Bess let her voice drift away, but got no discernible reaction. Ah well, time to try harder, she thought, giggling inside. This was fun!
“And of course your Ida just oozes sex appeal, but I guess you know that. Hard not to, the way she was aiming it at you all evening. You two must have had some wonderful times together.”
“One.”
He said it so softly, Bess wasn’t sure she'd even heard him. She cocked her head and looked at him, trying to decide if her ears were playing tricks on her. Then she went for broke. “You said one?”
“That’s what it sounded like to me, not that it’s any of your business, young lady. Now, will you please stop yammering and let me pay attention to the traffic.”
“There isn’t a car in sight!”
“All the more reason to concentrate. I dislike being taken by surprise.”
“You dislike me asking personal questions, that’s what you dislike. I'm a writer, sir, and people fascinate me. Ida fascinates me. So please unbend a little and tell me more. F'rinstance, where'd you meet?”
“At work. She used to be a contract cleaner, but after noticing how sloppy so many security firms are, she decided she could do it better. She went out on her own, and you’ve seen the result.”
Bess was truly astonished. It was incredibly difficult to imagine the Ida she’d seen tonight washing floors and cleaning toilets in some office building.
“And before you ask,” Geoff continued, “since I’m sure you noticed her Canadian accent, she’s actually from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, which I guess makes you nearly neighbors. Any more silly questions?”
Only about a thousand, Bess thought, but held her peace. Until suddenly her mouth opened and the question popped out far ahead of her mental demand that it shouldn’t. “Were you at your place then, for the once you mentioned? I did notice she seemed familiar with the layout, so I presume it was a fairly thorough once.”
“It was an entire weekend, if you must know. I suppose ‘once’ isn’t the most accurate word to describe it.”
“I should certainly think not. Although I can't say I'm surprised. You two seemed awfully chummy for a one-night stand. In fact, you seemed awfully intimate for a two-night stand. I guess I shouldn't ask how many dozen oysters you ate that weekend”
“Stop fishing, woman! She’s familiar with the layout because she's been there on a number of occasions. Ida and I are friends of long standing.”
“The expression, I believe, is just good friends, although why people bother to say that I really don't know.”
Geoff took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her. Then he laughed, and it wasn't the friendliest laugh she’d ever heard from him.
“You shouldn’t drink champagne in such quantities, young Bess,” he said. “You’re as pissed as forty cats, you are.”
“If that means I'm drunk, I am not. I can hold my liquor as well as anyone,” she retorted, only to belie the statement with an indiscreet hiccup that, try as she might, she couldn’t disguise.
“Maybe fifty cats, actually. Good thing we’re nearly home. I cannot abide women who can’t hold their grog.”
That remark emerged as he turned into his driveway, making it, Bess thought, quite uncalled for and unnecessary. Spiteful, even.
“Ida drank more champagne than I did,” she said, fumbling for the door handle that had mysteriously disappeared. “And I didn’t notice you complaining about her.”
“Ida's old enough to look after herself. And smart enough, too. You might not have noticed, love, but she had one of her people come to pick her up, just in case she might be over the limit.”
“Well, bully for Ida.” Bess's fumbling fingers found the door handle, tugged at it, and she came within an inch of falling out of the vehicle. As it was, her feet hit the ground with an almighty thud, and only her grip on the door handle saved her. “Are you saying she's old enough to look after herself, but I'm not?”
“So it would appear,” Geoff said, suddenly there beside her, one arm around her waist as he kept her upright. “You’d best let me help you inside and up to your room, my tipsy possum. I’ll take the chance you can find the bed by yourself, but the stairs might be a worry.”
He was laughing at her! She struggled in his arms, but she might as well have tried to escape from a set of handcuffs. Even as she struggled, Geoff was gently easing her toward the front door, the keys in his free hand.
“Let me go,” she said. “I’m fine, I tell you. It was just... just the fresh air after being in the stuffy warmth of the casino.”
