The Mistress Deception

by Susan Napier

  ‘What about your top?’ he said slyly. ‘You don’t want to get lotion on that, either.’

  ‘I think I’ll leave that on…for now.’ She poured lotion on her hands and stroked them together in front of his fascinated gaze, hoping he would not notice that they were trembling.

  Instructing him to fold his arms out to his sides, she leaned over and placed her hands against the nape of his neck, just below the occipital bone. It didn’t take her long to identify the congested bands of muscle, and she began to use long strokes to create a deep friction that made him moan with pleasurable pain. Progressing slowly over his back with a gradually increasing pressure, she bent into her work, enjoying the sensuous slide of her thumbs as they dug into the pressure points and worked out the tightness on either side of his spine.

  ‘Oh, God, that feels good!’ he muttered.

  ‘I haven’t even begun,’ she promised throatily, her hand going to his towel.

  He tensed as she dragged it off, and uttered a hiss of shock as she climbed onto the bed, straddling his naked thighs and beginning to knead his clenched buttocks, hooking her strong fingers deeply into the gluteal muscles. He buried his face in the sheet, uttering another groan, his arms contracting around the pillow under his chest.

  She admired him with her hands as well as her eyes, free to gloat over her enticing prize. He was so wonderfully, indisputably male, his skin so fine-grained as it curved over the flexing muscle, and lightly dusted with a mist of dark hair that vanished into the intriguing crease between his buttocks. She traced it lightly with one very unprofessional finger.

  Sweat broke out on his back. ‘Oh, God, Rachel, what are you doing to me…?’

  ‘Shh,’ she murmured, as she pushed the heel of her hand against the swell of his buttock and began to rock against his hip with her full weight. ‘I think you have some serious chronic tension here…let me see what I can do to relieve it…’

  ‘I can tell you, you’re making it ten times worse!’ he groaned as she continued to stroke him, compressing his hips rhythmically into the bed. ‘Much more of this and I’m in danger of exploding like that champagne bottle!’

  He reared up when he felt the warm press of lips in the hollow at the base of his spine and the moist flick of a tongue. ‘I bet that’s not in any damned massage manual,’ he gasped.

  ‘It’s in my manual,’ murmured Rachel, propping herself over him on her hands and knees as she kissed her way slowly up his long spine. ‘My love manual,’ she teased. ‘Turn over,’ she whispered in his ear, before easing aside to let him make the move.

  ‘I hope you’re prepared to take the consequences,’ he said, rolling boldly onto his back. His colour was high, his eyes challenging as he watched her assess the bold thrust of his manhood, jutting from the dark fur in his loins.

  ‘Oh, yes…’ Rachel felt a gush of heat between her legs. With a rough sound Matt grabbed her by the arms and pulled her down against his chest.

  ‘Aren’t you going to finish what you started?’ he demanded, dragging her thighs on either side of his and wedging her tight against the thrusting boldness. He slid his hand up into her hair and tugged, guiding her mouth down to his, biting kisses against her soft lips as he said harshly, ‘I love the feel of your hands on me…your mouth…your body…everything about you. I want everything you have to give…’

  She struggled upright, feeling the thick heaviness of him butting against the fragile silk thong, aware of the musky scent of his arousal mingling with the sharp fragrance of the lotion she had massaged into his back. She squirmed against him, frantic with excitement, driving herself closer to the very edge of sensual endurance. Her head tipped back, her eyes closing as she stroked his chest, overflowing with love and longing, not caring that she was no longer playing her part. She wanted him, she loved him, she didn’t want to wait any longer to make herself irrevocably part of him…

  ‘Isn’t it time for you take off your jacket?’ he wondered, and she drew his hand to the lowest toggle.

  ‘Here, you do it…’

  He was clumsy, too eager. ‘These are too little…my hands are shaking like crazy…’

  ‘So are mine.’ She showed him, laughing down at him as he fumbled at his task.

  He laughed exultantly back. ‘You can’t be more nervous than I am.’ He pulled apart her jacket at last and uttered a choked sound. ‘I think I’ve died and gone to heaven—what is this piece of confectionery?’ He explored the boning that shaped her body, up to the glory of her breasts, spilling over the top of the frothy lace, the blue veins prominent against the translucence of her skin.

