His eyes travelled slowly from my face down over my chest, my belly, across the front of my briefs, between my legs, back up, while I … waited. Breathless and shaky and greedy for him.
And then he dipped his head, kissed my mouth as he laid his hands on my rib cage, slid them slowly around me. He lifted me slightly, feeling for the clasp of my bra. Unclipping, stripping it off me, tossing it over his shoulder. And then he was pushing me down on the bed again, his hands and mouth on my naked, straining breasts. Fingers swirling, rubbing, pinching, rolling. Using his tongue to flick and lick, his mouth to suck and kiss and blow, his teeth to graze and nibble. It was impossible to separate one action from the next as he alternated the pressure, soft to hard; the pace, fast to slow. All the while, building, building, building the fire in me until I was gasping, arching up for him, almost delirious with pleasure.
He raised himself over me again, looking deeply into my eyes. ‘I’ll do it right this time,’ he promised, and leaned in to kiss my mouth. ‘I’ll show you how good it can be between us.’ Another long, drugging kiss. ‘So good, Evie.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered back, shifting beneath him, trying to urge him between my legs. ‘But do it now. Please, Jack, enough waiting.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, and took my mouth in another deep kiss. And then he was moving back down my body, leading with that hot, firm mouth. He kissed along my collarbones, down my chest, pausing at each nipple once more for a long, licking kiss. He looked up at me, through a lock of black hair that had fallen across one eye. ‘Love, love, love these. I could keep my mouth on you for hours,’ he said. And then he moved down, over my rib cage. My hands were in his hair, clutching at him.
‘Yes,’ he urged against my skin. ‘Touch me, Evie. Your hands. On me. Somewhere, anywhere.’
He moved inexorably lower. My hips arched off the bed, rolled against him, and I gasped as his hand brushed lightly against the front of my briefs. I wished he would rip them off, tear them, open me up.
He slid down the bed so that his mouth was positioned between my legs. But he stayed still, poised there. Brushed his fingers against me again, more firmly, deliberately. I moaned. My hips jerked.
‘Remember, Evie, last time we didn’t even get around to taking these off?’ Another touch, this time sliding between my thighs. He played his fingers over my covered crotch. ‘You were so hot, so wet, just for me,’ he said. ‘Like now.’
He looked up at me, and then put his hands beneath my bottom and raised my hips off the bed, kissed briefly between my legs. ‘The scent of you drives me wild,’ he said. And then he stripped the briefs off me and settled between my thighs. ‘But I’m going to love the taste of you even more.’ He ran his fingers over my tiny thatch of trimmed blonde hair, and I could barely breathe as all my senses leapt. He slid his fingers lower, touching me intimately. And then he lowered his head and used his tongue, sliding it over and around and inside me. I was pleading with him, skating grabbing fingers over his head, his shoulders.
Then he pulled me tightly, so tightly, against his mouth, breathed me in as he sucked, and I exploded, the tremors shaking me violently. He stayed, his mouth gently moving on me, until my body finally stilled. And then he slid up my body, sheathing himself inside me with one firm, deliberate thrust.
Oh my Goooooood. I was gasping again within moments, reaching towards another orgasm. Too hot, too soon. No. No, no, no – I wanted him to come. I wanted to be the one to make him come.
I pushed him off me, and then, lightning fast, rolled so that I was on top of him. ‘My turn,’ I said, and reached for him, guiding him to the opening of my body. A moan eased out of me as I sank onto him. The perfection of him filling me was almost unbearable, but I still wanted more. I pushed harder, circling my hips, moaned again. ‘Jack … that feels … so good. So … ahhhh God!’
My words seemed to snatch the last of his control, and he reached up to tangle his hands in my curls, pulling me down to kiss me at the same time as he thrust up into me so hard and fast, so powerfully, it teetered on the precipice between pleasure and pain, and the undiluted passion of it was glorious. The sound of our bodies straining sweatily against each other, the smell of him, the musky taste of myself on his lips, the feel of his mouth sliding against my own in a kind of savage mess, because he was gasping and whispering and kissing me all at the same time.
