Forbidden to Touch

by JC Harroway

  ‘That’s what I wanted,’ I grit out, cupping her flushed face so her eyes stay on mine. ‘Stay with me.’

  She nods, bracing her arms on the sofa over her head so with every thrust she meets me head-on.

  ‘Blair...’ The fire builds. The sight of this beautiful, confident woman splayed under me, her skin flushed with her pleasure as she waits to witness mine, snapping the last thread of my control. I choke out the words. ‘I’m coming. For you.’ And then I follow her over, my face buried in her neck and flames racing down my spine.

  Fucking hell... We’ll be doing that again.

  When we surface, the sweat cooling, I take my weight off her underneath me and sit back on my heels. I pull her into a sitting position and reach for a throw from the back of the sofa to drape around her, while I take care of the condom with some tissues from a box on the desk. It gives me time to find my breath, to compose myself after that fantastic lay... Otherwise we might have to start again, from the top.

  When I return she’s still checking me out like the three orgasms I’ve given her today have done nothing but whet her appetite. I hold out my hand, feeling ten feet tall, and she stands.

  ‘Can you stay?’ I fuss with her hair, sliding my fingers through the tangles I’ve created, although just fucked suits her perfectly. ‘That was so good, I want a repeat, just to check I’m not dreaming.’

  She laughs. ‘I’m not complaining.’

  I grip her chin, holding her still so I can enjoy her kiss. ‘I should hope not. But we should make sure something that good is reproducible.’

  She lifts one delicate shoulder, the one that’s become exposed by the blanket slipping. ‘A scientific experiment—I like it. Okay, but only if you’re up to it, old man. I don’t want to be responsible for depriving the Faulkner Group of its CEO.’

  I grin, secretly delighted by her teasing. ‘Old man, she says.’ Then I swing her up into my arms and carry her, giggling, to my room as if I’ve dropped ten years.

  * * *

  It’s four a.m. by the time we’ve exhausted my condom stash. I slide my fingers through the silkiness of her hair and contemplate dragging my weary bones downstairs to retrieve her clutch bag, which, she tells me, has two more inside.

  It’s bad enough she’s as addictive as sex heroin, that fulfilling her fantasies has become my new favourite pastime. Where did she come from and how long can I juggle business and pleasure so I can keep her in my bed until I’ve quenched this fire roaring through my arid life?

  Her eyes are still closed where her head rests on my sweaty chest, but she smiles, as if she knows I’m watching her.

  ‘Those were some moves—I’ll be walking like a cowboy for the rest of the week,’ she says.

  I laugh. I’ve done that more in the last few hours than in the last month, too. ‘Glad I could oblige. Give an old man a second to catch his breath and I’ll run you a bath.’

  She scrapes her fingernails up and down the ladder of my abs, which clench every time she shifts, and rubs her soft labia over my thigh. My dick stirs. ‘Fuck, I think you’re actually going to kill me.’

  She laughs and kisses me. ‘You are pretty insatiable for a thirty-something.’

  I grin and kiss the top of her head. Verbal sparring with her is almost as good as the horizontal sparring we’ve spent the last four hours indulging in. I roll onto my side so we’re face-to-face, filling my hand with her gorgeous arse and tugging her hips close.

  She’s rumpled, so damned sexy and even more beautiful, if that’s possible. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from if you have more lewd fantasies.’

  She smiles, gives a half-laugh, but then she grows serious.

  ‘You must think I’m nuts.’ Her teeth trap her lip and I tease it free with the pad of my thumb.

  ‘Not at all—that you know what you want and chase it is almost as sexy as hearing all those filthy requests.’ I trace her bottom lip, pressing a playful kiss there to show her I’m in no way judging. Then I sober, my own betrayal a sour taste hijacking the sympathy I feel for what she went through with her ex.

  ‘Was it someone you knew? The woman he cheated on you with?’ Sadie, as far as I know, didn’t cheat. But there are other ways to betray. Other ways to hurt and emasculate. Attacking the very heart of who I am—my family, my business, the father I hero-worship—is a well-aimed weapon.

