by Megan Mulry
“You are humming, my dear. Is this going to turn into some perverted phone sex?”
“Did someone say perverted?” Abigail asked optimistically. Her hand reached for her breast before she had time to even give it a thought. She bit down on her lower lip, closing her eyes and tugging at her nipple, just as Eliot had done earlier that morning when she screamed through the peak of another glorious orgasm.
“What are you doing, damn it?” His voice was adamant. “This is cruel. I’m standing in the middle of the Malpensa Airport. You’re going to get me arrested.”
“Just talk to me. You know.” She moaned involuntarily as she continued to tease her nipples and think of his tongue on her. “Like normal.”
“Abigail,” he growled.
“Yes, just like that, like you need to…” She gasped at the memory from yesterday when he had taken her from behind. “…Like you need to have me right now…”
“Stop it this instant!”
An elderly Italian woman who was waiting for her luggage looked up at his rude tone and shook her head in disgust. She obviously thought he was a despicable, controlling man. What a travesty of the truth: Abigail controlled his every waking moment.
Abigail’s breathing was starting to fracture. She switched her phone to speaker and set it on the pillow next to her. “Eliot,” she whispered into the phone, “it’s Pavlovian, darling. You come to me at night. It’s just how it is. I can’t help thinking of you now.” Her back arched to force her moist center more firmly into her own palm, and she whimpered her pleasure. “I’m sorry to be so selfish, but please talk to me,” she begged.
His angry breathing was crackling through the ether. He sighed then. “Oh, all right, let me move off to a quiet corner at least. But you are asking a lot and I plan to be properly compensated at a later date.” She could hear the background noises changing and then he must have settled himself. “Tell me where you are. Where are your hands?” he demanded.
“I’m on my bed and I have one hand, you know, and the other at my breast.”
“Okay. First of all, there can be none of this you-know business. I want to hear exactly where your hands are and what your fingers are doing.” His voice rasped against her, like a brutal, knowing touch.
“Mmmmm, Eliot, keep talking like that. Your voice is so damned sexy.” She let her finger dip into her slick folds, and cupped one heavy breast. “One finger just slid into my wet… pussy, the other”—she twisted her nipple methodically while pressing into her needy breast—“mmmm, the other is toying with my nipple… like you did… like I want you to… I need more hands…”
“Oh. Good. God. I don’t think I can do this. Seriously, Abigail, I’m going to get put in jail for lewd and lascivious behavior in a public place. I’m so hard for you right now.” He could hear her breathing accelerating in that familiar way, toward her release. “Do you like that idea? Of my hard cock wanting to be inside you so badly that I am going to have to go into a fucking public bathroom stall and pull it out?”
“Yes…” Her breathing was a mix of whimpers and desperate, encouraging inhales.
“And I’m going to take a few long, hard pulls with my hand—” Her sharp intake of breath told him that was exactly the idea. He was still whispering into the phone, one hand covering his mouth to ensure no one else could hear him. “And I am going to think of your taut, hard, willing body taking me… taking me everywhere, Abigail. Now. Come for me now, Abigail.”
She screamed his name into the empty bedroom, into the red flash behind her eyelids, into him: he was so close, right there, in her mind. “Oh, dear god. Eliot,” she panted out the words.
He sat in the corner of the airport and softly cursed every possible, vile deprecation he could think of. “I’m glad one of us is satisfied,” he bit out. “You need to get your ass to Geneva. Right. Now. Or I need to move there. I don’t care which, but we need to deal with this immediately. I’m not going to be alone and harder than a brick—did I mention how alone I am?—for any longer than absolutely necessary. Decide where you want to live and let’s be done with it, Abigail.”
Click.
Abigail’s lolling head stared at the small phone, propped on the pillow by her head like a little hotel mint. He was right, of course, but she still didn’t want to think about the realities of all that. She groaned at the prospect of real life encroaching on her small, private dream life with Eliot. He was going to have to extricate himself from his engagement. Abigail was going to have to decide whether staying in London was truly important. He was willing to throw it all over for her. His company. The beautiful house in Versoix he had described in loving detail. She tried to fight him on those points, claiming he didn’t know what he was saying or hadn’t thought it all the way through.
But he looked more angry and intractable at those moments than ever. Their conversation on the last night in their room at the Ritz had been one of many that week that always ended at the same impasse.
“I have had a lifetime to contemplate what I am and am not willing to do or not do, and a year on top of that where you’re concerned, Lady Abigail Heyworth. I am not going to settle. I want you. Unequivocally. All of you. All the time. I don’t care for those British ideas of absentee spouses—”
“That’s not fair! Bronte and Max are not absentee spouses—”
“Exactly. They live together. In the same country, in the same city, in the same bed! We have already squandered entire lifetimes not being together. I’m done with that.”
“I suppose you’re going to want to get married and all that.”
