The Seduction of Suzanne

by Amelia Hart

  No, there was no harm in keeping his secrets. If it came down to it he’d tell her sometime. And it might come to it. She was swiftly becoming an obsession. She held him at arm’s length like a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, advancing and retreating with diabolical timing.

  Yet for all that there was a fineness to her, a strong thread of integrity and . . . was innocence possible in this jaded world? . . . that left him wondering if it was calculation, blind instinct or something else that had her pushing his buttons with such sure knowledge.

  He planned to peel those layers away gently, with relish, until he understood what lay beneath. A fascinating, frustrating puzzle of a woman.

  Chapter Eight

  That day at the pool formed the pattern for the next two weeks. Every morning Justin met her on the front verandah of her house. He never asked to see inside, and she never invited him in. They wandered the island together, tramping, swim-ming, cycling, fishing, kayaking, even snorkelling.

  Over the many hours spent with him, he was always the perfect companion. His conversation was intelligent and interesting, at times light hearted, occasionally philosophical. He proved to be much more well-read and erudite than she had expected from a man whom she was ashamed to admit she had initially thought of as a ‘mere surfer’.

  She was forced to reassess her prejudices. There was no doubt that this particular drifting layabout would be clever and able enough to hold down virtually any job he wanted. His lack of motivation puzzled her.

  Even more bewildering was their relationship. He was at all times friendly and obliging, but in the casual way of a friend. She would start to wonder if she was the only one tamping down lust and trying to act normal.

  And then he would turn to her with that heat in his eyes, or touch her with hands that lingered. And his kisses. Oh, he kissed with a blazing passion that thrilled and terrified her. Again and again she broke away, skittish and aroused. Each time he let her go, watching, always watching.

  And slowly she began to believe in him, his self-control, his respect for her. She craved his kisses more and more, circling back for another taste in a spiral of desire that grew tighter and tighter. A web. Or maybe a noose. She still wasn’t sure. She didn’t have the experience to judge what was between them. And his control was too complete to penetrate, to figure out what he wanted.

  Beyond her. Oh, he wanted her alright. He didn’t try to hide the way his body responded to her. In the darkness of night, in her solitary bed, she thought of the hardness of his body and longed fiercely to have him there with her, wrapped around her, inside her, completing the equation he started.

  But where she could be bold and fearless in her fantasies, in reality the depth of passion between them made her break and run.

  She couldn’t imagine what he thought of her. She had heard the word cocktease. She hoped it hadn’t occurred to him to apply it to her. She couldn’t explain herself to him. Couldn’t bear to talk about their relationship at all. She simply lived in it, day by day, hoping and fearing and hoping again until she was dizzy with it.

  The hard edge of resistance within her softened. Her body grew to know him. When he held her she held him back, fitting into him like he was the missing piece of her puzzle, slotted against her. And though there still came that moment when she would instinctively back away, needing to escape, her reactivity dimmed, flickered, made way for passion and her handmaiden: lust.

  Even when she wasn’t with him, all she seemed to think of was him. He filled both her days and her nights. She became bad-tempered and capricious in her frustration, but he took her moods in his stride, teasing her gently until she fell back into reluctant good-humour. Nothing seemed to dent his equanimity.

  She just couldn’t work him out. What were his intentions? If all he wanted from her was a sexual relationship, he was certainly going about it a most peculiar way. To always step back after a kiss, and spend the rest of the day playing hands-off . . . it was like no seduction she’d ever heard of.

  They spent an enormous amount of time together. But never at night. She was afraid to share the darkness with him, its shadows and secrets reminded her of that other night long ago. He didn’t pry about why only the daytime, didn’t even mention it in fact. So maybe it suited him too.

  If he was doing any surfing at all, it was in the long, light-filled summer evenings after he had dropped her back home. Yet with determination she continued to brush aside the suspicion of him being serious about her.

  She refused to nurse foolish hopes about this gorgeous, clever, charming man.

  She had no doubt that he could have virtually any woman he wanted, so why should he choose her? Ordinary, everyday Suzanne, who had spent most of her life on an island just off the coast of New Zealand.

  The more she came to know about Justin, the more she admired him. He was like no one she’d ever met before. Her father had raised her with a straightforward ethos: work diligently, and set aside time to rest and play. She still sometimes felt decadent and sybaritic about the long, leisure-filled holidays that teaching allowed her.

  But Justin took the philosophy of enjoying life to a new level. Sometimes she shook her head at herself for looking up to a man she would previously have dismissed as an unproductive hedonist. Yet he was so centred and well grounded. He knew exactly who he was, and what he wanted from his life.

  Most of all he was happy. Simply, intensely happy. Suzanne realised she had only ever before encountered that kind of joy in children. It was a magnetic quality, which adulthood hadn’t managed to extract from him.

  And he was an adult, there was no question of that. He was a deep, complex man. If she hadn’t taken to observing him so closely, she might have missed the layers of thought and awareness that he occasionally revealed. She got the feeling that not only did he get on easily with people, he also understood them very well. He certainly seemed to be able to read her at times with remarkable ease.

