Her Guilty Secret

by Clare Connelly

  I force myself to remain unaffected, but the butterflies in my tummy are fluttering wildly. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having,’ he says as though it’s not important.

  What is Connor Hughes doing in my kitchen? In my tiny flat in Putney, being all huge and overpowering, strong and distractingly masculine? I pause the lecture and turn my back on him in the hope that I can catch my breath, reaching into the fridge and pulling out the bottle of wine, pouring him a glass which I slide over the bench without meeting his eyes.

  ‘Thank you.’ The murmured gratitude is unexpected and it slicks my insides with awareness. I lift my eyes to him then and almost wish I hadn’t when my knees, already so weakened, threaten to buckle.

  ‘What are you making?’ He asks the question softly, and I wonder—absurdly—if he’s nervous. Connor Hughes doesn’t get nervous. And not because of me.

  ‘Gnocchi.’ I lift my wine to my lips and sip it, then wish I hadn’t when I am instantly reminded of the way he dribbled champagne into my mouth last night.

  ‘For dinner?’

  ‘No.’ I lift the bowl and show him the quantity of dough. ‘For lunch tomorrow.’

  He doesn’t say anything and now I’m the nervous one, so I explain. ‘We always have family lunch at my parents’ place on a Sunday. It’s a lot of people for my mum to cater for so I like to bring a dish.’

  He nods, and I have the strangest sense that he’s filing this information away.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask after a moment, pressing my hands into the flour and then reaching into the bowl and lifting a walnut-sized piece out and forming a small circle in my hands.

  ‘I wanted to...’ He clears his throat. ‘You were gone this morning. When I woke up.’

  My forehead crinkles. ‘I know.’

  He reaches across, his touch on my cheek light and surprising. ‘I wanted to make sure you were okay.’

  My eyes are wide when they lift to his face. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Relief is palpable. My genuine confusion seems to warm him and he smiles. ‘Jesus. I thought I might have scared the shit out of you with all the tying up and blindfolding...’

  ‘The makeshift nipple clamps,’ I remind him with a teasing smile.

  ‘Yeah.’ Regret is back in his voice. ‘All that.’

  ‘No.’ I bite down on my lip, knowing I need to be honest with him. ‘You didn’t scare me.’ My reaction did, though. The depth of my desire for him. The way I needed him. The way I really didn’t want to leave him.

  ‘Jesus, Olivia. Why’d you run out, then?’

  I shrug. ‘I didn’t run out. I just woke up and thought it would be easier if I came home.’

  His laugh is a beautiful sound. Neither of us speak for a moment, but the silence is filled with the ebb and flow of thoughts and wants. He sips his wine, his eyes trained on my hands as they work, expertly shaping the gnocchi, one by one.

  ‘But you’ve never done that before.’

  I bite down on my lip as I grab another piece of dough. He reaches across and pads his thumb over my lip, reminding me forcefully of how he did that last night.

  ‘No.’ I answer directly, with no need to dissemble. ‘I’ve never done anything like that.’

  I don’t return the question. He was too confident with the belt, the blindfold, for it to have been his first time with that kind of kinky shit. An image of his vibrant sex life with other women is the last thing I want in my head so I smile brightly in the hope of dismissing it.

  ‘And did you like it?’ he prompts, his expression inscrutable.

  My insides heat. I nod, almost incapable of speech.

  ‘What did you like?’ he asks.

  I am embarrassed. Not by what we did, but at the discussion, in my kitchen, over gnocchi I will tomorrow serve to my parents.

  ‘All of it,’ I say, stumbling over the words a bit. He laughs.

  ‘And you’d like to do it again?’

  Is he asking to make me admit the fact? Or because he needs to hear it? He’s not an insecure man. I know that to be true. He is the definition of confidence and, if anything, he goes beyond that, to blinding arrogance.

  And yet he is asking me for something and I know he needs to hear my answer. ‘Yes.’

