He drove her into the mattress, her forearms sliding back and forth against the velvet, the friction delicious against her skin, inside her, on her. Everywhere. One palm planted by her head where she could see the size of it, and the tendons of his arm standing out like ropes.
He drove her mad. He made her wild. And when she was incoherent, when she was calling out, because nothing mattered except the orgasm she had to have… he stopped again, and she almost screamed.
“Do you want this?” he asked her.
She should have had some smart response. She just moaned.
“Do you need it?” he asked. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Please.” It was a moan. “Yes. I’m… yours. I’m yours. Please. Marko.”
She knew he was smiling. She knew he’d won, and she didn’t care. He plunged deep, then he kept going, and he kept up that buzzing pressure, too. Still just beneath that magic spot, like she was going to have to tighten up and work for it.
Nothing to do but hang on. Nothing to feel but this.
Too fierce. Too hard. Too much. Too far.
Wild.
She heard something. Somebody was trying to say words. It was her, and she couldn’t get them out. The waves were taking her over, pulling her down. Pulling her under, one after another, so she couldn’t get her breath. And over the music, over the throbbing guitar and the soaring violin… the sound of Marko swearing, long and low. Not in English, and not in Maori. An alien tongue she’d never heard in her life, full of consonants. Sounding as fierce and as rough as he felt driving into her, and she was gone.
Her forehead banged against the mattress, and then it did it again. And again. Over and over. She moaned. She called out.
And, finally, she screamed.
After what felt like approximately an hour, Marko discovered that he’d regained his breath. Also the power of speech.
“On the one hand,” he said, “that may not have been the… wisest set of decisions of my life. On the other hand…” He ran his hand down the hourglass that was Nyree’s wonderful bare back and slid it over her rounded hip, then gripped one of those luscious thighs. “You look so bloody good from behind. And I’d been waiting too long to see it. And making you give it up like that… ” He sighed. “Oh, yeh. Worth the wait.”
“Not so… protective, though, were you?” she asked, not sounding like she had much breath left to say it. One white arm flung over her head, one knee in the air, her body canted towards him in absolute abandon, and he wanted her again already. “Not so perfect.”
“Never said I was perfect.” He couldn’t have kept his hands off her if he’d tried, and he wasn’t trying. “But too bloody right I’m protective. If I hurt you, if you don’t like it—tell me to stop. I’ll stop.” He rolled on top of her and got her on her back again, propped himself on his elbows, and kissed her soft mouth, keeping it gentle this time, getting a hand on her breast and feeling the nipple pebble under his fingers, just that fast. “It’s only good if it works for you, too. If you don’t like it, say so. We’ll do it a different way.” He smiled into her eyes. “I’ve got more, no worries.”
She scowled at him, her inky-black eyebrows drawn together over her straight nose. “When did I say I didn’t like it?”
“Dunno.” He was still smiling, and he was kissing her again, too. “I’m going to take that as a green light. I do walk on a green light.”
She was still stretched out under him with her arm flung over her head, making no effort to look like anything but the receptor of anything he wanted to give her. She managed to sound severe all the same. “Boy, you do more than that. I’d say you run on a green light.”
He laughed, twisted a dark curl around his finger, tugged it the tiniest bit, and said, “Could be. Or you could say that you’ve frustrated me to breaking point. Been wanting my hands on you since the first day I saw you, and it’s only got worse.”
She heaved in a breath, and all of a sudden, her body wasn’t feeling relaxed beneath his anymore. “About that first day thing—you actually haven’t. I need to talk to you about that.”
Which was when the front door banged, Ella called out, “Oi! Nyree!” and he heard her feet on the wooden stairs, coming fast. And also when Nyree let out a gasp, rolled off the bed onto the floor, looked around wildly, and finally settled on slamming the door two seconds before Ella knocked on it.
He wanted to laugh. He didn’t, because for some reason, she was acting like her parents had just caught her in the back seat of his car. Which was a lovely little thought. Was there anything better than a woman sprawled across your back seat with her clothes coming off, piece by delicious piece? Oh, yeh. He could do that. A challenge, when you were as big as he was, but they could make it work. He could…
On the other side of the door, Ella said, “Oi. Nyree. There’s a huge fella outside. Says he needs to talk to you.”
