Authors: Sarah Manning
Unsticky (33 page)
‘I’m OK,’ Grace said flatly. Or it would have been flatly, if she wasn’t still panting like she was halfway through the London Marathon. ‘You go and have your shower and I’ll get on the cab thing.’
The proprietary stroke of her thigh was new, but the lack of orgasms was alas, getting very old.
Grace listened carefully for the shower then picked up where Vaughn had left off. It only took one stroke and all those delicious nerve-endings were thrumming insistently again because at least she knew how to get herself off. Grace’s fingers worked busily as the memories of the last fifteen minutes ricocheted through her brain’s pleasure centres. It was all there in glorious HDTV: Vaughn’s sweat-slicked skin skittering against hers, his ragged breaths, his cock driving into her . . . and Grace screwed her eyes tight shut and worked her hips a bit faster to get that good old orgasm thing going.
She wasn’t entirely sure when she registered the fact that the shower had stopped. Maybe it was the moment her eyes flickered open and she caught a glimpse of Vaughn standing in the doorway staring at her.
Every single millimetre of Grace was blushing. She knew that for certain because she was lying on Vaughn’s Frette bedlinen, stark naked. Her sticky hand was removed so she could curl into a ball and will herself to telepathically transport to another dimension.
‘Don’t stop,’ Vaughn said hoarsely, unbelievably, and the bed dipped as he sat down next to her. ‘You should have said that you hadn’t come. I’d have taken care of you.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ Grace mumbled, trying to press her face into the sheet but Vaughn’s hand was insistent on her hip as he forced her to turn over.
‘Look at me,’ he ordered, in that low, commanding tone that she was always too scared to ignore.
Grace’s eyelids fluttered open so she could watch Vaughn watching her. He didn’t look disgusted, repulsed or as if he was about to throw her and her sexual conflict out on to the street. He looked pretty horny actually. His eyes couldn’t decide whether they wanted to look at Grace’s nipples, which were standing to attention or her newly waxed snatch.
‘Really, it’s OK. I don’t normally, like . . . I don’t . . . not from sex,’ Grace blurted out. ‘God! Will you stop staring at me?’
Vaughn ignored her heartfelt plea, and stroked a finger along Grace’s arm. ‘You seemed to be managing just fine by yourself,’ he commented, and he was smiling and she didn’t know why. ‘And I can’t help but feel responsible.’
Now really was not the time for his inappropriate humour. ‘Go away,’ Grace said. ‘If you care anything for me, you’ll stop talking and go back to the bathroom.’
Vaughn moved but it was only to shove Grace across the bed so he could lie down and rest his damp head against hers. ‘Show me what you do when you’re alone,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘So I’ll know for next time.’
But there wasn’t going to be a next time because Grace was joining a nunnery the next morning. ‘I
can’t
!’
can’t
!’
‘Yes, you can,’ he said firmly, leaning over to bite the inside of Grace’s thigh at the same time that he took her hand and put it back where it had been, his fingers glancing over her clit so she had to force every muscle she had not to shiver. ‘Let me watch.’
Grace sighed because there was no way out, short of climbing over Vaughn, and he had a good four stone on her. She started moving her fingers cautiously until Vaughn took his hand away. She figured that she could do that for three minutes before she faked an orgasm, got dressed and went home to scrub her brain with bleach.
She couldn’t believe that she was letting Vaughn have a courtside seat while she prodded gingerly at her clit. There wasn’t a designer dress in the world that was worth this humiliation.
‘Do it properly,’ Vaughn suddenly snapped. ‘Or do you want me to do it for you?’
‘Shut up!’
But Vaughn didn’t shut up. He carried on talking, saying filthy little things in Grace’s ear until her fingers were rubbing frantically against her clit and she was lolling her head back against his shoulder.
‘You’re such a good girl, Grace, and you’re going to come, aren’t you? Because you want to and you really do deserve it . . .’
And that was all it took to have Grace arching for an eternity, a harsh little cry escaping as the world seemed to stop for one split second and she was reduced to nothing but sensation.
