by Kait Jagger
‘Darling,’ came Isabelle’s voice from Stefan’s other side, ‘I’m thinking of making a move.’ To Luna’s horror, Stefan turned slightly and put his free arm around Isabelle.
‘Come on, Isabelle,’ Jem said, glancing at Luna apprehensively. ‘The night is young.’
‘We have to be up early, don’t we, Stefan?’ Isabelle said sweetly. ‘Other commitments…’
‘Isabelle and I are cutting the ribbon at a day care centre in Deersley,’ Stefan explained as Luna stiffened and every hair on her body stood on end. If she could have arched her back and hissed at him like a cat, she would have, as much as she wanted his hand off her shoulder.
‘Care to dance?’ came a voice next to her. Ashley Eccles from the stables, if she wasn’t mistaken, looking slightly less pimply these days but no less ill at ease in his rented tuxedo.
She could have kissed him. ‘Love to,’ she replied gratefully, slipping out from underneath Stefan’s arm, pointedly draining her champagne glass and handing it to Jem before taking Ashley’s hand.
‘That was quite a show you lot put on out there,’ Ashley slurred a few minutes later as they danced to one of John Legend’s many love ballads. Ashley, Luna had soon realised, was very, very drunk. ‘I always thought when you used to work here,’ he continued, ‘that you were a bit prissy. Stuck up. But you’re alright.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Luna responded, her sarcasm clearly lost on the inebriated stable hand, whose hands were frankly all over her, one moving down the bare skin on her back and the other… the other tracing the top of her stocking through her dress. Jesus wept! What was it about men feeling her up tonight? Luna jerked bolt upright, pushing Ashley away from her and saying, ‘Whoa there,’ as a hand clamped down on his shoulder.
‘Go outside and sober up,’ Stefan commanded harshly.
‘S-sorry, Mr Lundgren,’ Ashley stuttered. He lurched drunkenly away and Stefan stepped closer to Luna, taking her in his arms and continuing the dance.
‘I was dealing with that,’ she said waspishly. ‘I didn’t need your help.’
‘I wasn’t offering it,’ he replied, his hand skimming her waist. ‘I’ve just been patiently waiting my turn, since it appears that everyone at the party tonight gets a go at your erogenous zones.’
Luna glared up at him. ‘Oh, and you’re a fine one to talk, Uncle Stefan,’ she replied scathingly. ‘Cradle robbing now, are we? And how long did you wait, after I left, to crawl into Isabelle’s bed? A week? A day?’
With that, Stefan pulled her so close that his mouth was next to her ear. ‘Why do you care, Luna?’ he murmured, moving her in a slow circle on the floor. ‘It was you who left me.’
And there it was. He was right. She had no right to care who he was sleeping with, no claim on him. So she said nothing, continuing to dance and inwardly cursing John Legend and all his oeuvre.
‘While we’re at it,’ Stefan said eventually, ‘why are you here? I can only assume it’s to make me jealous, but really, Luna, stable boys fondling you on the dance floor? It’s a little sad, isn’t it?’
Luna bridled and attempted to pull away from him. ‘I’m here because Jem asked me, you fucking—’
‘She’s watching us,’ Stefan warned. Luna turned to see Jem standing next to the bar, observing the two of them nervously. Pasting a smile on her face, she gave her friend a quick thumbs up. Look, look how much fun we’re having! Then returned her gaze to Stefan, her smile hardening into a rictus.
‘Who the hell are you,’ she hissed between her teeth, ‘to stand in judgement of me. You with your kissing cousin and your pubescent fan club.’ Honestly, she was shocked at the torrent of anger coursing through her. Sadness, yes. Jealousy, even – those she’d expected to feel tonight. But this all-consuming rage?
‘At least I’m properly clothed,’ Stefan rejoined, eyes devouring her. ‘Are you wearing a dress that leaves nothing to the imagination on purpose, I wonder, or was there no mirror at your fitting this afternoon?’
