A Bed of Broken Promises

by Clare Connelly

  “Okay, darling, time to go.” She scooped his bag up and dangled it over her wrist as she glided through the lounge. “David, I’m just running Maxie to school. Will you be needing anything before I go?”

  The look he sent her in response was pure volcanic heat. “Do I need anything…? Hmmm. I’ll be able to wait until you get back.” And then, in a voice only she could hear, “Just.”

  She felt her pulse skitter and splutter at his obvious allusion to their love making. She cleared her throat. “Maxie. Car. Now.”

  David’s car was the only one in the guest parking space. A hire car, she realized, noting the green bumper sticker on its rear window. Strange that he would have hired a car. Then again, lots of people in central London didn’t have cars of their own. With such great public transport, who needed the hassle? She pushed Maxie’s bag into the boot and waited patiently while her son did up his own seat belt, in yet another sign of his fierce independence.

  She thought of David Trent the whole way to school. She thought of him as she walked Maxie to his classroom, and put his bag on its hook. She thought of him as she had a detailed conversation with Mrs. Anderson about the upcoming charity bake day. And now, driving back towards Wadeford House, she was thinking of nothing but him.

  “David?” She called, walking in the front door. The guest dining table was empty. She scanned the lounge. No sign of him downstairs. She bit down on her lower lip. A dull throb in between her legs was making her very aware of how much she already needed him again, but she balked at the prospect of seeking him out. It was ridiculous to feel coy after the night they’d shared, but strangely, she did.

  Finally, she opted for a weak excuse. She walked upstairs and found him, leaning against the wall looking broodingly out over the back of her property, towards the golf course. He didn’t turn around so she said, hesitantly, “David, I’m just making some tea. Would you like some?”

  Please say no, she thought, just wanting to drag him back to her bed.

  “Sure. Sounds great. Except, coffee?”

  She nodded, but didn’t move. “Do you play?”

  “Golf?” He turned to look at her, and there was something dark in his eyes. He quickly disguised it with a killer smile, but she was sure she’d seen it. “Not for a few years.”

  “It’s a great course. Or it used to be. It’s been a bit run down lately. Would you like me to call and book you in for a game?”

  “No.” His denial was a little more forceful than he’d intended. The manager at the golf course would recognize him instantly, having already spent several hours showing him over the course and explaining some of the maintenance issues to him. He softened his reply with another smile. “Do you play?”

  “No. My father did.”

  “Did?”

  She stiffened. “He passed away three years ago.”

  Marcus pulled her into his arms, his face compassionate. “I’m sorry. Were you close?”

  She bit down on her lip. “We were. But around the time Maxie was born, I discovered he’d been having an affair.” She was amazed at how matter-of-fact she sounded now. At the time, it had torn her in shreds. “In fact, he had a whole other family.”

  “You have sisters? Brothers?”

  She shook her head. “They’re his new wife’s children, so I guess they would have been my step siblings… but I don’t ever see them. Mum took it hard, and I just didn’t feel like I could forgive dad.”

  David’s insides clenched as he knew instinctively she would feel the same about his own deception. “So your dad became just another man who let you down?”

  She tried not to sound melodramatic. “I lost Roberto first, and then him, and all in such a short space of time. But it made me determined that Maxie will have a great respect for women. I don’t ever want some woman to think about him the way I do about my father, or Roberto.”

  Shame flooded his body. If she discovered the truth, she’d never forgive him.

  “You don’t really want to hear about all this,” she said with a shake of her head. “It was eons of years ago. Come on, let’s grab a coffee.”

  “I can think of much, much better ways to spend my time.”

  She lifted her eyes to his face, and the desire she saw made her melt.

  “Coffee can wait, can’t it? His voice was thick with lust. He pulled her more tightly against him, and she delighted in the harsh planes of his body.

  She said the first thing that came to her mind. “You’re very… buff…for a school teacher.”

  He laughed. “Thank you. Is there some rule that makes the two mutually exclusive?”

