I heard a movement, down at the end of the room. Only the tiniest of sounds, but in the utter silence of the basement it was like a scream. I froze, eyes searching for the source.
Darrell was sitting at what must have been his old desk, dust sheets turning the monitors into a white ski slope in front of him. He was leaning right back in the chair, so far that it looked like he might overbalance, and staring at the featureless white in front of him. I’d never seen anyone look so dejected.
I had no idea what to say to him, so I found the folding table and deliberately banged it against the wall as I lifted it. Darrell suddenly came to life, blinking and looking round, then hurrying over to help me.
“Sorry,” he told me. “Just got thinking.”
I nodded and wondered whether to say anything to Natasha.
***
Upstairs, Jasmine had a glass of champagne and a plate of canapés waiting as a peace offering. “I didn’t know he was going to go all creepy dom on you,” she told me. “I thought he’d just be all you beautiful creature and buying you necklaces.”
“No more setting me up,” I told her.
“Pinky swear.”
I took a canapé. It was impossible to stay angry at Jasmine for long. “Where are Clarissa and Neil?”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow.
“Here? At the party?”
“Natasha says they do it every time they come here. This place has, like, sixteen bedrooms or something. They’re probably making sure they’ve christened every one.”
Sex in someone else’s house. Probably with the door unlocked. Knowing that everyone downstairs had a pretty good idea what you were doing. I just couldn’t see myself ever doing that…and, of course, I wouldn’t want to. So why did thinking about it send a little crackle of desire sparking straight down between my legs?
“Looks like your Irishman’s having a good time,” said Jasmine.
“He’s not my—” And then I broke off as I saw him.
He was talking to a willowy blonde in a white dress, her head thrown back as she laughed at his jokes. We were too far away to hear what they were actually saying, but Jasmine did a voiceover.
“Oh, hi, begorra! I’m the cheeky sexy Irishman! Will you be needin’ any help in getting’ them panties off, miss? Oh! Your accent is so cuuute! Let me give you my phone number and you can ravish me on the hood of my Porsche!”
We watched him step away with a phone number written on a napkin. He stuffed it into his pant pocket and headed for a brunette, her hair elegantly piled up on top of her head.
“Unbelievable,” I whispered aloud.
Jasmine shrugged. “That’s what he is. He must think he’s died and gone to heaven, all these rich girls to work his rough charm on.”
“Talking of money….” I said quietly. “How are things?”
“Okay for now, thanks to you. I’ve been looking around for somewhere cheaper, but that place is pretty much rock bottom. It’s New York—what did I expect?” She sighed. “I’m only a little behind at the moment, but when the rent comes due, that’s going to be a problem.”
“Any room to negotiate with your landlord?”
Something flickered across her face. “Yeah,” she said distantly. “We’ve been discussing an arrangement.” She gave me a hug. “Don’t panic. I’ll figure something out.”
As we moved apart, something caught my eye. Connor had moved away from the brunette and was stuffing a new napkin into his pocket. Shaking my head, I stalked over to him.
“Really?” I asked. I didn’t quite have my hands on my hips, but it felt like that sort of moment. I was angry—and on some level, I realized I was angrier than I should have been.
He looked at me blankly. “Really what?”
“How many napkins do you have stuffed into your pocket?”
He looked down at his pants. “Oh, no. I’m just pleased to see you.”
The simply, unashamed crudity of it took my breath away. “You’re incorrigible!” I told him, and turned away.
A strong, warm hand grabbed my arm. “Wait: I’m what?!” He pulled me back to him. Closer than before, close enough that the rest of the room seemed to fade away.
“Incorrigible,” I grated. “It means—”
“I know what it means. I just can’t believe you said it! Who says incorrigible?! You sound like you’re in a bodice ripper!”
I felt myself flush. Underneath my bed was a large cardboard carton packed tight with exactly that sort of romance—haughty heroines and square-jawed heroes who said things like “Oh, I like a wildcat.” But Connor didn’t know that. He couldn’t know that.
The band started to play and people drifted off the dance floor—no one wanted to be the first to start dancing. I was too angry to notice.
“It’s not my fault your vocabulary only extends to jokes and—and flirting.” I told him.
He frowned. “Why do you care who I flirt with?”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Why did I care? The women who’d given him their numbers were all old enough to know what they were doing. Far more experienced than me, in fact. For all I knew, they were using him just as much as he was using them.
“I don’t,” I said at last. “I just think going from one to the next like that is…tacky.”
“Tacky?”
“Tacky.”
He considered for a moment. “Dance with me. That’ll stop me chatting up anyone else.”
I looked around. The floor had mostly cleared, and we were standing in the center. I felt about a million eyes on me, and I couldn’t just walk off thanks to his grip on my arm. “No,” I told him. “I don’t dance.”
He fixed me with a stare, and I felt the strangest sensation ripple down my body. As if, for just that second, nothing else in the world mattered except for me. “Dance for me, Karen,” he whispered.
I blinked and drew in my breath. “I—”
He grinned, and the spell was broken. “Do you think that’s what it was like for your friend, with her millionaire?”
