The Object of His Desire (erotic romance suspense)

by PJ Adams

He looked down.

  I sipped at my tea, and gave him a few seconds, but when he didn’t answer, I continued, “You said you owed me an explanation... You left me with a god-damned note!”

  He looked down, then up again, and suddenly there was resolve in his eyes. “Sally Fielding,” he repeated. “I knew her at Cambridge...”

  “She was at All Hallows?” I wondered then if I’d met her, when I’d first visited Ethan at college. I’d hung out with him and his buddies for a time, back then, when I was still trying to work out what to do with myself after Yale and an internship at a New York publishing house that had been lots of hard work and taken me nowhere.

  He nodded. “Skinny young thing,” he said. “Lived life twice as fast as anyone I’d ever known. Took your breath away. Life and soul, and all that.”

  At first I was thrown by his gall: sitting here with a woman he had seduced, reminiscing about another girl in that swoony kind of way. But then I recognized his tone, and immediately stopped being pissed with him. He wasn’t talking about a past love, as such; he was talking about someone who had just died; he was in shock still.

  I thought back to when my folks had died. To when Ethan and I would find ourselves talking, tailing off into long silences. We couldn’t speak back then, and had never really done so since. Death does that; it robs you of the ability to properly grieve sometimes.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  He shrugged, and I wondered how many people ever saw this side of him, the vulnerable Will, the confused one.

  “She had a thing for Ethan,” he said. “She hung around us, became one of the group. She and Ethan had a thing for a while, but it never really went anywhere. She was mad for him, but he didn’t feel the same way for her. He was just a red-blooded young man: she threw herself at him, so he let her, but that’s all it ever was, you know?”

  I’d meant what had happened recently ­– this Sally Fielding was dead, Will had mentioned blackmail – but clearly he thought I was asking what had happened back at college.

  “And that’s all it should have ever been,” he went on. “But we were young and we were exploring, and things got out of hand.”

  “‘Out of hand’?”

  “Sally was the one who started calling us the Cabal, you know? The three of us... One for all and all for one – the Three Musketeers would have been more appropriate.”

  The Cabal. He’d mentioned that before; Charlie had too. I’d always thought the name sounded a bit sinister.

  “There was a bit of a hoo-hah...”

  God, he was so damned English sometimes!

  “...a scandal. I did what I could, the family rallied round, kept it all out of the papers.”

  I’d Googled him, of course. I’d tried to find out more about him, but there had been nothing. Will, and his family, were obviously adept at keeping out of the limelight.

  “A scandal?”

  “Oh, it was nothing, but it could have been made into something, in the wrong hands. You know what the Press can be like. Three young well-connected men, Cambridge, a girl... Money and sex and people with a long way to fall – ripe for the paparazzi, you know?”

  I thought of Julie Donovan, one of my authors: her first book had been about her time as a working-class Belfast girl and her first encounters with the wealthy elite. I knew exactly what Will meant about that mix. But... three guys and a girl... a scandal. What was he hinting at?

  And Ethan? Charlie? My big brother and the man I’d lived with for a year – neither of them had ever hinted at scandal. I wondered then just how much I’d been blind to in the past, or perhaps how much I’d blinded myself to.

  “Anyway, it all died down,” said Will. “The four of us drifted apart. Sally hit a rough patch and dropped out of college. I made sure she was looked after, but then we lost touch and it was all forgotten about.”

  “Until she reappeared...”

  He nodded, then glanced to one side, caught the eye of a waitress and tapped his cup for a refill. We paused while the waitress came out with a fresh cup for him and more tea for me. He thanked her, which confounded me again: that arrogant tap of the cup, as if the waitress was nothing to him, and then taking the trouble to thank her. Such an odd mix of a man.

  “That’s why I was in Austria,” he said. “She was there, at a little clinic. Discreet.”

  That could only mean one thing. “Rehab?”

  He nodded. “I’d thought she was over all that, after she dropped out of college. We put her through rehab then, too. I thought she’d sorted herself out. Poor thing.”

