Damage (11 page)

There would come a tipping point, she knew, and she wondered how it was that she could be so sure. A moment when the tease would be over, when the need would have become too great. A time when–

A hand on her shoulder, pulling her roughly to a halt, turning her. His other arm slipped around her waist, drawing her into his rough embrace.

Those eyes!

Somehow darker now. The color of storm clouds just before the heavens open.

Those eyes locked on hers as he closed in and then his mouth was on hers, a hard smear of lips and then he had moved on, his mouth on her jaw, following its line to her ear. That stubble scrape across her cheek was on fire!

A hard surface against her back, his hands on hers, pinning her arms up against the wall, and then one leg drove between hers, parting them so that she had to raise one leg and then his thigh came to rest against her sex, all hardness and grind.

She almost came right there and then.

That sudden pressure against her sent a surge through her entire body and suddenly she realized she was groaning aloud and she didn’t know how long she had been making this noise and how loud it was. An animal thing: the sound, and the response.

Such a heat! All concentrated in the pit of her belly, in her clit, as he ground that thigh up against her.

She managed to free a hand from his grip and reached down to tug at his shirt, pulling it free from his pants, her knuckles scraping against the cold metal of his belt buckle.

Lower down, those pants were stretched tight by his hardness. She pressed her hand against him through the fabric, grinding the heel of her hand against him, matching the rhythm of his thigh between her legs. That contact, the touch of his manhood, the hardness of his shaft against her palm... that was all it took for the heat in her belly to blossom, to explode, and she gave an animal cry as she tipped over that precipice and her whole body tightened, stabbing with pleasure, and then, finally, she subsided against him.

§

Hands at the neck of her t-shirt, pulling, and then there was a tearing sound as the fabric parted.

Pushing the shredded material roughly aside, he dropped his head to the swell of her breasts and that stubble scrape left a tingling, alive trail down across her collarbone and into the cleft between her breasts.

She pulled at his shirt, freeing the buttons, tugging it back over her shoulders. Then she moved her hands down to his belt. She tried to concentrate on feeding its tip back through the buckle, but then his teeth dragged across one breast and his tongue slid down inside the cup of her bra. A wet flick across that stiff nipple and she was groaning loudly again, and then he reached down and released the belt himself, and then the button, the zipper...

She slipped a hand inside his pants, and his manhood was so much more clearly delineated beneath the thin fabric of his shorts. At first his shaft was lying sideways, but now she teased it upright against his belly and the head stood proud, well clear of the waistband. With the flat of her hand, she pushed against him, allowing her palm to slide against his wetness, and now it was his turn to pull his head back and groan.

Then his mouth was on her again. Roughly, he pulled the cup of her bra down and then he took her nipple between his teeth and started to flick across it rapidly with the tip of his tongue.

She moved her hand up so that she could tug his shorts down, and then his manhood was free, resting in her hand as she pulled and twisted, thrilling at the size of him and the way the skin slid over its hard core.

She reached into her pocket, found a small packet and pulled it out. He looked, saw the condom, and then his eyes flitted to hers.

“Fuck me,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

She had never been much of a curser, but now... that word seemed the only one that could describe what was happening and what she needed.

“Fuck me now!”

Not caring that there were people elsewhere in the building.

He fumbled at her waist and then she felt the release of the button on her jeans, then the zipper, and then his hand forced its way in so that he could squeeze and caress her through her thin lace underwear.

She was so wet for him!

She reached for her jeans and slid them down over her hips. Kicking her shoes free, she pulled her jeans down and away, and then her panties.

There was a brief pause then. Eyes meeting, almost as if the two of them were surprised to find themselves like this.

Then she reached out, took that hard shaft in her hand again and drew him towards her. Ripping the packet with her teeth, she withdrew the rubber, pressed it against him and then rolled it down his length, her thumb and forefinger forming a tight ‘O’ around him, making him give out a long, breathy sigh.

Raising one leg, curling it around him, she pressed the swollen head of his manhood against herself, sliding it against her mound, wet with her juices and his.

Briefly... briefly she had been in control again, but now he reached down and took that thigh in his hand, supporting her, lifting her so that her back ground sharply against the wood paneling of the wall.

That movement, the way he lifted and repositioned her, moved his dick so that it slid against her, gliding between her pussy lips until the base of his shaft ground hard against her clit.

His other hand found her ass and lifted her further, so that only the toes of one foot touched the floor, and then with a bend of the knees he was lower, pushing upwards, inwards and she felt that sudden parting as he slid inside her, stretching her, impaling her.

She looked down, past the tight ridges and clefts of his abs to that knot of dark hair. Her skin was smooth and white against his, and where her narrow strip of brunette hair merged with his dark tangle there was a glistening wetness.

Then her last contact with the floor was gone, and it was only Blunt and the hard wall against her back that bore her weight.

He started to thrust. Long, deep strokes, pumping fast.

His face was buried against her neck now, and she looped her arms over his shoulders.

It had become a fast and urgent thing. Animal. Almost brutal.

Her shoulders were against a ridge in the wood paneling and each time he thrust upwards she ground painfully against it, but then that pain... it transformed... was pain no longer, but just another element in the mix of sensations rampaging through her body.

She moved one hand up, buried her fingers in the hair at the back of his head, and then she clawed the other hand and dragged her nails across his back so that he flinched, paused, and for a moment the only sensation she felt was the twitching of his hardness deep inside her. And then he started to thrust again, hard and fast, his body slamming against her and into her.

Reaching over him as far as she could stretch, she pressed her forefinger against his straining spine. Pushing so that the nail was hard against his skin, she dragged that finger up, slowly – so slowly! With each vertebra, her finger jumped and then dug in again, scraping a long welt up his back. Now he raised his head and those pale gray eyes locked on hers, widening, and with one last thrust he held himself deep and she felt him throbbing and then a sudden hot surge inside her, another throb and another, and then he was done.

