by Lee, Corri
"I would hug you but I have this annoying monkey with intimacy issues on my back."
"You said I looked edible..."
Someone hammered at the door, but I was already straddling Blaze, moaning into his mouth as his tongue stroked mine. In nothing but a t-shirt, all he had to do was pull his underwear down and we could be fucking like minks in seconds. He was hard already, switched on by my grinding against him.
"Ignore it." I mumbled when the door knocked again, pumping restlessly against his teasing hand, so turned on and in the moment that it wouldn't have taken much to push me over the edge. He held me up and watched his first hard inch push into me, growling so gutturally it undid me.
My orgasm hit the same minute the visitor called out. "Emmy, love? I know you're in there!"
"Shit!" I stared down with amused horror at Blaze, steadying myself on his shoulders. "It's my mother. She has a key."
"Emmeline Elizabeth, open this door!"
"Coming, Mum!" Blaze wiggled beneath me, hitting a sweet spot that damn near brought literal meaning to my answering shout. "You have to hide in the bedroom. Like now."
He pouted and slowly eased out of me, still rock hard. "Just let me meet her."
"No! Even if you weren't only in your underwear..." Ivy Tudor had the unmistakable face of an angel and an encyclopaedic knowledge of current events and celebrity hearsay. Blaze had his equally as seraphic face plastered everywhere. There was no conceivable way they wouldn't recognise each other. I shuddered at the thought and pointed sternly at the bedroom door. "Go, you fiend."
"You'll need these." Quickly, he yanked down his briefs and hooked my feet through them, pulling them up to cover my wet, less than modest modesty, then set on a leisurely pace towards the bedroom, gloriously naked. Watching him walk away was still almost as good as watching him walk towards me, more so when I now knew what lay beyond the clothes, a thought that made me squirm.
"Emmy!" The door opened before I could get to it and just as the bedroom door closed on Blaze's fabulous backside. I smiled up guiltily from the couch with my eyes still a little starry, pulling the t-shirt down over the borrowed briefs. My mother stood just inside the door, innocently oblivious to what she'd walked into.
She was a breath of fresh air in a lilac wrap dress that brought out the green in her eyes but clashed horribly with her car. Her greying blonde hair fell loosely into a chignon and framed a dainty nose, sculpted cheekbones, and naturally full red lips that sheathed a killer smile. She was a trophy bride alright— a real English rose who didn't have any thorns until she married them. And I hadn't seen her for the longest time.
"Mum! You look great." If she was a vision of how I'd look in twenty years, I was eager to age.
"I wish I could say the same, darling. You look dreadful." I nodded, knowing that I couldn't rationally find insult in what she said. My hair was still matted and fuck-mussed, eyeliner smudged and the bite mark Blaze had left in the tender flesh of my neck was starting to bruise. But no matter how obvious it looked to me that I'd been up to no good, Ivy Tudor saw the good in anyone and could deny the bad existed. "One of your neighbours called your father with a noise complaint. I was around and thought you'd prefer me to come and scold you for being a vixen." Her eyes gleamed with a mischievous yet reverent glint. These were the times she liked to leach vicariously from, having led a relatively unremarkable life in the bedroom department. I didn't want to know the details, but I knew that there had only been one man other than Henry between her sheets and he'd been something of a wet squib.
"I'm sorry, I had no idea I'd been so... vocal."
"By all accounts it was the fellow, love." She sounded disturbingly proud. "I think that was what caused the concern. Old Mrs Adams upstairs thought you were beating him senseless."
"Well then." I coughed and pulled the neck of the t-shirt up over my nose to hide my grin. The idea of Blaze being so lost in the pleasure he found in me was endearing, and I had the driving urge to make him do it again so I could hear it— hear him moan my name while I rode him. It was the times like that I knew I had him all to myself.
Ivy wandered through to the kitchen, pausing once or twice at various objects of my scattered clothing. "You bought yourself a tablet?"
"Ah... no, it's a friends. I'm borrowing it?" The music ceased, leaving a weighty silence between us. There was more to this visit than a noise complaint and I knew it.
