Dark Desires (Dark Romance Boxed Set)

by Cerys du Lys

  For once, though, things quietened down earlier than usual. By not long after ten the throng was thinning and there were only a few drinkers left at the tables. Lucy was behind the bar, talking to an old English guy El now knew as a regular. A group had just left from one of the tables out under the canopy, so El went to gather up their abandoned glasses.

  As she approached, she glanced across to the entrance and Rob was standing there, a strange look on his face. Had something happened? Something to do with his ‘business trip’, perhaps. Maybe this would be an opportunity to press him for more information.

  When he caught her eye, he nodded back towards his shoulder, indicating that she should join him.

  She smiled and went over. In that moment of eye contact, she had a brief flashback to that kiss on the beach, and then again here at La Taberna. Given his reputation as a bit of a player, she’d been surprised at his restraint. Perhaps, like his claims to be ‘the man’, he was far more talk than action.

  Before she had even joined him he turned and stepped out onto the promenade.

  It was quiet out here, deserted save for a few holidaymakers wending their way from bar to bar or back to their hotels.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, addressing his back.

  Something was wrong.

  Badly wrong, she realized.

  He turned, and fixed her with those silver-blue eyes. “You tell me,” he said.

  That was when another figure appeared, stepping out of the shadows to one side of the bar’s canopied frontage.

  It took her a moment to recognize him. The shaven head, the inverted triangle shape of his upper body, the arms and thighs pumped up with weights and steroids. The tattoos that emerged from his white t-shirt and ran down his arms, bold Maori patterns and on the left forearm a St George’s flag.

  Danny Taylor.

  It was Danny Taylor and the look in his blue and green eyes was sheer murder.

  Before

  1

  Is it worse to have lost all that you had, or to learn that you’d never really had it in the first place?

  Either way, it was a life stolen from her.

  She wasn’t a particularly materialistic young woman. It wasn’t the house, the cars, the freedom to eat out in the finest restaurants whenever the mood took her. She appreciated these things, but they did not define her.

  She was a good person. She worked for charities, for God’s sake! She’d had plenty of opportunities to carry on working in the City, but no, she’d chosen to work for next to nothing, helping charities make the best of their financial resources. A conservation group, a children’s trust, a humanitarian charity, even.

  Her friends were good people, too. People who cared and made sacrifices.

  The lifestyle was just... well it was nice. She’d grown up comfortable, and her marriage to Jeremy gave her the freedom to make choices that would otherwise have been much harder.

  The irony of all that did not escape her later, when she learned that it had all been a lie, and worse, a lie paid for in human suffering.

  §

  Jeremy.

  Tall and dark, not a hair out of place. That was his life: not an element astray.

  She had never known a man so considerate. He forgot nothing. Her favorite food and drinks, the designers she liked, the stories from her past, everything. Their last anniversary together: a private dining room at her favorite Michelin-starred restaurant, the music from their wedding day, two slender vases of Marchessa Boccella roses on the table. Everything, just right.

  If anything, Jeremy had been too restrained, too controlled. He was never a man to let himself go. He liked to be in control of every element of his life. That had been one of the attractions to Eleanor: a man who cared about the details was a man who cared. To have a man ten years her senior and clearly very successful pay that kind of attention to her had been quite breathtaking.

  They were together for three years, and in that time Eleanor had been unaware of the gradual shift in her own perception. She had not noticed the point at which that fastidious attention to detail had translated into a conservatism, a sense of life’s potential being constrained.

  She had not seen their relationship like that at all until that night when he had come to her late and falteringly said, “Eleanor... My darling Eleanor. I have something to tell you...”

  §

  It was an evening when their plans had abruptly changed, and that in itself was unusual for a man who so liked to be in control.

  They’d planned an evening out together with friends from Eleanor’s conservation charity. A few drinks, something to eat at the gastro pub in the next village, nothing too fancy. Jeremy had arranged to meet her there, and it was only as she drew up in the car park that her cell phone buzzed with a new message. Pausing in the dark, she found her phone and read his brief message. Sorry, my darling. Unavoidably detained. Please share my apologies.

  That was so Jeremy. Polite to the point of formal, even in a text message to Eleanor.

  She found her friends, shared her husband’s apologies and thought little more of it until later, at home, when he still had not turned up and there had been no more messages.

  She went to bed, the lights dimmed.

  Some time after midnight she heard a car door outside, then noises of someone entering the house. Moments later the bedroom door opened and he stood there and she felt that uplifting rush of happiness that her life was like this and that he was the man who had made it so.

  That was the last time she ever felt quite like that.

  He came around to her side of the bed, dropped to his knees and put a hand on her bare arm.

  “Eleanor,” he said. “Are you awake? I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  For a moment she thought he was apologizing for the evening, but then she realized it was something more than that.

  “Eleanor...” he went on. “My darling Eleanor. I have something to tell you...”

