by Jane Lark
She didn’t take the napkin.
‘Was that you doing a sales pitch on me? Remember I know how easily you influence people. I know you know what to say and how to control clients.’
The napkin scrunched up in my hand. Generally, in her presence, the sales man in me was switched on all the time. I was surprised she even knew I had another side. I’d thought Sharon was the only person who knew about the pissed-off and heartless me. But I knew what Ivy meant, and she was right. I could flip into selling mode in a second and I had probably pushed the point to make her cave in.
‘Maybe. But we’re here because we like each other. Can’t we just ignore everything else and get on with liking each other? Please? You can’t even imagine how much I regret meeting Sharon. I hated who I was. But that isn’t me now, and – I don’t know what to say. If it’s a deal-breaker for you, I guess it is. I don’t want to spend a week up here arguing with you. I can call Sharon or Victoria if I want to argue.’
‘Victoria…’
‘Daisy’s mum.’
I walked over to Ivy, still gripping her screwed-up statement saying she was going to be my lover in my hand as I looked into her eyes. ‘If you stay, then don’t mention any of the stuff I told you again. No sales pitch. Just because I don’t want to think about the past up here. Look at the place…’ I threw a glance at the view. ‘It’s too beautiful to waste time arguing about things I can’t change.’ When I said beautiful, though, I wasn’t looking at the view from the hill. I was looking at Ivy.
She looked from the distance to me. Her eyes said her brain was weighing up whether I deserved a second chance. But she had just let me fuck her again. ‘Okay. I won’t mention it any more.’
I slid the napkin into my pocket.
From this moment on… You’re my lover.
‘Come on.’ I held her hand. She still had her stripy gloves on. We’d had sex with her leaning on the wall, with her bum exposed to nature, and her silly stripy gloves on.
I laughed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. There’s other places I want to show you today, but the next place is going to be busy by the time we get there. I’m sure there will be loads of people out walking off their lunch.
Chapter 5
Ambleside was a small town on the edge of one of the lakes and I walked around it gripping Jack’s arm, my woollen gloves sliding on the leather. Nothing was open but he was right, it was busier. We had to keep stepping off the narrow pavement to walk past other people.
It was a pretty place. We walked along past a tiny picturesque house, which was built over the top of a stream. He said that’s what he’d wanted to show me. We leaned on the wall watching the river flowing underneath the house for a while, looking for fish in the clear water, and then walked past a giant water wheel.
Further along he took me down a path leading away from the high street. There was a sign pointing like an arrow, saying ‘waterfall’. It took about half an hour to walk up the path to it, and all the time you could hear the water as the pathway wove across the clear stream, through a wood.
‘Nice place?’ he asked when we stood just below the head of the roaring waterfall – watching it.
‘Yes.’
He was standing behind me. His arms wrapped around me. I leaned back against him and rested my head on his shoulder.
It felt good, despite what I knew about him, and despite the fact that he’d slipped into control-freak mode today. A part of me liked the alpha-male masculinity of his control-freak side. The other side wanted to slap him when he got arrogant and began ordering me around. Captain Control; that was what people called him when he was like that at work. But the way he’d ordered me last night and at the fort, and what he’d asked me to do – that was sexy.
He had his beanie hat on and his scarf wrapped right up around his neck. It was getting colder, especially in the shade of the trees.
We got back in the car after we’d seen the waterfall and he drove for about half an hour, but he drove sensibly because it was on a busy main road. I watched the scenery all the time, looking through the passenger window. Everything was beautiful around us. The road dropped down and followed the edge of a glass-like lake that reflected back all the hills around it. There were so many places you could just stop and walk, and so many places you wanted to capture in a photograph.
When he turned off the road I saw a brown sign saying ‘Castlerigg Stone Circle.’
‘This place should be quiet by now, I hope. It isn’t ever all that busy, but sunset is one of the best times to see it. I like it most in winter, when the sky is a metallic grey and a little threatening; it adds to the mystery of the place.’
‘What mystery?’
‘You’ll see.’
He was being Mr Cryptic today, as well as Captain Control. I’d never known Jack be cryptic or spellbound like this. He was like a child showing off his favourite toys – only it wasn’t toys, it was places.
‘Shut your eyes,’ he said, once we’d walked through a wooden gate on to a pathway into a field. I did, but my heels sank into the turf. His suede gloves covered my eyes, like he didn’t trust me to keep my eyes shut, and his strong body moved behind me, the leather of his jacket making creaking sounds.
‘Walk forward slowly.’
It was awkward because my heels were sinking and we were walking up a slope, so it was slow progress, but he kept his hands over my eyes. I was getting used to him keeping me in the dark. But I didn’t mind it. Not when I thought of last night. But then there’d been the sex on the top of the world with my eyes open looking out for miles, feeling like I owned the world – as if I had been the queen of it. My heart did a little skip behind my ribs, then it thumped in a steady beat. It was waiting for Jack to throw something new at me. Sex on the wing of an aeroplane!
I laughed aloud.
He didn’t comment.
But then… Prostitutes… The memory swept through me on a chilly breeze.
