Private Research: An Erotic Novella (2 page)

Since arriving in London four months earlier, I’d filled in the gaps of Anne’s genealogy, charted the connections she’d had with anyone during her lifetime, contacted or attempted to contact everyone on my list. I’d determined the locations of her known correspondence and visited archives across the country, poring over old documents. It was painstaking work and easy to get lost in the depths of it. Research in the day, take copies home and research in the evening.

Solitary work, other than the conversations with archivists, librarians, and researchers, or with clerks at grocery stores and baristas at coffee shops, where I ordered the cheapest drink just to use the wifi. It was as if I’d drained myself socially, exorcised the overly extroverted poltergeist who had taken over my body for a while.

And I was having dinner with Sebastian Graham. Wasting an evening better spent organizing my notes and thoughts so that I could focus the next day’s research.

But I was torn between the urge to run far away from him and everything I’d rejected the day I boarded the plane for England, and the desire to use this encounter as another line drawn in the sand. Satisfy that long-held curiosity and desire. Sleep with him even. Hair of the dog, in a way.

I met him outside the front doors of the archives. He was standing there, legs slightly parted, staring out into the distance, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a folded stack of papers, the results of whatever genealogical research he had done in the afternoon. His stance was so American, but maybe that was the eleven years he had spent in the States.

He looked as good in his jacket and slacks from the back as he had from the front. Only, from this vantage point I could admire his slim-hipped elegance, the tension of his body hinting at strength. Six-foot-one, if I recalled correctly. Not so tall, really, but he gave the impression of being taller than he was.

“So . . .” I said when I stood beside him, interrupting whatever thoughts had consumed him. He looked down at me and I was lost for a moment in pale blue eyes that made him so real and so known to me. Despite two years. Despite the past. Or maybe because of the past.

A pleasurable shiver rushed through my body, settled hot and full between my legs, and I shifted where I stood.

“Early for food,” he said. “A drink?”

A drink was exactly what I needed.

I nodded and followed him to his car. It was a pleasure to be able to stash my bag in the trunk, or rather the
boot
as he called it and relax into a relatively comfortable seat. As convenient as the underground system was, I’d grown up with wide, open spaces and had an instinctive aversion to small, crowded ones.

We didn’t drive very far, and in those few minutes there was only idle chitchat: Sebastian asking when I’d arrived and if I’d just been working since, me answering and staring out the window at the landscape, taking in the view I’d missed on the way out to Kew. Then we fell into silence.

The plan that I had formulated at the archives ricocheted in my head. I’d decided that, since he was the one who had prompted my ill-advised phase of sleeping around and clearly it was fate that had thrown us together once again, I should have sex with him. English major that I had been, I still saw the world in terms of themes and circles, subplots and motifs. Yet, I hardly knew him and had absolutely nothing to say to him. But if there was anything I’d learned in the past two years, it was that casual sex didn’t need a mental connection.

What it needed was lubrication of the alcoholic kind.

We ended up at a pub maybe ten minutes from the archives. Sebastian said it was fairly traditional, and at just after five, it was still quiet.

We sat inside at a corner table. Ordered our drinks.

“It’s hard to believe . . . two years,” he started, and it was, almost exactly. The last time I’d seen him had been at the very end of the semester, out on the bright green lawn. We hadn’t talked. When he’d seemed like he was going to approach me, I’d averted my eyes and headed off in the other direction. Maybe if I’d known he was leaving only a few days later, I would have waited, braved the awkward conversation.

“Longer than we even knew each other,” I added with a laugh. Diminishing those conversations and the four months of growing friendship.

“And here we are now.”

As far as conversations went, it was hardly scintillating. Instead, it was awkward talking around the subject. I was on edge, wanting to say something, thinking it better that I didn’t. Or thinking that maybe this conversation would be easier after we’d had that drink.

Did I really want to talk about it?

Not really. What I wanted to do was breach this strange wall between us, take things physical even though it was still light outside, still afternoon more than evening.

The waitress brought us our drinks and I reached for mine gratefully. Sebastian ordered another round for us both.

“So tell me about your research,” he said suddenly, as if we hadn’t been on the edge of a different conversation.

It wasn’t easy switching tracks that fast, but I had my spiel ready, the same speech I’d given to my advisor last year. “I’m not certain what I’ve already told you about Anne Gracechurch.”