But another second passed and she was Grace again. Vaughn stroked the hair back from her heated face. ‘How old are you again?’
He knew exactly how old she was, but Grace didn’t have the energy to call him on it. ‘Twenty-three. Why?’
‘Because I’d have thought you’d have grown out of these hang-ups by now. And I have to say, I think you’ve had some very selfish lovers - oof!’ Vaughn added when Grace elbowed him in the ribs as she strove to put as much distance between them as possible. And God, she really wanted to tug the quilt over herself too.
She settled for glaring ferociously. ‘Maybe I should have said something, but it’s not the kind of stuff that you can just bring up casually . . .’
‘I’m going to make a note in my BlackBerry.’ Vaughn cut right through her heated defence. ‘ “Make sure Grace comes every time we have sex”.’
And it was such a stupid-sweet thing to say that Grace got over herself for the time it took to giggle and flop back on the bed, because Vaughn had seen everything now, several times over and there was no point in false modesty. She reached out a hand so she could prod him in the ribs again. ‘Oh, whatever.’
‘Whatever is right,’ Vaughn murmured, and he lifted her hand so he could press a kiss to her knuckles. It was an oddly gallant gesture after what Grace had just done, what he’d just asked her to do, and Grace was touched by it. Tonight was all about firsts so she scooched up the bed so she could rest her head on Vaughn’s shoulder and let him wrap an arm around her pleasure-heavy body.
Grace was just getting into the cuddling and thinking that maybe a little kissing would be nice too when Vaughn started gently extracting himself from her limbs, which had gone all limpet-like. ‘You can shower in the guest room, if you like.’
chapter eighteen
The next morning, Grace was more relaxed than she’d been in weeks. It helped that there was a Facebook message from Lola thanking her for the night before and apologising . . .
if I acted like an arsehole. I was seriously freaking out for most of the dinner, then we got lost again on the way back to the tube. Anyways, you, me and Laetitia should go out for a drink sometime.
if I acted like an arsehole. I was seriously freaking out for most of the dinner, then we got lost again on the way back to the tube. Anyways, you, me and Laetitia should go out for a drink sometime.
It was a relief to know that Lola had seen the real Grace peeking through, and it fortified her for an emotionally draining lunch with Lily, who was steeling herself for a weekend visit to Godalming to tell her parents that they had to move up the wedding because their precious only daughter was in the family way. After that, there was the big biannual fashion and beauty brainstorm to suffer through.
Grace could feel her eyelids drooping as Kiki wittered on about the It bag and how rumours of its untimely demise were the work of dumpy features writers who could never get on a wait list. Courtney was surreptitiously messaging someone on her iPhone, Lily was hiding behind her bigass Alberta Ferretti shades and absent-mindedly stroking her stomach, and Posy was nodding her head in agreement with every single thing that Kiki said.
Grace looked down at her folder of ideas, which were uncharacteristically sparse. She didn’t have the free time any more to do test shoots, mooch around Shoreditch sourcing new designers or leaf through obscure fashion fanzines. Not that that was going to stop her.
‘Maybe we could do a special on the new accessories,’ she piped up, when Kiki finally had to stop to draw breath. ‘The new It shoes or sunglasses or those killer skinny patent-leather belts. Like, the It bag is dead, long live the It shoes or whatever.’
There was a deathly silence, because the first rule of the biannual fashion and beauty brainstorm was that you didn’t speak until Kiki spoke to you. It was the second and third rule too. Grace cowered on her usual rickety chair, as she waited for Kiki to tear into her.
‘The advertising department would resign if we mention death and It bags in the same sentence,’ Kiki reminded Grace icily. She paused to glance down at her taupe-clad bosom as if she expected to see a garish fluorescent accessory nestling there, before giving the assembled throng a wintry smile. ‘Then again, they do love accessories. Courtney, can you get on that? And don’t use the in-house digital studio . . .’
Grace’s shoulders slumped.
Plus ça
fucking
change.
Plus ça
fucking
change.
