by Lisa Cach
The conversation flagged and they were both quiet. Grace remembered Catherine waiting for the chamomile tea, and hoped she’d fallen asleep. Surely Cat would have come looking for her by now if she was still awake. She would be shocked to find Grace sitting with Declan in the dark.
Why was she sitting here with him?
It was the late hour and the quiet of the house, she decided, and the concealing darkness. He was less threatening when she couldn’t see him. She was reminded, though, of her first boyfriend and the evening they’d spent together on the couch in the basement of his parents’ house, watching movies. They’d started the evening with a foot of empty space between them, Grace achingly aware of every slight movement he made toward her, every “accidental” placement of hand or leg, every shift of body. It had taken one and a half movies for their hands to meet and then entwine, the two of them sitting with eyes glued to the screen, pretending that their hearts weren’t beating in their throats.
Declan shifted, his hand bumping her toes. She pulled her foot back, but his hand followed, his warm, rough palm sliding up over the top of her foot to grasp her ankle.
An electric thrill shot up her leg. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.
He pulled her foot into his lap. “I dated a massage therapist for a while.”
“So?” She tugged at her foot, but he wouldn’t release her. His thumb found the tender skin beneath her arch and started to rub in slow, delicious circles, sending a tingle of pleasure directly up her leg. She squirmed in embarrassment and feebly tugged again at her foot. Somehow, he’d hit upon a spot that was creating echoes of sensation in a decidedly less innocent body part than the sole of her foot. “You have a foot fetish or something?” she asked, trying to hide her embarrassing reaction.
He chuckled, the sound rumbling over her in the darkness. “The massage therapist was a big believer in reflexology. Do you know what that is?”
Grace murmured a negative sound, unable to speak further. His touch felt so very good, and if she closed her eyes she could forget who was creating such divine sensations. She sank down against the arm of the couch, glad of the darkness and determined not to let him know how very good his touch felt.
“Reflexologists believe that areas on the feet and hands correspond to other parts of the body. So if I massage a specific spot on your foot, you can feel it elsewhere.”
She opened her eyes in alarm.
“It’s mostly nonsense, of course,” he said, stroking the spot on her foot with exquisite tenderness.
“Of course,” she echoed weakly.
“You don’t feel this anywhere else, do you?”
“Like where?” she squeaked.
“Oh … your spleen. Your small intestine. Maybe even … your pituitary gland.”
She chortled in relief. “No.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to think I had intentions on your pituitary gland.”
She stared at him in the dark. Did he know what he was doing to her?
He found her other foot and brought it to join the first in his lap, both his thumbs working on that spot in slow, short strokes. Her eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolling back in her head. Oh God, it feels so good… . It really had been too long since she’d been touched by a man.
She felt a moan of pleasure start in the back of her throat and swallowed it. But those strong thumbs, stroking her just there… . Distraction! I need distraction! “You never answered why you’re sleeping on the couch,” Grace said hoarsely. “Don’t you have a home to go to?”
“In San Francisco. Surely you don’t think I should drive there in my present condition?”
“How drunk are you?” She couldn’t smell anything on him.
“Enough to sit here with you.”
She couldn’t claim the same excuse. “How did you meet Sophia?”
“I have football to thank for that.”
“Did you meet at a game?” It was hard to picture Sophia in the stands, face painted in team colors, yelling whatever people yelled at football games.
“No. She was friends with one of my football coaches at USC. She used to have a house in Beverly Hills, and when she needed a couple of young, strong, good-looking guys, she called Coach Griggs.”
“Needed good-looking guys for what? Her harem?”
“Your mind sure runs easily to sex.” He slid his palm up her calf, inside the leg of her pajama bottoms, and gently played his fingertips against the delicate skin at the back of her knee. He was turned sideways toward her, his dark shadow hovering over her. “I may have to take another look at what goes on in Women’s Studies programs.”
“What are you doing?” Grace breathed, hyperaware that she wore no underpants and that there was no obstacle, however flimsy, on the path between his hand and … everything else.
“This is supposed to be good for your, uh, liver,” he said, fingers stroking with hypnotic regularity on the tender, soft skin behind her knee.
“You’re making that up.”
“Does it feel bad?” he asked. “For your liver, that is.”
“N-n-noo …”
“Waiting tables.”
“What?”
“That’s what Sophia would hire us for. She threw lots of parties and was on committees for various fund-raisers, and she liked to hire us to serve. She said she preferred our brutish self-obsession to the arty-farty self-obsession of unemployed actors.”
“How kind of her.” She felt him shove up the other leg of her pajamas and stroke her from ankle to knee. She supposed she should stop him, but it was harmless, wasn’t it?
“It was kind of her. It didn’t take long to figure out that Coach Griggs must have given her a list of the guys who were broke. Like the other guys she hired, I had a full-ride football scholarship, but nothing else. Sophia paid us each a couple hundred bucks for a few hours’ work, and let us take home as many leftovers as we could carry. We loved her for that. Do you have any idea how much a twenty-year-old football player eats? We’d carry off plastic grocery bags sagging with beef tenderloin. Shrimp. Enough cheese and cured meats to make sandwiches for a month.” His fingers slowed on her skin as he lost himself in remembrance. “I can still taste that beef, dumped straight out of the catering pans and into a plastic grocery bag, dribbling juices out of a hole in the bottom all the way home. Blue-red in the middle, rare enough to moo …”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
He laughed softly. “I guessed you would be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have ‘self-righteous choices’ written all over you.”
