“Take a seat,” he said, brusque and unsmiling. Anna almost felt that she had been invited to an unpleasant disciplinary interview with a school headmaster. With sweat beading on her upper lip, she was as prickly and tense as a curled hedgehog.
Nonetheless, she sank into a too-comfortable chair, its yielding leather cushions moulding her spine so she couldn’t stiffen it as she wanted to. It felt wrong to relax, doubly wrong to cross her legs, so she sat up, knees clamped together, shoulders hunched, watching John mix what looked like rather stiff brandy and sodas. She wanted to break the silence, which pressed in on her, tying her in knots like those odd snaky things in her dreams. Her mouth was too dry. Her tongue felt large and clumsy. She stared at the floor, waiting, tacitly acknowledging that the greater right to speech lay with him.
“I spent a long time trying to work out why I was so disappointed,” he said, handing the drink to her but choosing to remain standing with his, sipping it while he paced the small area in front of her chair. “I mean, you don’t owe me anything, Anna. I don’t expect anything from you. You’re a free agent. You don’t have to see me. You don’t have to call me. I suppose the minor courtesy of a cancellation call might have sugared the pill… No, not really. It wouldn’t have.”
“M’sorry.” Anna tried to break in, her voice wavering. She wished he would stop pacing and stand still, or at least sit down opposite her.
“And it had only been, what, two, three days? After all.” He ignored her, continuing his monologue, seemingly oblivious to her presence. “It’s not unusual for a promising start to stay just that… But Anna!” He turned now, swung round, dropping on his haunches to face her, his eyes agonised. A drop of brandy mirrored his consternation, splashing up over the side of his glass.
“Did I really imagine it? The connection? The intensity of it? Did I dream it?”
She shook her head, eyes prickling again, voice too unsteady to frame words. He had felt it too.
“So why…?” His words trailed off. All the crinkles on his forehead—how she wanted to smooth them.
“When I saw the wedding picture…”
“Couldn’t you have asked me about it? Or at least called or messaged me to tell me I’m a lying, cheating bastard? I could have worked with that. Your silence left me wondering if you were alive or dead! Seriously, I rang around the hospitals. Anna…”
“You…did you really?”
He nodded, put the glass down on the floor, reached out for her hand. She let him take it, her hair standing on end at the static thrill of his touch.
“I should have told you from the start, I suppose.”
“You…I suppose it isn’t ideal first date conversation.”
“I had my opening. When you told me about your parents. But I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be sure of you. After we danced, I was sure of you. But now…”
“You can be sure of me,” Anna interjected, darting forward so her cheek almost brushed his. “I swear. I wanted to call you. So badly. I really wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you?” His hand was on the side of her head now, the fingers mussing her hair up around her ear. She leaned into the gesture, wanting to sigh as he stroked his thumb over her ear.
“My friend…she was only trying to protect me. She took my phone.”
“Oh, my darling.” At last, a smile, albeit a sad one. “Your friends want what’s best for you. But only you can really know that. I know what’s best for me. Do you know what’s best for you?”
“Please forgive me.”
He silenced her trembling lips with a kiss; a sweet, deep and thorough communion, leaving her in no doubt as to the sincerity and renewal of his passion, nor the magnitude of his forgiveness.
“Can we put this behind us?” he murmured, and when she nodded, he slid up beside her, momentarily dislodging her from the chair so that he could reestablish her on his lap. More kissing followed, the kind that brings deep sighs up from the lovers’ chests and into each other’s mouths; the kind that fills dreams and fantasies; the kind that captures and binds hearts.
“I feel I should tell you all now,” he said, emerging from the swoon-haze to pick his drink up again. “It isn’t a long story. Just a sad one.”
“I’m so sorry,” Anna repeated, but she was on autopilot now. Nothing mattered to her anymore but John, John all over her, above and beside her, on and inside her.
“She overdosed. On a cocktail of drugs—some prescribed, some recreational.”
