by Kait Jagger
Bathroom-related fears or not, Luna tried hard not to be the nervous type, so she steeled herself and continued walking, telling herself that the only people who could possibly be on the grounds at this hour were people who belonged here.
Sure enough, as she approached the dim light of a lamppost at the same time as the figure, she could see it was Paul Walker, carrying a sack on one shoulder, his shotgun folded over his other arm.
‘Missy,’ he leered at her without stopping. ‘Ye shouldnae be out this late, pretty young theng like you.’
‘Thanks for the advice, Paul,’ she muttered after him, gritting her teeth and pulling her coat closer as a gust of wind struck her. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t walk a little faster after that, that she wasn’t fairly running by the time she spotted the lights of the Dower House. It was about all she could do not to burst right in the door, but instead she stopped short, composed herself and knocked four times. When there wasn’t an answer she knocked again, then tried the doorknob, which turned, so she pushed the door open to find Stefan’s luggage in the front hallway. Just as she stepped inside, Stefan himself emerged from the front room and Luna jumped, hopping backward a little.
He had his mobile pressed to his ear and he was talking. ‘No, those weren’t the figures I wanted. Take a look at the chart I just sent you.’ Noting Luna’s startled expression, he reached up and quickly rubbed her arm, gesturing to the phone apologetically. Luna shook her head, no need to apologise, and indicated for him to go back into the front room, where she could see his laptop resting on the settee. Stefan headed back into the room, sitting down in front of the laptop. On the screen was a slide presentation – she could see the Lionsbridge crest and realised it must be the slides for the meeting next week.
‘So, on slide four, I don’t think it’s telling the story,’ Stefan said. ‘In fact, I think most of this stuff can go.’
Luna took off her coat and put it over the arm of the settee. She could sense Stefan’s awareness of her standing behind him; nothing he did or said, exactly, but she could tell he wasn’t comfortable with her listening to this, so she headed through to the kitchen, wondering how much he paid his staff that they were still hard at work for him at eleven o’clock at night.
She went to the fridge and got out a small bottle of sparkling water; Swedish, she noticed. Did he fly this stuff in specially? She twisted it open and tasted it. Well, it was good, she thought, draining the bottle and popping it in the recycling bin.
She could hear Stefan still on the phone with his office, so she decided to explore. She walked through a darkened doorway at the back of the kitchen, finding a small staircase, possibly for servants? She followed it up, emerging onto the main hallway above. Ignoring Stefan’s bedroom, she pushed open the door of the room opposite, which turned out to be a library. She switched on the chandelier, revealing a bank of beautifully restored leaded glass windows which, she could already tell from the chill in the air, weren’t exactly up to EU energy efficiency specifications.
The floor to ceiling bookcases along the opposite wall, all fronted by their original glass, were made of ornately engraved wood. And over the stone fireplace at the far end of the room hung a portrait of the 6th Marquess, as painted by Larkin. A gift to his wife, Roland had told Luna when she asked him about the house earlier that week.
‘I’m afraid that’s all she had of him for fifteen years, till she died of consumption,’ he said. ‘His mistress got the real thing. And,’ he added sotto voce, ‘I believe that he managed to ensure that one of his mistress’s children inherited Arborage. I have no proof, of course, but I’ve been looking into it, put it that way.’
Luna had had to work hard not to laugh. This speculation on events that took place 400 years ago had all the immediacy of a tabloid scandal for Roland. You had to love the man.
She removed her shoes before entering the room, having been at Arborage long enough to know that there was no greater enemy to antique wood floors than a pair of ladies’ heels. Standing before the portrait of the Marquess, she thought he looked like a cruel man, with his pointed goatee, thin lips and oversized ruff. The very first marquess to insist on being addressed as ‘lord and master’ by his servants, if Roland was to be believed. Luna shivered, cold suddenly in her stockinged feet and tunic.
She wondered how it would work between them, Stefan with his work commitments that involved Arborage but couldn’t quite be shared with her. Or maybe that was just the way he was about everything related to business.
