Kitabı oku: «The British Bachelors Collection», sayfa 18

‘So we’re here...and we’re sleeping together. You might say it adds a great deal more veracity to the situation. No need to pretend...’

Except, Violet thought, they were still pretending. Pretending an emotional connection that was absent, even though there was now a physical one.

‘You’re still frowning.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Live for the present.’

‘I’ve never been good at doing that. When our parents died, I was left in charge of Phillipa and the last thing I could afford to do was live for the present.’

‘I get that,’ Damien murmured. He wasn’t one for soul-searching conversations but he was feeling incredibly relaxed. ‘With a sister like her, you had to carry worries about the future for both of you.’ He gently parted her legs and slipped his finger along the crease that protected her femininity like the petals of a flower.

‘I can’t...talk when you’re doing that...’

‘Fine by me. Touching and talking don’t go hand in hand. At least...not unless the talking’s dirty...which I’ve discovered turns you on...’

‘But we have to talk...’

‘Wouldn’t you rather...’

‘Damien!’ She could feel her body tensing and building up to a climax. His caressing hand was doing all sorts of things to her and yet there was stuff that needed to be said.

‘I know. Irresistible, isn’t it? And you can feel how much it’s turning me on as well...’

Violet wondered how it would be were they to make love fully, properly... Her imagination soared as the rubbing movements against the pulsating bud of her clitoris got faster and faster and when she came it was an explosion that left her drained.

She curled against him. ‘What happens now...?’ She hadn’t wanted to pose the question but it was one that needed to be asked.

Damien stilled. Questions of that nature always left him cold. However, in a strange way, this was a far more straightforward situation. ‘You come up next weekend. As agreed. But I won’t be working till one in the morning and leaving the bedroom by six. It has to be said that the prospect of sojourns in the countryside has taken on a distinctly upbeat tempo.’

‘But I’m not your real girlfriend...’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Do we communicate during the week?’ She worried her lower lip as she tried to get her head round a relationship that wasn’t a relationship. ‘Or do we just become involved when we’re here? I mean,’ she added, just in case he got it into his head she would spend Monday to Friday pining for his company and putting her life on hold, ‘what if I meet someone...? I have quite a busy social life. Teachers like going out after school. Most of us feel we need a drink after a day in the company of high energy kids.’

‘Meet someone?’ He shifted so that he could look down at her.

‘I’ve been thinking about getting back into the dating scene. For some reason, it’s always been difficult with Phillipa around. I guess she just took up so much of my energy. I spent so much time worrying about what she was getting up to and listening to her personal sagas that there never seemed to be much time left over for myself. With Phillipa in Ibiza now...’

Damien’s brain had come to a screeching halt at the words getting back into the dating scene. They had just made love! He was outraged. How could she even be contemplating the prospect of some other guy when she was lying next to him, her body still hot and flushed after her climax that he had given her?

‘Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.’ He flung himself back and stared up at the ceiling with its ornate mouldings which he could hardly make out in the darkness. He felt her shift next to him so that she, likewise, was staring up at the ceiling.

‘I’m not following you...’

‘Explain to me how, on the one hand, you say that you don’t climb into bed with random men whilst on the other telling me that you want to start going to nightclubs and sleeping with whoever takes your fancy at the time...’

‘That’s not at all what I said!’

‘No? It sounded very much like that to me. And I am very much offended that you would even think of raising a subject of this nature after we’ve spent the past hour and a half making love. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about other men. Right now, I should be the only man on your mind.’

‘The game’s changed,’ Violet said calmly on a deep breath, ‘and now there are different rules.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Why do you have to be so arrogant?’

‘It’s one of the more endearing aspects of my personality. You were going to tell me about these new rules.’

‘I... For some weird reason I find I’m attracted to you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You’ve told me that I should live in the present and I guess this is my one-off opportunity to do that. I never expected it to happen, but there you go.’

‘So...other guys...out of the question. Nightclubs and sex after two drinks...likewise out of the question.’

‘In which case, the same rules apply to you.’

Damien rolled to his side and looked at her. In accordance with a serious conversation, she had tucked the duvet right up to her neck.