"Are you alright, love?" Frowning, I looked over my shoulder into the kitchen area of my open plan flat. "Hunter says you've been ignoring his emails." I blinked, at a loss for words. My email account had been untouched for weeks because the thought simply hadn't crossed my mind, but how dare he run off telling tales to my mother? I was a grown woman with my own life, a life he'd walked out of. "You know he thinks the worst when he doesn't hear from you."
"He could have called." I raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm alright, Mum. I'm the best I've been in a while." Though a little worse now for hearing the 'H' word.
"You do seem different. There's more colour in your cheeks." There was no way I was going to tell her that the rosiness might be due to the fact I'd been having sex just seconds before she walked in. Less way I'd tell her what was making me feel so exuberant beyond my bedroom. "You're still wearing awful clothes though. Come on, I'm taking you shopping. No arguments."
I leapt to my feet when she headed towards my bedroom door. "No, you can't go in there!" She ignored me and made a grab for the handle. "Seriously, Mother. Please don't go in there."
She scowled at me, one hand on her hip, and paused with her other hand ready to lunge. "Why not?" I immediately thought of the bloodied sheets and balked. Even if Blaze found a place to hide, the state of that bed might give her a coronary.
"It's a mess in there." A nervous giggle escaped my throat. "You don't want to see that."
But, because she was my mother, she knew I was hiding something. "Please don't lie to me, Emmy. I know your ways. Tell me what mess you made." My eyes widened and I was vaguely aware of shaking my head. I knew what ways she meant, the conclusion she'd jumped to. She'd jump on it harder when she saw the blood. My recycled excuses for secrecy stoked her concern but I hadn't even realised that I was using them again now.
"It's not like that this time." She sighed, looking me up and down before she made the move I'd been scared of, shoving the door open before my body had time to catch up with my brain.
The brain stopped stock-still at the sight of the bedroom. The bed was freshly made, the torn up sheets hidden by the duvet, and Blaze's personal effects were scattered around the room. Fresh underwear and a change of clothes for him were folded up on the ottoman spanning the bottom of the bedstead next to a pile he'd apparently laid out for me, next to clean towels for a shower. My small, practically antique stereo system played the same music he'd been listening to in the kitchen, and he could be heard singing along from the shower in the en-suite. He'd done this on purpose, though I had no idea why or how he'd done it so quickly.
Ivy stared at me, stunned into silence. "I told you it wasn't like that this time."
"You did." She swallowed hard, blinking too fast. "Sorry love, I just... Is he handsome?" I nodded with a shy smile. She might find out for herself some day just how handsome, but on that day, I was happy enough just to give her the reassurance. "Does he look after you?"
"He does. He took me clothes shopping. He takes me to dinner." Stepping back out into the lounge area, I urged her with me and fiddled with the hem of the t-shirt. "Let's have lunch tomorrow. I'll explain everything then."
"You don't need to explain anything, Emmeline. Just tell me that you're happy."
It was that cut and dry for my mother and I loved her for it. I could have been sleeping with an ex-con and she wouldn't have cared as long as he told me I was pretty and paid for my lunch. Love was paramount and almighty as far as she was concerned, believing that everyone should be paired off with their soul mate. She swore that Hunter was her fault,
an oversight. She'd tried to pair us up too young when our personalities weren't done flourishing. By her reckoning, he was marrying his match. My other half was out there and she promised that she'd know him when she saw him. Secretly, this was another reason for keeping her away from Blaze. I was scared she'd tell me that the man who was destined to be with me was the man I couldn't have. I'd be building a miserable rod for my own back.
"I'm happy, Mum. Happy and terrified."
"Then lunch it is. 'To fear love is to fear life'. We'll have you chomping at the bit in no time."
