A Taste of Passion

by Ashley Lister

  His kiss was all she had hoped it would be.

  Their mouths met in an exploration of raw and ravenous passion. His jaw was unshaven, making his kisses scratch lightly against her soft lips and adding a frisson of delightful discomfort with every caress to her face.

  Trudy could feel her nipples hardening, as though they were straining to get close to him. Because their bodies were shielded by the barriers of his shirt and jacket, and her apron, blouse and bra, it felt as though there were too many layers between them.

  She began to pull his buttons open, exposing his muscular chest and its coating of curled grey and white hairs. When she moved her mouth away from his, then pressed her kisses against his chest, her arousal grew even more profound.

  ‘I want you,’ he grunted.

  ‘I’m yours.’

  She didn’t know where the admission had come from. But she was sure that she meant the words. She had never needed anyone more than she currently needed William Hart. The longing for him heated between her thighs like a beacon of sultry, broiling need. Her heartbeat raced at such a panicked speed she felt lightheaded with the swell of desire.

  They staggered through to the adjacent head chef’s office, neither seeming willing or able to break the embrace, each battling to keep hold of the other as they struggled to find somewhere convenient so they could develop their intimacy.

  Trudy didn’t take any time to study the room.

  She realised Bill was guiding her towards a leather settee that stretched along one wall. She figured that would be a sufficiently comfortable spot for what she hoped they could do together. But, beyond that idea, her thoughts hadn’t progressed any further than the simple animal desire to be intimate with him.

  She longed to have Bill’s naked body pressed against her own.

  The wetness between her thighs was sudden and excessive. Her body felt so hypersensitive she was acutely aware of the rasp of the cotton crotch of her panties drawing against the moistened centre of her sex.

  The music blared more loudly in his office.

  Ella had stopped singing but the music remained light jazz: a smooth combination of piano, bass and sax. The sounds were pleasant and undemanding. They were familiar and yet somehow nameless. The music was slightly discordant and yet somehow perfect. She could feel the pulse of her arousal beating in time to the bass’s swelling rhythm. She could feel the urgency of her need quickening with the music’s accelerating tempo.

  She broke their tight embrace to allow him to unfasten the apron and pull it over her head. Then she was trying to push herself back against him so she could again savour his kisses and explore his mouth with her tongue.

  He eased her onto the settee.

  She had expected to find herself laid across the sumptuous cushions with her back on the seat and Hart above her. Instead she was sitting down and he was kneeling on the floor between her spread thighs. He had managed to unfasten a handful of buttons on her blouse and his fingers had ingratiated themselves into the cups of her bra.

  The sensation of his firm hands, sliding easily and confidently against her stiff nipples, was almost too much. She felt dizzy from the electric thrill of his caresses teasing at her breasts and pushing her closer and closer to a point of sensational, sexual climax.

  Her breathing deepened.

  Her heartbeat quickened.

  She moved her legs a little further apart for him.

  The pressure of his erection seemed larger than before. When she traced it with her fingers, clutching hungrily at his groin as she tried to discover more about him, her longing grew unbearable.

  The tips of her fingers found the zipper of his pants. As she continued to steal kisses from his lips, Trudy tugged the zipper downwards. It took a moment of fumbling but, finally, she released his erection.

  ‘Ms McLaughlin!’

  She caught her breath, shocked by how exciting it was to hear him call her Ms McLaughlin whilst they were engaged in such an intimate act.

  ‘Was that really what you wanted to do?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Hell, yes.’

  They chuckled together as her fingers explored his shape. He was long and hard and hot in her palm. The pulse contained within his length throbbed with a determination that matched her own avaricious desire.

  Trudy drew a faltering breath and silently begged him to satisfy her. She stroked her fingers lightly and lazily along his exposed length. The shaft undulated in response.

  His hand had crept up the inside of her panties.

  With one artful caress he stroked her sex’s centre. Absently, as though he was a master of such subtle movements, Bill teased the crotch to one side and slipped his middle finger against the hot folds of her lips. The sensation of his bare flesh touching her most intimate parts was enough to heighten and exacerbate her need.

  She groaned.

  His other fingers, so close to her centre, teased through the light down of hairs that coated her sex. She could feel the whisper of his knuckles brushing against the curls and teasing the follicles. Every suggestion of sensation seemed somehow amplified and more intense than anything she had ever previously experienced.

  The one finger that rested at the lips of her sex pressed forward.

  Trudy moaned.

  The folds parted for him, giving up the secret of her sex in a flush of greedy, moist arousal. When he dared to press the finger more firmly against her, and then push it inside, she almost screamed with the rush of satisfaction that threatened to erupt.

  She pulled him close to her face and devoured his mouth.

  He returned the kiss, the intimacy clearly made difficult because of his broad smile and the awkwardness of their posture.

  She had been holding his erection, savouring the sensation of his length sitting in her palm. With the thrill of his finger sliding into her sex she had lost her hold on him. Hurriedly, almost panicked, she fumbled between their bodies and found the thrust of his hardness. He still had a finger inside her, its gentle movement pushing her close to unexpected heights of elation.

