‘God, Violet. Maybe you’re right.’ His voice was terse and he raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Maybe this is madness. Tell me if this madness is something you can deal with.’
Don’t look for involvement. That was what she heard in that statement. Make sure you can deal with me walking away.
‘Don’t go.’ She circled his wrist with her fingers and thrilled at the latent strength there. She wanted to strip off her clothes. She wanted him to touch her so much that her whole body ached with it. ‘It’s just that...’
‘You don’t know which way to turn? Understandable.’ Because she was what she was, he thought, and that was what made this so exciting.
‘I’m a virgin,’ she said in a rush before a lengthy guessing game could begin. ‘I know you’re going to be shocked. It’s shocking. You want to know why. Well, it’s because sex was never something that seemed to crop up. You once said that something got sacrificed when I became a carer. Well, for me that was normality. A life on the road and then being responsible for dad when I was young... Well, there you go. You should know.’ She looked away, but slowly, by his finger under her chin, she was made to look at him.
‘You’re a virgin.’
Her smile and calm voice belied the tumult of emotions coursing through her. ‘We do exist. In fact, I like to think we’re pretty special.’
‘Will you let me be the first?’ And, when she smiled and inclined her head to one side, he began removing his clothes, taking his time, completely unashamed, watching her as he undressed.
Violet propped herself up and stared. He was so beautiful. The fact that the forbidden was turning into reality was such a turn-on. She wanted to touch herself and balled her hands into fists. This felt right. There was a tenderness between them that made her want to give herself over to this man without inhibition, with complete trust and in defiance of the fact that she had never thought she would have her first experience of sex with any man who wasn’t in it for the long term.
And this wasn’t about her feeling fragile because of circumstances, either. This was something she had been craving for a very long time, something that had brushed like a feather through her mind every time they’d been together in his office late at night... Every time he had come close to her, had leant over from behind to see something on her computer... Every time his lazy glance had settled on her...
His nakedness, oh, so slowly revealed, staggered her. His beauty. His strength. The width of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest tapering to a narrow waist and lean hips. Her eyes followed the spiral of dark hair and her heart sped up at the sight of his erect, gently throbbing penis. He took it absently in one hand and played with himself while keeping his eyes focused on her.
He was so uninhibited.
She was eager and ready as he approached her. Fear of the unknown still lingered, but excitement to explore it was greater, and her body went up in flames as he undressed her, stilling her fluttering hands, very gently easing her to a place where she didn’t feel self-conscious at being observed.
He made her look at him and he talked as he removed her clothing with practised ease, his hands gentle.
When she covered her small breasts with her hands, he tugged them away and lay down next to her, idly toying with her body, smoothing his big hand along her stomach, her thigh, brushing his knuckles against her wet crotch until she wanted to spread her legs wide so that he could do more.
‘I’m going to take my time,’ he murmured.
‘Matt...’
‘Shh. Just relax and enjoy, Violet.’ He flattened her hands on either side and levered himself into position so that he could pay attention to her small breasts. He licked her nipples. Her nipples were big in proportion to her breasts, and for some reason those perfectly shaped rosy discs turned him on like nothing imaginable.
He said he’d take his time and he did, licking and nipping, then suckling on them one at a time until she was moaning with pleasure. She pressed his head down farther and wriggled under him. Her mind went blank. Pure sensation replaced thoughts. His hands shifted to her rib cage and he journeyed with a leisurely lack of haste down her body, trailing his tongue along her stomach, circling her belly button...
And then lower he went, and she inhaled sharply as he settled between her legs and began to lick along her wet crease. This was so unbearably intimate. She wanted to snap her legs together in prim rejection of his ministrations, but she couldn’t, because the thrill of how her body was responding was too powerful. He gently nuzzled, his tongue easily finding her clitoris and stroking it until her soft moans turned into frantic groans and whimpers, and she writhed under him, plunging her hands into his hair and drawing her knees up, instinctively angling her body so that every sensation was heightened.
He didn’t stop licking and, as he licked, he stroked the soft flesh of her inner thighs, driving her to a place from which there was no hope of return. She started to spasm against his questing mouth, coming with an urgency that seemed to carry on for ever until she could scarcely breathe from the power of it.
Spent, she drew him up alongside her, eyes wide and dismayed, because how could he be satisfied?
‘You’d be surprised,’ he said with a slow smile when she voiced her concern. He circled her nipple with his finger and, bit by bit, Violet felt her rag-doll body begin to stir right back into life.
This time, he guided her, and it was an erotic journey, touching him just so, holding his penis in just the right way, circling the throbbing head until he was groaning. He covered her hand with his. Her stroking was long and slow and then, when he could no longer take the mounting excitement, he pushed apart her legs and gently inserted his bigness, nudging his entry gradually.
She was so wet.
For a few seconds she knew that she was tensing but it was, oh, so pleasurable, feeling his shaft ease inside her.
