Gemini Heat (11 page)

Delia shuddered. Peter's home-made plonk was sinfully delicious, but it reamed out the inside of your head the next morning.

'You're on!' she said boldly, the prospect of drinking to forget Jake de Guile being suddenly irresistibly tempting. Especially in this neat, pleasantly decorated flat - one floor above her own - which felt exquisitely cool on a night that was otherwise unbearably oppressive. By the time she'd had enough wine to forget what was happening, she'd be beyond the thrall of temperature anyway. And then she could just crawl downstairs, summon Jake the Prince into her drunken dreams and masturbate herself to oblivion.

Feeling cheered by that prospect, she watched Peter fuss with glasses and bottles and ice, and once again felt that strange surge of interest.

Gentle Peter, their upstairs neighbour, with his soft brown hair, his skinny pale-skinned body and his large hazel eyes behind owlish horn-rimmed glasses. He was no de Guile, no fantasy sex-god, but tonight he had a surprising allure to him. And he certainly had a massive edge over Russell, she thought guiltily, realising how little she'd thought about the man who was supposed to be her boyfriend. It had been a turbulent day, admittedly, but after she'd left his flat, she'd almost forgotten he existed. She'd have to do something about
that
soon too.

'OK then, let's hear it,' said Peter folding his lean frame into the seat opposite hers, then taking a deep, and plainly much needed, swallow of his ice-cooled home-made wine.

'Well, I told you about the "big boss of all big bosses", didn't I?' She paused to take a sip of her own wine, and was silenced for a full thirty seconds. Its high-octane, fruit-loaded flavour exploded on her tongue - then seemed to descale the inside of her throat. 'Good grief, Pete, this stuff is lethal!' she croaked, taking another, more cautious sip.

'The boss of all bosses,' he prompted, making Delia look up sharply. That sexy, angry edge was back again, and behind the thick glass lenses that helped him to see, his puppy-dog eyes looked suddenly and dangerously hard.

Slowly, she began. Slowly, because the tale seemed sordid told from the outside and needed conveying with care. She hid nothing though, because this was Pete, her mate and Deana's, the one with whom they'd always shared their troubles.

Sexual honesty got easier as the wine bottle emptied. As the heavy fruit nectar slid more comfortably down her throat, it seemed natural to describe Jake more fully. Without thinking, she waxed lyrical about his lips, his hands and his cock. Then moved on drunkenly to the case of mistaken identity, and the Gemini Game. Which suddenly seemed a perfectly logical and acceptable way to conduct oneself. Oneselves . . .

And as the wine warmed her belly and loins she felt no shame in describing how she wished that tonight was 'her' night with her Prince, de Guile. How she craved again what she'd had that morning. And more. How she wanted to
know
she'd been taken this time, to feel it. Feel that big, smooth penis sliding into
her
and filling her as it had filled Deana at the exhibition. As it was probably filling her now - in some luxurious bed in some exclusive hotel or apartment.

"Tisn't fair, Pete!' she said, aware that she was slurring and that she was lolling ungracefully in her armchair. Her legs were splayed akimbo in a fair approximation of how they'd been on Jake's black leather couch. She was drunk, but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered but not having Jake inside her. She'd lost the toss and now her burning female furrow was making her suffer for it.

'It isn't fair at all/ she enunciated carefully, tugging at her shorts which were suddenly uncomfortable and clinging. Tight between her slim, hot legs. 'He thinks he's got "Delia" but he hasn't. He's got "Deana"!' She took another pull at her drink, surprised to find it brimming again. There was already an 'empty' on the table. 'I love her, Pete, I really do! But I wish to hell that she could've sprained her ankle or something.'

'I do too.'

The dead, blank seriousness in Peter's quiet voice was a new shock. It jerked her back to sobriety. He did what? Wish Deana had a sprained ankle? Or was it something else?

Looking up from her glass with new clarity, she saw a very different man to the Peter she knew and was fond of. This was an angry man. An aroused man. A man full of passion and fire, not the mild-mannered almost genderless friend that she always took for granted.