“Oh my God, that’s awful. How awful! Did you… Were you there? Was it…suicide?”
“No, accidental death. She’d always been a party girl. I liked that about her at first, but I didn’t realise how far she was prepared to go for the sake of carrying on the party. Look.” He turned away for a minute, biting on a knuckle. “I feel I’m speaking ill of her—I don’t intend to do that.”
“No, no, of course. But if it’s the truth…you know. What can you say?”
“I tried to stop her, took her to specialists, begged her to go to a detox clinic, but I’m just one man. Up against the chemicals, I couldn’t win. She had to do it for herself, not for me. I wasn’t reason enough.”
“Oh God, you’d have been reason enough for me.” Anna was impassioned, her eyes swimming again. John’s melancholy smile melted her even further. He kissed her, just a brief meeting of lips, but so heartfelt that Anna felt as if her soul were transferring to his possession.
“I know,” he said softly. “Thank you. It wasn’t long after the wedding. I was overseas on business. Saskia went to a house party with friends. So at least I didn’t see…it. I was in a meeting when I got the call…” John’s voice wavered. Anna grasped his hands, so hard that her nails dug into his palms.
“I didn’t know her, but I’ll never understand her. Never!”
“You and me both.” He cradled Anna’s head against his chest and they sat like that for a long time, until the room was dark and the ice in the brandy entirely liquid again.
The excess of emotion coupled with exhaustion meant that Anna was beginning to drowse when John bent his lips to her ear and said, “Stay with me.”
“Hmm?” Anna’s glazed eyes met his, so dark, the pupils all black with a tiny outer ring of golden brown.
“Tonight. Will you stay with me?”
She knew she would be unable to leave anyway. “Yes,” she said, without hesitation.
“If you don’t want to…do anything…that’s okay…we can just sleep…it’s okay.”
It’s not okay with me. I want you—really want you tonight.
She touched her finger to his lips. He kissed it.
“I said yes,” she repeated, that word of affirmation giving him permission for everything and anything.
“Right,” he said, and there was a world of purpose behind him now. He stood, helping Anna up and led her, hand closed around her wrist, out of the room and towards the staircase.
“Your room.” The bed was enormous, but the even bigger room contained almost nothing else—just dark wood furnishings so anonymous that they would fit well in any hotel. Had he cleared out all traces of Saskia, she wondered? But she dismissed the idea. Saskia was not going to hang over the bed and watch them make love for the first time. Saskia doesn’t live here anymore.
“My room.” He smiled, throwing off his jacket and spun Anna into him in that dancer’s hold he had first tried out on the shores of the lake. “Your room,” he continued, his voice low. “If you want it to be.”
Anna was blinking, wondering if the implication of his words was as enormous as it seemed when he dashed the breath from her mouth with another kiss.
Her lips were starting to sting now; John needed a shave and he was not one for light kissing—these were devouring, ravishing, hungry kisses, swallowing her up inside them until the burn of his stubble faded into irrelevance beside the answering burn at the pit of her stomach.
“I want to undress you,” he said, and Anna supposed in theory
she could have objected, but something told her his wishes were not negotiable, not when his eyes looked like that. She leaned back against his forearm and tried to keep her breathing steady while he unbuttoned the white cotton work blouse, following his deft fingers with a kiss at each newly revealed part of her—lowering his lips to her throat, her collarbone, the hollow of her breasts between her bra cups, finally exposing her belly and sliding a hand around her hip, stepping back, drinking her in.
“God, Anna,” he moaned, then he was kissing her neck, shoulders, face, while a hand kneaded her lace-covered breasts, finding and circling the nipples with deadly accuracy. His fingers found the zipper of her short, light-tweed skirt and soon it was dropping over her slender hips to the floor, leaving her standing in only her underwear and summer slingbacks. When occasional thought cohered in Anna’s head, it was thankfulness for the Sunday afternoon she and Mimi had spent depilating, moisturising, clipping, trimming and polishing their bodies in front of Dirty Dancing. She was as buff and smooth as she would ever be, so John’s exploring hands would encounter little resistance in their journey. “You’re fucking beautiful.”
