Everything You Need: Everything For You Trilogy Book 1

by Bailey, Orla

  My destiny is never to be with Jack and the sooner I accept that, the better for my sanity.

  “We’ll talk about it.” Jack manoeuvres my weak, unresisting body down onto the sofa.

  I’m numb. He tries to raise my feet but I pluck at his sleeve to avoid his touch on my skin but what’s the point of resisting his will? He resolutely removes my hand from his arm and stubbornly settles my legs where he wants them to be.

  He recovers easily, speaks lightly. “Will you be okay for a moment? I’m going to make some strong coffee.”

  I give a curt nod. I’m still not ready to look at him directly, scared of the expression of contempt I might see on his face. He examines me for a second, possibly weighing up whether he can trust me to stay put, then turns and heads for the kitchen.

  How foolish I’ve been coming here.

  I clench and unclench my fists in the sides of his shirt. When restless fingers find a label, I glance down. Turnbull and Asser. Another faultless example of a world which caters to the whims of a wealthy man. Jack Keogh being mine was a fantasy before and remains an illusion now.

  The reality crashes back through the door carrying a tray loaded with a half-filled cafetiere and coffee cups, a bag of Amaretto biscuits and two plates of dessert. I stare at it like it’s some Mad Hatter’s tea party as he places it on a low table close by.

  “I brought food. We didn’t exactly eat dinner and you said you hadn’t eaten earlier. You must be starving.”

  “How nice of you,” I say, being deliberately provocative. “I’m not hungry.”

  Any way you look at it my appetites have disappeared. Does he think I’m so desperate he can use me? Except he didn’t use me. He rejected me. Again. My head can’t take in everything that’s happened.

  Jack settles himself on the sofa, close.

  His un-tucked shirt, casually hanging open to reveal the taut muscles of his torso makes him look entirely too desirable. Dark hair falls towards those intense blue eyes and I prickle to smooth away his perplexed little frown with the pads of my thumbs. Bitterly I realise in spite of everything that’s happened, I still want him. It’s the weakness of my own desire I have to fight, not his and I’m ashamed of myself for being so pathetic.

  I take the cup of coffee he carefully hands me. My body’s hyper-sensitive and thrumming. Nothing short of a hard, fast orgasm is going to make that go away but it isn’t going to happen. I’m resigned to the fact.

  “Something stronger would be good.” My voice is a whisper. I think I’m talking about alcohol. If I can’t get laid, I can still get drunk. My favourite cure-all. Jack never cared about me and it’s high time that message sunk in.

  He throws a frown in my direction. “It’s safe enough, with me,” he decides.

  Jack walks to his liquor cabinet and I observe the lithe grace with which he moves. He pulls out an unopened bottle and returns with it and two cut glasses held between his fingers. I can’t stop myself thinking about where those fingers have recently been. My body won’t let me.

  All my senses are brittle and heightened. I hear the sound of the sealed cap snapping with a metallic crack, the rich burble of fluid as it glugs from the bottle and the tinkle of the quality glass when the liquid hits, pale as rainwater drained through sweet meadow hay. I swear I hear Jack’s breathing, slow and heavy but perhaps it’s my own.

  “I don’t want you to drink too much more on an empty stomach.”

  “Concern for my sobriety?” I’m snippy and frustrated.

  He raises an alert eyebrow. “What just happened changes nothing.”

  “What did just happen?”

  “My fault. We need to establish ground rules.”

  Just what in hell does he mean by that? I ignore him. I’m not going to beg the man to have sex with me. I’ve practically done that already and he still walked away. Who says lightening doesn’t strike twice?

  I knock back a large mouthful of whisky and clutch my chest in alarm as it burns its way down my throat but I feel the colour and warmth return to my skin. Jack is more refined in the way he takes his spirits. He settles on the floor beside me, twirling the glass before his eyes watching firelight dance though each facet of crystal.

  “Talisker,” he says. “Scotch whisky distilled on the Isle of Skye.”

  “Strong.” My voice is hoarsened by the fiery fluid still scorching the back of my throat.

