“I can’t believe this place is empty,” Matt said.
“It will pick up in the school holidays. Always does. People are saving their money for that at the moment.”
“You have to bring me back here one day for a swim. It’s like something from a film.” He brushed the hair from his eyes as he glanced around. “Seems bittersweet that this is what has caused all their problems.”
“That’s a good way of describing it.”
Enough of this.
I took him around a smaller path to a tiny cottage with a thatched roof. The key creaked in the lock as I turned it. Inside, it smelled like lavender, and the sun licked the whitewashed walls.
Matt laughed as I pushed him up against the closed door.
“What am I meant to look at in here?” he said.
I stood on tiptoe and brushed the hollow of his neck with my tongue. “Me.”
“Oh. Oh.” His hands were melting against my waist, squeezing the shape of me and tracing along the lines.
He tasted me with deliberate slowness–it seemed I stole each kiss, he gave them so teasingly. When I pulled away, he grinned.
“I like it in here,” he murmured. “It’s…quiet.”
“We should change that.” I pulled his t-shirt up and grazed my teeth over his nipple. “Quiet won’t do.”
He pressed his face into my hair and inhaled, groaning.
The next few minutes were a battle of wills–my impatient hands undressing the pair of us and Matt slowing me for indulgent kisses. When he shoved me against the wall, bending so he could nuzzle at my throat, I let go.
My dress bunched around my waist, my bra, knickers and boots lost somewhere along the way. He pulled me down on the stairs and I mewed into his mouth as the carpet burned my buttocks. He was so lovely naked, that gorgeous hair falling back into his eyes, that muscled belly, those tanned thighs.
God. Matthew, how could I corrupt thee? Let me count the ways…
He remembered my lesson from last night and I was more than wet enough for his fingers. They left sticky trails over my breasts as he alternated between the two. I broke free from his mouth to suck on them and I tasted so sweet, sweeter than I ever had. I stroked his cock, so firm and hot against my thigh. The knowledge that I’d finally be coming on him made me tighten and gasp. He guided me down to pull on his balls and moaned loudly as I obliged.
“Bossy,” I breathed.
“Mmm. Do it again.”
It felt like our first time all over and I wanted to do it a hundred different ways. I could see him with his hands tied behind his back while I knelt and sucked him, me sitting on the stairs while he lavished his languorous kisses between my legs. I wanted to spank hard and make red tattoos on his shining skin. Have him beg for his release. Oh.
His mouth sank lower, kissing along my collarbone and mapping the undersides of my breasts. He grinned up through his hair as he inched down my belly, and I knotted my fingers in the dark tresses, shoving him. My hips bucked involuntarily as he spread me out. The world spun on the axis at the tip of his tongue. He licked around my clit at first, dodging it deliberately and sucking my lips, nuzzling at my inner thighs.
“Stop it,” I begged.
“Sorry…what was that?” He licked closer and I yelped.
“That!”
“Oh…you mean this.”
His tongue pushed sharply against the other side of my clit. My flesh vibrated when he spoke with that lush, deep voice and I could hear the grin still stretching his face; it shaped all his words.
“Matt…please.”
His tongue probed inside me and I rocked against him.
“Can’t decide where you taste better,” he mumbled. “In here, or…up here.” He took me in his mouth then, smothering it in warm breath.
Whimpers swelled to breathless wails. I needed this, so intoxicatingly controlled by the firm hands on my hips and the slow curve of his tongue. My orgasm built and fell away–it didn’t matter.
“Get up,” he whispered.
The stairs braced as he sat and beckoned me to him. I straddled him with my dress still around my waist. Hands urged my hips down and I couldn’t stretch fast enough, his entry brisk and sharp. I watched his eyes close as he sank in, let the sighs wash over me as we started to move.