  Blair’s eyes widen as she slowly shakes her head on the pillow. I press my forehead to hers so her face blurs out of focus and whisper over her lips, ‘It’s okay—you don’t have to tell me. But if you ever want to talk—’

  I hear her deep inhale and then the rush of words. ‘It was a man—his best friend.’

  I freeze, shock pinning me to the mattress, and then feel a stronger compulsion to drag her into my arms and hold her.

  A sheen covers her eyes, holding me in place and locking the air in my lungs—I couldn’t move if the roof started to crumble.

  ‘I came home from work one day and found them on my expensive sofa sucking the face off each other. It wasn’t a first kiss, if you know what I mean, and I’m guessing they’d have gone all the way right there on the Italian leather if I hadn’t come home early. Needless to say, my local charity shop was delighted to receive such a stylish and generous donation the next day.’ Her brave attempt at levity can’t conceal her anguish, which beats at me like physical shock waves spreading out from the centre of an explosion and fuels my own anger until it’s a hot ball in my stomach.

  I cup her face, my thumbs brushing the hair back from her flushed cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Betrayal hurts like fuck, especially from those who are supposed to love us.’ No wonder she’s so determined to make her business—a business she once shared with a man who let her down in the worst way—a success alone. No wonder she hasn’t dated for a year and wants no-strings sex.

  ‘It’s okay.’ She swallows and I want to drag her closer, but I keep still, listening, if that’s what she needs. ‘I should have known. All the signs were there.’

  I stiffen. ‘Your fiancé’s confused sexuality was in no way your fault, you know that, right?’ We’re steering away from casual here, but I can’t seem to stop myself, despite how her confession reminds me of my own misplaced trust years ago. I respect this woman. I like her—she’s funny and independent, an unstoppable force. One who could seriously bulldoze through my life if I were in the market for a relationship and she could take someone older than her seriously for more than just sex.

  My hands flex on her waist, impatient for more contact to dampen the swirl of mixed emotions turning my stomach.

  ‘I know that, but we’d grown more like friends by the end. I told myself it was nice, comfortable, a sign of maturity, given we were only months away from our wedding. I even reasoned the sex would return when we weren’t so swamped with work, not that he ever did what you did to me in the back of the car.’

  She looks away, as if she’s somehow embarrassed by her ex’s shortcomings. I want to break something.

  ‘We spent all day together, so when he wanted to socialise without me I thought nothing of it. But he was obviously struggling with how to tell me while looking for something else. I should have seen that him preferring to spend time with Mark meant they were more than just friends. But most of all I should have expected more than mediocre, demanded more. I’m ashamed that I settled for less.’

  My jaw aches where I’m grinding my teeth. I unclamp it and breathe through the red haze of my anger. Of course, he couldn’t help his feelings, but he should have come clean sooner. ‘How long had it gone on before you caught him?’

  ‘Initially he said a few weeks. But then he broke down and admitted it had been closer to months. He said part of him had always been attracted to men, but he thought he was bisexual and that he loved me. I tried to be mature about it, to support him—I could see it
wasn’t an easy thing for him to admit, least of all to me.’

  I swallow hard, more questions springing to mind, but I don’t want to make her relive painful memories, and the roll of my stomach, the way my own demons are clawing to be freed, tells me I’m skating too close to the boundary of casual sex. Even though this conversation borders on too personal for people sharing amazing sex but nothing more, I just can’t seem to help myself from wanting to see inside her to figure out how she works.

  I stare into her eyes, seeing more than a beautiful, smart, driven woman, a woman I’ve never truly looked at closely, and I have the uncharacteristic need to keep digging, keep learning all I can about Blair Cameron until I’ve discovered every fascinating facet of her personality. This realisation raises the hairs on my arms in warning, making me steer things back to safer ground.

  ‘He didn’t deserve you.’ A simple but true statement. Any man who couldn’t appreciate her amazing qualities, qualities glaringly obvious to me, despite the short time I’ve spent with her so far, was not worthy.