The song came to an end and she immediately disengaged from him, quelling an urge to reach up and run her claws across his face. She turned on her heel to witness Nancy making out with the coat check attendant from earlier. So much for sisterly solidarity. Kayla, meanwhile, had forced out the DJ and was manning the decks herself, looking like some kind of deranged octopus in all her green finery.
Luna went and talked to Jem’s eldest sister, who’d spent some time in the Shetlands on an archaeological dig during university. She switched from champagne to water and refused further offers to dance, claiming exhaustion. She sat at a table for a while with Roland and Caitlin, exchanging wary glances with Caitlin when Alex came over begging Roland to go outside with him while he had a fag. She kept her posterior out of sight, to the clear chagrin of the lake creature posse.
The party was still going strong at 2.30am, when she decided she’d had enough. Predictably, the coat check desk was abandoned, its occupant currently engaged in searching for Nancy’s tonsils with his tongue. And her backpack wasn’t on the shelf where she’d left it. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she muttered to herself, stalking toward Emma from Events, who was chain smoking with Alex next to the entrance.
Emma assured her that her backpack hadn’t been stolen, but instead transported up to her room at the house.
‘But I’m not staying here,’ Luna protested.
‘Oh, you are,’ Emma contradicted, whipping out her tablet. ‘See?’ She pointed to a corner room in the west wing. ‘There’s your name.’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Luna gritted out, before abandoning the cause in the face of Emma’s cluelessness and Alex’s supreme indifference. Never mind, she thought. She’d just go get the bag herself. Besides, she recognised her room on the map, though she had never been inside it – and despite her reluctance to enter the house, there was a kernel of curiosity inside her at the prospect of seeing that room.
She was surprised to find no security posted outside the portico to prevent non-guests from venturing into the house. Renovation work on the front hall, which had begun before Luna left Arborage, was still ongoing, as evidenced by the copious scaffolding around it. She shuddered to think of some drunken partygoer spilling a drink, or worse, on the half-restored inlaid marble floor.
Under the watchful gaze of cherubs and angels on the vaulted ceiling above her, Luna climbed the marble steps toward the private west wing of the house, the familiar smell of beeswax, Arborage roses and age filling her nostrils. It must have been tiredness, she told herself, but her eyes were stinging slightly. The smell made her feel like poor, woebegone Mole in The Wind in the Willows, when he caught scent of his home after many months away.
At the top of the main staircase and along the hall leading to the family’s private quarters, there were small, handwritten signposts guiding guests toward the bedrooms. On passing a small staircase leading to the attic, Luna resisted the temptation to carry on up to her old suite, the old governess’s room and schoolroom.
Walking down the carpeted hallway, floorboards underneath creaking familiarly, Luna passed perilously close to the Marchioness’s suite, heart skipping a beat. She relaxed a little when she remembered Caitlin telling her that Lady Wellstone was currently staying in a hotel near the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. The Marquess, who was being treated for lung cancer, had had a setback a month ago, apparently.
She arrived at a heavy oak door where a small card with her name had been fixed, pushing it open to reveal a large room with mullioned windows overlooking the lawn below. Tucked into an alcove on the right-hand side of the room was a four-poster bed complete with curtains. There was no carpet on the hardwood floor, so out of habit she lifted one leg, then the other to remove her heels before entering.
The room was wreathed in shadows, with only a small lamp on the wooden desk opposite the bed casting a feeble light. Luna approached the desk and idly examined its contents: a small globe, a stack of university study guides, various sporting pa
raphernalia. She picked up a cricket ball, ran her fingers along the stitching in its seam, then replaced it on the desk. Turning to the large portrait beside the desk, she stood face to face with a teenaged boy holding a King Charles Spaniel, laughter in his eyes.
‘Hello, James,’ she said softly. For this had been the room of the Marchioness’s only son, James Wellstone, who had died in a boating accident fourteen years ago. From what she could see, the room had remained largely untouched since his death, though clearly the cleaning staff had kept it tidy. She was frankly amazed it had been assigned to her, or indeed to anyone attending the party. Knowing how keenly the Marchioness still felt his loss, Luna couldn’t imagine her countenancing this.
