by Susan Napier
‘I suppose having to protect his skin from the sun is what keeps him looking so boyishly young,’ Kate mused, unable to resist feeding his evident irritation.
‘More likely a decaying old painting riddled with corruption stashed away in his attic!’ he grunted.
‘I thought he seemed very nice,’ she said demurely.
‘Nice? He’s a fire-born hell-raiser from way back! He’s dangerous. Stay away from him.’
As if she had a choice! She knew very well that Steve Marlow had just been idling away a few minutes of his time. It was the arrival of his friend that had truly piqued his interest. And Drake had played right into his hands.
‘He’s obviously not the same person he was when he was with the band—’
‘But he’s done it all…booze, fags, tattoos—sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Who knows what perversions he’s into now to give his jaded senses a kick? You can do practically anything you like in Tinseltown. He’s not someone you want to know.’
He sounded as pious as a priest. ‘I thought you liked him, I thought he was your friend?’ she said, bewildered.
He hunched over the wheel. ‘I do. He is. That doesn’t mean I’d let him date my sister,’ he muttered.
Her mind stuttered to a stop as she swivelled in her seat to stare at him. ‘You have a sister?’
His profile hardened. ‘I don’t have any family; I was just using the word metaphorically,’ he grated. ‘We’re talking about you.’
She recoiled. ‘And you think of me in a sisterly way?’
‘Of course not—you know what I mean.’ He cast her an accusing look. ‘You’re too good for him.’
‘You mean I’m a goody-goody,’ she said resentfully. She wound down the window to cool her cheeks in the rushing air. It was true. Becoming Drake’s lover was the baddest thing she had ever done, she brooded. Of course, having an illegitimate baby was about to put paid to that goody-goody image for ever!
‘Well, I happen to think his music has always been terrific,’ she said defiantly. ‘Even when he was with Hard Times. They produced some classics of the hard-rock genre—’
‘Yeah, and thanks to that he has enough groupies hot on his tail. He doesn’t need you drooling over him, too.’
That was the second time in a few days she had been insulted by the same accusation. ‘I am not a groupie!’
‘No? What is it with you, then? Have you started giving off some pheromone that announces you’re available? You never even notice other men when you’re with me, but all of a sudden you’re flirting with everything in pants—first Ken, then Steve—’
‘Flirting?’ Kate spluttered. ‘I was attempting to engage in normal conversation with two men I’d never met before. If there was flirting going on, your friends were the ones doing it. And that was only because you were bristling like a dog around a bone. You’re so jealous you can’t even see—’
‘Jealous!’
She gasped as he suddenly swerved, and pulled into a rest stop carved out of the bush-covered cliff at the side of the road, no longer trusting himself to drive. He yanked on the brake and cut the engine, turning to confront her across the console with a savage face. ‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
She tried to dial back her anger in the face of his, realising that her not-so-innocent prodding had stirred up a hornet’s nest, but determined to stand up for her rights. ‘Oh, I see—it’s all right for you to dangle another woman under my nose and accuse me of being jealous, but when the shoe’s on the other foot it’s a different matter.’
‘Don’t ever accuse me of being jealous,’ he spat at her.
‘Why not? It’s not a dirty word.’
‘It is to me,’ he said, so thickly he could hardly get the words out.
‘But—why?’
He gave her a look of impotent fury. Neither of them heard Prince whine in the back seat. ‘I’m not that person,’ he said through his teeth.
‘What person?’ And when he remained silent, she nudged him: ‘A little bit of jealousy is usually considered healthy in a relationship.’
‘In a healthy relationship, yes. In an unhealthy relationship it can be dangerous for everyone involved,’ he said rawly. ‘It can eat a person up from the inside and be hugely destructive.’
She felt a frisson of fear. That sounded very like personal experience talking. ‘What do you classify as an unhealthy relationship? Is that what we have?’
He angrily pushed away the past, his eyes hot as they slammed into hers. ‘No, of course not, because we know how to control it, we don’t let it control us—we’re equals.’
