I could feel his cock, thick and hard, pressing against the lips of my naked sex. This was all too raw, too sudden, far too dangerous… but I had no more chance of stopping than I did of flying.
As if he’d read my mind, he broke the kiss.
“You are far too sexy.” His hands stroked my hair, his fingers smoothing over the dampened strands. “You’re driving me crazy. I’ve been feeling as if I’m sixteen again, carrying this damned condom round with me day and night. Never believing I’d have the chance to use it.”
“I touched myself last night thinking of you,” I whispered, and saw his eyes widen in amazement at my words.
“God, Erin,” he choked out. “That’s such a turn-on. You have no idea what you’re doing to me…”
Swiftly, he fumbled for his discarded shorts and pulled a foil wrapper from the back pocket. He tore the wrapper open, rolled it on.
This was my last opportunity to say no… the final chance to stop this. Instead I was kneeling over him, clutching his broad shoulders, just about panting with desire as his fingers moved between my legs and traced circles of pleasure over my swollen lips before slipping inside.
“You’re so ready, so wet. You’re so needy to be fucked.” His voice was husky.
“So do it,” I whispered. His words were making me feel reckless and dizzy with lust. His fingering had turned me molten, liquid. I wanted to melt into him.
I reached down and grasped his thick shaft, feeling his heat, his hardness under the slick, stretched latex. His breathing quickened as I guided him to the place where his fingers had so recently pleasured. I was so hungry for him; there was a throbbing need deep inside me that I was desperate for him to fill.
His cock gently touched the delicate flesh at my entrance, a sensual, inviting caress that had me moaning in anticipation of what was to follow. I moved my hips and his head eased inside me, pushing my swollen lips apart. I let out an involuntary gasp at the exquisite stretching sensation, as the nerve endings at my entrance pulsed with pleasure.
Nicholas was breathing fast, staring into my eyes, his handsome face rigid with desire. His gaze was consuming me and at that moment, I knew he was as much of a slave to his body’s needs as I was to mine.
I pushed down, taking him deeper inside me, catching my breath at the unexpected size of him. He was big… big everywhere, from his height and the width of his shoulders to his broad, square hands and the thick hardness of his cock. It felt so sexy to be stretched and opened by him. This was more than erotic… it was possession.
I felt myself tauten with delight and from the breathy groan he uttered, I knew he had felt me, too. His hands closed over my thighs, easing me all the way down onto him as he arched his hips to meet me.
I let out a small moan as he buried himself to the hilt inside me. The sense of fullness was incredible, causing my breath to come in shallow gasps. My brain was whirling at the enormity of what I was doing with this man, this philanderer who’d made his disreputable intentions clear at the first opportunity. There was no going back now, no denying what we were doing. He was having his way with me, using me just like every other one of the slutty women he’d smooth talked into bed… this wasn’t lovemaking. It was fucking. His cock was all the way in me… oh God, but why did it feel so good? I was quivering, throbbing with the intensity of my desire.
“It’s okay, Erin” he murmured, as if sensing my thoughts. “It’s all right to let yourself feel pleasure.” His face was open with lust, his features slack, and staring at him made me think of a fallen saint.
His hips rocked rhythmically under me, opening me fully to him with his deep, strong thrusts. Then, grasping my buttocks, he angled himself into me, rubbing over a sweet spot so responsive that it sent liquid fire coursing through me. I started jerking involuntarily toward him in reaction to this, my body a puppet on his strings, and he groaned.
“That’s good,” he murmured. His fingers stroked my breasts, feeling my nipples erect and defined through the fine, damp fabric of my blouse. He squeezed them between his fingers and thumbs, then rubbed his fingertips over them, pinching them gently, and my mouth opened at the intense sensual gratification this offered.
“You like it?” he whispered. “You want more?”
His skin was hot, slick, beaded with the same perspiration that was trickling down my body, out here, thanks to the furnace of the morning and the extremes of our lust.
