The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

by Sonia Florens

  “Jesus!” she half-yelped, almost tripping over the man who stood on the pavement outside.

  “No, I think you must be mistaken.” He put out a hand to steady her, holding her at the elbow, smiling down roguishly, although the misty eyes gave a different reading of his emotions. “I recognize you though. It’s good to see you, Fliss. How have you been?”

  She was, for a moment, speechless, so he filled the silence.

  “I knew it was you. Last night in the Bevis Arms. I thought you’d left the village years ago.”

  “You … you … don’t tell me you’ve given me a second thought. All these years.” Her tone was belligerent and she tried to yank her arm away from him, but he held on to it steadily.

  “Actually, I have. I owe you an apology, I know. And you don’t owe me anything. I’d like to have the chance to make it up to you though.”

  “Fuck you, Richard Wainwright!” The words spilled from Felicity’s lips before she even knew they were coming. “Fuck you and your dodgy dealings and your … oh, just go away.”

  She managed to tear her arm away from him and marched up the street, hot tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. This was not what she was here for! This was the last thing she needed.

  She could hear his footsteps behind her, following her, but she refused to turn back to face him or speak to him again. Instead she almost ran up to the small chalet at the foot of the hill, where visitors paid for access to the castle ruins.

  “One adult, please,” she huffed, her breath steaming out in front of her, shoving a ten-pound note at the cashier and not waiting for change. Surely Richard would not follow her past the turnstile, unless he was willing to pay for the privilege of pestering her and being sent away with a flea in his ear.

  Yet it seemed he was, for taking great strides up the green slopes behind her he came, that evocatively sted scarf streaming out behind him, his face pale with cold, contrasting with the still luxuriant darkness of his hair.

  “Fliss,” he called, that voice still so warm and rich and deep, halting her in her tracks. “Please.”

  She spun around and barked a sardonic laugh. “You paid to stalk me? You must be serious.”

  “No, I didn’t pay,” he said, holding up a National Trust membership card with a somewhat sheepish grin.

  “What? You? A member of the National Trust? No way! You must have stolen that!”

  “Times change, Fliss, and so do people.”

  “You really are a member?”

  “Are you calling me a prick?”

  Felicity laughed, genuinely this time. She had forgotten that earthy, wicked wit of his.

  “You’ve probably got a point,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve done some twattish things in my time. Letting you get away being possibly the most twattish of the lot.”

  “Oh, come on, Richard, you can’t think a bit of sweet-talk is going to …”

  “I don’t. I don’t think that.”

  “You didn’t let me get away. You disappeared. You did a runner. I tried to get in touch for days.”

  “Days, eh?” Richard smiled ruefully. “I was in a French jail for longer than that.”

  “What?”

  “Come on. Let’s walk up to the castle together. I’ll give you my pathetic excuse for standing you up eleven years ago, and then you can decide if you want to kick me in my richly deserving bollocks or … not.”

  He put a hand on a hip, clearly inviting Felicity to link her arm with his. Hesitantly, she laid her hand on his wool-clad forearm and allowed him to steer her up towards the looming pile on the horizon.

  “So you’re saying you were in prison? While I was waiting for you in the Bevis Arms?”

  “I was. I was caught loading Jug-Ears’ boat with moody cigarettes at Cherbourg harbour and kept in the cells until it got sorted out. Took ages – but that was my fault for being a stroppy idiot. I don’t think they wanted to let me go. I think they wanted to teach me a lesson, to be honest. And I can’t say I blame them, looking back.”

  “Wow. Did you have to go to court?”

  “No, not in the end. I got fined and sent home. It was a wake-up call though. I haven’t smuggled since, Your Honour. I have turned my life around and am now a jolly decent, respectable chap with a National Trust membership.”

  “And a wife?”

  “No. An ex-wife.” He grimaced.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I know how that feels.”

  “Really? You’re divorced?”

  “Freshly on the shelf.”

  “Oh no, was it a bad one?”

  “Are there good divorces?”