A deep, urgent thrill bloomed inside her and spread out. When his thrusting became harder and faster, she was ready and tuned in. She dug her fingers into his back and arched up, eyes closed, feet wrapping round his lean waist, and her whole body splintered with wild pleasure as he came into her on one final thrust.
He sagged, lay completely still for a few seconds, then rolled off her to one side and shielded his eyes with one hand. When eventually he turned to face her, Violet was convinced that he would start on a litany of regret. She braced herself to assume a light-hearted response, the response of the controlled woman he had always assumed her to be.
She’d done the unthinkable, and was feeling the slow burn of delayed mortification, but when he spoke it was to say quietly, ‘That is the first time I have ever made love to any woman without using protection.’
Violet didn’t have to be a genius to detect the horror and alarm behind that statement.
‘You don’t have to worry, Matt. I’ve been using contraception ever since I got here to regulate my menstrual cycle.’ Her face was beetroot-red because this seemed such a prosaic note on which to end what had been the most wonderful experience of her life. She turned to get off the bed, so that she could shower and give him permission to leave without a load of apologies and embarrassed excuses, but he drew her back down against him.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked in a lazy drawl. ‘The night isn’t over yet...is it?’
No, it wasn’t. That was what Violet thought a month later. The night hadn’t ended and it was never going to end. He had stayed another three weeks, then had left without looking back, and her heart had broken in two, but broken hearts mended and hers would mend. He wouldn’t be around. He would never again be around.
How could she have known that there would be a price to pay for those stolen moments?
How could she ever have guessed that she would end up pregnant...?
CHAPTER SIX
‘MISS DUNN IS HERE.’
He’d been ex
pecting her. She had emailed him from Melbourne. A brief email which had made no mention of the time they had spent together. She’d politely asked how things were progressing with the start-up company they had worked on and then, as an afterthought, had informed him that she would be coming to London and wondered whether he would be available to meet. There was something she felt she had to discuss with him face-to-face.
For Matt, that could have covered any number of topics. Was she after the job he had offered her, after all? It made sense, because she’d enjoyed the adrenaline rush of working under pressure out there, but then wasn’t that an easy enough topic to broach via email?
Maybe she was planning to return to London. Her father was back on track. Babysitting duties on the other side of the world could be winding up and it was possible that she might be after her old job. Trouble loomed on that front, if that were the case, because they’d slept together. Returning to their old relationship was not going to be possible. He hoped that she would have sufficient knowledge of how he operated to figure that out on her own.
Or maybe...
He relaxed back into his chair and thought, not for the first time since he had received her email, that she was interested in picking up where they had prematurely left off in Melbourne.
Regrettably, that too would be off the cards, because he knew that a casual relationship wasn’t her thing, even though they had been lovers for a while and she had made no mention of taking it any further.
Sex with his prim and proper ex-secretary had been mind-blowing. He’d never known anything like it in his life before. The taste of forbidden fruit had been scintillating, had appealed to his jaded soul on a lot of fronts, but he was realistic enough to recognise the dangers of prolonging that brief liaison, even though he had been sorely tempted. He wasn’t in the market for love and happy-ever-afters, but she was.
He would see where the conversation went, but there were few avenues he could think of that would be free of annoying complications.
‘Shall I show her up?’
He nodded at his PA who, contravening all rules and regulations of a company that promoted an informal dress code, was attired in a natty pinstriped suit and a bow tie. His dress code was a daily source of amusement for Matt. He thought of Violet, and the neat and prissy suits she had been so fond of wearing to work, and he felt a sharp pang of nostalgia. He breathed in sharply and gathered himself.
‘Give it five minutes, John. I have a brief phone call to get out of the way first.’ He didn’t, but for some reason, he felt unsettled and that wasn’t going to do.
John nodded briskly and scuttled off, shutting the door behind him, and Matt relaxed back, fingers steepled, frowning because for once, his well-behaved mind was refusing to play ball. He realised that she’d been in his head, vaguely but persistently there ever since he had returned from Melbourne. It was an acknowledgement he found a little disturbing, because he had never been one to overthink the end of any of his relationships. What they had enjoyed, intense though it had been, was a moment in time, a brief meeting of ways which had always been very clearly defined as having an ending in sight. It certainly hadn’t been a relationship, as such.
Even though they had got along extremely well. As they would, all things taken into consideration.
He found himself wondering what she might be wearing. In Melbourne, she had sported a far more casual wardrobe. Tight jeans, small tops, cute flat sandals...
The PA had been nowhere in evidence. He had a very pleasing memory of her playing the piano for him in next to nothing, and then forcing him to do a rendition of ‘Chopsticks’ so that she could have a laugh at his expense. He hadn’t objected. They’d made passionate love afterwards.
He shifted, fighting down a sudden erection. He had no intention of picking up where they had left off, however much his body was tempted by the possibility, so why was he suddenly being bombarded with all sorts of inappropriate memories?
He opened up a file on his computer, a boring list of facts, figures and numbers, the sort of file guaranteed to numb a racing imagination, and waited for her to be ushered in.
