‘I’m getting better.’ She wasn’t blubbing, but her eyes still hurt like hell. She felt better, though, better than she had felt in a long time. ‘I went to see a counsellor and that was a turning point for me. Just to be able to talk about it. That’s when I decided to take back up the art. That’s when I met your brother.’
‘At counselling?’ There was bewilderment in his voice. ‘You met Andy at a counselling session?’
‘More than one, actually. It was a sort of trial, group thing. We hit it off from the start. He made me laugh and he was my shoulder to cry on.’
‘Why was he there?’
‘Why do you think? His own personal stresses were getting too much for him. We encouraged one another.’
‘Don’t go on,’ Curtis told her, with a hint of urgency in his voice. ‘I’m beginning to get jealous.’ He tempered the statement with a laugh, and the passing thought that he might really have been jealous was immediately squashed. ‘Is that why you can’t…touch me? Why you don’t feel comfortable with the opposite sex?’
She wanted to tell him that she normally felt quite comfortable with the opposite sex, just so long as they remained at an arm’s length away, then realised that he had unsettled her on all fronts from the start. He had certainly made her feel alive. For the first time she had begun to see the truth behind what people said, all those old clichés about dear ones being gone but that doesn’t mean that you are as well. He would never know it, but he had dragged her kicking and screaming, figuratively, into being a responsive, living, breathing, whole human being again.
‘I…yes…can you begin to understand?’
Instead of answering, he leaned forward and planted a brotherly kiss on her forehead.
‘Goodnight, Jade. Sweet dreams.’ He rolled onto his side, and for a few seconds she decided that she was so relieved that it had all been settled in such an amicable fashion. She had been truthful with him and there were no misunderstandings now to clutter their relationship. If what they had could be classed as a relationship.
He would stop flirting with her because he would know that she was no longer available, in any way, shape or form. That brotherly peck on the forehead was indication enough of that. He would treat her like a piece of china, respect her need for privacy, not try and needle her into any more heated outpourings. She had sorted out her own mystery for him, and now that he understood she knew that he would cease all attempts to seduce her with his personality. If he had ever been trying to seduce her.
Not that she wanted to be seduced.
She stared at the broad back. Above the duvet, she could see the top of his spine and the hard ridges of his shoulders. His head, inclined forward towards his chest, showed the vulnerable nape of his neck. She stared so hard at it that her eyes began to burn. He was asleep. She was sure that he was. His breathing was very regular. No twitchy movements. She waited for a few more minutes. If her eyes were lasers, she would surely have burnt a hole into his neck by now. A neat little hole just there, where his black hair tapered into a V shape.
She reached out and touched the spot. It was enough. Enough to send every nerve-ending in her body into over-drive. The touch became a gentle stroke with the knuckles of her fingers and she felt his body still.
She wanted him so badly that she thought she was imagining his response when his hand caught her fingers and one by one he put each finger into his mouth, sucking and licking them.
No dream.
She moaned softly and he turned to face her. ‘Do you want this?’ he asked huskily.
‘I’m not that kind of girl.’ Not the kind of girl who lets her hands roam feverishly over a man’s body, touching his nipples, feeling the flat, hard planes of his stomach, pushing down the loose elasticated waistband of his silk pyjamas so that she could feel, caress, stroke.
‘Not what kind of girl? The kind of girl who wants to feel alive again?’ His voice was unsteady as she began edging closer to him, with his powerful arousal still firmly in her hand. Closer so that she could lift her tee shirt and grind her hips against his, loving the feel of him against her through her underwear.
She couldn’t recall what kind of girl she was supposed to be. She just knew that right here and right now she was this type, and if that meant that she wanted to feel alive again, then so be it.
Her breasts, pinioned under her arm, felt swollen and heavy. She had to get her tee shirt off. She was burning up.
She sat up, and with one swift movement pulled it over her head. Before she could lie back down on her side, he had hoisted himself up enough to hold one of her swinging breasts in his hand, then he leant forward and began licking it. His tongue flicked over the soft swell, traced beneath it, teasing her mercilessly, so that when he finally absorbed her nipple into his mouth she groaned with satisfaction.
‘Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.’ She curled her fingers into his hair and flung back her head. She never wanted this to stop and, as if sensing her need, he levered her onto her back, pinning her hands with his while he continued to lick and suck her nipples. She felt them hard in his mouth, and when he nipped the protuberances gently with his teeth she began to writhe with mounting passion.
‘What do you want me to do to you?’ he asked, moving his hips against hers. He pulled off his pyjama bottoms, then her underwear, and supported himself above her, letting her feel him, taking her to dizzy heights but resisting the final thrust.
‘Anything,’ she half sobbed, ‘but just don’t stop.’
This was a different body. A new body with heightened responses and no inhibition. She opened herself to him in a way that she had never done to anyone in her life before, and, limited though her sexual experience was, she knew that this had nothing to do with the fact that she was emerging from her emotional deep freeze. This was unique to this particular man. Curtis Greene had somehow unlocked her, and she revelled in it.