‘. . . and have a bash at the copy, Gracie. Just extended sells for each spread and keep it cliché free, please. If I read “belt up” or “best foot forward”, I’ll fire you.’
Grace’s head shot up so fast that she bit her tongue and could only nod eagerly. It was the first piece of writing that Kiki had asked her to do in two years. Apart from making Grace draft emails to the
Skirt
staff to inform them that Kiki would be a guest judge on some tacky TV model show. ‘Sure th-thing,’ she stammered, beaming at Posy who’d just given her the thumbs-up.
Skirt
staff to inform them that Kiki would be a guest judge on some tacky TV model show. ‘Sure th-thing,’ she stammered, beaming at Posy who’d just given her the thumbs-up.
But what made it the best day ever wasn’t Bunny then getting reamed out for mucking up Kiki’s soy latte order but the flat, square turquoise box that Ron from the postroom handed to Grace, two minutes after she got out of the meeting. ‘You have to sign for it,’ he grunted, eyes fixed firmly in the vicinity of Grace’s nipples.
Grace knew for an absolute fact that no one had ordered anything from Tiffany’s and suddenly any similarities between her and Holly Golightly didn’t seem to matter so much. She quickly untied the white ribbon, lifted the lid and scrabbled through tissue paper to unearth a tiara. A tacky plastic tiara that still had a Claire’s Accessories price tag on it.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said when Vaughn answered the phone. ‘You really shouldn’t have.’ She couldn’t hold back her gurgle of laughter.
Of course, Vaughn delivered the punch line, which just made Grace laugh even harder. ‘I offered to buy you a tiara and I’d hate you to think I wasn’t a man of my word.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Grace giggled. ‘Really makes my highlights pop, thank you.’
‘I always send you flowers but a three-pound gag gift is the only time you phone to thank me and don’t send me a text message instead?’ Vaughn enquired idly. ‘Actually, I think this is the first time you’ve called.’
The flowers always put in an appearance each morning after a Vaughn night before, apart from the last couple of weeks when he’d been furious with her. Grace had asked Madeleine to stop sending them to the offices but to Montague Terrace instead, because the PR excuse was wearing thin. She divvied up the bouquets between Ilonka and Anita on the floor above her and poor Eileen on the ground floor, who always told Grace that no one had bought her flowers since her husband died. Grace kept every third bunch for herself and even if she knew the flowers were nothing more than a fake token for a fake relationship, it always lifted her heart a little to wake up and see her Murano vase crammed full of delicately shaded flowers that tried hard to give off a scent in the dankness of her flat. But she couldn’t tell Vaughn any of that so Grace decided to keep this light before it veered off down dark paths. ‘Well, fake plastic diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I thought that warranted a phone call.’
‘I’ll remember to buy you fake plastic diamonds more often then.’ They were flirting, which hadn’t happened before. It was a shame because Grace had a feeling that Vaughn could be an incorrigible flirt if he tried hard enough. ‘But actually I’m glad you called. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’
God, that sentence never led to anything other than tears and recriminations. Grace shoved the tiara under a pile of invoices. ‘Oh? What was that?’
‘Last night, when I was in the bathroom - the
first time
I was in the bathroom - I remembered that I needed to say something to you, but then you distracted me.’ Vaughn sounded wistful, as if the memory of how Grace had distracted him was a very pleasant one.
first time
I was in the bathroom - I remembered that I needed to say something to you, but then you distracted me.’ Vaughn sounded wistful, as if the memory of how Grace had distracted him was a very pleasant one.
‘Hey, you did your fair share of distracting too,’ Grace pointed out, relief washing over her because he wouldn’t have brought
that
up if he’d been planning to terminate her contract. Probably.
that
up if he’d been planning to terminate her contract. Probably.
‘I’m going to be away from London for a couple of weeks and I’m afraid I’m not going to ask you to fly out on the weekends,’ he said, and it was enough to have Grace tensing up all over again. ‘I’m going to be constantly on the move; lots of loose ends to tie up before December.’
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