‘And what if I don’t want control any more?’ she challenged recklessly. ‘What if I want something different?’
The heat in his eyes turned molten. ‘Is that what the matter is, Kate? Is life getting too tame for you when I’m away? Can’t get any satisfaction? The lack of sex making you edgy and restless…sending you out looking for diversions?’
He leaned over, flipped open the clasp of her seat belt and dragged her against his chest, pinning her hips across the central console. ‘Well, here’s a diversion for you!’
His hot mouth sealed over hers, his hand tunnelling up under her shiny mass of hair to cup the back of her delicate skull, tipping her head to give him deeper access to the moist, satiny cavern. His tongue stabbed, stroked, enticed…the slight roughness of his jaw scraping her chin, his musky male scent teasing her nostrils, filling her with a familiar sense of heady abandonment.
His mouth slid around to her ear, his teeth nipping then sucking suggestively at the tender lobe.
She shuddered, her hands clenching on his shoulders, fingers digging through his shirt into hard muscle, and his hot breath fanned the sensitive nerves behind her ears as he laughed roughly. ‘Oh, yes, you like that, don’t you? I know all the things that turn you on…’He used his tongue to stroke the delicate little nub of flesh, sending fresh quivers through her body. ‘You like the things I do to you, because you know I can give you exactly want you want…’
The hand pressing on the middle of her back moved around to shape her breast through the soft tee shirt, cupping the soft weight and his thumb stroking her stiffening nipple through the intricate lace of her bra as he kissed his way across her throat to tease and play with the dainty lobe of her other ear.
‘For instance, I know that when I’m doing this, you’re remembering about how it feels when I suckle that other, even more exquisitely sensitive little bud…’he whispered roughly. ‘You know the one…the secret one that’s tingling right now between your legs, making you long to bite and claw and scream for me, the way you do when we’re in bed…’
Kate’s hips writhed helplessly against the hard console as she squeezed her thighs together to try and ease the forbidden throb intensified by his taunting words. His hand tightened on her breast, compressing the pleasure into an even greater density, drawing at her thrusting nipple in a rhythmic counterpoint to his softly suckling mouth.
‘Drake—’ Kate groaned, her hands sliding from his shoulders to the neck of his shirt, lusting for the feel of his bare skin against her seeking fingers.
‘Yeah, baby, it’s me,’ he said, lifting his head to look down into her silver eyes, drowning in blind desire, before breaking open her kiss-stung lips with his teeth to feast once again on her voluptuous surrender. ‘Who else could it be? Who else knows how to turn you on so hard, so fast? You can be cool and standoffish with other men, but not with me, never with me…’
It was true, and the fact that he knew it and yet still withheld the essence of himself from her should have been humiliating, but it wasn’t, for she could hear the exultation that overlaid the taunting passion in his voice. Something deep and powerful and primitive within him wanted her to be for him, and him alone, regardless of what his private demons were telling him.
A deep rumble tore from his chest, vibrating through her fingertips spread over the warm hollow at the base of his throat, and the big
hand holding her head shifted to her shoulder blades, keeping her still as he worked impatiently at the front catch of her bra through the folds of her tee shirt.
Just as Kate felt the plastic clasp give way, they were wrenched from their mutual absorption by a roar and brief, blaring toot.
Kate jerked back, her dazed eyes following Steve Marlow’s black convertible as it swept out of sight around the corner.
‘Oh, God!’ she said, pushing away his hands and fumbling to do up her bra, not half as deft as he at conquering the small clip through the masking material.
‘I bet he got an eyeful!’ said Drake, with a hint of malicious gratification.
‘Did you know he was going to be coming this way?’ she paused in her pink-cheeked struggles to ask suspiciously.
‘The valley road turn-off is a few kilometres further on, but I didn’t plan this, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you.’ She frowned.