“It was two dozen oysters and too much champagne. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that oysters may be good for some things...” He flashed her that devilish grin. “But for soaking up grog you need red meat, preferably raw. If you’d filled up on steak tartare, you’d be in better shape now.”
Just the thought was enough... no, too much. Bess wrenched herself free of his grasp as soon as they entered the house, then stumbled her way toward the bathroom. When she returned some time later, she felt physically much better, but decidedly ashamed, although not enough to give in without a token rebuke.
“That was your fault,” she said. “You deliberately had to bring up the subject of raw meat, didn’t you?”
“I was merely attempting to educate you, you ignorant American wench. Now bugger off to bed before I turn you over my knee and educate you some more.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Not only would I dare, I would positively enjoy it,” Geoff said, rubbing his hands together like some silent movie villain. “Now are you going upstairs by yourself, or do I have to carry you up, which I warn you will have consequences you can’t even imagine.”
“Oh, I can imagine all right. Typical male chauvinist, using brute force instead of...” She paused, suddenly too close to sober, suddenly aware that whatever she said next might indeed lead to unknown consequences. The look in Geoff’s eye told her that, practically guaranteed it.
Devils danced in those ice-green eyes. Worse than devils. Sirens, or whatever the male equivalent was. Dancing and laughing and challenging her, enticing her, luring her toward an indiscretion Bess knew she desired just as much as he did. She could only hope Geoff didn’t realize that, and was terrified that he did, that indeed he was deliberately using her own nature against her.
“I want some coffee first,” she found herself saying. Lying, knowing she was lying, and knowing he probably knew it too. What she really needed was three aspirins, some warm milk to hold them down with, and a good night’s sleep to settle both her mind and her stomach.
“Don’t be difficult, Bess. You’d be asleep on the floor before the jug was boiled. Which might be the safest thing after all, come to think of it. At least you’d be safe from me. I don’t take advantage of girls when they’re asleep.”
“I wish I knew an Aussie word for... for horse feathers,” she retorted, stepping past him en route to the kitchen. “Coffee I want and coffee I shall have, with a healthy slug of Bailey’s Irish Cream in it, if you please.”
“Are you always this damned stubborn?”
He was smiling properly now, that slow sweet smile she liked so much. Bess’s tummy did a back flip. What would he do, she wondered, if she just flung herself into his arms, gave herself to him, gave in to herself, gave in to all the strange emotions that kept her entire body, her entire existence on edge, every time she found herself in Geoff’s presence?
“Usually I’m worse,” she said. “I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now. If you haven’t, I'm being too subtle about the way our book is going.”
“Subtle?” He snorted. “You change every second word, criticize my erotic bits, and tell me I can’t talk American. Or that my characters can’t, which is the same thing.”
With the jug boiled, they sat across from each other at the kitchen table, and it was all Bess could do to keep from leaning on her elbows and staring into those incredible eyes. How could Id
a let Geoff go after spending an entire weekend in bed with him?
And before Bess realized it, the question was flying off her tongue, and Geoff was rearing back in surprise at the directness of it.
“Bloody hell, woman! What do you want, a play-by-play description? Damn it, Bess, there’s a limit to curiosity, you know, and you’re way past it.”
She just sat there, still staring at him, the Bailey’s slowly warming her tummy into a gentle softness that seemed also to have gone to her brain. Even acknowledging the anger in his voice, she was unable to deflect her mind from its single track. “Was she good, Geoff? Utterly superb? The best there’s ever been for you? Did she...” Bess had to search her slightly befuddled mind for the appropriate Australianism. “Did she root you absolutely stupid?”
And then Geoff was on his feet, his face flushed with either anger or embarrassment, she couldn't tell which.
“That's bloody well it,” he said, reaching out to grab her by the shoulders and literally lift her from her chair as if she’d been a child of five.
Slinging her over his shoulder, he marched up the stairs. Into her room he charged, and for an instant she was positive he was going to throw her straight from the doorway to the bed... like a javelin. Instead, he carried her, and when he sat down on the bed, she suddenly found herself draped across his lap, bottom up, held so firmly she couldn’t do a thing about it.