  She sat up. The bedding fell away and, strangely before her husband, this made her feel suddenly exposed so she pulled the sheet up again and folded her arms across her chest to keep it in place.

  “Jeremy? What is it?”

  He was having an affair. He’d been in an accident. He–

  “I think I’m in trouble,” he said. “We need to prepare ourselves for the worst. The police are involved.”

  She stared at him. His words didn’t make any sense to her. He lived so cautiously... how could he ever end up in trouble with the police?

  “Our life,” he said. “My life. My work. They are not what they appear. All of this... the life that we share, my darling. Well, it didn’t come about from me just working in the City. I’ve taken risks, and some of the things I have done have pushed the boundaries of what is legal.”

  “You were always so careful about everything,” she said, struggling to keep up with him.

  He smiled then, and she saw something in his eye that she’d never seen before. A hint of something, a spark of danger.

  “I always try to give that impression,” he said. “The best gambler must always appear to be careful when taking the biggest risks...”

  §

  “What’s happening? What have you done?”

  He was still kneeling, his eye level a fraction lower than hers.

  “I promise,” he said. “I will tell you everything, but right now you are best protected if you do not know anything specific. You have to trust me. Can you do that for me?”

  “How can I do that when I don’t know what’s going on?”

  “You know me. Is that enough?”

  But did she know him? If all this had been an act, a front, then who was the real Jeremy Dryton? Who was this gambler who had always pretended to be so safe?

  “I...”

  “Trust at least that I love you, Eleanor.”

  Those dark eyes seemed to be pinning her to the spot, searching deep inside her for an answer she suddenly did not know.

&n
bsp; “Trust that I know what I am doing and we can get through this. That at last we can drop all the barriers, all the layers of protection I’ve always hidden behind. That we can be the real us. Can you do that, Eleanor?” He put a hand to her cheek, then slid it around to cup the side of her head, his fingers buried in her long, copper hair. “Can you trust me just this one time that I will see us through?”

  His fingers tightened in her hair, and he drew her closer. Such strength... how had his touch never felt like this before?

  So close, and those dark eyes were still fixed on hers.

  “Take this chance to explore what we can be, my love.”

  His kiss was hard, hungry, a kiss that possessed her from the moment his lips pressed against hers. He drove his tongue deep, that hand now at the back of her head, holding her hard against him. Then he tugged back, down, yanking her head back by the hair so hard that it hurt, but then immediately that pain transformed into something else.

  His teeth raked down her exposed throat and she gasped. She moved her hands behind her to stop from toppling backwards and the sheet fell away.

  His mouth reached her collarbone; lips and tongue working across smooth skin pulled tight.

  Down to the first swell of a breast, and then a great sweep of lips and teeth moved across that breast, caught on the nipple, clamped tight. He sucked her in, drawing the nipple between sharp teeth, flicking it with the tip of his tongue, and bolts of pleasure stabbed through her body.

  He stood, and she lay back, pushing the sheet away with her feet. She drew one leg up, half-turning towards him as he tore at his clothes.

  He pulled his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it, then yanked his trousers open, pulled them and his shorts down, kicked them clear.

  On his knees between her legs, he put a hand on her sex, pressing, sliding his fingers between her labia. She pushed against him and one finger slid into her. So hot and wet!

  She studied him as he kneeled there, his lean body, his manhood standing hard and high, and that look in his eyes! It was as if she was looking at a different man, and God it turned her on!

  She reached for him, but he cut her off, grabbing her wrist. Bearing down on her, he caught her other wrist and pinned her arms above her.

  She took his full weight, his hardness pressing against her mound, the base of his shaft against her clit and the wet head sliding across the flat of her belly. He started to thrust, and his mouth found hers, his tongue driving deep.

  Almost immediately she was on the edge of orgasm. She’d never known anything like it, never even imagined that Jeremy could be like this, that he could take her like this.

  He drew back, and the head of his manhood slid down through the neat triangle of hair at her groin, pressed against her, parted her and then, with an abrupt, hard thrust, slid home.

  She cried out.

  Hell, she nearly blacked out, the feeling was so intense. The sense of being so suddenly and completely filled, the sensation of being parted, almost split in two. The feeling of his full weight on top of her, driving him into her.

  It was more than merely physical, though. He was having her, possessing her. In that moment she was totally his.

  No man had ever done that to her. No man had owned her like this.

  He pulled away and thrust again, repeating that sensation of filling and splitting her. His mouth moved down her body again, his back arching and twisting until he found a breast, a nipple. His teeth latched on, his tongue started that flicking thing again, and now it was as if those bolts of intense pleasure were arcing through her body from the nipple, from her groin, sensations meeting somewhere deep in her belly where they combined and grew.

  She was crying and groaning like some kind of animal now, her entire body bucking up against him until that heat in her belly transformed into something else and she was taken over with wave after wave of tightening muscles, the nerves alive with sensation, her heart thumping and her breath ragged.

