Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (67 page)

‘It tangles really easily,’ she explained. ‘And I thought it would be easier to manage and I fancied a change. You hate it, don’t you?’

‘I don’t,’ Wilson protested. ‘It suits you. It’s just a bit of a shock.’

‘Do you think it looks more ginger?’ Hope couldn’t help asking. ‘It just seems more
orange
now.’

‘What? No! It looks gorgeous, you’re all eyes and cheekbones,’ Wilson said gamely, lightly touching the ends, and as Hope turned her head his warm fingers brushed against her cold cheek.

Hope thought she might have gasped, because she’d been agonising about that first touch, and she saw Wilson’s eyes widen and darken, and she couldn’t say which one of them stepped closer, but she heard the soft thud of her coat fall to the floor, and then she was in Wilson’s arms and they were kissing.

NOT TENTATIVE, POLITE
kisses. Not at all. Wilson’s tongue was fucking her mouth as Hope coiled herself around him, one hand sliding down his back to grab his arse and haul him closer.

Just when Hope thought she might actually swoon in Wilson’s arms, he tore his mouth away to place ferocious, hungry kisses on her neck as he tugged ineffectually at her dress, the dress that was never meant to come off, which was why Hope was already trying to tug down the zip.

‘No,’ Wilson said hoarsely. ‘I want … I’ve thought about undressing you. I’ve imagined it for so long.’

This should have been the point when Hope told Wilson sternly that they could kiss and only kiss, but it was to go no further than that. Instead she was leaning against the back of the sofa and running her hand up his chest so she could feel the frantic thud of his heart under black cashmere. ‘What else have you imagined?’ she asked.

Wilson stepped between her thighs so Hope could feel the prod of his hard cock against her belly. ‘I told you that I wanted to kiss every single one of your freckles. I want to see where they stop, and I’ll kiss you there too, but mostly I’ve thought about fucking you.’

Hope hung her head and tried to catch each panting breath that came out of her mouth. ‘I’ve thought about that too,’ she admitted. ‘I shouldn’t have, but I did.’

‘You’re going to say it’s too soon, aren’t you?’ Wilson’s
voice
was resigned as he took a step back. ‘You’ve only just got out of a long, difficult relationship, and you’re not ready to jump into bed with the first guy who asks.’ He sighed. ‘Why did I have to fall for a nice girl?’

‘I’m not a nice girl!’ Hope said indignantly. ‘But it
is
too soon. I was worried that this would happen if I came round, and I swore to myself that we’d just have a little drink and a laugh, and if I did have to stay the night, it would all be respectable and above board.’

‘You’re right.’ Wilson smiled tightly. It wasn’t a fraction as beguiling as his earlier smile. ‘Tea or champagne? Or should we not risk alcohol?’

‘It
is
too soon,’ Hope repeated. ‘And if we have sex it will make everything really complicated …’

‘Yeah, I think you already mentioned that.’

‘… but I don’t care that it’s too soon, I don’t care about complicated, and I really don’t care about being respectable and above board,’ Hope said, bracing her arms against the back of the sofa so her heaving breasts under teal-coloured lace were thrust forward. Wilson’s eyes were immediately drawn to them. ‘I’ve had it up to here with doing the right thing. I want to do all sorts of bad things, and I want to do them with you.’

‘You absolutely sure about that?’ Wilson clarified, but he wasn’t making any kind of move, even if his eyes were still fixed on her tits.

Hope wanted to stamp her foot, but she settled for a fervent ‘Yes!’ and then, thank God, Wilson had closed the distance between them and his mouth was on hers again, and he was half lifting her so he could stagger towards the slatted staircase that led to his bedroom.

He even attempted the first step, which was sweet of him, but if Wilson carried on like this, he’d either drop her or give himself a hernia, which would curtail the evening’s agenda of all sorts of bad things before they’d begun. Instead Hope stood on her own two feet, took Wilson’s hand, her fingers
twining
around his, and led him up the stairs to his bedroom.

It was a long, low room under the eaves, lit only by the candles downstairs, so they were half in shadow, until Wilson snapped on the bedside lamp and Hope could see his huge bed, with an old-fashioned iron bedstead, dressed in crisp white linen. In fact, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bed.

‘Turn round,’ Wilson said.

‘Why?’ she asked, even as she turned round, then shivered as she felt Wilson’s lips press against the back of her neck, that sensitive patch of skin which had always been hidden by her hair.

‘Because I’m going to undress you,’ Wilson replied, and he started to slowly inch down the zip of her dress, kissing each millimetre of skin that was gradually exposed.

When the dress got stuck on her hips, Hope worked the fabric loose and kicked it away, then pushed down her woolly tights, while Wilson stared at her, his tongue moistening dry lips, as if Hope was seductively unrolling a pair of silk stockings.

Then she was standing in another man’s bedroom in her underwear, and Hope suddenly realised the enormity of what she was about to do with this other man who wasn’t Jack.

It was someone else looking at her body, running his eyes over the freckles that dusted her breasts, and along the slope of her belly and the curve of her hips and on to her thighs, which would never be long and lean even if she took up marathon-running. That didn’t seem to matter so much with Jack, because Hope’s body was as familiar to Jack as his own, but Wilson might have higher standards.

He’d been with Susie after all, and before Susie there had been other women, and he was a photographer so some of those other women must have been models – and she’d been with no one else but Jack. Just Jack.

‘You look like a Vargas girl,’ Wilson suddenly breathed, his hand gently and tentatively stroking her hip as if he was scared to touch her. ‘I could just picture you painted on the side of a Second World War bomber plane.’

