Control (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels)

by Stein, Charlotte

  Though I know that’s not true. I know, even though it makes it worse, somehow. I can hate him, when I just think of him as a cheating liar. But he didn’t really lie at all, and now I’m standing on the pavement outside what used to be his parents’ toy museum, trying to glean something of him from what is now a very upmarket jewellers.

  It’s in a prime location, too. Suddenly I’m starting to see his lack of previous job experience with different eyes – because if he sold this place he’ll have made a pretty packet from it, no matter how rundown it was. There’s that car park near the Minster not far from it, and the centre of town only ten seconds away.

  But all I can really think about is – I wish I’d talked to him about it, more. I wish I’d asked him what it was like, back when it had toys in the window and Kauffman’s Clockworks over the door.

  Because that’s what it was called. It was a museum, but they sold things, too – little clockwork toys and wooden puppets, colourful things that delight children of all ages. And I know because I googled Kauffman, York, and all of this is what came up. They weren’t totally bonkers once, I guess.

  And I hope they were kind enough to leave a forwarding address, with the man behind the counter of Naughton’s The Jewellers.

  I’m still not sure what my plan is, as the taxi pulls up outside The Grove. That’s the name of his old home, his family’s home – The Grove! As though he truly did grow up trapped in some sort of bizarre fairytale like The Twits, and I really am going to find out soon that he was never real.

  Maybe I should just put on an old wedding dress now, and sit inside his old house and rot with the rest of it, waiting for him to visit. That’s a perfectly sane plan, isn’t it?

  None of this feels sane, when I’m standing by the frankly massive and completely decrepit gate, outside his house. And it is still his house. He didn’t sell it, like the toy museum – and I know because Mr Naughton was very kind, and told me that Gabe still visits, occasionally.

  Is it OK if I feel unbearably sad, about that? I can just see him wandering around all the display cases, lingering over things shiny and new, lost in a world of faceless puppets and dolls that move.

  Also: I’m really starting to creep myself out, now. And though the just-starting-to-push-into-summer-sunshine is pouring down, and the overgrown garden beyond looks lost in a haze of heat and green, it does nothing to ease that sense of creepiness.

  I wonder if I’ll go in there, and never come back out again. I’ll probably end up lost, in the nineteenth century. But I push open the gate – which wails, ominously – and start up the gravelly, overgrown drive, anyway.

  I think of Gabe’s comment about Grey Gardens again, as I go. Maybe his parents aren’t dead and I’m going to find them somewhere, dressed in their swimming costumes and carrying racoons.

  However when I get up close, I can see the house is empty. The windows are boarded up, and most of it has been taken over by creeping plants of all kinds – in fact, I think I can see a tree, starting to poke out of the boards over one of the upper windows.

  But it’s a massive and beautiful old thing. A real country house, grey-bricked and squat and sprawling, surrounded by so much grassy overgrown British countryside it’s unreal. And when I peer through the cracks in the boards, I can just about make out a kitchen with an Aga and all of that nonsense.

  His childhood would have really been idyllic, if his parents weren’t insane. There’s even a huge old apple tree in what might be the back garden – it’s hard to tell, amidst all the vast grounds – and it has the remains of a rope swing, attached.

  Bees drone lazily, through the overgrown grass and the ten feet tall dandelions. The grove of trees that lies at the bottom of an almost not there path whisper when the breeze hits them, and everything is still and summery and lovely, even with this film of dust all over everything.

  I follow the path down because I can’t not, and there’s a little stream that dwindles off into nowhere. The water glistens beneath the shards of light that make it through the canopy of leaves, and I think of all the children that could have had wild Enid Blyton adventures here if their parents just. Weren’t. Crazy.

  But they were and this is it, and oh my heart just aches for him. I hope you were happy with me, my Gabe, even if it was only for a little while. I hope I made you happy.

  However, when I turn and he’s just standing there, and he asks me in this really surprised sort of voice why I’m crying, I just want to kill him all over again. I’m relieved to see him and he looks so good and not full of despair, but I just want to kill kill kill him for making me all ridiculous and dramatic like this.