What was the right word to describe fucking Matt? Fucking just didn’t cover it. Urgency coursed like oil under water, but we took our time, as if every stroke took hours, as if the sensation gripped my body in a giant fist and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed. He pushed down on the back of my neck so I’d look at him, and his eyes were so wide, he could have sucked in the world.
“Please,” I panted, my fingers knotting in his hair.
He drove up into me faster, made me fall on him harder. I wasn’t even riding him anymore, just swept away somewhere heady and visceral. I smacked against the sweet, sharp wall and then he moaned his own orgasm, the staccato release of it tossing me about. I dug my nails into his back just to cling on. He wouldn’t let me stop moving, but held me down so firmly that the sensation soaked me five times over.
Breath steamed against his cradling shoulder as we came down together. It felt like we had lost a virginity of sorts and it seemed we weren’t spared the awkwardness...like I’d cheated him out of his self-imposed ban. I was a little too in control there, even if Matt behaved otherwise.
“Thank you.” I bit his earlobe.
“Babe. You don’t have to.”
“I mean it.”
“Mmm.” He buried his face in my neck for a moment. “I ought to get up before I freeze like this.”
“Wouldn’t be so bad.” I giggled.
“Shh.”
He lifted me gently as he got to his feet. “I probably can’t use the bin here, can I?”
I winced. "Not the best idea. We’ll find somewhere outside.”
We dressed in a few minutes. I wanted to take so much more time, but we had to get back on the road. My thighs ached from the way I’d worked myself over him and the soreness turned saccharine, a new memory lingering and taking hold.
I had fantasized about having Matt so many times. In my less-than-polite little girl’s mind, he was always willing and strong, but never so intense. With him, it could never be just sex. The way he made lo–
No, no.
Can’t do it. Can’t say those dirty words.
* * * *
“Leila?” Matt didn’t take his eyes from the wheel.
I looked up from the paperwork I was doing a rather wobbly job of. “Hmm?”
“I meant to ask. Um.” He cleared his throat. “How much is it that you have left owing?”
“Owing on what?”
“You know. What you’re paying off for your parents.”
“No.” I tapped my pen on a file anxiously. “I don’t want your money.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t your problem. It’s mine, and I fixed it. It’ll all be over soon.”
Silence, greasy and unwelcome.
“This weekend, everything that’s happened…it’s been easy to forget about Joseph,” he said finally. “But now that I think about it, I–”
“Do you really think he’d take kindly to me saying no?”
He shrugged helplessly. “What can he do? I don’t know if I can just hand you over when he asks.”
Er, hand me over?
“But you knew. You knew when we started.” I swallowed on a dry throat. “I don’t know what you want me to do that won’t risk my job.”
“Apply somewhere else. The firm I’m going to has a great reputation.”
“I don’t want to apply anywhere else! And what if he won’t give me a reference?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice went hoarse. “I just…it’s hard.”
He left me at my door with a slow kiss, though he wanted me to ask him to stay. It was the way he held me for so long, just breathing against my ear. I couldn’t do it, though. Charlotte wanted to wake up n
ext to him, but not with the guilt trip that seemed to come with it.
I had been with Charlie in one of the estate’s cottages. Not the one I took Matt to–no, that would have been low even for me–but one close by. He’d booked in on my A-level results night and I slipped away under the guise of celebrating. Beneath the watchful shadows, he had me splayed like soft fruit in every room.
I hadn’t known that one day, I’d let the step-son of the man I worshipped take me on the same cream carpet, splashed in the same golden sun. I felt dirty for all the wrong reasons: lies, lies, lies.
“Are you okay?” Clemmie’s concern poured down the phone line and made me feel guilty for calling.
“No. Not really.” I cracked a nut loudly and rolled it around in my fingers. “Can you come for dinner tomorrow?”
“Of course. What’s wrong? Is it Shares-Your-Desk? Bad weekend?”
“Yes, him. And I don’t know. In some ways it was a great weekend, but there’s a lot of mess.”
“Is it clean-up-able?”
