by Susan Lewis
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll just wait until you’re through here. You know, I’ve never seen TV editing done before, so I’m kinda interested to see what happens.’
In order to try and keep herself from laughing Corrie stuck her tongue into her cheek, and turning back to her notes suggested that they now take a look at the piece to camera outside the refuge. As she gave Colin the relevant time codes Cristos folded his arms and stretched out his legs to make himself more comfortable as he watched.
After fifteen minutes Corrie was in such pain trying not to laugh that she had to walk out into the corridor to catch her breath. She knew precisely what Cristos was up to, and what’s more she was fairly certain he’d succeed, since Annalise was already showing signs of how intimidated she felt by his presence. He was being so outrageous in his absorption that Corrie could almost feel sorry for Annalise, after all, who the hell wanted a director of his stature looking over their shoulder when they were trying to make difficult decisions? Not that Cristos had said a word, he was just sitting there looking so rapt that even Corrie might have been convinced had he not just winked at her.
When she went back into the edit suite Cristos was sitting with his elbows on his knees frowning with concentration as Colin explained how he was storing up edit codes on the machine’s computer system ready for the dub. Annalise, with a pencil behind her ear and another between her teeth, was searching through her notes, which was presumably what had brought proceedings to a halt once again. Seeing that Cristos was genuinely interested in what Colin was saying Corrie eased herself in front of him and sat down quietly. He could still see, but pulling himself forward he leaned an elbow on the back of Corrie’s chair to watch from behind her. Corrie opened the transcript in front of her and started to ask Annalise what she was looking for, but the words dried on her lips as she felt Cristos’s fingers brush lightly over her waist. Her response was so instant and so powerful she almost gasped. She knew he was still watching the monitors, and shooting a quick look at Annalise and Colin she saw that they were too. So, folding a hand beneath the desk she reached out for his. He took it, linking his fingers through hers and giving them a gentle squeeze.
It wasn’t long after that, while Corrie’s hand was still in Cristos’s, that Annalise said, in a voice several notes higher than normal in its effort to sound casual, ‘You can go now, Corrie, if you like. I can manage here alone with this next interview.’
‘Are you sure?’ Corrie said, having expected this but perhaps not quite so soon.
Annalise shrugged. ‘I expect Cristos is hungry after filming all day. Why don’t you take him somewhere for dinner now he’s come all this way?’
‘Oh, I’m doing just fine right here,’ Cristos assured her, letting go of Corrie’s hand and leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
Corrie glared at him, but before she could speak he said, ‘It’s kinda fascinating watching all this technology at work, I could sit here all night.’
Catching the laughter in his eyes Corrie’s own narrowed as she muttered through her teeth, ‘Don’t push it!’
His face broke into a grin, and rolling her eyes, Corrie started to pack up her things. ‘I’ll see you at nine in the morning, then,’ she said to Annalise as she was leaving.
‘On the dot,’ Annalise answered, without turning round.
Corrie stood at the door, tapping her foot as she waited for Cristos, who was now standing with his hands in his pockets behind Colin having something else explained.
‘You’re incorrigible,’ she told him when they eventually walked along the corridor to the darkened office.
‘Me?’ he said, all innocence.
‘Yes you! You knew full well that you being here would browbeat Annalise into letting me go.’
‘But I didn’t say a word,’ he protested.
‘You didn’t have to. And all that business about pretending not to know about TV editing …’
‘But I don’t,’ he interrupted, taking her coat from her and holding it out for her to put it on, ‘and it was kinda fascinating.’
She slid her arms into the sleeves, and as he hooked it up over her shoulders she was about to say something else when he bunched her collar in his hands and turned her to face him. ‘It’s great to see you,’ he murmured, and using her collar to pull her closer be brought her mouth to his.
‘It’s great to see you too,’ she whispered when he let her go, ‘but if you do that again I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk out of here.’
He grinned. ‘It was that good, huh?’