“Uh… what?” said Nyree. “Who?”
“Can’t remember what he said,” Ella said. “He surprised me, and I forgot. Super Rugby somewhere, because I’ve seen him before. He says you didn’t tell him you moved. And that you won’t answer his texts, and what’s going on. Is Marko still around? I think he should come down.”
Marko was up. Finding his clothes and starting to pull them on. “I’m right here,” he informed Ella. “And no worries. I’m coming down.”
A lot of things happened at once.
Nyree hissed at him, “Wait. I mean it. Wait for me,” and told Ella through the door, “Tell him to wait.” Ella said, “OK, but hurry,” and Nyree threw open her closet and apparently grabbed the first item her hand touched, since it turned out to be a sleeveless red dress that was reasonable in the front, but laced all the way up the back from the low waist, allowing her creamy skin to show through. And Marko thought, I’m going to have to kill this bastard. That wasn’t a dress, or a body, that a man would walk away from without a fight, and Nyree wasn’t going to be the one doing the fighting. That was his job.
She shot a look at him he couldn’t interpret, then opened the door and headed down the stairs ahead of him. No undies, no bra, and her hair a curly, wild mass. And some beard burn and flush on her neck and chest that she hadn’t bothered to cover up. Like it didn’t matter, because she knew he’d be right behind her. At least he hoped that was the reason.
Out the front door, now. Ella was hovering on the steps, and the bloke was on the driveway talking to Kors, the two of them leaning up against the wall of the house like mates.
Bloody hell.
You could say that Marko knew him. You could also say that he’d spent a thousand hours or so in the scrum with his arm around the fella’s back, both of them wearing the black jersey, and had lifted him in the lineout to steal the ball from some Springbok or Wallaby or Scot more times than he could count. You could also say that the surge of red was rising in his chest, up to his throat, and choking him.
Jealousy. Protectiveness. Whatever. It all felt the same.
Nyree said, sounding very nearly cheerful, “Hi, Kane. How’d you find me?” As if this were going to be casual. Marko was pretty sure she was wrong. Kane Armstrong could look like a mild fella, especially at times like this, when he was wearing his spectacles. As mild as a six-foot-nine block of muscle could possibly look, anyway. But he wasn’t that way once the whistle blew, and he wasn’t going to be that way about Nyree.
Marko hadn’t thrown a punch, on or off the rugby field, since he’d sent Ella’s dad on his way for good at twenty-one. He knew his size, and he knew his strength. Now, though? He was going to need them both, because Kane was standing up to his full height, his eyebrows slamming down hard.
“Dantz atu nahi ez dana, ez doula dantz ara,” Marko told him, and possibly himself. “If you don’t want to dance, don’t go to a dance. Last chance to get off my driveway.”
“That meant to scare me, mate?” Kane asked. “I don’t think so.”
They stared at each other, and Kors had backed
up and moved behind Marko. Up the stairs, Marko guessed, gone to stand with Ella. He couldn’t think about that now.
Nyree sighed, walked up to Kane, put her arms around his waist, and said, “Stop glaring at Marko and give me a cuddle.”
What. The. Bloody. Hell. Marko didn’t go in for the sharing plan. He sure as hell wasn’t doing it with Nyree. He didn’t think Kane was, either, from the look on his face.
He was right. Kane didn’t give her a cuddle. Instead, he asked her, his lips barely moving and his eyes not leaving Marko’s, “Why are you here?”
Nyree took a step back. “Because I live here. Why are you here? How did you find me? And how did you get here? Never tell me it was on the team bus.”
“Your friend, landlady, whoever, told me where you were, of course. And I borrowed a car from a mate. Also of course. You haven’t answered your mum’s texts, or mine, either, for days. Answer me. Why are you with him?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Because he needed somebody to stay with his cousin while he was gone, maybe? Because I’m an adult who can make her own choices? Because I needed to paint? Because it was my best option, and it seemed like it would work out for everybody? Oh—Ella, this is Kane Armstrong. My stepbrother. Who thinks he’s in charge of my life.”