And his…control issues. He’d been right that they’d given her pleasure, almost overwhelming pleasure. But they scared her a little too, especially when she juxtaposed their intensity with the detachment Stefan seemed to prefer when it came to other parts of his life. Not that she could criticise, she of all people. When she was little, her mother had a small apothecary chest where she kept her jewellery and ‘bits and bobs’, as she called them. One drawer for earrings, one for bracelets, one for gifts from Luna’s father, and so on. Luna used to spend hours playing with the chest, removing and returning the contents to their allotted containers. And when first her mother and then her father were gone, and she’d glimpsed what it meant to be truly alone, she eventually learned to place the emotions she couldn’t deal with into her own drawers, in an enormous apothecary chest she was careful to keep well ordered.
So no, she was in no position to judge Stefan if he preferred to keep her at arm’s length from parts of his life.
The gale outside was making the window panes rattle and she could hear a tree outside groaning in the wind. She made a mental note to mention to Nigel the branch she could hear clawing against one of the windows, so he could add it to his never-ending list for pruning.
She fancied that the Marquess’s eyes were looking straight at her, warning her she’d get no happiness out of this house. She heard Stefan call her name downstairs and didn’t reply, rooted to the spot, she and the Marquess. She heard steps on the stairs, saw Stefan appear in the doorway out of the corner of her eye, and eventually dragged her gaze away from the portrait to look at him.
He motioned towards the shoes in her hand and smiled. ‘This reminds me of something.’
When she didn’t return his smile, he walked over to her, placing her shoes on a reading table and taking her hands in his. ‘Otch, you’re freezing! What are you doing in here, Luna? Luna?’
She looked up at him and said, ‘We need to understand each other. I am not a marionette, to dance to your tune. Your “control issues”…’
Stefan laughed. ‘I think you misunderstood me.’ Belatedly sensing the cloud of brimstone that was coalescing over her head, he added, ‘Or I misspoke, or something was lost in translation.’ He chafed her arms, then her hands again, encircling them with his own. ‘We Swedes have…different views towards sex than you English. It gave me…’ he searched for the right word, ‘great satisfaction to please you. It is…it’s part of the pleasure for me, pleasing you. I can’t explain it in words big enough to tell you what it felt like. I know it won’t be like that every time.’ He gazed up at the ceiling humbly. ‘I’m only one man, after all, and even I have my limitations…’
Luna’s lips twitched and she felt herself soften, her body relaxing slightly against his.
‘I am only asking you to give yourself to me a little, in this way, even though I know it doesn’t come easily to you. I don’t want to control you, or dominate you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ And with that he put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.
‘And yet,’ she said into his chest after a moment, her voice slightly muffled, ‘I think really you did dominate me the other night.’ She looked up at him sceptically. ‘It felt a lot like I was being controlled to me.’
‘Did it?’ he asked innocently, then gave her his honey on toast smile. ‘Well, I must be even better than I thought.’ And with that he picked her up and hoisted her over his shoulder, walking toward the doorway.
‘See, this, this is what I’m talking about,’ she laughed.
He carried her all the way down the stairs like that, interspersing the journey with little comments like, ‘High praise indeed, coming from you, Luna,’ and, ‘Really, I’m going to have to be careful not to let this go to my head.’
He deposited her on the settee and she saw that’d he’d made a fire, and that his laptop was closed on the coffee table. He sat down next to her, looking lovely as ever in dress pants and light blue shirt, his tie loosened around his neck. Then he reclined his head against the arm of the sofa, holding out the back of his hand to her and swiftly flicking his fingers toward himself in the style of a sensei.
‘Come do your worst, Stellaluna.’
She launched herself at him, lowering her lips to his and immediately prising open his mouth with her tongue. When he answered it with his own, she ran her teeth along it, shifting her mouth to take him even further in. She raised her hands to his shoulders as his hands moved to her back. He slid himself down till he was lying flat on the settee with her resting on top of him, and their lips came apart with a slight sucking sound, a noise that Luna found strangely arousing. Her hips developed a mind of their own, rocking into Stefan’s as her mouth descended towards his again.
