She shivered, but to her astonishment a touch of wetness adorned her thigh, wetness she’d freshly made. He was discovering a part of her she’d never been aware of before, something more profound, touching every part of her.
He spoke low, his voice throbbing with passion. “What if I took you now? Draped you over the back of the sofa, your beautiful bottom sticking up for everybody to see, and then fucked you senseless? I’d drag you up so everybody could see your face and the way you react to me. Everyone would see that pretty little cunt, open and wet and ready for me. I’ll eat you out, let them see you come, and then fuck you again, turn you so you faced the window, make you spread your legs wide and cup your breasts so they can see how gorgeous you are. Then I’ll take you from behind, make you tweak and pinch your nipples while I take you. And everyone will be able to see it, take pictures, even video it. How many people will get turned on by that film, how many will get off at the sight of us?”
By this time shivers had turned to shudders and he watched her, eyes wide and dark with passion. “On the other hand,” he concluded, “they could be made of one-way glass, and we could fuck our brains out in front of them as long as we want and nobody could see us.” He rolled her on to her back and moved on top of her, kneeing her thighs apart. “Which do you think it is? What should we do?”
That tantalising touch of uncertainty made her moan his name and reach down to touch her clit, unable to stop. He slid inside her, his cock meeting almost no resistance. “Keep doing that, darling.”
That was when the door opened on a knock.
Joy’s scandalised shriek alerted Finn to the fact he wasn’t alone with Beth any more. He’d left the door unlocked deliberately, wondering if she’d slip into the habit he disliked so much, and which she’d taken to using as a form of rebellion. He didn’t care who saw them, but he had a feeling Beth did, so he grabbed the end of the blanket that he’d draped over the sofa and flipped it over them. Pausing to reassure her with a soft kiss, only then did he turn his attention to Joy. He leaned up on one elbow and stared at Joy. “Well?”
“I—I—” Joy put up her chin and clenched her jaw. The tiny muscles at the back of her jaw tensed. “I wanted to remind you that you had a meeting.”
“And you couldn’t ring through?”
“I forgot.”
Finn laughed. “What a crock of shit. You wanted to see Beth get her druthers, didn’t you? Thought I was going to fuck her and sack her?” He continued when he saw the expression of sheer hatred on her face. “She didn’t believe you for a minute. I did, unfortunately. Maybe you’d like to know that Beth is about to accept my proposal.” He laid a hand on Beth’s stomach when she jerked, aware that he was still inside her. “You stay there, darling. I’ll attend to you in a minute.” He smiled, but his face hardened when he turned back to address his PA, who was currently standing rigid with shock in the open doorway. “Joy, you’ll find some people waiting for you in the outer office. They’ll escort you out of the building. You’ll also find the police waiting outside. They have a warrant to search your flat and take away suspicious material. You may not have realised this, but you’ve been stealing intellectual property from me, and theft is a criminal offence.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if you’d given me a decent wage,” Joy spat, defiant to the end.
“Or if I’d taken up your frequent offers to sleep with you. Joy, there was nothing wrong with you but I didn’t want you, pure and simple. Instead of letting yourself get eaten up with jealousy and resentment, you should have gone elsewhere. Now you have no choice. Go.” He was tired of this. He had better things to do. It was enough that the spy had been caught. Now he wanted to get on with the rest of his life.
He hadn’t raised his voice through the whole business and he took no notice when Joy slammed the door so hard that it shook a couple of books off the shelves nearest the door. Finn was too busy, first soothing the woman he loved, then making love to her again.
Chapter Six
When the building had finally quietened down, Beth left with Finn. But to her mild surprise he didn’t take her to the underground car park. Instead, they went out the private way, taking the executive lift down to the ground floor then out a small door on the river side of the building. Across the road and down a flight of steps led them to a small inlet. And there Finn stopped. “I arrived this way. Let’s go home this way.”
The sun was setting over the Thames, sending a glowing ball of fire rippling over the surface of the grey water. The sky was slowly fading, the light going with the sun and she could see the faint outline of the moon where it was preparing to take over once the cloud-scudded sky had faded to a softer tone. She was exhausted from thinking, and just plain tired. But she had one more trial to endure before she could sleep.
Did he catch the water bus? She couldn’t see a stop nearby, but maybe there was one she’d missed. But no, he led the way around a small pier, and she followed.
A speedboat. He had a speedboat. He pressed a button on his key ring, and, just like a car, the small, white vessel glowed into life. “Come on. Or don’t you like boats?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know. Can you drive this thing?”