‘Gladly.’ He pulled the duvet down, exposing her breasts and he gently nuzzled a rosy tip until it stiffened against his tongue. ‘Gladly?’ Violet tugged him up so that he was looking at her, although her body was aching for him to carry on doing what it had been doing so well.

‘I’m a one woman kind of man...’

Violet wondered whether that was because he happened to be temporarily stuck far away from the action but then she conceded that, however arrogant and infuriating he could be, his ground rules would be fair.

‘And besides...’ he nibbled her lower lip, tugging it gently between his teeth ‘...this works...’

‘You said you first thought that getting involved like this...’

‘Falling into bed together and making love until we’re too exhausted to move...’

‘...would complicate things.’ Violet didn’t know what she wanted him to say. She had knowingly thrown caution to the winds and yet she still felt confused. She had never felt so physically satisfied—never ever—and yet the road ahead still seemed opaque and clouded with uncertainty. He might not want to put a label to what they now had, but effectively they were an item. For real. And yet why didn’t it feel that way? And did she really expect him to set those niggling anxieties to rest?

‘I wasn’t thinking out of the box. I’ve found that women seem to associate fun in bed with meeting the parents and eventually shopping for a wedding ring. You...’ seemingly of its own volition, his hand caressed her breast; he couldn’t get enough of her ‘...fall into a different category. You know how the ground lies. I’m not looking for any kind of commitment. Been there, done that, won’t be revisiting that particular holiday hotspot in the foreseeable future. But what’s going on right now...mind-blowing...and I’m not one to throw around superlatives lightly...’ He shot her a smouldering smile that made her toes curl. ‘I won’t be casting my net anywhere else and, if it makes you happy, you can communicate with me all you want to during the week. In fact, you’ll need to be updated on my mother’s progress. I’m sure she’ll also get in touch. It would be abnormal for you to be ignorant of how she is doing. So I’m guessing all your questions have been sorted...’

They were having fun. Plus it was convenient. But he was trusting her not to get emotionally wrapped up. When he said that they would communicate during the week, she knew that their conversations would be about Eleanor, that there would be a specific reason for them to happen in the first place. They wouldn’t be passing the time chatting about nothing much in particular. Violet decided that she was fine with that. She had never been the sort of person who kept the various sections of her life neatly boxed away and separated. This was how it was done. Of course, it would take a little getting used to but she would do it because, like it or not, she was greedy for the physical exhilaration he had introduced into her life, which, on that level, now seemed bland and nondescript in comparison.

She parted her legs and felt his hardness rub against her. No penetration but the sensation produced was still powerful and she moved in time to increase the pressure.

‘And when things fizzle out between us...’ she volunteered breathlessly.

‘It’s called the natural course of events.’

She could hardly imagine him being so deeply in love with a woman that he would want to take it to the very limit, that he would propose marriage. She couldn’t get her head around the notion of him offering commitment rather than talking about the natural course of events. For a man as intensely proud and intensely passionate, she could understand how he could have been permanently damaged by the most significant relationship in his life going belly up. Eleanor had never broached the subject of Annalise again and neither had she. Damien’s past was none of her business. This was the here and now. Everything he said made sense. This was her one opportunity to ditch her comfort zone and there was no point having a mental debate on the pros and cons of the clauses attached.

‘We’ll go our separate ways but as long as we’re lovers you’ll find, my darling, that I am exceedingly generous...’

‘Your money doesn’t mean anything to me.’ She tried not to feel hurt at the implication that she could be shoved into the predictable mould of one of his women, eager to take whatever gifts were on offer. ‘That’s not why...I don’t care if you own the Bank of England. I don’t want anything from you.’

Damien thought that whilst she might say that now, her tune would change the second he presented her with her very first diamond-encrusted bracelet or top-of-the-range sports car.

‘Frankly, my mother would expect it.’

‘She already knows that I’m not the materialistic kind.’

