He looked immortally pissed off.
Immortally pissed off and at least half a dozen years younger than her.
This was madness. She should get her wits together and act her age. Her head was all over the place, what with the divorce and the sabbatical. Now was hardly the time to go leaping into intense flings with artistic fugitives from the wrong side of the tracks.
But I want to, whispered her disloyal desires.
Well, you can’t, retorted what she thought of as her rationality.
‘I don’t know,’ she said to Lawrence. ‘I’ve had a takeaway curry and it’s made me rather sleepy.’
‘Well, how about I come in for a snifter? Then you don’t have to make an effort.’
‘No, no.’ God, no. Looking at Leonardo with an apologetic expression she hoped might be interpreted as ‘Sorry, business, can’t get out of it’, she spoke into the phone. ‘It’s fine. I’ll just get my bag and put on a bit of lippy and I’ll be with you.’
‘Excellent! Ciao.’
‘Hot date?’ enquired Leonardo with hostile sarcasm, as she took out her mirror compact and began applying lipstick.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to go out. I won’t be long. You might as well go up to bed.’
‘Up to my sleeping bag in the attic, out of your way.’
She tried to sound soothing. ‘It’s not forever. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have …’
‘Right. Of course. Moment of madness, eh?’
He looked as if he might smoulder into a pile of ashes.
‘No, not that – it was lovely, you’re lovely, but … The timing, it’s all wrong. Look, I’m sorry, I have to go.’
She virtually ran out into the hall.
‘I’ll wait up for you,’ Leonardo called. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Shit, she thought, crunching along the gravel to the front gates, her head apparently broken into tiny pieces. What the hell am I going to do? Should I throw him out? But I can’t throw him out. Back to London, then. Sell the house. But where will he go? Why should it be my problem? It wasn’t me that got myself mixed up in a load of estate gangland rubbish. But I can’t just throw him to the wolves! I care about him.
These thoughts carried her up the street to the corner where Lawrence was parked.
‘Goodness, penny for them,’ he said, opening the car door and offering his arm.
He looked very eye-catching tonight, in a low-key pair of jeans, tweed jacket and open-necked blue linen shirt. Casually expensive and impeccably groomed. He smelled quite intoxicating too.
‘Sorry?’ She took his arm.
‘I was watching you in the rear view mirror. Your face was like thunder. Are you all right?’
‘Oh. Yes. Fine. Bit tired, you know. It’s been a dusty day.’
‘Dusty?’
‘The kitchen fitters. Stripped everything down and left clouds and clouds of dust.’
‘Ah. You’ll be thirsty, then. Here we are.’
It was a street corner pub, left in quaint pre-war condition, with an old-fashioned snug and an old-fashioned clientele, some of whom still wore flat caps in a non-ironic manner.
‘Ah, there used to be one of these on nearly every street,’ remarked Jenna, accompanying Lawrence to the bar.
‘Yes, I remember. Twenty years ago. Now they’re all converted into flats while big flat-roofed bunkers serve the estates with Sky football and cheap cider.’
‘Oh, they were there all along,’ reminisced Jenna. ‘The Lord Harville got vandalised, and boarded up though. Is that still there?’
‘I think it may have changed its name,’ said Lawrence uncomfortably. ‘What are you having?’
‘Best stick to still water, thank you. My head feels thick as treacle.’
Not just her head, either. Between her legs she still felt a kind of erotic hangover, a heaviness that wouldn’t lift. She could be lying on her mattress with Leonardo on top of her right now.
She shivered. It was a lucky escape, but it certainly didn’t feel like one. It felt like a wrench.
She escaped to sit at a high-backed bench, attempting to get herself in the frame of mind for light chat with added flirtation.
Lawrence was a good-looking man. She watched his back and shoulders as he exchanged pleasantries with the barman, then her gaze drifted down to his bottom, half-covered by the tweed jacket, but not entirely. It was certainly squeezable.
God, Jenna, stop it! It’s as if you’ve gone man-crazy after years of keeping this kind of thing down. You’ll get yourself arrested.
He came and sat beside her, placing her mineral water on the beer mat while he took a sip of his own whisky and soda.
‘Barman recognised you,’ he said. ‘Asked me what you were doing here.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Told him I was your new business partner and we were starting a venture – Bledburn’s very own Talent Team. Turns out he’s a very skilled juggler and he wants to know if we’ll put him on our books.’
‘Oh, you rotten liar.’
‘OK, I didn’t tell him that. It’s a fair question, though.’
‘You know the answer. I’m on sabbatical. I need space. I can get it here.’
‘Jenna, the only way you’ll get space is if you take yourself to Cape Canaveral and buy yourself a rocket trip. Wherever you go, people will be curious. You’re a household name, here and abroad.’
‘People forget that kind of thing quickly enough, if they’re allowed to. Otherwise those Whatever Happened To …? shows would never get made.’
‘You really want to end up on one of those?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘I don’t know. That’s the point, Lawrence. I don’t know what I want.’
‘Let me help you find out. I have a dozen sure-fire business ideas – all they need to get off the ground is a savvy partner and some capital. Why don’t we put our heads together and see what we can come up with?’
