STORM: A Standalone Romance (4 page)

Two things had been made clear to Cara in the course of that afternoon.

              One:
intermittent breaks
or not, the rain wasn't about to let up long enough for any tow company in the county to risk coming to her rescue.

              Two: Simon Banning, the mystery man who housed her, was an amazing lover.

True, they hadn't gotten anywhere close to doing the deed—at least, not as close as Cara in that moment would have wanted—but she felt that there were plenty of clues to lead her to this conclusion all the same. She tried not to imagine that it was her
journalist's instincts
that were being put to use now, but the evidence was increasingly being stacked against him: evidence like the sinfully skillful way he had first kissed; the way he had pinned her beneath him against the wall without an ounce of reservation about it; the expert way his fingers had caressed and opened her to him. He had made her crave the treatment, crave
his
touch and his touch alone, and now he had left Cara high and dry in every maddening sense of the words.

              "'Sorry'?" she hissed to her reflection in the mirror. "'I haven't had
company in a while'?"

             
She was currently holed up in her quarters and sitting in front of the vanity. It had taken a while to find her way back, admittedly, considering that Simon had just
left her there alone
in the basement story of the mansion. It was only after she had wandered the upper halls for ten minutes in nothing but an expensive bathrobe that she had managed to grab hold of a servant and request a guide back to her room.

              Her aggravation with her host was full-bodied. Any positive thoughts she had been entertaining about the man now seemed to have vanished completely; the only credit she would grudgingly admit to giving him was that he knew what he was doing when it came to making love. Her body still burned with the echoes of his touch. She might have felt extremely cross and annoyed by him, but there was no part of her that would resist him if he came on to her again. Cara was so mixed up in Simon that she had already arrived at the conclusion that the only way to get the man out of her mind—and out of her system—was to let him finish what he had started.

              But that seemed unlikely now. Cara set her hairbrush aside on the vanity, and tried not to notice the disappointed look that her reflection wore at the thought. She needed to turn her mind to other things; otherwise she risked going crazy. Inevitably, her thoughts returned to the vision of Simon's sculpted, dripping body, but she decided to hone her attention in on something very different this time.

              His scars. The memory was still fresh in her head, and she thought she could recall the old injuries clearly now. How had he gotten them? Was the story behind them what had contributed to his complete withdrawal from society? They were expansive, but hardly hideous—at least to Cara's mind. They were storied, and
interesting,
which were traits she coveted as a student. They gave fascinating character to a man that she was increasingly starting to suspect might be otherwise physically perfect in every way.

              So what
was
the story behind Simon Banning? Was it vanity at a perceived disfigurement that kept him imprisoned inside his own vast estate? As much as she currently didn't want to give the man credit for anything, Cara somehow doubted it. Simon was a bit eccentric, but she doubted the scars were capable of striking a true blow to his confidence. Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding how he had acquired them, then, that had traumatized him.

              She sighed in frustration and rose from her seat at the vanity. All of this would be relatively simple to work out if the man himself were here. Cara would have had a few other things to work, too, with Simon in her bedroom.

              He did not join her for dinner that evening, but she found him in one of the downstairs studies, nursing what looked like a strong drink and staring out the window. Rain buffeted the side of the house, driving against the mansion's foundations so relentlessly that it no longer sounded like the onslaught of individual drops from the morning, but more like a dull roar. Simon turned when she entered, his expression severe.

              "It's not getting any better out there," he said, but Cara cared nothing about the weather. She crossed to the center of the room by the blazing hearth and stood before it with her arms stubbornly crossed as she glared at him.

              "I'm leaving tomorrow," she informed him. "Rain or shine."

              "Rain," Simon said with certainty.

              "I wanted to thank you for your hospitality," she continued, as if she hadn't heard him. "But there are a few things I think you should know, as one person to another, and I don't think these are things your servants will feel comfortable telling you."

              Simon's expression changed immediately to one of amusement, and Cara wished the reappearance of the man's smile didn't flood her with momentary relief. She didn't like seeing him look worried, or haunted; she wondered what expression he was used to wearing when she wasn't here. Simon detached from the window to join her by the fire, alighting on the opposite end of the mantle and propping his forearm comfortably atop it. He leaned toward the warmth of the fire and sipped his drink, eyes never leaving her. He was dressed in slacks and a drab-colored sweater once more, but the light of the fire edged him in gold; he couldn't help but look wealthy in his complete ease. "The staff tells me everything," he said. "Even the things I don't want to hear. That's why I keep them hired on. Do you really think you have any special insight into me after having only been here a day?"

              Cara was undeterred. "This is how I'm choosing to express my gratitude to you," she said. "These are just my observations, and you can take them or leave them. I think you have a drinking problem."

              Simon's eyebrows lifted at the unexpected introduction to her list. He opened his mouth as if about to argue, before his gaze was drawn to the conspicuous crystalline glass he held in his other hand. Cara almost imagined she could smell the pungent aroma of the expensive alcohol drifting to her from where she stood.

              "…How can you possibly arrive at a conclusion like that already?" he inquired. He did not appear angry with her directness, only genuinely perplexed. "I have a predilection for alcohol, it's true, but there's nothing much else to do when the weather gets like this. Why do you perceive it as a problem?"

              "It's not the fact of your drinking," Cara said. "But it's the fact that I can only assume you started this morning, early, when we were both having breakfast, and have carried on like this all day. It doesn't seem to having a significant effect on you outside of…" But she quickly skipped over a recollection of their earlier exertions. "It doesn't seem to be having a significant effect on you, which leads me to assume you have already developed an extremely high tolerance to it. A man of your size and weight should be able to put away more than someone like me, it's true, but this sort of extended day-drinking shouldn't be sustainable, unless it's something you're used to doing often."

