by PJ Adams
Denial, I know. How long can you deny something like this?
Does denial end at that point when you remove his neck-tie and thread it in a figure of eight around his wrists and then through the conveniently placed loops in the wrought iron headboard of that massive bed?
This was still need. This was not an ‘us’ thing.
That day, that thing we did at Ethan’s wedding... that had been the start of something and now I was simply seeing it through.
I pulled at my blouse, freeing the buttons, discarding it on the floor.
I found the zipper at the back of my skirt, the catch. I climbed briefly away from him so I could shimmy out of it, kick my Karen Millen slingbacks away, and then I was on him again, pressing down on him, lost in the heat of the moment, the heat of the encounter... the heat.
He was looking at me. Those blue eyes. The smirk in the eyes more than in the mouth.
I didn’t want him looking at me. I didn’t want him to see the effect he had on me, even now, after all this time. I didn’t want him to see the need.
I put a hand over his eyes, hiding them, blocking his view.
This made me lean forward, low over him.
He was still in his suit, the front pulled open, my breasts still in a low-cut black bra squashed against his chest, sliding against him.
A twitch, a slight movement of the muscles in his jaw, and I smothered his mouth with my own. I didn’t want him to say anything, didn’t want him to make a noise.
We kissed hard, our bodies still joined below the waist, grinding so hard against each other.
There was iron in that kiss, the metal tang of blood. His or mine, I didn’t know, as our teeth, tongues and lips swirled and clashed.
Finally, I reached down and pulled my thong aside, found his length – so hard! so wet! – and guided him so that the swollen head was pressing against my opening, poised, pushing up into me.
I bore down and felt him enter me, filling me in a way I’d only ever been filled by Charlie. Driving, so slowly, home.
I closed my eyes, giving myself up to that sensation of being slowly, relentlessly filled. I pushed down until I was impaled on him and I could feel every twitch and throb of his shaft as I held still, savoring the sensations.
I started to move, almost nothing at first, a slight twist of the hips, a slight pressing against him.
A little more each time, a deeper swing of the hips, a harder grinding.
Harder and faster and suddenly it was a wild animal thing, my every sense focused on what was happening where our bodies joined.
You can lose yourself in sex. Lose yourself to sensation. You can hit that point where nothing else exists, where there is just touch, stimulation of nerves, senses that only come alive during rare moments like this. The sense of being full. The sense of your nerves pulsing, an electric thing. A sense that is somewhere between pure pleasure and pain and utter, desperate need.
Senses that suddenly come together, explode deep inside you, surge through all that you are, over and over again until you are left gasping ragged breaths and then you remember who you are, where you are, and the sensations come back, different, a different kind of ache, and you look down and it’s Charlie, and you can tell that something of that order has just happened for him, too, for both of you.
When all you can do is slump down onto him, struggling for air, waiting for your head to stop spinning and a small part of you hopes that it never will.
§
Charlie.
How did I find myself in that position with him, after all this time? How had I let this happen?
Charlie.
There was no ‘us’, no Charlie and me.
It was over, so god-damned over.
§
The rose.
I shouldn’t have allowed myself to push that solitary rose out of my thoughts.
Will Bentinck-Stanley was a man who got what he wanted, and that rose was a clear indication of intent.
I should never have let myself dismiss it so easily. A man who can arrange for a rose to be delivered with a signed card faster than I could drive home from the wedding that night was not a man to dismiss so lightly.
He called the morning after that moment of madness with Charlie.
I was in my office at Ellison and Coles, working through the proof of an early reader I’d offered to help with, even though kids’ books were way out of my normal field of literary fiction and memoirs. It was a fun change to my usual fare, and so I found myself that morning, staring at gaudy illustrations of cartoon characters, my head full of images of the night before.
Concentrate, Trudy. Focus. That inner monologue thing again, something I’d done since I was a kid, constantly talking to myself, coaching myself, pushing myself.
I was a serious professional, a successful young woman. I wasn’t going to allow myself to be distracted by memory-images of Charlie, tied to his bed, my hand covering his eyes as I ground against him.
No, not at all.
My desk phone rang and I jumped. I’d been miles away.
“Trudy Parsons, Editorial.”
“Ah, good. Hello, Trudy Parsons-Editorial.”
A man’s voice. It took me a moment to place it. Charlie... no, not Charlie, but a similar clear tone, very English, very refined.
“Will. Will Bentinck-Stanley–”
Of course! And then it came back, the reception, running away from him on those ridiculously high Jimmy Choos, the long drive home to Islington, and that solitary rose on my doorstep. Will.
“–I wanted to apologize. I was rude, presumptuous. There is no excuse for my behavior.”
“And...?”
Silence. I’d thrown him.
“The apology?”
“Oh. Yes. The apology. Yes, of course.”
I couldn’t work out if he was genuinely flustered, or if it was an act, a Hugh Grant thing that he thought would let him get away with anything.
“So...?”
“I could apologize now, but that would just be words. It would be easy. But perhaps easy isn’t enough, Trudy Parsons-Editorial.”