  “Of course not. It’s just unusual. I bet all the school girls have crushes on you.”

  He took her cue to lighten the conversational mood. “I hope not. Teachers get fired for that.” He hated himself for perpetuating this lie. The only way he could think to put an end to it was, conveniently, the only thing he wanted to do. He lifted her up and pulled her against his chest.

  “I can walk, you know!” She said with a laugh. But she didn’t want to walk. Being carried by this man was just so heart-achingly pleasurable. He shouldered open the door to her bedroom and dropped her heavily onto the middle of her bed. “I didn’t get time to make the bed…”

  “Would have been a waste of time, anyway.” He muttered, pulling his shirt off and stepping out of his loafers. He brought his lips down to hers, hungrily, desperately, surprising himself with the force of his need. The pressure of his kiss forced her into a lying position and he lowered his body on top of hers, loving the way she felt beneath him. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips, holding him close. “Too many clothes.”

  He slid his fingers beneath her sweater and pulled it up over her head, throwing it clear across the room. “You’re not wearing a bra.” He said, marveling at her breasts, perfect, round and pale, like the rest of her. He groaned at the sight of them. “Thank God.”

  He took one nipple into his mouth and could almost have come when she jerked hotly against him as soon as his rolled his tongue over its sensitized tip. “Baby, you are so hot,” he whispered, rubbing his palms up her body and cupping her other breast in one hand, feeling the weight of it, teasing her tip with his thumb.

  “Too many clothes,” she repeated his words as she unbuckled his belt and whipped it out of his pants. Her hands were nowhere near steady and she fumbled trying to get his jeans loose. “Arghhh.” She expelled in frustration.

  His soft chuckle was an aphrodisiac. She watched as he straightened. The only consolation for the immediate hit of desperation that assailed her at his removal was the knowledge that soon, so soon, he would be back inside her. Moving her, and rocking her world.

  She pulled her own pants down quickly, flicking them off with her foot once they pooled at her ankles. Naked. Again.

  “You,” he said slowly, as he came to lean over her, “are truly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  She ran her fingertips over his chest, stilling as she had the previous night at the gauze strip covering one of his pecs. He froze as her fingers gently stroked the bandage. “Truth or dare.” She said, wrapping her now naked legs around his waist and drawing him closer to her core. His eyes flared as his tip nudged her entrance.

  “Go on.” He smiled, wolfishly. “But make it quick.”

  “How many women have you…seen?”

  “Are you asking how many women I’ve slept with?”

  She bit down on her lip. “I’m sure you know I’ve only been with two men. You and Roberto.”

  He frowned. He hadn’t known. He pushed the revelation aside. He was no monk. He dipped his tip inside her, watching as pleasure flooded her face. “I’ve never been with anyone who made me feel the way you do.” It was the absolute truth. He drove into her and felt the warm, wet muscles enclose him.

  It was as though she had the ability to erase the dark, dark pain from his mind. He moved inside her, thinking of nothing but how exquisi
te this pleasure was. All of his achievements paled compared to this one, earth-shattering feeling.

  Katie cried out loudly as she lost all sense of time and space, and tipped into an abyss of heavenly sensation. “David!” She cried loudly, jolting him out of his own pleasure. How he hated hearing another man’s name on her lips. It couldn’t be helped, but he didn’t want her to say anything but Marcus Harris. He wanted to imprint on her in a way she would never forget. As himself, not some convenient invention.

  He watched as her breathing returned to normal, and then, so close to the edge himself, he whispered against her ear, “Would you turn over? I want to show you something.”

  She looked at him with total trust, and complete excitement, and rolled onto her stomach.

  “On your hands and knees, please,” he urged, arranging her so that she was on the edge of the bed. He stood behind, and with his hands firmly on her breasts, he entered her again.

  “Ohhhhhh!” She cried out, arching instinctively as he drove so much deeper inside of her. His hands on her breasts stroked and manipulated until she was almost whimpering with pleasure. Then, when she thought she was about to die, he moved his hand to massage her most sensitive entrance, while he moved inside of her.

