now I have to work. I’ll only be an hour or so. When I get back we’ll go see your boyfriend.’
He releases me with a smile and closes the door softly behind him. I stare after him and rub my wrists as my robe slowly unwinds at my back.
At that moment my phone rings.
Ryan.
Still shaky, I grab it and peer at the display but it’s not Ryan, it’s my old friend Billy Brown. I tried to reach her yesterday and now she’s calling back.
‘Willamina. Hi, where are you? Fixed your new job yet?’ My voice sounds shaky but as usual she chatters on without drawing breath.
Her new internship in a big Boston law firm has really caught her imagination. She joined them as a researcher. She’s small, dark and dynamite and gets bored easily. This is her third try in a firm so prestigious even the janitors seem to have college degrees.
I tell her she’s aiming too high. She laughs, and I know that her elfin face has lit up with mischief. That’s all that’s worth aiming for, she says, and anyway she can afford it and I aim too low.
Ouch. After we graduated we both took a course in law but I went back to literature, my fir
st love. While she took the risky route via a legal internship Miss Normal took the safe one and decided to teach. Unlike Billy’s father mine’s no millionaire, just a country physician. I need to earn money. Also I have a paralysing shyness that sometimes roots me to the spot in interviews and forbids me to speak.
At least in the classroom it can’t do any harm – not lose me a case, like it would in law, my first career choice, or fluff a broadcast like it would in journalism, my second. Students just laugh.
So for various reasons that I’d never tell anybody else my third career choice – teaching – was also the hardest for me and presents a daily challenge. But I’d never complain. I love it.
Now she’s curious about my unscheduled trip west. I can almost see her eyes narrow. ‘I thought you were invited to speak at the Charlotte Academy Summer School in North Carolina? So how come you’re in Dallas, Texas, of all places? Come on, spill.’
I sigh. ‘It’s complicated. Ryan-related.’
‘That asshole.’
She must be feeling good. Her usual comment would make a trucker blush. I grin into the phone. ‘Tell me about it. Catch you passing through, maybe?’
She’s on office business in Austin so we could meet. We leave it in the air and I ring off. Billy’s brisk, no-nonsense energy has put me back on the rails. Now to get my day to match.
And the first thing I decide is to drive over to Fort Worth by myself. I’ll meet Ryan, find out what he wants and then get back here. Why wait for Darnley? It’s not like it’s really his business.
* * *
I leave him a brief note and then shrug on some clothes, scrape back my hair and set off to the parking bay to retrieve my hire car. Too late I recall my hasty promise to call the company for an upgrade but I decide to risk it.
At last I turn out of the impressive hotel driveway into the freeway running southwest, lower the window when the air-con fails once more to kick in, and switch on the radio.
I love driving in strange places. It’s about the most daring thing I do these days, so I’m happily bowling along, and singing along – at the top of my voice and in my best nasal twang – to Tammy Wynette and then Hank Williams on a local radio station, when I glance at the rear-view mirror. Some way behind me there’s a dark car. It looks like an expensive brand and it’s maintaining a steady distance behind me. Other cars are sliding past each other or falling behind but this particular car never seems to shift out of view.
After a few minutes I glance back again. It’s still there.
I frown at myself. Fort Worth’s the next town. Lots of people are going there.
Plenty of cars follow other cars – for miles, sometimes. I do it all the time. Why am I so jumpy about this one?
You might be in danger. Away from the seamless protection of his wealth and his lavish hotel suite Darnley’s words take on new meaning.
I press my lips together and turn up the volume on the radio. Bobbie Gentry’s mournful lament about Billie Joe McAllister fills the car and brings tears to my eyes. Irritated I switch it off and change lanes twice, speed up for ten minutes, and then slow down and change lanes again.
Other drivers lose patience and lean on the horn but to my relief the dark car has disappeared.
Panic over. My heart still thumping, I switch on the radio again and start drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as some couple – sadly not Johnny Cash and June Carter but pretty good all the same – crow about getting married in Jackson but all of a sudden I’m not listening any more.
That car has just reappeared in my mirror. It’s keeping a precise distance away from me, it’s travelling at exactly my speed and in the last twenty minutes it switched lanes each time I did.
Sweating now, I infuriate my fellow drivers further by swerving right across the slow-moving traffic and take the first exit slipway I see. I’ll lose him in the suburbs.
CHAPTER FIVE
Funny how memories of your first boyfriend stay with you long after you know he won’t be your last. In the case of Ryan and me it was more a matter of convenience than anything else. I was shy around most boys – the speaking thing made me nervous – plus he turned up to all the dances I did and he seemed a nice guy. Correction, he seemed a carefree, brilliant kind of guy and he was not only a member of the teaching staff but a rising star in his faculty.
I was young and fresh from the country – a small town in Maine’s not much prep for the cut-and-thrust of hard-hitting Boston, it seemed to me then – and romantic.