Luna walked to her backpack, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. As she bent to retrieve it, she caught a motion in the darkness beside her and jumped. Ah, it was a standing mirror – she was jumping at her own reflection. Shaking her head at her nerves, she lowered her backpack and moved closer to the mirror, studying herself.
Her eyes, as ever, were enormous and translucent, and her skin was deathly pale; she certainly looked the part of a ghost. Gaze scanning downward, however, Luna experienced a burgeoning sense of unease. For the first time, she noticed that the gauzy material in the bodice clung to her in a way that left no doubt she wasn’t wearing a bra. It was, well… if she’d been a little less dismayed, Luna might have felt justifiably proud, because they looked phenomenal, the curved tops of her breasts pressing against the gauze as they descended gracefully into the scattering of sequins and beading that covered her nipples.
Craning her neck, she observed that the scooped back of the dress was more revealing than she’d appreciated, exposing not just most of her spine but the curve of her waist as well. And the skirt. Bloody hell, Kayla was right, her booty was… hard to miss. Biting her lip, Luna frowned at her reflection. This really, really wasn’t the look she’d been going for tonight.
‘Quite an eyeful, isn’t it,’ came a voice from behind her. Luna spun around to see Stefan sat cross-legged on the bed, half obscured by its drapes and the stygian gloom of his cousin’s room.
‘Jesus!’ she gasped, placing a hand on her chest, where her heart was fluttering against the gauze like a hummingbird against a net. Then, ‘This is your room.’
‘No, as you can see, it’s James’s.’ His teeth flashed coldly in the darkness. As Luna’s eyes adjusted to the dark she saw that he’d removed his jacket and cufflinks and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His feet were bare and he looked so… like himself. So like the Stefan she knew.
Realisation dawning, she said, ‘Augusta put you in here, I assume?’
‘For my sins.’ His smile was self-deprecating and in spite of herself Luna smiled in return. She couldn’t think of a worse fate than being installed in his dead cousin’s room, expected to replace the irreplaceable.
They stayed where they were for a moment, a silent truce in force. But then Luna lifted her backpack onto her shoulders and said, ‘I have to go.’
Suddenly, he was off the bed like a big game cat, springing toward her, grabbing her shoulders and lifting her up onto her toes.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, because that’s what you do, isn’t it.’ And then he was dragging her toward the door, throwing it open, his fingers digging into her shoulders. ‘You should go, Luna,’ he told her. ‘Nothing good will come of you staying here, I can promise you that.’
She heard the sound of muffled laughter and the tinkling of glass bottles from down the hall.
‘And that, if I’m not mistaken, is your American friend, helping herself to my family’s house uninvited,’ he said. ‘She’ll be around the corner any second now and she’ll see you here with me. So you’d better run, just like you always do.’ His face hardened and he shook her brutally. Luna made a noise, of pain or protest, she wasn’t sure which, and the undercurrent between them shifted.
Lowering his head till it was within millimetres of her own, Stefan angled his face against hers and, like a snake being charmed, Luna mirrored him, her eyelids lowering, growing heavy along with his. ‘Run, Luna,’ he said softly. And reached to her shoulders, lifting the straps there, lowering her backpack to the floor. ‘You aren’t safe here,’ he said, removing her shoes from her hand, dropping them next to the backpack. ‘Run,’ he repeated, the fingers of one hand digging into her chignon while the other pushed the door shut, turning the key in the lock.
He shoved her against it then, reaching his hands up to the yoke of her dress. She heard it tearing, felt the muscles in his arms flexing against her collarbone, heard the sound of beads and sequins showering to the floor as he ripped it to her waist and tore it off her.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he said, lifting her into his arms and carrying her to the bed.
Chapter Six
Luna woke at just after 7am. ‘Woke’ being a relative term, given that she had slept no more than an hour in fitful dozes through the night. She was lying on her back, staring up at the embroidered fabric in the canopy. Pallid, reluctant light filtered in from the leaded windows to her right; it was going to be a wet day at Arborage.