  Instead, I stumble in my stupid strappy sandals over to him, and throw my arms around his shoulders, and generally behave like a big sappy idiot. Thank God, thank God he didn’t move to Brazil.

  Thank God he hugs me back.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, like a moron. ‘What’s the matter, Maddie? Is it Andy?’

  Lord, what is the matter with him? I do shake him, then, with my hands bunched in his shirt – a still dorky plaid thing, for some inexplicable reason – and my teeth all gritted and I must just look a mess. But I don’t care.

  ‘Why did you leave? Why? How could just run off like that?’

  I sound frighteningly high and not at all in control of myself. He tries to soothe me with his stupid big hands, but I’m having none of it, apparently.

  ‘I thought that …’ he starts, but I think it’s already beginning to dawn on him that what he thought is totally ridiculous and so fucking wrong. ‘I thought it would be best.’

  I let go of him then, and try, fruitlessly, to compose myself. Which really just means I wipe my eyes and nose on the sleeve of the summer dress I thought it would be advisable to wear.

  ‘You thought it would be best to stop me choosing for myself?’

  His eyes go big, at that. But then, I do pack an awful lot of mean and sullen, into it.

  ‘No, no! No, I just … I don’t know. You want Andy, don’t you?’ Then smaller, in this almost sickly sounding voice: ‘You do want Andy, don’t you? I mean, I just can’t be like him, Maddie, I can’t give you everything. I can’t be in charge, I can’t be in control, I can’t.’

  He swallows around his words.

  ‘I won’t ever be the kind of man Andy is.’

  I think he intends the words to be loaded, and like a death knell, or something. He actually does look despairing, once they’re out. But they just make me explode with stuff.

  ‘Who says I care? Why would I care? You talk about how you’ll never be the man he is, how you’ll never be like him. But he won’t ever be like you. He won’t ever be kind, or funny, or smart, like you. He won’t ever be able to do some of the things you do for me, not ever!’

  Somehow, he gets the nerve to interject. In fact, he interjects pretty damned fiercely, for him.

  ‘He did them for you, the other night!’

  I guess it’s our first argument, because I can’t stop myself from shouting right back, ‘But I don’t love him!’

  And then we’re both quiet, for what seems like a long, long time. Gabe because he seems stunned and unable to process what I’ve said, me because I can’t believe he’s really stunned. I guess the I do, too was much more pathetic than I gave it credit for. I guess I’m much more pathetic than I gave me credit for.

  ‘I love you, Gabe. I do. I’ve never loved anyone as much in my entire life as I love you. I’ve just spent the better part of two days, searching for you – I mean, what did you think? That I just turned up here because I fancied a day out?’

  His smile tries to emerge – oh, that lovely way his tongue touches to his upper teeth. So slyly happy!

  ‘Go back to that other part, about the love,’ he says, and I could just punch him.

  ‘You’re an idiot, you know?’ I say, but when he just nods I have the overwhelming urge to apologise. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I know I should have, I know
– I’ve just never said it to anyone before. I’ve just never –’

  I’m glad, when he cuts me off with a kiss. Gladder yet, when it goes on for what seems like an age and gets deeper and deeper and oh, is that his tongue? Do I seriously crave him so much that it’s only been two days, and a messy tear-streaked kiss is working me up?

  Because it completely is.

  When I grasp a handful of his arse, he stutters into my hair oh, are we going to … But all I can think about is the fact that he’s wearing jeans. Ironed jeans, but jeans nonetheless. And his arse feels absolutely fantastic in them, so fantastic that I just have to squeeze.

  ‘You know that I love you, too, Maddie,’ he says, but he’s fondling me all over through the summer dress, while he says it. I don’t blame him – this is probably the thinnest item of outdoor clothing I’ve ever worn in his presence, and it takes next to nothing to get the front of it open and his mouth on my bare breasts.