  ‘A basque. It laces down the front, see…’

  ‘Oh, God, more fastenings…’ Their fingers tangled together as she impatiently assisted, and as the delicate structure slid away in a tangle of ribbons and lace they both sighed in mutual delight.

  ‘Glorious…all the woman I could ever want…’ he murmured, gathering her up in his cupped hands and burying his face in her abundance.

  Her hands clasped his head and she cried out as his seeking mouth found her straining nipple and drew on it with hungry fervour, drinking in the richly feminine flavour of her velvety-soft skin.

  ‘Such a delicious mouthful…’ He grazed to her other breast, and suckled there, too, drawing out her nipple with his teeth until it throbbed with delicious agony.

  She sobbed. ‘Matt—’

  ‘What—am I hurting you?’

  ‘No, oh, no—’

  ‘Good…’ his mouth surrounded her nipple again, lashing it with his tongue ‘…because I don’t think I can stop…’

  His hands reached down to touch the pouting plumpness between her legs. ‘Oh, God, you’re so wet here…and swollen…’ He insinuated his fingers under her thong to torture her with his passionate curiosity, and she twisted frantically so that she could free herself from the last impediment to their lovemaking. As she kicked away the scrap of fabric he shuddered at the settling of her scalding heat against his pulsing erection.

  He rolled over on top of her with a hoarse cry, crushing her breasts against his chest as he positioned himself heavily between her thighs, his hair-roughened skin rasping against her smooth stockings. He snatched the small packet from the bedside and cursed as he failed to get it open. In the end Rachel had to do it, but he wouldn’t let her help him put the condom on. In a thick voice he told her bluntly that if she touched him like that it would be all over.

  The waiting intensified the desire, and soon she was dipping into his mouth again with her tongue, her nails digging into his scalp as she felt his explorative touch parting her intimate folds and his hips jerk as he tested himself against her tight sheath.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’

  She felt a delicious stretching, but no pain, and she shook her head on the pillow. Matt raised himself up on one arm, gazing triumphantly down into her passion-blurred face. ‘Now…’ Looking deep into her eyes, he took her hand and pushed it down between their steamy bodies to cup his virility. ‘Show me…take me…’ He used her fingers to guide him inside her. ‘I want to feel everything you feel. I want it to be you and me, together, every step of the way…’ He eased slowly forward, gritting his teeth and shaking with the effort of restraining himself, until she wound her legs around him and deliberately unleashed his most primitive urges, the violent series of penetrating thrusts that shattered their separate selves and fused them into a single, sensual being.

  And, true to his naive expectations, the resulting mutual pleasure was utterly spectacular!

  CHAPTER TEN

  WAKING up next to the man you loved was, Rachel discovered next morning, one of life’s most joyous delights. She’d thought Matt had sated himself on his exhaustive exploration of new-found pleasures and would be bound to wake sluggish and heavy-eyed after a long night of vigorous physical activity.

  She was wrong.

  When her eyes fluttered open he was already lying on his side, propped up on one elbow on the
sunlit bed, his gaze bright with curiosity as he watched her lazily shift her shoulderblades against the firm mattress and wake herself with a low, slow stretch that ended in a soft groan at the pleasant pull of aching muscles. Either he or their nocturnal stirrings had pushed the sheet that was their only covering somewhere down around their hips, and he was clearly enjoying the voluptuous visual extravaganza.

  ‘You’re insatiable,’ she groaned, correctly interpreting the gleam in his eye.

  ‘You’re the one who made me that way,’ he said with a grin, noticing that she made no effort to draw up the sheets.

  ‘It’s rude to watch people while they’re sleeping,’ she murmured, basking in his admiration.

  ‘I haven’t got my glasses on; I can’t see a thing,’ he lied boldly. He stroked her bare arm where it lay against her side, his knuckles brushing against the relaxed swell of her breast, burnished by a shaft of early-morning sunlight. ‘You’re very still when you sleep—no shifting, no twitching or sighing…just pure, unadulterated peace.’