She shuffled out of the shoes and stood on tiptoe so she could reach his mouth with hers, longing to have them joined once more. He obliged, running hands down the hollow of her back, cupping her bottom with a squeeze that made her moan. Quick as a flash, his hand was between her thighs, tugging at the knicker elastic, sliding inside, finding her wet.
His other hand unhooked her bra. “Come on,” he ordered, voice gruff. “Bed.”
She lay amidst the puffy peaks of the duvet, watching him avidly while he tore off his shirt and trousers, revealing the extent of his desire for her when his boxers followed suit.
“I’m not waiting for you another minute,” he vowed, diving on the bed at Anna’s side, then leaping astride her, covering her body with his and ravaging her with kisses and caresses.
“Oh please, oh please,” Anna gasped, running her hands all over him, grinding her hips against his in mindless need, opening up for him, offering him everything she had and was. He wrenched down the knickers, rubbing his cock in the juices he found there while she disposed of the inconvenient wisp of fabric with her toes.
“So ready for me,” he rasped in her ear, sounding almost pained by the weight of his longing for her. “Do you want this, Anna?”
“Oh yes, yes.” Her legs curved and curled around his arse, urging him down and forward, until there was nowhere else for him to go but into her. He entered her sleekly and slickly, swarming all the way up until he was fully seated, their two bodies made one flesh at last. They twisted in harmony, his strokes torturously slow to begin, holding her in check, keeping her away from that edge she knew she was skirting too soon.
“Want you to feel me, Anna.” His voice was thick in the shell of her ear, breath hot and moist. “Are you feeling me?”
Yes, yes, she felt him, everything of him, all the power he was keeping in reserve, ready for the moment when they both felt safe enough to lose themselves in each other. It was humming in his chest, behind his eyes, in the crook of his fingers where they raked her hair, all over his skin, crackling with it like electricity. It was almost superhuman, almost scary, if she could be scared of someone she loved so much. Yes, loved. Real love, love that takes you away from everything you ever knew or believed of yourself, and gives you over to him, your lover, your one true love.
“I feel you,” she panted, jiggling beneath him, signalling a hope that he might speed up now. “So much, so deep inside.”
“Good.” The word shuddered, almost like a laugh, against her skin before he reared up and began to thrust in earnest, his hands clamping her down by the shoulders, his face hell-bent on hers. “Deep inside. That’s where I am.”
His knees nudged the backs of her thighs until the angle was perfect and she lay beneath him as he slammed, hitting that sweet spot with every forward drive, watching her face. He would see it crumple, see her eyes screw up, mouth drop open, and then the eyelids fly wide in one wild stare of shock at the enormity of what he was making her feel, and here was the thing she wanted to give him, his real reward, her voice, coming from afar, singing out in ecstasy for him.
“Yes!” he cried in triumph, and he emptied into her, rhythmically pulsing until he was drained and she had taken every drop of his essence.
Amazing, he’s amazing, every bit as good as I thought he would be, better even. The euphoria gushed through Anna’s consciousness as she submitted to his post-orgasmic kisses of victory, her chest heaving and sex still having little spasms around her lover’s softening manhood.
“I think that was good. Wasn’t it? I think that was good for you?” John’s solicitude was a little feverish, but she smiled and rolled her eyes back in reply and he kissed her once more before drawing out and gathering her into his arms.
“I feel I should be smoking a cigarette,” he said with a yawn, stroking her hair as she lay happily burrowed in the crook of his arm. “Perhaps we should get something to eat instead. I’ll order out. What do you fancy? Chinese? Thai? Sushi? You need to keep your strength up, Anna. I’m going to want to do that again. And again. And possibly again.”