  He walked on in silence for a moment before speaking again, quietly. “The Wainwright timing strikes again then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll be … I dunno … on the rebound, or wanting some time to think. I’ve come and gatecrashed your retreat, haven’t I?”

  Felicity made a non-committal face and thought about this proposition. Was his presence unwelcome? Did she really want to sit and brood about Tom in her chilly cottage for the next ten days? And was she on the rebound? If she was completely honest, she had been on the rebound – badly – when she met Tom in her first week at university. Perhaps her whole life was a rebound from Richard, in which case … did it make a kind of sense to bounce back to him?

  “You haven’t changed that much then,” she offered, giving him a subtle clue that she might wanthim to take this conversation in the direction he wanted. “And you do owe me an apology.”

  Unexpectedly, he clutched at her hands, threading his fingers with hers in a tight cat’s cradle.

  “I know. I’m sorry. Truly, I am. If I could make the past play out differently …”

  “Don’t worry about it, Richard,” she said lightly, trying not to betray the racing pulse, the heightened colour brought about by his nearness and warmth. “You didn’t ruin my life. You knew I was going to university anyway. I expect you already had my successor lined up.”

  “Felicity!” he reproached and she shivered, remembering how he had only used her full name when she had said or done something outrageous. “That’s not even close to the truth. I was … I had a real thing for you.”

  “Really? Wideboy Wainwright? With every girl from Poole to Lyme after you?”

  “Wasn’t interested in those girls.”

  “You found one to be interested in in the end though?”

  “Yeah.” They were at the top of the hill now, leaning against a ruined stump of castle stone, looking down over the patchwork fields and woodlands, across to the dark-blue sea. Richard smiled wistfully. “Fiona. It worked out, for a while. She did a lot for me. Calmed me down. Showed me that there was more to life than thrill-seeking on the boats.”

  “She sounds great.” Felicity kept the dash of jealousy out of her voice, barely.

  “She was. I managed to get a job after the France fiasco – just labouring on Breaker Island. Fiona was the warden – she got me on a college course. It changed my life. I found something I really wanted to do, and that I was good at. Now, I’m the warden on Breaker Island.”

  “You never are! Seriously?” Felicity laughed. “So that’s why you’ve got the National Trust card. You work for them!”

  “I am the picture of respectability.” Richard took an ironic little bow.

  “And Fiona?”

  “She got a promotion to the Peak District. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t leave this place.”

  “Gosh.” Felicity was sombrely silent for a moment. Richard was a son of this soil, of these hedgerows and the chalky cliffs at their edges. He reminded her how much she loved this land, and the land reminded her how much she loved Richard. It was as if they were part of each other. Somehow it made sense that he would not leave it, even for a loved wife.

  “Silly romantic notion, probably, but it’s in my blood,” he said, expressing her thought for her. “I know I’m a sentimental fool.”

  “That’s not suc
h a bad thing to be,” she murmured. “Sometimes, you can’t get things out of your system.”

  He turned to her, hot coals for eyes, that long sweep of dark hair over them, the incipient stubble that no razor could ever quite defeat, the strength and solidity she had missed, almost without knowing it, for these last eleven years.

  “I shouldn’t,” he whispered, touching the pads of his fingers to her cheek. “But I can’t seem to help myself.”

  Help yourself, help yourself, urged every fibre in Felicity’s body. He took her up on the invitation, bending low to brush her lips, pushing her gently but inescapably up against the weather-worn stone that supported her. Her skin sang, collapsing into grateful recognition, revelling in its sense memory of the careless rapture of a decade before. Coming home, I’m coming home, I’m home now, the familiar lips, the fondly remembered weight of him, the way their faces fitted together, the way his heat cancelled out the whipping wind on the hilltop … How had she ever given this up? And would she ever be able to do it again?

  She banished the intrusive worries that theatened to derail this sensual abandon, giving herself up to the probing excursions of Richard’s tongue. It was like listening to an old favourite song again, or tasting something divine that had been unobtainable for years. All the kisses of yesteryear flooded back into her mind, all the rolling in the heather, all the passionate clinches on the beach, all the slow dances and stolen moments when their friends weren’t looking. And then her shaky legs, and the building heat and moisture between them, reminded her of what all that had led to.