  He simultaneously expels a breath and smiles—a smile that completely changes his face.

  My heart races.

  ‘Would you like to stay for dinner?’

  The question surprises us both. He stands up then, sipping his wine before moving around the bench and placing his hands on either side of me. His body presses into my back and his lips drop to my neck, nipping my flesh with his teeth, buzzing my skin with his stubble. I moan and drop a piece of gnocchi into the flour, so that a little cloud of white erupts from the benchtop. I don’t care.

  My fingertips are numb.

  His hands slide under the front of the apron, finding the hem of my shirt. He lifts it up, running his palms across my stomach and higher, to the swell of my breasts. He is gentle with them today, cupping them reverently as his tongue moves along my shoulder. I shiver against him and feel the hardness of his cock, just behind me.

  He runs his hands lower, one hand pushing inside the elasticised waistband of my yoga pants. His fingertips brush against me, teasing my clit, teasing me, and I moan as pleasure radiates through me, all fiercely hot and burningly commanding.

  I am panting against him as my pleasure mounts. How can my body feel like this again, now? It is as though the day has passed in a strange suspension of our natural state, and now we are back exactly where we were.

  I breathe hard and fast and he moves faster and whispers in my ear, words I am too drugged by desire to catch, words that are low and soft. I feel his breath in my ear as his fingers rob me of any ability to think. I am his, for a song. I am his, for anything.

  My fingertips dig into the benchtop as an orgasm explodes around me. It is fierce and all-consuming. I stand in my kitchen, the air thick with my passion, my skin pink, my breath rushed, and I wait for the world to stop racing.

  I spin in his arms and stare up at him, my eyes round, my face flushed. I want him. I need him. I am lost to him. He understands, I know he does, and yet he steps back, a smile on his lips promising me things he is withdrawing right before me.

  ‘I can’t stay.’ The words aren’t even tinged with regret. My stomach swoops—not in a good way. He moves back towards the door and my hungry gaze chases him in confusion.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I have to go.’ He presses a hand to the doorknob. ‘I just needed to be sure.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That you’re okay.’ His smile dazzles me then, almost as much as his concern.

  I gape, though, so close to being with him and yet so far. ‘You don’t have to go right now, surely...’

  ‘Yeah, I really do.’ He laughs softly as he pulls the door inwards and then he leaves. Evaporates. Disappears.

  * * *

  I walk away from her to prove that I can. I walk away from her when I want to stay because it feels somehow vitally important. I don’t remember the last time I wanted someone like this. I don’t think I ever have.

  In fact, I know I haven’t. This kind of desire isn’t welcome. I like my relationships to fit neatly into the space I allot them in my life. Snatched nights to suit my schedule, weekends away when I’m between cases. Always over when I say, and most definitely ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Olivia is the first woman to break into my mind and obliterate any box I might have hoped to contain her with. And it’s only been one night.

  But what a night.

  The law school ball. My apartment. Everything we wanted for four weeks exploded and we were powerless in the wake of that.

  Sleeping together is abso
lute madness but I can’t see either of us stopping what we’ve started.

  So finding a box and putting her—this, us—into it is crucial. Control is crucial.

  Controlling this, her, what I want and need from her, remembering that this is just an infatuation—this is all important, and so I walk away from her to prove to us both that I can.

  I need to be strong so I walk away when all I want to do is carry her to bed and make her my own again.

  I stare at the cross on my wrist as I hail a cab. I am not a man of God, but from the age of twelve I was raised by one. Father O’Sullivan taught me many things, including the importance of an unswerving belief in my own strength.

  I have conquered many things. The loss of my parents. The anger that swirled through my adolescent frame at their violent deaths. There were many torments to rise above and I have always done so.

  But this, I fear, is something different altogether. I’m not so sure I can conquer this obsessive lust in a way that will save Olivia from losing everything she’s worked for. So much is at stake—I have to be strong. We must be careful.

