by Lucy King
‘No.’
Right. ‘Would you mind closing your eyes, then?’
‘Yes. I would.’
‘In that case, I’ll just have to close mine.’
He stood there before her, enviably unselfconscious, and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘You have no idea how much I want you, do you?’
‘Well, I guess...that...is some sort of indication,’ she said, waving a hand in the direction of his erection and vaguely wondering how on earth something of that length and girth was supposed to fit, ‘but seeing as I have nothing to compare it with, no, not really.’
‘You will.’
He leaned down, putting one knee on the mattress, and as he came down beside her he tugged the sheet down to her waist. When she tried to grab it back he took her wrists and held them to the bed. He ran his gaze over her for one long slow moment and a rush of heat surged through her. Her nipples tightened and a fresh ribbon of desire began to unfurl deep inside her.
‘You are stunning,’ he murmured and she wished she could believe it. At least he hadn’t called her beautiful. If he’d done that she’d have known he was lying. ‘And I am extraordinarily attracted to you,’ he added gruffly, ‘so stop worrying.’
Easier said than done. But the physical responses he aroused in her body did seem to obliterate her self-consciousness and whitewash her mind, so maybe she ought to trust it would work again. ‘Make me,’ she breathed, and he didn’t need asking a second time.
Bending his head, Theo kissed her long and hard, and as she’d hoped, as before, her insecurities faded, and rational thought gave way to something primal, instinctive and way beyond her control.
As he continued his devastating assault on her mouth she softened inside with renewed need. He lowered himself, twisting slightly so he lay half on top of her, and the deliciously heavy weight of him pressed her down. So much strength and power, she thought giddily. So contained. And as for his scent, that was a dizzying combination of spice and wood and something she couldn’t identify but tugged at a spot deep inside her.
Swept up in a maelstrom of desire and heat, and feeling slight and feminine for the first time in her life, Kate moaned as she kissed him back and writhed against him in a desperate, instinctive effort to get closer.
With a harsh groan, Theo tore his mouth from hers and moved it to her breast, and if she thought the sensations had been stunning when he’d touched her there earlier they were nothing compared to the electricity that zinged through her at the heat and feel of his mouth.
She clamped a hand to the back of his head and let out a strangled gasp as her stomach liquefied. He turned his attention to her other breast and as the desire rocketed through her with ever-increasing intensity, the need to touch him back became overwhelming.
She wanted to explore him. Everywhere and at length. With her hands and her mouth. She wanted to learn the texture of his skin and the strength of his muscles. She wanted to see if she could drive him as crazy as he was driving her. She’d read books. She’d seen films. She had a fairly good idea of what to do.
But what if she did it wrong? niggled the tiny voice in her head that managed to penetrate the chaos. He’d implied he wanted her a lot, and it certainly seemed that way, but what if her clumsy, naïve attempts put him off? What if he laughed? She couldn’t risk it. And besides, she was getting impatient. Theo’s kisses and caresses were divine but she wanted more. She needed more. Deep inside she actually ached.
The sheet that before had acted as a shield was now just in the way. It was stopping her from feeling the whole length of his body against hers, and she wanted it gone. She wanted nothing between them, not even air. So beneath him she wriggled and struggled, kicking at the fine white cotton, and Theo froze.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said sharply, instantly lifting himself off her, and staring down at her, his eyes blazing. ‘Do you want to stop?’
‘Stop?’ Kate muttered with a frown. ‘Why would I want to stop?’ Nothing short of Armageddon would make her want to stop now. Maybe not even that.
‘Then what’s the matter?’
‘The sheet. I’m trying to get rid of it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Never been more so.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he breathed, yanking it off her and tossing it to one side.
Finally free, Kate bent her leg and, turning slightly, pressed her pelvis to his, her body clearly knowing how to ask for what it wanted. And Theo seemed to get it because he put a knee between her thighs and nudged her legs apart, and then he was between them, looming over her, his jaw clenched and his face dark and tight.
She could feel him at her entrance and she caught her breath, her pulse racing. It was about to happen, she thought, her entire body trembling and her heart swelling with a giant tangle of emotions she couldn’t begin to unravel even if she wanted to. It was finally about to happen. After all these years. After everything...
She let her knees drop, parting her legs even wider, and then he was sliding into her, inch by incredible inch, giving her time to adjust to the strange feeling of being stretched and filled.
‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed, when he was embedded in her, deep and hard and strange.
‘Are you all right?’ he muttered harshly.
She took a moment to think about it. It might feel odd, but it hadn’t hurt. She was getting used to it, and the promise of what he could do to her, how he could make her feel, bloomed inside her. ‘Extremely all right,’ she said, the desire and excitement building all over again at the thought of the pleasure to come. ‘You?’
‘Fine.’
Fine? Just fine? Oh, well. He had done this before. It was only momentous for her. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply and he grimaced.
‘Don’t move,’ he said roughly.
‘Why not?’