“She wrote around the same time as the Brontës, was popular but drifted into obscurity? I think you said she wrote seventeen novels. Whatever would be pulp fiction for the time.”

Again, I was startled by how much he remembered.

“Twenty,” I corrected. “Or rather, I
believe
she wrote twenty. And my goal is to prove it.”

He took another gulp of his ale like it was water. It was nearly all gone while half my vodka martini was still there. I sipped at it again. When the waiter brought our next set of drinks, I swallowed down the one in my hand.

“So, you found some mention of three other books. Is that enough for a dissertation?”

“If everyone thinks those three books written by a man?”

He nodded in appreciation. I could see the light of intellectual interest in his eyes. “How do you intend to prove it?”

“One aspect is the syntax, the style. A line-by-line comparison shows a tremendous similarity. This past fall, I did an in-depth study of the text of both authors, and I talked to forensic linguists who concur. But that isn’t enough. I need to show a physical link between them. A letter to the printer or some reference somewhere. Proof that James Mead absolutely didn’t exist other than on the frontispiece of those three books. Which is what I’ve been doing since January. Or trying to do.”

“January,” he repeated.

“Yeah. I leave in two weeks.”

He looked as if he was going to say something else about it, but with one vodka martini under my figurative belt and another dangerously close to sloshing over the rim in my unsteady grip, I didn’t want to talk about the research anymore. As usually happened when the alcohol took hold, I had a decidedly oral fixation. And I was studying Sebastian with a new appreciation for his features, the slight shadow under his cheekbones, the generous length of his thin lips. It would take me days to fully explore his body with my mouth, with my tongue. Kissing him would be—

“Not very much time at all.” I met his eyes, startled that he’d read my thoughts. “Did you find your link?” I inched closer to him. His eyes narrowed in something that maybe was confusion. Which made me stop. Rethink.

Then I laughed, at myself, at the conversation, at how close I’d come to jumping the gun on this.

He raised an eyebrow, and I put my drink down. Searched for an excuse.

“Maybe we’d better order some food,” I said with an apologetic shrug.

“Americans don’t know how to drink,” he said, shaking his head.

“Or maybe we do.” I stared into my glass, finger running along the rim. “In any event, I haven’t found it yet. The link. Proof.”

At Sebastian’s beckoning gesture, the waitress came by and we ordered.

“And what if you don’t find it?”

I looked back up at him again. Found him watching me attentively.

“Then I adjust, adapt. Simply because I want something to be one way doesn’t mean it is.” Only, I wasn’t talking about the work. I was talking about Sebastian and the way I’d felt about him. About my romantic ideals, my dreams of love and even an ephemeral thought of white dresses and babies, which had been shattered so easily, first casually by him and then ruthlessly by me.

Was my plan for the evening another ruthless attack on myself, or was it really the right thing to do? Healing in a twisted way?

“That’s an excellent perspective to have,” he said, clearly missing the subtext. “Adaptability is the key to success.”

I laughed. “I’d bet you haven’t had to adapt to failure ever.”

“Ah, but I have.”

“Sebastian Graham, you seem like the type to have what you want fall into your lap.” Even as I spoke, I knew it was the alcohol that made me so forward, so flirtatious. The alcohol and the fact that I had liked him once upon a time.

“
You
didn’t.”

I froze for a moment, and then smiled, reaching for my drink. I held it up as if I were about to make a toast.

“We could remedy that.”

His eyes widened slightly before narrowing, and a small line creased his forehead.

I’d shocked him. Good. Because he’d shocked me, too, by admitting he’d wanted me. Or maybe he’d wanted a threesome.

“Mina.” All humor fled his voice and in the face of that seriousness, I downed the rest of my drink fast, even though I knew I should stop. If the food didn’t come soon, I’d be a mess. “I know I didn’t handle things well that night.

“I suppose I thought after seeing me with Tanya . . . I was trying to . . .”

“You don’t have to explain
,
” I interrupted. Thankfully, the waitress seemed to realize a diversion was necessary for my sanity. She slid our plates in front of us before disappearing again.

