Obsession

by Cathryn Cooper

  ‘Come dance with me,’ he cried, and his laugh was the same as he gave any pretty face that took his fancy. ‘Come drink with me,’ he also cried, and she did that too, aware that he was making love to her, but not in the way he had done at the hotel in London.

  Along with others that hung on his every word, she was whirled away, and then, as the evening wore on, he reached for her, hugged her to him, and murmured that he wanted to take her into his cardboard temple and make love to her on the altar of the goddess Kali.

  Katie was no fool. She remembered that first party she had gone to when he had used the blonde he had selected rather than making love to her. All those things he was whispering in her ear, she knew would lead to the same treatment.

  When the time came, she was ready for him.

  She trembled. She was staking everything she knew about him, and everything she knew about herself, on what he would do next. Would she win? Or would he treat her like he had all the other women in his life?

  Just as at the other party, people trooped off up the stone staircase and congregated in the minstrels’ gallery.

  ‘Come this way,’ he said to her and, although his lips smiled, she sensed a nervous confusion in his eyes. But she let him take her to his cardboard temple which he had set up in the dining hall.

  She dropped her clothes of her own accord. The gasps from the gallery did not matter. All that mattered was the way he stared, the way he swallowed.

  He kissed her as she layout over the altar beneath the eyes of the staring goddess.

  ‘Am I your sacrifice?’ she said softly. ‘Will you sacrifice me to another man and your own pride, your own arrogance?’

  The deceitful nerve quivered. The light of battle shone in his eyes and so did surrender.

  Slowly, as though he could not bear to see her eyes, he blindfolded her.

  Everything, Katie knew, absolutely everything depended on what he did next.

  The crowd watched. They had fallen silent.

  She heard a door open. Someone had entered. Would Carew gesture that the man he had selected come forward? Would he sacrifice her to him and to his own hurt pride?

  There was a breathless hush as the man selected waited for the word.

  In her darkness, Katie waited too.

  The order did not come.

  If she had not been blindfolded, she would have seen Carew raise his hand, would have seen it tremble and his eyes flit from the waiting man to her naked body.

  Instead of gesturing the man that he take her, Carew took the blindfold from her eyes. He looked down at her. She smiled, and he did too.

  Witnessed by those in the gallery, he gazed into the face of the woman he loved, kissed her lips and, there and then, opened his trousers and went into her.

  In the gallery, a pin could have dropped and been heard. Not that Carew would have heard it.

  That scent- her scent - was in his head; the same scent that had haunted and eluded him ever since he had set eyes on the boy, Oliver.

  As though he were drowning in her, he inhaled that scent and listened as she told him about the night in the darkness of the abbey, and the many times she had wanted it to be him in her body rather than Gareth, or Edgar, or even his uncle.

  He groaned as she told him, his longing intensifying as he imagined her with those other men.

  She kissed his lips and held him tight to her.

  ‘I mean what I say,’ she whispered to him. ‘I am not just telling a story - not any more, though I do have many more tales I could tell you.’

  ‘And I will enjoy listening to them,’ he murmured. ‘I will enjoy listening to them as long as you want me to.’