  Jack laughs but with a detectable note of sympathy. “Robust,” he corrects, teaches. “Smoky.”

  It’s only one of a number of lessons I’m learning tonight. “Like drinking liquid fire.” My voice is raw so I sip at it more cautiously. The scald feels good. It sears more painful thoughts from my mind. “It still burns.”

  “Warms.” Jack turns to me. I keep my eyes focused exclusively on my glass but can tell his are resting on me. “Fifty-four point six percent ABV.” He doesn’t need to read the label.

  He remembers every detail. The whisky. His business. My past. “A quantifiable certainty,” I agree in a roughened voice as I take another swallow.

  Jack chuckles deep in his throat. It makes such a dark unnerving sound I glance up to watch him sip and savour. The quality single malt, the firelight and Jack’s closeness are a heady combination that makes my sense of loss feel so much more acute.

  “They bottled three thousand and ninety of this particular one. It’s thirty-two years old.”

  “Same as you.” My eyes suddenly lock with his and fly away again. I wish I hadn’t spoken when his lips curve in a satisfied manner. I don’t want to please Jack. I don’t want him to know that I know his birth to the very day, the hour. Or that, even now, I automatically read his horoscope alongside mine if I come across one in a magazine. I like to torture myself that way. “How many did you buy?”

  “All of them.”

  “That’s a lot of whisky, even for you.” I’m babbling. “How much did that cost?” I stick to business. He understands business and it’s infinitely preferable to draw both our minds from foolishness.

  “Somewhere between a lot of money and an awful lot of money.” His look is an entreaty. The call for a ceasefire.

  I can’t help hearing the Irish humour and shake my head at his casual disregard for what I expect is more like a cosmic amount of money.

  He drinks my features in. “It’s no secret. I paid five hundred pounds a bottle, last year,” he explains.

  He doesn’t seem bothered by the astronomical cost but he wouldn’t be. I do the mental calculation and whistle. “That’s an incredible sum of money to spend on whisky.”

  “They’re worth a lot more already,” he counters. “It’s an investment, for the future.”

  “Then why are you drinking away your future?”

  “We.”

  One simple word which means so much. Or might have done. I have to remind myself it’s an illusion. Another punishment to make my fall harder. If I allow myself to fall, to hurt. He’s simply pointing out I’m plundering one of his five hundred pound bottles too.

  “Why are we drinking away your future?”

  “We’re drinking to it. Tonight seems right.” He leans in closer. “Perfect.”

  I stare into those hypnotic blue eyes. The contrast of intense, bright colour against black, black lashes strikes me, is as risky as staring out a dark angel. Why is he playing games with me? Torturing me? I fight an overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss him. Make him want to kiss me back but it will only prolong this purgatory.

  “Jack?” My body tingles in all the right places. All the wrong places. I still want his body even though he doesn’t want mine. Nothing changes but would it be so bad to capture one memory before he walks away?

  When I part my lips on a sigh, Jack closes the distance and presses his mouth softly against mine. It’s warm and firm, a little moistened with whisky. As he moves gently over me, I taste the smokiness of the liquor on his breath just the way he describes it. The robust nature of its assault on my senses. The warmth. It
– he – steals my wits while he heightens my animal senses. I close my eyes, feeling myself sucked into some eternal void where I have only to experience without question whatever Jack chooses to share with me. Again I go, without wonder, wherever he leads me because the chemistry he alluded to between us is all his power and my weakness.

  When he ends the kiss, I’m thoroughly conquered. He sits back to observe me while I realise it’s foolish to sip something so potent, so dangerous, when it only makes me desire it more.

  Jack removes the glass from my hand. “It’s powerful stuff.”

  “Mmm,” I agree completely. Slowly my eyes close then open to find him watching me thoughtfully. Is he still talking about the whisky? It’s becoming far too hard to focus.

  “Especially on top of Champagne.” His beautiful white teeth are revealed every time he speaks. They lure me and I mustn’t allow myself to fall for such obvious attractions. I won’t. But it’s so hard, sprawled on his leather sofa, dressed in his warm shirt, inhaling his scent and that of the whisky and feeling so very close to him.

