The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  The tea was reviving and welcome, and despite a rather pungent initial aroma, the lotion Jack had left was noticeably soothing as I rubbed it over the injured skin. I borrowed a comb to smooth the tangles out of my hair, and as I cleared a circle in the steamy mirror, I saw that only my waterproof mascara remained from the make-up I had so carefully applied before leaving home. I gave a small shrug and bent to retrieve my clothing. If the prospect of my undressed body hadn’t been sufficient to entice him, then what hope had there been for a little eyeshadow and lip gloss?

  He was waiting patiently for me at the bottom of the stairs, and as I descended the treads I saw he was carefully studying my gait for a limp. Thankfully I was much more mobile after my shower.

  ‘You seem to be moving easier.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m fine. It really is just a bruise, albeit a horrendously big one.’

  He looked worried at my words. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have gone behind you on those steps.’

  ‘Then I’d have taken us both down,’ I reasoned. I sniffed the air, smelling something burned and charred.

  ‘We killed the toad,’ Jack declared solemnly.

  I laughed at his words, and noticed for the first time how dark the hall had become. At some point while I’d been in the bathroom, the grey clouds which had been gathering all afternoon had turned into a thick grey blanket covering the sky. It was raining hard.

  ‘It’s not your fault I fell. It’s mine. I should have listened to your warning.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re very good at following orders,’ he said ruefully. ‘Now I’m going to be haunted for months by nightmares of what dreadful injury you were concealing from me.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake—’ I exclaimed, suddenly turning my back on him. ‘You’re not going to rest until you see it, are you? Go on then, look, if that’s what it takes to satisfy you that I’m not mortally wounded.’ I pulled my shirt free of my jeans and undid the top fastening on my waistband. ‘But I have to warn you… it’s not pretty.’

  The hall was silent except for the falling rain battering against the windows and the soft purr of my zip. I didn’t need to do more than lower the waistband of the jeans a few centimetres for the bruise to be visible.

  I heard his sharp indrawn hiss of breath as the dark discoloured skin came into view. I was showing far less than I did when wearing a bikini on the beach, but there was something very intimate in holding up the back of my shirt and pulling down the jeans to allow him to study my exposed body.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated, his voice much huskier than before. I felt a small tug on the waistband as his hand took hold of the fabric and inched it lower, until the denim no longer covered me. I felt his fingers move slowly from the garment and brush against the undamaged skin of my lower back, and then dip lower and run against the top seam of my lacy briefs.

  I sucked in a mouthful of air as though I was drowning, and heard the roughened raggedness of his own breathing. He paused, and I knew he was waiting for me to stop him. I did nothing. His fingertips ran just beneath the light elastic at the top of my underwear, following a path around my hip bone, lingering to stroke the sharp contour and then moving around on to the softer skin of my lower abdomen. I looked down at the strong fingers slowly circling and caressing my flesh. I leaned my entire weight back against him and heard him groan softly. Very slowly he turned me around. His eyes were heavy as his mouth lowered to my lips and his tongue searched for, and found, mine in a rush of desire that swept me along like a tidal wave. The kiss was so overwhelming and intense that I was numb to the pain of the pressure of the banister rail behind me, and then the wall as we stumbled back against it. His body pressed powerfully against me as his kiss took me with him through a blazing inferno which scorched and branded me as his.

  I was flying, falling, lost, my only anchor to this world were the lips devouring mine and the strong shoulders on to which my hands were fastened, gripping and holding him against me. His lips released me and moved to the column of my throat, searing the skin I willingly offered with a blazing trail of kisses. I murmured his name, my hands journeying from his shoulders into his thick dark hair, finally knowing the feel of it between my fingers. He raised a hand and pushed the shirt from my neck, allowing him access to the sensitive skin of my shoulder. The thin strap of my bra was eased aside as he gently bit the delicate flesh and my knees literally felt incapable of holding me up a moment longer. I didn’t think that they’d have to. But I was wrong.