  As I slide into the back seat of a cab, I shoot one more look at her little house on the river. My gut twists with regret.

  I would do almost anything to be back in her kitchen, with her in my arms...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BY TUESDAY I’M wishing I had stayed at her house. Not just for dinner but for the whole night. By Tuesday, my body is throbbing with needs only Olivia can satisfy. She’s sitting in the third row, writing notes as furiously as ever, but I feel the tension that throbs between us and I ache to dismiss the class and act on it. She avoids meeting my eyes.

  Because I am attuned to every movement she makes, I see the instant she reaches into her bag and pulls her phone out. And, even though I’m not looking straight at her, I see the small frown that etches across her face. A curiosity to know what’s on her screen throws me for a moment. I look back at my notes to regroup and carry on.

  She has all my attention, though.

  * * *

  I’m around the corner. Meet you in the foyer.

  Why the hell is Pietro messaging me this? I told him I had a lecture from one to three today. The implication was reasonably clear, I would have thought—that I’d prefer not to be disturbed within that timeframe. Yet here we are, fifteen minutes before the end of class, and he’s messaging me?

  I can’t ask him to hang around; that’s not fair. He’s doing me a massive favour by bringing me the laptop I left in his car on Sunday, when he dropped me home from my parents’ place. I curse my forgetfulness and I blame Connor for it.

  I was thinking only of him. His body. His touch. His games. His kinky self.

  And so I climbed out of Pietro’s Mercedes without most of my mind, and without the bag that has my computer, my course notes and various other can’t-live-without things.

  I know you said you had a lecture, but I’ve got an appointment to get to. Sorry, bella. xxx

  His follow-up message arrives as I’m dithering about what to say or do and it spurs me into action. I slip my notebook into my bag and put the cap on my pen. I try to catch Connor’s eye to mouth an apology but he is resolutely not looking in my direction. I was grateful for that up until a moment ago—grateful for the fact our eyes weren’t meeting. It didn’t change the fact that I felt as though my body was being burned alive, desire lashing at the heels of my feet, need throbbing low down in my abdomen.

  I stand up and dip my head forward, moving to the side of the classroom and down towards the door. My hand is on the knob before I hear his voice.

  ‘Is there a problem, Miss Amorelli?’

  I spin around to face him and my breath thickens in my body. Our eyes meet and the thunderstorm is back, vibrating in the room. How is it possible that everyone else doesn’t feel it?

  Bloody hell.

  I’ve slept with my lecturer.

  Seeing him standing there in front of the class, so commanding, so confident, so hot, my insides clench with the easy recollection of how his body possessed mine. How we wrapped around each other and held on as pleasure and satiation robbed us of breath.

  It’s as if this moment is the first time I’ve actually realised the enormity of what I’ve done.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I have to meet someone,’ I say, imbuing the words with as much clinical detachment as I can muster when my breasts are tingling for his touch.

  ‘I see.’ Concern flashes in his gaze—concern that makes my heart thump almost painfully.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mouth once more, pulling the door inward and slipping out of the classroom. I make my way quickly down the corridor to the enormous foyer that is the heart of the LLS building.

  The campus was built some time in the seventies. It’s an uninspiring brick rectangle from the outside, but the inside is quite spectacular. The foyer is double height and features cream tiles the whole way across. At change of class times, it’s furiously loud, with students and teachers bustling one way or another.

  Now, as I make my way to the middle and stare out of the sliding doors, it’s almost deserted. Just a couple of people walking through it, and a girl sitting on a bench listening to headphones.

  I’m waiting at least ten minutes, which is flipping aggravating, to say the least. I could have avoided that whole early-departure scenario if only Pietro hadn’t got me out here prematurely.

  ‘Ciao!’ He strides into the foyer when I’m on the brink of shooting him an angry text message, his expression relaxed, his manner as charming as always. He is handsome, elegant and kind and yet I feel nothing for him, except the warmth of an easy friendship.