Her passion was only matched by his. His muttered crudities, which would have been like a bucket of cold water had they come from anyone else, were deliciously sexy when he spoke them, in a rough, unsteady voice. He was aggressive, but with an expertise that left her wanting more, and his aggression fired her own wanton abandon.
When his mouth found her most intimate place, she pushed his head still closer against her, gyrating her hips with circular movements that resembled a dance, arching her body back so that she could savour the licking of his tongue.
How was it that she had never felt like this before? He touched and explored every inch of her willing body and she found that she was doing the same to him.
When neither of them could stem the oncoming flood of release, he moved over her and filled her with his manhood. If a tornado had hit the guest house, she doubted whether either of them would have been aware of it.
She only became aware of the silence in the room, which had echoed to the sound of their passion, when they were finally lying next to one another, spent.
It had all seemed so natural, so right, that she felt not the slightest twinge of regret, even though she knew that there was plenty of that waiting in the wings for her.
‘You,’ he said huskily, cupping her bottom with his hands so that there was barely an inch of space between their damp bodies, ‘are beautiful. Spectacular.’
‘Beautiful? Spectacular?’ she teased, stroking his cheek with her finger. ‘That has the ring of a cliché about it. Is it what you tell all those willing women whom you lure into bed with you?’
‘I don’t do lure,’ he murmured, ‘and I don’t do women. I’m very discriminating when it comes to the fair sex, and you, my darling, are the fairest of them all.’
Darling? She wasn’t sure whether she had heard right. Had he just called her darling? Did it mean anything? She fought against getting lost in analysis of an endearment which had been muttered in the pleasant afterglow of lovemaking.
‘Do you still object to sharing the bed with me now?’ he asked with teasing gravity.
Jade wa
nted to tell him that she would object to not sharing the bed with him, but caution, dreary though it seemed, was not to be tossed to the four winds. She wanted him, and there was no point in trying to disguise the fact or apologise for it, but some inner voice of common sense warned her against betraying too much of her feelings.
She went to sleep after more lazy lovemaking that was just as satisfactory, holding the memory of that endearment close to her heart, and awoke to a view of leaden skies and snow streaming down. Curtis was standing by the window looking out, and to her intense delight he didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. She had a few seconds of pure, undiluted enjoyment of the sight before he turned around and smiled at her.
‘You’re awake, Sleeping Beauty.’
Jade stretched and yawned. ‘It’s still snowing.’
‘All the more excuse for us to keep each other warm.’ He began walking slowly towards the bed and she followed him with her eyes, provocatively pulling the duvet down so that her breasts were exposed. He paused at the foot of the bed, and the intensity of his look was as much of a turn-on as if he had reached out and touched her. A turn-on, she thought with some satisfaction, for the both of them, judging from the way his body was reacting to the sight.
With a sinful lack of inhibition she began to roll her fingers over her nipples, teasing them into full erection, enjoying this sexual lovemaking that was visual only. The anticipation of what lay ahead was enough to send waves of desire surging through her.
The room was beautifully warm and she languidly kicked off the duvet, so that the rest of her nudity was on show, and very slowly trailed one hand along her stomach, then to the soft curls between her thighs. She watched as a slow smile crossed his face, but he waited until she had touched herself into mounting passion before he swiftly joined her on the bed and, with exquisite lack of haste, completed the job she had begun.
By the time they finally left the pleasurable warmth of the bed it was nearly nine-thirty, and downstairs Tom was already up and busy.
The indulgent, knowing look he shot them as they strolled towards him brought a faint pink flush to her cheeks.
‘How did you two sleep?’ he asked, interrupting himself to shout to Rose, who was somewhere behind the area of the bar, that Curtis and the wee lass would be ready for some breakfast.
‘Oh, there wasn’t much of that, Tom,’ Curtis said, raising his hand to roughly caress the nape of her neck beneath her hair. ‘But the fault didn’t lie with the mattress.’
‘Say no more, son.’ His grin grew broader, as did the pinkness in Jade’s cheeks.
This was heavenly. This warm, possessive tenderness that Curtis was showing towards her. He made her feel special and desirable, and she intended to bask in the sensation for as long as the snow continued falling. It would end, because all things did, but there was no law against enjoying it while it lasted.
‘What d’ye make of our fine Scottish weather, lassie?’ asked Tom, showing them to the very same table they had sat at the night before.
‘I always knew that it never stopped snowing in Scotland,’ Jade answered gravely. ‘I bet it even does this in the summer time.’
‘Aye, it takes its time giving in to spring,’ he replied with the same mock gravity. ‘When we’re all heartily fed up with its winter antics.’
‘Doesn’t look like it intends to give in at the moment,’ Curtis remarked, with something approaching satisfaction in his voice. He was speaking to Tom, but his eyes were on Jade, and she had the same feeling of being touched even though that wasn’t the case.
‘Not for another day or two,’ Tom told them thoughtfully, glancing over his shoulder, then heading towards the kitchen.
‘Well, I guess we’ll just have to find things to do to occupy ourselves, won’t we?’ Curtis shot her a wicked, teasing look, and she entered into the game, shaking her head with a puzzled frown.
‘Are there any places of interest around here?’ she asked. ‘Accessible by foot?’