Marko said, “What?” just as Kane said, “That isn’t why you’re here. I have eyes. And I told you to ask me first.”
“And I told you,” Nyree said, crossing her arms under her breasts, which was going to show Kane that she didn’t have anything on under that dress, and that, yeh, that was beard burn—“that I’m an adult now.”
“Who’s sleeping with bloody Marko Sendoa!” Kane said, not sounding like an easygoing fella at all. “Who is not any kind of good bet. If you put him up on the TAB, he’d be forty to one, and you’re not the one. How much does he love my dad right now? More reason than one to take a woman to bed, and some of them aren’t very nice. Which you should know. No rugby players. I mean it. Especially not him.”
“Wait,” Marko said, stepping forward. He looked at Kane, and then he looked at Nyree. He looked at her hard. She met his gaze, but he could tell it was an effort.
“Oh, shit,” he said, as what you might call a montage of images flashed across his mind. Of a sunny terrace in Dunedin and a shy girl in specs. Of a lanky Kane warning him off. Of rugby matches and the coach’s family in the stands, and of laughter in the sheds. “You’re Grant Armstrong’s daughter.”
The dismay, first. How could he not have known, spectacles or no? Nyree was a common enough name for a Maori girl, and she’d changed, but how could he have forgotten her eyes, her voice? After that came the anger. That was coming in hot.
He kept his voice absolutely controlled. Absolutely level. It wasn’t easy. “We need to talk. Now.”
She said, “Kane—”
“Bugger Kane,” Marko said. “Inside. Now.”
“Wait just a bloody minute,” Kane said, stepping forward. “You don’t talk to her like that.”
Marko turned on him, and Kane didn’t step back. “I’m not going to hurt her,” Marko said, enunciating every word, fighting for that control. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“He’s going to yell at me,” Nyree said. “You probably don’t want to hear it, Kane.”
“Marko doesn’t yell,” Ella said from behind him.
Kors said, “That’s because he doesn’t have to,” and Marko wished everybody would quit giving their bloody opinion. And that Nyree would do what he said.
Which she did not. She crossed her arms again and said, “I was about to tell you. I had my mouth open to tell you. And before that? I had my reasons.”
“What reasons?” he asked. “What possible reason could you have not to tell me that your dad was my coach for thirteen years? You may not know what that means. Why don’t you let Kane tell you?”
“Let’s see,” she said. “Why didn’t I tell you? Oh, I know. How about this? ‘Coach’s daughter. Little Nyree. Would you bang?’”
This time, her eyes didn’t drop one bit. She stared at him like she was sure she’d scored a point. What point, though?
“You don’t even remember,” she said. “You listened to Angus Hamilton tell you all about it, all about me and how… awful I was, and you don’t remember? How many chats like that have you had? Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Oh. He said, “Whoever told you about that didn’t tell you the rest of it.”
“Yeh, right,” she said. “Nobody told me. I heard you.”
“No,” he said, “you didn’t. If you had, you’d know that I told him to shut up. You’d know that the skipper and I—all the leadership group—shut that down fast. And why d’you think Josh Daniels didn’t come back? Because we told Grant we didn’t want him back.”
Nyree’s mouth was working, and all of a sudden, she sat straight down on the concrete of the driveway, put her elbows on her knees, and rested the heels of her palms on her forehead. She said, without looking up, “You told Grant about me. Oh, that’s just wonderful.”
“What?” Marko said. “No. Don’t be an idiot.”
She looked up at Kane. “But you knew.”
Marko was fairly sure Kane was deeply regretting his decision to come find her. Nyree didn’t let him off the hook, and finally, Kane said, “I heard, yeh. Later.”
“So…” Ella said. “What? Who’s this… Angus. Josh. Whoever?”
“Somebody Nyree, ah, had a thing with,” Kors told her. “When he was at the Highlanders. Coach’s daughter, when she was still a schoolgirl. Poor form. Didn’t realize that was you, though, Nyree.” He looked like he didn’t want to know it now, either.