“I’m licensed. Well?”
Drawing a deep breath, she walked around the side, prepared to climb in. Then she stopped dead, because emblazoned on the side, was one word. Beth. Oh God. “Is this n-new?” she said, stammering in her nervousness.
He was watching her carefully. “No. It’s nearly three years old.”
Which meant that, unless he’d had a fast paint job done on it, this boat had been called Beth since he’d bought it. The signs of use, the splashes on the side, indicated no new coat of paint. She took his hand and let him help her into the boat and on to the broad seat at the rear. The stern, she supposed she should say. He jingled the keys. “Make yourself comfortable, sweetheart.”
As if she could. She clutched the arm rest as he powered up the engine. In other circumstances she would have revelled in the experience, but now, on this beautiful spring evening with the wind ruffling her hair and the breathtaking views of London and the Tower, she viewed it all with a dull eye. All she could think of was what she had to say to him, what she had to do before she left him for good. So desperately she wanted to lie, to try to fool him that she didn’t want him, that she didn’t need him, but he’d know. She’d let too much out, let him see the innermost Beth.
Now she had to pay.
If Finn noticed her unusually quiet demeanour, he said nothing. With the roar of the engine and the sound of the water against the side of the boat, it was difficult to say anything, and impossible to communicate much below a yell.
He piloted the vessel down to the Isle of Dogs, and around to a small private pier. She recognised it as his apartment block, and despite her concerns her interest was piqued.
After turning off the engine, he tied up, climbed out and, with one foot on dry land and the other on the ledge at the side of the boat, held out his hand to help her.
“You own this bit?” She waved her hand vaguely, indicating the pier.
He glanced around. “Yes. It seemed like a good investment.” But he didn’t add a smile or a joke. He’d noticed. He could hardly avoid it.
They entered his apartment in silence, and as soon as he’d closed the door he indicated the sofas in the main living area. He took the one opposite her, instead of next to her. “Okay, what’s up?”
She drank her fill of him—likely the last chance she would have to do so. It was borne in on her in that moment how much she loved him, how deeply she’d let him get to her, even more than last time.
“You were joking back in the office, weren’t you? Saying what you did to Joy to shock her? Nothing else?”
He shook his head and reached for her hands. She gave them to him. She’d give him everything, if she could. But some things were beyond her gift. “I meant every word. I don’t know what went wrong between us before. I w
on’t even ask. But one day you were there, and then you’d gone.”
“I won’t do that again.”
“Too fucking right you won’t. I went nearly insane when you disappeared off the face of the earth, you know that?”
“I saw pictures of you in the papers. Getting awards, escorting women to dinners and first nights—I thought you’d shrugged and moved on.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Business, darling. But nobody was you, and the more I tried to forget you the less successful I seemed to be. I had to find you. I needed you. Need you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t. You can’t. Do you remember when you told your parents you wanted to marry me?”
“Sure. They were delighted.”
She gave a humourless laugh. “No, they weren’t. I wasn’t right for you, your mother told me. And your father barely tolerated me.”
“You’re wrong.” He squeezed her hands. “They wanted me to settle down and, once they realised I wouldn’t settle for anybody else, they got used to the idea.” He frowned. “My mum was a snob, my dad was business obsessed. You can’t choose your parents. Please tell me that wasn’t the reason you left?”
Not bloody likely. “No way. It was you I was with, not them. But your dad mentioned making an heir; he smiled and said he’d adore anyone who could do that.” She swallowed. Now, now she’d lose him. “You love babies.”
He laughed shamefacedly. “Yeah, I know. A man’s man and all that. We’re not supposed to, but they bring out all the protectiveness in me. Like you, though in a different way.” The look in his eyes changed from friendly to predatory, the inner depths seeming to light up with his desire for her. “I want to protect you, but I want to fuck you into next Tuesday while I’m doing it. So how about it, Beth? Will you marry me?”
Tears misted her eyes. She blinked them away and let them fall unheeded. She hadn’t worn waterproof mascara that morning, so the tears were probably black. Right now she didn’t care. She’d wash her face before she left, scrub all the makeup off. “No. I can’t, Finn.” She swallowed. “I can’t have children. And you need them for the business, for you, to fulfil you.”
If he’d hesitated, even for one moment, she’d have walked away. But he didn’t. “All I need is you. Kids we can adopt if we decide we want them.”