‘More confidences exchanged during one of your cosy tête-à-têtes?’ But he liked her protestations of wholesomeness. What guy in his position wouldn’t? Even if, sooner or later, the moral high ground took a bit of a beating? Greed and avarice were frequent visitors to his life. It was nice not to have them knocking on the door just yet.

‘We don’t just talk about you!’

‘I’m hurt. I thought I was never far from your thoughts...’ He moved fractionally against her and she squirmed and her eyes fluttered. To stop herself from losing control altogether once again, she reached down and firmly held him in her hand. The steel thickness of his girth made her shudder with wicked pleasure.

‘You’re not in my thoughts,’ Violet denied vigorously. Having someone in your thoughts implied a connection. Even jokingly, she didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to let him think that he might be anything more to her than she was to him. ‘You crop up in conversation with your mother because you’re the person we have in common and, under normal circumstances, a girlfriend would be really happy to hear her stories about the guy in her life from his mother. It’s natural that your mother would want to talk about you. Now, though, we talk about other things. Art, the garden, life in a small community, the treatment and what it might involve...and I don’t just have conversations with your mother. I talk a lot to Dominic as well. He has a lot to say. You just have to be patient. He gets frustrated because he can’t communicate as fluently as he’d like, but he’s smart.’

Damien gently removed her hand from him. Reluctantly. Of course, warning bells shouldn’t be ringing. They were, after all, singing from the same song sheet but still...just in case...

‘Don’t get too wrapped up, Violet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean...we might become more involved with one another than either of us anticipated or probably even wanted, and your role might have been extended beyond what I envisaged, but don’t start nurturing ideas of permanence.’

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ She pulled away from him. ‘And you don’t have to warn me! You’ve already made the parameters of what we have perfectly clear. I understand, Damien. It suits me! I’m not an idiot.’

‘But you’re forming links with my family,’ Damien said drily.

‘I’m having conversations!’ But she could detect the coolness in his voice. This wasn’t a gentle caution. This was a warning shot across the bows, a blunt reminder that she was not to go beyond the Keep Out signs he had erected around himself. If she did, and the message was clear though unspoken, she would be ditched. He would enjoy her but that was as far as things would go. In short, don’t start getting any ideas...

‘I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself. And because the women you’ve dated in the past might have wanted more from you than you were prepared to give, that’s not the case with me. I’ve always been careful. I’m just having a go at what it feels like not to be careful for once in my life. And do you always have a list prepared of dos and don’ts when you start a...something? With a woman? Or is this specially for me because I happen to have met your family?’

Violet knew that she shouldn’t be pursuing this. This wasn’t part of her decision to be daring for once in her life.

‘I’m always upfront when it comes to women. I let them know that I’m not in it for the long-term.’

‘Because you’ve been hurt once doesn’t mean that you have to spend the rest of your life keeping your distance.’

‘Come again?’ Damien said coldly.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ But had he laid down loads of rules and regulations for Annalise? No. She wasn’t in the same category—of course she wasn’t—but neither did she need to be subjected to a hundred and one boundary lines because he thought she was too gullible or too stupid to know how the land lay.

‘Let’s move on from this conversation, Violet. My past is not fertile ground for discussion.’ And he was willing to let it go. His magnanimity surprised him because he categorically did not invite anyone’s opinions on certain aspects of his life. Naturally, he didn’t want to engineer an argument. He hadn’t enjoyed the past few days of awkwardness. And also, for once, he was thinking with that part of his body which he always had under control. Never had elemental desire been so important a factor in his response.

‘As I said, I understand the parameters and it suits me.’

‘You’re using me, in other words.’ His voice was light and amused.

‘No more than you’re using me.’

Not quite the response he had expected. He gave a low laugh. Fair’s fair, he thought. Wasn’t it? He’d never had any woman admit to using him before. So what if the feeling didn’t sit quite right? He wanted her. She wanted him. Trim away the excess and that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DAMIAN REACHED INTO his jacket pocket and flipped open the lid of the black and gold box which had been nestling there for the past three hours.