  The fall in temperature happened so quickly, I didn’t even see it coming, and at first I didn’t register the climate change. The fire storm became an ice blizzard, as Jack slowly froze and then determinedly levered himself away from me, bracing his arms against the wall on either side of me. The dying embers of passion were still blazing in his eyes, but when I leaned forward, lips parted, inviting him to claim them again, he moved further away. The swirling clouds of desire began to clear and I looked up at him in confusion.

  ‘Jack?’ I asked hesitantly.

  In reply he just shook his head. ‘I can’t do this.’

  No bucket of ice-cold water could have been as effective as those words were at putting out the fire. But I still didn’t know why he’d said them. My eyes spoke the question my throat was suddenly too constricted to ask.

  ‘Don’t…’ Jack said hoarsely. ‘We can’t…’ For a writer he was being far from articulate. ‘This is all wrong.’ I got the meaning of that one all right.

  ‘Why? Why is it wrong?’ I had found my voice, even if it was a shaky parody of itself.

  He ran his hand distractedly through his hair, following the same pathway my own fingers had taken only moments earlier. ‘You know why.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t.’

  He sighed and pushed away from the wall, staring out the window at the falling rain; that’s when I knew I had lost him, when he wouldn’t even look at me as he spoke.

  ‘I can’t do this with you.’

  ‘Can’t, or don’t want to?’

  In answer he swivelled back to face me, grabbing my hand and laying it against his chest, letting me feel the thundering pounding of his heart beneath my palm. ‘Does that feel as though I don’t want to?’

  I shook my head again, aware that my eyes were beginning to fill with tears, and not ashamed to let him see them.

  ‘Then why? Is it Sheridan? Is she the reason?’

  He looked genuinely shocked and also slightly horrified at my suggestion.

  ‘What? No, of course not. Why would you even think that?’

  This wasn’t the time or the place for that one. ‘Jack, why then? Why are you pushing me away? Surely you know by now that I want this?’ I threw my last piece of pride down at his feet.

  ‘That’s why I have to stop it.’

  I was broken and confused and he was making no sense.

  ‘I want you, Emma,’ he admitted, his voice raw, ‘more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else in my entire life.’ His declaration should have filled me with joy, if only it hadn’t been delivered in such a dire and terrible way. ‘But what I said the other night on the bridge hasn’t changed… and nor have I.’

  ‘Don’t I have any say in this? What about what I want?’

  ‘I know what you want,’ he replied, and despite everything I still felt my cheeks ignite at the implications. He looked back at the rain.

  ‘You want someone who will be there for you. Someone who can commit. Someone who isn’t about to disappear to the other side of the world. Someone who isn’t me.’ His voice deepened as he went on, ‘You have to know that stopping this now is the last thing I want to do. I can’t even look at you without wanting to sweep you into my arms and carry you up those stairs to my bed. But I can’t be that much of a bastard. I’m stopping for you, not me.’

  ‘You don’t know what the hell I want…’ I said bitterly, hands shaking as I zipped up my clothing, ‘… or what I need.’

  ‘Whatever it is, it
’s not me.’

  There was nothing left to say. I had laid my feelings out as plainly as I knew. And he’d turned me down. ‘I have to go,’ I said, hoping, even at this final moment, he might protest or try to stop me.

  He turned away from the window and nodded. This couldn’t be it, could it? After everything that had happened between us, was this how it was really going to end?

  I pushed past him and flung open the door. The rain was pounding the ground with a ferocity that stung my skin as I ran down the drive to my car. Stop me, call me back, I silently pleaded as I ran past his own car. Do something, do anything, don’t let me go. But he never intervened, never moved at all from his position in the open doorway. I flung open my car door, grateful I’d left my bag and keys inside it earlier. I paused for just one last long look at him. Our eyes locked. He didn’t disguise the pain and regret in his, but he also didn’t move.