The pressure, the ache, the build. God, it was … everythiiiing.
I came again, with a loud cry, and Jack thrust once more, shouting as he poured himself inside me.
What was it about Jack that made me forget about condoms?
I shivered, and Jack reached for the bedclothes, pulling them up over our naked bodies. He eased me into his arms and kissed my temple. The sweetness of that made me want to cry. And there was that feeling again – that I was in trouble.
So I forced out a laugh, nice and dismissive. ‘Talk about getting Evie laid!’
Jack’s fingers had been threading through my hair, but instantly they stilled. ‘Getting Evie laid,’ he repeated slowly. ‘That’s not what this is about.’
‘But that’s how we started tonight. I asked you to get me laid, remember?’
He sat up, snapped on the bedside lamp, looked at me. ‘What’s this really about, Evie?’
‘It’s about –’ I stopped, fearing this conversation now the time had come. ‘About sex. Of course. So thank you. I enjoyed it. A lot.’
‘You enjoyed it a lot.’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus, Evie,’ he said, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
And yep, I was definitely in trouble. Because the thought of him leaving, even if it was only the bed, terrified me. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I just –’ He looked at me over his shoulder. ‘I thought you wanted me.’
‘I do. I mean I did.’
‘Me! Me, not sex. Me.’
‘I – I did.’
‘Did.’
‘Stop repeating everything I say.’
He stood, looked down at me. ‘Saying you “did” want me suggests you “don’t” want me now. Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That you don’t want me any more? Because I’m not a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist or a rocket scientist? Or for some other dumbass reason? Go on, tell me you don’t want me. Tell me, and I promise I’ll leave you alone.’
I tried – but my mouth wouldn’t open.
‘You can’t tell me, can you?’ he said. ‘Because you do want me.’
‘All right, yes, I want you,’ I said. ‘Happy now?’
He sat back on the bed. ‘Getting there.’
‘I want you tonight,’ I said, very deliberately. ‘And I want you tomorrow night. Anything else is insane.’
‘You said that last time we made love. That it was insane to think of a relationship. It wasn’t good enough then, Evie – and it sure as fuck isn’t good enough now. It’s not insane, it just is. It just is – understand?’
‘Whatever it is, it’s a two-day maximum, because you’re going to Morocco.’
Jack resettled beside me, facing me. ‘Come with me.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘You can. Just say the word and it’s done.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh sure. The media will have a field day with that.’
‘Why? It’s not human trafficking, it’s boy-meets-girl. Unattached boy meets unattached girl. Nothing to report.’
I closed my eyes tight. ‘Jack …’ Opened them. ‘About Sam … I’ll tell you. All of it. Maybe then you’ll understand why this isn’t going anywhere.’
‘I already understand the only important thing – that you belong with me.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘But all right, tell me, Evie. And I’ll find a way to fix things.’
‘I’m the thing that needs fixing,’ I whispered.
‘That’s not true.’
I rolled onto my back, away from him, staring at the ceiling as though that would make it easier to talk. ‘I
met Sam at a media awards ceremony in my last year at university. I was there with Chloe. She’d met him when he came to our university to give a guest lecture to the journalism students. So she introduced us, the way she always does, being the networking queen of the universe. Sam was up for the main award for a story he’d done on police corruption – and when he won, of course I was starry-eyed.’ I sucked in a breath. ‘I thought he was so fine and principled. Sniffing out corruption. Fighting against injustice. Supporting the powerless. His job was a thousand times more admirable than my own.’
Jack had hoist himself onto his elbow beside me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with what you do for a living, Evie,’ he said simply.