A necklace with a teardrop pendant, a blood-red ruby, surrounded by tiny diamonds. He had chosen it himself. Well, why not? Suitable recompense for the past three and a half months, during which Violet had proved herself a superb and satisfying lover. He always gave gifts to his lovers. She might have thwarted every attempt he had made thus far on that front, rebutting his offers of a car, because who needed to become snarled up in traffic, not to mention contributing to global warming whilst having to pay the Congestion Charge the second you needed it for anything really useful? an expensive weekend in Vienna now that his mother seemed to be responding so well to her treatment programme, can’t, too much work, sorry, some really expensive kitchen equipment because he had seen what she had, no, thanks, a girl becomes accustomed to working with old, familiar pots and pans and ovens and fridges and microwaves...

But this necklace was a fait accompli. She would have no choice but to accept it.

He snapped shut the lid of the box and returned it to his jacket pocket before sliding out of his car and heading up to her house.

He had grown accustomed to the confined space in which she lived. Literally two-up, two-down. Phillipa was still doing whatever she was doing in Ibiza. He couldn’t imagine the claustrophobia of actually having to share the place with another adult human being. Personally, it would have driven him mad. He was used to the vast open-plan space of his five-bedroom house in Chelsea. When he had moved there years ago, he had hired a top architect who had re-configured the layout of the house so that the rooms, all painted stone and adorned with a mixture of established art and newer investment worthy pieces, flowed into one another.

Violet’s house was more in the nature of a honeycomb. Two weeks previously, he had offered to have the whole thing gutted and redone more along his tastes, but predictably she had looked at him as though he had taken leave of his senses and laughed. Alternatively, he had said, they could just spend more time at his place. He was now splitting his time between London and the West Country. Why not make love in luxury? But she had told him, in the sort of semi-apologetic voice that managed to impart no hint of remorse, that she didn’t like his house. Something about it being sterile and clinical. He had refrained from telling her that she was the first woman to have ever responded to opulence with a negative reaction.

He pressed the doorbell and instantly lost his train of thought at the sound of her approaching footsteps.

From inside the house, Violet felt that familiar shiver of tingling, excited anticipation. After the first month, and once he had ascertained that Eleanor was responding well, Damien had split his time. He always made sure to spend weekends in the country and often Mondays as well, but he was now in London a great deal more and Violet liked that. On all levels, what she was doing was bad for her. She knew that. She didn’t understand where this driving, urgent chemistry between them had sprung from and even less did she understand how it was capable of existing in a vacuum the way it did, but she was powerless to fight it. Having always equated sex with love, she had fast learned how easy it was for everything you took for granted to be turned inside out and upside down.

She had also fast learned how easy it was to lose track of the rules of the game you had signed up to.

When had she started living her week in anticipation of seeing him? Just when had she sacrificed all her principles, all her expectations of what a relationship should deliver on the high altar of lust and passion and sex?

She had told herself that she was throwing caution to the winds. That most of her adult years had been spent being responsible and diligent and careful so why on earth shouldn’t she take a little time out and experience something else, something that wasn’t all wrapped up with doing the right thing? She had practically decided that she owed herself that. That she was a grown woman who was more than capable of handling a sexual relationship with a man to whom she was inexplicably but powerfully attracted.

So how was it that it was now so difficult to maintain the mask of not caring one jot if he never discussed anything beyond tomorrow? If he assumed that whatever they had would fizzle out at some point? More and more she found herself thinking about Annalise, the wife that should have been but never was. He never mentioned her name. That in itself was telling because three weeks ago, on one of their rare excursions out for a meal at a swanky restaurant in Belgravia, he had bumped into a woman and had afterwards told her that he had dated her for a few months. The woman had been a flame-haired six-foot beauty, as slender as a reed and draped over a man much shorter and older. Afterwards, Damien had laughed and informed her that the man in question was a Russian billionaire, married but with his wife safely tucked away in the bowels of St Petersburg somewhere.

‘Don’t you feel a twinge of jealousy that he’s dating a woman you used to go out with?’ Violet had asked, because how could any man not? When the woman in question looked as though she had stepped straight off the front cover of a high-end fashion magazine? Damien had laughed. Why on earth would he be jealous? Women came and went. Good luck to the guy, although he had enough money to keep the lady in question amused and interested.