He squeezed my nipples again, in rhythm with the thrusts of his cock, then as he pushed harder inside me, began rubbing his fingers over them rapidly. The liquid delight of his touch coursed deeply and powerfully through me, igniting every cell of my body. The friction of his thick cock inside me caused me to shudder … a sensation which became too sweet to bear. I could feel myself coiling and tightening around him. My heart was banging as I gasped for air.
“I’m… oh, yes, I’m…”
With a hot rush of delight, I came, crying out in amazement at the intensity of the release. I dug my fingers into his solid biceps, squeezing him hard, shuddering as the waves of my orgasm causing me to jerk and writhe.
He grasped my buttocks, his hands digging into my flesh as he thrust, hard and rapidly, before letting out an explosive cry and pulling me down toward him.
“Ah, God, Erin.”
Plastered against his body, clamped to him by his urgent hands, my rough breathing matched his own. I felt his hips powerfully convulse, and the deep, strong pulses of his release inside me.
I lay on top of Nicholas, his grip holding me close. I could still feel him inside me, could feel the pounding of his heart and the rapid rise and fall of his chest. As reality filtered in once more, I became aware of the sounds around us. The splashing of water, the trill of the cicadas, the occasional bird call from the nearby trees.
The boiling heat of the sun, now higher in the sky.
After a while, his grasp relaxed and I sat up, then climbed carefully off him and stood on legs that felt surprisingly weak. My shorts, still damp but now warm, were lying discarded near the cliff. Feeling suddenly self-conscious about being outside in the open, even though I knew we were in the middle of nowhere on Nicholas’s private land, I pulled them on.
Nicholas walked to the car—to dispose of the condom, I assumed. I watched him as he returned, picked his clothes up and got dressed.
I didn’t know what to say. I knew I should feel cheap and guilty—and I did—but it did not alter the truth of my attraction to him. The physical tug was so strong it made me want to hold him now. To push his tousled hair back from his face and smooth the creases out of his rumpled shirt. To bury my face in his neck and inhale his musky, masculine scent.
Be strong, I told myself, turning away to survey the bushveld. Don’t cross the line between fucking and intimacy. You can’t let yourself become entangled with him. What you’re enjoying now is pure physical indulgence. You’re using him just as he’s using you. This is fucking. It’s your weakness, revenge, celebration of survival, however you want to try and justify it. Whatever, it’s certainly nothing to be proud of.
And yet, my body had never felt more blissfully satiated in my life. Not with any other lover… not even with Vince.
Nicholas walked toward me and I braced myself to resist his touch in the unlikely event that he offered it.
And then I caught my breath as, only a few yards away, the tiniest and most perfectly formed antelope I had ever seen, standing just a little over two feet high, picked its way delicately through the long grass before leaping onto a low shelf of rock.
His hand grasped mine and, forgetting my promise to myself, I held it tightly. We both stood still as we watched and a smile of pure wonderment spread over my face.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed, and even at that sound the animal’s large ears flicked. “Is it a baby?”
“No,” he whispered back. “Fully grown.”
We watched as, with another trotting jump, it soundlessly crossed the rock and van
ished once again into the long grass.
“It’s a steenbok,” Nicholas told me, still speaking in a low voice. “One of the very smallest antelope. I didn’t even know there were any in this part of the estate. There were none listed in the inventory.” Glancing at him I saw my own delight reflected in his eyes.
“I guess you got a small buck bonus,” I joked, and he laughed, smoothing my hair—which was now in a state somewhere between tangled and dreadlocked—back from my face.
“I guess I did.”
Five minutes later we were in the car and heading back to the lodge, with the air conditioning on full blast and slowly starting to cool down and banish the oppressive heat.
“So you don’t know exactly what animals are in this section of your park,” I observed.