I wasn’t over the news, but I was trying really hard not think about it. It was in the past. He was right. It just made me feel weird to know I’d gone with a guy who did that sort of stuff. But he’d said he wasn’t carrying any nasty diseases, so it shouldn’t matter, I suppose…
‘Okay, here’s a good view.’
His hands slipped away and my heart burst into a full-on thud like the bass beat that had pulsed through his speakers in the car. I opened my eyes. ‘Oh…’ I didn’t know what to say. ‘Wow.’
The air was colder as I breathed in, but it tasted really clean up here. ‘My God. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘I’ve thought about suggesting this place for adverts, but I can’t bring myself to do it, it would feel disloyal, like I was breaking some unspoken code. It would ruin it if loads of people started coming up here.’
I looked at him. ‘You’re more complex than I thought.’
He smiled.
I turned around, looking at the ring of stones. Then walked towards them. ‘How old is this?’
‘Stone Age.’
It wasn’t the stones that were beautiful, though, it was their setting. The stones themselves were no higher than an average person, or below that, but they’d been brought up here, to a place, to a particular hill, which seemed as if you were balanced in the clouds with God, speaking with the other hills around you. Perhaps ancient man thought these hills were gods and they’d come up here to try and speak with them.
I looked at Jack. ‘What was this place used for?’
‘Look at the panel. It gives you all the information. Last time I read it, it said for trading—’
‘I can’t imagine anyone just coming up here to buy or sell a pot.’
He laughed at me. Probably because I had a dopey look of awe on my face.
But I was awed by this place, like everything around here. I hadn’t been abroad, my parents had never travelled and Rick and I had never had the money to go anywhere. This place had noth
ing to be compared to for me, except itself and as itself. It was the most perfect part of the world I’d ever seen.
I looked at Jack. I was still in awe of what had happened last night, too, but then I hadn’t travelled around guys either, not like he’d journeyed around women. I suppose nothing had been special for him last night.
I looked back at the view. I was also still shocked to know he had an eight-year-old daughter. But the thing that knocked my feet out from under me most was the relationship he’d had with Sharon –prostitutes as presents – I was never going to be able to look Sharon in the eyes if I saw her again.
Oh, but I was trying hard to do what he’d asked and not think of that; I just wasn’t winning.
They had been in the office. Emma couldn’t have known.
I walked into the centre of the ring of stones and stood there for a moment looking at the view, then I opened out my arms and spun around. The place had a magnetic pull. I was trying to live in the moment, but I didn’t ever want to forget this. This was a perfect memory to be filed away and kept forever.
I slipped my hands around Jack’s middle, over his stomach. ‘Hey…’ He was washing up. By hand. He didn’t have a dishwasher here. My fingers reached to his belt buckle and undid it.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Acquiring this for when you’ve finished in here.’ I started pulling his belt out of his dark jeans.
‘Why?’
‘You used the forfeit you won from me yesterday. I haven’t used mine.’
He glanced over his shoulder at me, smiling, as his belt slipped free from his jeans. ‘I’ll finish this up right away.’
He’d cooked for us. He hadn’t let me do a thing. He’d cooked prawns and stir-fried vegetables. I was impressed. He was a better cook than me. But then he was better at everything than me.
I wrapped the belt around my hand and went into the living room. There was no TV; he had nothing to do in the cottage, not even a bookshelf. All he had was the tin of cannabis in the cupboard and the music player. It was playing the Arctic Monkeys, ‘AM’, and the cannabis, his other entertainment, was left open on the side as we’d had a joint with our after-dinner coffee. ‘What do you do when you come up here alone?’
‘Relax. Think. I’m busy in the day and generally I just sit and think in the evening!’ He shouted from the kitchen
‘You’re so weird, I don’t get you…’ I bent and pulled a cushion off the sofa, then threw it on the floor as he’d done last night.
‘I think you get me more than most women I’ve known,’ he said when he came into the room.
I turned around. I didn’t know what to say. We’d agreed to forget the past, and I didn’t want to consider what other women thought about him. Or think about how many of them there’d been. ‘Turn out the light, then sit down in that chair.’
He smiled.
I forced my mind to focus on now, and fun, as the cannabis played in my bloodstream. And maybe a little revenge. We’d had sex twice and both times he’d controlled it – and after his confession I didn’t feel so great about it. This was my turn.
I was going to mess with his freaky need for domination.
I smiled to myself and scattered more cushions on the floor as he watched from the chair with a smile twisting his lips. The sort of smile he gave me at work if we were flirting – before he disappeared into his office.
The wood-burner threw out heat behind me, but I wanted the room hot like it was when I did yoga, hot enough to make Jack sweat, so I opened the wood-burner door and threw a couple of logs into the flames.
When the room was ready I turned around and looked at him, my hands on my hips.
His fingers gripped the chair’s arms and his lips parted in a wider smile, saying, what do you want to do with me?
Everything, Jack.