She brushed her lower lip against his, pulling back immediately when he moved to kiss her. Teasing him, she touched the very tip of her tongue against the corner of his mouth. His hands tightened on her waist and she withdrew again, smiling at him. Then she sat up on his lap, digging her knees into the sofa and sidling her hips from side to side on top of him. She reached for his tie, loosening it and pulling it slowly out of his collar, then folded it neatly and placed it beside his laptop on the table.
Stefan lifted an eyebrow. ‘There’s a trouser press upstairs if you’d like to—’ he began, only to be interrupted by Luna’s mouth, back on his, one hand moving to his forehead and the other to his chin, angling his face sideways with a swift jerk. Kissing him perpendicularly, marvelling that his lips felt good from every direction, this angle allowing her to curve her tongue along the inside of his cheek.
She slid her knee between his and whispered, ‘Open your legs,’ gratified when he immediately complied. Curling her hands underneath his neck, she propped her elbows on his shoulders and lifted her butt in the air, suspending herself briefly above him, tantalising him, before bringing her hips and pubis down into his. And repeated, undulating sinuously, moving up and down on top of him, dry humping him. Stefan closed his eyes, his hands planting themselves on her ass, and his hips lifted up off the settee to meet hers.
She heard the sound of his breathing, laboured, mingling with hers. She felt his length, trapped between them, encased in his trousers. Still she ground against him, her arousal magnifying, and she’d have kept at it if he hadn’t eventually hissed, ‘Stop,’ and forcibly stilled her hips.
Luna climbed off him, perching on the edge of the settee to remove her tights. And then she went and stood in front of the fireplace, turned her back to him and lifted her knitted tunic over her head. Her hands, she noticed, weren’t cold anymore. Still facing the fire, she looked down at her white cotton bra and knickers with the little flowers on them and realised, too late, that she was all out of moves. She turned her head slightly in his direction, the heat of the fire warming her cheek, then looked down at the Oriental rug under her feet.
By which point he was behind her, naked, his arm coming round to encircle her shoulders. The hair on his forearm, like that on his cheeks, was light blond, shimmering in the firelight. His other hand went to her ponytail, slid down the elastic, and dug into her scalp.
‘Skitsnygg. You are skitsnygg,’ he breathed.
Luna smiled into his wrist. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Fucking beautiful,’ he translated, turning her around. ‘You are fucking beautiful.’ He brought his mouth down to hers and she melted into him. He could control her all he liked if it felt like this, his chest rising and falling against her breasts, their naked thighs rubbing together. Making short work of her underwear, Stefan lowered her to the rug, lying face to face with her, smoothly lifting her knee and fluttering his fingers around her vulva, before delving further.
‘Ha— I, ha,’ Luna panted inarticulately. How did he always find her, his fingers so sure and certain? He briefly pressed his forefinger and middle finger up into the heart of her, then brought them back out, spreading them into a ‘V’, positioning them on either side of her clitoris. He drew them along her, closing his fingertips together slightly as they moved slickly back and forth. She squirmed atop the rug and bit her lip, then stilled, forcing herself to relax, allowing herself to enjoy the pressure of his fingers against her, to feel herself swell against them. It wasn’t her control issues that made her reach for his penis, but rather gratitude for the way he was making her feel, and an overwhelming desire to share that feeling with him. To touch him as he was touching her.
His penis was hard and hot and beautiful. Joining her thumb and forefinger, she circled his shaft, stroking it down to its base at the same time as he drew his two fingers closer to her clitoris, stroking the sensitive side of it. They moaned simultaneously, and Stefan rolled his eyes back into his head, trembling slightly. She cupped his balls and felt them tighten.