  “I thought you said she was blackmailing you...”

  He shrugged. “She was. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get drawn in. She didn’t know what she was getting involved in.”

  He was shaking. He put his cup down so it wouldn’t show, but his hand had been trembling. I reached across, put mine on his, on the table, and waited for him to calm.

  “I move in different circles these days,” he said. “It can be dangerous. Not the kind of circles where a doped up innocent like Sally should ever be, making a lot of noise and thinking she’s being clever.”

  “Is that what happened? Something to do with... the things you do?”

  “I think so, yes,” he said. “I think she just got caught in the crossfire. Such a mess. Such a silly fucking cow. Why couldn’t she keep her head down?”

  “Could you have done anything?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  I didn’t know what to say, then, and suddenly I thought, Am I just another Sally Fielding? Drawn into his circle, exposed to risks I couldn’t even begin to grasp... I didn’t know who this man was; I was barely even scraping below the surface.

  But one thing I did know was that he was dangerous company to keep.

  I should get up from that table, walk away. It was nothing to do with me.

  I squeezed his hand, felt a slight response, kept that pressure up, that contact: hand on hand, skin on skin. It was a very human thing, a very intimate one.

  Finally, he looked up from the table. Those dark eyes, no longer the predator look, the calculating, gaming seducer. There were tears there, pooling, not quite spilling over.

  He reached across the table then, and put his free hand tenderly to my cheek. I pushed against him, like a cat, and his thumb found the line of my cheekbone, his touch sensitive, light.

  21.

  I was mad at him. He’d abandoned me in a hotel in a foreign country, left only a note on the pillow beside me. He’d seduced me and then left me.

  I was mad at him.

  I kept trying to remind myself of that, but it was an exercise that was lost almost as soon as I started.

  I’m mad at you.

  His embrace was like steel, strong arms wrapped around me, hands on my back, his face buried against my neck, as we stood in that street under the dappled shade of the lime trees, their leaves just starting to turn golden. All the things you notice as you stand in an embrace like that, your head rushing. The cars crawling past in the narrow, heavily parked-up street, the kids playing on the sidewalk, the For Sale notice in a window, a jet’s contrails ruler-straight across the deep blue sky.

  His scent, that heady mix of citrus and spice.

  I’m mad at you.

  Walking together, not touching. Bound together by those invisible lines again. A tension. A magnetism. A need.

  I’m mad at you.

  Him, reaching for me, pausing, and our eyes locking. “I’m warning you,” I told him, “I was a kick-boxer at Yale. I know how to look after myself.”

  That hand, clamping around the back of my neck, locking me in place. “I like that,” he said, suddenly another Will, a powerful Will, in command, strong. “A bit of fight...”

  His other hand in the small of my back, as we paused there at the street door. That hand staying there as we passed through into the small lobby and I fumbled with the key for my apartment’s front door.

&n
bsp; Tumbling into the apartment, bodies pressing together, those strong hands holding me, turning me, his mouth finding mine. A clashing of teeth and lips and tongues, an animal thing all of a sudden.

  Pushed up hard against the still-open door, his body against me, one hand pulling at my clothes, the other stealing round to the back of my head, fingers burying themselves in my hair, closing, pulling my head back so that his mouth could work down my neck, teeth and tongue dragging against my skin.

  I pushed him back, away, and managed to swing the door shut.

  And then he was on me again.

  That night in Austria, in the hotel with its view down a snow-bound valley, he’d been strong and tender at the same time, controlling and controlled.

  Now... now, there was none of that. There was need, hunger.

  My blouse, pulled from the top of my pencil skirt, his hands tugging at it, fumbling with the buttons and then, with a grunt of frustration, he just yanked it open, fabric tearing, buttons popping.

  We stumbled into the apartment, me backwards, him driving me on, until the backs of my legs hit the sofa and I went down in a heap.