If I was a nice, decent girl, I should be back in London by now. I should have grabbed his offer to get out of here. Jack was depraved when it came to sex. But the truth was, knowing he was so bad made my heart race harder, being here was like living the best dare. I’d bungee-jumped into bad-girl status. But I’d needed this to get over Rick. This feeling – the way my heart had thumped with adrenaline all day, because I never knew what to expect – this had been what I’d missed out on with Rick.
I was going to enjoy this.
I unwrapped the belt from my hand, put it down on the sofa, then stripped off my jumper and top and threw them on to an empty chair, so I stood in front of him in my purple bra and jeans.
He breathed out. ‘You look good, Ivy’
‘Give me your hands.’
He held his hands out. ‘But think about it. Don’t you want me to take my top off first, babe?’
‘Oh.’ I made a face at him. Trust Jack to be clever. Like I’d said, he was better at everything. ‘Take your top off, and don’t call me babe, in that patronising tone.’
He gave me one of his twisted smiles, his eyes dancing with life and humour as he stripped his sweater and his t-shirt off. The flickering orange light from the wood-burner played over him.
His body was incredible. His stomach was stupidly firm. I imagined you could hit him with an iron bar and he wouldn’t flinch, and I could see every muscle moving beneath his skin when he moved, even tiny ones you wouldn’t be able to see on most men. His skin creased at his side when he threw his sweater and t-shirt on to the sofa, with mine.
The sight of him danced through my nerves, a line of Irish dancers drumming out their steps, and the muscle around my womb clenched tight because it had the instinct to make babies with him. My body knew what was coming and every sensation was amplified by the cannabis.
‘Hands!’ My order was sharp because I felt so weird inside.
He held them out. I wrapped his belt around his wrists in a figure of eight a few times, then I pulled the end through the buckle and yanked it tight.
‘What now, Ivy?’
‘Wait and see.’
My guess was that me getting naked first would be the thing that would torture him and turn him on most. I smiled and unbuttoned my jeans, then slowly slid the zip down.
‘Phew.’ He laughed after he’d said it.
I’d played stripper for Rick a couple of times, but this wasn’t the same, probably because Jack was a ten-out-of-ten man with a depraved, extreme alpha-male sexuality. I was playing with fire stripping for Jack, teasing a tiger.
I put my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans, then slid my jeans down over my hips, just my jeans. ‘Arabella’ started playing on the stereo. What a song to strip to.
I stripped my jeans and socks off my feet. That wasn’t all that sexy.
He’d probably watched a hundred women strip. Don’t think of the past. It’s you stripping for him now. But the past was still intimidating. ‘Arabella’ played on. I rolled my hips, dancing to the music in my thong and bra, in the heat that the fire threw out into the room.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees to get closer, his tied-up hands lifting to brush over the crotch of my thong. ‘No touching! My pace!’
He laughed at that and tumbled back into the chair.
I turned around, turning my back to him, and carried on rolling my hips as I played with the edge of my thong over my bottom.
‘You’re being mean. I want to touch.’
I undid my bra strap then slid off my bra. He huffed out a sigh. He couldn’t see anything more as my back was turned to him. For ages I just kept teasing him, swaying my hips, dancing, then I squatted back, gripped the arms of the chair and wound my hips across his lap, not touching him and twerked a couple of times.
He didn’t even try to touch me.
It was the sexiest thing I’d ever done and if he’d touched me he’d have known I was turned on too.
I stood up and turned around. The heat in his eyes said it all, and the beat of the music throbbed through me. The dark small room here, out in the middle of nowhere, away from anything I was in real l
ife, gave me the confidence and freedom to be wicked too. I could be anyone I wanted here. Make up a new me.
The cannabis in my blood urged me on.
I played with my breasts, squeezing them and rolling my nipples between my fingers. I could see from his face he was painfully hungry for sex, plus there was an obvious sign in his jeans.
I slipped my hand into my thong and touched myself there as I swayed to the music, still gripping one breast too. He was only watching my thong now. I put my other hand down there and ran one hand over the top of the silky fabric while the other played beneath. He sighed with a low growl. His face moody.
I turned around and played with the material that ran between the cheeks of my bottom, then leaned forward and touched myself from behind.
‘Come closer and let me touch with my mouth…’ It was a plea, not an order.
I did, but only because that was what I wanted too. I was as turned on as he was.
His tongue danced around where my fingers played, but I couldn’t really let myself go when I was standing – without something to lean on. My legs were getting weak.
‘Shit…’ I breathed as I un-seductively stripped off my thong and then I turned around and climbed on to the chair, with one foot either side of his thighs as he leaned back, so I could stand over him, straddling his legs in the chair.
I hissed out a breath when his tongue slid over me, then I touched myself again.
His hands came up and touched my bottom. He couldn’t grip me, but he did slide a finger into me while his tongue played around and I caressed my sensitive spot with little circles.
I came in minutes.
He wiped his chin on his arm as I collapsed on to his lap with a sigh.
This was Christmas Day. I’d never imagined I’d spend a Christmas day like this. Rick, his parents, my parents and my nan would be full of Christmas lunch, lounging in their chairs watching specials on TV and I was here…
