Everything You Want: Everything For You Trilogy 2 (15 page)

“Fall backwards,” he instructs. “Stay up on here though.” He gives me his hand.

I’ve never engaged in sexual gymnastics before. I’m embarrassed but turned on at the same time. The feelings coursing through my body threaten to overwhelm me.

He notices my apprehension. “It’s okay,” he encourages. “Don’t think about it. Just do as I say.”

I drop slowly backwards, holding tight to his hand, until my shoulders touch the seating cushions. My pelvis is arched all the way up onto the arm. Jack manoeuvres between my thighs, which he separates wide, pulling me towards him.

I wonder if he will remove my knickers. But not for long. With sheer brute strength he rips the gusset out of them until I’m wearing only a string of elastic round hips and thighs.

When I flinch at the lustful nature of his actions he reminds me, “You asked for rough, remember?” He never forgets a thing.

Ripped knickers feel so much more licentious than total nudity. He strokes me with his hand before his mouth rediscovers that most intimate part of my anatomy. I jerk in sensitivity, fully aware of how smooth and hairless I remain after last weekend’s Bollywood wax. Every sensation is extra intense to the touch of his lips and teeth and tongue. He takes time to look, feel and taste, exploring me thoroughly in a way I’ve never discovered myself.

My face burns but my body quickly catches up when his fingers enter me. I practically combust as he strokes back and forth rendering me mindless yet focused down below until I lose all decency and moan out loud.

“Please don’t leave me hanging.”

He stands, pulls my thighs around his hips, upending me even more, centres himself and drives straight into me.

“Then show me what I want to see.” His voice is thick with arousal as he withdraws and penetrates, pushing through any resistance with absolute power until he’s fully sheathed.

I crash so hard and fast I’m humiliated. He controls my body totally. As I crest, screaming, he pulls me up by my arms and we just make contact before he convulses his own release, crushing me to him as I draw him up hard inside me in one momentous spasm.

He grunts approval. “I adore your body, kitten.” His words emerge between gritted teeth. We cling to each other riding the powerful paroxysm together. He doesn’t seem any more able to let go of me than I am of him. “I’m an addict. The more I have you, the more I want,” he says, stroking back my hair and staring into my eyes as if determining where his affliction lays.

I’m not sure if he’s suggesting it’s good or bad either. It’s a mixed message although he doesn’t approve of those and I’m not pointing it out. His heart pounds hard enough to rock right through me. As he caresses the length of my spine, I rest my cheek against his chest. When I’m in a place like this one I wonder if in some parallel universe we might even stand a chance. Yet as soon as he withdraws I feel the separation acutely. I need him to hold me close forever.

“Put your clothes back on. If I try to talk to you looking like that, I’ll never say what I have to.”

“Have to?” I really don’t care for the sound of that.

“You’ve been far too much of a distraction already.” He grazes my cheek gently with the backs of his knuckles. “This wasn’t the reason I came here but you’ve got me side-tracked.”

My heart sinks like a pebble in a pond. I was right. Sex with me is merely a distraction for Jack. He pulls away to pick up my dress, dropping it over my head and turns me to zip it while I lift my hair out of the way.

He pauses. “Thank you, kitten.” The gentle kiss he drops on the back of my neck signals an ending somehow. He retrieves his own things and clothes himself as I walk to the sofa meaning to sit.

It’s a bad move. All I can see is us doing unspeakable things when I look down. Things that mean less emotionally to Jack than they do to me. My limbs tremble. It’s stupid really. What could Jack possibly tell me that would frighten me so much? There’s really only one thing I dread. And I know it’s coming already.

“What have you come here to say to me, Jack? Face to face.” It’s rather brave of me to confront the finality directly, considering every atom in my body screams at me to put my hands over my ears, hum loudly and refuse to hear it from his lips.

“Sit down.”

I sit up the other end to our recent activities. I don’t need that in my mind on top of everything else. I expect him to sit beside me but he paces back and forth on the rug in front of the fireplace. Perhaps he dreads this conversation too. My stomach churns.

“You’re returning with me on Monday.”