“But I do,” he insisted. “It was an awkward situation, and I figured I’d lost any chance with you anyway—”

“Sebastian, your point is made,” I said quickly, cutting him off again. I no longer wanted to hear his explanation, to have to think about what it meant for my life, for the choices I’d made. I was so tired of analyzing everything. He had insisted on dinner, and therefore, tonight, he was simply a means to an end. “You have had to struggle against adversity in your life.”

He laughed, and I laughed, too, before pointing to the television screen hanging from the ceiling and asking about the soccer game that was playing. He paused for the briefest moment before answering my question, and I hoped he wouldn’t press the issue. He didn’t. Instead, I listened to his patter, relieved that he seemed willing to follow my lead.

My
lead. This time I was in charge. I wasn’t the same girl who’d run from the kitchen in embarrassment, and I’d meant what I’d said so carelessly a few minutes earlier. There was one way to make this chance encounter meaningful. One way to close the circle.

As we ate our food, talked about sports and team rivalries, my focus was on the very near future. On getting Sebastian Graham into bed.

Chapter Two

W
E LEFT SHORTLY
after finishing our meals. The night was chilly, a mist in the air, despite it being spring.

“Where are you staying?” he asked as we walked toward his car. He played with his keys in his hand and the sound of their jangling was loud in the relatively quiet neighborhood.

“So that’s it?” I asked. “Just dinner? Old school chums catching up? As if we both aren’t curious what it would have been like between us?”

“I didn’t think . . .” I’d caught him by surprise. Sebastian stood on the sidewalk, keys dangling from his finger. He watched me carefully, assessing, maybe realizing that I’d meant what I said earlier in the pub, that this night could go differently than he’d imagined.

“Then don’t think,” I interrupted, moving closer. I’d learned a lot about seduction in the last two years. I’d learned that conversation was like music, physical space a medium to play with. As I stepped close, merely a centimeter between us, his breath caught. I lifted up on my toes and closed that infinitesimal space with the press of my body against his, enjoying the delicious electricity of first contact as I looked up into his face and willed him to kiss me.

He answered, and I knew his heat an instant before the touch of his lips, the wrap of his arms around me, the sensation of being completely taken over by a man who understood exactly what he was doing. I was held up by his arms and lost in the pleasure that unfurled down my body in increasingly potent tendrils.

I pressed closer to him, feeling the strength of his body beneath his suit, the heat of his growing erection against my hip. Simply the knowledge of that hardness made me shiver with longing, made me feel empty and desirous between my legs.

“Your place,” I murmured, breaking away just enough to enunciate the words.

He lifted his hands to my face and stared down at me, his gaze intense. Then he nodded and let me go.

I was giddy inside as he opened the car door, watched me slide in and then shut the door behind me. In the silent emptiness of the car as I waited for him to round it and join me, I envisioned his naked form with nearly breathless anticipation.

Then he was with me again, his gaze hot with erotic promise, and I shifted in the seat, damp and needy.

The fifteen-minute drive across the city was a tense, silent blur. Light washed over us—blue, red, green, and white. The reflection of cars and streetlights shone off surfaces, off the watch on Sebastian’s wrist, which I hadn’t noticed earlier but did during my desirous study of his hands.

“Are you sure?” he asked at one point. In answer, I placed my own hand on his thigh, stroking teasingly across the lightweight wool blend, my touch firm enough to feel the muscle beneath. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, the end of his lips quirked up slightly. I kept my hand there, stroking, inching ever so slightly higher. Knowing that I affected him, that I could make him do what I wanted, aroused me even more.

He lived in a modern building that had sprouted up during the renovation of the King’s Cross area, the garage and convenience of the underground within a few blocks being the deciding factors.

His one-bedroom flat wasn’t drastically different from anything I’d seen in America and had all the modern conveniences I’d been told not to expect in England, like air-conditioning, a decent-sized refrigerator, and cabinets in the bathroom. Certainly, they weren’t present in my flat.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked, as he shrugged out of his coat and hung it over a chair at the dining table. This was that moment of starting over again, getting back into the mood after an extended, enforced break.

“Yes,” I agreed, following him closely, so that when he turned around in the small kitchen, he turned into my arms. He had a sexy, somewhat cocky smile, and I lifted up on my toes to meet it with my lips. Contact. Stunning and drugging. His mouth became my world and I wrapped my arms around his neck to get closer. His hands grasped my hips, lifted me against him. I was only half-aware that he was moving me until I was perched on the counter, legs wrapped around him, head against the cupboard.