Rolling to her left, she grimaced as every last joint in her body screamed in protest. Lying next to her on his stomach, head turned in her direction, Stefan remained fast asleep. Studying his face, Luna thought he looked even worse than she felt. There were purple shadows under his eyes, like last night wasn’t the first bad sleep he’d had recently, and even in repose the set of his mouth was grim.
He didn’t wake when she rose from the bed, nor as she showered in the adjacent bathroom, nor even when she sat back down next to him, still wrapped in a towel, and pulled up the details for her flight back to Shetland on her tablet. She had an hour to get to Heathrow, more than enough time.
He stirred then, rolling onto his back and throwing an arm over his head. She thought for a moment he would wake, but no, his eyelids were flickering. He was dreaming…
*
Carrying her across the room like so much chattel, Stefan deposited her roughly on the bed, immediately grasping the hair at her nape and forcing her face down onto the mattress. When she struggled, he pressed his forearm into her shoulder, pinning her in place.
‘Let’s see what the stable boy found so irresistible,’ he gritted into her ear, sliding his hand down her spine. ‘Ahhhh… yes.’ His fingertips grazed the waistband of her silk knickers and his palm came to rest on her buttock, slowly stroking it before moving to the lace edge of her stockings. ‘Lovely,’ he said, removing his arm from her shoulder and climbing atop her, nudging her legs apart with his knee.
She tensed beneath him, preparing to resist, but he anticipated her, lowering himself onto her, grasping her hipbone and grinding his pelvis into her ass. His fingers glided to her sex, fingering her through the silk of her knickers, which, to her combined shame and arousal, was damp with longing.
Stefan’s chest rumbled against her back. ‘Ah, Miss Gregory. At least one part of you is glad to see me.’
Luna’s hackles rose at his goading tone; if he wanted a fight, a fight was what he’d get. Tightening her fingers into a fist, she sharply jabbed her elbow upward into his ribs, rewarded by a swift grunt of pain from him. She half-rose on her knees and Stefan returned his hand to her nape, twisting his fingers in her hair and pulling it so tight she yelped.
‘That’s right, fight me,’ he panted, placing his other hand under her knee and viciously jerking it till she collapsed spread-eagled on the bedspread. ‘I think we both know who’ll win.’ Then both his hands were on the hem of her knickers, swiftly yanking them down her legs.
He gave her no more opportunities to resist after that, kneeling between her knees and planting a hand on the small of her back, reaching the other underneath and claiming her. Luna felt him covering her entire sex with his palm and she stilled beneath him like an antelope felled by a lion, held in place by its massive paws, exposed for the kill.
An
d how good. God, how good, to feel his hand upon her again. The hand that knew her, that caressed her with such absolute surety, its palm eventually ceding to fingers, one rubbing lightly against her clitoris while the others pressed harder into the engorged flesh around it. There was no more goading now, no more struggling.
‘Lift your—’ he instructed, removing his hand from her back and urging her haunches upward, to give him better access to her undercarriage. She felt both his hands on her then, one spreading her wide and the other manipulating her silky interior. She wanted it to last, wanted to draw out the feeling of his fingertips gliding along her, finding and feeding her elusive sensitive spots. But his hands were growing rougher on her, one drawing her mons up and down while the other moved ever more swiftly across her.
Luna buried her forehead in the bedspread, a guttural noise rising in her throat. She heard him inhale, knew the effect her utter prostration must be having on him.
She heard a fast, wet, smacking noise; felt his hand almost slapping against her. If it went on for much longer her pain would outweigh her pleasure, but no, no, the pleasure was taking her now – if he just kept… ah, yes… Trapped as she was against the bed, the muscles in her thighs straining to support her, her orgasm came in quick, silent jerks, its energy absorbed into the mattress. Juddering beneath him, tailbone in the air, Luna heard herself grunting like an animal as he drew pulses of pure feeling out of her, his hands smacking, and stroking, and squeezing.
And then he stopped, just as suddenly as he had started, pulling away from her and off the bed. Expecting him at any moment to return to her, to slip the hard cock she’d felt pressed against her thigh just a moment ago into her slick, swollen core, Luna remained where she was, waiting.