Laughing and shaking her head she heaved her bag up over her shoulder and pulled him out of the office.
‘Hungry?’ he asked, as they rode down in the lift.
‘I’m not sure,’ she answered, pursing her lips in a smile.
His eyes were dancing as he bent his head to kiss her again. ‘What do you say we pick up a Chinese and take it back to your place?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ she said, wondering how much more of this euphoria she could take.
His hire car was right outside on double yellow lines, where, Corrie discovered, Bill had been guarding it with his life. Cristos thanked him, wanting to tip him, but Bill wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You’ve made his day, you know that, don’t you?’ Corrie remarked as they edged out into the traffic.
‘I got a habit of doing that to people,’ he grinned.
Corrie’s mouth fell open. ‘Oh! You conceited …’
‘Conceited what?’ he asked when she stopped.
‘I don’t know, but I’ll think of something,’ she laughed.
‘You wanna tell me where we’re heading?’ he said, when they reached the lights at the Embankment.
‘Straight ahead to the next lights,’ she answered. ‘Cristos …’
‘Did I tell you yet how great you’re looking?’ he interrupted.
A mischievous light shot to Corrie’s eyes. ‘No, but you don’t have to, I already know.’
With a shout of laughter Cristos put the car back into gear and drove on.
‘Cristos,’ she began again. ‘I don’t know if now is the time to bring this up, but I’m going to. I mean, this is all pretty difficult to take in when the last time I saw you you walked out without saying so much as a word. You never even called me after … Yet now here you are and …’ She shook her head, ‘I just don’t understand. What happened?’
Though he was smiling as he glanced over at her as soon as he spoke Corrie heard the serious note in his voice. ‘I don’t know if now is the time to bring this up, but I’m going to,’ he said, repeating her words with a touch of irony. ‘What happened was, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. When I told you that we weren’t just for one night, I guess I meant it. There’s something special happening here and we both know it. But the night I came round, when you were swimming in the pool, Fitzpatrick said something that kind of got to me. I didn’t believe him, even when he said it, but back then I was looking for a way out so I used it. You got to understand, I didn’t want to get involved, but you were getting to me and I could feel myself going along with it. Then when Fitzpatrick started in about how you were his property, that he was sleeping with you …’
‘So that’s what he told you!’ Corrie interrupted. ‘I always knew he’d said something.’
‘We gotta make a decision here, Corrie.’
Bemused Corrie turned to look at him.
‘Left or right?’ he grinned.
‘Right,’ she chuckled. ‘So,’ she said, as they headed along the King’s Road, ‘you walked out because of what he told you? Meaning you believed it.’
‘I walked out ’cos I could see things were going to start getting complicated,’ he corrected.
Corrie was silent for a while, torn between her fury with Luke and the wonderful feelings Cristos’s admissions were evoking in her.
‘So,’ he said, ‘did you ever sleep with the guy?’
Cor
rie hesitated. ‘Twice,’ she confessed. ‘I slept with him twice and ever since I’ve wished it never happened. Pull in over there.’
Following her directions Cristos stopped the car and turned off the engine.
‘Do you mind?’ Corrie said when he still made no response to her confession.
He sighed heavily. ‘Hell, I knew you were no virgin when you came to me,’ he said, ‘but yeah, I mind it was Fitzpatrick. Was he the first?’
‘No. I slept with two other men before him. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘you’re the only man I’ve ever slept with without using a condom, if that means anything.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘I don’t know. Should it?’
‘No. I had to get tested for the movie. But I guess we were pretty irresponsible.’ He turned to look at her. ‘But if I’m clear and you’re clear, what do you say we go on being irresponsible?’
‘That calls for fidelity,’ Corrie answered without even thinking about it.
He nodded. ‘I’m up for that. How about you?’
Corrie simply looked at him, so full of stunned emotion the words would barely come. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I’m up for that.’