  ‘Which you’ve been longing to disturb,’ she teased.

  ‘Fair’s fair. You’ve been disturbing me just by lying there!’ He bent to brush his lips over hers. ‘I woke up wanting you.’ He deepened the kiss and broke it off slowly, in juicy little bites. ‘I woke up imagining that we were still making love, that your gorgeous wet mouth was doing those wicked things to me that made me scream myself hoarse—’

  She was suffused by a wave of delicious embarrassment. ‘Matt!’

  ‘What? Don’t you like to talk about it? You had plenty to say last night. “Not there, Matt!” “Do it like this, Matt”.’

  Her giggles burst like sweet honey on his tongue. ‘I didn’t! You didn’t seem to need much instruction.’

  ‘Mmm, I was responding to a very basic instinct.’ He nibbled down the side of her throat and over the top of her breastbone. ‘I obviously have a natural talent for pleasing you.’

  ‘And yourself,’ she pointed out, shifting so that her breasts moved enticingly within his area of interest.

  ‘Oh, no, that’s entirely your doing.’ He blew experimentally on her soft pink nipples, a warm, moist zephyr that caused them to pucker and rise eagerly from the surrounding creamy flesh. He rewarded their jaunty salute to his authority with a soft rain of kisses around the dusky areolae. ‘You make love the way you do everything else—with courageous strength and a fiery spirit.’

  His ardent praise ignited the passionate sizzle of her senses into a blazing conflagration. ‘You mean like this?’ she said, kicking away the sheet and rolling over to mash herself against his length.

  He growled, and they wrestled across the bed, Rachel somehow ending up easily overpowered and pinned face-down beneath him. He grunted as she arched her spine, pushing her wriggling bottom into his groin.

  ‘Why, you let me win, didn’t you? You little cheat,’ he panted in realisation as she pushed up on her knees, his voice thickening with excitement as he recognised the erotic potential of her submissive position. ‘Do you want me to take you like this? Is that it?’ he murmured, stroking her bottom and the curvature of her spine with a possessive hand.

  He sank his teeth into her shoulder, gently holding her captive as he reached for the replenished supply of protection beside the bed. His chest braced her back, his hands slipping underneath her, one to fondle her swaying breasts, the other to splay across her taut belly, adjusting her to his thrust as he discovered a new and intensely pleasurable thrill to add to his expanding repertoire.

  Afterwards he took her in his arms and kissed her damp forehead. ‘I thought you might not like the feeling of being sexually dominated like that,’ he said, explaining the constraint that he had shown through the dark hours of the night, when he had proved eagerly experimental in most other ways.

  She tilted her head back and looked at him with clear eyes. ‘You mean because of the rape?’

  A painful tautness entered his body, his irises darkening with a haunting uncertainty. ‘I know it’s not a trauma you’ll ever be able to forget or forgive.’

  ‘No, but time is a great healer. I learned that to keep yourself safe doesn’t mean to bury yourself out of the way of life.’

  Responding to his tender concern, she lay in the safety of his embrace and told him all about the ugliness of the rape, the bitterness it had created with her parents, the pain and joy of bearing an illegitimate child.

  She sensed his silent search for words and wondered if she had misinterpreted his compassion. She tried to ease herself out of his embrace. ‘But I suppose some people might think I’m tarnished for life—death before dishonour and all that…’

  He was swift to disabuse her. ‘Oh, no! God, Rachel, no—you can’t believe I’d think that of you. Still affected by it, yes—tarnished, never!’ His hands tightened around her back as he said grimly, ‘In fact, if either of us is tainted by the past, it’s me—’

  Her hand over his lips stopped the words in his mouth. ‘Don’t. It doesn’t worry me that you had a wife with HIV,’ she said, assuming he was talking about Leigh. ‘You’ve always been honest with me, and I know you wouldn’t put me in danger. I’ve worked around health professionals—I’m not susceptible to scare mongering.’

  ‘Rachel—’

  ‘The past is the past. It’s what we are now that matters.’ She didn’t want to mention the future—that seemed, as yet, too fragile.

  ‘And what are we?’ He smiled wryly, accepting her philosophy with a mixture of reluctance and bitter relief.

