“Oh, that old chestnut.” Greg dipped his fork into his bowl, twirled up some noodles and ate them before continuing. “I did no such thing. His girl, who he thought was an angel, had neglected to tell me she was seeing my best mate. It was as much a shock to me as it was to him. I was really forgiving back then, so when she said she really loved me, I believed her until I found her in bed with some random exchange student.”
“Oh, jeez. You must have thought history was repeating itself.”
“A bit”—he nodded—“at first anyway.”
“I’m really sorry about that, I shouldn’t have led you both on.”
“No, no, not your fault. You were honest with us both all along. Either of us could have backed out at any time. The problem’s firmly with two pig-headed blokes with more money than sense, not you.”
“Well, I’m not sure anyone has a billion pounds’ worth of sense.” I laughed.
“I certainly don’t,” he chuckled. We continued eating and drinking, relaxing into each other’s company.
“That was good.” I patted my stomach, sat back and eased into the comfort of the chair.
“Not bad, even if I do say so myself,” he agreed and set his bowl beside mine on the table. He moved back into the sofa. His hand brushed against mine. I extended my fingers and he entwined his between them.
“Mind if I flick on the TV?” he asked.
“No, go ahead.” I was full, a little sleepy after the wine and very content just to snuggle where we were for a while.
“The building has been reduced to rubble. The well-known and well-loved bar and restaurant was reported ablaze in the early hours of the morning. Firefighters have only recently put the blaze out. Foul play has not been ruled out and there is a possibility this was a case of arson. Miss Matthews has struggled over recent times with bad reviews and other problems. Some think she may have set light to Diamonds herself to gain the insurance payout.”
“Oh, good to see the rumours are already flying.” I sighed.
Greg shrugged. “I wouldn’t let it get to you, there’s always rumours.”
“It isn’t what they’re saying that’s upsetting,” I said. “It’s the pictures. Look at it, Greg, it’s in ruins.”
He squeezed my hand comfortingly. “I know, but you’ll build it back up again. See it as an opportunity. Surely there’s something you’ve always wanted to change? Well, now you can put it into the new plan.”
“Wow, that’s major-league optimism. I wish I could see past the destruction.”
“It’s still raw,” Greg replied. “You’re still grieving and so you’re allowed to be irrational. The optimism will replace that eventually.”
“I suppose.” I sighed again. The news had moved on to something else but I could still see the ruined, smoke-blackened bricks and the fresh air where windows and walls and the doors should have been.
“You’ve really been through it, haven’t you, sweetheart?” He turned to me and pulled me into an embrace. “I’m sorry I’ve not been around for you because of my stupid selfishness. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.”
“Don’t worry.” I held him tight. “We’ve sorted it out now and we can’t change the past, can we? But we can influence the future.”
“True.” He kissed my neck gently. “That’s very true. I’m going to do all I can to make the future better.”
“You’re going to buy me a lifetime’s worth of chocolate?” I pressed my hands to his cheeks and pulled him up to kiss his lips.
“If that’s what you want.” He smiled.
“Oh, you’re going to give me what I want?” I questioned, still holding his face in my hands.
“Definitely,” he whispered, his voice raspy. The tone vibrated deep in my stomach, making it flip.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“So, what do you want?” he asked.
“You,” I whispered, the word catching in my throat, not because I didn’t want to utter it but because I wanted it so very much.
“You’ve got me,” he replied, his smile gentle and heart-warming and even more warming when he pressed it to my lips.
I melted into him, rolled my touch down to his shoulders and his chest. He grasped my shoulders, then his strong grip lessened and he moved his touch down into the centre of my body, cupping my breasts, eliciting a gasp from me as he shifted his hands down to my hips. I felt lightheaded and it wasn’t from the wine. His touch intoxicated me. After being so miserable for so long I couldn’t believe he was with me again, making me feel so good.