“Well, I thought I did. They were listed in detail, but there are supposed to be two red hartebeest in here that I’ve never managed to spot, and there are more eland than were listed, as well as that little steenbok.”
“What made you buy this place? Did you live in the area previously?”
“No. I like space and solitude, though, and this offered both at a time I needed it. I’ve lived…” He tightened his lips as if aware he was telling me too much, but unwilling to stop. “I’ve lived in Johannesburg, Cape Town, London, and Zurich, mostly. Those are the cities where I grew up. Then I’ve worked in a lot of other, less civilized places in my capacity as a paramedic. Ivory Coast. Sri Lanka. Afghanistan. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months.”
He stopped speaking but didn’t look at me, instead staring ahead as the grass-lined track unrolled in front of us.
“And your family? Where are they now?”
Nicholas shrugged, the gesture at once defensive and angry. “Erin, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t concern you.”
“Well, all right, then,” I shot back, unreasonably hurt by this dismissal. “Like you said, I’m here for a week, then I’m gone. Now I’ve fucked you, which I’ll probably regret, but I’ll do it again if and when I feel like it. Apart from that, you’re right. I shouldn’t give a shit about you.”
I stared angrily out of the passenger window. Not even the sight of three energetically cantering zebra could bring a smile to my face.
“I’m sorry,” Nicholas said after a while. I glanced at him. Was it my imagination, or did he look rather hurt by my callous words?
“Whatever.” I was still smoldering, unwilling to accept his apology.
“I’m not used to being asked that kind of question.” The car’s tires rolled onto smooth paving as we drove up the driveway.
Now I swung round to face him. “Nicholas, that kind of question is perfectly normal. In fact, I was just trying to make polite conversation when you went all weird on me. Jeez, what the hell’s a safe topic around you apart from wildlife?”
“Almost anything. Books, art, music, current events. You name it. As long as the topic isn’t Nicholas de Lanoy, I’m happy.”
“I’ll certainly bear that in mind in the future.” He parked in the garage and I opened the door, planted my feet on the ground, and then on impulse, leaned back in. “And I would like you to know that you don’t have a monopoly on fucked-up family life. You’re not the only one. So, for your information, Erin Mitchell is also off-limits as a conversation topic from now on.”
I slammed the door behind me and stomped out of the garage into the cool, airy lodge.
CHAPTER 13
I was halfway down the corridor leading to my bedroom when I realized that the lodge was not just cool, but deliciously cold. Music was playing from the dining room and I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner coming from somewhere nearby.
I entered my bedroom to find Miriam folding a small pile of freshly laundered clothes and towels into the cupboard.
“Good morning,” she said cheerfully, seeming not to notice my disheveled appearance or, more probably, simply accustomed to women looking the way I did when they’d spent some time in the company of her boss.
“Morning,” I responded with a tight smile.
“We have full power again. The main supply is restored,” she told me.
“Oh, that’s great.”
“It is, yes. We were lucky. The damage was not on this side of the river. The storm knocked a transformer out on the other side, so they were able to repair it this morning. I will bring coffee now. And would you like a waffle? Ice cream and fruit salad?”
“Thanks,” I told her. It was easier not to resist Miriam when she’d made her mind up. In that respect, I had to admit, she had something in common with her employer.
After she’d left the room I stepped under the shower to wash and condition my hair. When I stood under the hot water I thought I could smell Nicholas on me, and I felt both cheap and promiscuous as I poured half the bottle of shower gel into my hands to banish his scent from my skin. I soaped my sensitive breasts, and washed between my legs, where I was still swollen and slick from the sex we’d had.
My body was a mess of bruises. The one on my chest was looking worse every day—a grim thunderstorm landscape of purples and yellows. It was tender to the touch, but looked worse than it felt. Others, too. A small bruise on my upper thigh and one on my calf.