The first smack of his palm across her rump wasn’t especially hard, nor did it hurt. Bess grunted, but didn’t cry out. The second smack was more definite, and drew a gasp of surprise and a small squawk of alarm.
“Now,” he said, “are you going to stop this bloody nonsense?”
Gritting her teeth, she refused to make a sound.
“Okay, Bess. But don’t tell me later I didn’t give you a chance.”
To her astonishment, she felt her skirt being lifted. At which point, her mind and body disassociated entirely as hell reared up before her and she saw Paul’s face, heard Paul’s whining, accusatory voice... lousiest wife in the world... bitch... bitch...
She remained silent, trembling, terrified now by the pictures and voice in her head. Her jaw clenched. Her breasts flattened beneath her on one side of Geoff's lap. Her legs kicked to no avail.
And yet she was suddenly aware of the thrust of his erection against her tummy, and she found herself squirming against it, unable not to, not even wanting not to. Wanting anything, whatever it would take, just to end this, to get it over with. The movement of her hips caused his next light smack to miss her rump and land instead on her thigh, below her panties.
His gasp was a mixture of surprise and obvious dismay, but it emerged as a gasp and returned to his mouth as a soft, soughing sigh that she could feel all the way down to where his groin prodded at her. Bess sighed too, couldn’t help it. He was Paul, sighing with contempt, and her own sigh was one of total submission, total subjugation.
The so-called spanking stopped, but Geoff’s hand did not. It rubbed at the back of her thigh, moving in small, gentle circles, as if he was trying to erase the evidence of what he’d done. But all too soon it was moving further and further afield, his fingers tracing intricate, idle patterns down her thigh to the softness behind her knee, then returning along the back of her other leg, to halt at the edge of her panties.
Beneath her, she could feel his erection throbbing, twitching, attempting to lift her with a strength that seemed unreal, even when she squirmed against it, hating it, hating herself. Wishing she dared to reach down, somehow, and wrench it from him, break it like a dead stick. And then his hand was moving again, this time across the smoothness of her panties, seeking that soft, downy hollow at the base of her spine before advancing to snake between her legs, touching but not touching as it slid to her crotch.
She moaned, not aroused, but truly terrified. And despite her stubborn desire not to plead, the horror of memory took full control. “No... please,” she whimpered. “No, Paul... please... not again... please. Please... please... please...”
Then it stopped. Everything stopped. The room seemed to spin, pulling her mind into a vortex that dizzied her, carried her in a frenzied whirlpool that spun her from the past to the present to the past to...
“My God, Bess, are you all right? What the hell have I done?”
She was upright now, although still in his lap, Geoff’s lap, with Geoff’s pale green eyes staring into her own, his eyes wide with anxiety. Bess shook her head, wild auburn curls flying everywhere, as she tried to assimilate, fought to understand.
“Bess?”
“Geoff? Oh, Geoff...” And she sagged in his grip, wallowing in the sudden safety his arms offered. Her own arms flung themselves around his neck, pulling him to her, letting her face nuzzle into the hollow of his throat as the tremors worsened, then subsided, then finally stilled.
Her nostrils drank in the scent of him, and it swept through her mind like a cleansing wind, driving out the memories, the pain, the humiliation. Replacing them, magically, with a surge of desire that plunged through her like a tidal wave.
“Geoff...” And now it was a whisper, teased from her throat as she lifted her head, blindly seeking his mouth with her own, unable to open her eyes, not wanting to open them, lest the dream be lost, lest it somehow vanish.
The lips she found claimed but didn’t capture her mouth. They took her kisses tentatively, hesitantly, exploring as cautiously as her own lips tried to be bold, tried to dominate. Bess writhed in his arms, her lips burning, her tongue sliding past his teeth in a search for more response, seeking to conquer, demanding a response.
She let her tongue probe deeper, finding his, touching it, teasing it, seeking to initiate the dance, but frustrated because they were still out of step. She wriggled on his lap, felt the surge of reaction beneath her rump, wriggled some more as her tongue played against his teeth.
