Confession time was over, precious as it had been. Scary as it had been. With an effort, Jess filed the moment away, turning a key on it as she sensed he wanted her to. She too focused on the drawing.
Did he really mean what he’d just said? Did he really think art was a viable future for her? Most people who knew about her drawing admired her work, and a couple of people had even bought sketches, but at an art group she’d once joined, then left again shortly after, there’d been some cuttingly patronising observations.
‘I think I’m too naively representational to be a real artist. Too figurative. I just draw what I see, or see in my imagination, and sometimes I just copy from photographs.’
Ellis gave her a level glance. Thank God, he seemed to be shaking off the pain she’d almost forced on him. ‘I like representational. I like things to look like what they are. And all these pseuds who pay thousands for square blobs of grey paint and the like … well, they want their heads testing!’ He gave her a more playful smile. ‘And that includes my mother. She has a Rothko, a Pollock and at least one de Kooning, and she thinks they’re the bee’s knees. But me, I’d far rather have this on my wall than splodges and splatters worth millions.’ He pointed to her sketch.
‘You’re proving to be very good for my creativity, Ellis. I got extra special praise at life class this week, because of you.’ She blushed, remembering how every study of the male model had turned out as Ellis himself.
‘How so?’ He gave her a wicked smirk, as if he already knew what she’d been up to.
‘Well, even though we had a perfectly good male model, every drawing I did seemed to end up looking a bit like you.’
‘Really?’ The grin broadened. ‘So you’ve compromised my reputation, have you? Naughty girl.’
‘It’s all right. Nobody will recognise you with your clothes on.’
‘Even so, it’s still taking a bit of a liberty, isn’t it?’ He winked at her. ‘I think you owe me for using me as a muse without my permission.’
He was working around to something. Something risqué and sexual. She was glad of it. And not just because she was rapidly becoming addicted to the risqué and the sexual with him, but because it would distract his attention away from the sad thoughts that had descended upon him a few moments ago; the ever-present grief over the death of his family. At least in this, the physical, she could help him.
Bring it on, Mr Sex. I’m ready, willing and able to oblige you.
‘What were you thinking of in terms of a recompense? You know I’m not exactly an accomplished sensualist yet. You’re going to have to give me a nudge in the right direction.’
‘Bullshit, Miss Lockhart, you’re a sensualist to your very fingertips. It’s all there. I think the fact that you’re an artist proves it. All you needed was the slightest bit of encouragement.’ He beamed at her, his eyes dancing. He’d obviously already decided what he wanted, and mentally sifting through the activity cards of what they’d done and what was yet to be attempted, Jess had a pretty good idea what it might be. Reaching for her water bottle, she took a sip to freshen her mouth, then ran her tongue around her lips in a way she hoped was sufficiently provocative.
‘God, you’re a hot piece! I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman as quick on the uptake.’
Jess suspected that his wife might have been such a woman – Ellis and Julie must have been totally attuned to each other – but it was best not to mention that right now.
‘Do you want what I think you want?’ She pushed her chair away from the table. Making ready …
‘Of course I do.’ Ellis did the same too, swinging out to sit at right angles to the table, and setting his feet wide apart on the tiled kitchen floor. He was barefoot, and she got the urge again to kiss the source of his childhood pain, but she suspected that he’d prefer her not to dally. With a slow nod, he indicated that she get down on the floor, between his thighs. In the lap of his robe there was significant tenting.
Jess slipped into place, opening her own robe as she went. Ellis’s eyes flared with heat, his glance darting from her breasts to her pubis as if the sight were entirely new and delectable to him. Her body warmed, blushed. Part excitement, part pride in herself and her own desirability that Ellis had revealed to her.
Tugging on his sash, she parted the wings of his robe and his erection sprang up at her, rosy and fierce.
‘How long has it been like that?’ she asked, eyeing the magnificent totem.
‘Pretty much since I picked up a certain pretty but slightly waterlogged woman and gave her a lift to her workplace.’
‘Don’t talk daft.’