I narrowed my eyes. For a second there, it had almost felt like—but of course he’d just been kidding around. “You’re lacking about thirty million dollars, a mansion and the looks.”
He looked at me seriously for a second. “You don’t think I’m good looking?”
That threw me. Because I was starting to see that, yes, if you went for the dark, bad boy look with the wicked smile, if you had a thing for biceps and strong chests and—Anyway, if you went for all that, which I most definitely did not, then yes, he was very good looking.
“You’re not my type,” I told him.
“What is your type?”
“That’s—”
“Are we back to Kurt again? Would you like me to bend you over my bed and spank you?”
My jaw dropped open. Unbidden, some very dark images flashed through my mind. “How dare you?” I croaked.
“How dare I?” He was trying not to laugh. “You’ve gone all Brontë on me again. Are you going to start putting a ‘sir’ on the end of everything? Do I forget myself? Am I a bounder and a cad?”
I tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Hot anger was bubbling through my brain. I was drunk with it.
“Why did you come over here, Karen? Did you really think those women needed saving from me?”
A little voice inside me was demanding to know that, too. What was it about him chatting up some random women that had me so worked up? “I—”
“Let’s dance.” Suddenly, his other arm was around my waist.
“What? No, wait—”
He pulled me close and I yelped. Suddenly my body was pressed against his, the heat of his body shocking through my thin dress. I could feel the hard wall of his abs against my stomach and I tried to speak, but I couldn’t seem to get any air. I was dimly aware that the band were playing a slow number, and a few couples had drifted back onto the floor around us, but we still seemed to be very much the center of attention.<
br />
“I can’t dance,” I squeaked.
“You’re doing fine.” We were barely moving, just a few steps in each direction as we turned slowly around. But even that was hazardous in my ridiculous heels, and I staggered and had to hang onto his arm to stay upright. It felt as solid as iron, and I was reminded of how he’d caught me on the steps. He was even stronger than he looked.
Unfortunately, not even he could make me a better dancer. I recovered, but kept tripping over my own feet, my face going red as I felt everyone looking. “Connor—”
And then he pulled me even closer to him and lifted me, my shoes just leaving the floor. He swept me round without apparent effort, and without my stumbling it actually looked good. “Better?” he asked.
I was panting. The whole length of my body seemed to be molded to his. His broad chest was pressed against my breasts, and the touch of him there was making my nipples rise and harden despite me willing them not to. His arm around my waist meant that my groin was mashed to his, and I was uncomfortably aware of the hardness I could feel along the inside of his thigh, and the effect it was having on my body—a dark, twisting heat inside me that I could already feel turning to moisture. This is Connor, for God’s sake! What’s the matter with me?
I looked up at him, helpless. I expected him to be smirking, or outright chuckling at me. I thought he’d make some crude comment, but what I saw in his eyes took my breath away.
He looked just as helpless as me.
The music ended and the arm around my waist eased free—almost reluctantly. I was away across the floor immediately, heading for the safety of the edge. Jasmine was waiting for me, open-mouthed.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing. Him being stupid.”
I couldn’t stop myself looking back over my shoulder at him. He was still standing there, watching me.
“It didn’t look like nothing,” Jasmine told me. “Do you want to know what it looked like?”
“Not particularly.”
“It looked like he wanted to get some Irish inside you.”
I winced. “Thanks. Classy.”
“I’m serious. I think he likes you!”
I shook my head. “He likes…them.” And I pointed to yet another tall blonde who was cuddling up to Connor, running her hand over his back. “He’s just messing around with me to annoy me, because he knows I have to work with him.”
Jasmine frowned. “You don’t…like him, do you?”
I rolled my eyes. “God, of course not!”
Chapter 7
That night, when the canapés were all gone and the champagne all drunk, when we’d offered our help in cleaning up and been politely refused by Natasha, when we’d half-carried a slightly drunk Jasmine to the cab and taken her home…I thought about Connor.
I was alone in my apartment, still wearing the dress—although I’d slipped off the Heels of Death and was enjoying the blessed relief of bare feet. I was sitting facing the window, playing my cello and looking out at the city lights. I hadn’t had much to drink, just enough to make my mind a little dreamy and random. I let my thoughts guide my playing, my body just a conduit.
Connor Locke was long, low notes—the sound of my impending doom. What did I really know about my nemesis? Irish. Bad boy. Arrogant. Drunk, more often than he should be. Magnetic to women—at least, a certain type of women. And yet from what I could see, he never stayed with one for very long.
Except Ruth. What sort of woman had tamed him for long enough—or made him fall hard enough—that he wanted her name permanently etched on his body?
He was enjoying playing with me—I could see that much. He was like a cat with a mouse, knowing that I could never really escape but wanting to draw out the game as long as possible. Exactly how much was he going to make me suffer, over the next three months? Enough that I’d break and call the whole thing off?
It occurred to me that maybe that was what he wanted. If I refused to work with him, he could walk away and all the blame would be on me. Was he just looking for a way out, one that wouldn’t make him look like the bad guy?
The weird thing was, I couldn’t imagine Connor minding being the bad guy. He seemed like he’d embrace the role. So why, then, was he playing with me? Just because he found it amusing?