“I don’t give a crap about that and you know it. You’re mine. I’m yours. Nothing will change that.” He was looking out the window at the Place Vendôme, quiet and glistening in the middle of the night. He turned back to face her where she was sitting cross-legged on the bed with the sheets pulled up loosely onto her lap. “Nothing.” He stalked, naked, as usual, back to the bed and sat in front of her. “This is totally unconditional for me, Abigail. I don’t know why. It’s not like me to be so completely unanalytical, but I have no desire to parse it any further. I spent the last year trying to figure out what went wrong, and you know why it was such a mind bender? Because nothing was wrong. It was always right between us, but we were too”—he waved his hand in her general direction—“something… to see it. You were scared. I was demanding. I don’t know. After a while, though, I think people start to recognize when life presents them with a truly unique opportunity. I think I knew it the minute I saw you. What we have is indisputable. Immoveable.”
Abigail was trying to distract herself from the power of his words. The truth of them always made her want to wince a little, as from a too-hot coal fire in the old-fashioned grate at Dunlear. “I know. I know it’s all true, but it’s just so—”
“Abigail!” He didn’t raise his voice often, other than to roar his carnal satisfaction, so when he did, Abigail started.
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
She kept her gaze down. “I don’t need to look at you to know you’re right. I feel kind of weak when I look at you.” He put his finger under her chin, and with a gentle urging, brought her face to face with him. Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears and her lips were twisted into a lopsided smile. “See?” she croaked.
“Oh, Abigail. It’s all too much, isn’t it?”
She hated feeling like a little girl, but something about broken engagements and moving across continents made her feel entirely small.
“It will all turn out right,” she hiccupped and wiped at a stray tear. “I know that’s true, here”—she put her hand on his heart—“but everything out there?” She tossed her head toward the large windows overlooking the Place Vendôme. “It feels tricky and loaded with obstacles and trials.”
“Abigail—”
“No, wait, because I think this is legitimate. It’s not just that I feel like a home wrecker”—she knew it was tired ground, they’d argued t
hat point past death—“but more that I don’t want to look back a few years from now and feel like we were swept up in this part of everything. I love feeling swept up.” She gestured between the two of them and let her hand return to his warm chest, loving the feel of his constant, reliable heart pounding beneath her touch. “Swept up here, this way, but all of the realities of where we will live and how we will live, I need to own all of that.”
Eliot rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know what that means. My mother says crap like that all the time, about owning this or that, and it makes me feel like a friggin’ caveman that I have no clue what that really means.”
She brought her hand up to his cheek for a moment then let it rest back on his chest. “You know exactly what I mean. I want to go through all of it together. To decide together. Not feel thrust along by circumstance… or you.”
“I’ll thrust you along.” He winked, then tried to give the situation the serious attention she wanted. “That’s all fine in theory, but the reality is that someone has to at least initiate the plan. Let it be you. I’d welcome that. But the sad, immature truth is that I’m simply overcome with eagerness. I don’t think any decision at this point could possibly be construed as rash, after all the hand-wringing that’s preceded it.”
She released a long exhale. “You’re right. I think I’m just being a coward and wanting to crawl under the bed until you sort everything out with Marisa… what if she fights for you? I would. I will!”
“That’s more like it.” He kissed her and nipped at her soft bottom lip. “Please leave all that to me. If it helps assuage your conscience, you were first. For whatever that’s worth. She can’t win, and I doubt she even wants to. I mean, after the initial shock of not having her plan executed,” he pinched the words out, “I think she’s honest enough to know it’s all for the best… for her most of all.”
Abigail gave him a cynical look.
“Well, maybe not most of all, but, at least, on some level, it’s got to be better for her to be free than to be with someone whose heart is firmly held by another.” He looked down at Abigail’s hand resting on his chest to make his point.
She leaned in to kiss his chest, loving the feel of his heart beating on her lips, the feel of his chest hair against her wandering fingertips. She pulled away slightly, still looking up at him. “Your heart really is mine, after all, isn’t it?” Her lips were moist and full from their endless lovemaking of the past week. Her eyes were shining with hunger and satisfaction and anticipation and simple love.
Eliot tried to win the ongoing battle within him: to stare forever into those willing eyes, savoring the timeless beauty of her skin, the straight perfection of her nose, the high arch of her brow, or to dive at her and take and give everything her look promised and demanded. He looked his fill, then he took her hard and thoroughly, with an animal ferocity she had encouraged him to honor over the past days. Sharing that demanding, primal part of him always brought Abigail to the highest reaches of her own satisfaction.
She relived the sweet aftermath of those powerful moments again and again as her body lay there in London, alone and empty. He was right, as usual. Being apart was simply not tenable.
Chapter 17
Eliot had meetings in Milan for the two days after he left Paris. Marisa had had very limited access to reliable communication while she’d been in Tanzania, so he had not expected to hear from her for the weeks she was away, but he was surprised he’d only had one quick text that morning letting him know she was back in Geneva.
He took a deep breath and dialed her cell. It was early Monday morning and she sounded like she was already deep in work mode.
“Hey, Eliot. How are you?”
“Good. How was your trip?”