  “I thought it couldn’t get any better but I was wrong!” She screamed, pressing her head into her pillow as sensation after sensation overtook her. As he felt his orgasm reaching tipping point, he gripped her hips and held her still, so that he could empty everything he had into her.

  He hadn’t had sex like that since – well, ever. He felt animalistic. He pulled out of her reluctantly and removed his condom, wrapping it in a tissue and tossing it into the waste paper basket, before coming to cuddle his beautiful temptress against his chest.

  “David,” she whispered, her eyes wide, her face flushed, her lower lip swollen from where she’d bitten it. He traced a line from her forehead to her chin, and then down her to her full breasts. “I feel… so… good.”

  “You do feel so good.” He grinned, kissing her on the lips.

  She fluttered her eyes and bit down on her lip again, a habit of hers he was beginning to find impossibly sexy.

  “What is it?” He asked, amusement rich in his voice. “I know when you look like that you’ve got something on your mind.”

  Her eyes went wide with surprise. “I guess that’s true.” She moved her hand to cover his bandage again, swirling her fingers over his bare skin. “What happened? Here?”

  He could have lied. Said something benign, like that he’d had a skin cancer removed. But he wanted to stick as close to the truth as possible. “I was in a fight.” It hadn’t been a fight. Not a fair one, anyway. Bryan and he had been locked in that squalid basement for over a week before he’d escaped. Bryan hadn’t been so lucky. He closed his eyes now, thinking of his best friend and business partner, and the two days he’d spent chained up next to his body, after he’d died from the wounds.

  “A fight?” She shook her head. “What kind of fight?”

  A picture of the Swiss army knife he’d finally been able to fish out of his pockets sprang to mind. “A knife fight.”

  “A knife wielding teacher?” She said with a flicker of a smile. “You really do trash all the stereotypes.”

  He ran his hand over her exposed hip, thinking her skin was the most flawless ever created. “I aim to please.”

  She rolled her eyes, wanting to ask more but sensing the line of questioning would not be welcome. “Could you be in any doubt?”

  He grinned, glad to move past the talk of his ordeal in Iraq. No amount of talking was ever going to bring Bryan back, and the weight of survivor guilt he carried would dog him for life. Bryan had left behind a wife and a daughter. It should have been him instead. Before meeting Katie, he had had nothing to live for.

  “Well,” he pulled her so that she rolled on top of him. “I’m not entirely convinced. Perhaps another demonstration…”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You know, for someone with a professed love of birds, you’re not really doing much bird watching,” Katie said teasingly, lifting her camera and pointing it at David. She captured him at the precise moment he turned to face her, one eyebrow lifted quizzically, his lips curled into just the hint of a teasing smile, showing one dimple in his left cheek. A slight breeze had ruffled his dark hair, and he looked better than handsome. He literally took her breath away.

  “Perhaps that’s because I can’t take my eyes off you?” He responded in kind, coming to wrap his arms around her waist and admire the view in front of them. They had walked miles, and it had felt so good to get his legs moving. Wadeford was a poky little town but the scenery was second to none. He took in a deep breath of that clean, cold air. They were at the top of a cliff, and beneath them, the ocean sang noisily with each crashing wave. The sky was dark and gloomy, but Katie had assured him it wouldn’t rain.

  “It looks like rain,” he said now, causing Katie to shake her head.

  “I’m telling you, it won’t rain.” She scrunched her nose. “I’m almost never wrong about the weather.”

  His laugh was throaty. “Almost never wrong? I’m glad I brought a weather proof jacket.”

  “Oh, pish. A bit of rain never hurt anyone, anyway.” She spun in the circle of his arms and looked up at him, thinking how amazing the last few days had been. Once they’d got over the initial awkwardness of what she saw as her professional duties, and the ways he wanted to help her, they’d formed a surprising partnership. She couldn’t believe he’d already been at Wadeford House for five days. At the same time, five days could have been five years, for how well she felt she knew him.