'You're in love with Deana, aren't you? she asked -the illuminations coming to her in droves.

'Yes,' he said crossly. As if the heat were suddenly too much for him too, he tugged off his baggy white T-shirt, tousling his hair in the process. Somewhere along the line, he'd removed his 'mad professor' glasses, and his eyes seemed ten times as bright without them. Or was it thwarted lust that was doing that? In a relapse into bleary tipsiness, Delia couldn't work out which.

'This must seem pretty weird to you,' he went on, pausing to swig down more wine. 'I'm telling you that I'm in love with a woman who looks just like you.'

'Not as weird as you think,' Delia answered. She took another drink of her own wine as an unthinkable idea occurred to her.

With the slow, simple rationality of the far from sober, she saw an elegant solution to their problems. To her sexual dilemma and Peter's.

'Do you want to make love to her?' she asked bluntly, as fire built low in her belly. She could see pictures in her head now. Pictures of Deana, her legs wide open, being possessed by the dark, ruthless Jake.

But no, it wasn't Deana! It was herself. Delia. Her face! Her body! If she closed her eyes she could slip into the scene: live it, make it happen. All she needed was a hard, male penis inside her.

And what if she could make an illusion for the man who provided that penis?

Draining her glass yet again, she rose to her feet and walked carefully across the room. Extremely carefully, because it seemed - very slightly - to sway . . . Pulling off her own T-shirt, she dropped down onto the sofa next to Peter, then cupped her bare breasts in her hands, offering them to him as if they were a pair of softly-ripe fruits.

'Make love to me, Peter,' she said, her voice faint. She flicked her nipples lewdly, to make them stiffen up and grow hard. For him.

'Delia ... I don't—'

'It's "Dee",' she corrected him, 'Dee Ferraro. I play games, remember?' The wine made her powerful and she reached for his narrow hand with its square, neatly trimmed nails. He shook, visibly, when she placed it on the slope of her breast.

'Just for tonight, Pete. Please?' It seemed strangely apt to be pleading. She would've grovelled to de Guile, wouldn't she?

'But I know the difference,' replied Peter, his voice cracking. He was protesting but his hand was already moulding her flesh. It was clear he was enjoying it.

'For comfort then ... If you can't pretend.'

'Oh Dee,' he sighed, moving in on her, even though she'd no idea whether it
was
for comfort. Maybe it was for fantasy's sake, after all?

For a moment, she drew back within herself. Calm and centred, she looked at the real man with her, not the sex-fiend who'd hijacked her body this morning.

Peter wasn't Jake. He wasn't dark, or mysterious, or an insatiable creature of wealth and power. But his smooth, pale body was hard and wiry - and far from unpleasant to her eyes.

His thin arms were strong as they pulled her to him and crushed her in a tight, shocking grip. Her nipples and his were pressed up against each other. And as his mouth met hers, he moaned into it, shimmying his body as if his small brown teats felt all the pleasure that her larger, rose red ones did.

His tongue was bold too. Probing and tasting as their wine-scented saliva mingled. It seemed a prelude to a far greater blending, a bolder probing. She sighed and sucked at his mouth.

'You're so good to me, Dee,' he murmured, then sucked hard on her tongue in return. He savoured the muscular flexible organ as if it were a sweetmeat or a lollipop. A nipple or a clitoris. Delia moaned, her hips lifting and beating against him with a life that was all of their own.

There was a pressure and a heat down there now, a pulsating, tingling discomfort that wasn't unpleasant at all. The mouth between her legs seemed to whimper and beg and cry out. She was hungry. Hungry for maleness. For flesh. To be filled . . . Perversely, she still knew that Jake de Guile would be perfection inside her. Even though it was Peter who was actually here with her. Here with his available penis. A penis that was hard against her body and pressing towards her sex like a missile homing blindly in on its target. Even several layers of cloth could do nothing to deflect it.

Suddenly she wanted to be naked on a mattress with her legs open wide to receive him.