I drank him in, the taste of his skin, the feel of his lips, his tongue. And between my legs, through the layers of cloth—my jeans and his trousers—he was hard and pressing against me.

One hand threaded through the hair at the back of his head and with the other I touched his skin, my thumb exploring the texture of his jaw, his cheek, the slight roughness of the skin at the end of the day. The pads of my fingers tingled with sensation.

He
was my drink. His touch and his scent made me dizzy, intoxicated.

“Too many clothes,” he muttered. And I had to agree. He pulled at my sweater, lifting it up, and I raised my arms to help him. I reached for the buttons on his shirt, but he stopped me, his warm hands on the bare skin of my arms, and me still, his eyes running over me. I loved that expression on his face, so intense and filled with desire.

He reached for my tank top, slid it up over my body, peeling my clothes like I was a Christmas gift.

I was suddenly aware of my plain grey cotton underwire bra. When I’d put it on that morning, I hadn’t imagined anyone other than me seeing it. He ran his thumbs over the curves of my breasts above the cups of the bra. Then the bra itself didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was the way he was pulling the cloth down, exposing me fully to his view. I shivered as cooler air hit my nipples, and his thumb circled where the flesh stood stiff.

He leaned forward again, arms circling me to unhook my bra. He slipped it off me and threw it . . . somewhere. His hands were back, this time cradling my head just before his lips found mine again. My naked breasts pressed hard against his chest. The smooth fabric of his shirt teased me, made my skin tingle. But I wanted more. I reached between us and started unbuttoning his shirt. This time, he didn’t stop me. I yanked the cloth free of his pants and delved underneath, feeling with my hands what I wanted to see later with my eyes. I wrapped my arms around him, caressing his back, naked skin to naked skin, and felt the briefest moment of peace before the sharpness of desire took over again.

He broke the kiss. “Let’s move into the bedroom.” He didn’t wait for me to respond, just lifted me off the counter, and I slid down his body slowly, looking up at him in that semistupor of unfulfilled desire.

I followed him across the apartment. His bedroom was big, by London standards. He had what looked like a queen-size bed, but all I knew was that it was far bigger than my single back at the flat.

But there would be time for looking at furniture and decorations later. What I wanted was the half-dressed male body standing in front of me. I reached for his belt buckle, slid the leather tongue out, and then focused on the fastening of his pants. Maybe I was too slow, fumbling too much, because he took over. I moved on to my own jeans, unbuttoning, unzipping, and then pushing them down my legs and off.

We stood there, me in my panties, he in his boxer shorts, staring at each other.

For a moment I was transported back to the kitchen of my old grad apartment. Only, this time, there was no Tanya. This time, I was saying yes.

Except . . .

“Seb, we should talk.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay. I agree.”

It was all too clear he thought I wanted to discuss the past when that was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

“No,” I corrected with a small laugh. “About safe sex . . .” The words sounded so formal, but I’d had this conversation dozens of times over the last two years. Not that the conversation alone meant anything but . . . it was more than nothing.

“Right.” He laughed too, as if he were nervous, and shook his head. Then he spoke briskly. “I’ve been tested fairly recently. It’s been months since I’ve been with anyone. I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I’m negative for everything.”

Relief swept through me, except . . .

“Me, too, but I can’t say for sure either.”

His eyebrow rose, and I stared straight back at him, challenging that doubtful expression with my own amused little smile. He only knew the old Mina, the shocked little innocent. I liked that this time he was the one who was surprised.

Finally, his lips curved up.

“It sounds like we’ve minimized risk, and condoms should minimize it more.”

Minimized risk.
Risk management was part of his job after all. Yet, even if he was right, it sounded so odd. But . . . I didn’t want to think about that anymore. I wanted
him.

I stepped forward and rose onto my toes to reach his face, wrapping one hand behind his head to bring him down the few inches I needed. Any momentum we might have lost during the brief conversation was recovered in an instant. He was hard against me everywhere, especially
there,
where fabric kept us from moving too fast.

