The First Time We Met: The Oxford Blue Series #1

by Croft, Pippa

  It seems strange to be sitting down to dinner with almost the same set of people as on my first night – yet this time to have Alexander by my side, and for everyone to know that we are dating. It ought to be fantastic and I’ve eaten in here several times since that night so I should feel comfortable. Yet somehow I feel more out of place with Alexander at my side than I did on my own.

  I ask myself why that is as Alexander talks to Rupert and the other guys around us about some rugby game that’s coming up on TV.

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll see you in Klosters over Christmas vac?’ Rupert enquires in a louder voice, as if he wants our dinner companions to overhear this part of the conversation.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ll be flying off to the States, then.’

  In my fantasies, I could stab Rupert with my dessert fork but I stay quiet.

  ‘I haven’t made any plans that far ahead.’

  ‘Really? Lauren may have.’

  Alexander throws his napkin on the table. ‘For your information, I really don’t know what I’m doing at Christmas. I may well be … busy. If not, I doubt I’ll be coming to Klosters anyway. One of the guys in my regiment wants to do some heli-skiing. I’d ask you, of course, but last time we went skiing, you ended up on your arse half the time and shagging the chalet girl for the rest.’

  ‘Shagging the hired help is the best part of skiing so you can keep your army trip, Alexander. Will you be going skiing, Lauren?’ Rupert’s voice drips sarcasm.

  ‘Actually, Rupert, I prefer snowboarding. Not that I’m any kind of expert. Usually end up flat on my back too, though I tend to leave the chalet staff alone.’

  Alexander smiles. I can see he’s enjoying me giving it back to Rupert, not that I need his approval or encouragement.

  Rupert winks at me and lowers his voice. ‘I’d love to see you flat on your back.’

  ‘Trust me, you’ll never have that pleasure.’ I glance at Alexander, wondering what his reaction to Rupert’s innuendo will be, but he’s intent on his mobile, which is vibrating. His expression darkens and he stands up. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing to worry about. I’ll be back soon.’

  After he’s gone, Rupert points to the virtually untouched apple pie on my plate. ‘Lost your appetite?’

  ‘Oddly enough, round about the time you sat next to me.’

  Rupert’s thigh butts against mine and his breath is hot against my ear. He chose the garlic chicken for dinner. ‘I’d like to get in close proximity to you, if Alexander would take his eyes and hands off you for a second. You do know that when we were boys we shared everything? I don’t see why it should be any different now and I can understand why he’s so smitten with you. Two reasons, in fact. Incredible.’ He sighs. ‘We’ve got a book running at the Club, speculating on your … um … assets. Most of the guys think 34B; I’ve got you down as a 32D.’

  He stares right down my cleavage and gives a low whistle.

  ‘Funny. Most of the girls in college have got your asset pegged at about two inches.’ I wiggle my little finger. ‘Though with the cold weather coming on, maybe that’s being over-optimistic. One more reason for you to steer clear of the ski slopes, I guess.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m flattered so many ladies are thinking of me in that way. But you know, Lauren, it’ll never work between you, no matter how much you think Alexander is in “lurve” with you or what he says and does now.’ His tone is laced with venom. ‘In the end, he’ll revert to his roots. That’s what his father expects, what we all expect.’

  ‘I may not have known Alexander that long, but the one thing he won’t do is what anyone expects. Not his father, not his friends and definitely not you. Now, let go of my arm because you’re making me feel nauseous and I’d hate to ruin another pair of your trousers.’

  He releases his grip and curls his lip. ‘Say what you like, but we both know the truth here. Where Alexander is concerned, you don’t fit into the picture and you never will.’

  ‘Whatever gave you the idea I had any intention of fitting anyone’s picture? I plan on creating my own.’

  All Rupert gets is the back view of me as I make my way out of Hall.

  Alexander is pacing the flagstones at the bottom of the steps and shoves his cell phone into his pocket when he spots me. In the dark I can’t quite see his expression, but there’s a hunch in his shoulders that tells me he’s on edge. He looks edible in his handmade inky blue suit, white shirt and silk tie. Add the formality of his graduate gown into the mix, and I could drag him off to bed right this minute, but I want to know what’s bugging him first.