As Greg removed my top, his hands slipping under the material and hefting it up, I moved my arms to accommodate him. When my hands were freed I dropped them to his chest and fiddled nervously with the buttons there as he captured my mouth once more with his. The gentle scrape of end-of-the-day stubble on my cheek added to the arousal.
It took a few moments to release the buttons, and I left the shirt hanging on his shoulders and enjoyed the feel of his hard lines beneath my fingers. I revelled in his heat beneath my fingertips, teased his nipples, enjoyed the crinkle of response and ruffled the dark hairs across his abs. I followed them down over his stomach to reach the fastening of his trousers.
He was equally busy undoing my bra strap. His big hands on my back warmed my blood as he guided the material off my shoulders—leading me to stop my ministrations for a moment—then grabbed at my revealed breasts and kneaded them enthusiastically. The roaring rumbling he made in the back of his throat rolled through me, urging me on to release him from the bottom half of his smart suit.
I pushed forward and he collapsed back along the length of the sofa. I leaned over him and trailed kisses down from his upturned lips, caught in a surprised smile, and onto his neck then lower across his chest. I took in details of his contours and lavished love on him. I noted a mole just above his left nipple, and the flush that bloomed across his chest in his arousal. I could feel the very thick, very obvious evidence that he was turned on as my pelvis pressed down on his crotch. I was eager to feel more of him, I wanted the joy of his erection inside me, but I didn’t rush. I wanted to take my time. I wanted to remember everything in detail.
He impatiently bumped his hips as I meandered down over his body but this time I was in control and I wasn’t going to give in. I finally reached the band and belt at the top of his trousers. I balanced myself on my elbows and worked frantically to release his belt and zip. My heart thudded rhythmically and I fizzed with stored energy. I was aware of every little thing. The cool air above me, his hot body below. The clink of his belt as it fell loosely to his side, the just perceptible whoosh of the material slipping down his legs and the creak of the expensive leather as our bodies shifted.
I could hear his breathing under mine, and the TV babbling in the background. I wasn‘t paying attention to what was said, though, I was concentrating on revealing his cock. It sprang eagerly into sight when I eased his trousers and boxers down his thighs. I drank in the visual first, reacquainting myself with his length, the unique crick that I then teased my fingers down, reacquainting myself with its shape and heft.
I drank in his scent, masculine and musky and somehow amplified by the richness of the leather beneath us. My mouth watered and I licked my lips. Greg reached out and desperately grabbed at my shoulders, trying to hurry me along. I resisted, enjoying teasing him, not wanting to rush a single moment.
I dipped my lips to his balls, which wrinkled pleasantly under my kiss, then I continued on to the tautness of his erection. I kissed lightly then nibbled the straining flesh, running up higher with my kisses and licks, he moaned continually until I reached his tip and sank my lips around him.
“Oh, yeah,” he gasped as I sank my mouth lower, then retracted it. Tasting and enjoying the stretch of his dick, the rigidity of it against my tongue. I lovingly licked and sucked, concentrating fully on giving him pleasure. He gripped my ponytail, wrapping the loose curls tight around his fist to control the rise and fall of my
ministration. I surrendered to it, eager to please him, then unexpectedly he pulled me off him. My lips popped and I groaned my frustration.
“I have to fuck you,” he growled. “I need to—your mouth—oh, it was amazing but I don’t want to come like that, not right now. I need to be inside you.”
I didn’t argue. I moved back into a seated position and he pushed himself up. Greg lunged forward and pushed me back with his hands and his ferocious kisses. I undid my jeans and pushed them down my legs with my knickers and kicked them off as they pooled at my ankles.
“You’re so beautiful,” he crooned between harsh kisses, “so gorgeous, so amazing.” We scrambled together. I twisted my body round and insinuated myself so that my thighs were split around him. He moved back, pulled his knees up beneath him and waited, poised to plunge into me.