              Simon said nothing immediate at the conclusion of her monologue. After a moment, he set his drink down on the mantle, but Cara noted that it was empty anyway.

              "Go on then," he said quietly. "What else?"

              She hesitated slightly, but the invitation to continue had been extended. She noted the amused smile had faded from Simon's face, but the way the flickering fire cast shadows across his expression was making it difficult for Cara to interpret what he was thinking. "You're lonely," she said finally. "I don't know how long you've been living this way, but I'm guessing you've been here a while. Real friendships with the people you employ, with the individuals whose livelihoods you are directly responsible for, are next to impossible…but I think you know this already. So you can't use them as an excuse for not seeking out human connection. I think between alcohol and solitude, you're slowly killing yourself. I think you might even be doing it on purpose."

              The room plunged into silence in the aftermath of her conclusion. Even the thundering of the rain outside seemed to dissolve into the background as Cara felt the weight of her words. It had been a fleeting thought, to be sure, but she hadn't expected that she would express it now to the man. Her anger at him had long subsided, and she appeared to now be processing what she had said as much as he was. They stood across from one another, but neither made eye contact.

              "What did you say it was you do for a living?" Simon asked after a long moment.

              "I'm a student," she said simply. The spell was broken, and she moved away from the fire to occupy a chair close to it. The cushion was so wide that she was able to pull her legs up and cross them beneath her. She felt suddenly self-conscious, though she didn't know why she should feel this way. She had only been telling Simon the truth as she saw it. Besides, after tomorrow, it wasn’t like she would ever see him again.

              The man did something surprising, then: he moved to join her where she sat, lowering himself down onto the rug until his head was level with her knee. Cara hadn't expected the change in positions, and drew back slightly at his sudden closeness…but Simon did nothing untoward, only propped his arm on the cushion beside one of her legs. She wished she didn't feel the warmth of his proximity so acutely—maybe it was only due to the fact that he had been standing so close to the fire.

              "It's interesting," he said finally. "To have an outsider's perspective on things. You are right in presuming that these are not things anyone on the staff would feel comfortable telling me. It is a lot for me to process."

              "Feel free to forget everything I just said," Cara mentioned. She hated herself the next instant for trying to retract her statements, but she was afraid she had overstepped. "I mean it. It's just…" She struggled silently for the words. She hadn't been expecting such a ponderous reaction from the man—then again, Simon always reacted in a way that she wasn't expecting. "I…I don't know why I felt like telling you. It's none of my business. You're just…" She sighed gustily. "I felt like you deserved to know. Because I think you are a good person. At the end of the day, you've been nothing but compassionate toward my situation—even if you do drive me a little bit crazy. I'd even go so far as to say I might miss you when I'm gone."

              She let her eyes fall to him, and saw that he was looking up at her from his position on the floor. The hand beside her leg moved, and she felt the touch of his fingers alight on her thigh, gently. The mansion was kept warm, and she had left her room earlier in a skirt and stockings—maybe it had been her intention to make him look, a little, at the tight young body he had abandoned back in the pool.

              "Miss me?" he repeated. "I doubt it. You'll forget all about me once you're back out there in the world. I'd prefer it if you did, actually."

              "You're lying." The ghost of a smile turned up one side of Cara's face, but it was hard to maintain amusement at his claims with his hand moving up toward the high hem of her skirt. She didn't sense any lascivious intention behind the man's touch—it was almost absentminded on his part, as if his hand sought the comfort of a physical connection without his full awareness. The drag of his fingertips across her bare skin set her heart fluttering faster, and all of a sudden she wanted it again—the press of his fingers in her most secret spaces, the feeling of him stroking her deep inside. One hit and she was already addicted to the rush he could give her, the feeling of forbidden pleasure stolen in a heated moment.

              "I am," he admitted. "I don't want you to forget me so easily. That's why I—" He appeared to notice the ascent of his hand then, but he didn't withdraw it. After a moment's quiet consideration, he allowed it to trespass beneath the girl's skirt. Cara, no longer able to contain her reaction to his touch, shuddered at the luxurious feeling. She felt his fingers massage her inner thigh, his thumb stroking measured sweeps across her trembling flesh. Her muscles tensed at the intruder in a last, desperate attempt to resume control of her body's too-eager responsiveness. He was driving her crazy, but she refused to come undone so early and so easily—
especially
when he was watching her to gauge her response.

              "That's why I had to touch you," he whispered. "That's why I couldn't help myself in the pool. From the start, you seemed so eager to enter my life and throw it into complete turmoil, that I had to make you feel some of what you had done to me. I've been desperate to claim some part of you ever since you walked through my front gates. I never realized you would be so willing. I thought just being around me infuriated you."

              "You do infuriate me," Cara panted. The hand was pushing against her harder now, gripping her thigh almost possessively, and she wanted so badly to be possessed by him. "I can't wait to leave. I wish I could leave right now."

              "You're lying." Now it was his turn to flip the quiet accusation on her. "I felt you in the pool earlier. You might remember how
deeply
I felt you." As he spoke the word, she felt the stroke of a finger across the crotch of her underwear, but he gave her nothing more. Cara tried to summon the wherewithal to hold perfectly still beneath his toying caresses, but it was not going well for her. "You let me inside you, Cara. I never imagined you would be so tight."