  “Gin, too, before I left home,” I confess to his semi-amused lips. “And I had a slosh of Bailey’s in my coffee late this afternoon but that was your fault.” I’m prattling again.

  “It’s time we had that talk.”

  Jack pushes up off the floor and sits, pressing himself into the depths of the sofa beside me, resting his lean hip against my thigh. I shift as far to the back as I can and not simply to make room either. I have to pull myself together. I have to try to remember why I’m here. But when his body touches mine my muscles spasm, ripping all random thoughts from my brain.

  Jack speaks softly drawing my attention back to his mouth. The lips that have just touched mine. “I didn’t halt things between us because I don’t care about you.”

  “Plenty more scallops in the miso and garlic butter.”

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of the absurd.” He looks like he might have lost his.

  “In advertising, wit is a prerequisite.”

  “It’s wild, by the way.”

  “Furious, I’d have thought.”

  “Funny girl. I’m talking about the garlic butter. Wild garlic butter. And why do I think you know that already?”

  “Do you always have to be so precise?”

  “Less ambiguity that way. You’ll learn it’s necessary.” His hand absentmindedly caresses my naked thigh raising goose bumps all along my skin.

  “Will I?” I question if I’m capable of learning anything.

  I snatch my glass back to swallow another great gulp, before he stops my hand, struggling to catch my breath through the alcoholic incendiary rolling its way down my throat and igniting in my chest. My eyes water but it’s only the effects of the fiery Scotch burning into me, nothing else. I toy with the magical light reflected through the ochre fluid as it swirls.

  Jack takes the crystal from my fingers once more and stretches over me to place it on the table behind my head. I freeze when he reaches past me, so close I can practically taste him. It’s beyond my resistance not to inhale. He smells so good.

  He stills over me, looking for one second like he’s going to kiss me again and I despise myself for imagining he might. For hoping. My lurid imagination and Jack’s almost available body, combined with the alcohol, all fifty four point six percent proof of it, works its own alchemy. I bite back any self-revealing moan. Jack leans back and downs the remainder of his Scotch in one. He pauses while it takes effect and I have no idea how he can bear to do such a thing without choking.

  My hands snake between my thighs which I compress around them.

  He notices and his features soften. “Tonight I wanted you here. I want you.” His voice has softened too.

  “You have a funny way of showing it.” I can’t analyse this anymore.

  As I squeeze my thighs together aiming for a little relief, another hot surge of awareness rolls through my belly. My face flushes. I silently and sarcastically thank my wayward body. It clearly hasn’t got anything better to do with itself.

  Jack raises an eyebrow. It reminds me totally of the look he gave me when he uncovered the handy place beside my bed where I keep my vibrator, which does nothing for my dignity.

  “I’m trying to show you I can be patient. I can wait for what I want.”

  Double hell with bells on. He’s laughing at me. He’ll think, by contrast, I’m completely obsessed with having sex with him. Hardly. I haven’t had any yet. And I’d better get over the idea right now. I’m not having sex with Jack Keogh. God, now I can’t stop thinking about not having sex with Jack. It would have been better if he’d just got it over and done with. I keep my lips clamped together for fear I may blurt my thoughts out loud.

  It’s taking all my willpower not to finish the job myself. I glance down wondering if I can extricate my hand without losing face. Placing it there seemed like such a good idea at the time but my body is pulsating. Sex is all I can think about, especially with Jack beside me. Practically on top of me, actually. I inhale the intoxicating aroma of high end male fragrance, Scotch and desire. What would I need to do to get him completely on top of me?

  I shake my head. “If you have something to say, just say it.”

  “I distanced myself from you when you were eighteen, because I couldn’t be around you anymore.”

  Oh God. This is it. He’s about to humiliate me totally. “We don’t need to talk about it. It’s over. Long forgotten.” I’m such a liar. “I’m so over it.”

  He rests his chin on his knuckles. Such strong forearms. That jawline. I want to launch myself at him, ease my body against his. Feel those powerful arms wrap themselves around me.