I lay panting, thighs splayed, breasts bouncing in time to my breathing. He watched me. It was his turn to tease. I wanted him to touch me, to fuck me savagely but he just sat and watched me. His gaze travelled down from my face, to my heaving chest, down over my soft stomach and to my crotch. I’d drunk in his details and he was doing the same. I wondered what he was taking note of—the colour of my aroused nipples, the curl of my pubic hair, the way one of my intimate lips protrudes farther than the other or the way they plump with blood when I’m turned on.
Greg finally reached out and touched me just at the top of my thigh. I watched intently as he trailed his fingers into the damp folds of my pussy. He stroked and pushed until his fingertip entered me, leaving it there as I desperately clutched with my muscles to pull him deeper.
He withdrew that finger, his pointer, then lifted it to his mouth and sucked it in. I felt sparks of pleasure in my pussy when I imagined him licking my juice from the source. I shivered with desire, my skin prickling with anticipation. Ever so slowly he withdrew it, licked his lips and lifted up from resting back on his heels. He scooched forward until his cock was brushing against my lips.
Greg curved his lithe body over me, his hands resting on the arm of the sofa just above my head, and he pushed forward. He pressed just below my entrance then swept up and his tip slipped in, just. He held there, looking down and deep into my eyes. I felt like I was falling into his gaze, like I was becoming part of him.
I didn’t know what he saw in me. I hoped it was all the love inside me, not just the raw lust, because he pressed forward and I opened for him, pulled him tight into my intimate embrace. As his cock was fully sheathed within me I grabbed at his sides, holding him, reassuring myself it was real.
He moved in and out slowly, rhythmically with great control. I closed my eyes and absorbed every throb, every slip and slide of our entwining. It was more than sex, it was deeper and more sensual. I felt myself healing as we moved in time together. All that had been out of balance, all that hadn’t been right in the past weeks clicked into place. I was whole again.
I fluttered my eyes open and Greg was still staring down at me. “I love you.” I had to say the words, they were pent up inside and had to be released.
“I love you too,” he responded and bent his arms so he could reach down and kiss me. His cock stilled inside me and I didn’t want the moment to end.
“Touch yourself,” he demanded when he pulled back. “I want to feel you come around me, I want to feel you squeezing me as you explode.”
I moved my hand from where I gripped his side and slid it between our bodies. He lifted slightly so I could extend my finger between my lips and to rest on my plump clit. I slipped it lower and gathered up some of the silken liquid that flowed from our joining and lifted it to coat my nub.
I rubbed up and down, and he thrust in time. I was taken with the rhythm, absorbed by the synchronicity of our joining. We worked perfectly together and as the pressure built inside me, the intensity of his thrusts heightened. As I brought myself to the brink of orgasm he copied me.
The first spark bathed my clit in pleasure and my body reacted by pulling Greg deeper inside. I moaned, my chest vibrated, my skin tightened and the force of a love-fuelled orgasm racked my being. He came then, almost at exactly the same moment, maybe a split second later when I throbbed around him. He seemed to expand and retract to the same rhythm.
I rode the feeling, gasped and panted as the explosion stilled and I came to a standstill beneath him. He slipped down, his cock leaving me, his head rolling into the crook of my shoulder. We snuggled together then, needing the comfort of each other’s embrace. We were raw and the contentment of the sexual joining was only the start of mending our relationship.
“Stay with me,” he whispered after the silence between us had become too much.
“Okay,” I replied eagerly.
“I need you.”
“I need you too.”
Chapter Twelve
The next day I woke in Greg’s bed. He wasn’t there but he’d left a note on his pillow.
I’ve gone to work. Chester knows you’re still here. Feel free to stay, make yourself at home, I’ll ring you later. Love you, Greg.
P.S. you snore so prettily when you sleep.
I shrieked with rage then laughed. I was fairly certain I didn’t snore and I was also pretty certain he was trying to wind me up. I pushed myself out from beneath the feather-light duvet and stretched out the cricks of a night’s sleep.