‘It’s not daft,’ said Ellis, gently mocking her northern phraseology. ‘You excite me, Jess. You set the blood flowing to the critical zones every time I see you, every time I think about you.’ He took himself in hand, lightly drawing his fingertips up and down his length. ‘Would you believe that when I’ve been in London, there have been nights that I’ve had to masturbate like a teenager to get to sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about fucking you?’
Jess’s blush deepened. God, he was a thrill! ‘Was that before or after you’d actually had me?’
‘Both.’ He leant back in his chair, pushing his robe well out of the way. ‘Kiss me, Jess. Lick me. Caress me with your sweet lips and your nimble wicked tongue.’
‘It might not be all that nimble,’ she pointed out, almost cross-eyed in her intimate proximity to Ellis’s erect cock. This was the closest look at it she’d got so far, seeing detail she’d never observed in the at-rest specimens at life class. For a moment, the artist in her battled with her lust. What a challenge it would be to draw this thing before she fellated it!
‘Your tongue is very clever when we kiss … just do the same.’ Ellis adjusted his position in the chair, making himself even more inviting. Jess hid a grin. He’d slightly misconstrued her hesitation there. ‘Kiss whichever bit of it you fancy, as a start.’
She licked her lips, and leant forward.
The head of Ellis’s cock was very shiny, the taut rosy skin coated in a veil of slippy-silky pre-come that was flowing from the tiny love-eye. With closed lips at first, she pressed her mouth against the tempting plum-shape. One kiss. Then another, moving around the head, exploring. The pre-cursive fluid was slick against her lips, and when she parted them, and sampled it, the taste was bland. A little musky, a little salty, but not in a strong way.
‘Yes, that’s nice. Do more of that. You’re a natural, my darling. You’re amazing.’
Not sure that such praise was merited – quite yet – Jess found that what was natural was the desire and urge to lick. Her tongue seemed to know what it was doing, at first cautiously, and then more boldly sweeping over his contours. She swept around the groove that demarked his glans, first from one side then the other, then returned to the very particular little indentation, a kind of notch, on the underside. When she furled her tongue to a point and jabbed there, Ellis moaned like a soul in torment and clasped his hands around her head.
‘Oh yes … oh hell yes … that’s the sweet spot, Jess. Oh, that’s so good, you clever little goddess. Do more of that.’
Your wish is my command, she would have said, as he’d done, but her lips and tongue were otherwise fully occupied.
She swirled and slithered and flickered at him, but always came back to that sensitive notch, and the finely raised filament that pointed down the underside of his cock from it. He shouted out her name again when she dashed her tongue rapidly back and forth right there.
While he was still shaking his head from side to side and praising her to high heaven, Jess decided to try something a little different. Grasping Ellis’s length in her hand, she lightly ran her fingertips up and down the upper side, while caressing the ridge below with the flat of her thumb.
If she hadn’t been using her mouth on Ellis, Jess would have smiled again. Grinned. Laughed out loud. Shouted out herself, in triumph. The sense of power was intoxicating. T
he control she had over him. She might be the one on her knees, in the supposedly subservient pose, but she’d never felt more in command of a situation before in her life. Ellis was a slave to sensation, a slave to the pleasure she was giving him. A pleasure she could increase or deny as the whim took her. A pleasure that seemed to flow through her and transmute into gold within her own body.
Using her mouth on Ellis was making her own sex rouse and grow hot. Desire ground low in her loins, and she knew that even if her lover-man was going to be pretty much incapable for a short while when she’d finished with him, she would take her own pleasure, her own release, at her own hand.
‘Oh Jess, Jess … suck me. Suck me now.’ His voice was a ragged edge, yet warm. He wanted her to do him, but there was still a respect for her there, despite his near delirium. He honoured her, and was grateful for her gift to him.
Very well then … seeing as it’s you.
Smiling inwardly, she parted her lips, let him in, and began to suck.
Oh, holy hell, she was amazing!
Ellis dug his fingers into Jess’s thick dark hair, trying not to be rough, but not quite in control of himself. The way her tongue danced, the deep, sweet suction she was orchestrating. The way she handled him as she used her mouth; the sight of her perfect, lithe body crouched at his feet. That was, when he was able to see straight in the midst of the sublime pleasure she was creating.