  I also have no intention of telling him about Rupert, so I slip my arm through his. Moonlight bathes the grass in a silvery glow as we skirt the path around the quad

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So was it a, um, work call?’

  ‘No, not work.’

  ‘You looked a little concerned when you saw the screen …’

  He gives a terse smile. ‘Just some family business.’

  ‘I see.’ OK. I ran into a dead end there, but I decide to make a tactical retreat for now. We stop at the bottom of my staircase. ‘Are you coming up?’ I ask, half teasing, half soothing.

  The look he slides me would melt a glacier. ‘I’d rather we went back to my place. I have something in mind.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Something in mind.

  He sure has.

  My eyes are shut, but I don’t need to see anything, because every other of mysenses is stimulated. After we made love, Alexander left me in bed while he filled the huge white claw-footed roll-top with warm water and, whatever potion he poured in the bath, it smells divine: citrussy yet also spicy, like oranges studded with cloves or nutmeg. It’s so delicious I can almost taste it. There’s low-level mood lighting above the tub and candles flicker on the window, casting shadows on the walls as steamy tendrils rise from the bath.

  He uses a sponge to trickle water over my breasts as I lie back against the solidity of his chest. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  The water tickles and tantalizes my skin. I open my eyes as he dabs a blob of foam on each of my nipples with his fingertip. ‘The cherry on the cake,’ he says. I relax back against him, feeling his erection stir against my bottom and his sigh resonates through my body. He’s chilled, or as chilled as Alexander ever gets.

  ‘Have I ever told you how much I love your breasts?’

  ‘Um … you may have. Once or twice.’

  He massages the foam into my nipples and they peak painfully under his fingertips. I can’t help wriggling back against his erection. ‘Alexander, I can’t stand this.’

  ‘That’s the general idea.’

  My sigh of pleasure as he slips his fingers between my legs is lost in an angry buzz from the pocket of his trousers on the tiles. His body stiffens.

  ‘You should answer that.’

  ‘In the bath?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’ll wait.’ He squeezes out the sponge, dribbling warm water over my back.

  ‘No. Answer it.’

  ‘A, I’m not going to speak to anyone while I’m naked in a tub with you and, b, I know who it is.’

  ‘Care to share?’

  The sponge pauses on my shoulder. ‘It will be Emma again.’

  ‘Emma?’

  The sponge circles the top of my arm. ‘My sister.’

  ‘Oh … yes, Immy did mention her a while back. Is she OK?’

  The sponge slides over my shoulder to the top of my breast as he gives the briefest of ironic laughs. ‘Emma is … as she will point out to you ad nauseum, virtually seventeen. She is also infuriating and completely impossible.’ His words are at odds with the underlying emotion. This girl may be impossible, but I can tell he adores her.

  ‘You’re close, then.’


  ‘Who else has she got?’ He drops the sponge into the bath and squeezes me tight into his chest. His hands rest lightly on my stomach and his damp chest hair tickles my back. ‘Emma and my father don’t see eye to eye on a number of things, one of the biggest being what Emma should do when she leaves school. She wants to go to Saint Martins to study theatrical costume design, but my father wants her to try for Classics at Oxbridge. That was her now, threatening to abandon her A levels and go to live in London with some French friends she met on a trip to Morocco.’

  I have to smile at the frustration in his voice, almost as if he’s Emma’s father, rather than her older brother.

  ‘At sixteen, Morocco and costume design sound a lot more exciting than Classics. I think I’d feel the same as she does. Is she at school now?’

  ‘She was when she called during dinner. By now she may be on the train to London for all I know. She put the phone down on me when I asked her to see reason.’

  He nuzzles my neck, his voice a low murmur. I wonder if this is the way his father speaks to Emma too.

  ‘You don’t think she’ll seriously walk out right this minute?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Emma always had her own way even when our mother was alive. Since she died, my father has found her impossible to deal with.’