‘Because if you do this will be over before it’s begun.’
Oh. ‘It was just a sigh.’
‘That’s all it’ll take.’
He really wanted her that much? Perhaps he did. She could feel him pulsating deep within her. She could see the tension in his face and straining of his muscles. He looked as though it was taking every drop of his control to hold back, and it wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she needed.
‘What if I can’t help it?’ she said, the ache spreading through her body demanding release with an insistence that was impossible to ignore.
‘Try.’
‘Impossible. Sorry.’ It was too much. The need gnawing away inside her was too strong to control. Her hips shifted of their own accord, and Theo groaned.
‘Heaven help me,’ he said through gritted teeth before lowering his head and kissing her fiercely as he slowly withdrew, dragging along all her nerve endings, sending new thrills of desire coursing through her, and then plunged back into her.
The rhythmic pull and push of his movements stoked the flames inside her, melting her bones and boiling her blood. Her hands somehow found their way to his shoulders and she could feel his muscles shift beneath her palms with every strong powerful thrust of his body.
He was blowing her mind, and within minutes her breath was coming in short sharp pants, her heart was thundering so hard it could well escape and all she could think about was racing towards a finishing line that was simultaneously rushing towards her.
Stifling a sob of desperation, Kate wrapped her arms round Theo’s neck and her legs round his waist, and it must have been the right thing to do because suddenly he was moving faster and harder, pounding into her over and over again, pushing her higher and higher, until the unbearable tension within her snapped and, with a cry, she shattered.
White-hot pulses of pleasure, stronger and more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced, barrelled through her body. Stars exploded behind her eyelids and lit up her nerve-endings. She felt as if she were falling apart, and
it was so intensely incredible that she barely registered Theo letting out a tortured groan, thrusting one last time and then burying himself deep and pumping into her over and over again.
As he collapsed on top of her and they lay there for a moment, all ragged breath, pounding hearts and long sweaty tangled limbs, Kate reeled with the intensity and magnificence of it all.
She’d done it, she thought, feeling weak, limp and completely wrung out. She’d actually done it. She wasn’t frigid. She wasn’t undesirable. All those years of disappointment and rejection, wiped right out. All those horrible mean comments, wrong.
The enormity of everything that had happened this evening suddenly struck and emotion welled up inside her, a swirling mix of relief and triumph, inexplicably tinged with guilt and sorrow, so massive, so overwhelming that she felt a tear escape and trickle down her temple.
But this really wasn’t the time or the place to dissolve into a puddle, she told herself, choking off a sob and blinking frantically as Theo carefully levered himself off her and rolled onto his back. She’d save that for the privacy of home. Right now she needed to act as if everything was fine. Deep breaths and composure. That was what was called for here.
‘So that exceeded my expectations,’ she said huskily, with a nonchalance that sounded almost genuine.
‘Good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She thought she detected a note of aloofness in his voice that was at odds with the gruff impatience that had dominated his tone for the last half an hour, and glanced over. He was staring at the ceiling, and gone was the raw passion and the fevered tension, she saw. His expression didn’t bear even the hint of a reaction to what had just happened. He certainly wasn’t about to collapse into a quivering heap as she was. He was back in control, and this whole mad little interlude was over.
‘So...ah... I should probably, really, go now,’ she said, keen to leave before the situation could get any more awkward but unsure of the etiquette.
‘You should,’ he said, pushing himself up off the bed and, with barely a backwards glance, heading in the direction of what she presumed was the bathroom. ‘Get dressed and I’ll call you a cab.’
* * *
Kate spent much of the following forty-eight hours either breathlessly reliving the earth-shattering encounter with Theo in his office in gloriously vivid Technicolor or being battered by the emotions she’d managed to stave off when lying there in his bed.
At home, there was no one to witness the moments she drifted off into a sizzling daydream from which she generally emerged hot, flushed and trembling. Or the occasions when muscles she never knew she had twanged and she suddenly felt so vulnerable, so raw, it brought a lump to her throat and tears to her eyes. Alone, safely cocooned within her own four walls, she had no need for defences, which was just as well because any she might have mounted would have been crushed within seconds. The enormity of what had happened—not to mention the speed and unexpectedness of it—was simply too overwhelming.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant. She was no longer a virgin, was the bewildering, incredible realisation that kept ricocheting around her mind while she pottered about her flat achieving very little. She was no longer unusual. Well, not on that front, at least. She was still a great, unwieldy giant, and the boost that Theo’s rampant need had given her would no doubt fade, but losing one’s virginity was a rite of passage others took for granted and she’d finally made it.
And now she had, it was as if a light had suddenly switched on in her head, illuminating the shadows and making sense of things that deep down she’d always found baffling. Such as why she’d never found anyone willing to date her when out of a potential population of millions surely there would have been someone somewhere. It wasn’t even as if she were particularly fussy, so how come she’d never met a single man who’d been up for it?