‘Sam thought there was. He was so derisive when I got my job … Anyway, that was him. Lucky him. Living the dream, doing a job that meant everything to him. He saw himself as a great crusader, naming and shaming corrupt politicians and shady businessmen, attacking corporations. And I was so naïve, I believed everything he said about himself. And about me, too, when I didn’t land my dream job – that I was a sell-out for choosing money over ideals.’
‘Ah, I get it. The whole job obsession.’
‘I guess it is an obsession. I was just always so sure of what I’d be doing – and when I didn’t end up doing it, I made do with basking in Sam’s reflected glory as he strove to make the world a better place, one column centimetre at a time. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t altruism driving him. It was ego. More than anything, he was interested in making a name for himself, and those hard-hitting exposés were the way to do it.’
We’d reached the hard part, so I sat up, leaning my back against the bed head. No lolling for this.
Jack sat up beside me, took my hand.
I cleared my throat. ‘So. The infamous magazine column. It was different from his other work. Anonymous – which he seemed to think made it acceptable to write about us, about me, without telling me. Our first meeting. First date. The first time we had sex. Which morphed into sharing our lovemaking preferences – seriously!’ I looked at Jack with the ghost of a smile. ‘And they weren’t exactly deserving of the notoriety they got.’
‘What – compared to me?’ Jack asked, and made me smile for real.
‘Let’s just say vanilla sponge cake versus chocolate cherry torte with a side serving of caramel cream.’
‘I hope I’m not the vanilla sponge.’
I giggled.
He raised my hand to his lips, kissed it. ‘But I’ll be the whole cake shop for you, Evie.’
‘Anyway,’ I continued, a little choked up by that, ‘even sharing that wasn’t enough for Sam. He needed more raw material. He decided to test my reactions to what I suppose he thought was the next stage of a relationship: infidelity. So he pushed to get my reaction – very clichéd, I’m afraid – to the smell of some other woman’s perfume, lipstick smears, email messages left on the laptop so I would see them. And then he wrote about what I said, what I did. The explosions, the confessions, the contrition, the reconciliations.’
‘Dickhead.’
I giggled again. Jack said ‘dickhead’ like you might say ‘carpenter’ or ‘brunette’. Like it was just an immutable fact.
‘So …?’ he asked.
‘So, of course, the last part of the relationship had to be the break-up,’ I said. ‘Nicely engineered, so people all over the country got to learn about the tears, accusations, and recriminations. Including me – except that I had no idea it was me who was starring in the soap opera. Not until I got a call out of the blue from a newspaper reporter, asking me to confirm that I was the woman the columns were based on.’
‘Ah, Evie.’
‘I thought it was a mistake, so I called Sam. And he told me the offer to write the column had been too good to refuse. That because the column was meant to be anonymous, I wasn’t supposed to know, and what a person didn’t know didn’t hurt them. But his identity had somehow slipped out.’
The disillusionment hit me all over again. ‘Not that any of that would have made what he did acceptable – but his identity didn’t just “somehow slip out”, of course. Chloe went digging, and found out that because the column had become so successful, Sam’s ego had got the better of him. He had to make sure a few people knew who penned it, and they told people, who told other people, and … well.’
I paused, thinking back. ‘From his perspective, it was a case of, so what if my name got mangled in the process? We weren’t together any more and I was nothing to him.’
‘Evie, darling,’ Jack murmured, pulling me into his side, under his arm, cradling me there.
It felt so wonderful, being able to nestle my head into his shoulder – too wonderful, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. ‘I know I should be able to let it go, move on,’ I whispered. ‘And I want to, because I hate being the way I am. But it was so mortifying, to be talked about. To have my photo taken when I least suspected it, looking so shattered. What if I never get over that fear? And just think … The scale. What I went through is only the tiniest fraction of what you put up with every day. If I were with you, I’d end up embarrassing you as well as myself. And that’s why this thing between us can’t … can’t be.’
Jack kissed the top of my head. ‘But it is, Evie. It already is. You’re fighting a losing battle.’