Several storeys down, Violet was nervously reacquainting herself with the towering glass building that had been her home away from home for over two years.
She’d promised her father that she would be back as soon as she could, as soon as some urgent business had been dealt with, and he had been weirdly accepting. He’d said he was toying with the idea that a return to Blighty might be a good idea, now that he was as fit as a fiddle. No more drink, of course—he was over all that—but he could appoint someone to run the music school and keep the house on so that they could visit whenever they wanted. And wouldn’t it be great to catch up with old friends back home...?
Violet had no idea what was going on. She had thought that Melbourne would give her clarity and cure her of her ridiculous infatuation.
Yet here she was and everything was an almighty mess.
When she had emailed Matt to tell him that she was coming to London and wanted to see him, she had opted for meeting him at the office on the assumption that it would provide her with just the right sort of businesslike state of mind she would need to deal with a difficult and personal conversation. Now that she was here, memories were dragging her down. Everything was so familiar. The memory of the simmering excitement she used to feel every time she click-clacked her way to that shiny mirrored lift was like a punch in the stomach.
She wondered what had happened to Candy but, honestly, she didn’t really care. She could barely think straight and her nerves were all over the place as she and John were whooshed up in the lift and, after some halting progress through those familiar plush offices—because so many people wanted to stop and chat and fill her in on gossip—ended up outside Matt’s sprawling quarters.
‘I’ll leave you here, Vi,’ John said, and she thought, in a panic, Must you?
She knocked and pushed open that all-too-familiar door that led into the outer office where she had worked like a busy little bee for such a long time. Matt’s adjoining door was firmly shut and she took a deep breath as she walked towards it.
‘Come!’
Violet pushed open the door and did her utmost to look calm and composed.
‘Violet.’ He smiled, but his eyes were guarded and watchful. ‘You’re here. An unexpected pleasure.’
He’d been sprawled in his waiting-for-inspiration-to-strike pose, but now he sat up, smiling and indicating the chair in front of his desk. Ex-boss politely welcoming ex-secretary. He was uncomfortable, because he didn’t know why she was here in his office, and she felt a pang of misery, because not so long ago he had been her lover, touching her in places she had never been touched and turning her into a woman she had barely recognised.
‘I guess you’re surprised to see me,’ she opened, not quite meeting his eyes but not looking away, either. Just sort of looking through him and past him with a fixed smile that more or less mirrored his own.
‘You have a house here. Should I be? Perfectly natural for you to return for a break. Brought your father with you? How is he, by the way?’
Violet, trying desperately to gather her thoughts, took her time sitting down. She’d put a great deal of thought into her clothes and was wearing a pair of black trousers, a casual baggy tee shirt tucked into the waistband and some sensible shoes.
‘Dad’s in Melbourne and, yes, he’s fine. If it weren’t for you, I might never have got to the bottom of his anxieties over his liver, so I must thank you for that. He must have spent months blowing everything out of proportion until he convinced himself that he was on the way out unless he had a liver transplant. A few words from the consultant taken the wrong way, and he could have been spared an awful lot of anxiety. But all’s well that ends well. On that front.’
If they were any more polite with one another, she reflected, he would ask
her to send him a memo as to the reasons why she had demanded an audience. As far as he was concerned, they’d had a bit of fun and that was the end of that. He was, after all, the guy who considered anything longer lasting than a nanosecond a commitment from which he was compelled to escape.
‘Good to hear.’ He paused. ‘So, tell me why you’re here—not that it isn’t good to see you, Violet. Problems to sort out with your house?’
‘I wanted to talk to you and I wanted the talk to be done face-to-face,’ she told him flatly.
‘Please don’t tell me that you’ve returned for your old job.’ Matt shifted, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation but knowing that he had to be blunt. ‘As you can see, the delectable Candy didn’t work out, but John—one of your recommendations—is doing very nicely in the post. Would be very reluctant to put his nose out of joint by sending him back down to the bowels of Accounts...’
‘I haven’t come here to talk about getting my job back.’ Violet surreptitiously wiped her hands on her trousers and licked her lips.
‘No?’ Matt tilted his head to one side and looked at her narrowly. ‘What, then? I’m consumed with curiosity.’
‘Matt... This is difficult for me to say...’ She sighed. Her hair had grown just a little and she combed her fingers through it, eyes skittered away from him.
‘Shall I help you out?’ Matt asked heavily, suddenly restless, and she darted a look of astonishment at him.
‘You know why I’ve come here?’
‘If not for your job, then there’s only one other reason I can think of.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She rushed into speech. He knew! And he seemed to be processing the situation with a surprising lack of drama, which came as such a relief, because it meant that they could have a sensible, unemotional discussion and then she could get on with her life. ‘I wasn’t lying when I told you that I was on the pill—even though you probably didn’t believe me, because you made sure you used protection every single time after...after that first time. I was on the pill, but I was so sick after with Dad and everything... Well, I never thought that I would get pregnant, but I was wrong.’
His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 9
