Anything but Vanilla (2 page)

The muscles in his face tightened into a grin, and then he picked up her and the pace again, pounding into her like it was a race they had to win.

Kara continued to mouth the side of his neck where the skin was thinnest and his pulse raced just below the surface. He was slippery and hard between her thighs. Her clit, already prepped by his earlier teasing, shot out darts of pleasure each time he made a forward thrust. Why wasn’t it always this good? Why could she only get this sort of relief with a stranger in a seedy venue? Why hadn’t her life worked out, and did that matter when she could get sex this good?

‘Ooohh!’ The buzz built and suddenly burst. She screamed, panted, scored a few lines across his back. He continued to fill her up the whole while, until the moment passed and she realised he was still hard and hadn’t come.

Kara shook herself free of his arms. She knelt down on the quayside. Took a little risk – what the heck – and closed her mouth over the length of him. She’d said she was going to lick him clean. Well, instead she was going to suck him off.

The plan met with no resistance from Jack. Nah, his knees buckled a bit, but he had some handy railings to cling to, which was good, because she wasn’t letting him go. He tasted too nice: part her, part him, the whole ridiculously sexy.

Kara steadied herself, with one palm flat against his inner thigh, the other wrapped around the base of his cock. She liked that he wasn’t too long. He was nicely proportioned and she got one hell of a kick out of roving her tongue over the flare of the head and tickling the sweet spot just below the eye. When he started trying to claw at her hair in order to drag her closer, she worked with the roll of his hips.

‘You’re good at this. Oh, sweetheart.’ His knuckles were white against the vivid blue railing.

‘Are you going to come?’ she asked, grinning up at him in a facetious manner.

‘So close.’

They were back to the depth of discourse they’d shared inside the club. ‘I want to watch.’ Actually, not just watch. She wanted to watch and do. Kara rose and stood beside him with her back to the railing. She cupped his length with one hand and shoved her other hand inside her skirt so that she could rub herself in time with the thrust of his cock through the ring of her fingers. The low-level spark of her previous orgasm rekindled immediately. They almost raced. Who could cross the finish line first? Who could ejaculate the furthest? OK, he won hands down on that one. He was beautiful as he came, his face kind of screwed up and tortured looking, eyes closed, teeth gritted, as if he was doing something painful or hideous. Yet in those few moments he belonged to her totally.

Jack opened his eyes and stared at her. ‘You’re a dirty minx,’ he scoffed as he watched her give in to a minor explosion. The second big O of the day just never lived up to the first. Then he hitched up his jeans and tucked his cock out of sight. ‘Got somewhere to go?’ he asked. By which he meant: let’s continue this somewhere more comfortable.

‘Yeah – yeah, I have. I’m good.’ She dropped a kiss upon the tip of his nose, backed off, then returned to press another to those delicious lips of his. Then Kara was off, trotting across the tarmac back towards the club. She couldn’t face an awkward parting in the morning; better that they went separate ways now. And she definitely wasn’t looking for a relationship. No way. Not for a good long time.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ He moved forward as if he were about to jog after her.

Kara laughed and waved. ‘Back to my wedding party.’ She hoped he got the emphasis on
my
. The girls were probably scouring the dance floor for her by now. Being tipsy and high on the aftermath of awesome sex meant she could just about tolerate the thought of being found. As far as celebrations went, this one sucked, and sucked in a truly pointless, ridiculous way. It wasn’t a hen night, a point on which she’d had to correct several people. It was the fill-in party for what ought to have been her wedding night and an orgy load of sex in a hotel room before jetting off to Hawaii. Only Gavin David ‘Tosspot’ Covey had gone and ruined that by being a clingy control freak who insisted on knowing her whereabouts 24/7. More importantly, instead of apologising when she’d called the wedding off, he’d gawped at her in horror over the deposits they’d lose. No way was she signing up for a lifetime with him. She hoped the plane carrying him and Gemma –
you are so not my best friend considering how fast you jumped in to console him
– over the Atlantic was hit by lightning and dropped out of the sky. It seemed appropriate punishment somehow, except that she didn’t want to hurt anyone else on board so maybe they’d have to accidentally fall out of an open door or something.