  But she wanted more.

  Much more.

  Without allowing herself to think about the consequences, only certain that she needed him, Trudy pulled him towards herself.

  He placed a hand between them.

  ‘Let’s be safe about this, shall we?’

  The finger that had been filling her sex was suddenly pulled away. It left an aching emptiness that she needed him to fill. She didn’t understand why he had stopped or what he meant by ‘safe’ until she saw him produce a condom. She nodded consent as he slipped the sheath from the pack and then unrolled it over his hardness. A moment later he was pressing the firm end of his erection back against the sopping lips of her sex.

  She could not recall ever being so desperate to have someone inside her.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered. Even lowered, his voice was textured with authority. The gritty timbre of his northern accent was a thrill against her ear. ‘Are you sure you want this?’

  Trudy could not recall being more sure of anything. Ever.

  She hooked her heels behind him and urged him closer. As he adjusted the position of the end of his hardness against her sex she waited for a heartbeat, savouring the anticipation as she held him on the verge of penetration.

  The prospect of what she knew was going to come was intoxicating.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she told him.

  He grinned, unhurried and clearly happy to wait for her to take the lead on this occasion. Slowly, Trudy eased herself onto him.

  The rush of pleasure was instantaneous. Trudy could feel his thickness spreading her inner muscles wide and filling her. The aching need for satisfaction was replaced by the certain knowledge that he had already pushed her to the brink of climax and beyond. Her body pulsed through a cataclysmic rush of release from the simple act of his slowly sliding into her.

  Was he really such a good lover? Or had she been secretly harbouring a desire for William Har
t and this was the fulfilment of a previously unspoken fantasy? Trudy couldn’t decide which explanation was the more likely.

  In that moment she knew it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was the satisfaction of the experience.

  She pressed her kisses more ferociously against his mouth. When he pulled her closer, his strong hands holding the base of her spine and the back of her neck, she felt a second explosion of euphoria rush through her being.

  It was another orgasm. Another monumental release.

  A flood of excitement rushed from her sex. The waves of pleasure wracked her frame. They left her trembling with a delight that tingled in every extremity. The release was so powerful she feared she might pass out. Her inner muscles rippled with a flurry of ecstatic responses that were so intense she wasn’t sure if they were divine or devastating.

  She only knew she wanted more.

  But, as she basked in the afterglow of her orgasm, and as she savoured the insistent rhythm of him riding back and forth inside her, Trudy could hear the intermittent beep of her smartphone’s alarm. She groaned inwardly when she realised the alarm was telling her that the muffins were now ready.

  Chapter 7

  Trudy was determined to take on the quad killer. That would be this morning’s challenge. She tiptoed quietly around Eldorado, the house she shared with Donny and Charlotte, as she readied herself to do battle. She didn’t want either of her friends to know what she was doing. Today the quad killer would be a private test: something that she needed to do on her own.

  Charlotte’s parents had generously subsidised the rental of Eldorado, allowing the trio to reside in a substantial, attractive property in a fairly exclusive location. Trudy and Charlotte had rooms on the upper floor whilst Donny lived in the converted basement. The ground floor was a communal living space where they occasionally met for breakfasts and chitchat or to discuss the finer points on their plans for eventual world domination of the global catering industry.

  The walls and furnishings remained predominantly coloured in the same bland magnolias, oatmeals and beiges that had been there when they moved in.

  The floors were hardwood.

  The décor was sparse and minimalist and open plan.

  It was a stylish area to entertain friends and, most importantly, it was easy to keep clean and tidy. The only problem with the ground floor level was, unless she carefully tiptoed, that the hardwood floors screamed and groaned an announcement of her every movement like some form of security siren.

  Trudy checked that her keys were zipped into the pocket of her hoodie before closing the door behind her. It was barely 5:30 am. She had been home this morning for less than three hours. The world outside the door was held in the blackest night between darkness and dawn. Trudy savoured the chill of the icy weather caressing her skin. Then she began to jog steadfastly through the grey morning mist.

  Every breath came out as a visible reminder of the early summer morning’s frostiness.

  The brim of her black baseball cap was pulled low. Her features were hidden inside the shadows of her black hoodie. Wearing black Lycra leggings and black trainers, she figured she looked as anonymous as the shadows as she hurried along the pre-morning roads. She wanted to blend with the early-morning lightlessness and complete her run without being observed. The way she felt this morning, Trudy wanted to continue the remainder of her existence without ever being observed again. Remaining permanently unobserved, she thought, would be safest for all.

  You fucked William Hart.

  The soundtrack for her MP3 was set to a list of tunes intended to accompany an energetic workout. There were lots of glam rock pieces, each one heavy with power chords and inspirational lyrics. She turned up the volume so the music had a chance to drown out the catcalls of her conscience.

  You fucked William Hart.