‘Was she too expensive for you?’ Violet had asked, which he had found even more amusing.

‘No one’s too expensive for me. I dumped her because she wanted more than money could buy.’

Violet had thought that that had said it all. The woman in question had wanted a ring on her finger. Damien, on the other hand, had wanted casual. Which was what he wanted with her and the only woman to whom those rules had never applied was the one woman who had broken his heart.

And yet, knowing all that, she could still feel herself sliding further and further away from logic, common sense and self-control. Forewarned wasn’t forearmed.

She pulled open the door and her heart gave that weird skippy feeling, as though she were in a lift that had suddenly dropped a hundred floors at maximum speed.

It was Thursday and he had come straight from work, although his tie was missing and his jacket was slung over his shoulder.

‘Damien...’

‘Missed me?’ Deep blue, hooded eyes swept over her with masculine appreciation. No bra. Ages ago, he had told her that it was an entirely unnecessary item of clothing for a woman whose breasts were as perfect as hers. At least indoors. When he was the male caller in question...

He had been leaning indolently against the doorframe. Now he pushed himself off and entered the tiny hallway, his eyes glued to her the whole time.

His smile was slow and lazy. With an easy movement, he tossed his jacket aside, where it landed neatly on the banister, then he wrapped his arms around her, drew her to him so that he could try and extinguish some of the yearning that had been building inside him from the very second he had set foot in his car. Her mouth parted readily and he grunted with pleasure as his tongue found hers, clashing in a hungry need for more.

Violet braced her hands against his chest and stayed him for a few seconds. ‘You know I hate it when the first thing you do the very second you walk through the front door is...is...’

‘Kiss you senseless...?’ Damien raked his fingers through his hair. Frankly, he wasn’t too fond of that particular trait himself. He didn’t like what it said about his self-control when he was around her, but he chose to keep that to himself. ‘Is that why the last time I came, we didn’t even manage to make it up the stairs?’ he said instead. ‘In fact, if I recall...your jumper was off on stair two, I had your nipple in my mouth by stair four and by stair eight, roughly halfway up, I was exploring other parts of your extremely responsive body...’

Violet blushed. As always, it was one thing saying something and another actually putting it into practice.

Right now, although he had done as asked and had drawn back from her, the one thing she wanted to do was pull him right back towards her so that they could carry on where they had left off.

It was only a very small consolation that these little shows of strength helped her to maintain the façade of being as casual about what they had as he was. She knew that she had to cling to them for dear life.

‘I’m going to cook us something special.’ She led the way to the kitchen and retrieved a cold bottle of beer from the fridge, which he took, tilting his head back to drink a couple of long mouthfuls.

‘Why?’

Violet contained a little spurt of irritation. Shows of domesticity were never appreciated. He had never said so but, tellingly, his chef would often prepare food, which he would bring with him, stuff that tasted delicious and required an oven, a microwave and plates, or else takeaways were ordered when they had been physically sated. The ritual of eating was usually just an interruption, she sometimes felt, to the main event.

‘I’m trying it out as a meal for my class to learn,’ she lied and he shrugged and swallowed a couple more mouthfuls of beer before retreating to the kitchen table, where he sprawled on one chair, pulling another closer and using it as a footrest.

Violet bustled. Now that they weren’t tripping over themselves, tearing each other’s clothes off in a frantic race to make love, she wished that they were. Her body tingled at the knowledge that he was looking at her. She loved it when his eyes got dark and slumberous and full of intent.

‘Tell me how your mother’s doing,’ she said, to clear her head from the wanton desire to fling herself at him and forget about the meal she had planned.

She listened as he told her about recent trips into the village, her upbeat mood, which so contrasted with her despair when she had initially told him about the situation, recovery that was exceeding the doctor’s expectations...

Violet half listened. Her mind was drifting in and out of the uncomfortable questions she had recently started asking herself. Occasionally she said something and hoped for the best. She was a million miles away when she jumped as Damien padded up towards her and whispered into her ear, ‘Must be a complicated recipe, Violet. You’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes.’