  All I can do is moan in relief and a crackling sort of happiness, reaching between us to pull and clasp at his clothes, as he does the same to mine. It doesn’t take much to get the plaid shirt partially unbuttoned, the jeans unzipped, my dress up around my thighs – and then we’re tangled together on the grassy embankment.

  I look up and see the sun flickering through the leaves, as I sink my fingers deep into his thick, black hair. It feels warm on my upturned face, but his body feels warmer still – as urgent as ever and twice as greedy.

  He runs sweating palms over the outside of my thighs, and groans when I do the same to him. I get feverish fingers under the waistband of his jeans, and scratch my nails all over his firm flesh, just delighting in the feel.

  He delights right back at me. He squirms just like always beneath my touch, the familiarity triggering the hot gush of pleasure that goes through me, more than anything else. I’m actually familiar with someone, and that person’s familiar with me, and that feels better than I ever thought it would.

  Especially when he finds his way between our bodies, so that he can press the heel of his palm over my straining sex.

  It feels good – like a relief. Like the pressure’s being let out. But then I guess he always knows just where to touch and how to do it. He knows that when I arch into that firm press, it means I want him to kiss me open-mouthed and rub his stiff prick against my thigh.

  And he knows that it’s time to frantically search my handbag for condoms, while I lay back against the embankment, half-dazed – though not so out of it that I can’t struggle out of my knickers.

  I do it when he moves off me, briefly, and watch him grin to see me so desperate. He doesn’t have to tell me that my eagerness is the thing that makes him happy, because I just know. I know it, and should probably feel embarrassed, but instead I’m busy telling him to fuck me, Gabe, fuck me.

  His tongue touches to his upper teeth as he fiddles with the little square of foil, and I’m sure I know what he’s going to say. It’s there in his expression, that all-encompassing need, and sure enough he runs with it.

  ‘Are you ordering me to?’ he says, and I bubble over with laughter. I clasp him to me. Yes, I tell him, yes – I’m always ordering you to.

  Just before his mouth finds mine again and his hand touches briefly between my legs in that soft, sweet, testing sort of way he has. His eyes shutter closed briefly, to feel my slipperiness and my heat – just like always. But this time he doesn’t tell me what it feels like or go for the fuck or any of the things I expect.

  Instead he tells me that he’s glad I came to find him. That I should always come to find him. That if I were the one to run away from him, he’d have the guts to come and find me. He’d always come and find me.

  So I kiss him and reach for his delicious curving cock, before he can see me getting all mushy, again.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I say, against the side of his face. ‘And this time – I won’t stand for sidetracking. Just get on and do it, right now.’

  I love his expression for folding inwards, as though I’d stuck with mushy without me knowing it. And I love it – and him – more, for pushing my legs apart and getting right between them, when I grab a fistful of his arse and squeeze until it hurts.

  I know it hurts, because he whines for me. Then pushes into my waiting pussy, smooth as silk.

  His face goes slack over mine, but that’s OK because I think my expression mirrors his. Play sex games for months and months, and fill your time with delicious pleasures, and suddenly two days without seems like for ever. My body sings to feel it again – that roll and push of a good fuck, Gabe’s eager body pressing into mine, the sound of his breath panted hot and tense against my cheek, my ear.

  He starts off slow but that can’t last – and I think that’s in part due to where we are. It takes me a second to realise that we’ve just fallen to rabid fucking outdoors, where anyone could find us, but I think Gabe’s been considering that idea all along.

  I can see him flicking his gaze up the embankment as he rocks into me, as though he expects the posh neighbours from down the road to turn up at any second. To catch us rutting lewdly in the grass, my bare legs up around his waist and his arse largely exposed to the world.

  Or maybe he’s just thinking about where we are, exactly. About how many times he didn’t come down here with a girl, to make out or fumble with her, stickily, or just sit here, holding hands. Maybe he’s thinking of his parents and their disapproving gaze, while we defile their property and moan and grunt and groan loud enough to send birds up from the trees.