  And oh, she loved his stories. She laughed so much sometimes her cheeks ached. When Justin spoke of his travels around the world, she could feel the soles of her feet begin to itch, and had to acknowledge how limited the scope of her safe little life was. He described the people and places he had seen so vividly, a hunger to see them had been rebuilt in her, despite her half-hearted attempts to deny it.

  She started to think that it would be no bad thing to save money in order to travel. After all, she was only twenty-four. Without her father around she had no ties to the island beyond her house and job. The house could be rented out, and when she had last spoken to Marie, the teacher whose post she had taken over after Marie had gone on maternity leave, the woman had mentioned the idea of returning to work now her son was older.

  Yet when Suzanne envisaged going to Europe or Asia, Africa or America, her imagination seemed always to place the tall figure of Justin by her side. In fact she was finding it increasingly difficult to visualise her life without him in it, for all that she had known him for little more than three weeks.

  Still, she would be going back to work in seven days, and then she would have to see less of him.

  She reminded him of it that very evening. Wishing to break their routine of only spending the days together – and the associations dictating that choice – she invited him to dinner. More than half-expecting him to politely refuse, the offer was made tentatively. He accepted with pleasure.

  They had spent the day fishing off a friend’s large dinghy on the sheltered side of the island. The sun had blazed down, was still doing so now at six o’clock in the evening. It would continue to be hot until sunset, shortly after nine. Then the steady breeze would offer some respite as the air cooled.

  With a sigh of relief she opened her front door and ushered him inside, where it was dimmer and relatively cool. She dropped the backpack she was carrying on the floor and headed for the kitchen sink. Her face felt a little tight from a combination of salt and reflected sunshine, and she wanted to splash some of the ic
y water from her underground cistern on herself.

  It was only after she had done so, and was wiping the excess off with her hands and looking for a towel, that she realised Justin was still standing in the doorway

  He was staring at one of her paintings, a large landscape which hung on the kitchen wall and seemed almost to glow in the warm sunlight that streamed in through the west-facing French doors.

  “That,” he said reverently, “is beautiful.”

  “Do you like it?” she asked rhetorically, feeling a rush of gladness. She had never said much to him about her painting, though she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t usually discuss it with anyone, but then that could be said of most of what she’d told him about herself.

  “Very much. Is it by an artist on the island? It must be,” he went on, without waiting for her answer. “It has that loving familiarity with the subject.” He walked forward and put out a hand as if he must touch the canvas, stopping at the last moment with his fingers just above its surface.

  She was delighted with his wholehearted response.

  “Does the artist have more for sale? Will I be able to buy one?” he asked.

  “I should think so, although she might be persuaded to give you a painting if you’re nice to her,” she said playfully, mindful of his financial situation and unwilling to take his money.

  “Really?” he asked doubtfully, with a slight frown. “I can’t imagine anyone simply giving away an artwork of this quality.”

  She gave an involuntary gurgle of delight, then grasped his large hand and pulled him out the door and down the hall. As he saw more of her work hanging on the plain cream walls she watched a dawning comprehension battle disbelief on his features. With a final tug she propelled him into her workroom, where her current work took pride of place on an easel. Stacked in the racks against the walls were other canvases, some finished and dry, others blank and waiting. The walls were stark white, to reflect the bright light from the large windows and overhead skylight.

  “This is where I paint mostly,” she said, holding back her laughter at his dumbfounded expression. “Occasionally I work from life, but usually I make sketches and then come back here to complete them, as the mood strikes.” She gestured to the wall, where several pencil, charcoal and acrylic paint studies of her current subject hung.

  “And all this time, you haven’t said a word to me about this vital part of your life,” he said slowly.

  “Well, no, but then there are all sorts of things I don’t know about you,” she said, her tone a little defensive. “There are times when I ask you direct questions about stuff, like what you do when you work, and about your family and so on, and you avoid answering and then change the subject. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. If you don’t want to let me in that’s your business. But if I then decide that there are things I would rather keep to myself then I’m quite entitled,” and she put her hands on her hips and looked challengingly up at him.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I suppose it must seem as if I have been keeping secrets at times. I am delighted,” and he put his hands on her shoulder and looked squarely into her eyes, “that you’ve decided to share your beautiful work with me. I’ve just been taken completely by surprise, that’s all. Nobody told me you painted.”

  “Oh, barely anyone knows,” she said breezily, mollified.

  “Do you sell them on the mainland?”

  “I don’t sell them at all.”

  “Why not?” he asked, obviously astonished.

  “Because…Well I…It’s just a hobby. I didn’t think anyone would want to buy them,” she said with a shrug.

  There was a silence. When she finally looked up he was staring at her oddly.

  “Suzanne,” he said, “these are some of the most incredible modern landscapes I have ever seen, and I’ve been around. I don’t think you’d have any difficulty selling every one of them, if that’s what you wanted. In fact, if I were you, I’d look at exhibiting them overseas.”