Sliding his fingers under her hair Cristos began stroking her jaw with his thumb. ‘What are you doing to me, Corrie Browne?’ he whispered.
Corrie’s answer was to turn her face and kiss the palm of his hand, all the time keeping her eyes on his.
‘Let’s go get this food and get back to your place,’ he murmured.
Twenty minutes later Corrie was letting them into her studio and turning on the lights. ‘If you just put the food on the table I’ll get some plates,’ she said, dropping her bag on the floor and starting to unbutton her coat.
Cristos walked over to the dining table, put down the cartons of Chinese then taking her hand as she made to pass him he pulled her into his arms.
‘So this is home?’ he said softly, looking around the place.
She smiled shakily. ‘It’s no villa in the Holmby Hills I know, but …’
He interrupted her with a kiss so gentle his lips barely touched hers. He pulled back to look into her eyes then brushed his mouth against hers again. Corrie gazed up at him and seeing the way his eyes were clouded with such feeling her own fluttered closed as her lips parted. Then he was kissing her again, moulding his lips slowly and tenderly to hers, bringing her whole body against his and supporting her as she clung to him in sheer need.
‘Corrie, I want you so bad,’ he whispered, his lips still touching hers. ‘I want you now, here … Oh, Christ,’ he moaned as she pressed herself even harder to him and this time when he kissed her he pushed his tongue deep into her mouth.
Somehow they managed to climb the stairs, and as they went, kissing all the time, his hands were under her dress and Corrie’s fingers were seeking the hardness of him. Cristos reached the top first and turned to stand over her, one hand on the wall the other on the banister, as she unzipped his jeans. He watched her as she lifted his erection free, then gave a long groan as, stooping to take him in her mouth, she pushed his jeans to the floor.
‘Come here,’ he murmured, pulling her up into his arms.
She was still one step lower than him as he bent to kiss her, and lifting her pale cashmere dress to her shoulders, he pulled back, tugged it over her head, then was kissing her again. And all the time Corrie was unbuttoning his shirt and spreading her hands over his chest, his abdomen, then gently caressing his testicles with her fingers.
The bed was so close that Cristos just let himself sink back onto it, pulling her on top of him and, still kissing her, kicked off his shoes, then his jeans. Corrie rolled onto her back, taking him with her, raking her fingers down over his buttocks.
‘Sit up,’ he whispered, moving off her, ‘let me watch you undress.’
Corrie pulled herself up and as she reached behind herself to unhook her bra he gently eased her tights and knickers down over her thighs. In the lustrous moonlit glow coming from the skylight above them Corrie could see that his eyes were on hers, but as she peeled away the lace cups of her bra, revealing the heavy plumpness of her milky white breasts and succulent rosy nipples his eyes dropped from her face.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ, just look at you,’ he groaned, and letting her knickers and tights fall to the floor he rolled onto his back and all but lifted her onto him. She was up on her knees and his hands were around her waist as he rose to meet the nipple she lowered to his mouth. And as he sucked and kissed each one of them in turn his hands moved down over her buttocks and thighs teasing her to such a state of arousal that she was begging him to take her.
Looking up at her and smiling he shook his head, and breathless as she was Corrie smiled too. But as she sat back on his legs and lowered her head to take him in her mouth he stopped her and pulled her back up to her knees.
‘OK, you win,’ he murmured, ‘I want to be inside you. Real deep inside you.’
His words sent a bolt of such exquisite eroticism through her that Corrie pushed her tongue into his mouth and moaned frantically as he continued to knead her breasts and evaded her searching lips. In the end, moving a hand between their bodies he guided his penis to her and pulled her very gently, very slowly, so that they could savour every moment of penetration, onto him.
‘Sit back,’ he whispered, drawing his knees up. ‘Sit back and let me watch you,’ and as Corrie rested against his legs he cupped his hand over her pubic mound and began to caress her with his thumb. At first she could only look at him, hardly able to breathe it felt so good, then as he started to rock his hips slowly back and forth her head fell back as she felt herself starting to lose control.