Damn! And now her good mood was gone. Time to reinstate it with alcohol. A lone tear trickled down her face as she slipped back into the nightclub via the fire exit. At least she’d just had the most glorious sex she’d had in months, far better than that painting-by-numbers crap she’d been enduring with Gavin.

‘Hey, Kara, there you are.’ Her sister clamped a hand tight around her arm. ‘You’ve about thirty drinks lined up.’

She hoped that was Karen’s usual exaggeration.

‘Come and play catch up.’

* * *

Kara woke disoriented in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight so bright she could barely open her eyes flooded in through sheet-glass walls that surrounded her on three sides. Where the hell? For a horrible moment she feared she’d taken up some fool on his offer and ended up in his bed. Only there didn’t appear to be anyone beside her. Kara shook her head to try and dislodge the grogginess. Slowly her vision corrected. Karen’s place – she was in her sister’s conservatory, huddled beneath a throw on the garden swing they’d brought inside for the winter. No wonder nausea bubbled in her stomach like she’d swallowed poison. She’d been swinging in a hammock all night, and she was always travel sick.

The wail of her phone that had woken her compounded the ache in her head. Kara flailed around and eventually wrestled it out from the pile of discarded clothes she must have torn off in the dark. Not Gavin, she prayed, as she unlocked the phone screen. She never wanted to speak to him again. She’d already deleted his number but that was no guarantee that he’d done the same.

Christopher, the caller ID flashed up. ‘What do you want, baby brother?’ she croaked. Her throat was drier than a carton of crispy fried squid.

‘Oh good, you are still alive.’

Kara resisted the urge to tell him to fuck the hell off and opted instead to swallow the water she’d had foresight enough to bring to bed with her last night, but not wits enough left at the time to drink. Didn’t he realise she was off limits today, pre-booked for wallowing in a post-my-wedding-didn’t-happen party haze?

‘I heard a rumour that you and Karen crawled in around dawn.’

Fell, was more accurate. They’d only crawled after they tripped over the doormat. Thinking of which, boy, did her knees ache. Karen really needed to get a rug to put over those tiles. ‘What did you want?’ While it was entirely possible he’d called merely to be vindictive, even that couldn’t explain the hint of excitement in her brother’s voice.

‘I got the job.’ He gave a pause so she could make appropriate noises. ‘I’m off to New Zealand for twenty-six weeks to work on that sci-fi flick I’ve been talking about. Plus, I’m focus puller not clapper loader.’

Kara pulled a cushion over her head and settled down again. The pillow smelled faintly musty, like a caravan that had been locked up for too long. However, it did allow her to open her eyes without being dazzled. The conservatory had already reached temperate and was headed for blistering within another forty minutes or so. ‘Does that mean you get to operate the camera rather than just load the film?’ she asked. Chris had explained the various camera-related roles dozens of times, but she’d never yet assimilated the facts beyond something to do with angles, trajectories and making the images crisper. ‘That’s wonderful! Great news.’ Faking exuberance only compounded her headache. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until this evening to tell me?’

‘Oh, are you hung over?’ he crowed. ‘And no, it couldn’t wait.’ The line crackled and she guessed he was in the car on loudspeaker. ‘I’ve a flight to catch. I’m on my way to the airport now, and you haven’t heard the best bit yet.’

An enormous yawn stretched Kara’s jaw as she closed her eyes and tried to relax her brain while she waited to make appropriate ‘wow’ noises over whichever major star he was going to be working with. Unless he was about to offer her a job as chief pamperer to Johnny Depp and throw in a ticket to New Zealand, this absolutely could have waited.

‘You know that place I was looking at,’ Christopher said instead, which surprised her into jolting upright, and caused the swing to start rocking. Kara bounced against the cushions and dry heaved.

‘I didn’t get it, but it’s OK, because I found somewhere else that’s twice as good.’

‘That’s great,’ she said. Somehow she managed to disentangle one foot from the throw and place it on the floor, thus bringing the swing to a tremulous halt. ‘So, you’ve bought a house but you’re flying to New Zealand.’ Hopeless timing was obviously a genetically wired family trait.

‘It’s a barn rather than a house, and it’s on an island.’

‘You mean like Lindisfarne or the Isle of Wight?’

‘Nah, smaller. More like St Michael’s Mount only with fewer tourists. It’s called Liddell Island. It’s less than a mile across.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s just off the coast.’