“I am not self-righteous,” she said, and tried to jerk her legs away from him.
He wrapped his arm round her knees and pulled, dragging her toward him until her butt bumped up against his thigh and her head thumped flat on the cushion of the sofa. “Shhhh … ,” he said.
“I will not shush! What are you doing?” She felt warm, moist pressure through the thin cotton covering her knees.
“Calming you down.”
“Are you kissing me?”
“My dear, if you think this is kissing, you have been sadly deprived of experience.” He slid down between her and the back of the couch so that he lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, his body pressed alongside hers. His other arm was across her waist, his heavy hand lying on top of her outside arm and the edge of one breast, gently trapping her.
Flat on her back as she was, he seemed immensely large above her. The warmth and firmness of his body, and the weight of his arm sent a delicious weakness through her. Every breath was filled with his male scent, and she wanted to drown in it. She wanted to be a nameless woman in the dark, giving in to the temptations his body offered. It would feel so good. Her heart thumped at the thought of impulsively giving in and doing it, but at the same time a familiar part of herself said, Get off me, I know you don’t like me, I know you’re laughing at me.
“I should go back to my room,” she said weak
ly. “Cat’s waiting for her tea.”
He stroked the hair back from her face, then traced the shape of her lips with a feather-light touch. He laid his finger against her lips, as if to quiet her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see the shape of his features, and the gleam of moonlight in his eyes. He wasn’t smiling, or laughing.
You’re drunk and horny, and will make fun of me tomorrow, she thought. And yet his finger on her lip held her captive, and made her want to know where it would move next. No guy had ever taken the lead in such an overtly sexual way with her, and she was mesmerized by it.
One of his legs came over hers, nudging its way between them, and he leaned his weight against her, half covering her. She felt his arousal against her hip, and her body seemed to swell and soften in response.
I need to be touched—it’s been so long. Just touch me, touch me, please touch me… .
His hand trailed down her chin, then to the hollow at the base of her throat. He stroked his fingertips over her collarbone and sternum, stretching the neck of her T-shirt to reach her skin. He pressed his palm flat over her chest, outside her shirt, his hand so wide that he covered part of each breast, then ran his hand down her belly. It came to rest at the gap between her shirt and pajama bottoms, his thumb stroking her bare skin. She felt a flicker of embarrassment about her too-soft belly, but he showed no sign of having noticed.
“How long has it been since you were kissed?” he asked.
“I don’t know … at least a year, but it was only Cat.” The truth spilled out of her of its own volition, a secret she’d revealed to no one until today. He knew about it anyway, so what did it matter what more she said? “She hoped I might be bi, and persuaded me to let her try to find out.”
He groaned, pressing himself hard against her. “What did she do?”
Grace saw the scene again, watching it as if she were outside her own body. “She had me take my shirt off.”
Declan dropped his face to the crook of her neck, where she could feel his breath. “And then?” His hand moved up under her shirt.
Grace knew the story about her and Cat was turning him on, even as she was puzzled that it would do so; what was it with guys and girl-on-girl action? It felt so good to be touched, though, and nothing seemed to matter here in the dark… . “Then she unfastened my bra, and had me lie down on her bed. Before I knew what was happening, she kissed me.”
“Christ,” Declan muttered, and lifted his head to crush his own mouth to hers.
Grace let him, parting her lips when his tongue sought entrance and delved within. He sucked against her, his tongue rubbing hard against her own. His hand slid up toward her breast and she clutched his shoulder with her one free hand, not knowing if she would make him stop or urge him to continue.
A crash of crockery shattered the moment, jolting Grace out of her sexual haze. Cat’s voice let loose with a string of curses, and Grace remembered the mugs she’d left on the bottom step of the staircase.
Panic flooded her. She couldn’t be found like this! She struggled to get out from under Declan, but he weighed her down, his hand still up her top.
“Let me go!” Grace whispered.
“Grace?” Cat called softly into the darkness. It sounded like she was standing in the doorway to the living room, not ten feet away. “Are you in here?”
Grace froze, not daring to breathe.
Declan’s fingers pinched her nipple. She stared, wide-eyed, at him and caught the gleam of light on his grin.
“Grace?” Cat called again.
A lamp clicked on. In its amber glow, Catherine gaped at her.
Frantic in the light of discovery, Grace struggled against Declan and was released, his hand withdrawing from her shirt. Hot with embarrassment, she rolled off the couch and onto the floor on all fours and scrambled to her feet, pulling down her T-shirt.
“God damn you,” Catherine cursed, glaring at Declan.
“I’m astonished you didn’t get further with Grace,” Declan said to her, sitting up. “Look how far she was willing to go with me, a stranger she despises.”
Grace glared at him, too aghast to speak. Her worst doubts about him were proving true, even as her body still tingled with his touch.