How can you do this? Your first time sucking a man … You’re a prodigy, a divine genius, beautiful Jess Lockhart.
If it had been any other woman since Julie, he would have now have been questioning her claims of inexperience. Such mouth skills as these were exceptional even in women who’d been pleasuring men for years.
He believed Jess utterly though. She was all truth and honesty, and she’d been a physical virgin, there’d been patent proof of that. In another woman, he might have suspected one that ‘did everything but fuck’, but not Jess.
She’d been a consummate fantasist, that was for certain, her erotic daydreams no doubt rich and vivid, fuelled by art and sensual reading and perhaps other sources of erotica.
But in every way that mattered, she’d come to him in innocence. He knew that. He’d been her first fuck … and now he was the first man to whom she’d ever given head.
Oh, you lucky, lucky bugger, McKenna. You’re arrogant, capricious and contrary, and you still get rewarded with this!
This … an increase in delectable, devilish suction. This … virtuoso fondling with the tips of her fingers and thumbs, travelling up and down his shaft, and also experimentally and with sublime delicacy, straying over his tensing balls and the excruciatingly sensitive plain of his perineum.
Her fingertips danced like fairy feet over his genitals, while her lips and tongue were those of an angel divine. White, boiling sensation surged down his spine like a wave, and his hips started to buck.
No! He couldn’t just do that!
How the fuck could he stop himself?
‘Jess … Jess … let me slip out. You don’t have to let me come in your mouth.’ His voice sounded like an alien’s, not his, torn to shreds by the fight not to ejaculate.
His closed eyes snapped open. She wasn’t letting go. When he looked down at her, there was a supreme smile of triumph in her eyes.
Beautiful, despite having her lips stretched around him, her face blazed with power, and as her tongue jabbed hard at his tender spot, he growled out her name and shot his seed into the warm haven of her mouth.
18
Afterwards, he swept her up to bed and made love to her slowly and thoroughly, mapping her body for all the places where she best liked to be touched. And the ways she liked to be touched and kissed there.
Fierce kisses on the side of the neck while he was fucking her sent her into orbit!
‘I must be into vampires.’ Jess touched her fingertips to a spot close to where her neck met her shoulder. It was tender. ‘Have you marked me?’
Ellis sat up and leant in close. ‘A little bit. You might have to put a bit of makeup on that at work.’ He kissed it again, exquisitely gently this time, stroking the little reddened place with his tongue. ‘Or you could take a few days off on the sick. Nobody’s going to dare sack you or discipline you now, you know.’
‘I do know. I get some very funny looks around the place at Windsor now. Both from bosses and other employees. I’m sure they’re all dying with curiosity, desperate to know whether anything happened as a result of that performance of yours in the office.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ellis with a shamefaced grin, ‘I was terrible, wasn’t I?’
‘Not terrible,’ countered Jess, sitting up, and automatically tweaking the sheet over her breasts. It still seemed weird to be in a bed with a man. ‘But certainly noteworthy. Things like that don’t normally happen at Windsor. In fact I think they probably don’t happen in most insurance company buildings. Except in films …’
Ellis was looking at the sheet. Jess shrugged and let it drop. His smile widened, yet somehow, it wasn’t a desiring leer, more a satisfaction that she was relaxing her inhibitions when they weren’t making love, as well as when they were.
‘Believe me, it is the first time I’ve done something like that in a business or workplace environment. I like to drop in on acquisitions, and surprise the management teams. But I’ve never hijacked a woman before …’ His eyes lowered a moment, as if veiling a thought from far away, another life, perhaps. ‘Although I once swept Julie out of a very, very posh party so I could make love to her. Not long after we first went to bed.’ Ah, she’d been right … the ghost of Julie was always with him. The woman he’d loved so deeply. The wife he probably still loved as much as when she’d been alive.