Well, duh, she’d figured that. Where else was it going to be? She couldn’t see him moving to the Norfolk Broads.

‘Listen, K. I’ve got all the paperwork done. I just need you to pick up the keys for me. You’ll do that, right? You don’t mind.’

Of course she did. She’d rather not get out of bed today. Although, considering how much said bed kept moving, rising might not be such a bad plan. ‘Yes, I’ll do it. Just tell me where.’ She gave a sigh.

‘Thanks, Kara. Look, it needs a bit of work. I figured you could hang out there and fix it up while I’m away.’

She ought to have known there’d be more to this than just collecting some keys. Chris had a talent for layering things. He’d get you to agree to one thing and next thing you knew you were signed up for a month of hell. She was about to turn him down when he uttered the magic words. ‘I’ll pay you.’ That put an entirely different spin on things. Decorating was hardly her favourite pastime, but … ‘It has to be better than hanging out at Karen’s or going back to mum’s, right?’ Exactly, anything, bar being locked in a room with Gavin, was better than occupying a room in the family home. And since she was homeless – having sold her place to live with Gavin – and jobless – plain old economic downturn – this was likely the best offer coming her way.

‘All right. I said I’d do it. Give me some directions and tell me where to get the keys from.’ She jotted down some notes on the edge of the TV guide as Chris went through the details.

‘You’ll need to check the tide timetable before you make the crossing. The causeway floods at high tide for several hours. Once you’re on the island, you pick the keys up from Alaric Liddell at the fort.’

‘Little of Little Island,’ she joked.

‘Liddell,’ Chris corrected.

‘Yeah, I got it.’ Kara grimaced at the phone. ‘The Liddell king of the castle.’

On the other end of the line, Chris huffed. ‘Now you’re just being silly. Besides, it’s a fort, not a castle. Don’t you know the difference? I thought you did history.’

‘Evidently I missed the lesson on forts.’ Just as he’d missed the lesson on humour. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

‘Not that I can think of. Listen, I’m coming up to the turnoff for the airport. Skype me about the house and what needs doing and I’ll transfer you the money. Try and get there without flushing the car away. Talk to you later.’

‘Will do. Bye.’

He hung up without muttering a corresponding farewell.

‘Was that Chris?’ Karen wafted in straight from the shower smelling of lime and carrying two mugs of tea. She passed one over to Kara. ‘I had to get up. Mum phoned to nag me about you. She wants you over there later so you can have a talk. She’s still pissed off at you about the wedding.’

‘Yeah, I got that even though Gavin’s the controlling twerp, it’s still all my fault that the wedding is off. I think she actually suggested that I didn’t look after him right. Like if I baked him apple pie every night and did as I was told there wouldn’t be a problem.’

Karen’s face wrinkled in sympathy. Her lips made a tight pout. ‘I know. You don’t have to convince me. I went out with you last night to commiserate, didn’t I? That and I’ve already told you I think you were right to call it off, but you know how mum is. She was all geared up for the big day and now she’s disappointed because she doesn’t get to don her Donna Karan suit and flaunt it in front of your new in-laws. Give her time and let her have her rant. Deep down I’m sure she knows it was the only choice you had.’

It was bleeding typical of her family that everyone was worried over their mother’s disappointment and not the wreckage Gavin had made of her life. Kara scowled into her tea cup. Perhaps Chris had done her more of a favour than she’d initially thought. There was sure to be a downside – where her brother was concerned there always was, like she’d discover his new house was roofless – but anywhere would be an improvement on here.

‘Kara, I’m sorry I can’t offer you a bed here, but you know there’s not space,’ Karen started awkwardly. ‘Andrew will be back in an hour with the kids. You’re going to have to stay at mum’s.’

‘It’s OK. Chris has offered me his place.’

‘Isn’t Richard there?’

Kara shrugged and let Karen think that she was holing up with their brother’s on-off live-in lover at his rented apartment. Doing a disappearing act seemed like a grand plan. Isolating herself on Liddell Island, cut off from the mainland by the tide for hours at a time, suddenly gained magical appeal. No one would know her. She’d be able to wipe the slate clean and begin again. Maybe even have some fun. She’d made that promise to herself last night.