His body liked her hands on him, no question.
But his eyes were conflicted. ‘What’s on your mind, Adam?’
‘Complications,’ he said gruffly. ‘Rules of engagement. I have some.’
‘Tell me.’
‘We’d need to be discreet,’ he rumbled. ‘This doesn’t involve the boy. And no promises. No place in each other’s lives at all. No one gets hurt. Just sex.’
‘That’s a restrictive set of rules you’ve got there. I can see plenty of room for hurt.’ But her fingers found the pucker of his nipple and she ran her nail over it, wanted her mouth on it. He made a little sound; involuntary, she thought and utterly sexy. ‘The sex would have to be amazing.’
‘I know,’ he said, and bent his head and grazed the tender cord of her neck with his teeth, and now it was her turn to whimper as she lifted his T-shirt higher and then all of a sudden he pulled away and the shirt was on the ground and his hands were on the ute on either side of her and his lips were tracing a not so lingering path towards her ear, her cheek, and finally her lips.
Motionless again, as his lips brushed hers. Time stopped as she opened her mouth just a little and tasted salt on her tongue. And then he groaned and deepened the kiss so perfectly and so fast that all she could do was slide her arms around his neck and hold on.
Not a bruising, biting kiss. Not tentative or teasing either.
Perfect.
Things got a little rushed after that, what with the removal of her shirt and the unbuckling of his belt.
‘Stop me,’ he whispered at one point.
But, ‘Stop yourself,’ she whispered back and he didn’t, and he had a swag in the back of the truck and he got it out and unbuckled it and with a flick rolled it out onto the ground and dragged her down onto it.
‘How good did you say the sex would have to be?’ he muttered as he rolled her onto her back and slid her shorts and panties from her body.
‘Incandescent.’
At which point he got this look in his eye and put his shoulders to her thighs and his stomach to the swag beneath them and set his mouth to her centre. Not bruising, biting or tentative, but definitely abandoned and altogether perfect.
Dear heaven the man could eat.
It took him two minutes, possibly less, before Billie began convulsing around him, pushing up into his mouth as she rode out her pleasure on his mouth, her eyes closed against the glare of the sun.
Billie lay boneless after that, with the sun on her skin and spots behind her eyes as he pulled away, and then he was back and there were condoms and Adam asking her if she’d had enough, but she hadn’t had him yet, and he certainly had more to give.
Plenty
more to give, and he slid into her slowly and sought her mouth again while he did so. His taste and hers, and she loved it, his body completely at her service and she loved that too.
‘So tight,’ he whispered when at last he could go no further.
So full, thought Billie with what was left of her brain. She wanted slow and languid from him. She wanted hard and rough and reckless with her mouth on his skin and her body bowed skywards and he knew… somehow he knew without asking and he gave her both and then rolled onto his back still buried deep inside her and set his thumb to her clitoris.
Not shy about the giving and taking of pleasure, not shy at all, and it freed her to have such a reckless, responsive lover, and oh, that thumb was as skilled as his mouth had been, only this time when her body began its climb towards orgasm, Billie reached back and stroked his balls and made sure Adam came too.
The aftermath was awkward, what with the twitching and the trembling. There was clean up and the recovery of clothes, and more water from the cooler. There was sunshine and precious little conversation on the trip back to the cottage. Adam kept the engine running as he pulled up to her door.
‘So,’ he muttered, his hands firmly fixed on the steering wheel. ‘That seemed fairly…illuminating.’
Indeed.
‘Want to do it again?’ He cleared his throat, stared straight ahead. ‘Not now, necessarily. Just… again. No strings attached. No need to mention it to your—anyone. It’s less than you deserve, I know that. I
do
know that.’ He lapsed into silence again and Billie was silent too. She knew full well that his rules of engagement weren’t fair. That she should value herself more and his lovemaking less. That sooner or later she’d have to pay for her lapse in judgement. But, oh, the pleasure had been sweet.
‘Adam?’ She waited until he turned to look at her. She leaned forward and the kiss she coaxed from him could have lit up a midnight sky. ‘Yes.’
Adam did not follow Billie inside the cottage for another round of nakedness and passion. She needed to get to work, he needed to get back to the house and put food in his stomach. Something, anything, to help keep his hunger for Billie in check.