She would need every shred of protein and carbohydrate from her king prawn pad Thai over the course of the night. He bent her and twisted her, licked her and tasted her, marked her and filled her, in every permutation he could think of until exhaustion won over imagination and he permitted her to sleep at last.
It was her first dreamless sleep since they had met, and her brain made the most of it, sinking deep into the black oblivion, taking its time to repair and renew her overused body.
She woke, slowly and foggily, to his face bent over hers. Startled, she forced her eyes wide and sat up, staring around her at the unfamiliar room. John was fully dressed, suited and booted and ready for the City.
“Wass time?” she mumbled. “Shit. Shit, m’late for work.”
He kissed the panic out of her, diligently, unhurriedly, before breaking off and saying, “Don’t go in. Take the day off.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Course you can. You look wrecked.” He chuckled, seeming to admire his handiwork and the dishevelled mess he had made of her. “Can you even walk?”
He had a point. Every muscle felt as if it had been warped out of shape. Her face was raw and lips swollen from kissing. As for lower down, she felt bruised, as if she had been kicked, almost. But the pain and the sting were sweet; she revelled in it, the evidence of John upon her body.
“Not sure,” she confessed, blushing. “I’m so, so tired.”
“Call in sick, if you must. But you know…” He bent his head closer, lips to her ear. “You don’t have to go there ever again, if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, John, I need that job!”
“Not anymore. I’ve got money enough for both of us.” He sat down on the side of bed, taking her limp hand in his, looking into her eyes in that peculiar, ferociously intense way he had. “Come live with me and be my love,” he declaimed.
“You mean… Are you serious? John, it’s been one night…” She trailed off, not wanting to put him off this idea, which seemed, suddenly and blindingly, the absolute culmination of her every dream. She ignored every nagging “it’s too soon” impulse, letting his eyes drive them out of her head.
“I don’t know much,” he said, the smirk at the corner of his lips betraying the falseness of his modesty, “but I do know that life is short, love is rare and happiness has to be caught and caged when you find it. I don’t care what the normal form is, Anna. You’ll learn that about me. I do what I think is right, always—and if that happens to clash with the conventional wisdom, well…” He shrugged. “So be it. What do you say?”
“I say…all right.” Anna giggled, wanting to hide from the enormity of it. I’m signing up for something incredible. He took her in his arms, his eyes smiling along with his mouth now, his forehead meeting with her
s before the kisses started all over again.
“Oh God, I can’t,” he groaned, releasing her lips, which sang and stung with joy. “I wish I didn’t have to go into the office…”
“Take a sick day,” Anna suggested, grinning mischievously.
“Alas, a sick day is not an option for me. I have important meetings; meetings which I have to attend if I want to keep you in the style to which you will become accustomed, my love.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. But I ought to go back to my flat and collect a few things, otherwise what shall I do all day?”
“Rest. Sleep. The house is at your disposal—there’s a very well-stocked home cinema if you fancy watching a movie or two. Popcorn in the kitchen. I haven’t got the pool yet, but I’m working on it. If you’re up to the gym, there’s one upstairs. You’ll find plenty to entertain you, I’m sure. Now, I really must go soon, so why don’t you hop into the shower and I’ll cook you some breakfast.”
Anna’s mobile rang while she was tucking into bacon and eggs with a large pot of tea. She tried to stand—which was difficult—from the massive table in the huge kitchen, but John turned around from stacking the dishwasher and frowned at her.
“Ignore it,” he commanded.
“Why?”
“It’ll be your office. Let them live without you, just for one day. They’ll manage. You need to take some time out. Be kind to yourself, Anna, or you’ll force me to be kind for you.”
“It might be Mimi…” she demurred.
“Ah. Mimi. That’ll be your friend, will it? The one who took your phone off you? For your own good?”
“She meant well.”
“I’m sure she did.” His features softened. “And I mean well too. So perhaps you should give your phone to me.”
Under His Influence Page 5