  She’d closed her eyes, lost in all that was happening, but now, as those sensations ebbed, she opened them and his dark eyes were boring into her. At that moment, she saw the change, saw the slight widening of his eyes, the sag in his jaw, his mouth opening narrowly, and then he threw his head back, arched his spine and thrust deep into her as wet heat suddenly filled her.

  He thrust again, even as he started to soften, and she felt another pulsing somewhere deep inside.

  Again, and then he was growing rapidly soft, holding himself in her, clinging onto every last wave of his own orgasm.

  §

  She’d never known anything like it.

  She’d never thought he could be like that.

  She’d never... she’d just never...

  She slept, and the last thing she knew before drifting off was his reassuring presence beside her.

  And when she woke, just as dawn’s light was breaking, he was gone.

  2

  He called her, though.

  He called her just before she was due to leave for the commute into London.

  She didn’t know what to do. Whether to treat this as a normal day, or to abandon all pretence and stay home, waiting.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Jeremy.”

  “I had to leave, or I could never have left. Do you understand that?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m safe. And I love you.”

  The line went dead. Was that it? Had something happened. Was that his way of saying he was gone from her life?

  She didn’t know.

  She went to the station, caught her train, had her meetings.

  She just didn’t know.

  §

  Four days passed, and she heard nothing.

  It was long enough for people to ask questions, and all she could say was that he had been called away on business. She was accustomed to evenings on her own, but now those evenings were different, something worse than empty. She was never without her phone, but it remained silent. She wouldn’t leave the house in case he returned. She canceled dinner with her aunt Lydia, making excuses that she was sure must not ring true.

  Nothing.

  On the fifth evening, a Friday, the doorbell went and she almost leapt from her chair. She had not believed there would be anything by now; that last call really was the last she would hear and at some point she must work out how to rebuild her life.

  It wasn’t him, though. Why would he ring the bell?

  Was it the police?

  She paused in a doorway, suddenly scared.

  He’d said he was in trouble, said the police were involved.

  She’d promised to support him, but if this was the police how could she know what to say, other than the truth? Could she even bring herself to say something that was not the truth, if the police asked?

  The house had a wide entrance lobby, with windows to either side of the double door. She paused by one of these windows and peered out through the stained glass. She saw a silver car, distorted and tinted blue by the hand-made glass. If it was a police car then it was an unmarked one.

  She opened the door to a man about her height, head shaved smooth, broad shoulders almost splitting a brown leather jacket.

  “Hey, Mrs Dryton,” he said.

  It was Danny Taylor, a friend of Jeremy’s. She’d never known what had connected the two. They had nothing in common. Probably unfairly, she’d always seen Danny as the male-friendship equivalent of her husband’s bit of rough.

  All this time she’d vaguely known Danny, she’d never worked out what it was about the way he looked at you that was so unsettling. He’d always made her uncomfortable, and she’d put it down to something not quite right, that pervy way his eyes kept wandering down her body before leaping back to her eyes. Well there was that, but also... his eyes were different colors, one blue and the other green. How had she not noticed that before?

  “Danny? What is it? I’m afraid Jeremy’s not–”

  “It’s okay, Mr
s Dryton. Eleanor? Jerry’s been in touch. Asked me to pass on a message.”

  For a moment she felt that as a physical blow: he’d been in touch with Danny, but not her.

  Perhaps Danny read some of that in her face, because he raised his hands defensively, and said, “No, no: I’m just the messenger. He said he couldn’t call you. Didn’t know who might be listening in.”

  She felt instantly guilty for her reaction, couple with alarm at Danny’s words. How had she entered a world where a husband didn’t dare phone his wife for fear that their line had been tapped? How had a world that had been so safely middle class only a few days before now have this Kafkaesque paranoia running through every action, every thought?

  “He wants to see you,” said Danny. “He said he wants you to give him a chance to explain.”

  She wanted nothing else in the world, other than to see her husband again.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Midday. Said you’d know where. Said it’s the place with the roses. I don’t know any more than that. Does it make sense to you?”

  She nodded. “It does. Thank you, Danny.” Then a thought occurred, and she said, “If he’s worried our phone might be tapped, might we be watched, too? Right now, is someone watching us? Will someone follow me when I leave tomorrow?”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Like I say: I’m only the messenger. I don’t know where he is. He called me on a number I didn’t know, and he’s probably binned that phone already.”

  They said their goodbyes, and she waited at the half-open door as Danny returned to his car, climbed in, and headed back down the graveled drive.

  §

  She went upstairs and packed an overnight bag, then came back down, took the through door into the garage and sat in her BMW, gathering her breath and her thoughts.

  Her first instinct had been to flee the house, but now she hesitated. If she was being watched... If someone might follow her when she left here tomorrow, would they not be watching the house already? If she checked into some quiet little guesthouse would the use of a credit card be flagged up somewhere in some monitoring system?