Lessons and Lovers

by Portia Da Costa

  She patted Darryl’s sleek back, aware of the perfection of his skin but also imagining of the touch of another man’s skin and the intense, burning blue of his eyes as she seemed to watch her.

  A soft cough made Hettie jump and she jerked back from an equally surprised Darryl, expecting to find that man—and those blue eyes—to be right there on the patio really watching her.

  “Is everything all right?” inquired Stevie. Her voice was gentle and professional, in spite of the fact she was wearing a skimpy olive green T-shirt, a floppy hat and a pair of voluminous ex-army shorts.

  Hettie was more relieved than she cared to admit to see her friend right at that moment and flashed Stevie a welcoming smile. She expected Darryl to be awkward, having been caught in tears by an unknown woman, but quite the reverse. Composed and graceful, he rose to his feet, rubbed quickly at his eyes then held out his hand towards Stevie.

  ‘Hello, you must be Dr. Madrigan. I’m Darryl di Angeli. How do you do?’

  “Ciao. Piacere,” replied Stevie with a grin. Hettie could see that even though her friend’s smile was warm and friendly, the doctor was astutely sizing up the situation as a clinician and assessing Darryl and his emotions.

  A stream of musical Italian issued from Darryl’s lips, but Stevie only laughed and shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s about the extent of my knowledge of your language, Darryl,” she said, taking his hand and shaking it, “And yes I am Stephanie Madrigan, but you can call me Stevie.” She glanced over Darryl’s shoulder and winked. “Any more of that wine left, Hett? I’m dying of thirst here!”

  “Lots. Let me get you a glass,” said Hettie, rising to her feet and bustling around to get Stevie some wine.

  She felt a great glow of gratitude. The older woman had arrived and immediately taken control of the situation with tact and delicacy. Behind her, Hettie could hear her two companions chatting easily about the beautiful weather and the equally beautiful gardens. They were classic British topics of conversation—but always wonderfully comforting when you were making a brand-new friend.

  As the sun beat down, the three of them continued to sit in the shade and talk. It was mostly Stevie who led the conversation, and Hettie smiled to herself as she admired the way her friend was able to draw Darryl out and ask him gentle questions about himself without seeming to be in the slightest bit intrusive or prying.

  Years of practice, I suppose. She caught Stevie’s eye for a split second and saw her nod in acknowledgement. For all her eccentricities and her sexual forthrightness, the doctor was eminent and respected in her profession.

  Maybe I should turn you loose on Starr, Stevie. Hettie said silently to her friend. I’m getting nowhere trying to break down his wall… Maybe you can do it?

  But even as she thought the thought, Hettie knew it was unlikely. Starr was private and impenetrable, locked behind barriers of his own making. He’d give his body unstintingly but never a hint of what was happening in his heart.

  The afternoon wore on. Peacefully and amenably. Despite her frustration over Starr, Hettie’s heart warmed to see Darryl so relaxed and at ease with Stevie. And she grinned to herself at his obvious sexual interest in the good doctor.

  “It’s just too hot!” said Stevie suddenly, standing up beside her lounger, her hands on the hem of her shirt. “Does anybody mind?” she queried, but before either Hettie or Darryl could speak, she’d whipped off the thin garment and bared her small but shapely breasts to the afternoon heat. Her shorts and the miniscule thong she’d been wearing beneath them quickly followed.

  Hettie hardly dared look at Darryl, but as she watched Stevie begin to smooth sunblock over her slender, athletic body, she felt a frisson of reaction in her own flesh.

  She’s beautiful. And if I wanted to go that way, I know she and I could be together.

  It was a piquant fantasy, and for a moment Hettie imagined describing it to the one she really wanted to be with. Where the hell was he? Had he come back from wherever he’d disappeared to yet?

  “How about doing my back, Darryl?” said Stevie, lowering herself onto a lounge chair, on her front. Then, looking seductively back over her shoulder, she held out the tube of sunblock to the young Italian. The air was suddenly heavy and charged, and as Hettie watched a play of emotion dance across Darryl’s smooth face, she realized that it was far more than a chance to apply the lotion that Stevie was offering him.