‘You could?’ Hope asked doubtfully.

‘Absolutely,’ he said, and then he dropped to his knees so he could kiss the big splodgy freckle on Hope’s left knee, because she even had freckles on her kneecaps. It was the first time a man, or anyone, had bowed down before her and though that felt weird and vaguely wrong, it also made Hope feel less self-conscious about standing there in her M&S knickers and bra.

Wilson was now investigating the freckles behind her knee, which tickled. Hope touched the top of his head, careful not to dislodge his quiff, which was still vertical despite the earlier, frantic kisses. ‘I’m feeling a bit under-dressed,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe you should lose some clothes too?’

‘I suppose I could, while you’re arranging yourself on the bed,’ Wilson agreed, as he slowly got to his feet and grimaced slightly when he straightened up. ‘Yeah, this might work better if you were lying down, because I think I pulled something when I was playing football.’

‘I could massage it, if you wanted,’ Hope offered as Wilson nudged her nearer to his huge bed. ‘I am a trained first-aider.’

‘Later,’ Wilson said, and then he pulled his jumper and T-shirt over his head, and the view was so good that Hope stopped worrying about the most flattering position to lie in and decided to concentrate on the floor show, as Wilson toed off his shoes and pulled off his socks. Hope propped herself up on her elbows, all the better to see, and because it flattened her tummy and perked up her boobs. Wilson raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Seen anything you like?’

Hope nodded. ‘Quite a lot of things, actually,’ she said, and she’d never been good at the sexy talk, but Wilson seemed so relaxed and unfreaked out that it made her feel
relaxed
and, well, about 50 per cent less freaked out than she had been.

Eyes fixed on hers, Wilson unbuckled his belt and pulled it slowly through the loops on his jeans, then he began to unbutton them with what looked like great difficulty. Up until then, Hope’s gaze had drifted across the firmly muscled planes of Wilson’s chest, resting appreciatively on his biceps and the way his pecs rippled as he moved. He was solid without being flabby, and it was going to feel so good when he was on top of her, or when she was on top of him and not worrying that she was going to crush his ribs. But then Wilson pushed down his jeans and his boxers and kicked them off, and Hope could see exactly why he’d had difficulty in unbuttoning, and now she knew that it hadn’t been false advertising when Susie had said that Wilson had a big dick.

Of course, she’d already touched it, but that time Wilson had only unzipped his jeans, and Hope hadn’t even glanced down, but now she had a perfect view of his cock and it was big and beautiful, though Hope had never thought of cocks in that way. He was already lovely and hard, his dick straining upwards so it was almost touching his belly, and Wilson stroked it almost absent-mindedly as he smiled at Hope. It was a smile full of promise and she couldn’t help but smile back.

‘You should probably roll over so I can get to work on those freckles,’ he told Hope as he moved towards her.

‘But then I won’t be able to see you,’ she complained, but Wilson’s hand was already on her hip and she was turning over to lie on her front on his bed, her hands shaking slightly as she rested her head on her folded arms.

She felt the bed shift as Wilson kneeled on it, then his fingers curled around her left ankle, and she smothered a shriek as he licked a path along the arch of her foot. ‘I don’t have any freckles there!’

‘Just checking,’ Wilson said, and he began to place kisses
along
her calves. It tickled, and she wriggled on his duvet cover, breath catching in her throat as he reached her upper thighs. But though his fingers hooked into the waistband of her briefs, he began to kiss his way up her spine, unclipping her bra so he could trail his tongue along the red marks it had left, until he arrived at her shoulders, where the freckles reached critical mass. ‘I think this might take some time.’

It seemed to take for ever, with Wilson alternating between butterfly brushes against Hope’s skin and hot open-mouthed kisses that had her scrunching handfuls of quilt between her fingers. Then he was on the move downwards again, slowly tugging her panties down with a little tut, as if he was annoyed with them for hiding Hope’s arse from him. Still, she tensed up as her bum was displayed in all its rounded glory.

She tensed up even further when she felt Wilson’s mouth rain kisses down on her buttocks, and his hand slipped between her legs to keep her still, the tips of his fingers centimetres away from where she was already wet and aching for him.

His fingers shifted higher and Hope thought she might have stopped breathing altogether as she felt them graze against her pussy, but then he was moving away and she wanted to cry, just a little.

‘Turn over,’ he said with a commanding edge to his voice so Hope didn’t think of refusing, even though as she rolled over and fidgeted until she was lying on her back, pillows propped up behind her, she felt ridiculously shy and naked in a way that wasn’t about not having a stitch on.

Wilson didn’t even disguise the fact that he was running his eyes over her body with an intensity that bordered on obsessive, so nothing would escape his scrutiny, not her pot belly, or her splayed thighs, or the way that her breasts were too small to balance out her wide hips.

‘God, you’re so fucking sexy,’ he said in a thick, treacly
voice,
and he was touching his cock again, but when Hope’s hand crept over so she could join in, because it felt as if they’d been doing this for hours and she hadn’t even got to touch him yet, he slapped her hand away. ‘Not yet. I’m only halfway through my task.’

‘Maybe you could finish it later,’ Hope suggested, but Wilson just smiled and shook his head.

He started with her feet again and as he travelled up her legs, biting softly now and again, Hope started squirming, thighs parted so Wilson would have to be blind not see how much she wanted him, but he simply placed a hundred tiny kisses on her neatly trimmed mound and continued upwards.

‘I can’t take much more of this,’ Hope gasped. She felt as if it wouldn’t be too long before she began to cry from pure, unrelenting frustration. ‘I want you so much that it hurts.’