  She stared at him.

  “You really think so?” she said with wonder.

  “I do,” he replied firmly. “I cannot believe that you can paint like this, without ever having had formal training.”

  “I did want to go to art school when I was younger, but it just didn’t seem sensible, so I decided to teach instead.”

  “Do you really enjoy painting? More than teaching, I mean?”

  “Oh yes. I paint most of the year round, in my free time. It’s only in summer during the school holidays that I try to take a break. I don’t think it’s healthy to be inside all the time. So I get out and fill myself with sunshine and beauty, and it keeps me going for the rest of the year. Even then I can’t quite keep myself away. I’ve been working on this one in the evenings, while there’s still light.”

  “If you had the chance, would you leave teaching and study art?”

  “It’s not sensible…and I don’t have the money. . .” she faltered.

  “If you took these paintings to the US – to California, just as a for instance – you could sell them there and probably make more than enough to support yourself in your studies.”

  She quailed at the idea of taking such a risk.

  “I don’t know…I’m not sure if I really want…I just--”

  “Give it some thought, Suzanne. It would be a crime to waste a talent like yours.”

  He met her gaze earnestly, and she saw that he was utterly serious.

  She hesitated, frowning at him doubtfully, then turned and led the way back over the bare floorboards to the kitchen, picking through what he’d just said, cherishing the compliments but doubting the expertise of the source.

  She asked Justin to fetch the chilly bin she had left on the verandah as they came in. He went and carried it back in easily, though it must have weight thirty kilos at least. She was briefly distracted by his flexed muscles, then turned away before he could catch her mooning over him.

  The chilli bin contained a couple of white-fleshed snapper on a bed of half-melted ice cubes. They had caught the fish a couple of hours earlier. She started jasmine rice cooking, then filleted the fish.

  She set the fillets in the fridge while she went outside to pick fresh leaves and tomatoes from her vegetable garden for a salad.

  Justin drifted after her, and came to stand beside her, putting the leaves she passed him in a plastic bowl he had thoughtfully snagged in the kitchen, popping tiny cherry tomatoes into his mouth when he thought she wasn’t looking. She pointedly caught him in the act and he blinked at her all wide-eyed and guilty-trying-to-look-innocent then grinned like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “They’re all warm from the sunshine. I like feeling them pop in my mouth and all the seeds spray out.”

  So she passed him another one, placing it between his teeth when he opened his mouth for her obligingly, his eyes growing darker with a sensuous light as she stroked his lip closed over the small red fruit. She watched his jaw move, imagining the seeds bursting out and coating his tongue

  His eyes were on her, and as her eyelids drooped low over her eyes he stepped forward, put a hand on her waist and urged her towards him. Without protest she came, stepping between his spread feet and pressing against his body.

  He claimed her mouth with a hungry directness. She felt the scrape of his teeth across her lower lip. It made her shudder and cling to him. His hand slid up her back to clasp the nape of her neck. She could taste a sweet acidity in his mouth: the traces of the tomato. It was amazing to her that such a minor intimacy – the hint of the food she had just fed him – could turn her on so much.

  With a murmur of approval he deepened the kiss still further, pressing her into him. His fingers cupped her neck and bottom.

  She slid a hand underneath his shirt to dig her fingernails into the heated skin of his back. She rubbed her body against his, the slide of their clothes over the hard ridges of his muscles overwhelmingly erotic. He groaned and plunged his tongue into h
er mouth. Hedonistically she welcomed it, drew it in and sucked on it, making him shudder powerfully. Heat radiated through her body, tightening her nipples and turning her knees to water. She whimpered quietly in the distress of her own pleasure.

  It seemed that he heard the small sound, for he gentled the kiss, pulling back slightly, and then more, lifting his fingers to run them up her spine. As his mouth left hers she laid her head to rest on his shoulder, slightly dizzy. Her nose was against the skin of his neck and she sifted through the scents that had come to mean Justin in her mind. His arms went around her and he held her gently in a hug. She felt so safe like that, with all that masculine power wrapped around her, undemand-ing and present.

  He was still breathing a little fast. She moved her hand to the narrow groove between his pectorals, feeling it rise and fall. Oh, she could stand here all day like this, and never let him go.

  But the thought was enough to make her move away.

  With reluctance he disengaged until only his hands touched her elbows, giving her support as she swayed a little. Her eyes opened, and fixed dazedly on him, the eyelids feeling weighted and heavy. His mouth was slightly swollen, and without thought she put her fingertips up to touch it. He shuddered. She smiled shyly.

  “Witch,” he accused her in a hoarse whisper.

  Her eyes opened very wide.

  “Yes. Witch,” he said in response to that inquiry. “With your long black hair, and eyes so deep a brown that a man could drown in them. That flawless white skin and beautiful body. How could you be anything else?”

  “Ha! Yeah right. What I wouldn’t give for a little power over you.” Then she bit her lip, embarrassed by her own comment, and turned away. “That should be enough for the salad. You can put it all together while I fry the fish.”