Maybe she just hadn’t looked hard enough, she thought now. In fact, maybe she hadn’t looked at all. Maybe it had been easier, safer, to resign herself to the status quo. Maybe she’d even become accepting of it. Happy with it.
And when she asked herself why that might be, it began to dawn on her that when she’d told Theo about the relationship between her height and her virginity she hadn’t furnished him with the whole truth. What she hadn’t revealed, what she hadn’t even known at the time, was that for years she’d been scared. Of sex. Scared of doing it wrong and making even more of a fool of herself than she already felt.
It was so obvious now she could see it from the other side. When she forced herself to look back to her troubled adolescence, to the time when her school friends had started losing their virginity and talked about it in great detail, she remembered she’d been fascinated and so excited about her turn, so desperate to be normal and fit in.
But when her turn never materialised, when it became apparent that she would always be on the outside, always rejected, she’d become quieter and had hidden her embarrassment and shame behind an air of mystery. Over the years that embarrassment and shame had escalated and had eventually turned into fear, which had put her off even more, creating a vicious circle that she hadn’t even been aware of and which had possibly spread to other areas of her personal life, preventing her from trying new things in case they didn’t work out and she made even more of an idiot of herself in the process.
But she’d had nothing to fear. Sex with Theo had been incredible. And momentous. And not only because she’d finally got rid of her virginity at the grand old age of twenty-six. Didn’t it also prove that even though she would probably never be normal and would most likely never fit in, she might just not make a fool of herself? Theo certainly hadn’t laughed at her, and he’d seen her stripped of not just her clothes but also of the protective shield she’d always kept wrapped round her.
So what was she going to do going forward? Was she really going to spend the rest of her life not trying things, just in case? Didn’t that seem a bit of a waste? And hadn’t there already been too much waste of life in the Cassidy family?
Surely she owed to it to herself, to her parents and her siblings, to make the most of what she had. To live life to the max. She’d allowed her virginity to hold her back by tethering her to a time of her life dominated by painful memories and teenage angst for too long.
Well, no more.
Now she’d recognised her fears she was going to confront them and let them go. So there’d be no more hiding. No more slouching. No more trepidation about the unknown. She was going to pull her shoulders back and hold her head up high as she sallied forth. She was going to be brave and bold and fabulous, and nothing was going to stop her.
CHAPTER FIVE
A MONTH LATER, Kate made herself a mint tea and took it into the sitting room to sit cross-legged on the sofa. It was one thing deciding to hold your head up and your shoulders back while you blazed a trail, she thought wretchedly, quite another to put it into practice. Because not only had it become apparent that decade-old deep-seated issues couldn’t be wiped out quite as effortlessly as she’d assumed, but also life really did have the habit of suddenly walloping you about the head when you least expected it.
And to think that everything had been going so well. Theo, clearly a man of his word as well as action, had wasted no time in instructing his lawyers, and in the aftermath of a flurry of correspondence between her and his legal team, the monstrous debt her brother had accrued had been paid off and the fund Theo had promised for her sister had been set up.
As she’d hoped, the worries that had been hanging over her like the sword of Damocles disappeared in an instant and the relief was indescribable. Her home was safe and she’d been able to give up her extra jobs, and she had no regrets. Every time she visited her sister and saw how happy and settled she was, she knew she’d done the right thing, even if her visit the first Sunday after That Friday had mo
mentarily shaken that conviction.
‘Those are pretty,’ she’d said to Milly, spying the huge bouquet of yellow roses sitting on the windowsill having dumped her bag on a chair and given her sister a hug.
‘They’re my favourite.’
‘I know. But where did they come from?’
‘Theo.’
At the mention of his name her pulse had leapt and questions had spun around her head but her smile hadn’t faltered. ‘That’s nice.’
Milly had grinned. ‘He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? He said he was a friend of Mike’s. I liked him.’
And then her smile had faltered. ‘He came here?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To find out what my favourite flowers were.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember.’
The conversation had turned to the series Milly was watching on Netflix but Kate hadn’t been able to focus. She’d been too concerned about why Theo had really shown up. When she’d questioned the staff, however, they’d reassured her that the only instruction Theo had issued was that Milly was to have whatever she needed. Kate had been sceptical, but gradually she’d come to accept it in much the same way she’d come to accept the flush of heat she experienced every time she looked at the fresh flowers that arrived weekly and reminded her of that Friday evening.
From the man himself she’d heard nothing, nor had she expected to. He’d been very clear about what he was offering and she had no reason to doubt that, which was fine because there was no future to be had with him. Apart from above average height and intense chemistry they had nothing remotely in common, and she’d neither seen nor heard any evidence to suggest he did relationships even if they had.
She hadn’t bumped into him at work, thank God. As she’d suspected they trod completely different paths, so there’d been no awkward moments in a lift and no darting into nearby cupboards in an effort to avoid him. She kept her head down and worked hard, passing her probation and being given the pay rise she’d brazenly asked for after recalling what he’d said about tall people earning more.