  I could barely breathe, with the intensity of it.

  Somehow my blouse had come off. Had he ripped it open, ripped it off my back as we fell?

  It was there in his hands, a white rag and then... what was he doing with it? Twisting it into a cord, wrapping it around my wrists, pulling it tight, looping it with a well-practiced twist up over the wooden frame of the sofa, securing my arms above my head, my body exposed.

  My bra was next, a delicate lacy thing. He pulled hard at the straps at my back, tore it open, pushed it up and away from my breasts. One of the straps had broken, and he pushed the bra aside, dropping his head to my breasts. One hand, cupping and squeezing me hard, a nipple pinched between thumb and forefinger so that a bolt of delicious pain shot through me.

  I cried out and then his mouth was on the other nipple, teeth clamped tight, tongue flicking. Pain... but a different kind of pain, a pain that blossomed and transformed.

  I felt swamped, overcome, so totally dominated and possessed.

  I needed more, and I squirmed against him, shifting position so that he had a thigh between my legs, grinding hard against my wet heat.

  “I’m still mad at you,” I said, and that made him pause. He raised his head from my breast, found me with those dark eyes, those predator eyes. And then that thigh pressed harder and held there, making me sensitive to every slight movement as he lowered his head again, dragged his teeth down the upper curve of one breast and then latched onto that nipple once more, biting and sucking and sending sharp bolts of that pain-that-was-pleasure right down through my body into my belly, my heat, my desire.

  He shifted position, found the catch on the side of my skirt, the short zip, and then with another sharp yank it was down around my ankles and then clear of me, hurled away across the room.

  He kneeled back then, surveying my near-naked body. The tiny black thong, the sheer black hold-ups, the Kate Millen wedges.

  He pulled at his tie, loosening it, discarding it. He unbuttoned his shirt from the top, revealing that hard torso, the fine covering of dark hair, the tight, well-defined muscles of his chest, his abdomen.

  Lower down, he released the buckle of his belt, and my eyes were drawn to the straining fabric below.

  He stood and kicked those expensive shoes free, then bent to pull the black socks away.

  The belt... he pulled it out of the loops at his waist and for a moment I thought he was going to use it on me and I felt wet and hot and scared all at once, and oh my God so vulnerable!

  He dropped it to the floor, undid the button on his trousers and eased the zip down.

  Just in his shorts now, and my how they strained! He was hard, tenting the black fabric out at the front. He tugged at the waistband and his manhood sprang clear, as long and hard as I remembered it from that night in the Alps.

  Two, three nights ago? So recent, and yet it seemed so long ago.

  Naked, he lowered himself between my thighs, reaching down to find the waistband of my thong, pull at it, slide it down my legs.

  His hand found me, the thumb lined up along the narrow strip of hair, the fingers cupping me, parting me, entering me. That sudden hardness inside me made me cry aloud again, and then he was stabbing those fingers deep, pulling out and stabbing again, having me roughly with his hand.

  It was so intense! I felt totally owned, as he worked me like that.

  Then a hand closed around my right ankle, pushing my stocking-clad leg high, my foot over his shoulder. With his other hand he reached down, took my other ankle and pushed it up so that both legs were against his chest, my feet over his shoulders, and he was bearing down on me so hard I felt as if I would snap in half at any moment.

  His hardness found me, then, sliding against my wet heat, its length gliding through my folds, grinding against my clit as I pushed up to meet every thrust. Then, with a slight twist of the body, he pulled back and the swollen head of his manhood pressed against my opening, slid inside and I felt myself being parted, penetrated, forced open by him.

  He drove deep, slowly sinking into me until I was filled and then filled more, and still he kept sliding slowly inside me. Just as I thought I could take no more, his balls pressed up against my ass, and his pubic bone ground up against my clit. I’d never been had so deeply before... I felt so full!