Both of them were sighing, and it was nothing like the charade they’d played earlier. Now there was only this tiny world of the bed, and them in it, and...
“This is crazy.” Geoff's mouth managed the words, but she was pivoting in his hands, and whatever else he might have said was lost as their mouths searched for each other, found each other. She tangled fingers in his hair, dragging him down to her, holding him there as securely as he had held her across his lap.
Crazy, Geoff thought again, meeting her halfway, more than halfway, but not all the way. His body reacted, couldn’t help but react. Yet his mind was stronger, alive with vibes that suddenly felt horribly, terribly wrong. He wanted Bess more than he had ever wanted a woman, but there were ghosts here. He and Bess were together, but not alone.
Paul... her ex-husband. No face to the name, yet he was somehow here, poisoning the air, giving the entire scenario an aura of...what? Geoff couldn’t name it, could only sense it, fear it, despise it.
Bess’s hand groped for one of his own, tugging at it, pulling it down to touch her breast, moaning as she felt his fingers sculpt. But even as part of Geoff reveled in the feel of her, his sense of a wrongness grew and destroyed that pleasure.
“Crazy,” he said again. Removing his hand, he began to use his greater strength against the almost manic tempo of Bess’s seduction effort. The heat in their lovemaking dissipated, then died, until finally he was holding her and yet not holding her, looking down at her and seeing...
“Bess,” he whispered. “No, please. Not here, not now. I just can’t, won’t. Can’t,” he finished, almost ashamed to meet her fevered, now confused eyes; those amazing, beautiful turquoise eyes; eyes that had haunted him for so long; eyes that would always haunt him.
Eyes that filled with pain as she felt his rejection. Filled with pain, then flared like shooting stars as the pain become anger, rage, a fury he'd never before seen in a woman’s eyes.
“Bastard!”
She spat out the word as she recoiled from his arms, nearly falling to the floor when she scrambled off his lap. Then she scurried backwards until her spine
was against the wall, her eyes wide and staring.
“Bess... I...” He got no further, couldn't find the words.
“Bastard! You... bloody bastard!”
Her eyes wavered, her mouth sagged into despair, and she turned and fled into the bathroom, the door slamming behind her.
Geoff sat for a moment on the edge of her bed, trying to work it out, failing, as confused by it all as Bess seemed to be, even though his primary emotion wasn’t anger, but dismay. Then he shook himself like a wet dog and strode from the room, taking care to gently close the door as he left.
If he had learned one thing over the years, it was that there were times when nothing could be said, nothing could be done, nothing should even be attempted.
You're on a hiding to nothing here, boy. Just get out of it, and be glad you still can.
As he wandered down to the relative sanctity of his office – sleep impossible now, not even to be contemplated – he tried to fathom it all out, but found himself only getting more and more confused.
He padded to the kitchen and grabbed up the Bailey’s from the fridge, then returned to the office and sat staring at the blank screen of his computer. He tilted the Bailey's bottle to his lips, taking small sips that gradually became larger ones, thinking small thoughts that also became larger, thoughts that began to take on nightmare proportions as the alcohol surged through his brain before it evolved into the depressant it was, and finally began to damp down his surging emotions and confusion. But when the last of the sweet liqueur was gone, he was still rattled, so he cracked open a bottle of scotch and sat sipping at that, his mind lost in a tempest that slowly succumbed to the grog, slowly began to fade into the obscurity of a bad, half-forgotten dream.
Eventually, he threw himself down on the sofa and lay staring at the ceiling until its spinning drew him into the vortex of sleep.
~~~
Bess tiptoed down the stairs, desperate for coffee, equally desperate to avoid the confrontation she knew had to come. Her memory of last night's incident was fragmented, blurry, tormenting her with visions of Paul, of humiliation, of rejection. And of Geoff’s kisses, Geoff’s touch, and even more rejection.
Finding Bess Page 10