And, on the inside of my left arm, the incriminating line of blue-black fingerprints from where Vince had grabbed me. Those, also, were at their worst now. Another few days and I hoped they would fade, together with the giant bruise on my hipbone, now purple, red, and yellow, from where I’d fallen against the corner of the desk when he’d yanked me towards him.
Back in the bedroom, wearing clean clothes and with my hair finally combed out and under control again, I devoured the large, late breakfast, which Miriam had left on the table. I was surprised by my appetite until I remembered what a physically active morning it had been.
I turned my phone on.
Waiting to see if I had a message from Vince, I felt acute nausea. What would I tell him? How would I word my story? Would he be able to pick up from my voice what I had done?
There was no message although the network notified me I’d had three missed calls from him since my phone had been off. I called him, praying he wouldn’t answer, and he didn’t. I left a brief message, telling him I hoped his shoot was going well and that I loved him. I felt sick while I was saying the words. Would the rest of my marriage feel like this—as if I was living a lie?
I turned my phone off again and connected to the Internet to find I had mail. The insurance company had sent a claim form for me to fill in, and Samantha had messaged me again.
Hey, girlfriend… Sam’s mail read. I haven’t heard back from you since my last mail. What’s going on? Are you sure you’re okay? Please write soon… I’m worried. Love and hugs.
Reading her words made me smile.
I took a little while to compose a reply.
Hey girlfriend yourself!
I’m sorry about the lack of communication. I didn’t know how best to reply to your last mail. I was hoping if I waited a day or two, everything would be sorted out and I could tell you it was all fine. But instead, it’s all gotten much more complicated. It’s only since I’ve been apart from Vince that I’ve had a chance to realize how crazy jealous he can be. And that’s not even the worst of it.
I paused for a moment, thinking what my next words should be.
I’ve just been unfaithful to Vince with the man who saved me from drowning, the one I told you about, who owns this estate and who’s a serial womanizer. I don’t know how I feel now or what to do. I feel very alone. I’ve made some stupid decisions and I think they might have started further back than this morning. My life is a mess at the moment and I don’t know how to fix it.
I stared down at the words on the screen.
This was a confession. It was dangerous.
Please, please don’t tell Vince any of this. Strictest secrecy, okay?
This email could get me into big trouble. I should delete it or at the
very least, make it less incriminating. In the end, I didn’t. Before I could change my mind, I pressed send. I watched it go, feeling so tense that when there was a knock on my bedroom door, I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Who—who is it?” I fumbled with the mouse, clicked the window closed.
“It’s me. Nick.”
Nick?
“What is it?” And then, realizing the idiocy of conducting a conversation with him through a closed door, I added, “Come in.”
He opened the door and walked in. He, too, looked freshly showered. His damp hair was the color of honey and he was wearing a smart white golf shirt with the leopard logo I now recognized. I could see fine golden hairs on his bronzed forearms. I wanted to touch him. I craved the feeling of his skin under my fingertips. I knew exactly what it would be like—a little warmer than my own and surprisingly silken to the touch.
I shook my head briefly, hoping to clear these dangerous, intruding thoughts.
“Sit down,” I said, and he took a seat on the armchair nearby.
“Much more pleasant in here with the A.C. operational,” he observed. “Anyway, I came to tell you we’ve been invited to a party.”
“A party?” I frowned at him, confused. “Both of us? Who…?”
“It’s to celebrate the electricity being reconnected, apparently.” I realized Nicholas looked as perplexed by this invitation as I felt. “Thandiwe and Berndt are holding it—the owners of the estate where we went yesterday, remember? They’ve invited everyone on this side of the river; a total of seven households, including ours.”
“Well, we’d better be polite and go, then.”
“I suppose so.” He gave me a baffled smile. “This is a new one for me. Socializing with all the neighbors.”
I couldn’t help feeling amused that, finally, I’d found an area where Nicholas felt out of his depth. Saving people’s lives and starting up businesses were clearly all in a day’s work for him, but attending a local get-together was not.
Drowning Page 11