He headed home. He had a shower too, and didn’t stint on the shampoo and soap. He made sandwiches. And then Simon showed up.
‘I passed your new tenant on the way in,’ said Simon as he ambled over to the kitchen bench, fixed himself a coffee and made himself at home. ‘Tell her she drives too fast on that road.’
Adam scowled.
‘Aren’t you chatty?’ said Simon.
‘Windmill’s in pieces,’ he said by way of explaining away his black mood.
‘You want a hand with it?’
‘You got time?’
Simon nodded and eyed the ready-made sandwiches with interest. Adam pushed them towards him, and the jam jar and half a loaf of bread besides.
Twenty minutes later the bread was gone and he and Simon were standing by the windmill, with Adam ignoring a certain crushed patch of grass for all he was worth.
‘Who helped you lift it out?’ asked Simon, looking at the pipe.
‘Billie.’
Simon tipped his hat back to stare at him. ‘Really?’ he said mildly.
Adam grabbed the new pump from the tray of the ute and headed for the windmill. Discretion. It was the only way this thing with Billie was going to work.
He and Simon worked well together, always had done. In between swapping out the old pump for the new and lowering pipe back down the bore Simon talked about his sheep and stud rams, when he was thinking of separating lambs from ewes and could Adam give him a hand with the drenching. Busy conversation that went a fair way towards keeping Adam’s mind off a naked Billie Temple and the way she’d wrapped around him.
‘So how’s she working out?’ asked Simon, halfway through lowering the third pipe. ‘Your tenant.’
‘Fine.’
‘Got a pretty smile. Of course, with a mouth like that it’s not long before a man starts wondering what it tastes like.’
Adam fumbled the pipe, cursed, and exhaled his relief when Simon was there to steady it. Despite making light of it with Billie, if he dropped sixty foot of two-inch pipe down a one-hundred-and-fifty foot hole that was only six inches wide, it wasn’t coming back up.
‘Sorry.’ Simon’s smile was unrepentant. ‘Didn’t mean to distract you.’
‘You didn’t.’ Between them they lowered the pipe until the clamp rested gently on the lip of the hole. ‘My grip slipped, that’s all.’
‘Right,’ said Simon drolly. ‘You should ask her out.’
‘I don’t date.’
Simon sighed, tipped his hat back. ‘Not sure that’s real healthy,’ he said and wore Adam’s icy glare with equanimity.
‘She has a kid.’
‘You like kids, remember?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t want one of my own. I’m not looking for another family, Si, I don’t want one. Been there, done that. Failed.’
A family man.
His father had made it look so easy, only Adam had tried it and it hadn’t been easy at all. He’d been a lousy husband to Caroline and a distant father to Jeremy. Caroline had seen to that, for she’d bound the boy to her so tightly there’d been no room for anyone else. He liked to think that as Jeremy grew older the boy would have spent more time with him. He liked to think he could have made his marriage work, but his heart knew better. From beginning to abrupt and tragic end, his family life had been a farce.
‘You didn’t fail,’ said Simon. ‘She just wasn’t right for you.’
Adam said nothing.
‘Talk to me,’ said Si.
‘What about?’
‘Whatever’s eating you.’
That would be Billie. And dear heaven, Adam hoped it would be soon. ‘Nothing’s eating me.’
Simon finished screwing the final pipe in place, crouched back on his heels and regarded him steadily. ‘So it won’t bother you if I ask her out for a meal?’
‘Suit yourself.’
Didn’t mean she’d accept the invitation, even if it was a far better offer than anything Adam had in him to give. Adam clenched his jaw and kept a grip on the pipe and the temper in him too. Surely she wouldn’t accept his brother’s invitation. Not now. Not after what they’d done here today.
God help them all if she did.
‘Feel like heading into the pub tonight?’ asked Simon next.
‘No.’
‘I hear first prize in the darts competition is one of Maude’s high-top apple pies. You could be my wing man in the quest to charm your new tenant.’
‘No.’ Temper flashed and Adam knew damn well that his brother had seen it.
‘Alternatively,’ drawled Simon. ‘I could be yours.’