“I’m not sure it is. It’s just…ugh.” How much of this could I divulge without mentioning the whoring? “You know about Charlie.”
“I remember.”
She had been my sole confidante.
“Turns out he’s Matt’s step-dad.”
“Oh gosh,” she gasped. “God. Does Matt know?”
Crack. Another nut joined my neat little line. “No, and Charlie doesn’t know I’m seeing Matt. I worked it out from a picture. There’s more, I just–”
“Save it for tomorrow, okay? I’ll bring wine. Lots. And do you want me to cook?”
“Will you make Clem Po?” I asked meekly.
She laughed. “I’ll make whatever you want if you make the flapjack.”
“It’s a done deal.” Not that I could probably eat much at the moment–my pyjama bottoms were a bit tight. Ugh. Time to start running again.
“I’ll come to yours at seven? We’ll sort it out. You’ve been single for too long, Leila,” she said.
Oh, cheers. “Thank you, whorebag.” I found myself smiling anyway.
“You’ll be worshipping my wok when I’m done, slutface.”
Before I fell asleep, Matt sent a text.
Bed feels v empty tonight xxx
Get in with Toby? X I replied.
He didn’t respond.
Chapter 12
If there is a point when the dawn actually cracks, I’ve never seen it, but the next morning, I made myself get up an hour early and went for a run in the park. I limped into work like I’d gone three rounds with Aidan–and not in a boxing ring.
A single calla lily sat on my desk, plum-stained petals like bruised velvet. Soon read the card. I shot a glare at Joseph’s door–as if it would somehow penetrate and smack him in the face–and then hid the bloom in my drawer before Matt and Poppy arrived.
I was straightening my windblown hair in the toilets when a sob erupted from one of the stalls.
“Poppy?” I asked, unsure. “Pops, is that you?”
The sobbing ebbed to a sniff.
I knocked on the door gently. “Are you all right?”
“Leila?”
I recognized the soft accent and my stomach did a little flip. “Isobel?”
The door clicked open and she leaned against the stall wall, shoulders hunched.
“Oh, sweetie,” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a meeting upstairs.” She wiped her eyes and smudged her already bleeding make-up. “I have to be there in twenty minutes.”
I grabbed my bag from the counter and pushed into the stall, locking the door. I perched her on the toilet and knelt to find my face wipes.
“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, embarrassed.
“Don’t be silly.” I wiped the running mascara from her cheeks and gently cleaned her eyelids. “I’ve only got browns. Will they do?”
She waved a hand absently. “Oh, I don’t care.”
I blotted the moisture from her skin with a little toilet paper and fumbled about for my compact.
“We broke up over the weekend,” she blurted out. “Joseph and I.”
“I’m sorry.” Now I had to pick my words carefully. Had to use a needle when I normally skewered them on a knife. “Has he said something to you this morning?”
She sniffed. “Nothing I didn’t encourage. It was just a bit of a shock.”
“It always is, I think.” Shimmering taupe swept over her eyelids as I painted her pretty again. “You’ll be all right though, Isobel. You know that, don’t you?”
“He’s a Nazi. He needs…” She shrugged helplessly. “Therapy. Or something. He was using prostitutes. You should know, Leila. After–well. That night.”
I lowered my eyes. “Was he really?”
“But you mustn’t tell anyone I told you. He’s pissed as it is.”
“Of course. Try not to blink.” I stroked mascara over her long lashes. “How did you find out?”
“He told me. He told me. It was a very bad night. Do you know what they call him, his friends?”
Did I want to? “No.”
Air hissed through her nostrils. “The Chairman of the Whored. All this time, all these months, they’ve all been laughing at me–”
Jesus. “Of course they haven’t. Why would anyone find that funny?”
“I don’t know, Leila.” She swallowed. “I thought I was indulging him, that night with you. I never realized it was one of his fucking hobbies.”
“I’ll bet.” I dusted bronzer over her cheekbones and held up a little mirror. “There. You look beautiful.”