Slowly, slowly, he started to soften inside her, and the tension began to ease from his body.

First one foot and then the other reached the ground, and then his manhood slipped free of her wet heat, and he was against her, skin on skin, pressing her to the wall, slumping briefly before his mouth found the line of her jaw, started to kiss along it, down and across to her mouth.

His lips were so soft now, his touch so tender.

This kiss... it was unlike any that had come before. A delicate pressing, an almost shy probing of his tongue, the touch of his lips on hers so light it was almost imperceptible, butterfly soft.

He reached down, one arm behind her thighs, and swept her up into his arms. Lifting her. Cradling her. Carrying her gently through to his private rooms, leaving only a scattering of clothing and shoes to mark where they had been.

§

She must have dozed.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she was aware of was the bedding and the curtains and she knew immediately where she was.

His bedroom.

She closed her eyes again, and let the memories seep back into her wakening mind.

The dancing, the ballroom to themselves. Leading him up the stairs. That moment of intense passion as he reached his climax with her pinned up against the wood paneling, her weight carried by the wall, his embrace, and the joining of their bodies, magnifying every last sensation.

She opened her eyes, turned her head, and he was there, lying on his side so that he faced her. He rested with his elbow on the pillow, his head in one hand, and those pale gray eyes were studying her closely.

“How long have you been watching me?”

She was naked, covered only partly by the loose draping of a sheet.

He shrugged, and looked away. Eye contact broken, she let her gaze wander down his body. Dark chestnut hair followed the contours of his chest and down the center of his belly to where it lightly covered those sharply-delineated abs. He clearly kept himself fit, despite his injured leg. The sheet twisted across his hips, just covering him where that dark belly hair began to grow thicker.

He turned then, and lay on his back. Her eyes came to fall naturally on the rise and drop of that belly, the bulge lower down now barely concealed by the sheet.

“So,” he said, gazing up towards the ceiling, “what
is
this?”

“Do we have to analyze it?” She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive, but that’s how it came out. “I mean... I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have expectations, if that helps.” Other than to not be just another of his little tarts.

He glanced across, then looked away again. “I don’t
do
this,” he said, almost to himself, his head turned away.

“You keep saying that,” said Holly. “As if you’re trying to convince yourself of something.”

He turned to face her again, and she was surprised at the anguish etched across his features. “I don’t... I mean I’ve never done this. Never allowed myself to. Not since...”

Holly put a hand lightly on his chest. She half-expected him to bat it away, but he let it lie there.

“Not since Sarah,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this. Haven’t allowed myself to feel like this. And I don’t know if I like it. Is that a terrible thing to say? I’m torn up inside.”

Holly shook her head. “Not terrible, no,” she said. “Painful, yes. Painful to say, painful to hear. I don’t want to be the one to make you feel bad. I know how difficult it must be. I can
see
how much it hurts you.”

Those words were so hard for her to say. She was trying desperately to find the
right
words, not the awful first words that had rushed through her head. Not the
How can you talk like this about another woman when you’re with
me
like
this
?
that she had almost blurted out.

He said he was torn, but so too was Holly, here with a man who was still in love with his late wife, a man whose every thought, it seemed, still circled around Sarah.

Even now, when they were here, like this.

Always: Sarah.

Sarah.

“I know I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t cling to the past. She’s gone. She’s dead.” That word was sharp, like a bullet, when he said it:
dead
. “Hanging on is unhealthy, and it just feeds the gossip mill. I know what they say. Look at the beast in the Hall who won’t let go of his dead wife. There must be something mysterious. Something that’s making him feel so guilty. As if going through all that wasn’t enough.”

Holly thought back to earlier in the evening, when Tommy had thought he could shock her with rumors that Blunt had somehow been responsible for his wife’s death.

She studied Blunt’s face closely.

“You encourage it, don’t you?” she said softly. “Or, at least, you don’t
dis
courage it.” He was punishing himself. His whole life here at the Hall had self-destruction written right through it.

“I killed her,” he said. For a moment she was shocked, then he went on: “Whether I was the one behind the wheel or not, I was responsible. It was my fault. I should have been driving, but I’d drunk too much. If I’d been driving it would have been me instead of her.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Now she moved her hand from his chest to lie against his cheek. “You need to–”

“Forget? Move on?” he finished her sentence, with a harsh tone to his voice.

“No, I wasn’t going to say that. You need to open yourself up to the world again, let yourself heal. Stop shutting yourself away up here in the Hall, hiding behind parties full of guests you don’t know. Stop shutting yourself away from the people around you.”

He took her hand and kissed it briefly. “I think I am,” he said, and then turned to lie on his back once more. “Or at least,” he went on, “I might be starting to.”

§

She opened her eyes but now the room was in darkness.

She must have dozed again. What time was it?

She didn’t know. There were no clocks visible in the darkness of the room and her phone was in her jeans, wherever they’d been discarded – somewhere on the floor here or out in the main part of the building, she wasn’t sure.

How had this happened? How had she given herself up to her feelings like that? Given herself up to the needs of the moment.

She knew that wasn’t the complete story, though. Much as she might try to convince herself that a moment of passion had stolen over her, the truth was more complicated than that. She’d come here prepared. She’d brought condoms, which she didn’t normally carry. Even the thought made her chuckle: since when had she lived the kind of life where you needed to carry condoms around with you, just in case?

Tommy had done it again, his clumsy words acting as a trigger for her to seize the moment and take control. Warning her off Blunt had only prompted her to come to the Hall and decide for herself.