  Her cheeks burned crimson. She cranked the volume higher and began running harder. Every footfall shook as it landed heavily on the ground. She forced herself to think about each step of the circuit that lay ahead. It was never a good idea to tackle the quad killer with anything less than absolute mental focus. This morning she needed something to concentrate on other than the punishing memories of the previous night. The quad killer – devilish, demanding and dangerous – struck her as the ideal distraction. Not that the memories were particularly punishing. In truth, the majority of them were rather pleasurable. But she didn’t like to dwell on the easy way she had given herself to him.

  You fucked William Hart.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to banish that thought.

  In a moment of typical dramatic flair, Charlotte had labelled this route the quad killer. It was a six mile run that went up some steep hills, over stretches of gruelling fields, and through a couple of treacherous woodland trails. Trudy believed it to be one of the most invigorating and challenging cardiovascular workouts she and Charlotte had ever negotiated. The name quad killer was apt because it always left the front of Trudy’s thighs in an agony of overstretched and trembling exertion. It left her quivering and on the brink of ceasing to function. This morning, more than any other she could remember, Trudy needed the quad killer to distract her thoughts. There were some things that she simply didn’t want to think about.

  You fucked William Hart.

  After she and William Hart finished having sex, Trudy had felt an almost irresistible urge to apologise or at least explain herself. She didn’t usually have sex with people she’d known for less than an hour. Her only previous lover, Peter, had been her one and only former boyfriend. She’d been committed to Peter for two years before they became intimate. Their relationship had lasted a further twelve months and she’d been devastated when he said it was time for them to go their separate ways.

  Aside from one embarrassing drunken fumble with Terry, a blind date that Charlotte had organised, Trudy had never displayed anything like the uninhibited abandon that she shared with William Hart in the kitchen of Boui-Boui.

  But she hadn’t dared put those thoughts into words. It was easier to simply cringe from the shame of having made herself so easily available to him and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  A car approached her on the road. The headlights were dusty and faraway in the pre-dawn mist. Even as it sped past her its presence seemed oddly muffled and otherworldly.

  It was amazing that it had happened, she thought. The sudden desire she’d had for Bill, as well as the fact that he reciprocated her feelings and they’d been sufficiently fortunate to be in a convenient location where they could do something about their mutual attraction, had been a combination of events that would lead someone else to win the lottery. Yet, despite the fact that sex with him had felt good – incredibly good – she conceded, Trudy did not feel like a lottery winner.

  If not for the fact that she was tackling the quad killer, Trudy would have curled into a ball and sobbed bitter tears of recrimination and frustration.

  She left the first stretch of uphill climb and leapt easily over a low dry-stone wall. She kept one hand on the rough stone for balance. Then her feet were stomping on the unyielding and uneven surface of a deep-ploughed field.

  It was early enough to still count as dark. There was a suggestion of morning sunlight somewhere on the horizon but it was nothing more than a baffled brightness in the wrong part of an unseen sky. A bank of low-lying cloud made the world around her an impenetrable fog of confusion.

  She ran more briskly.

  A ramblers’ path lead through the field up to the forest. It was a stretch of well-trodden grass that had worn to a thin and sometimes-muddy walkway. The surface was uneven and potentially calamitous. Trudy knew, if she didn’t pay attention to every step, there was a danger she could lose her footing, twist an ankle or fall and cause herself serious injury.

  This was one of the reasons why she had forced herself to take on the quad killer this morning. It demanded so much concentration there was little s
cope for reflection or self-condemnation. She kept her face down and focused on her run as she hurried into the primordial depths of the forest.

  The mist was cold against her cheeks. She could feel each icy speckle that touched her as she ran. The moist fragrance of the trees was rich in her nostrils. She could smell damp earth, dewy leaves and the heady scents of pollen and sap.

  They were all musky perfumes that she normally enjoyed.

  But this morning Trudy wouldn’t allow herself to acknowledge the smells. Her thoughts, when not fixed on the circuit she was attempting to complete, seemed able to focus on only one thing.

  You fucked William Hart.

  The music continued to thump through her skull at a deafening volume.

  She knew each and every one of the power ballads in her exercise regime. Most mornings, when breathlessness wasn’t a problem, she would sing along. This morning, Trudy couldn’t find the enthusiasm to mutter a single syllable.

  The muscles in her legs began to ache.

  Maddeningly, rather than help take her thoughts away from William Hart, every increasing strain reminded her of the way her muscles had responded beneath his touch. Every glimmer of discomfort made her think of the previous evening when her muscles had been equally well exerted but reacting to far more pleasurable stimulation.

  Her stomach folded.

  Her cheeks flushed. She shook her head in an attempt to banish the memory.

  His fingers had traced appreciatively over the sculpted muscle of her quads. They had slipped upwards, disappearing beneath the hem of her skirt and touching the crotch of her panties. His fingers had teased the elastic to one side as he continued to explore her with the practised hand of an expert lover.

  Trudy had savoured every magnificent moment.

  Regardless of the regrets she now harboured, regardless of the doubts she had about what she had done, how Hart might interpret her actions, and what her friends were likely to think should they ever find out, the evening had been a sensational experience that she would happily revisit if she was given the opportunity.