I PURRED HAPPILY, stretching my sleepy, well-used body out across the king-size mattress, coming to rest with my head nuzzling the pillow that was once again wrapped up in Blaze's t-shirt. I'd owed him an orgasm and he'd made damn sure that he'd claimed it the minute my mother had walked out of the door. The skill and technique I'd grown accustomed to had returned, buckling me into a fairground rollercoaster I couldn't get enough of.
Blaze had been created with a vendetta to literally fuck me stupid. I could think of no logical reason for my surrendering to our difficult romance without a fight that didn't involve him at some point scrambling a few of my brain cells. Like it or not, I was bloody besotted and it was entirely his fault.
"Good afternooning, Miss White." I sat up automatically when Blaze strolled in, freshly showered and dressed in just a red chequered shirt still hanging open. He smelled strongly of men's shower gel, washed clean of the musky scent of our sex, but it still at least distracted me from the fact that he'd practically moved himself into my flat.
"Why do you do this?" I nodded down at the pillow I'd unwittingly kept clutched to me when I sat. "Why have you wrapped your t-shirt around this today?"
"I untangled myself from you earlier to go the bathroom. You were fine when I left but when I came back in a minute later, you were having a bad dream." He sat down next to my feet and took one of my hands in his, turning it palm up to trace circles on my skin.
"I had no idea."
"You calmed as soon as I sat next to you so I thought it was over. But you started to toss and turn again when I stood up, so I got my t-shirt from the lounge and made an alternative me. I didn't think you'd appreciate it if I was there when you woke up, but I couldn't just leave you like that. It was heartbreaking." His face fell and became morose and pained, like he was reliving watching me at the mercy of a nightmare. But then it brightened when he spoke again. "You immediately threw an arm over the pillow and nestled into it, calm and smiling. It was a joy to see, Emmeline." A joy to see me act so daftly or a joy to see me so comforted by his scent?
I simpered, embarrassed by my somnial admission. Surely it was the behaviour I couldn't control that betrayed me the most? "And this time?"
He smiled and stood, pulling me up to my feet. "I didn't want to take any chances. I kept checking on you to make sure I wasn't being big-headed. I wasn't. Now..."
Whatever he said, I didn't hear it. My mind was working on overdrive, clawing around for any shred of a clue at what I'd dreamt of that had made him want to comfort me beyond consciousness. That spread into a paranoia over what I'd done in my sleep, if I'd spoken or done anything untoward. What if I'd said something I shouldn't have?
I acted compliantly as he dressed me like a child. The clothes he'd picked out portrayed me as anything but. The black vest clung to my body, showing off just how slight I was, but the low cut V revealed something that I didn't usually care to show off— I was still somewhat 'blessed' around the bust. It was almost a point of embarrassment that my breasts look like someone else's stuck onto a waif, and the minute Chris had pointed out that I was unrealistically stacked and trim like a video game character was the moment I started to cover up. The flared, black satin skirt Blaze had picked to accompany it was equally as revealing. How had I not realised that he'd been dressing me up like a baby hooker when I was in the shop trying them on?
"You've expanded." Blaze spoke directly to my chest and leered, tugging at the V of the vest. "You've gained those few pounds I was lusting for. This wasn't so tight before."
Fat Emmy roused from her sleep in my subconscious and shook her head at me disapprovingly. You've been letting things slip. "What, really?" Now he mentioned it, my underwear had been feeling a little snug and the clothes he'd brought for me looked more like they would have on the airbrushed catalogue models who sold them.
"You look great for it," he assured me, forcing his eyes away from my cleavage to meet my distraught gaze. No woman wanted to be told she'd gained weight, some women didn't want to be placated with lies like, "you look so sexy". I was one of them. Blaze turned me around by the shoulders and groaned longingly behind me. "This skirt is so short..."
"Shouldn't I have showered before you dressed me?"
"No point. You're going to be filthy in minutes when the music starts and no man wants to stir another's broth."
It took moment to decipher his riddle. "You want me to go out smelling of you so I don't make it with any rockstars?" His usual cockiness faltered with the betraying twitch of his eyes. "You do! Does my green eyed monster have a green eyed monster of his own?" I felt a little guilty for calling him mine, but it didn't seem to be that particular point of the conversation that left him disgruntled.