“But the title—”
“What?” He frowned, then his brow cleared when he remembered. “Oh, that! Ma was heir to some obscure Scottish barony. You mean that?” She nodded. He laughed. “I haven’t even bothered to see if I can claim it. There’s no land, no fortune, and if I went out of my way to claim it for business’s sake there’s a good chance people would laugh at me for being pretentious. And quite right too. My mother used to go on about it, but I never took much notice.”
She tried to pull her hands away but he wouldn’t let her, gripping them tight. “Are you sure you can’t have kids?”
She bit her lip. “Yes. I was born with a defect and my fallopian tubes and ovaries never developed properly. I don’t produce eggs, and I never will. There’s no miracle cure, no chance I can have children.” She kept her gaze steady, her voice clear. She’d grown up knowing it, but telling him could well break her heart.
He stared at her and she watched understanding dawn on his face. “You poor darling,” he murmured. “And I didn’t make it any easier, did I? I told my parents that if they wanted an heir they’d let me marry you. I thought it would help. So you thought I wanted it as well?”
“I saw you with your baby nephew. You loved him.”
”I love you more.”
His answer came so promptly she couldn’t doubt him. Except that he might regret it. “What about in ten years’ time?”
“Or twenty, or thirty?” He sounded mocking now. He tugged on her hands so she had to move, tumbling over almost into his lap. He caught her and stood in one smooth movement. “It’s been a hell of a day. How about we postpone this until we’ve had a long, hot bath?” He waggled his eyebrows at her with a Groucho-suggestive mannerism, forcing a laugh out of her.
“Okay.”
He did it all, poured the bath, adding bubbles, pretending to get huffy when she asked him if he usually had bubble baths. The large walk-in shower at the other end of the bathroom seemed more his style. “I bought it especially for you. I remembered which perfume you use.”
Before she could censor herself and remember that she was trying to create distance between them, she answered, “Then you should have bought Boss bubble bath.”
“Okay, I will. But tonight it’s Givenchy all the way.”
When the bath was full, he stripped them both, pausing to linger at the softer parts of her anatomy. She caught her breath at his tenderness, his utter devotion to her comfort, but he smiled and kissed her before swinging her up into his arms again and stepping into the tub. He lowered them down, the bubbles exploding crisply around them. She hadn’t even put up her hair. The ends dangled in the water and when she lifted her arms to sweep the mass out of the way, he took advantage of the way the movement lifted her breasts and bent to kiss her nipples, sucking and tasting.
She gasped and groaned, cupping the back of his head, threading her fingers through his thick, dark hair. So good. She couldn’t let him do this, seduce her into saying yes. Because she knew that was what he wanted, what he hoped. “Just enjoy,” he murmured against the soft swell of her breast, “and I’ll try to do the same.”
She loved that about him, loved the way he could fuck her blind one minute, giving no concessions, controlling her as easily as she might control a puppet, then show her such tenderness and consideration that it brought her to tears. Finn wasn’t afraid of his sexuality, giving way to it or loving her, showing her how deep his feelings went and how much she meant to him.
How could she not do the same? She loved him. That wasn’t the issue here. He continued to kiss and caress her, finally taking her mouth in a kiss so deep, so all-encompassing that it seemed to have no end.
By the time it actually ended, she was sitting astride him and he was inside her. He thrust up, taking her further into their own world with every stroke, his hands on her hips holding her steady to accept him, dropping featherlight kisses around her left nipple until he finally took it into his mouth and sucked hard.
How did he know how to do that? She cried his name, begging him not to stop, aching for fulfilment, but he paused, deeply embedded inside her. “Say you’ll marry me. Say it and I’ll let you come.”
“Fuck!”
“Exactly.” He sounded almost smug and she’d have hit him for it if her hands hadn’t been busy holding on tight. “Now say it. I love you, Beth, and I always will. I’ve loved you for six years, the one we were together and the five apart, and I know I’ll never, ever stop. So say it. Give in, darling. Life isn’t always perfect, but this is as perfect as we’re going to get it.”
What could she say? Besides, she wanted that orgasm. “Yes.”
He touched her, stroked inside her and with that one, final caress she exploded around him.
About the Author
Lynne Connolly has been in epublishing since the Wild West days. She’s holding on, and these days she writes for several epublishers. After a varied career in business in which she sold baby nappies, coffee and beer, she took a break, and ended up writing instead. She lives in England, but tries to visit the US at least once a year. She lives in the North West of England with her family and her mews, Jack.
Email: [email protected]
Lynne loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.
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Unbroken
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