‘Well, I didn’t. Which is not to say I’m not pleased he saw us.’ He met her glower with a mocking shrug. ‘It’s a guy thing…Here, let me help you with that…’ He put his warm hands up under her tee shirt and boldly drew the cups of her bra together, his fingers brushing her taut nipples a little too often for it to be accidental as he eased the lacy fabric into place around her breasts and neatly snapped the clip into place. ‘There,’ he said thickly, adjusting her breasts for one final time in their snug cocoon, his hands reluctantly trickling away down her quivering tummy. ‘Maybe we should take this into the back seat,’ he murmured, watching her black pupils expand even further into the silver irises.
She cast a guilty look behind them, struggling to find a reason to resist his alluring suggestion. ‘Prince is there,’ she remembered with a relieved gasp, prompting the dog to lift his head at the sound of his name and loose an ear-splitting ‘woof’.
‘There’s plenty of room. He can scrunch up, or hop into the front seat and watch…’
‘I don’t think so,’ she began repressively. Her honey skin became even more flushed under his sultry gaze as she realised he was only teasing. He had never meant her to take his suggestion seriously. She tried to hide her chagrin by adding smoothly, ‘He might be traumatised for life.’
‘I might be traumatised if we don’t,’ muttered Drake, rolling his hips and tugging at the denim to ease the constricted front of his jeans. To her embarrassment Kate realised that he hadn’t even undone his seat belt…she was the one who had been doing all the writhing and squirming.
‘I should have remembered you don’t like making love where there’s any chance of being caught in flagrante,’ he continued to needle, ‘but I thought you said you wanted something different. Now I see you’re all talk and no action.’ He switched on the engine and put his hand on the automatic gear-shift, shifting it out of park in preparation to pull back out onto the road.
Trust him to reduce her demand to the lowest common denominator—sex. Two could play at that game!
Kate stopped fishing under her bottom for the end of her seat belt and grabbed the collar of his shirt, jerking his head down and around so that she could stretch over and plant a deep, soulful kiss on his unsuspecting lips, using her tongue to glide her way into the slippery recesses of his hot mouth.
At the same time, she ran her flat hand firmly down the front of his shirt to the buckle of his jeans. She felt the tension in his stomach and knew he thought she was going to keep on sliding her hand down until it cupped the bulging denim pushing out the zip. Instead she increased the pressure on her hand and thrust it between the denim band and loose hang of his shirt, reaching into the tight space between jeans and skin at the apex of his strong thighs. She felt an electrifying jolt go through his entire body, his shocked jaw sagging open to her exploring mouth as she fanned her fingers out over the silky distension in his briefs, tracing the rigid tip of his erection, feeling it pulse against her circling thumb.
He groaned, his hips lifting, the lunging twist of his chest towards her engaging the locking mechanism of his seat belt, trapping him at the mercy of her exploring touch. He was about to wrench himself free when she cruelly broke off the kiss.
‘What I want different is for me to dictate the choices,’ she purred. ‘And what I choose now is to go home and have a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch, so—carry on, driver!’ And with one last, wicked little tease of his straining manhood she was withdrawing her hand from his pants when another car tooted past, briefly slowing as it drew alongside, this time a big, sturdy, dust-laden four-wheel drive with the personalised number-plate VET KEN.
When Drake had finished cursing a blue streak at her actions he looked over at Kate, buckled into her seat belt and sitting primly upright looking serenely ahead, her hands folded in her lap.
‘You’re as red as a poppy,’ he discovered.
She could imagine. She could imagine far too much, that was her trouble, she thought, smoothing her hair nervously behind her ear.
‘His seat was so high up…do you think he could see what I was doing?’ she couldn’t help asking.
Drake laughed so hard that Kate refused to speak to him all the way back to Oyster Beach, but it was hard to act cool and dignified when you had been spied with your hand down a man’s pants! It didn’t seem fair that her foolish attempt at revenge had rebounded so embarrassingly on herself. Or that she had found it so unexpectedly arousing to toy with Drake in that scandalous way on the open roadside. If Kate was hauled up on a charge of public indecency her mother would have fifty fits—and probably recommend hard time in the slammer!
