A Taste of Passion

by Ashley Lister

  Now it was as silent as a photograph.

  She made her way into Bill’s office and saw two slices of carrot cake had been left on plates by his desk. She grinned tiredly, understanding they were an apology from Kali. Knowing Kali’s carrot cake, Trudy thought they were possibly the most wonderful apology she had ever encountered.

  ‘I only got into this cooking business because I thought it would be relaxing.’

  She hadn’t heard Bill appear behind her.

  She turned and saw him looking tired. The urge to embrace him was almost irresistible but she contained herself, not sure she wanted him to know that she had been so thoroughly frightened when she saw him being taken away by the police.

  He flashed a weary smile as he walked past her. She watched him study the carrot cake with a sour smile then poured himself a large Chivas Regal. Without asking if she wanted it, he poured one for Trudy.

  His features were a grimace of anger and frustration.

  ‘I’ve had Frank and Aliceon tell me you did a good job in here this evening.’

  ‘That’s kind of them.’

  ‘Kindness be buggered. You must have done well for Frank to say something nice. You must have done really well for Aliceon to give you praise. When I first brought you in the kitchen she said she thought you had a mental deficiency.’

  That was unexpected. It explained the way Aliceon had described table thirteen as the nutcase table, although Trudy had wanted to believe the woman was joking. Now she realised the maître d’ had been brutally honest.

  She accepted the Chivas Regal Hart was offering and sniffed the golden liquid. The richness reached the back of her nostrils with a smooth, delectable impact. It was an aroma she was beginning to associate with the end of the day at Boui-Boui.

  ‘How did it go at the station?’

  ‘I’m being charged with assault.’

  ‘Assault? But it was self-defence.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not the first time I hit him. And the second time, apparently, I used unnecessary force.’

  Trudy considered reminding him that he had struck a man wielding a knife but she thought there would be little point in saying as much. She knew that Hart would have mentioned such details to the arresting officers and it was obvious that they hadn’t been impressed by the information.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘I wait until the Smurf’s solicitors get in touch.’ He chugged his drink and poured himself a second one. Before sipping the contents he munched on a piece of Kali’s carrot cake.

  ‘Too moist,’ he complained.

  ‘A carrot cake can never be too moist,’ she said automatically. ‘Although I’d argue that this one might be slightly improved if she used pecans instead of walnuts. Walnuts are overrated.’

  He grunted sour laughter.

  The sound of his amusement was enough to make her worries for him fall away. She walked to his side and kissed the bitter taste of Scotch from his lips. He took her in his arms and she felt the thrust of his erection nestling against her.

  She cupped the shape of him through his pants and said, ‘They say a man who’s just been released from prison knows how to service a woman.’

  This time his laughter was an explosive roar. ‘Don’t they usually say that about blokes who’ve spent their lives in prison? I’m not sure it applies to chefs who’ve spent an hour in the holding cells before being bailed on their own recognisance.’

  She shrugged. ‘You still feel like a man who knows how to service a woman.’

  ‘I am,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m also jiggered after a night punching the stupid and arguing my innocence.’

  She nodded and guided him over to the settee.

  ‘Then you should sit down,’ she told him. ‘And let me help you relax.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘The way a spankmaid is supposed to help with relaxation.’

  He sat on the settee as she spoke. She knelt between his legs and, again, stroked the shape of him through his pants. Meeting his gaze she smiled and licked her lips.

  ‘Ah,’ he managed. He sipped a little more Chivas Regal. ‘That sort of relaxation.’

  She unzipped him and took his erection from his pants.

  Her arousal began to churn eagerly as she licked and lapped at him but she had decided her own excitement was a secondary consideration on this occasion. She took him in her mouth and sucked hungrily. She eased her tongue against the smooth lines of his shape and tasted him until he had reached a full state of hardness.

  He stroked gentle fingers through her hair.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he muttered.

  She moved her lips away from him. ‘I want to do this,’ she insisted. ‘And, as your spankmaid, I think I do have to do this.’

  When she caught the sight of his returning grin, she moved her head back over his erection and began to suck more greedily. He was long and rigid and she felt sure she could effortlessly coax the explosion from him.

  The need to taste his ejaculate was overwhelming.

  She heard him sipping Scotch above her and marvelled at the flood of excitement that tore through her when she realised he was using her as an accessory for the satisfaction of his own pleasure. The idea was so thrilling it was all she could do to resist the urge to touch herself as she continued to suck and lap at his thickening erection.

  But she knew that it wouldn’t be right to take her pleasure in this moment.

  The important points were, he was hard and in need of release and she was amenable and had a mouth that could accommodate him. Trudy moved her head more briskly up and down his shaft. He tasted of clean perspiration, manly salts and the fading memory of the last time he had been inside her. The scents and flavours were such a distinctive blend she thought it was like sampling the taste of their romance.

  Absently, he stroked his fingers through her hair.

  The sensitive caress was almost enough to make her moan with pleasure.

  ‘You really are good at that,’ he growled.