‘Oh, I can certainly think of one place of interest,’ he said softly, leaning towards her across the small rectangular table, ‘accessible by hand.’
He watched with gratification as a schoolgirl blush spread across her cheeks.
‘I love to see you blush like that,’ he murmured, reaching out and caressing the side of her face, as though he couldn’t help himself. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever made love to you with words before?’
‘Not…not that I can remember,’ Jade replied breathlessly, dropping her eyes.
‘Well, now, here’s the perfect opportunity for me to put that right.’
The perfect opportunity had to be relinquished in favour of breakfast, as Rose bustled in with two enormous plates of eggs, bacon, oatcakes, baked beans and steaming mugs of coffee.
‘I shall get fat,’ said Jade, tucking into the food with gusto. ‘If I have two more days of hearty Scottish fare, I won’t be able to waddle out of the door.’
‘Bit of an exaggeration, but never fear. If it comes to that, we can always arrange some kind of pulley system for you through the window. Or else we can just stay put here for as long as it takes for you to go on a diet and lose the weight.’
‘Oh, dear, I wouldn’t dream of having you miss work.’
‘When it comes to your very…edible body, it wouldn’t be too much of a sacrifice, I assure you.’
The word edible reminded her of just how tasty he had found her body the evening before, and she hurriedly concentrated on her food and heard him chuckle under his breath.
This was sheer madness, but for the first time since her sister’s illness had been diagnosed Jade felt wonderfully free. She knew that sooner or later one of them would have to mention the inevitable subject of what would happen when they returned to London. She also knew that before she was forced to hear him say that London was reality, as opposed to Scotland, which was a bit of unexpected fun, she would say it herself first. She would retreat with dignity, and just in case the dignity proved to be skin-deep she would leave the shared house and find alternative lodgings. The prospect of that was such a blight on the horizon that she pushed it to one side. What was the point of crossing the bridge before you came to it?
And here, in this snow-covered wilderness, it was easy to forget about tomorrow.
She discovered just how easy when they went for a walk and she found herself doing things she hadn’t done since she was a child, and then only infrequently, because snow was something that had only ever flirted lightly with her home town.
She had certainly never made a six-foot-tall snowman in her life before; that much she could state with absolute certainty.
They worked away at it for an hour and a half, until they no longer felt the biting cold through their layers of clothing, and at the end of their mammoth task she stood back, surveyed their creation and said wonderingly, ‘It looks just like you.’
‘In which case we must bear an uncanny resemblance to one another, because I was about to say the same thing about you!’ He grinned at her and she made a snowball, packing it tightly in her gloved hands, and struck home.
The only problem with escape was that it was impossible to run in inches of snow, and she was laughing gleefully when he pulled her down and kissed her very thoroughly before allowing her back to her feet.
‘Naughty little girls must be punished,’ he informed her, in his best school teacher voice, which naturally propelled her into a full-frontal attack and a fully declared cold war.
‘Peace!’ she said, holding up her hands when she had been splattered with enough snowballs to construct another six-foot snowman.
‘Are you admitting defeat?’
‘I am.’
‘In which case,’ he said, with a theatrical bow, ‘I generously accept my role of victor. In which case, I get to choose the spoils…’ Jade folded her arms, grinning, and he chucked her under the chin. ‘An amble in the direction of the house.’
‘You said yesterday that walking to the house was
out of the question!’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think we’ll make it there. In fact, I know we won’t, but you might be able to catch a glimpse of it.’
‘That big, is it? Those wings’ll do it every time, won’t they?’
Will the real Curtis Greene please stand up? she thought, as they walked as far as they could go, which wasn’t very far, and he regaled her with stories of New York, making her laugh with his anecdotes, getting her to regale him with a few of her own and gently helping her over the obstacle of her sister’s death.
The words seemed to have accumulated inside her and were bursting now to be freed. She remembered amusing incidents that she had thought forgotten, and the more they spoke, the more she felt the weave of the net surrounding her tighten.
This felt so good and so real, but it was merely an illusion. Like all illusions, though, she was powerless to fight it. As powerless to fight the inroads he was making into her soul as she was to fight the responses of her body when he touched it.
And he was almost boyishly pleased at all the firsts he was providing for her.
A first, he said later that evening, counting them out on his fingers, for building a six-foot snowman.
A first for eating haggis, which he assured her was perfectly delicious when you forgot what went into it.
And a first for being engaged; he grinned rakishly when she opened her mouth to dispute that one.
Two days later, with the snow finally beginning to show signs of abating, she realised that there were an awful lot more she could add to his categories.
Curtis Greene was a first when it came to showing her just how fulfilling lovemaking could be. In between the teasing, the conversation and the companionable silences, they had made love with the urgency of two people who knew that time and reality were not on their side. Until him, she had never shared a shower with a man before, and had never even contemplated that the simple act of getting clean could become an erotic exploration of bodies.
Until him, she had never revealed herself to anyone. She had scattered confidences around here and there, things that were of no real significance, but with him she had laid bare her soul, never mind the consequences.
A Scandalous Engagement Page 12