  One step at a time, she told herself. ‘Why, lovers of course!’ she purred.

  A ping sounded from the bedside table and she peeped over his shoulder at his electronic watch and sighed. ‘I think it’s time we got up.’

  ‘I’ve been up all night,’ he said, grinning.

  He looked so splendidly cocky he made her laugh. ‘I hope you’re not going to be this insufferably self-satisfied all day!’

  ‘Of course I’m not; now I have you to satisfy me, I don’t have to rely on myself,’ he said with a leer.

  When she swatted him a stinging reproach on his bare chest he chased her into the shower, which delayed them another half-hour.

  Over a rather rushed breakfast, he said, ‘You know, watching you at the gym, it occurred to me that we could do with some sort of corporate fitness programme at Ayr Holdings. We have a fully-equipped executive gym, and someone to oversee the equipment, but no one providing expert help or supervised workouts. How about it? Would you be interested in submitting a proposal?’

  Rachel stared at him over her coffee. ‘Me? But I already have too many jobs, remember?’

  ‘In fact I know quite a few companies that might be interested in sponsoring employee fitness programmes,’ he went on. ‘It could be the basis of a whole new career for you.’

  ‘I have a career: at Westons,’ she stressed. ‘Why else have I been struggling to learn the trade, working for virtually nothing in an effort to help salvage David’s dream—’

  ‘David’s dream,’ he picked up. ‘Not yours?’

  ‘Not at first, but now—well, it’s opened new doors for me. The work is always challenging, always different.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure.’

  She drank her coffee. ‘You’re as bad as Frank. He worries I’m not serious about it, either. Whenever we hit the doldrums he offers to let me bail out if I want to, so I won’t be tied to a losing proposition—even though it would be a hardship for him to scrape up the money to purchase my share.’

  He studied her thoughtfully. ‘That’s very generous of him. Ever been tempted to take him up on it?’

  ‘No. I guess he’s figured out by now that I’m not a quitter. You wouldn’t be making this offer to me because you think it’s too downmarket for a tycoon like you to have a girlfriend—’

  ‘Fiancée.’

  ‘—who’s a security chick, would you?’

  ‘A security chick?’ He grinned. ‘Is that
what they call you on the streets? Is that an updated version of a red-hot mama?’

  She turned her nose up at him. ‘If you’re ashamed of what I do—’

  He got up from the breakfast bar and kissed her mouth. ‘Of course I’m not. Don’t be silly, darling. It was just an idea, that’s all. I just want you to be happy.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me not to worry my fluffy little head about it next,’ she muttered sarcastically, and they both suddenly creased with laughter at the absurdity of the image.

  But the disruptive thought returned to trouble her in the heady days that followed, as she fell ever more profoundly in love with the complex man who had brought such unexpected drama and passion into her life.

  The emotional intensity of their affair was such that, at times, she believed that Matt’s feelings ran as deeply as hers, that even though their love remained undeclared he was as desirous as she to move forward to the next level of intimacy. They talked for hours about almost every aspect of their lives, and made love with impassioned ardour, but at other times Rachel’s heightened sensitivity to his moods made her aware of an element of reserve in Matt, a waiting quality that erected an invisible barrier which she was afraid to broach for fear of what lay behind it.

  She thought it might be because of his father, who had thrown the expected tantrum when he had been told that his fully-grown son had got himself unofficially engaged to someone who was not on his list of approved political assets. Rachel had weathered her first encounter with the post-operative Kevin Riordan with a gutsy good humour that had gained his grudging respect, but when she taxed Matt afterwards about whether she should stay out of his family’s orbit, in order not to create a further rift between father and son, he was adamant in his refusal.

  ‘My love-life is none of his business. Dad never had a hope in hell of breeding me to some dippy debutante and he knows it. He never wanted me to marry Leigh, either…’

  Rachel forbore to point out that his father’s negative attitude had been fully justified. Even though no one else had been told about Leigh’s HIV status, the Riordans couldn’t have escaped knowing that her turbulent affair with their nephew had scarcely come to an end before she’d rushed to the altar with Matt.