  He pushed again, a slight movement, and it was as if every sensation was magnified by the size of him, by how full I was. His length, deep inside me, the pressing of his balls against my ass, the wetness and heat between us, that grinding... oh, that grinding against me, taking that hot electric feeling and intensifying it, a heat spreading through my belly, a tightening... sudden and unexpected in its intensity.

  My entire body bucked against him as I tightened around him and that wave of sheer, intense pleasure swept over my senses, so sudden and overwhelming that I almost blacked out.

  And again, a tightening, a wave passing through my entire body.

  Over and over, until finally each wave was less than the one before. I’d never climaxed so intensely, or for that long, before. I’d never known anything like it.

  As I slumped against him, spent, he started to move. Small thrusts at first, then pulling back his entire length before driving hard and deep inside me again.

  Normally for me, one big orgasm is it, but there was something different this time, his sudden rough intensity arrested that inevitable slide down from the peak of climax, drew it out, transformed it, so that each time he slid home there was an echo of what had just happened, a tightening, a surge of sensation welling up inside me...

  It was taking me over, swamping my awareness, so that all I was conscious of was each peak of pleasure as he drove his length deep inside me. I couldn’t think, I don’t think I could even see straight.

  He was being so hard and brutal with me, he really was fucking me senseless.

  Harder and faster with each thrust, it felt as if I was about to burst, split open by his need.

  His head, his face... they’d been buried into the space between my neck and shoulder, but now he arched his back, raising himself, and those predator eyes locked on mine and suddenly there was a whole new level of intensity to it all.

  With each thrust, I rose to meet him, welcoming him as deep as he could go, reluctantly slumping back as he withdrew, and then rising to meet him once more.

  He plunged his head down, and his mouth found mine, a savage, brutal kiss as he drove deep inside me and there was a sudden blossoming of liquid heat in my belly and he stayed there, deep, filling me as he came. And then, as his hardness inside me transformed, started to ebb, I felt a new heat, a new tightening, and I was climaxing again, pushing up against him, keeping him firm inside me as my body spasmed and tightened and then finally, slowly, eased, settled, slumped.

  He lay there, on top of me, our hearts hammering in our chests, his face aga
inst mine, him still deep inside me, spent, and into his ear I gasped, “I’m still mad at you, remember? I’m still mad.”

  22.

  I was still mad at him. I was confused and mad at the same time.

  Mad that I couldn’t pin him down. I didn’t know him. A man who was so elemental, so variable. Which was the real Willem Bentinck-Stanley? The sensitive yet strong man I was teeteringly close to falling for? Or the bad boy, who more than one person had warned me to steer clear of? The arrogant manipulative man who I always felt was gaming me, or the one so close to spilling tears for a woman who had only ever seemed to cause him trouble? A woman who had died because she had got too close to whatever dangerous activities Will was involved with...

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t work it out, couldn’t work him out.

  And I couldn’t quite allow myself to relax into this relationship. I couldn’t quite trust it.

  He was an evasive man. Quite natural for someone who had every reason to be wary of people, for a man who moved in Government circles, with an office at the House of Lords and frequent trips around the world on God knows what business. But whatever his good reasons might be, it did little to put me at ease.

  We met for dinner. A pretty conventional date, for goodness sake. This was the man who had pursued me with roses, had me driven to meet him for drinks at the House of Lords, who had whisked me off to a hotel he owned in the Alps just for dinner... An evening at a little Soho bistro was such a refreshing change from all that.

  He sent a car for me, driven by Maninder, the giant of a Sikh who served as Will’s driver, minder, assistant and who knows what else? I tried to make small talk, but Maninder was a man of few words. He dropped me off at a little place on a side street just off Dean Street, a place with a small frontage of bull’s-eye windows. There was a bar at the front, then eating space stretching a long way back.

  Will stood when he saw me, and gestured to the seat opposite him across the small table. I went over, we kissed on the cheek, and for a moment I thought it was going to be all rather formal. Then he raised a hand to my jaw, turned me slightly – such a delicate touch, and yet so commanding – and kissed me briefly on the lips.