  I got into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and reversed out on to the road faster and more recklessly than I should have done. My falling tears and the pouring rain, which the wipers were struggling to control, were a double hazard. I was lucky not to meet any other vehicles as I drove erratically away from him. I wasn’t concentrating enough to be behind the wheel, and two miles outside Trentwell I snapped on the indicator and pulled over to the side of the road. I stared sightlessly through the curtain of rain falling on the windscreen, seeing nothing except his face, his eyes. I couldn’t leave it this way. I’d never even told him how I really felt about him. Would that have changed things? Would it have made a difference? Was I really going to be able to live the rest of my life without knowing the answer?

  I furiously wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand and turned the ignition key. The engine roared into life. Performing an illegal U-turn in the empty road, I headed back to his house. I didn’t have a plan in mind, there were no clever or wise words that might make him change his mind. I was working on nothing here except a primitive instinct that was pulling me back towards him, as surely as though an invisible cord was stretched between us, compelling me to return.

  The light was fading fast as night and the rain washed the last rays of daylight away. I drove mindlessly through the downpour, never stopping to consider how I would feel if, or when, he turned me away once again. By the time his driveway came into sight my heart was pounding as though I had run the last few miles, instead of driven them. This was it. My final chance.

  It was a miracle that we didn’t crash into each other. It was his reactions that must have prevented an accident, not mine. All I knew was that as I turned on to his property I was suddenly dazzled by the bright intensity of two headlights bearing down on me as he sped down his drive. I slammed on the brakes as he swerved abruptly to one side, coming to a halt half on the lawn beside the driveway. The pouring rain kept obscuring my vision, which meant I saw Jack throw open his door and begin to walk towards me in a series of disjointed snapshots, as the wipers swept across my screen. His eyes were locked on to mine as he strode through the sheeting rain, his shirt plastered to his arms and body like a second skin. My hand fumbled for the door handle and I virtually tumbled out of the car as I made my way to him, pulled by a force more powerful than gravity. Tears were probably still running down my face, but they were lost among the raindrops. I covered the last metres between us at a run and he caught me, his arms capturing me and lifting me up against him. My legs left the ground and curled around him as he walked blindly back to the house. His lips never left mine as he carried me, eliminating the need for words and speaking their own language, which my own fluently answered. Nothing else existed for me in those moments; I couldn’t feel the rain or the cold, my world had become just this man, his arms holding me against him, his tongue matching mine and the hardness of his body pressing intimately against me.

  He stopped just once as we reached the front door, which in his haste he hadn’t bothered to close properly. I liked the urgency that implied. He took his mouth from mine just long enough to look into my eyes as he gave me one last, totally unnecessary, chance to change my mind. ‘Are you sure? Because once we go in, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. There won’t be any going back, Emma.’

  He got his answer as my mouth returned to his, my hands tightening on the back of his neck as he kicked open the door. My fingers were already undoing the buttons on his shirt as we climbed the stairs, pulling the wet fabric from his muscled shoulders as he carried me into his room. He lowered me gently on to the mattress as I reached hungrily for his belt. He was naked before I was. He took more time tugging my own wet clothing from me, savouring each moment before I impatiently pulled him towards me.

  It was unlike anything I had ever known or experienced before. I cried out when he entered me, unaware that tears were falling as he took me somewhere I hadn’t even known existed. He called out my name as his body shuddered in orgasm, filling me and completing me. I came right behind him.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘That might just possibly be the worst bruise I have ever seen.’

  I slowly opened my eyes. I was lying face down in a tangle of twisted sheets, each knotted snarl reminding me of our bodies, rolling and entwining on their surface throughout the night. I had a sudden flashback of his hands gripping fiercely on the cotton bedcovers beside my face, as he had gradually lowered his body inside me, at a pace so tantalisingly slow it had pushed me over the precipice of lust and desire into a world of undiscovered sensations.

  ‘That’s not the most romantic morning greeting I’ve ever heard,’ I mumbled sleepily into the pillow.