  ‘And you?’ I try to twist to see his face but it’s impossible. Maybe that’s why he wants to have this conversation – when I can’t read his emotions.

  ‘Though Emma may not always believe it, I love her and I want her to be happy more than anything. Occasionally she does listen to my advice, but it’s getting harder as she gets older. She wants her independence, which I can understand, but she’s convinced she doesn’t need anyone else’s help.’ He pauses. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  After he’s helped me out of the tub, he hands me a fluffy white bath sheet. I already empathize with Emma Hunt, caught between a stern, domineering father who seems to have no clue how to handle his free-spirit daughter who’s growing up fast, and Alexander, well-meaning yet with his own ideas of how she should behave. Emma isn’t that much younger than me, but I know there’s a big difference between sixteen and twenty-one – and a huge one between sixteen and twenty-five, which Alexander is.

  While I pat my skin dry, I wonder if Emma gets her love of the arts from Lady Hunt. Was she creative too? Then I realize that Emma must have been very young when her mother was killed. Alexander goes out of his way to avoid speaking about her and closes down my every attempt to bring the subject up. Yet I wish I could have known her, and could meet Emma and the marquess to make my own judgement.

  Alexander knots a towel low around his waist. The tanned torso, the ripped stomach, the muscular calves aren’t the result of hours in the gym; they all testify to real-life battles and exertion. His hair is damp and tousled from the bath and I want to drag him straight back to bed, but there’s something I want him to do even more.

  I tuck my own towel above my breasts and put my arms round him, my fingers pressing the damp skin around his spine. ‘I have to say that I like the sound of Emma, the more I hear about her.’

  ‘I think you two would get along very well.’

  ‘I’d really like to meet her.’

  The phone buzzes again, and he grimaces. ‘I’m sorry. I ought to get this.’

  In the bedroom, I’m getting changed and trying not to listen to his conversation through the open door, while also trying to listen to it. Yes, it’s wrong to eavesdrop, but I’m curious about his family and background, and tired of having to interpret his silences and evasions. I know it’s part of his job to be discreet, secretive even – but it also frustrates and disturbs me. I don’t expect him to ‘open up’ to me or do anything ‘soul-baring’. Most guys would rather die than do that anyway, but Alexander is buttoned up so tightly at times it seems impossible to find a way to the man underneath.

  No matter how much I try to ignore what Rupert said at dinner – and what Immy warned me about earlier – I do worry about not being part of Alexander’s ‘picture’. The wealth, ‘class’ thing and cultural gulf: these are things I should laugh off, but they still niggle at the back of my mind.

  Now I can’t help but hear him because his voice is raised as he remonstrates with his sister. The words come in snatches, often indistinct, but I can chart the ebb and flow of their conversation as he veers from grudging patience to bursts of frustration.

  He strides into the bedroom, phone to his ear, while I’m rolling up my thigh-highs.

  ‘I’ll come down to see you at the weekend, Emma. Don’t do anything stupid before then unless you want Dad coming to the school.’

  The phone lands on the bed beside me with a thump. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘So she’s not walking out?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not today anyway.’

  He sits down on the bed next to me, picking at the quilt.

  ‘I don’t want to interfere or sound trite, but it must have been awful for Emma, losing her mother so young. What was she? Eight?’

  ‘Barely four. I was thirteen.’

  ‘That must have been hard on you both.’

  ‘Hard?’ He echoes me, and I can’t for the life of me work out how he feels about what I said. Angry? Upset? Annoyed I dared to drop a pebble into the dark pool of the Hunt family angst?

  ‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my mother or father in that way.’ This feels like tiptoeing over eggshells in a pitch-black room.

  ‘Then don’t.’

  He dives on top of me, tipping me back on to the bed and giving me a kiss that’s so far from tender or empathetic it rips the breath from me. It’s a savage kiss, because as far as he’s concerned the conversation is over for now and for good.