I slipped my feet into the deep pile of the scarlet carpet and levered myself from the curved, dark wood bed. I walked towards the door on the opposite side of the room from where I had entered and sure enough it was a bathroom. It was magnificently clean—the marbled tiles and the bright white tops all sparkled. I leapt into the shower and spent some time working out how to use it. There were several jets and I loved feeling the water hitting me from all different angles. I wasted a good long time in there before wrapping myself in a huge, fluffy white towel and heading back to the bedroom.
It was a very masculine room, basic but clearly expensive. There were practical pieces of furniture, beautiful in their simplicity, and plain white paint on the walls.
I slipped my bra and knickers on, then my jeans and top. They’d been left on the ottoman at the end of the bed. I hoped Greg had collected them for me, I wasn’t sure I wanted Chester or another member of staff to be so intimately acquainted with my underwear.
I opened the curtains and looked over the tops of the trees into the general busy jumble of houses and offices of a London skyline. I admired the unique beauty of my city and was pulled from it when my mobile phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and after checking the caller pressed a button and lifted it to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Kerry, sleep well?”
“Yes, thanks, and I don’t snore.” I giggled.
“Hmm, well, if you say so.” He laughed.
“I do,” I retorted.
“Fair enough. I was just ringing to see if you were up, I’ve got something here you might want to see. You up to coming to my place of work again?”
“Yeah, sure, erm, where’s the nearest Tube station to your house? I don’t have a clue where I am, you know.”
Greg chortled heartily. “Chester’s there, he’ll give you a lift.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll ring him and let him know you’ll be waiting in the hall in five minutes, all right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Good, see you soon.”
I shook my head as I put the phone back in my pocket. I still had a lot to get used to—Greg’s billionaire lifestyle was still quite foreign to me.
Chester was waiting in the hall when I found my way downstairs. He smiled broadly and escorted me into the limo then on to Greg’s work. This time the receptionist led me straight to the main lift when I told her my name.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I apologised as we waited. “You were so nice to me and I took advantage of that.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” She smiled. “I was hoping you’d notice the opportunity. Mr Stamford
has been miserable without you.”
We went straight into Greg’s office and this time he beamed widely.
“Ah, Kerry, I’m glad you’re here. I recorded the news, I thought you’d be interested in it.”
Greg beckoned me over to where he sat and slapped his lap. I took a seat with him on his side of the desk and looked over to the wall opposite. Greg pointed a remote and the white wall sprang into life as a TV screen.
“Darren Bennett has been helping the police with their enquiries this morning in regards to charges of kidnap and arson, amongst other more minor charges of fraud and bribery.”
I looked at Greg and his gaze was fixed on the screen. He was smiling broadly. I glanced back and paid attention once more to the report.
“Mr Bennett was caught out when a phone call he made to Diamonds bar owner Kerry Matthews was intercepted and reported to the police. They are continuing to investigate the allegations, believing that the alleged threatening phone call connected him to several counts of fraud as well as arson and kidnap.”
I watched lights flashing and Darren stepped out of an office, flanked either side by police officers. He was pressed into the back of a police car and the footage then flicked to the burnt-out shell of Diamonds.
Greg stopped the footage with another click.
“So, you found the call then?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded. “I got a call from Trey at seven this morning about it. So we got straight down to business, reported it to the police. That’s okay by you, right?”
I nodded emphatically.
“And the police did the rest. They’re going to question the staff at Michael’s in Venice and check the other calls Darren’s made. He’s not going to get away with what he did to you, Kerry.”
“Good.” I sighed. I could feel tears bubbling up inside. I wanted to cry with the relief.
“It’ll be all right now.” He cuddled me tightly against him. “I want to apologise again for not believing you—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted. “It’s in the past. Let’s not dwell on it. We’re together now and that idiot is going to end up behind bars. You caught the bad guy and got the girl in the end, it’s the perfect fairy tale. I think that makes you my prince.”
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