Even Prince seemed to be having a sly laugh at her expense as he punctuated Drake’s continuing chuckles with an occasional wuffle, and he added insult to injury when he leapt out of the car at the other end and raced around as if he’d just undergone a day at a leisure spa rather than prompted a mercy dash to the clinic to save his life.
Kate apologised stiffly to Drake for the disruption to his day. ‘I hope I haven’t put you and Melissa too far behind in your schedule by dragging you away from your writing for so long,’ she said, and beat a hasty retreat as his lingering smirk turned to a moody frown.
It wasn’t until she’d forced down a cheese and pickle sandwich in order not to make even more of a liar of herself that she remembered the scallops she had left in the front seat of her car.
She went to fetch them and stowed them on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Then, worried they might have already gone off by sitting for more than an hour in the hot sun, she took them out to put them to the sniff test. They seemed fine, but to risk eating spoiled seafood was foolish when any toxic reaction had the potential to hurt her baby. Anyway, she had gone off the idea of a dinner party, she thought as she wrapped the scallops in newspaper and placed them in the rubbish bin outside the kitchen door.
So she was stunned when, later that afternoon, Drake knocked at her door and asked her over for dinner, hastening to add that he wasn’t doing the cooking.
‘Melissa’s going to do scallops—she always insists on doing the cooking when she’s here; it’s the only way she claims she can get a decent meal,’ he said, unknowingly rubbing salt in her wounds.
‘I don’t think I—’
‘It’s in the nature of a farewell dinner. Melissa goes back home tomorrow.’ The casualness of his words were belied by the sensuous awareness in his eyes. Tomorrow one source of upheaval between them would be gone. Melissa would go back to her husband and Drake would…what? Retreat? Or advance?
‘She’d really like you to come,’ he said, strolling back to the verandah steps and turning to say, ‘And so would I.’
‘The two women in your life at the same table?’ she said drily, following him out.
‘I quail,’ he admitted, but with a slight smile that was infinitely reassuring.
So much so that Kate decided to take the gamble: ‘Or are there perhaps a few other women in your life that we should invite, to forestall any future
confusion about who fits exactly where?’
‘Well, there’s always your mother,’ he replied lightly. ‘You could say she fits around the fringe of my life—by way of producing you.’
He and her mother had only met a few times when their paths had crossed socially, and to Kate’s secret relief they had cordially disliked each other. Drake didn’t like the way that her mother tried to dominate him with her relentless, battering logic, the way that she had hectored Kate as a child and still continued to denigrate her hopes and dreams as an adult, and Jane Crawford had hated that she couldn’t influence his opinions or command his attention and respect and thus prove her superiority over the male sex. As a consequence she had been contemptuous of Drake’s success, expressing cold disappointment that Kate should let her silly public infatuation for a ‘chain-store novelist’ destroy any hopes of her being taken seriously as a career woman.
But if Drake had been the kind of man to kowtow to her mother, Kate wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.
‘No, thanks.’ She used the mocking offer as the springboard for her retaliation. ‘But I am sorry that I’ll never get the same chance of inviting the woman who produced you to dinner,’ she said, just as lightly. ‘That might have been interesting.’
His mouth twisted. ‘No,’ he said tightly, ‘it wouldn’t.’
‘Of course not,’ she sighed, half turning away to watch a dinghy being rowed out to one of the moored motor yachts.
‘Because she only had one topic of conversation.’
‘And what was that?’ she asked carelessly, looking back at him, still expecting to be greeted by one of his usual witty evasions.
‘Her husband. He was everything in the world to her, quite literally. Even though he dumped her for another woman when I was six—walked out, divorced her, moved overseas to remarry and never contacted her again—she still clung to the fantasy that he was going to come back. She loved him therefore he must love her, and when the truth began to seep through the cracks of her obsession she blotted it out with drugs. She committed suicide when I was a teenager, not because she wanted to die, but because, according to the twisted reasoning in her note, she was proving to him how much she loved him, by showing that she couldn’t live without him…’