“Great,” she answered a bit too enthusiastically, thinking foolishly of that kiss in Frankfurt, then reminding herself that Eliot was asking about Africa. “They broke ground on the hospital. It was really something to be there for that. Thanks for asking.”
Eliot was surprised at the mellow, grateful tone of her voice. She sounded oddly relaxed. “So, I’ll be back in Geneva tomorrow night. Are you free for dinner?”
She swiveled in her office chair to take in the priapic spray of the fountain in the middle of Lake Geneva. The early morning sun was clear and pristine. Fresh start popped into her mind. “Yes. I don’t have anything booked. Where do you want me to meet you?” Please don’t say your place, she thought as soon as she’d asked him to decide. She was afraid he had recommitted himself to their wedding, and she was no longer sure she wanted to recommit. She needed to think a bit more about James before she gave up on Eliot, certainly, but she didn’t want to be lulled into the comfortable routine of their life together—the subtle ease of Eliot’s beautiful home and how easily they got on there—and let that affect her decision.
Eliot tried to tease out some meaning from the strange tone that kept creeping into Marisa’s voice: cautious, but certainly not fearful. “Let’s just go for beer and fondue,” he suggested, “if you don’t mind. I’ve had enough fancy French food to last me a year. Unless you’re craving sushi or something?”
“No. Fondue sounds fine. I’ll see you tomorrow night at Soleil at seven. Sound good?”
“Great, see you then.”
“Okay, I’ve got to hop, Eliot. I’ll see you then.”
Then the phone went dead. Eliot held his quiet cell phone in the palm of his hand and stared at it as if it were a curious Etruscan artifact. What in the world was that about? No outpouring of detailed successes from Africa? No (justifiable) interrogation about the status of his unresolved feelings for the anonymous other woman? What the hell? Was she going to act as if their discussion of three weeks ago had never transpired?
***
Marisa looked at her desk and decided to drown herself in the backlog of work that had piled up in her absence. After two hours, she had slogged through most of her emails, dealing with those she could, delegating where possible, and setting aside the others for closer replies later in the week. She was just starting to open her paper mail when the phone on her desk rang.
“Marisa Plataneau.” Her tone was bitter: she was grimacing at a letter from a foundation in New York that was declining a recent grant application.
“As bad as all that?” The British lilt was unmistakable.
Marisa dropped the piece of paper she was holding and watched as it floated down onto her desk. A flash of sizzling joy crackled through her. “Just got a lot better.”
“Are you still engaged?”
“Last time I checked, yes.”
“Are you free this weekend?”
“How did you get my number?”
“Your luggage tag.”
She laughed at his tone, as if it was perfectly right and just that he would do so.
“Hi, James.”
“Hi, Marisa.”
She turned to look out at the lake again. The golden midday sun shone on the dark blue surface. Two small craft were braving the brisk, Alpine wind, their sails perfect white triangular silhouettes.
“So? Are you free this weekend?” His voice was even more intoxicating on the telephone, if that was possible. His low rolling timbre had been heady in person; now it was downright erotic.
“I don’t know James. I mean—”
“Hear me out. Obviously, I have my own crass, selfish interests clouding my powers of analysis, but listen. I’m not saying you should throw over the future Mister Plataneau for me, but I’m not sure this guy you are with now is the right guy.”
“You don’t even know him. Or me, for that matter.”
“I don’t know him, and I don’t care to. But you… now there’s the interesting part of all this. You just don’t seem, I don’t know, fully committed.”
Marisa corralled her thoughts as best she could, weighing the strong desire to be completely honest with James against the fact that he was a veritable stranger. This newfound, compelling urge to expose he
rself to him won out. “Here’s the thing, and I kind of hate you a little bit for it, but you are absolutely correct. I don’t feel comfortable going into the details—he is still my fiancé after all, and he is, on every level, a very good man, and I am a good woman, I suppose.” James hummed his agreement as she continued. “But whether or not he and I are good together? I wonder. And then, well, I do not think these are the thoughts that an engaged woman is supposed to be entertaining.”
James was sitting on the edge of his desk in the mahogany, wood-paneled office that his father, and generations of Mowbrays before him, had occupied. He felt her bending slightly toward him, like a palm tree in a gentle leeward breeze. “I can’t say I envy your position, but since you already seem to be questioning the… viability… of the whole enterprise, perhaps you’d enjoy a weekend in the country to, you know, unwind.”
“What country might that be?”
“England. The English countryside. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I’m heading out to my cousin’s for a house party, for the weekend, and he told me to bring a date. And I want you.” He paused. “As my date, I mean.”
“James.” She said his name matter-of-factly, simply to hear it and feel it on her lips.
“Marisa.”
She closed her eyes and felt the caress of her name on his lips. And then decided that she had as much right to second thoughts as Eliot and threw caution to the very blustery Swiss wind. “Yes. My answer’s yes. I can probably get to London by suppertime on Friday… I might even be able to schedule some meetings for Friday there during the day.”
James tried to think of something more eloquent than thank you, God, but nothing came to mind so he stayed silent.
“James?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think… I think I am feeling very lucky and can’t quite get past that at the moment.”