  Oh Lord, this is it! She hid a smile behind her fingers. Stevie said she’d come down here to help with his “education”…and the first lesson is about to start now!

  Time to make herself scarce.

  “Er—yes—of course,” replied Darryl, getting up. His voice sounded a little odd, but in a distinctly excited way. His eyes were dark, the pupils hugely dilated and as she watched him take the tube from Stevie’s fingers, Hettie swiftly gathered up her belongings and shrugged into her wrap. Her friend the doctor was looking at the young man with a very direct, inviting smile upon her face. And Hettie guessed that Darryl wouldn’t even notice if somebody dropped a piano into the pool right now, much less take much notice of her own exit from the scene.

  “It’s too hot for me out here now,” she said quickly, already walking away and not giving anybody time for false protests that she should stay, “I’m going in for a shower. I’ll see the two of you later.”

  Casting one last glimpse at the couple on the patio, she saw Darryl flash her a smile that was both surprised, and at the same time strangely complicit…and grateful. And as he turned his attention back to Stevie, the doctor winked knowingly at Hettie.

  And now for you, Mr. Starr!

  Her face set and determined, Hettie swept through the house, her thin wrap flying behind her. She didn’t really know where to start looking. He hadn’t been in the kitchen, the pantry or his own room last time she’d searched for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be in any one of those places now. The man was so elusive he could be just about anywhere.

  But she was damned well going to find him if it killed her!

  Finding herself hovering outside his room, she studied the wooden door as if it might tell her whether he was beyond it.

  Strange quivers rippled through her. It was sex, she realized, her mind flicking to what might be happening on the patio between Stevie and Darryl. But it was so much more than that. She had to fathom Starr, to know him. Having acknowledged her love for him, the situation that existed between them was no longer enough for her. She had to get close to him in a way that he’d never, ever allowed her to. She wanted more, and somehow she had to make him decide whether he wanted more too.

  Or whether the whole thing had to end.

  The sound of her knock on the door seemed astonishingly loud, but it brought no answer. Hettie’s heart pounded. She couldn’t be thwarted now, she just couldn’t.

  Again, she pounded on the door. Again nothing. Not giving herself time to think she tried the handle, turned it and found that the room wasn’t locked.

  Heart fluttering and leaping, she stepped into the somber, tidy, almost ascetic room. She knew that Starr had always been offered every home comfort for his accommodations, but his bedroom still had the spare, uncluttered feeling of a monk’s cell.

  “Some monk!” she growled to herself, moving inside and glancing around. Barely any possessions sullied the stark orderliness of the room’s surfaces. On the bedside cabinet there stood a small, cheap-looking alarm clock, a bottle of water and a paperback book. A military biography she discovered when she picked it up and flipped to the page marked by a simple black leather bookmark.

  Crossing to the chest of drawers, she picked up the items that were set upon it. An unlabeled bottle that on opening revealed Starr’s subtle but strangely exciting cologne. A pair of cuff links. A plain black clothesbrush.

  The only other items on show in the room were an art magazine neatly placed on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and an inexpensive portfolio from a discount stationery house set beside it. />
  Starr’s drawings.

  Hettie’s fingers twitched with a desire to open up the portfolio and look inside. Having studied and worked in art, her curiosity about his work was almost as ferocious as her hunger to know the mysteries of his heart. In fact the one might be the window to the other. But no amount of requests to view his drawings had ever induced him to show them to her. He was like iron, and completely unmovable on the issue. It was the one thing that they’d almost but not quite actually argued about.

  She ran her fingers over the cardboard surface of the portfolio. The evidence of Starr’s secret talent was just the merest flick of her fingers away—but suddenly Hettie knew she mustn’t reveal it. She was already invading his privacy unforgivably, but in this one thing she could still respect his boundaries.

  Abandoning the portfolio, she turned and saw a single black cotton shirt on a hanger hooked to the front of an old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe.