  He jerks my dress up and yanks my panties down my thighs, running his fingers lightly over my clit. He plunges a finger inside me and the sound he makes is guttural and primeval. I’m wet; I was from the moment he pushed me on to the bed, but, still, this is fast, hurried, desperate.

  He shifts his weight from me a little so he can rip my panties off my ankles. The towel falls from his waist and I inhale sharply as I see his cock, already thick and hard. I’m excited and alarmed by the urgency of his need to take me like this: without finesse.

  He pushes my knees apart and plunges into me.

  ‘Ohhh.’

  My moan forces a gruff, ‘OK?’ from him and a drawn-out ‘Mmm’ from me and he sinks in deeper, spearing me up to the hilt. He’s like a leather glove that’s too tight yet when he shifts his hips from side to side I stretch a little further to fit and the discomfort eases to a glorious fullness.

  ‘Touch yourself.’

  At his guttural command, my fingers move to my clit, and I’m flicking and teasing myself as his eyes lock on mine. It feels wanton and forbidden to pleasure myself with him watching me, but his eyes are glazed with a kind of savage delight so I don’t want to stop. When he pulls his tip out a little way then slips inside me again, I moan to the air and press my fingers harder to my clit. My fingers work on the bud, the sensation radiating outwards through my limbs.

  ‘I have to come.’

  ‘I want to watch while I’m inside you. You’re so tight I won’t last long.’

  I hesitate. His expression is so intense he looks in pain.

  ‘Do it. Look at me while you do it.’

  His voice is jagged and I rub my tender, swollen clit as those blue eyes burn into mine. He moves inside me, in and out, rhythmically, the feeling of being full to the core and beyond, sending me to the edge.

  ‘Let go, Lauren.’

  His thrusts are harder, more urgent and I can’t last now. I can’t look at him either and I close my eyes and drop my fingers and feel him thrust into me hard. I let go and there are seconds when I don’t know anything; I’m only waves of sensation rippling out from my centre as Alexander lets go too. His body goes rigid and as I open my eyes his are shut tight, his neck stiff. He’s out of whatever tr
oubled world he inhabits and I’m glad that I took him there.

  ‘No! God, no!’

  I’m having a nightmare; a terrible dream where someone is in the bedroom, throwing the furniture around the room. I know it’s not real but I’m still battling to wake up as some unseen presence lifts up a chair high into the air and launches it at me.

  It hurtles through the darkness and I scream but no sound comes.

  My breath comes hard and fast as my eyes open to the room. It’s lit only by a sliver of dim light from the streetlamp outside the window and there’s no one there. My heart feels as if it’s trying to escape from my chest.

  ‘I’m sorry!’

  Just in time, I see Alexander’s arm scything through the air towards my face and I roll out of the way. ‘My God!’

  His arm crashes down onto the mattress. ‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t!’ His voice rings out through the silent room as he thrashes the space where I lay, his head rolling from side to side.

  It wasn’t my nightmare, it was his – fighting its way from his mind into my sleep.

  He sits bolt upright in bed, his eyes still screwed tight shut. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it to happen.’

  Standing at the side of the bed, trembling with cold and shock, I feel completely helpless. Should I try to wake him? Leave him be? Comfort him?

  Sweat prickles his forehead and glistens on his torso. His face is contorted in agony. What horrible things is he seeing or doing? What’s brought on this awful nightmare? Is it something from his work? Or linked to his mother’s death? I remember Immy telling me that his father blamed him for causing the accident, but how I don’t know.

  ‘Alexander …’ I reach out and touch his arm and he flinches away.

  I wrap my arms around myself then realize I’m still naked. My robe is on the chair so I wrap it round me and stand a few feet from the bed as Alexander lies down again, mumbling words I can’t understand but know stem from extreme anguish.

  ‘Shhh.’ I step closer. ‘It’s all right. You’re OK.’

  Warily, I let my trembling fingertips rest on his bicep and this time he doesn’t flinch. His eyelids flutter a little and he looks at me. I heave a sigh of relief that he’s freed himself from whatever hell he was in. I climb on to the bed beside him and stroke his hair.