Was this all a joke? An arrogant English toff having fun with the colonials? I really was having trouble reading men these days!
“A gesture might be more appropriate,” he went on. “Lunch, perhaps? An apology over lunch?”
“So this is all for me, right? Or is it just for you, another chance to... to pursue me like you did on Saturday?”
“Could we cut the negotiations and agree that it’s both, perhaps? Lunch and an apology for you; an opportunity to redeem myself and enjoy your company for me. That kind of thing? I promise to be on my best behavior. The perfect gentleman. At the very worst you get a free lunch with the dull but polite brother of your new sister-in-law. What do you say, Trudy Parsons-Editorial? Shall we give it a crack?”
10.
He knew where I was, of course. If he could find my Islington apartment and have a rose delivered there late on a Saturday night, it was never going to be beyond his powers to have someone Google the street address of a reasonably well known publishing company.
After I’d put the phone down I sat back, applied some fresh lip gloss, and gave myself a quick spray of Madame.
He’s gaming you, Trudy. You know he’s gaming you, with all this ‘best behavior, perfect gentleman’ bull.
I did. And I didn’t care. I was a successful, professional woman and I figured I could handle a bit of flattery and hot pursuit.
Almost immediately there was a buzz from Ellie in the general office. “Someone here for you, Tee. Shall I send him through?”
“No, I’ll be right down.”
The stairs were narrow and steep, the walls lined with shelves full of a quite exceptional array of first editions, an eBay fortune just waiting to be had.
He was waiting in the office. Will.
I was a little disappointed. I’d expected him to send someone, a driver to whisk me away, not for him to sho
w up here in person.
Then those eyes found mine, the predator eyes. I’d forgotten what that look could do to a girl. Immediately, I started to blush. Then I took a deep breath. Get a hold of yourself. This was my environment, my company. They weren’t van Goghs on the walls, they were books. This was my world.
I stepped forward, smiled and held out a hand for him to shake. “Mr Bentinck-Stanley. So good of you to come.”
He smiled. He knew when he was being played, too. He took my hand, dipped his head, and kissed it with the most delicate of touches.
From the corner of my eye I could see Ellie turn to Jo, the two of them struggling to suppress giggles. This was going to take a lot of living down later.
He turned toward the door. “Shall we?”
§
When we stepped outside into the narrow street I expected a car to be waiting. I was thinking The Ivy, or maybe the Savoy Grill, or some discreet little back-street bistro only known to the cognoscente. Instead, Will paused as I looked around, then raised a hand to indicate that we should start walking.
He had a table waiting in a wine bar a few doors down. He must know that this was somewhere I visited at least once a week. So low-key and familiar was his game plan.
“Thanks, Lou,” I said, as a familiar waitress showed us to our table. We sat, and I saw a bottle of my usual Sauvignon Blanc in a cooler. Will’s glass already had some wine in it, and I worked out that he must have been sitting here when he phoned me.
“So,” I said, “you’re going to be on your best creepy stalker behavior, are you?” I was joking, but only to an extent.
He dipped his head, reached across and poured me some wine.
The table was at the back, in an eating area lit by a high, domed ceiling, the perfect position to sit back and watch the place filling up for the lunchtime rush.
I sipped at my wine, studying his features. He’d shaved today, at least. That was something.
He looked back at me, clearly starting to feel a bit uncomfortable under my scrutiny.
Eventually, I relented, and said, “So...?”
Then he got it. The apology.
“Ah. Yes. I’m sorry. I mean... not just sorry, but sorry. Let me start again.”
Maybe it was rude of me to laugh at his discomfort and his flustered Englishman act, but Hell, I figured I was due a laugh at his expense.
“Trudy.” A pause for breath. “Please do accept my apologies. I was rude and boorish. It was a difficult day for me and you caught me off guard. I hadn’t expected you to be so–”
“Are you going to say it was my fault...?”
He stopped. Took a breath. Started again. “No. It was all my fault. I can be an arrogant prick at times. It’s one of my less endearing traits. Will you forgive me? Can we start again? For Ethan and Eleanor’s sake?”
That was his trump card, and he knew it. The happy families card.
“I guess...” I said. I wasn’t going to let him off the hook quite so easily.
Lou returned to take our order, but I hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. It broke the tension, though. I knew I wanted the salt and pepper calamari anyway, so I ordered that while Will skimmed the menu and chose sea bass.
“So... Ellison and Coles,” he said, as Lou departed with our orders. “One of the last independents.”
I shook my head. “No. Not any more. It’s all part of a multinational these days. ” We’d fought hard to keep the imprint name, but that was all it was: an imprint. Ellison and Coles was more than a hundred years old, one of the great names of British publishing. I’d gone there as a temp, not long after I’d come over to visit Ethan at Cambridge and decided to hang around. It had looked like good experience before I tried to break into New York publishing.