  However, his expression isn’t half as tense as any such thoughts would demand. I’m sure it isn’t. We get to some sort of blissful, shaking, halfway point, mouths all over each other and unable to come apart more than an inch, and then he suddenly rears up over me. Mouth wide and open in the broadest smile I think I’ve ever seen him give, breathing out in a way that almost seems to spill over into laughter.

  He looks giddy, I think, and maybe if he were anyone else that would be kind of insulting. But it’s Gabe and I understand that bursting feeling of something freeing, and newly discovered, and so I laugh back. I capture his face in my hands, and laugh back.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get over how good this feels,’ he tells me, in between lurching, vigorous thrusts, and his hands suddenly in the grass either side of my head. I see him bunch it into his fists, digging into the soil with greedy fingers as his hips churn against mine.

  It makes me even more aware of our surroundings – little pebbles and the slippery twist of weeds and grass pressing into the bare flesh of my arse, the smell of summer and fertile heat surging through me with each ragged breath.

  I can taste something green, on my tongue. I can feel him, thick and hard and hot and strong.

  ‘I love you, Gabe,’ I say, as my head goes back. ‘I love you.’

  And he laughs again, deliriously. Those dirty hands leave the soil and the grass and clutch at my hips in much the same way, so that this time when he fucks into me it hits hard against that sweet spot inside me.

  I think I cry out. I probably shout that I love him, again. But that’s OK, because he says it back before burying his mouth in mine, twisting our bodies until the world is spinning and suddenly I’m over him. I’m over him, all that mess of nature pressing into my knees instead of my butt, and his soil-streaked hands linked with mine as I push them up, up, over his head.

  It feels good, and right, to hold them there. And it feels even better to shove down on that gorgeous thick cock, rocking until I get into that good good rhythm – the one that makes me shiver with pleasure and moan into his mouth.

  On each surge upwards my clit brushes the jumping muscles of his almost-bare belly, but it hardly seems to matter. Just the feel of him and the taste of him and his cock shoving roughly into me as I press his hands to the grass – just those things are enough on their own. They make me ache and him say oh God, yes, please fuck me, do me, do it, as he grins wickedly – probably over his own unabash
ed lewdness.

  When he jerkily asks me to get his shirt all the way open – yeah, then I know it’s the lewdness. He wants to be filthy in this place, largely naked and rutting up against the slut Queen he calls a girlfriend.

  And I know this, because that’s what he actually calls me. He actually calls me a slut Queen, while we’re fucking. Before looking naughty and caught and flustered, and bucking up at me all at the same time.

  He needn’t worry, however. I’m quite happy to accept my new title. In fact, I’ll accept any regal epithets he chooses to give me, as long as we keep fucking while he says it. Anything, as long as we keep fucking. Or having sex. Or making love.

  We’re probably making love, even though it’s on an embankment and we’re a mess and people are likely spying on us from the farm across the way.

  But the point is, I think – he doesn’t seem to care. And I don’t seem to care – not about anything. I just kiss him, and kiss him, and when he blurts out that he’s going to come, I do too.

  I watch him writhe beneath me, eyes burning dark and bright and mouth slack, and orgasm blooms in my belly, warm as anything. It pours through me, and pours through him, and all I can think is this: I would find you anywhere.

  We lie on the embankment, side by side – long enough to feel the day cooling around us. But the truth is that I only notice evening drawing in because he starts pulling his clothes all the way back on. He lay there that long, in comfortable silences and outdoors to boot, with his cock hanging out and his hairy chest on display and dammit, I should have teased him! I should have told him that someone was coming, and watched him scramble.

  Instead I have to make do with marvelling at the plaid and the jeans. Now that I can think straight, they’re calling my attention, again.

  I nudge him, as he fiddles with the buttons.

  ‘What’s with the outfit, Butch McBeeferson?’

  He laughs – not giddy like before, but even so. And even better, he blushes – as though he’s embarrassed about the get-up.