Violet snapped back to the present and turned to him with a little frown. ‘I’ve got stuff on my mind.’

‘Anything I’d like to hear about?’

She hesitated, torn between not wanting to rock the boat and needing to say what she was thinking.

‘No. Just to do with school.’ She cravenly shied away from doing what she knew would ruin the evening.

‘What can I do to take your mind off it...?’ Just like that, Damien felt his tension evaporate. He thought he might have been imagining the thickness of the atmosphere, her unusual silence. He turned her back to the chopping board, where she had been mixing a satay sauce, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. ‘Looks good. What is it?’ He slipped one big hand underneath her loose top and did what he had been wanting to the moment he had set foot through the front door. He caressed one full breast, settling on a nipple, which he rubbed gently but insistently with the pad of his thumb. With his other hand, he dipped a finger into the sauce, licked some off and offered the rest to her. Violet’s mouth circled round his finger and she shivered at the deliberate eroticism in the gesture.

She moved across to the kitchen sink, carrying some dishes with her, and he released her, but only briefly, before resuming his position standing right behind her.

Outside, with the days getting longer, darkness was only now beginning to set in. Her view was spectacularly unexciting. The back of the house overlooked the wall of another house; the outside space comprised of a pocket-sized back garden just big enough for Phillipa to lie down in summer and spend the day tanning without having to dismantle the washing line.

Their bodies, merging together, were reflected hazily back to them in the windows overlooking the garden and their eyes tangled in the reflection as he slowly pushed up her jumper until she could see both their bodies and the pale nudity of her breasts. She gasped and fell back slightly against him as he began massaging them, rhythmic, firm movements that pushed them up, making her large nipples bulge and distend.

‘Damien...no...someone might see us...’ Although that wasn’t really a possibility. The one thing about the house and its location was that it was surprisingly private, given the fact that it was in London, where privacy was a rarity. The small back garden was fully enclosed with a fence and a fortuitous tree in the back garden of the neighbour opposite ensured limited view.

Damien continued rubbing her breasts, filling his hands with the heavy weight of them, bouncing them slightly, as though evaluating their worth.

‘Get naked for me,’ he murmured, nipping her neck and then trailing hot kisses along it.

‘Get...what...?’

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear. Get naked for me. Take your clothes off. Scratch that. Maybe I’ll let you get away with just wearing an apron...’

‘I’m not dressing up for your enjoyment!’ But already the thought of his dark, intense eyes following her naked body as she moved around the kitchen was making her feel hot and bothered.

‘I’m not asking you to dress up. I’m asking you to dress down...’ He shifted her jumper up, over her breasts, and Violet responded by spinning round to face him, her bare breasts pushing against the hard wall of his chest.

She began unbuttoning his shirt. From a position of relative inexperience only months ago, she had grown in confidence. He might not have had it at his disposal to offer anything most women would have expected of a proper relationship, but he certainly had it within him to turn her into a woman who was no longer tentative when it came to responding in ways that would pleasure her.

She shoved her hands under his shirt and felt the abrasive rub of his chest, not smooth and androgynous, but aggressively masculine with its dark hair. Slowly, she pushed the shirt off his broad shoulders, running her hands expertly along the contours of his muscles until the shirt had joined her jumper on the kitchen floor.

He propped himself against the counter, caging her in, and took his time kissing her until her whole body was burning up and she could feel the damp heat pooling between her legs.

‘Those jogging bottoms do nothing at all for your superb figure... They should be banned from your wardrobe...’ He slipped his fingers underneath the stretchy waistband and tugged them down, allowing her to wriggle out of them, keeping his arms on either side of her so that her movements were restricted. When he looked down, he could see her generous breasts shifting as she moved, soft and succulent. Unable to resist, he captured one and lifted it until her nipple was pouting directly at him. Reluctantly he decided that a full-on assault would have to wait. He wanted to take his time. She had been in his head for days; frankly, from the last time he had seen her, which had been the previous week, and he wasn’t going to rush things. He had spent hours fantasising about the next time they met and he intended to see at least some of those fantasies translated into sexy reality.