“You said that.” I’ve accepted I can’t run away from CaidCo forever and Lassec doesn’t belong to me anymore.

“To Belvedere.”

“Ok-ay?” It’s not an agreement exactly. We agreed Belvedere together at the weekend but Monday until Friday night we live apart.

“You’ll be living at Belvedere for the foreseeable future.”

I snort. “Roomies?” That makes no sense. Isn’t he going to tell me it’s over? This is a departure from our four weekend deal. And what about Amanda? I know he’s just said I’m like a drug to him but I know that’s only sex talk.

He snaps at me. “For God’s sake, Tabitha, this is no laughing matter.”

“That’s not usually the way a man asks a woman to move in with him.” I’m not going to make this easy for him but I’m hurt by his reaction. I’ve already given every part of me to Jack, for love.

“Your things have already been brought from your apartment to mine.”

“You had no right to assume that would be okay, without my permission.” But he did have the key to do it, after he kicked my apartment door down and replaced it with one of his own.

“I’m trying to operate damage limitation here.”

How ironic, I think, remembering the shattered wood and the trauma that he’s wreaked on my heart. I stand up, done with him glaring down at me like I’m some errant school girl who’s been called to the Principal’s office. The strategy is flawed. He’s so tall he towers above me anyway; an immoveable wall of muscled testosterone who has just screwed me stupid and I feel weak, slight and insignificant in his latest grand scheme to humiliate me.

Yet I know exactly what he’s referring to. “Still sorting out the mess?” That same mess he’d been discussing with Amanda last night. Me.

A stormy frown mars the space between his eyebrows. “Well if you insist on publically making out with every male you encounter.”

I feel slapped. Is he still seething about Luc? And Ben Gunn? I thought we’d got beyond all that. I thought he’d forgiven me for last night and quite admired Gunn’s nerve, actually. The knot tightens in my belly as I wonder if Jack considers I make myself too easily available to him and therefore is inferring, perhaps to anyone else who looks my way twice. Whichever it is, he’s not happy.

And neither am I. “That’s bloody unfair and you know it.”

“Is it?” He takes a step towards me but this time I won’t back down.

“Yes it bloody well is.”

“You really must learn to show more dignity.”

Dignity? I stalk half way across the room in the opposite direction, turn and stomp back again. He isn’t getting away with an accusation like that. “He. Kissed. Me.” I focus on Gunn and diplomatically neglect to refer to Luc’s groping. That one was partially my fault. And as for Jack… And everything happening here…

“You may have fled the repercussions of having photographs of yourself kissing two different men in the space of an hour, plastered all over the newspapers last Monday but I had to stay and cover your rear end.”

I laugh out loud without any trace of mirth in it as I think about the current state of what covers my rear end. I’ve just had the knickers ripped off me by Jack with his tongue hanging out. “It was you I fled!” More accurately the sight of him and Amanda together. “But you’re more interested in hounding my rear end. I didn’t ask you to follow me here. You could have sent a lawyer to demand I vacate your premises. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

He attempts to calm the row escalating, on his part at least, with a sigh. “Between us we’ve created a situation and between us we’re going to have to remedy it.”

“So you admit some of the fault, then?”

“I do.”

That simple statement takes the wind out of my sails. I stop shouting. “I don’t have to live at Belvedere to do my part.”

“Oh yes you do. That is not up for discussion.” Instantly he’s uptight with me again.

“I’ll accept any blame. Tell me what you want me to say to make you look like the injured party and I’ll issue a press release.” Amanda can have you back with bells on.

It’s Jack’s turn to laugh without humour. “Things aren’t quite that simple.” His eyes dart shards of cold blue anger in my direction. “Sit down, Tabitha.”

I do.

So this is it. I made Jack Keogh look like he can’t keep control of a woman. And I did it in the public eye. Nice one. When I crash and burn I really smash and blaze. And Jack doesn’t like being collateral damage. Perhaps that’s what this weekend has been all about. He may not hit women but he certainly knows how to punish them.

“I’ll talk to the press,” I say, calmly, turning my heart to stone. “Tell them you’ve already dumped me for Amanda.”