  ‘I thought you were here already.’ My response is short and I wince at it.

  ‘I was finding a parking space.’ He shrugs, leaning in for a kiss on the cheek.

  I force a smile, reminding myself that he’s come out of his way because I was forgetful. He’s being kind. I’m not. His eyes roam my face with an intensity that leaves me cold, and guilt runs through me. Guilt that I don’t love him any more when I think he’s probably still in love with me.

  ‘What’s your appointment?’

  ‘A fashion shoot around the corner. I’m just scoping out the lighting today.’

  Pietro is a great photographer. He’s very creative and that expresses itself in myriad ways, from his impeccable personal style and grooming to his apartment that is a work of art, to his photographs, that are poignant and breathtaking.

  ‘Anyone exciting?’ I ask.

  ‘Just supermodels.’ He grins and I laugh.

  ‘Nice. All in a day’s work, huh?’

  ‘You got it.’

  Noise around us lifts as various classes come to an end and students begin to move to their next destination.

  ‘I’d better get back,’ I say, holding a hand out for the laptop. But he puts his hand in mine instead and then lifts my hand to his lips.

  ‘I really had fun with you on Sunday.’ His dark brown eyes are boring into mine and I fight the urge to pull my hand away.

  ‘Miss Amorelli.’ Connor’s voice is like spiced rum on my nerve-endings. Hot and dangerously addictive. I don’t yank my hand out of Pietro’s but I dislodge it carefully and drop it back to my side, turning slowly to face him.

  ‘Mr Hughes,’ I say with what I hope sounds like professional detachment. I turn back to Pietro. ‘This is Connor Hughes—one of my professors.’

  Pietro’s impressed. He, like I, keeps up with the news. ‘The Donovan barrister?’

  Connor’s tight smile is confirmation, then his eyes clash fiercely with mine.

  ‘I need a word with you in my office.’

  My heart palpates. Is he crazy?

  ‘Fine,’ I say, not sure I want to do any such thing.

  I can feel Connor’s enmity towards Pietro and it makes t
he hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  ‘I’ll be there soon,’ I say dismissively, turning my attention back to Pietro.

  ‘Now,’ he insists softly, but with an edge that I understand.

  I roll my eyes and Pietro laughs, unhooking my bag and passing it to me. He seems completely oblivious to the undercurrent of tension. ‘I have to go anyway,’ he says with a grin. ‘I’ll see you Sunday?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I nod, but I’m frowning, wondering what the hell Connor is playing at.

  Pietro puts a hand on my waist and leans forward, kissing my cheek.

  I feel Connor’s harsh glare.

  ‘Sunday.’ I nod, watching as Pietro turns and leaves the building.

  Connor is still behind me. It takes every single ounce of my strength not to speak my mind. But I’m furious!

  ‘Where’s your office?’ I ask, the words stony, my eyes not meeting his.

  ‘Second floor. The McMahon wing.’

  ‘Fine.’ I move in that direction without looking at him. I opt for the stairs instead of the lift, moving up them quickly then turning right. Classrooms run halfway down the corridor before giving way to a faculty lunch room and then several offices. His is the second from the end. I stand to the side of the door. He’s right behind me. He pauses, not looking at me, either, and then pulls a set of keys from his pocket, sliding one into the door and unlocking it before stepping back.

  ‘After you.’

  I shoulder my way inside, taking brief note of the layout. A desk, leather sofa, a chair, laptop and a window with a view of Holborn. It’s a nice office. Not huge, but elegantly furnished, and yet I bet it’s nothing compared to his usual corporate digs.

  I hear the door click shut and spin around, ready to let fly. But the look on his face arrests me. I am frozen.

  He is staring at me like I am his only chance for survival. His need is so fierce that, for a moment, everything else evaporates from my mind. The air around us thickens, anger transforms into desire, but then I’m angry again.

  ‘Why am I here, Connor?’