  She laughs and my heart lurches into my throat because I’ve put that astounding smile back on her face.

  ‘Well, that’s true. So, what happened to you and Sadie?’ Curiosity and caution war in her eyes. I consider dismissing her question. After all, I wasn’t just betrayed on a personal level. Sadie went after my business, my family business, and almost succeeded—far more humiliating to admit.

  ‘Just the usual,’ I pacify, hypocrisy crawling over my skin like ants. I’ve been inside her, done intimate, personal things with her, and she’s shared her darkest pain. Why is it harder to admit I was taken for a ride by a woman I thought I loved and trusted?

  ‘Okay—you don’t want to talk about it. I understand.’ She withdraws slightly, and I tug her body back to mine. She’s right. Of course she understands on one level, and I’m being a coward where she’s fearless. Fuck, I’m too set in my ways, but if anyone could challenge me it’s Blair, from the glimpses I’ve seen of her determination to date.

  ‘No, I don’t. But only because it’s not very interesting,’ I concede with a sigh. ‘We split three years ago after a short and rocky marriage. She accused me of being a workaholic and putting the business before her, before everything.’ My account is clipped, as devoid of emotion as I can make it, but I can see in her eyes she wants more.

  ‘Did you?’ She seems to hold her breath.

  ‘Yes. Fuck, that sounds bad.’ I rub at my eyebrow. ‘You understand—running your own business isn’t like other jobs. We have responsibilities, salaries to pay, people dependent on us. And the family business—it’s who I am. Who I’ve been raised to be. Who I was when she met me.’

  She nods, her intelligent eyes perceptive and blessedly free of judgement.

  ‘Sadie liked the perks, but wasn’t interested in the business.’ Perhaps that was why she went after everything she could get—bitterness, a sense she’d been short-changed throughout our short marriage. Or perhaps she simply never loved me, only our lifestyle.

  I’m dragged from my unpleasant reverie by the hushed voice of the woman in my arms. ‘It must have been hard for you, the other day, hearing Graham mistake me for her. He was remembering a time when you two were happy together, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The reminder of my father, of how his mind is stuck in the past and seems to have no recollection of the way Sadie behaved at the end of our relationship, snaps the door open on everything I want to forget but can’t. I want to enjoy this moment—the aftermath of great sex, the pleasure of taking the time to hold Blair, to string tonight out as long as possible, to get to know her better—but instead I’m dragged back to the wide, gaping chasm of uncertainty in my life.

  She runs her hand through my hair as if she’s drawn to touch me, almost as if comforting me, but we don’t know each other well enough for that. I stare deeper into her eyes, seeking the blissful escape of the pleasure we found in each other, and my cock stirs as if it’s nineteen again. But I’m thirty-five. I have responsibilities. There’s no margin for anything else.

  I press a final kiss to her mouth, rolling away before my dick gets any more ideas.

  ‘Where are you going?’ The lingering understanding in her eyes gives me pause, where it should scare me off. Because we’ve both been hurt, but getting close enough to care, to feel the protective stirrings building inside me, is a big red flag waving in my face.

  ‘I’m going to run that bath. And then I’m going to let you sleep for a couple of hours before I drive you home.’ I silence her objections with another brief kiss. ‘All part of the fantasy service,’ I add where she would have interrupted with some assurance of her independence. I wink for good measure, the uncertain quality of my pounding heart reminding me of my tattered and forgotten casual rule and how close I’m skating to the fine line of caring too much. Perhaps it’s the age difference that inspires such urges towards her—completely ridiculous, because I’ve never met a woman more capable, or more determined to go it alone, than Blair.

  ‘Thanks, Reid.’ She accepts my change of subject with grace and a small, sexy smile that leaves me aching to climb back into bed and wring a bit more numbing pleasure from us both. ‘I had a good time.’

  I smile too, the finality of her statement and the absence of my answering relief scooping out my insides and leaving me hollow.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blair

  A FEW DAYS later I’m working on some last-minute preparations at the Faulkner, and, despite the fact that it’s Sunday and not only is Reid unlikely to be working, but is even less likely to walk into the hotel where I’m occupying the deserted seating area with my laptop, my eyes stray to the front doors every five minutes.