My timing was all wrong, or all right, depending on how you looked at it. I started there at the onset of one of the periodic upheavals of the publishing business, just as the still independent Ellison and Coles was about to succumb to the weight of economic inevitability and become an imprint of one of the multinationals. Senior staff left, opting for retirement or finally taking the plunge to start the novel they’d always planned to write. Suddenly I found myself as one of the most experienced members of staff, inheriting a list of literary stalwarts and charged with breathing some new life into the imprint if it was to survive in the new corporate environment.
One small victory was that what was left of Ellison and Coles resisted the pressure to move into the modern offices by the Thames and we were still based in those ancient offices in Covent Garden, a Dickensian building on four floors, with tiny offices and uneven floors and a charm that reminded me every day of why I’d chosen to stay on in London.
“So you’re here for good, in love with the quaint world of British publishing?”
I realized I’d been talking at length. Somehow he’d just set me off. I took a long sip at my wine. “Not for good,” I said. “Not necessarily. I don’t plan that far ahead.”
“What if you meet someone?”
“It’s not all about meeting someone,” I said. I remembered now how Eleanor had vowed to obey Ethan at their wedding. Will’s family clearly had a very different view of a woman’s place to anything I would subscribe to.
He raised his hands, briefly. Best behavior.
He seemed different today. More relaxed. Less intense. More ready to smile and laugh.
I know I’d been stressy at the wedding: family tensions, lost ground to make up with Ethan. Maybe it had been something like that for Will, too.
You think you might have been a little harsh with him, Trude?
We talked some more, about Ellison and Coles, about how I’d come to England to visit Ethan and just happened to stay.
“It’s that kind of place,” said Will. “My family did exactly the same thing, about four hundred years ago.” I think he was making a joke at his family’s expense, but I wasn’t sure. It could easily have been a simple passing comment. His family had such a long history, it could be easy to take for granted.
“So are you going to tell me if I ever met you at Cambridge?” I asked him. “If you, Charlie and Ethan were buddies it’s hard to think I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “I’d have remembered,” he said, skirting that fine line between best behavior and flirting once again.
I looked at him with one eyebrow raised for a second or two, then relented.
“No,” he went on. “We were close early on, me, Charlie and Ethan. A band of brothers. Always destined for great things, or so we believed. But you know how it is. People drift.”
I thought of me and Ethan. I’d come to England to visit him, stayed here, and when our parents died we were suddenly the only family we had. But even then, over the last year we had drifted. Sometimes you just don’t value what’s right under your nose.
“Yes,” I said. “It happens, doesn’t it? People drift.”
We ate on in silence for a time. I think we were both lost in thoughts, memories, regrets maybe.
“I really mean it,” he said eventually. “The apology. All the emotion of the wedding, and all that. And I was tired. So tired. I was tired and emotional and I never should have behaved the way I did.”
“You certainly looked tired.” Damn. I’d said that out loud.
Briefly, he looked pissed with me, then he relaxed again. “I was,” he said. “I’d been up all night. Hadn’t slept in 48 hours or so.”
I remembered thinking he looked like he’d come from an all-nighter. He could at least have shaved.
Maybe he read the disapproval on my face, because he went on: “It was unavoidable. I was in Oran. Algeria. Heavy negotiations. Dull, but vital. It may sound a little melodramatic, but people’s lives really did depend on it. I flew back that morning. Only just made it. I looked like shit, I know.”
He shrugged, smiled, and all of a sudden I felt guilty that I should ever have questioned him, that I should have been pissed with him for slipping away to make i
mportant calls on his cell phone.
“I did my best, but I really should have done better, for Eleanor.”
I shook my head and felt like a bitch, and only then did I start to wonder if he was still gaming me, if this was all some elaborate story concocted to get me into bed.
And then... I felt guilty again for even thinking such a thing.
I drank more wine, grappling with my confusion.
“So...” he said. “Apology accepted?”
I shrugged, then nodded, then reached across the table to solemnly shake his hand, trying not to be distracted by his touch, his firm grip.
“Apology accepted,” I said, even if I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was.
11.
“I had a postcard from them yesterday,” I said.
I looked at Charlie over the rim of my cup of Lapsang Souchong.
There is no ‘us’.
We were in Grey’s, a little boutique coffee shop just off Long Acre where I was due to meet one of my writers to talk about a book proposal. Small talk. Nothing more than small talk.
There is no ‘us’.
“They sound very happy.” God, I was acting like a complete moron. How could Ethan and Eleanor ‘sound very happy’ from a two-liner postcard? They were just married, honeymooning in a cabin on stilts over the sea in the Maldives. Who wouldn’t be happy? But still...
“Good good,” said Charlie. He was enjoying this. He was milking it.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then stopped. No good denying it with him, no point stressing the no ‘us’ thing. Look where that had gotten me last time.
I glanced at the clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes until Julie would get here to rescue me with talk of her proposed book about her time as a working class Belfast girl studying at one of Oxford’s most exclusive colleges. It was a no-brainer. Julie was an insightful and funny writer, and the first volume of her memoirs had already been reprinted eight times and was being filmed by the BBC. Of course we would publish it. But no harm in meeting for coffee and cocktails to discuss the details and have her at least go through the motions of pitching the book.