'Come on, Pete, let's do it!' she purred, aware of her own unsubtlety, but helpless to do anything about it. Scrabbling at his shorts, she tried to free his cock and get her hands on it. The button on his waistband slipped easily through the worn button-hole, but as she started to unzip him, she felt her fingers grasped firmly in his.

'Slow down, Dee,' he whispered, taking her busy hands off him and holding them still in her lap. 'I've waited too long for—' He paused and smiled boyishly. 'For something like this ... I want it to last. I want to savour it. Just the way I've always imagined I would.'

This was a deviation from the fantasy pattern. Both with her, and by all accounts, with Deana, Jake had been swift in the taking and the pleasuring of his woman. In each case, of course, circumstances had dictated there be haste, but somehow slow leisurely sex was not what she associated with Jackson Kazuto de Guile.

Even as she thought this, she made a decision. She was with Peter now and it was Peter she'd have inside her. Jake would be hers - or she his - some other night.

'Let's go to bed, shall we?' she said, rising shakily to her feet. Unfastening her cool linen shorts, she pushed them down her legs with her panties tangled inside them. Naked, she took Peter's hand and urged him to his feet too. 'I've had enough of quickies on settees. I fancy some of that "savouring" of yours!'

A new Peter stood before her now, a tempting Peter whose worn old shorts were tented with magnificent promise. There was pleasure in sight, and Delia was ready.

'You're right. Let's do this properly.' He took her by the hand and escorted her decorously across the room. 'Let's go to bed, shall we . . . Delia?'

Somehow even Peter's bedsheets were cool. Delia sighed happily as she lay down on them and stretched out her limbs luxuriously. Reaching behind her head, she pulled out her hair-ribbon and let the whole brown glossy mass of waves fan out across the crisp white pillow. 'Come on, Pete. Join me,' she encouraged.

But for a full minute he just stood still, admiring her naked and honey coloured body.

'You're beautiful,' he whispered, sliding out of his shorts and underpants and lying down on the sheet beside her.

Who's beautiful? she wondered as he started to touch her. She felt spaced-out from the wine and languid from heat and arousal. It didn't seem to matter whether it was Deana he wanted, or herself, or even this peculiar amalgamated creature called 'Dee'. Neither did it matter

- at this precise moment - that the fingers at her breasts were Peter's. They were cool and gentle and skilled. It might matter later who he was, when Deana came back all aglow from Jake. But now it seemed perfectly wonderful to be with this thoughtful, less demanding lover. This lean, diffident man with his tentative sexual style and his surprisingly imposing penis.

His caresses were slow but extraordinarily sensuous

- as if he were trying to imprint the entire shape of her body in his memory. The pads of his fingers rode her smoothly but comprehensively, but didn't dive for the obvious zones. He seemed content to dally in less likely latitudes. A shoulder-blade. The inside of a forearm. The arch of a foot.

She wondered if he would want to lick her sex, and she parted her legs in readiness, trying to consciously forget that only this morning Jake had licked her there.

But Peter seemed happy enough with touching. Touching her belly, the edge of her pubic hair, the long inner slope of her thigh where it was beginning to get sticky with her juices. And as he touched, he kissed her mouth; pressing in but only lightly this time. He stroked the inside of her lips with his tongue then dabbed it delicately to hers.

The slowness, the circumspection, were unbearably tantalising and delicious. Did he know how hot it was making her? She supposed he did. For him this was a remarkable and special occasion. A fantasy come true. Even if he had called her 'Delia' out of courtesy. The gradual build-up was what he needed to make the moment fabulous and who was she to argue. 'Perfect' for him would surely mean 'marvellous' for her, and there might never be another night when wine would so blur the barriers.

When he finally touched her clitoris, she cried out hoarsely and orgasmed straight away. The intensity was incredible, and when she could quantify again, she was astounded that she'd felt so much sensation and ecstasy with not a single scrap of fantasy to help her. As she opened her thighs wider, and leaned into his slow rubbing hand, she was fully aware he was Peter and that her pleasure was complete because of him. She moaned his name spontaneously, and when she opened her eyes, and looked up into his dear, but rather short-sighted gaze, she could've sworn she saw the glitter of tears.