Jenna stared at him.
‘I don’t believe it. You want to get your hands on my money. You’ve had what I paid for the house, but that wasn’t good enough for you. Classy, Lawrence. Real classy.’
She pushed aside her glass and stormed out of the pub, Lawrence chasing her down the road with pleas for her to listen and not to misunderstand him.
But she left him behind and hailed the first taxi she saw, switching off her phone as she clambered into the passenger seat.
Back home, in the drawing room, Leonardo lay where she had left him, on his back on the mattress staring gloomily up at the ceiling.
He sat up when she came fully into the room and made to rise to his feet.
‘You weren’t long,’ he said.
‘No. Meeting wasn’t worth going to,’ she said briskly, letting her bag fall with a jink on to the floor. ‘Yet another chancer after my money.’
There was a pause while Leonardo decided against standing and sat back on the mattress.
‘Is that what you think of me?’ he said.
She frowned in incomprehension.
‘Of course not.’
‘Right. Just you said “yet another”. Thought you might include me in those.’
‘Well, I don’t. I’ve met a lot in my time, that’s all.’
They held each other’s eyes, neither one of them knowing how to break down the invisible wall that lay between them.
‘Listen, Leo, I’m tired,’ muttered Jenna, but there was no conviction in it.
‘Do you want me to go?’ asked Leonardo.
She couldn’t answer, and so he did it for her.
‘You don’t want me to go,’ he said. ‘When we kissed, it was like unlocking the door of our old broom cupboard. Everything always fell out on top of you, all at once. That’s what it was like, kissing you. Like you’d had all your … Fuck, this sounds stupid, but all your passion … shut up behind that door and when it was opened, blam! Drowned me in it.’
She looked away, burningly embarrassed. She had overw
helmed him. She imagined him in his tracksuit sitting on the wall by the supermarket, bragging to his mates. She fucking couldn’t get enough of it. She was desperate for it.
‘It’s been a while,’ she said coldly.
‘Hey,’ he said, holding out a hand that she didn’t take. ‘Don’t be like that. Don’t push me away. I felt the same, Jen. It was exactly the same for me. I’ve held so much back, these last few years. It was a relief, you know, to get some of it out. Come and sit down.’
‘It’s getting late—’
‘Come. And sit. Down.’
She was startled by his commanding manner, just as she had been on the previous evening. It allowed her to stop resisting, to be docile and to do what he said – which was what she wanted anyway.
‘Bossy bastard,’ she grumped, but she was half-smiling as she gave him the corner of her eye.
‘When I have to be,’ he said. ‘Which is quite a lot, with you, I think.’
She laughed at his pure effrontery.
‘I’ll have you know that nobody bosses me about, mister! Not if they want to keep their careers.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s your problem, isn’t it? Used to being in control. Can’t let go.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Jen, you want to let go. You want to let the sexual woman out from behind the sharp business player. But you’re scared. You’ve kept her behind bars for too long and you might find something out about yourself, something that might break up your perfect little image of yourself.’
‘Oh, shut up! Are you some kind of bogus counsellor?’
‘No, but I can offer you sex therapy.’
‘Leo! This isn’t funny.’
‘I’m serious. Deadly fucking serious. You want space, you want peace, you want quiet, yeah, I can dig all that. But if you try telling me you don’t also fancy a bloody good shag, you’re a liar.’
His words, together with the lazy, low-toned, arrogant way in which he spoke them, were a shot right between the thighs.
He was uncannily right. She wanted nothing more than to get him on top of her and have him ride her into the night until the sun came up and her body fell to pieces.
But if she was going to involve herself in his career, it couldn’t work, could it?
‘Think of it as a holiday fling,’ he said, closer to her now. ‘You’ve been lying in the sun all day and a sexy Spanish hombre has just turned up to slap on the suncream and show you what a good time really is, señorita.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But his gravelly tones, combined with the heavy hand on her thigh weakened her conviction.
‘Be honest, then,’ he said. ‘Admit you could do with it. Why is it so hard for you to be honest?’
‘I am. I’m honest …’ She floundered, all at sea, and every wave was Leonardo, coming for her, tilting her this way and that, capsizing her. ‘I do want to. I just don’t know if I should …’
‘If you want to,’ he said, ‘you should.’
And that was that. Her token resistance was shot to shrapnel.
She let him wind her up in wiry arms and lay her down on the mattress while he planted his pelvis on top of hers and stopped up her mouth. It was something she couldn’t resist, and that knowledge gave her mind permission not to fret or couch objections through the writhing and grabbing, the biting and sucking.
Sex could be this way – hungry, urgent, needy. Her hands got tangled in his clothes and she parted her thighs to let the unyielding rock of his erection sit comfortably in her apex. Elsewhere, their bodies bumped and crashed into each other, graceless in their lusty rush to have what they must.
Leonardo let her flail for a few minutes before taking both wrists and pinning them above her head, looking down at her from the greatest height he could achieve in a horizontal position.
‘You’re fighting me,’ he said. ‘Keep still. We don’t need to tear each other to pieces.’