“I was curious how far she’d go,” he said, his eyes on Catherine. “I didn’t think she’d let me touch so much as her foot, but she is full of surprises. A minute or two more, and you’d have seen her getting what she so obviously wants.”
The hard words hit Grace in the gut. “I don’t want that!”
Catherine shot a bitter look at her. “Don’t lie to me!”
Her breath caught on a sob of humiliation. She had wanted it while Declan’s hands were on her and his mouth against hers. She’d wanted it with every cell of her body.
“Good thing she’ll be here all summer,” Declan said. “We’ll have plenty of time to scratch that itch.”
Catherine pivoted on her heel and marched from the room. Grace stared after her, then turned to face Declan angrily. “Why?”
“Because you let me. Your type always does.”
“My type?”
“Dumpy women protesting that they don’t want to be sexual objects. What you really want is a man with the balls to bend you over a desk and fuck you till you can’t see straight. All your feminist crap is a shield you hide behind because you know no guy is ever going to want you enough to do it.”
She shook her head, stunned by his blatant chauvinism. “You’re wrong. It’s not about sex. It’s about respect, it’s about—”
“Everything’s about sex. Grow up and smell the pheromones, Grace. Sexual acceptance and rejection; it’s what makes the world go round.”
“Not my world.”
“Then you’re living in fantasyland. Have fun there, alone with your vibrator.”
She choked on a sob and fled.
CHAPTER
5
Grace shivered in the misty air of dawn, her bathrobe inadequate against the chill. The maroon Jaguar and the other cars were all gone, and she wondered which had belonged to whom. The Volvo looked like a piece of forgotten rubbish in the empty courtyard.
Catherine loaded the last of her things into the back of the car and slammed the hatch. “You’re crazy to stay,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? You’ll need years of therapy to undo the damage that bitch and that prick are going to do to you.”
“He lives in San Francisco. I’m sure he’ll hardly ever be here.” To Grace’s surprise, Catherine hadn’t dissolved into more tears and fits of accusatory anger when Grace returned to her room last night. Declan’s humiliation of her seemed to have satisfied Cat. Grace had been punished for her sin. Catherine was content with her suffering and happy to take on the role of wise consoler of sorrows.
“That still leaves Sophia to deal with,” Catherine said.
“I’m a big girl. I can handle her.”
“Not from what I saw. There’s a time for retreat, Gracie, and better to do it now and save yourself the wounds. The woman has nearly a century of evil she can work on you; I don’t care how smart you are, you’re no match.”
“I don’t need to be her match. I’m going to study her!”
Catherine shook her head. “She’ll devour you.”
The words were an eerie echo of Declan’s. “Yeah, Sophia’s warped and horrible,” Grace admitted, “but think what it will mean to my thesis to spend the summer here.” The idea had come to her in the shower a few hours earlier, as she tried to wash away the humiliation of Declan’s touch and figure out why she’d been such an easy target. When she was hurt, intellectual analysis both distracted her and made her feel less vulnerable. Her analysis of the situation on the couch came to the highly scientific conclusion that she was horny and Declan was an insecure asshole who had to prove himself by conquering women. It was biology that had made her give in to him; his square jaw and symmetrical features had undone the primitive areas of her brain, making her want him.
After she’d figured that out, she’d then wondered about Declan and Sophia’s relationship, and thus the idea of studying Sophia was born.
“Talk about beauty meeting an unhappily ever after,” Grace continued. “Sophia’s story can be the centerpiece of my paper. She’s an example of every idea I’ve been developing for the past five years. Where’s her happy ending? She’s old and surrounded by nasty people, and so bitter she practically creaks with it. She’s perfect!”
“She’s Satan. Gracie, promise me that the moment you feel you can’t handle it here anymore, you’ll call me. I’ll come get you. You can spend the rest of the summer with me in San Diego, no strings attached.”
“Thanks, Cat, but I’ll be fine.” Just as she was pretending to be fine now, pretending not to be cringing inside at every memory of Declan’s hands on her, and her eager, stupid belief that he was turned on by her. He’d probably been retching inside as he stroked her flabby belly.
“Promise me anyway.”
Grace sighed. “Okay, I promise. Now get going, so I can go back inside. I’m cold!”
They hugged, Catherine’s arms too tight, holding too much unspoken meaning. Grace kissed her cheek and patted her back. “Go on, now.”
Catherine released her and opened the car door. “Remember, I’m just a phone call or text away.”
“I’ll remember.” Feeling a stab of guilt for her own cold heart, which wasn’t sorry to see Catherine go, she gave Catherine one more hug. “You’re a good friend.”
Catherine sniffled and looked even sadder. The car door shut and the Volvo coughed to life. Grace waited on the front step, waving until Catherine drove away between the two stone pillars.
Grace took a deep breath and shook her arms and shoulders as if she could shake off the bad juju of the past twenty-four hours.
It’s a new day. I can start over. Declan won’t ever tell Sophia what he did to me, not if he cares about her good opinion. No one ever has to know.
No one but herself, and it was knowledge she could face only when she dwelled on what a completely screwed-up asshole Declan had to be to prey on her trusting stupidity.