‘I accept that you’ve already won the battle, Jack. We’re here, in bed together, you got me. But if we stop now, then you go to Morocco, and I stay here … Well, there’s no story. No public fallout.’
‘Go to sleep, Evie. We can fight about this tomorrow.’
‘Nothing to fight over.’
‘I’m fighting for you, Evie. Against you, for you. I’ve got tomorrow and a handful of hours either side, and I’m fighting. As dirty as I have to.’
‘I don’t want to fight.’
‘That’s okay – you can just surrender.’
‘Not going to do that either.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘No, we won’t.’
Jack laughed, low in his chest. ‘Tomorrow, Evie.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I can make coffee,’ I said, when Jack, smelling of my soap, walked into the kitchen the next morning. ‘But I don’t have any food.’
‘Yeeeah … you’re not that good in bed, Evie. Not having your coffee. Let’s go out. That way we get coffee and food.’ Quicksilver smile. ‘Our first date.’
‘We’re not dating.’
‘Okay then – our first time eating breakfast without anyone else at the table.’
Little trickle of fear. ‘I’ve got to go to work.’
‘It’s breakfast, not a ten-course degustation menu.’
‘And there might be … I mean, what if there are photographers?’
‘There probably won’t be. But if there are, they’ll see two people eating breakfast. Stop the presses!’
I fiddled with the lapel of my jacket, procrastinating. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him but I was, frankly, terrified at the idea of being seen in public one-on-one.
‘Promise not to kiss you across the table,’ he said solemnly – not exactly helpful.
‘Jack!’
‘I can look bored – what about that?’ He gave me a ‘bored’ look. ‘Will that get you out of the house with me?’
I giggled – which got rid of some of my tension. I knew I was being stupid. Who would think Jackson J Stevens was with – as in with – me? For all anyone knew, we could be business associates. Or … or friends. Nobody had to know we were mid-fling.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, wavering. ‘I think – I don’t think – I’m not dressed for … for photographers.’
Jack took my hands in his and held them wide as he looked me up and down. ‘Black suit. White shirt. Hair in a ponytail – sort of.’ He tucked a curl behind my ear. ‘It’s breakfast on your way to work, not a film premiere.’ He smiled, but it looked strained. ‘Come on, Evie.’
I gave him a half-hearted shrug tha
t he took for acceptance, and he rushed me out the door so fast my head spun, just shy of The Exorcist, before I could change my mind.
He took my hand as we hit the footpath and wouldn’t let me pull free.
I glanced around as he strode purposefully down the path. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To my car.’
I stopped abruptly. Didn’t Hollywood people who were having flings always arrive and leave places separately? ‘I’ll drive myself. Otherwise how will I get home after work? Just tell me where to meet you.’
Jack looked like he was about to argue, but in the end he nodded. ‘The café near your office. Big blue door.’
‘Oh, that one. I was thinking maybe we could try the smaller one. It has better coffee. Better –’
‘Big blue door, Evie.’
‘Okay,’ I said, but I could feel a finger of fear trailing down my spine.
‘Evie.’ Warning look. ‘Don’t not come. Because I will come and drag you out of your office if I have to. And that’s a promise, not a threat.’
I felt like a cannibal carrying a severed head into the policemen’s ball as I slunk in through the big blue doorway and scuttled over to Jack’s table. Criminally conspicuous.
The waitress hurried over the moment I sat, but stared straight at Jack, even though his regular double espresso was already sitting in front of him.
‘Coffee, Evie?’ Jack asked quietly.
‘Cappuccino please.’ And man, those two squeaky words were hard to get out. Ridiculous.
‘And can I get you something to eat?’ the waitress purred, still looking at Jack.
‘Evie?’ Jack asked, and the waitress finally looked at me.
‘Um … toast. And jam. I guess.’
I sat like a block of petrified wood while Jack patiently repeated my order to the starry-eyed waitress (who hadn’t listened to me), and ordered an omelette for himself.
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