  Unable to control herself, Hettie plucked the shirt from the hanger and pressed it to her face. It’d been worn, and not only was it scented with the same cologne from the bottle, but there was also a fainter, more insidious, more blood-stirring fragrance. The fresh, yet disturbingly musky scent of Starr’s warm skin…

  Pressing her mouth and nose against the thin black cloth, Hettie felt her loins kick hard and surge for its wearer.

  Oh, Starr! She inhaled his essence and longed, longed, longed for the feeling of his hard flesh inside her. She had never wanted him more than at this moment. The craving was so intense that her knees trembled and she swayed on her feet. Stepping shakily, she backed up until she found herself at Starr’s narrow, neatly made bed.

  Collapsing backwards, she lay down still clutching the black shirt, with its evocative odor, to her face.

  Each breath seemed to make him more real to her. Each breath made the need for him ache and ache and ache. Unconsciously, she rubbed her thighs together to try and ease the torment. With a shock, she realized what she was doing and slid her hand down to her crotch and pressed her fingers hard against her pussy through the skimpy black wisp of her bikini bottom.

  Closing her eyes tightly, she sank into a world of scent and sensation. The scent of Starr. The pressure of not her fingers but his, working with increasing fervor against her clitoris. Orgasm barreled quickly towards her, rising from the depths of her love for him and blooming in a sad, deep sweetness beneath her pounding fingertips.

  “Oh Starr! Oh Starr!” she groaned, her pussy clutching at emptiness, clutching at the void where he should be.

  For a while, she just lay there clutching the shirt, astonished and very scared by the tears that had trickled from beneath her tightly close eyelids. Crying for Starr? What was to become of her? It wasn’t all that long since she’d lost the husband she’d been devoted to and yet here she was weeping for another man…

  A long, firm and very familiar tread on the landing brought her shooting to her feet and she flung the black shirt willy-nilly across the bed. The door opened and she froze like some tiny, terrified prey animal before an unstoppable predator.

  “Milady?”

  A frown momentarily pleated Starr’s broad, tanned brow. He stepped across the threshold, his movements relaxed and economical as ever. But in spite of her own confusion, Hettie could see he was clearly shocked to find her in his room.

  But a second later, his familiar, glasslike mask was back in place and his voice was a smooth and even as it always was.

  “I’m sorry, was there something you wanted?”

  Chapter Seven

  Yes! You! You’re what I want! Hettie was dumbstruck anew by the beauty of the secretive blond paragon who served her.

  Starr had been running or jogging or exercising somehow, because he wore only shorts and an abbreviated athletic shirt and a battered old pair of well-worn running shoes. His gilded arms gleamed with perspiration and there was a ruddy glow of exertion across his face, throat and chest.

  If Hettie had been hungry for him before, she was ravenous now—especially with her senses piqued by thoughts of what Stevie and Darryl might be doing.

  In an uncharacteristically unstudied gesture, Starr lifted an arm and rubbed the back of his hand across his sweat-streaked brow, making Hettie shiver with lust at the strangely vulnerable sight of a tuft of golden hair in his armpit. She wanted to rub her face in that hot niche and absorb his earthy smell and taste, then smear the spoor of his dominant maleness across her cheeks.

  “Milady?” he queried softly again, wiping his hand down his shorts. His blue eyes were still wary. Hettie had never been to this room before and she wondered if her presence here fazed him.

  “Er…no, not really… I just wondered where you were,” she said, glancing at the shirt on the bed and wondering if he’d remember that he’d left it hanging up.

  Of course he’ll remember! He’s Starr and he’s never been known to forget or overlook anything!

  “I’ve been for a run, Milady,” he said, lifting his hands again and this time passing both across his closely cropped scalp, “But if there’s anything you require, I can be showered in a few moments. Perhaps a cold drink? Or afternoon tea? Just give me five minutes.”

  He did nothing other than rub sweat from his face and neck, but Hettie could read the unspoken agenda. He wanted her out of his room and back within the normal parameters of their relationship. His bedroom was “staff” and she was the lady of the house. She was out of place here.