‘Condoms?’ she asked. Stefan rolled onto his back, stomach muscles heaving and cock standing almost straight up. He flung his hand towards his trousers and Luna crawled over to them, purposefully swaying her derriere in his direction. By the time she’d located and ripped the condom out of its packet, he was behind her, pulling her butt up against him. Placing her free hand on the floor, she tilted her head upside down in the puddle of her hair and grinned wickedly up at him, passing him the condom. Then she scooted back against him, spreading her knees, readying herself.
‘Not yet,’ he said, reaching both hands underneath her and parting her. She felt his fingers, all his fingers, playing along her sex, strumming her. Slowly at first, but as she began to twist beneath him his pace and the pressure of his fingers increased, spreading her, leaving no bit of her untouched. Lovely, so lovely…she was blooming, lifting and…she was gone, neck arched, thighs quaking, inarticulate noises escaping her.
He entered her immediately, holding her hips at such an angle that she had to go down onto her elbows, laying her cheek on the carpet. He gasped at the sight of this and all restraint was lost to him as he slammed his hips against her till he came, in one last driving push, head flung back, forehead furrowed in rapture.
She told him, sometime later, as they lay next to the dying embers of the fire, about her Ladyship’s visit from Florian and her two daughters earlier that day. Like Stefan, Luna was still feeling her way along in terms of how much ‘inside information’ she should share with him – and how much, as the Marchioness’s loyal PA, she should keep to herself. But she reasoned that Lady Wellstone would certainly tell him about this herself. And something in Luna wanted him to know what was at stake here; not just Arborage’s possible future, or his reputation, but the Marchioness’s authority.
To all this he’d said nothing, merely nodding speculatively, till it occurred to Luna that he might think she’d used this as a gambit to extract information from him on his presentation. She sat up on the Oriental rug, locating her knickers and sliding them on, then reaching for her bra.
‘It’s late, Luna.’ He watched her from his prone position on the floor, expression inscrutable. ‘Why don’t you just stay?’
‘No. I have things to do in the office tomorrow morning,’ she replied, deciding against telling him that Lady Wellstone was off to Venice again. Besides, although she was prepared to have mind-blowing sex with him, actually sleeping with him was a bridge too far right now.
*
The following night Luna came over to the Dower House late again, having seen Lady Wellstone off on the latest possible flight to Venice. Yet again she found Stefan hard at work on his laptop. He had the grace
to look slightly guilty when she lifted her tablet and said, ‘Don’t rush. I’ll just go upstairs and read.’
Climbing the main stairs and entering his bedroom, she kicked off her shoes, crouching briefly, then leapt up onto the mattress. She sat and scrolled through her usual news websites, none of which she’d had a chance to as much as look at over the past few days. Then she searched Kayla’s forthcoming Cats premiere, which she, Jem and Nancy were going to attend the following week. There were a few negative bits of gossip about a former soap actor who was also appearing in the musical, who many in the business appeared to think wasn’t up to the job. Luna yawned and looked at the time in the bottom corner of her tablet. 23:16. Stefan was clearly a night owl, and usually so was she, but frankly all this sex had worn her out. She switched off her tablet, resolving to close her eyes for just a few minutes. She wondered if Stefan had turned up the radiators in the room, which was blissfully warm. And very quiet…
When she woke later she was on her side, her fist pressed against her chin. She opened her eyes and saw Stefan lying next to her, watching her.
‘Hi,’ she said groggily.
‘Hey,’ he smiled, stroking her cheek.
‘What time is it?’
‘Around midnight.’
She stretched, yawning, and reached behind his neck. ‘How long were you watching me? Was I snoring?’
‘Not quite,’ he grinned. ‘Breathing deeply.’ He stroked her cheek again and she shut her eyes, rubbing her hand up and down the short hair at his nape. Stefan sighed and reached for her, but at that moment her phone vibrated on the bedside table. Pulling away from him, she turned and studied the display. It was the Marchioness.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello, Luna. I’m sorry, were you asleep?’