  She remembered his dark head, haloed by the sun above it, looming above her in the golden corn, his teeth grinning white, his hair full of broken straw, his voice rumpled and wicked. “You could come back to mine. Flatmates are out on a trip.”

  “Back to your place? In Poole?”

  “Yeah. Stay the night.”

  “You mean …?”

  “I love you, Fliss. And you’re going away soon. I want to be with you … properly.”

  Properly. How nervous she had been, and yet how completely unable to resist him. She had knocked over the bottled alcopop he had served her in his squalid living room and then flustered around with kitchen towels and disinfectant spray until he had removed them from her hands and said, “Never mind – leave it. Let’s go upstairs.”

  She had thought he might be demanding and intense and a little bit rough, the way he was when they tumbled in the heather, but he was gentle her first time, and so considerate. He made sure she was ready, made sure she was happy, made sure she came before he did, and when she dissolved into emotional tears afterwards he held her and shushed and stroked her hair and said he loved her and she was special and always would be.

  And the next day he didn’t show up at the pub.

  Felicity broke the kiss with a tiny mewl, suddenly realizing how very, very cold it was at the top of the hill.

  “Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere,” suggested Richard, noticing the indignant glares of a couple of elderly visitors.

  “Perhaps.” Felicity did not want to leave the sheltering warmth of his wool-coated chest, outside which reality appeared frozen and uninviting, but she drew back anyway, unable to meet his eyes, feeling as shy as a schoolgirl again.

  “If you want … I don’t mean to presume …”

  “You can. You can presume. Presume away.”

  He laughed delightedly and kissed her on the cheek. “Let’s go somewhere warmer.”

  They ran, hand in hand, down the hill and mooched through the village, looking in shop windows and reminiscing, until they arrived at the Bevis Arms, where Richard bought lunch for them both.

  He really is different, thought Felicity, listening to his tales of life on Breaker Island, observing the annual patterns of the seasons and preserving the natural wonders there. He has grown up. He is a man, not a Bad Boy.

  “And does London life suit you?” he asked, almost as if hoping for a negative response.

  “I … well. It did. It really did, for a long time. And Tom was a Londoner through and through – could never bear to be away from the action. But I’m finding it difficult now we’ve split. I’m at work most of the time, and I don’t see a lot of the friends we shared. I’m … you know, I actually considered joining a dating agency.”

  “It’s lonely?”

  “Yes. In a nutshell. I know a lot of it’s to do with grieving for my marriage but … God, it’s hard sometimes. Sometimes I just want to stop having to be so bloody grown up all the time and just retreat to somewhere I was young and happy and naive and unspoiled.”

  “You were all those things when I knew you.”

  “Yes. I was, wasn’t I.” She looked at him directly. “I’m not now. And you’ve changed too. Do you think we can ever …?”

  He put a hand over hers. “I think we can try.”

  Tumbling out on to the street, insulated by steak and kidney pie and bright with two glasses of wine, they bought a holly wreath at the florist in the square and went to install it on Felicity’s front door.

  Richard hammered it into place and they stood back on the pavement, admiring its verdant cheerfulness, before Felicity turned to him and asked if he wanted to come in. For coffee.

  Slipping an arm around her, he kissed the tiny scrap of her neck that was exposed between her knitted scarf and her coat collar and spoke softly into her ear.

  “Can’t, love. I have to get to work. I wish I didn’t, but I drew up the rota myself! Can I come round tomorrow? Will you be in?”

  Felicity’s heart hammered. She had hoped never to have to do this again – to say goodbye to him and trust that he would be as good as his word.

  “I … expect so. If you aren’t too late.”

  “Oh, I get off at lunchtime. Could be here for about two, is that all right?”

  Felicity nodded. It would give her the morning to get provisions in for Christmas. And what better than a busy supermarket full of grumbling, sniping shoppers to take her mind off the waiting?