  “Katie, can I ask you something?”

  “Truth or dare?” She said with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

  “Just truth.”

  “Oh,” she said with mock disappointment. “I thought you liked to dare me…”

  “Okay, fine. Dare.”

  In what was a now familiar biological response to him, she felt her heart race. “Dare me, then.”

  He linked his fingers through hers and brought one hand to his lips. “Have dinner with me tonight. I dare you.”

  “Dinner? With you?” She eyed him quizzically. “Like a date?”

  “Not like a date. A date.”

  “Ah…” She blushed and looked down at the ground. Panic rose inside of her. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “I see. Would you care to explain why?”

  She continued to stare at the pebbled earth beneath them. “It’s just… that’s not what we agreed.”

  He willfully misconstrued her objection. “We have dinner together every night. Why can’t we eat out? What harm would it do?”

  More than he could know, she thought grimly. “I don’t want us to complicate what we have. We both said from the outset that this – us – is just a casual holiday thing. If we start going on dates, we run the risk of thinking it could be more …permanent.”

  “And neither of us wants that,” he said quietly, pressing a finger underneath her chin so that he could angle her face towards him.

  “It’s not about want.” She corrected. Because she did want something more permanent. With all her heart, which she now acknowledged belonged completely to the man standing before her. She shrugged. “It’s about what’s possible. You live in London, and I live in Wadeford. I have a son.”

  A muscle clenched in his jaw. “People have conquered such tyrannies of distance before.”

  She shrugged. “That’s not what either of us wants. I know you, David.” She sucked in a deep breath and said what she’d been thinking since first she’d met him. “You’re obviously in the middle of something. I don’t even think you know what you want.”

  He narrowed his eyes, momentarily caught off-balance by her perception. “What, exactly, do you mean?”

  “There’s just something haunted about you. I see it in your face sometimes. And… you talk, in your sleep.”
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  He raised his eyebrows, running a hand over his stubbled chin. “I do?”

  “Not enough that I can make out what you’re saying.” Her face was momentarily guilty. “But I can tell that it’s bad. That you’re upset.”

  “Jesus.” He swore under his breath. “I had no idea I was such a mess.”

  “I didn’t mean that!” She denied hotly, replaying her words and cringing at her insensitivity. She’d always called a spade a spade, though. “You’re great… but… maybe it’s some unfinished business with your wife. I just feel like… there’s more to you.”

  He hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans, staring unseeing at the ocean.

  Katie sucked in a breath of air and tried again. “It’s just… I don’t think you want a relationship right now. And I can’t afford to put Maxie through an emotional ringer. Do you know how hard I’ve worked to give him a stable, happy life? This scares me.” She pointed from herself to him. “I’m scared because for the first time since Maxie was born, I feel myself wanting to leap off a cliff with you, regardless of the consequences.” She shook her head. “It’s better if we keep things as they are.”

  “The safe option? I’m disappointed, Katie.”

  “There is nothing safe about you,” she retorted emphatically, trying to get away from the serious ground they were covering.

  “So I’m good to screw, but not to date. Thanks for clarifying.” He felt something unfamiliar burn through him. Hurt. She had hurt him. It was a totally foreign feeling. Even leaving his wife had been something he’d approached prosaically. After what she’d done, there had been no way he could ever look at her again, but he had still made the decision with a degree of emotional detachment.

  Katie’s appalled face showed his words had hit their mark. “Don’t say that, David.”

  And though he’d encouraged the lie, he hated hearing that name from her lips now. It made him irrationally angry. “Say what? The truth? You’ve had a dry spell and then along I come, ready to indulge your every fantasy. A willing sex slave, but I’m too messed up for you to want to actually get to know? To date? Don’t you see how insulting that is?” He cringed inwardly at the hypocrisy. How many women had he taken to bed and never called again? Wasn’t Katie just doing exactly what he’d asked of her?