‘I
said
no. She deserves better than me. They both do.’
And finally,
finally
his brother fell silent.
But not for long.
‘You know you never gave up on love when Caroline and Jeremy were alive.’ Simon’s words were all the more potent for being so gently delivered. ‘Day after day I watched you and you
never
stopped trying to make it work, no matter how much poison Caroline fed you. How come you’re letting the bitch defeat you now she’s dead?’
Spring rolled into summer. The days grew longer and the nights grew hotter. Christmas was coming. School holidays were barely two weeks away. Maude added blackberry pie to the menu. Roly and Arthur took up golf. Cal’s band had expanded to eight kids in total and Roly suffered in silence as Billie shifted hours and took to teaching them simple riffs and tunes in one of the unused back rooms of the pub after school two days a week.
Those hours through the day between eleven and three were hers though, and more often than not she spent them with Adam. Loving him with her body and letting him take away her mind. Drawing pleasure, so much pleasure from him, and giving it in return.
He barely came near her when anyone else was around. And then turned around and treated her better than any man had
ever
treated her when they weren’t. It wasn’t right. Someone was going to get hurt soon and that someone was her, but damned if she could stop what she’d started.
Nothing to do but build a reputation for saying no to any man who asked her out. No, in some fool attempt to be faithful to a man who was
never
going to ask her out.
It had to end; whatever this was she had going with Adam. The madness had to stop.
Just… not yet.
Her other passion became building the business. Making the premises more appealing to a wider selection of the community; that was her job, the part she enjoyed most, and if it helped her keep her mind off heartbreaker Kincaid and his kisses, well, that was just a bonus. Mothers started getting together as they waited for the music workshops to finish. Mothers who wanted nothing more than a coffee and somewhere to chat, and Billie’s thoughts turned to cappuccino machines and what she might do to draw in an afternoon crowd of mothers with young kids in tow.
‘I’ve been thinking we could use a cappuccino machine,’ she said to Roly one afternoon when Maude was there too.
‘What do we want a cappuccino machine for?’ said Roly.
‘For people who want to drink coffee.’
‘People don’t come here to drink coffee, Billie. They come here to drink alcohol. This is a drinking establishment. That’s why we have a liquor license.’
Billie stared at him steadily. ‘You said you wanted more customers.’
‘Well, I didn’t mean teetotal women,’ blustered Roly. ‘Take the darts competition for example; now that brings in the type of crowd we want. Serving up Maude’s pies at six-o'clock each evening brings in the customers we want. As for these music workshops, you know good and well that I only said yes because Cal had his heart set on them, not because I ever thought it was going to bring in business.’
‘You’re a wonderful man,’ she told him. ‘Isn’t he wonderful, Maude?’
‘But you cannot, I repeat,
can not
have a cappuccino machine!’ And on that note, Roly left.
‘That went well,’ said Billie with a grimace. ‘Do you think he just figured out that all those new customers I plan to draw in next are going to be women?’
Maude snorted. ‘He’s a little slow on the uptake, our Roland, but he’s not stupid. He knows.’
‘Do you think he’ll go for it?’
‘No. Surely you never expected that dragging this place into the family zone was going to be easy?’
Billie sighed. ‘Easier than this.’
‘Maybe you need to pick battles you can win.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said, thinking not of Roly but of Adam. Thinking that Maude’s advice fitted that particular situation to perfection. Retreat, stay whole. Value herself a little more and the half-full glass of loving Adam brought to her a little less.
‘Or maybe,’ said Maude. ‘You need to persevere.’
Two days later, Roly was waiting for her when she arrived at work, his face lined with worry and his eyes uncommonly grave.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Someone took to Maude’s garden last night. Hacked all her roses to the ground.’
Billie stared at him. ‘They what?’
‘I was thinking I might head over there and see if she needs a hand. I could be a while. Rachel might need a hand around lunchtime.’
‘I’ll stay,’ she said, pushing him out the door. ‘I’ll stay all day, now go.’
Billie tended the bar automatically, her mind not on her work but on Maude’s roses. Maude loved her garden. She took pride in her plants and those roses had been her babies. Why would anyone hack them to the ground?
Everyone had a theory.