‘Oh no,’ she cried, ‘Cristos I can’t bear it.’ And then he was sitting up too, taking her nipples in his mouth and biting hard as she ground herself onto him. He knew she was very close now, but suddenly he pulled himself out of her and covering her protests with his mouth, he pushed her onto her back. Lying over her he lifted himself up on his arms and entered her again. Corrie’s legs circled his waist and she gazed up at him as he began moving in and out of her with long, tender strokes, letting her feel every inch of him.
‘Yes, oh, yes,’ she murmured, her head turning from side to side. Then she gasped and her eyes flew open as suddenly he jerked hard into her. He did it again and again, then he was rotating his hips gently and rubbing himself against the delicate bud at the join of her thighs.
Time after time he took her to the brink, watching her face, feeling her body start to convulse until he knew she couldn’t take anymore, and lifting her knees with his hands he forced her legs wider, then pushed every ounce of his strength into taking them both there.
‘Oh, Cristos, Cristos,’ she sobbed as a surge of such excruciating, debilitating sensation drove through her that her arms fell from his shoulders and she could only gasp and moan as her climax broke around him and he continued to thrust himself into the heart of it.
He was holding her very close, and began kissing her brutally as he felt the force of her uncontrolled muscles clench him and push him and draw him to her until the seed exploded from his body and she clung to him, whimpering and whispering, ‘I can feel you. Oh God, Cristos, I can feel you there so deep inside me!’
When it was over she lay quietly beside him, her hand in his, staring up at the skylight, and as she allowed herself to relive every moment they had spent together, every word he had spoken since he had arrived at TW that night she felt her heart tightening with such immeasurable emotion that she knew it just wasn’t possible to feel happier or more fulfilled than she did right at that moment.
She could hear him breathing, steadily now, but knew he wasn’t sleeping even though his eyes were closed. She turned to him and looked down the full length of his perfect body lying there in the moonlight – it looked so dark and so masculine beside her own creamy fullness.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked when her eyes returned to his face and she f
ound him watching her.
Smiling, he closed his eyes again and bringing her hand to his lips, said, ‘Jeannie figures I’m in love with you.’
Corrie’s heart seemed to stop as, hardly daring to breathe she waited, until at last his eyes opened again and the smile faded from his lips. ‘I figure she could be right,’ he said huskily and drawing her to him he kissed her full on the mouth.
When he let her go and Corrie simply continued to look at him a teasing light sprang into his eyes. ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ he smiled.
Corrie lowered her eyes and resting her forehead on his shoulder, she murmured, ‘I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s all, well it all seems so unreal. You and me, and …’
He chuckled. ‘For a minute there I thought you were going to say that it was all so sudden …’
‘It is …’
‘But how do you feel?’ he asked kissing the top of her head.
‘Confused suddenly.’ And it was true, she did. Not that she wasn’t sure about the way she felt, it was just that she didn’t know how easily those words might come to him – or if they really meant as much to him as they did to her. She’d never realized this in herself before, but now she was confronted with it she knew that to tell him she loved him would mean everything. That to say those words would be for her the ultimate commitment. It was a commitment she could make, but if it didn’t mean the same to him …
He hugged her. ‘Hey, it’s all right, sweetheart, I’m not going to rush you.’
Immediately Corrie’s eyes filled with tears and laughing she said, ‘Oh Cristos, that’s what my mother used to call me.’
‘It was?’ he smiled, lifting her face back up to look at him. ‘Then I guess that’s why you’re crying. You still miss her?’
Corrie nodded. ‘All the time.’
‘Why don’t you tell me about her?’
‘I can’t, because right now I’m so full up with emotion I might never stop crying. And I look terrible when I cry.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ he laughed. ‘So, how about we have that food? I’m starving.’