So many fellow students, mostly females, told me how dishy he was and how lucky I was to go out with him that I overlooked the weak chin and the take-it-or-leave-it sex. And so many men on campus said how clever he was, I told myself he had his mind on higher things and forgave the missing rent money, the unexplained weekend trips and the late-night ‘seminars’ with female ‘students’ who looked nothing like any students I knew.
But when I graduated and my new teaching job started to cover all the bills while his generous salary never seemed to help out, I began to smell a rat. He begged me to be patient. He was onto something big. Everything would come right, yada, yada. So our relationship was already pretty shaky that night I walked into the business gala hosted by Wolfe Security where he was planning to clinch some deal and saw him clinching his female boss instead.
Or maybe that was the deal.
The very next day, after my spectacular and unscripted one-night stand with Darnley, I packed my things, made some hasty phone calls and walked out on Ryan for good. That night I went back to my old room in Billy’s tiny apartment and stayed there.
I’ve not seen Ryan since.
Which is partly why I’m curious to see him now. Especially as Darnley’s version of him is so out of character. For all his faults Ryan’s no shy, driven backroom geek – he’s clever for sure but he’s also happy-go-lucky and charming and makes friends easily. I can’t see him as a big player.
I think Darnley’s got him all wrong. And Darnley strikes me as a very big player indeed – he’s got all the charisma, the forceful energy and the sheer class to wipe the floor with a dozen Ryans. And I’m getting wet just thinking about it. All those qualities make him also very, very hot.
But then he must know that. He’s way out of my league too.
I glance in my rear-view mirror and feel a trace of relief. At last I’ve lost that car. But now it dawns on me that I’m lost too. I’m deep in the Dallas suburbs. This looks like some poor neighbourhood. I’m cruising past low-rise liquor stores, deserted parking lots and small businesses long boarded up. People going nowhere lean on fences daubed with graffiti. They look up as I drive past and follow me with their eyes.
It seems not all Texans are in oil.
I pull over and park across the street from a news kiosk. I’ll ask there, or at least buy a map.
I get out and stride purposefully across the street. There’s not much traffic. On the sidewalk a small group of men in jeans and leather jackets appear from nowhere and bar my way. Up close they stop talking and stare at me. My stomach shrivels. The one standing directly in front of me makes no attempt to move out of the way.
‘Can I get to the counter?’ My voice sounds tinny and unreal, and I sense movement behind me as more of them gather round.
‘What counter, babe?’ He’s just spoken but his mouth hardly moved. And I sense the others closing in. Now I’m surrounded and all at once I’m scared.
More men quietly join them, appearing from nowhere.
I’m no local and I’m clearly lost. I must reek of fear.
He shifts aside to show me the kiosk behind him is closed. It looks like it’s been closed a while – possibly months.
I open my mouth to frame a question about directions to Fort Worth that won’t make me sound like a frightened rabbit asking how to get back in the hutch. All at once there’s a commotion in the road behind me – a screech of brakes, a blare of horns and the crash of car doors being flung open. The men around
me all stare at something past my shoulder and I’m instantly forgotten. I spin round to see what’s happened and clap a hand to my mouth.
A low black car has pulled up at a crazy angle across the street, blocking both carriageways. As I watch, men leap out and start walking purposefully towards us.
The effect is terrifying. They look mean and professional and they move in formation. And at their head is Darnley, his jaw set, his blazing eyes locked on mine.
The men around me have melted away. Now they’re watching from doorways, edging round corners. Darnley towers over me, his face like thunder.
‘Where is he?’
I stare at him, my mind a blank. ‘Who?’
The flash from his eyes could sear metal. ‘Don’t play games with me. I said to wait. We’d go together. Then you set off on your own. We tailed you. When you tried to shake us off I guessed you must know something we don’t. Mitchell’s here somewhere. You’re going to see him. So where is he? Which building?’
Now I’m getting angry too, spiked by adrenalin. ‘You tailed me? Since when is Ryan your ex? This is my problem, not yours. I want to talk to him alone. Stay out of this. Your beef with him is just business. Mine’s personal. So let me do it my way.’
‘I repeat, where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I’m lost. I was trying to get back to the freeway –’
I break off as he turns and signals to his men. As one they pause.
The street immediately around us is free of traffic now. Cliff Face is waving it on. The kerb is also clear. Curious passers-by have shrunk out of range. Faces peer from windows. The men who confronted me have regrouped across the street. They think it’s a gang thing.
They watch like cheated hyenas as a pack with a prior claim and better suits claims their prey. No one’s picking a fight but now they’re curious, hoping for drama.
Darnley turns back to me, his expression veiled but his manner brisk. ‘OK, you’ll ride with me. One of the men will return your car.’ He takes my arm and propels me towards the dark car, whose engine is revving up and ready for the off.