“Mina, fuck,” he whispered against my lips, and then lifted me up and turned us around. The room spun until I was flat on my back on the bed and he was climbing on top of me, pressing himself against me, the rigid length of him rubbing back and forth between my legs even as his mouth opened hot and electrifying on my neck. I gasped as he devoured me, his lips and tongue moving across my skin like wicked things, leaving a burning trail of wet fire.

My arms flopped to my sides under the sensual onslaught and I simply
felt.

But when his lips closed over one of my nipples, I gasped again and reached for him, to feel his skin under my hands, to say something about how right it was when, with my own mouth, it was all I could do to breathe.

And his hands . . . they were moving everywhere his mouth was not, down my waist, to my hips, tugging on my underwear, until he finally moved away for the briefest moment to pull them off completely.

Then his body was back between my legs, his mouth on the planes of my abdomen, and anticipation for the inevitable goal of his methodical progress down my body had me oversensitized and trembling at every touch.

I wanted his mouth on me, and suddenly it was there, at the center of sensation, gentle and exploring. I heard myself moaning unconsciously, as if it weren’t me. He found the right rhythm, the right everything.

“Yes. There,” I said on a breath, as the swirl of sensation started rising on the path that was so familiar yet, at the same time, always new.

I was close, so close, and my whole body tensed. I fell over the peak, opening up, my hips moving, as I cried out, reaching for him.

But he made his way back up my body slowly, and every place his mouth touched made me shudder again. Too much, but not enough. I wanted him inside me. I reached for him and found he’d shed the barrier of his boxer shorts. I sighed as my hand closed around the hard length of him, learning for the first time his shape and texture.

When his lips reached my neck, he leaned over to his left, to the side table, and slid open a drawer. Then he was back, tearing the condom wrapper. He paused as I stroked him, eyes closing.

I watched his face, trying to learn what he liked best. Clearly, he enjoyed what I was doing, but he opened his eyes and moved away from me. I looked on hungrily as he rolled the condom down his penis, which was thick and straight and ridiculously gorgeous.

He leaned over me again, mouth against my ear. I parted my legs farther, urging him inward. When his hips pressed forward, I held my breath at the first touch of him against me. He slid forward easily, deliciously, stretching me, and I wrapped my legs around his hips, bringing him deeper.

He pulled out slowly, and then, just as slowly, thrust back in, and then again. And again. Each stroke teased my sensitive flesh and brought me higher and higher in that spiraling up of sensation. We both grew more desperate—hands and mouths sliding down skin, massaging, pulling, faster and faster until he wasn’t slow and gentle anymore. Until I climaxed in a rush of movement, gasping, “Oh my God.”

My body floated around his as he moved faster, seeking his pleasure. He stiffened over me, his lips drawn back, neck arched, and he cried out, too, his cry deeper, more guttural, like it had been drawn out from the deepest part of his body. He fell forward. With him heavy on my body, his lips open against my neck, I clung to him still, my legs tight, my hands stroking down the now-relaxed muscles of his back.

“
I
FIGURED YOU
’D
be good in bed, experienced,” I said, after he’d rolled to the side and my mind had gathered any sense of clarity. Either he was simply skilled at sex, or the attraction between us was like nothing I’d ever felt with anyone else. Maybe both.

“I’ll take good. As for the rest . . .” He laughed. “I suppose you’d think that, considering, but really, I haven’t had time to do much of anything the last two years, including date. I work for an American firm, which means longer American hours, but it’s higher pay and a position closer to the action.”

I didn’t understand the specifics of that.

“To the money,” he clarified. “In this field, if you’re ambitious, if you can take the stress, you want to be as close to the money as possible.”

I could have asked him to explain, and once I would have, would have wanted to understand every minute detail of the work Sebastian did. I probably would have gone home and searched “quantitative analysis” just so I could understand the jargon, could have educated conversations with him about something that so obviously was of interest. In fact, I’d done a bit of that when we’d first met, which was the only reason I had any idea what investment banks and hedge funds did, what quantitative analysis entailed.

But no more. In another few minutes, I’d slink out of this bed and back into my clothes. As much as I’d enjoyed these last hours, I’d leave this night and Sebastian behind. I had no need to fill my brain with details that didn’t matter.

What did matter? I reached out and rested a fingertip on his hip, stroked the hollow there, and then down, skimming the muscle, deliberating if I wanted another round. Good-bye sex.