I stopped playing, and then started again as I thought about how his body had felt. The movements of my bow got smaller, faster. Notes rippling down over the hard ridges of his abs. Curving and soaring as they arced over the broad swell of his chest. Then hard, strong strokes as the music flowed over the thick muscles of his shoulders, down his back to his—
I broke off abruptly and sat there with the bow resting on the strings. Something had started inside me, a swirling heat that I visualized as deep, deep scarlet, and I wasn’t sure how to shut it off.
A part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to shut it off.
I laid the cello carefully down and started pacing. It wasn’t getting turned on that bothered me; it was getting turned on by him. Think about something else. I stared at my composition notes, but that only made me think of Connor. I slipped out of the dress and hung it up neatly so I could give it back to Clarissa the next day, but that left me in my underwear, and rogue thoughts of Connor’s hands on me started to creep in.
This is ridiculous! I do not like him! I told myself. It was just a purely physical reaction, I decided. Like getting goose bumps when you’re cold—nothing you can do about it. My body simply didn’t know any better, didn’t care that he was a loud-mouthed, brash idiot who coasted on his talent. It was only interested in how big his hand had seemed when he gripped my arm. How his chest had felt against my breasts when he pressed me to him, how his hard cock—
I closed my eyes. This was getting out of control.
I’d go to bed. I’d go to bed and sleep, and in the morning I’d be back to normal. I’d go to bed and I would absolutely not play with myself.
Minutes later, I was lying there under the covers in just my panties. Normally, I threw on an oversize t-shirt, but that night I didn’t bother. Going topless didn’t mean I was going to give in to temptation, though. Not at all.
I turned over, unable to get comfortable. It was like an itch, deep inside my body, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t completely dark in my bedroom, enough of the city lights making it through the blinds to light up the white covers and the wide, queen-sized bed. A bed that had only ever had one person in it, the entire time I’d been at Fenbrook. The only time it saw any sort of action was when I—
No. Not to memories of him. Not while thinking of his smirk and his twinkling eyes.
I turned over again. Then again. The swirling heat didn’t fade, but grew more and more intense until—
I slid one hand down my body and under the thin fabric of my panties. Eyes tight shut, fingertips stroking along my lips, up and down, up and down….
There was too much weight on me. I kicked the comforter off and lay there almost naked. I tried to keep my mind empty, but Connor’s face was there immediately and I let out a groan of anger that sounded a lot like lust. Think of Sven! I thought desperately. Strong hands working your back, all slippery with oil….
But my body didn’t want Sven. I felt the ghosts of other hands on my body, on my arm and back. Felt my nipples stiffening at the memory of him.
We all have our preferred positions. Mine is on my back, knees wide, heels digging into the bed. My fingers were slick with my moisture now, stroking up and down my lips, and my thumb was beginning to circle my clit. Ripples of energy were skittering down my body, growing stronger each time. I could feel the orgasm building inside me, but there was something missing, something not right.
It doesn’t feel like him, a traitorous little voice told me. That’s what’s wrong.
I pushed the thought away, and let my knees flop wider. I was panting now, my fingers frantic at my opening, feeling the lips swell and spread. My thumb kept circling my clit, so super-sensitive it was al
most painful, yet I wanted to stroke it raw. I was desperate, aching for release in a way I’d never known before.
I could feel the orgasm trapped inside me like a tethered balloon. However fast I stroked and rubbed, it refused to rise any higher. I needed something else.
I swung myself off the bed and yanked out the carton of books. They were in neat alphabetical order, double-stacked with the filthier ones on the lower level. But when I pulled out the five bodice-rippers at the end, they revealed my other secret. A black, unmarked box which I opened with shaking fingers. Inside, a translucent pink dildo.
I’d tried a couple. A vibrator was good, in its own way, but I never got over the alien-ness of the buzzing. It felt too mechanical, too unrealistic. And the dildos I’d seen with carefully textured surfaces, with their skin colors ranging from ivory to black, had gone too far in the other direction. Mine, though, was made of some jelly-like material, and the color helped, too. It didn’t look too real. Yet when you closed your eyes….
I quickly stripped off my panties and lay back on the bed. I teased myself with it a little first, tracing my lips with the head, imagining some faceless man doing the same. But he wouldn’t stay faceless. However hard I tried, it was Connor I saw. Connor’s thick biceps either side of my head, as he supported his weight above me. Connor’s tight ass flexing as he positioned himself to—
I rolled my head back and groaned as I slid the head into me, feeling myself stretch. Just the thought of it, of the man I thought of as an arch-enemy entering me, was enough to send my climax rising and twisting, almost faster than I could control. In my mind he started to thrust, and I stroked the dildo back and forth, my teeth biting my bottom lip as the smooth rubber stretched my walls. My heels grew warm as they rubbed back and forth on the bed, and I imagined gripping his ass with both hands and pulling him in deeper….
I arched my back as it slid into me, gasping as it opened me up. I’d started to sweat, my breath coming in choking gasps. But it wasn’t enough. This was Connor, I realized, inserted into my normal Sven fantasy.
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