  She could feel his length stiffening. A subtle tremor shivered from the base to the tip. She could tell he was already close to the point of release and, for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, the notion made her happy. She supposed it was simply an indicator that, not only was she capable of running Hart’s restaurant to the standard he demanded: she was also capable of providing him with the sexual satisfaction he deserved.

  That thought was so exciting she had to crush her thighs together.

  When Hart finally climaxed, spilling his hot and salty eruption into her mouth, she swallowed greedily. She savoured every nuance of his flavour. She delighted in the surprising warmth of him and the oyster-like smoothness of all that he produced.

  It had almost been enough to make her come.

  She trembled with the frustrated prospect of her own climax as she allowed his seed to spill slowly down her throat. Reluctantly, she moved her face from his spent shaft and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Glancing slyly up at him, meeting his gaze with a soft and steady stare she said, ‘You taste good.’

  ‘Everything that comes from Boui-Boui kitchens tastes good,’ Hart told her.

  They chuckled together at the comment as they finished the Scotch and the slices of carrot cake and then went back to his cottage.

  Chapter 25

  Waking up in Bill’s arms should have been a divine experience. Their bodies seemed to fit together with curves and contours made to match and marry. She was laid on her right, curled into the shape of a lazy question mark, and he was snuggled against her. She didn’t need to open her eyes to savour the moment. She could feel the bristle of his jaw against her shoulder, the weight of his arm against her bicep, the curl of one hand cupping her bare breast, and the pressure of his morning erection pushing at her thigh. In that moment she decided it was the way she wanted to wake every morning.

  Sunlight streamed through the lacy curtains at the wind
ows. The beams were a golden warmth against her closed eyelids. Trudy wondered if she could wake Bill in a saucy fashion. She reasoned it would be wonderful to start the day with a taste of the searing passion that made their developing relationship so exciting. She reached behind herself, hoping to casually encircle his hardness with her fingers. She planned to lightly tease him with her touch until the arousal coaxed him from his sleep.

  A woman’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘You’ll both forgive me for intruding,’ Aliceon began. ‘But the shit has hit the fan. I needed to warn you both that the press are outside.’

  Trudy opened her eyes.

  Aliceon stood at the foot of the bed. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair hidden beneath a baseball cap. Under her arm she was carrying a bundle of newspapers. Her entire appearance looked nothing like the pristine maître d’ Trudy was used to seeing at Boui-Boui’s front of house. The woman looked more like someone pretending to be a newspaper delivery boy.

  ‘Jesus!’ Trudy gasped. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  She turned to Bill, snatching her hand away from his stiffness and blushing furiously at the thought of what Aliceon had almost caught them doing.

  ‘Bill,’ she whispered urgently. ‘What the hell is she doing here?’

  ‘Ali,’ Bill said, sitting up. He pulled the quilt to cover his modesty.

  Trudy fought to keep hold of enough bedding to cover her own embarrassment. She and Bill were both naked beneath the bed’s flimsy covering. She was blinking her eyes furiously, not yet convinced that she wasn’t still immersed in some surreal and disturbing dream. She didn’t know whether to hope she was still dreaming or be relieved that her subconscious wasn’t quite so warped as to conjure up this level of depravity.

  ‘I see you still have a key to this place,’ Bill said with resigned acceptance. ‘I don’t suppose you thought to switch the espresso machine on before you came up here to wake us, did you?’

  ‘Unlike your mobile,’ Aliceon started tartly, ‘the espresso machine is switched on.’ She drew a melodramatic sigh and added, ‘But I think you’ll need a lot more than coffee to deal with the gargantuan shit-storm that’s landed on your doorstep this morning.’

  She threw the bundle of newspapers onto the bed.

  Bill groaned.

  Trudy glanced at the papers. Four of them had headlines about last night’s incident at Boui-Boui. The story labelled COOK OFF! Showed a picture of the Smurf laid unconscious on a gurney as he was being wheeled into an ambulance. It was a grainy black and white image that looked like it had been snapped on someone’s mobile phone. In black and white the gush of blood from the Smurf’s broken nose looked so severe it could have made a casual bystander suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The strapline beneath the picture said, ‘TV Chef charged with unprovoked assault of lowly kitchen porter.’

  He wasn’t a kitchen porter, Trudy thought bitterly. He was a bloody commis chef. And the assault wasn’t unprovoked. Couldn’t they get anything right?

  She glanced at a second newspaper. This one showed an image of Bill in the back of a police car. His unmistakable profile made him easy to identify. The headline over this picture was a corny pun: TV CHEF IN CUSTARD-Y.

  Trudy stopped reading. Were the newspapers nothing but inaccuracies and cheap, stupid jokes? She didn’t think she would learn anything from looking at any of them.

  Bill rubbed sleep from his eyes and yawned. If this was the gargantuan shit-storm that Aliceon had declared it to be, he didn’t seem overly troubled by the development. ‘Should I give a press conference?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t give a press conference,’ Aliceon said firmly. ‘The charges against you are still under judicial consideration therefore sub judice rules apply.’ She moved to the side of the bed and tossed a towelling robe towards Trudy.