“Oh, wonderful,” Nyree said. “That’s just brilliant. I’m a legend to people who were hardly born at the time. I’m so glad this has come out into the open, and in such a private way.”
“Marko told you to go inside,” Kane pointed out, and she glared at him and said, “Whose side are you on?”
“Right, but wait,” Ella said. “So you’re embarrassed, Nyree, because you hooked up with some player, and the other boys heard about it, and you’re the daughter of the coach. Really? The Highlanders coach isn’t Maori, I didn’t think, if it’s the same one as now. Ginger, isn’t he? And I thought you were from Northland.”
“Stepdaughter,” Nyree and Kane said together.
“OK, stepdaughter,” Ella said. “When you were my age. So what?”
“So,” Nyree said, “he had a girlfriend already. I was for… revenge. For using. Laughing at. And he told the whole…” Her voice shook. Her lips shook. “The whole team. All about it. And they laughed, too. I wasn’t pretty. I told you.”
“The pig blood,” Ella said.
Kane said, “What the hell? Nyree. I told you to tell me. I told you I’d take care of it. What pig blood?”
Nyree uttered an audible sigh. She didn’t have her forehead in her hands anymore, at least. “It’s a metaphor. There was no blood of pigs. Nobody has to take care of anything. It was ten years ago.”
“Which would be why,” Marko said, “you didn’t tell me who you were. Because it was ten years ago, and you didn’t care anymore.”
“Wait,” Ella said again. “Couldn’t you just say, like… eff them, or something? What do you care what they think? How much hooking up have they done?” She turned on Kors. “Like you. How much?”
“Wait,” he said. “What?” If he’d been a horse, he’d have been showing white all around his eyes.
“See,” Ella said, “you won’t even answer. It’s not…” She waved her arm. “Nineteen eighty or something. So what? It’s not like you slept with the whole team, Nyree. And even if you did—so what then, too? Maybe they have pig blood on them. Maybe Marko does.”
“Definitely,” Marko said, not sure if he was still furious, and if so, with whom. “Pig blood all over the shop.”
“I told you,” Kane said to Nyree. “Blondes.”
“Mate.”
Marko gave him a stare that he hoped Kane wouldn’t have trouble interpreting. He remembered a few items from Kane’s past well enough. He’d settled down now, like most of them did, but before that? Pot calling the kettle black there.
Ella said, “So could we just stop imagining who’s slept with how many people? I’m pretty sure I’m the only one here who’s slept with only one, and I’m also the only one who’s pregnant. With twins,” she informed Kane, who looked impressed. “So I’m the one walking around in the pig blood, except I’m not, because that’s stupid, and I’m not going there. Also, Nyree, it’s after twelve-thirty, and Pookie’s wedding is at two, and you’re going to miss it.”
Nyree yelped, stood up with a major flash of thigh and breast, from which Marko hoped everybody was averting their eyes, and said, “Oh no. I forgot Pookie.”
“Who the hell,” Kane asked, “is Pookie?”
“Dachshund,” Marko informed him. “Portrait. Never mind. And why are you worrying about Pookie when you’re painting like that?” he asked Nyree. “Pookie’s rubbish.”
“Oh, yeh?” Her chin went up. “And rugby’s a boy’s game, and why’s a grown man spending his life playing it? Because he’s getting paid for it, that’s why.”
“No,” he said. “Because I love it.”
“Well, hooray for you,” she said. “I love painting, too. But so far, the only thing people will pay for is dogs. My other work is decorative. Nobody’s hanging decorative. So I’m painting dogs. And right now, I need to go get myself looking artistic so I can convince some more people with more money than taste that they don’t want another Neo-Expressionist piece, even though their neighbor just bought one and they know how much it cost, so it must be good even though they actually hate it. That what they’d really love is a painting of their overfed, nasty Chihuahua, who tried to bite the postie on the ankle last Christmas. And that is what I am going to do. If you need me,” she told Kane, “I’ll be in the shower. And next time, just ask.”
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