"I certainly don't want to stand there watching anyone else putting the moves on you." He scrubbed a hand over his face and grabbed my brush from a shelf underneath a large oval mirror painted with brightly coloured filigree, a piece of art with my fingerprints all over it. Blaze sighed as he combed at the tangles in my hair, stroking the entire length down to my waist as it smoothed. "It's like I told your friend Chris, I have every intention of concreting this arrangement someday and I can accept that things won't be 'typical' in the meantime. But I'll be clear, Emmeline, one day I won't care for the complications. Mine are temporary and I can overlook yours."
"But you don't know what my complications are."
He shrugged. "I don't care. I'll take what I can get. God knows I had no idea that we'd be at this point when we met, but I don't know that it would have stopped me anyway. Ten days away from you put it into perspective and scribbled a few question marks into fullstops. I just need time, if you'll allow it."
I don't know if he needed my answer, but I was stuck too still to respond. As messed up as I was, he was looking for permission to stay and a license to become permanent fixture in my life. How could he say that he could just overlook my 'why's when he had no idea what they were? There would be times when I'd regress and fall apart, a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode, and I'd always be in love with another man. It wasn't fair to give him a green light when there was so much he didn't know, so much that might overshadow his delusion that I was a joy to look at and 'make love' to.
"You really don't know how messed up I am, Blaze." Flapping his hand uncaringly, he paced into the bathroom and returned with the case full of makeup I rarely used.
"I'm a strange man, Emmeline White. I prefer to look a person's problems as strands in a tapestry. Alone, they mean nothing, all the same dull colour and hue. Put a few strands of red in a white sea and you might say it looks wrong, blemished, unacceptable. I say it adds character and definition, all in the interest of improving the bigger picture. I could pick away and analyse, questioning why they're there, or I could appreciate that they are and enjoy the masterpiece that took a miracle worker twenty-two years to weave. Now look up." With a smile on his lips, Blaze held my chin up with his forefinger and kissed the tip of my nose. I loved the way he could ham up any sentiment with something poetic when 'I don't give a shit' would have done. There was no way in which he didn't seduce me and leave my inner Juliet drooling and damp around the gusset.
Holding a kohl pencil next to my eye did, however, concern me. "You're going to do my makeup? What, are you—"
"A model? Yes." He gave me a look that warned me off the words 'gay', 'cross-dresser' and 'post-op'. "I also spent a lot of puberty painting Warhammer armies. Loo
k up." It was nigh on impossible to imagine Blaze as the nerdy type- huddled over collectors cards and hyperventilating over pictures of girls boobs. It was harder to imagine him ever not being attractive. Nobody just morphed into a stud when their balls dropped and I refused to believe that he'd been a special case.
He applied my makeup with care and a delicate touch I never would have expected from a man who could be so brusque and domineering. It was almost like having a very masculine big sister prettying me up for the prom I never attended. He sucked on the back of his teeth thoughtfully when he'd finished and stepped back to examine me.
"You'll do. Any more and we won't make it out. I already have balls like space hoppers from looking at that skirt."
I glanced down at the short band of satin and smirked. "You like?"
"I'd like it better if it was all you were wearing and your ankles were by my ears." His eyes misted with a heavy haze of arousal that made heat pool between my legs. That look, Jesus, I was addicted to it. "Keep looking at me like that, Emmeline," he warned, lips dipping to graze my earlobe, "and neither of us will leave this flat for days."
"Keep talking like that, Blaze," I countered, "and neither of us will leave for weeks." And a very small part of me thought it might just honour that threat, keeping him captive in my ivory tower whether it was complicated or not.
Eight
"THAT SKIRT IS so short..."
"You mentioned." I swatted at Blaze's hand as I climbed out of our taxi onto the pretentious red carpet that was typical of one of Henry's establishments. He said that he liked his guests to feel important when they arrived, like royalty. That was bullshit, he just knew how to market his businesses.