Jenna tried to catch her breath and work out what had come over her. She had been like a polecat, wild with need.
‘You’re stronger than me,’ she said. ‘It makes me want to try and overpower you.’
‘Well, you can’t. So don’t try. Have you always been in control in bed?’
‘Mostly.’
‘Try something different. Lie back. Let me do the work.’
Let me do the work. What a blissfully calming concept.
Immediately she felt the worst of her tension dissolve and she knew that, if he let go of her wrists, she would keep them there. No need for pinning any more.
‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Good girl.’
The words made her bristle as much as they melted her. When had anyone called her a good girl, since her parents, years ago? If anyone had dared they would have been blasted out of her presence with a whole circus of fleas in their ear.
But when Leonardo said it, that was different.
He released her wrists and lowered himself gently to her face, kissing it all over, from her hairline to her jawbone, then moving down to her throat. The kisses were soft, butterfly rain, gentle teases. She almost wanted to snap at him to get on with it, but she stopped herself. She was going to let him do the work.
When he pushed his tongue, slowly and luxuriously, into her mouth, it was worth the wait. A moan filled the empty spaces between their oral duellists and she raised her spine, without knowing she was doing it, inviting him further in.
He pushed his hips down, keeping her in position – an unspoken rebuke. His tongue made its mastery clear at the same time, pushing further. He moved one hand back up to her wrists in warning whilst his other lifted her top clear of her breasts.
Her moans continued and she had to work very hard not to make a move of her own when he began running his finger along the scalloped lacy edge of her bra. It was such an obviously teasing gesture she felt he was testing her. But what was the test? Did he want her to react, to try and force him to go further? Or did he want her to submit and allow him to torment her in this way?
She felt that the latter was what he really wanted, but she was not at all sure her passivity could last much longer if he kept it up.
He carried on the stroking, one fingertip thrilling along the lace, never digging deeper, never uncovering her nipple. It felt huge now, straining at its restraining cup, bursting through the patterned fabric – as did its twin on the other side.
If only he’d let her mouth free, she might beg. She wanted to beg. She thought that what he really wanted was to know that she ached to disobey him and yet continued to obey. That was the payoff for him.
It was perverted and strange but, by God, it was turning her on in a way she had never before experienced. She shimmied her hips in mute entreaty. He understood and chuckled into her helpless mouth. He plucked at the bra cup and brought his other hand down to deal with the other side.
He raised his head only to whisper, ‘Don’t you dare move,’ before plunging his tongue back into the place it seemed to consider home – inside her mouth, silencing her.
Now both his thumbs had breached the border of the brassiere and they rubbed at her soft slopes underneath the lace. They wouldn’t get close to her nipples, though, and she made a strangulated sound of frustration and tried to force them lower.
He removed his thumbs immediately and went back to pinning her wrists.
It was a punishment. She knew it, and she burned to protest, to demand of him whom he thought he was playing with, but still she kept herself in check.
She was more interested in what might happen next than in asserting herself. If this was a game, it was the most compelling – and arousing – one she had ever played.
He made her surrender to minutes more kissing whilst immobilised before he rewarded her with the return of his hands to her breasts.
‘Are you going to behave yourself now?’ he asked, his lips a millimetre from hers, his voice smoky as sin.
She didn
’t want to answer but, to her shame, she nodded and made a little ‘hm’ of acquiescence.
‘Didn’t catch that,’ he taunted, letting his thumbs hover close enough to her bra for the fabric to catch against his skin.
Oh God, just rip it in half and do what you want.
‘Yes,’ she mewled, turning her face from him.
He pushed his lips into the hollow under her ear, kissing and licking it, then took the lobe into his mouth and sucked. ‘Look at me,’ he whispered, once she was good and wriggly, and sure that her knickers couldn’t be any more soaked.
She could hardly bear to meet his eyes but somehow she did it.
‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I know what you want. Is it this?’
Very gently, he lowered the cups of her bra until her fat, ripe nipples were exposed to the room.
‘Um hmm,’ she said. His eyes scorched her. He was in absolute seventh heaven, she could tell.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Please.’ It was a whimper.
He smiled like the Cheshire Cat and dropped a smacking kiss on her lips.
‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘I like to be asked properly.’
His thumb pads brushed the undersides of her breasts, massaging the tender skin, just close enough to her nipples to make them tingle with every sweep.
Again, the urge to get hold of him and make him hurry up, make him pinch her nipples, put them in his mouth, anything, was almost too strong to resist. She made fists with her hands and pushed them hard into the mattress. Her belly was flipping over and over and her sex was throbbing so hard she expected it to break into buzzing at any moment. Had it ever been like this with Deano? She couldn’t remember. Surely she’d remember something like this?
But there was no room in her mind for anything but the immediacy of her desire, and the way Leonardo was stoking it and stoking it until its flames practically licked the sky.
Speaking of licking … At last, at long and shuddering last, he bent his head and deposited a little steamy breath at the peak of each nipple.
Now, finally, she would get some satisfaction. Now it was coming. She squirmed in anticipation.
‘You want it bad, don’t you?’ he growled. ‘I almost want to make you wait longer.’
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