  I close down my emails, stretching out the kinks in my back and recalling the astounding night I spent in Reid’s bed—the very reason said kinks are there in the first place. Wow, did I get more than I’d asked for? Talk about overachieving... As I’d known he would be, Reid was as phenomenal between the sheets as he is at the Faulkner helm. It took two days before I stopped feeling the after-effects between my legs, not that the erotic dreams prolonging the experience even while I sleep show any sign of abating.

  I stare at the insipid watercolour prints on the walls, my gaze blurring out of focus as I contemplate what other fantasies I can request. I might have to come up with one or two fresh ones, perhaps even a bit of kink, just to keep him on his toes... Don’t want him becoming complacent, have him thinking he’s too good, especially as he seems to have embraced my teasing him about our age difference.

  The only downer was when he gently probed about Josh. I opened up to him where I’ve barely told anyone—friends or family—the full details of the split. A surge of acid burns my chest, reminding me I’m not quite as over his betrayal as I’d assumed. But I’ve worked so hard to put all that behind me, to focus on rebuilding what Josh stole and move on, there’s no way I’m allowing what I have with Reid to be tainted.

  Thinking of Reid’s well-endowed prowess drags my mind off into fantasy land again. Which is presumably how I miss his approach.

  ‘Off in your imagination again, I see.’ His scent envelops me, warm and spicy, and his breath ruffles my hair. I stand, concealing the instant incendiary effect he has on my body with boring old fright as I clutch one hand to my chest. I hide my delight at seeing him, although it makes my breath catch.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump. I thought you’d seen me come in.’ His smile kicks up one corner of his mouth and I wish he’d kiss me, remind me of the exhilarating thrill I feel every time we touch, but he stays at a distance designed to leave me achy and craving.

  ‘No... I was...working.’ Then an alarming thought occurs—perhaps he’s done. Perhaps one night was enough for him. Perhaps we racked up enough orgasms between us that he’s reached his casual threshold. I probe my own fee
lings, nowhere near done with him. I have years of yearning and crushing to sate. I’ll just have to convince him to play out a few more fantasies...

  He glances down at the blank screen of my laptop, one eyebrow arched. ‘Ah...work...that’s what we’re calling it these days. More like daydreaming...off in fantasy land again?’ He grins as if he has a front-row seat to every graphic play-by-play in my head—as he pretty much does, because I’ve told him—his eyes dark with his particular brand of intensity, seemingly equipped with laser beams, for all the protection my clothing offers.

  I breathe a sigh of relief—he’s not done yet either.

  The teasing tone of our banter reminds me how much we laughed together on the ride back to my place after the incredible night of mind-blowing sex. Reid has a tinder-dry sense of humour, with glimpses of self-deprecation that make me want to snuggle up to the massive man, as ridiculous as that sounds. It’s then that I register he’s wearing a grey T-shirt and relaxed black jeans. It’s been years since I’ve seen him in anything other than a suit. He looks edible, and I can’t help the shudder that originates in my core and passes through my entire body. Because I know what he looks like under those clothes—his big frame covered in toned muscle and a manly smattering of dark hair. I know what he’s packing beneath his fly—the biggest, most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen. And no matter how naively I believed this would just be sex, neatly compartmentalised sex, things can never go back to the way they were between us. Because I’ve experienced forbidden, and it has the potential, if unchecked, to ruin me.

  ‘Why are you working on a Sunday?’ he asks, his hands slung casually in his pockets, dragging my willing eyes south.

  ‘I’m just catching up on last-minute checks, and ensuring everything is ready for tomorrow. You’re here too,’ I counter his gentle reprimand.

  He steps closer and I glance around. We’re still occupying a professional or friendly space, but the air is tense as if any second one of us could close the distance, reach out and touch, making it clear to anyone who noticed that we’ve crossed a line and can no longer be considered acquaintances or even friends.