  “Look!” she said suddenly, taking the brakes off, sick and tired of divisions and parameters, “You don’t have to skulk around in here or in the kitchen or go for runs and disappear all the time. Why don’t you join us, out on the terrace? Just hang out for a while. You’re not just a servant, Starr. You’re much, much more than that. And you always have been. Surely you know that?”

  It was as if shutter came down across his face, closing out any hint of the emotion she’d seen a few moments ago.

  “My place is to take care of your welfare and your household, Ma’am,” he said expressionlessly, “It’s inappropriate for me to expect to socialize with you and your guests.”

  Hettie curled her hands into fists, furiously angry. He was so goddamned stubborn! So determined to stick to the rigid role he’d assigned himself.

  How could she ever get through to him? Force her way through his façade? The words I love you, you stubborn bastard! rose to her lips but she couldn’t utter them. Not in the face of that cool, glacial expression.

  She decided to try another tack.

  “Darryl fancies me, you know!” she cried, throwing back her head, bringing her chin up defiantly, “Aren’t you afraid that if you leave us alone together too much, he’ll make a pass at me? And I’ll respond. Because you’re not there? I bet he wouldn’t just retreat behind some kind of cold, emotionless wall when he’d made love to me… With him, it’d be warm. Close. Normal.”

  She watched for signs. Something… Anything… But nothing happened. “Aren’t you jealous? Don’t you think I’m a slut? Thinking about having sex with a man I’ve only just met?”

  Not a flicker. If anything the cool lines of his face grew harder than ever.

  “My job isn’t to judge you or question you, Milady, simply to be here for you when you need me.”

  Dear God, he could have been discussing the weather! Hettie took a step towards him, every muscle in her body taut. She’d always thought the expression “her blood boiled” was just a cliché, but she could almost feel it happening to her now. Frustrated anger bubbled and welled up in her like molten lava. Seeking release…

  “Then be here for me now!” she hissed, locking her eyes with his as she fought to get a reaction, “I want you. Now. Not some other man… And don’t call me ‘Milady’! I’m Hettie! You fuck me, remember?”

  His face was still as smooth as glass, yet opaque. Giving nothing…and yet…and yet, was that a flash of something? An instantly suppressed flare of furious emotion?

&nbs
p; And it was that act of suppression that made Hettie snap. Before she could think or reason, she whipped back her arm and backhanded him right across the face with her entire strength.

  There was a long, drawn out moment. Tension thickened between them as Starr’s golden face turned pink where she’d struck him. Then, moving with catlike, preternatural speed, he enveloped her savagely in his arms, crushing her mouth beneath his as he ground an erection like iron into her belly.

  Hettie’s knees felt like paper, her bones dissolving. This was what she’d wanted so long, so very long. Longer, she realized faintly as her mouth was punished and possessed, than she and Starr had ever had any kind of relationship.

  This… This real emotion, she suddenly understood in both horror and wonder, was what she’d wanted since the first evening Piers had taken her home from the art gallery, and introduced her to the tall, grave man who drove his limousine. This beautiful man had been bone deep in her senses even while she’d fallen in love with his employer.

  Moaning, she yielded all her mouth to him and helplessly rubbed her body against him, abrading her swollen nipples against his hard chest and massaging his amazing hard-on shamelessly with her belly.

  He was so big. So hot. The heat burned through their insubstantial clothing and brought fresh saliva to Hettie’s plundered mouth. With a yearning so intense it made her groan, she wanted one of the few sexual acts that Starr had always denied her. The one he would not allow because he’d devoted himself to her pleasure alone and not his.

  She wanted to taste him. Feel his magnificence fill her mouth and invade it—subdue her with its size and force. Shaking herself free, she sank to her knees and plucked at the waistband of his shorts, fighting to free him in readiness for her attentions.

  But as fast as before, Starr took control, grasping her hands and holding her away from him. He glared down at her, blue eyes on fire as never before.