“Amanda? Don’t drag her into this. The only thing you’ll be saying to the press is you’re one very happy woman.”

Happy? He believes Amanda doesn’t have anything to do with this awful situation and he’s trying to protect her. I realise he wouldn’t want to drag his lover into my PR mess but I don’t understand how me telling the press I’m happy fixes anything.

I’m totally confused. “Call me stupid but you’ll have to help me out here, Jack.”

I’m driving him crazy. He tears at his hair like I might already have made him committable. “You are not stupid.” He takes a deep breath and stares steadily at me. “And I’ve already issued a press release.”

I freeze. “What?”

“You heard me.” He’s uncompromising.

“Yes, I did. What press release?” So this is it. He’s already exposed me as a trollop. That’s why he’s reluctant to tell me but I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “Whatever you said to the press, I won’t dispute it. You have my word. Why should I stay at Belvedere?” Goose bumps lift all over my skin. Exactly what the hell has he told them about me? Something isn’t quite making sense. I don’t like the fact that Amanda is in this up to her neck whatever Jack believes. She hates me being anywhere near the man she wants.

“So I can protect you.”

I can’t sit any longer so I pace the room imagining the worse. “No doubt you made me out to be a complete sexual predator.
Can’t take her anywhere. Lock up your sons. I was totally misled as to the sort of woman she is...blah, blah, blah.
Fine.”

He actually has the nerve to laugh at me. “A submissive little thing like you a predator? Who is ever going to believe that?”

Is he comparing me to Amanda? Is that their private little joke? Poor, weak, foolish, besotted Tabitha.

“I can protect myself.” From you and her if necessary.

He isn’t done diminishing me yet. “Protect yourself? I’ve never known anyone who can throw herself at trouble quite as easily as you can. Or as often. Someone’s got to manage your reputation.”

I wheel round to glare at him. “Manage me? What are you hiding? If you’ve fixed the press why do I have to hide myself away at Belvedere?” Now I’m really worried. Has there been some backlash? Jack Keogh is popular. Eligible. Admired. Amanda aside, powerful society females won’t take kindly to thinking some little nobody has played fast and loose with their philanthropic, playboy bachelor of the decade.

He exhales like he knows I’m not about to like what I’m going to hear.

“I’ve announced our engagement to be married.” His expression is a combination of recoil and defiance but he holds fast to my incredulous stare.

My behind hits the sofa cushions with a whumph. Try as I might my lungs simply won’t expand. Is this some horrible set-up so he can publically dump me again? His and Amanda’s cruel way of finally kicking the stupid little upstart to the curb? I stare at him looking for some reasonable explanation.

Now, he decides to sit down beside me and take my unresisting hand in his. His voice is mild and gentle. “Press photographs of me... kissing you up against the wall at the Commerce Ball in that unfortunate manner, don’t look quite so damaging to you when you’re my fiancée.”

Ravaging me, he means. I saw the pictures. Everybody I know saw the pictures. “And Ben Gunn?” I manage to choke out the issue that blows his argument right out of the water. “There are pictures of him and me doing pretty much the same too.” I remember Gunn forcing his filthy tongue down my throat, his groping paws all over me. It still makes me want to hurl. Courtesy of good old Amanda. “Was I having a final fling before the marital chastity belt went on?” I claw at my neck, at a phantom of the distraction necklace Jack gave me to wear before the ball with the ironic little charm. “Christ Almighty, you put the padlock in the wrong place.” I think I’m getting a bit hysterical.

“Not even gallows’ humour, kitten.” He glares to back up his point. “I suggested to reporters that Gunn was young, drunk and got a little carried away with his congratulations over our engagement,” he explains. “I’ve made sure there are subsequent press photographs of him shaking my hand over-enthusiastically and thumping me on the back too. He was delighted for us.” Jack’s tone is so way beyond cool I’m getting frost bitten. He sounds like he’d rather strangle the guy than shake hands with him. Jack looks disgusted at the thought he had to go through such a charade over me. With Ben Gunn.