  Trudy caught it and tried to make sense of what was happening. Suddenly the world seemed a strange and puzzling place. She had gone to sleep the previous night ensconced in the arms of a man whom she adored. Now she was being woken by the man’s ex-wife, the bed was littered with newspapers decrying him for being violent, and the pair of them were speaking Latin and all but ignoring her. She struggled to punch her arms into the sleeves and wrap the robe around herself whilst remaining under the quilt.

  Aliceon watched. Her lips were thinned by a bemused grin.

  When the woman worked as Boui-Boui’s maître d’, Trudy thought her expressions were inscrutable and unreadable. This morning, clearly gloating at Trudy’s discomfort, there was no danger of misreading the mocking smile in her eyes.

  Bill reached for his mobile. ‘Eighty-seven missed calls.’ He sounded more amused than shocked. ‘I guess these were reporters trying to get a scoop.’

  ‘Lucky you have it on silent when you’re bedding blondes,’ Aliceon observed. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have had a wink of sleep.’

  ‘That’s not even close to being funny,’ Bill grumbled. ‘And I’ll thank you to give Ms McLaughlin an apology.’

  Aliceon lowered her gaze and nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms McLaughlin,’ she repeated dutifully. ‘That was uncalled for.’

  Trudy scowled at Aliceon. She had finished wrapping the robe around herself and, confident her nudity was concealed, she climbed from beneath the cover. Flouncing briskly from the room, stomping barefoot across the polished floorboards, she made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t stand too close to the windows,’ Aliceon called after her. ‘You don’t want to be caught by a long range lens. God only knows what story the press would publish if they found Bill was sleeping with someone your age.’

  Trudy wanted to shout back that Bill wasn’t sleeping with her – they were in a relationship and they were making love. She didn’t bother voicing the comment, not wholly confident that Bill would want to support her claim.

  That realisation made her shoulders slump.

  The espresso machine was reaching a head of steam. Trudy empathised. She could feel herself building to a wrathful explosion and she didn’t think the aftermath would result in anything as pleasant as bitterly-strong, Italian-style coffee.

  It seemed odd to be standing alone in Bill’s kitchen and unable to position herself over the kitchen counter. On those occasions when it had happened, the impact of being punished in the kitchen had proved to be exceptionally exciting. Even as a memory, she was stung by a need to crush her thighs together and savour the mounting sense of arousal.

  Her nipples stiffened with the thought.

  The centre of her sex trembled as though touched by an unbidden need.

  Nevertheless, with an effort of will, she resisted the urge to act on her growing excitement. She could hear the babble of voices from reporters outside. They weren’t immediately beneath the window but they were close enough so she could catch snatches of their conversations.

  ‘Cookery show,’ someone grumbled.

  ‘Cocky TV chefs and their over-priced nosh,’ another moaned.

  ‘Wealth like this from cooking posh pies?’

  Trudy flinched from the disparaging tones, aware that the reporters were already sounding unsympathetic, and they had yet to hear Bill’s side of the story. It sounded as though they had made up their minds that he deserved to be pilloried for his wrongs. She imagined their conversations would become more focused if they suspected Hart’s current young lover was standing in the man’s kitchen, dressed only in a thin bathrobe and fantasising about the last time he had spanked her.

  She suppressed a shiver.

  Her sex warmed with the need to be touched.

  Remembering that Aliceon was talking to Bill upstairs in the bedroom, Trudy told herself that now was not the time for such licentious memories or wanton responses. Right now she had to think about how best to help Bill manage this situation.

  At the back of her mind she knew that she was responsible for what had occurred. If it hadn’t been fo
r Bill defending her honour, she believed there would have been no argument the previous evening. If there had been no argument, there would have been no fight. And, if there had been no fight, there wouldn’t be a posse of nattering reporters standing outside the cottage, preparing to take the details of his private life and plaster them across further newspaper headlines.

  She poured herself an Americano and started scouring the kitchen for breakfast essentials. She knew it would have been polite to prepare coffees for Aliceon and Bill, but Trudy reasoned, she was meant to be his girlfriend, sous and spankmaid. She didn’t think making breakfast coffees for Bill and his annoying ex-wife was one of her responsibilities in any of those roles.

  Her mobile buzzed.

  Like Bill, she had left it on silent before retiring to bed. The cottage was low on plug sockets so she had left it to charge in the kitchen. She checked the screen and saw that she had received two messages and numerous Facebook updates.

  She ignored the Facebook stuff.

  Usually it was only game requests or shared pictures of kittens.

  The two text messages were more appealing.

  She saw that one was from Donny and the other was from Charlotte. Hurriedly, she opened the message from Donny first. She hoped that her former friend was apologising and trying to heal the rift that had come between them. After all the trouble and upset of the past few days, it would be wonderful to have things look like they were starting to return to normal.

  The message did not read like an apology.

  Saw a funny item on the news last night. Isn’t it sad when old folk lose their faculties and start hitting out at younger people? LMFAO

  ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

  She checked the message from Charlotte. Her frown deepened.