  Jack was lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, staring down at my prone body, which was exposed to the elements and his scrutiny. He bent down, lifted my hair to one side, and kissed the sensitive skin on the back of my neck.

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Good morning.’ His voice was a seductive purr as he moved his lips to whisper against my ear, ‘Last night… you and me… it felt… there are no words…’

  It was quite a feat to rob an author of the ability to string together a coherent sentence. I smiled into the feather pillow. ‘That’s better,’ I mumbled approvingly.

  ‘But that is still one God-awful bruise.’ The pillow swallowed my small laugh.

  Jack set his lips to a much more interesting activity than speech, as he dropped a trail of feather-light kisses down the curve of my spine, stopping only at the very edge of the tender, damaged skin. Very gently he kissed the injury, his tongue grazing me and provoking a very natural chain reaction to begin deep within me. ‘Better?’ he asked, his lips still against my flesh. I groaned softly in reply, and the sound encouraged him. Very gently he turned me over.

  I saw the desire reignite in his eyes as they travelled the length of my body, stopping on the swell of my breasts and then moving down past the narrowness of my waist to my long legs, which were already beginning to part in readiness.

  ‘So, anywhere else that’s hurt?’ he asked, his voice a low sexy throb.

  ‘There may be some other areas that need your attention,’ I murmured huskily.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promised, his head lowering. The room fell silent except for the raw ragged sounds of our breathing. It was a very long time before either of us was capable of speech.

  I must have dozed, because the morning light coming through the window had shifted its path across the bed when I next opened my eyes. My head was on Jack’s chest, and his fingers were slowly threading through the strands of my hair, winding and twisting them to hold me captive against him, as if there was ever the slightest danger of me wanting to be anywhere else. I curled closer to the curve of his body, feeling the strong and steady beat of his heart beneath my head, and the warmth of his limbs tangled with mine. I should have known that a moment of such complete and utter contentment was too perfect to last.

  Jack bent his head and kissed my forehead. ‘At the risk of being accused of being unromantic again, can I just sa
y that I’m absolutely starving.’

  It occurred to me then that we hadn’t done anything as prosaic as eating for a very long time. As though the thought of food had woken it from its slumber, my stomach made a very noisy sound of agreement.

  ‘And I need to keep my strength up, if I am going to spend the rest of the day making wild and passionate love to you.’

  ‘Is that what’s on the agenda?’

  ‘It’s certainly on mine,’ Jack confirmed with a sexy smile.

  He wasn’t going to get an argument from me. I levered myself reluctantly from his body, but before allowing me to move away, Jack ran his hand lingeringly down my arm from shoulder to wrist. ‘And we need to talk, Emma, and when you’re lying here naked in my arms, I can’t concentrate on anything except how much I want to make love to you again.’

  I turned and swung my legs off the bed, a very content and satisfied smile on my face. I looked around the room for my clothes – any of them – and then smiled secretively as I recalled Jack pulling them off me and carelessly discarding them. The missing items could be anywhere: stuck on top of a wardrobe; in a far corner of the room; or even hanging off the ceiling light. It wasn’t as though either of us had been paying much attention at the time.

  ‘Here,’ said Jack, passing me a shirt that was lying over the back of the chair. I shrugged happily into the pale blue garment which still smelled vaguely of him. The shirt was enormous on me, and I had to roll up the sleeves at least three times before my hands emerged from the cuffs, but at least it was long enough to just about cover my modesty, given my missing underwear. Jack pulled on just a pair of jeans, and as I padded barefoot down the stairs behind him it was a real struggle not to reach out and run my hand over the tessellating muscles of his back as he moved. He was like an exquisite piece of art, or a beautiful sculpture, which I’d suddenly been given permission to touch.

  The Aga’s heat ensured that the kitchen was warm and even wearing nothing except the thin shirt, I still didn’t feel cold. As we waited for the kettle to boil, Jack pulled me once again into his arms, and bent down to kiss me. The roughness of his cheek was another new sensation to explore, as my fingers travelled over the dark bristle.