Another sad little sob. “Thank you. Really. You’ve done a great job.”
“Technically, it was Lancome.” I smiled, and reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Not that you need it.”
A flush lit her cheeks as she glanced away. “If–if you knew something…you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.” Needles, needles. Prick prick prick.
“I mean…oh, God.” She put her face in her hands. “You were never involved with him other than that night, were you? It was just a one-off?”
At least she spared me the eye contact. “I have a boyfriend,” I said quietly. “It was just a one-off.”
She snorted. “He told me you were a lesbian.”
“Oh. Well. That’d be a lie.”
“I should’ve known. You’ve no idea how relieved I am, seeing you here. I thought you might have been…” She gulped. “Hired.”
My look of horror was genuine, although not for any reason she could guess.
“I’m sorry,” she went on. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I…I’d have thought the same.”
“Yes. Well.” She got to her feet, brushing the creases from her skirt. “Please don’t tell anyone about this, Leila.”
“Of course not.” I followed her out of the stall. “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
In the mirror, her reflection stuck in a forlorn scowl. “I don’t need him. I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t believe it. I didn’t, either.
* * * *
I couldn’t look at Joseph in the meeting. Matt sat right next to me, his leg pressed firmly against mine, and the blatancy of his display mixed with Isobel’s rough sobs–still ringing in my ears–was too much to tolerate. Basic tasks were dished up and I nodded absently.
“No point starting much now,” Joseph said. He wore that knowing smile which made my nerves coil and spring.
“What do you mean?” Poppy’s pen poised over a fresh sheet of paper as if she might skewer it at any moment.
“Nothing I can confirm yet, children. Just don’t make any plans for next week.” He arched his fingers in his lap. “You’ve all got passports, haven’t you?”
Poppy practically vibrated with excitement all day. “We’re going on a trip. Has to be. He always takes the last load of interns, everyone says so.”
“Best not be before Saturday,” Matt grumbled. “I’ve got a big match.”
“I wonder where it’ll be.” She sighed wistfully. “Last year, it was Salzburg…”
I tried to join in with her, but all I could think about was the next job. It would be on that trip–of course it would. Similarly subdued, Matt thought the same. I could tell by the state of his hair.
Poppy disappeared at lunchtime and Matt went out for bagels. The office empty, he dragged his chair next to mine and we picked at each other’s food.
“Little holiday next week then,” he said.
“Sounds like it.” I speared a slice of tomato. “Exciting.”
“Yeah.” His palm rested on my knee and he rubbed absent-mindedly. “Are you busy tonight?”
I bit my lip. “I’ve got a friend coming over.”
“Oh. Thought we could have dinner, that’s all.”
I pressed my hand over his.
“Could do tomorrow?”
“I’ve got practice.”
“Come and see me after. All sweaty and muddy.” I grinned.
“Are you sure? I’ll smell like a gorilla’s ballsack.”
“Sounds delightful,” Joseph said behind us as he strode through, his eyebrow cocked in amusement. “He’ll probably taste like one too, Leila.”
The door swallowed him and I winced.
“I am going to punch him before I leave,” Matt hissed. “Seriously. I’m going to wait outside and just deck him one day.”
“I’m sure he was joking.”
Matt glared at me. “Don’t make excuses for him.”
“Sorry.” I broke off a bit of chocolate brownie and held it out in reconciliation.
He leaned forward and took it in his mouth.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Poppy dropped bags by her desk. She sounded distinctly unimpressed.
“No. I mean, sorry,” I said, edging away from Matt a little. “Just having lunch.”
“You’re supposed to eat the food,” she said dryly.
Matt shot her a wicked grin and I poked him under the desk.
Poppy twisted the ringpull off a can of iced tea and it frothed quietly over her fingers, dripping onto the carpet as she stared. “Get a room.”
* * * *
Breaking Leila Page 19