  “OK,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  He scooped her up and ravished her with kisses beneath the holly wreath. “Get some mistletoe in,” he advised, turning to go with a wave.

  “I will. Oh, and Richard …”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t get arrested.”

  She was on overdrive for the rest of the day, barely able to sit still for two minutes at a time. Her book failed to draw her away from the excited babblings of her mind, so she opted for an early night, huddling under the old-fashioned candlewick bedspread, listening to the sigh of the wind with its promise of snow, and giving herself up to her fantasies. The one she’d had as a teenager, of him being kidnapped and imprisoned by foreign pirates and her rescuing him from his terrible plight. But before she untied him, she teased him into a frenzy, taking advantage of the pirates’ absence, for they were all insensible with rum next door and would not be roused for hours. He sat in a corner of the old-fashioned brig, rope looped around his chest, clamping his arms to his sides, his ankles similarly fast. He tried to appeal to her through his gag, his red-rimmed eyes lighting up at the sight of her, his thick black hair matted and dishevelled – but in a sexy way, not a greasy horrible way. He expected her to rush over and free him straight away, but instead of that, she flitted across and dropped to a crouch in front of him, placing a finger on the outline of his mouth through that red-spotted handkerchief gag.

  “Don’t worry, Richard. I’m here to save you,” she said, and she would slip her hands either side of his neck, on to his shoulders, and kiss his scratchy face, his eyelids, his ear lobes, his forehead, all the sweet, sweet lines and planes of his handsome face while he stiffened and tried to speak, tried to urge her to let him go.

  “Oh, not yet, not yet, Richard. You never keep still, and just this once, you are going to keep still for me.” Her fingers raked his hair, massaged his scalp, and, although he still struggled, she could fe
el his muscles loosening, feel his forehead uncrease and his knots unravel, watch the rise and fall of his chest slow and his shoulders slump. He was hers, to do with as she pleased, until she decided it was time for them to leave.

  He was wearing one of those big billowing shirts from olden days; it was a little torn and there were bloodstains where h had valiantly fought the pirates. The tantalizing glimpse of bare chest tempted her lips downwards and she tore the stained linen just a little more, to reveal a nipple which she sucked on with eager gratitude.

  Now he was moaning through the gag and, when she settled herself in his helpless lap with her knees either side of his thighs, she could feel the itchy jiggle of his pelvis and pressed herself against the hard heat in his breeches. If his arms had been free, he would have overpowered her, crushed her into him, flipped her over and fucked her hard, to scratch that itch as quickly as possible and fly to safety. But his arms were not free, and Felicity was going to dictate the pace. She licked a slow trail, using the very tip of her tongue, around his nipples and then down the line towards his navel, until the confining ropes halted her explorations. She could go up or she could go down. By now, it was tumescently obvious that Richard was hoping for the latter decision – and after all, she loved him. So she would please him in this regard.

  She bent to unlace his crotch – somehow it was 1759, which was how the fantasy worked – and, with a gentle hand, finessed the awoken beast from its casing. Oh, he was writhing now, and making incoherent sounds of near pain into his gag, trying to jerk his pelvis towards her, to say “More! More! More!” Lovingly, she stroked the shaft and cupped the tight-packed balls, smiling up into his pleading eyes before lowering her head and kissing his dark-red cock tip. This now was her gift to him. The gift of giving him what he wanted, even when he had no choice in the matter. The gift of showing him that she knew what he wanted. The gift of showing him that she was right for him. She plunged down over the erection, sealing it with velvet lips then sucking it, tickling it with her tongue, lapping and tasting and breathing vocal vibrations along its length. She waited until the rest of his body was completely limp and acquiescent in her hands, then she withdrew, stood up, stepped back. He lunged, as much as a man in bondage can lunge, roaring through his gag, and then the ropes around his arms snapped and he broke free, ripping off the gag, swearing great oaths, freeing his feet and catching her before she could retreat to the other side of the brig.