‘I hope she told you off for being imperious.’ Jess was surprised at her own words. She hoped she’d not spoken out of turn, but somehow she was almost coming to know Julie, through Ellis, and to feel a kinship with her. She was relieved though, when he smiled broadly.
‘She did. In that respect she was much like you. She didn’t take any shit from me, I can tell you.’
Jess didn’t know what to say at that, but suddenly, with a flourish, Ellis threw the sheet aside. ‘We left your drawing book down in the kitchen. I’d like to see some of the other work in it. I think I’ll go and fetch it. Can I get you anything while I’m down there? Something to eat? Or drink? A glass of wine?’
She’d not wanted alcohol earlier, but now, a glass of something not too strong would go down nicely. ‘Mm … yes. I wouldn’t mind some wine.’
‘White? Red? Rosé? Champagne?’
‘What? You’ve got rosé? I didn’t think wealthy sophisticates approved of pink plonk for the masses.’
Ellis laughed, reaching for his robe and shrugging into it. What a shame to cover such a body up, but hey. ‘I might have plenty of money, but I’m no sophisticate, Jess my sweet. I’m a total philistine, really. Much to my mother’s chagrin.’ He strode to the door. ‘Rosé it is … and some nibbles. Making love to you makes me really hungry.’ He winked at her. ‘Back in a trice, baby!’
Jess took the opportunity of Ellis’s kitchen raid to dash to the bathroom and freshen up. Like the kitchen, the master bathroom was modern and beautifully appointed. The major rooms that had been restored so far were more in keeping with the house’s Queen Anne history, but clearly some rooms were entirely new in the renovation. In front of the big mirror, she studied her reflection, looking for more differences, more signs of her new eroticised state.
You just look the same … only a bit more so.
She was still herself, but somehow ever so slightly larger than life, as if some of Ellis’s special charisma had flowed into her via osmosis when they’d been joined. Or maybe it was her own specialness? And sex had made it flower?
On the shelf in front of her, she studied Ellis’s toiletries. Cologne, shaving lotion, something called ‘skin and stubble balm’; all with a white label as if they’d been special
ly blended and formulated for him. Only the best for Mr McKenna.
At the end of the shelf, in a space he’d obviously cleared for her, bless him, she’d placed her own bits and pieces. Because to her great surprise, he’d invited her to share his bedroom. To sleep with him. All night.
‘Um … are you sure?’ she’d asked. ‘I was assuming you didn’t actually sleep with your conquests. I thought that was something you … well … would only have done with your wife?’
He blinked, looking at her, clearly surprised. ‘To be honest, I’ve never actually brought a woman here before. I’ve invited lovers to my London pad, and to various hotels, but never here.’ He gave her a wide grin. ‘You’re the first.’
But not the last … probably.
That thought, now, cast her down a bit. But she gave herself a stern inner shaking. The rules of this arrangement must never be forgotten. She could allow herself to be fond of him – hell, she couldn’t stop herself, she was already infatuated at least – but possessive thoughts, and ‘forever’ thoughts were forbidden.
He isn’t Mr Right. He’s Mr Handsome, Mr Rich, Mr Generous and Mr Sex, but that’s it. And that’s good. That’s the deal.
Shaking her head, she fluffed up her hair, attempting to dispel her disquieting detour and focus on the now.
Yet she couldn’t. Not entirely. It was too late. She wouldn’t allow herself to say the words. Or even think them.
But picturing Ellis in her mind – his eyes and his smile, and every wonderful thing about him – the twist in her heart said everything the forbidden word couldn’t.
He was waiting for her when she emerged, flipping through her Moleskine. A bottle of wine stood in a cooler on the bedside table at his side, and he’d already poured two glasses.
‘Are all these hands and eyes and ears and mouths mine then?’ he enquired, passing her wine to her.
‘Yes, I must admit they are. You’re pretty much my muse at the moment. Hence your unexpected appearance at my life class.’ She took a sip of the rosé. Ooh, it was nice. A girly wine, but Ellis seemed to be enjoying it too. She didn’t have many other men of her acquaintance, but the few she did have would have pulled a face at pink wine.
How to Seduce a Billionaire Page 17