  Jack has the effrontery to laugh out loud. “We both know that isn’t true.”

  “We do?” I make a passable shot at sounding condescending. There is no we. Never has been and never will.

  He lists the evidence like a courtroom lawyer. “The cuff-links drama, the sex on the rug?” He presents me with all the damning evidence. “Begging me to take you. Please, Jack. Please.”

  “I didn’t beg.” Did I? He’s being cruel. “Sex on the rug? What sex on the rug?” Do I have to keep saying sex on the rug? He’ll think I’m obsessed.

  “You want me.” It isn’t even a question. His voice is a hot caress. His eyes graze my over-heated body until even the luxury cotton weave of Turnbull and Asser tailoring feels like a coarse itchy horse-blanket scouring my skin.

  “I can take you or leave you.” My voice chokes but it’s the best casual off-hand remark I can manage under the circumstances. I’m definitely far too drunk and it’s too hard to maintain a frosty façade, when my body is about to launch into nuclear meltdown.

  Jack’s scrutiny intensifies. I wonder if it’s beyond the realms of possibility he can make me come, just by staring at me that way.

  His hand flashes out clipping open the highest of the closed buttons on my shirt. I gasp. Why is he doing this? Can he never be consistent? Does he want me or doesn’t he? He tweaks another button undone and slips his hand inside to cover my swollen breast. The heat from his skin singes my surprised flesh so I mewl like a kitten.

  His questing fingertips trip across my nipple which instantly tightens, erect, puckered. Guilty as sin. The tingle rocks right through me straight to my sex.

  “Take me or leave me? Your body tells me otherwise.” He grasps my nipple between finger and thumb and rolls it causing a long slow moan of deep arousal to escape my lips. I squirm which makes Jack smile indulgently. “But is this just for any man?”

  I clutch at his wrist, my intention to remove his hand before I completely succumb and slither docilely downwards, opening my legs for him once more. Why the thought of wild garlic, tamed, should enter my head at this moment I have no idea.

  Jack counters my action, imprisoning my hand in his huge free one, clamping my two wrists together and pulling them up above my head, agitating my nipple and my mind into co
mplete compliance.

  It’s easy for him to restrain my liquid arms above me with one hand. I’m powerless, limpid, molten, all self-will fleeing before his occupying forces with the last convoy of resistance fighters out of town. By the time he releases his hold I’ve got the message. My arms stay put, tethered by the invisible bonds of Jack’s resolve.

  He toys with me as I claw at the leather upholstery. Undoing the rest of my buttons he teases the edges of the shirt apart until I’m nakedly available to him once more.

  “Why are you doing this, Jack?” My words sound breathy. Unfocused.

  “Because you pretend you don’t care. Because you believe I don’t want you.” He sweeps his heated gaze the length of my nakedness, taking in the pulse I feel ticking in my throat, lingering over my tender breasts with the achingly tight nipples, wandering my clenching stomach and libidinously arching pelvis. “Because you’re going to let me help you. Because.”

  All rational thought is lost in the spiralling ascent of my seduction.

  Jack lowers his mouth to suckle my breast in spite of my moans and half-hearted protests. Because of them. The aching pull of suction blisters my body with sweet torment. My hips buck in total want each time he draws hard and he cups my sex, allowing his arousing fingers to trail languorously over me, probing deeper and deeper between my folds, opening my silky longing to his touch.

  “You want me, kitten. I think you’ve been wet for me ever since you arrived.”

  “Jack, don’t.” I feel his lips smile against my skin.

  “I like you that way.”

  My thighs fall open and he nestles between them, his erection heavily evident beneath his clothing. Haven’t I just told him I have no intention of opening my legs to him again? So much for indignant declarations. Hollow protests. He’s right. I want him now as much as I ever did.

  My mind no longer makes sense. All consciousness focuses on the fires stoking beneath his fingers, the sparks of electricity arcing in my nipples as he runs lips and teeth between them creating impulses to flow between the critical places in my writhing body.