Dark Secret (12 page)

As she squatted on the chair, her feet as far apart as the seat would allow, her skirt rose up and Chris realised with a thrill of excitement that she was wearing crotchless panties. He put his hands on her waist and without any preliminaries at all thrust roughly into her.

As he thrust he put his mouth close to her ear
and each time she was pushed forward by the force of him Rowena heard him whispering, ‘You’re mine, mine, do you hear?’

The words increased her excitement and she slid her right hand beneath the hem of her skirt so that she could stimulate herself but it was hardly necessary. Already her excitement was mounting and when Chris moved his hands upwards and cupped her breasts through the linen shirt she contracted the muscles of her pelvic floor with the result that her pre-orgasmic tremors intensified. As her half-brother muttered, ‘I’ll never let you go, never,’ her body exploded in a dizzying mass of pleasure until she slumped forward with her head resting against the rounded top of the kitchen chair.

Chris leant against her back, his breathing gradually calming. When his erection had subsided he slid out of her and with one final tweak of her nipples stepped away, adjusting his clothing.

When he left her, when her body was physically separated from his, Rowena felt a shiver of fear. Suddenly she wanted him back inside her, not for the sex – she was sated now-but to reassure herself that they were still close.

Chris saw her tremble. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. I’m so afraid all the time.’

‘It isn’t your heart that’s going to be broken, it’s Harriet’s. She’s falling in love with Lewis.’

Rowena climbed down off the chair and pulled her skirt back into place. ‘Don’t be stupid, she doesn’t know him except physically. Anyway, Harriet doesn’t look to me like the kind of girl who falls in love. She’s much too sensible – an
admirable English virtue.’

‘I think you’re wrong, but it needn’t worry you.’

‘It would worry me if it were true,’ responded Rowena, running a hand through Chris’s hair in a proprietory manner. ‘Men are susceptible to women who fall in love with them. It flatters their ego.’

‘Lewis doesn’t have an ego problem.’

Rowena smiled. ‘All men have an ego problem. I’d better go and see how Harriet’s getting on. I was a bit short with her earlier.’

‘She won’t have minded. She expects you to be temperamental; it goes with the territory, as they say.’

Chris was right. Rowena’s bad mood hadn’t perturbed Harriet, particularly after Lewis had managed to touch her, however briefly. She wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that he was in love with her, but she did think that he liked her as a person as well as a sexual partner.

His emotional detachment from Rowena was starting to show itself to her. Given his continuing lack of jealousy over his wife’s extraordinary relationship with her half-brother this was beginning to seem the most logical explanation, and if his emotions weren’t engaged anywhere else then so much the better for her.

At the same time as Harriet was working out a strategy to get the man she wanted, Lewis was finalising his plan for drawing Harriet deeper into the web they were all spinning around her. Her sexual response to him was gratifying, and with a body so clearly made for sex it should be easy to train it to expect constant satisfaction. Once that
was done, once she was used to a full and satisfying sex-life, then he would leave her for a time.

It would be harder than he’d imagined because he enjoyed giving her pleasure but his enjoyment was of secondary importance to the film, and the film’s plot meant that Harriet had to be persuaded to go a step further into the world inhabited by all who lived in the house in Regent’s Park.

Probably the only member of the household without any worries at this time was Chris. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Rowena was turning to him more, not less as he’d feared, while Harriet fascinated him as no woman apart from his half-sister had ever done. He knew that in time he’d be allowed to use her, because the film called for Rowena to watch and assist him in this.

Anticipation of that moment, coupled with Rowena’s urgent need, meant that for the first time in his life he was totally content. He was also amused because he had the feeling that Lewis’s plan, so cleverly contrived to remove Chris and drive Rowena into her husband’s arms, was going to misfire, and what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to see Lewis fail at something.

Chapter Six

THAT EVENING CHRIS
and Rowena went to the opera. Lewis hated opera. ‘Good music spoilt by bad acting,’ was his opinion and nothing he saw ever made him change his mind. After they’d gone he went in search of Harriet and found her reading a book in the comfort of the drawing-room.

‘We’ve got the house to ourselves,’ he said with a smile. ‘How would you like a nice bath? We can use the tub in Rowena’s bathroom – it’s meant for two.’

Harriet lifted her eyes from the page. ‘I had a shower this morning, thanks.’

For a moment Lewis couldn’t believe he’d heard her correctly. ‘You don’t have to be dirty,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It’s meant to be a sensual pleasure.’

Harriet smiled in an absent-minded way. ‘I’m sure it would be, but I’m a bit tired tonight.’

Since nothing in his imaginary script had prepared Lewis for this he was totally at a loss. ‘I’d like it,’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t that matter to you?’

With a soft sigh Harriet put the book to one side. ‘Of course it does, Lewis, but I’m sure I’m not the only woman in London who’d be willing to give you a bath.’

‘You’re the only one I want to give me a bath,’ he replied, frantically trying to work out how to handle this.

‘Then you’ll have to settle for a shower,’ she said gently.

Lewis stared at her. ‘What’s all this about, Harriet? I thought you were enjoying our affair as much as I am.’

‘I am, but I’m not in the mood tonight.’

He cursed silently. The whole plot hinged on the fact that she found him irresistible, that her need for him was total and when he left her she had to be devastated. This cool woman sitting looking at him with a half-smile on her face seemed to have suddenly stepped out character.

Much to Lewis’s amazement it dawned on him that he wasn’t only put out because of this divergence from the plot. He was also disappointed for himself. Their times together had been good, and his enjoyment had probably equalled hers. To be rejected wasn’t something that happened to him very often and neither was it usual for any rejection to matter.

Harriet watched the way Lewis hovered in the doorway. He seemed unable to accept her words and leave, but at the same time she sensed that it was almost beyond him to press any harder. His personal pride would be offended at the thought that he’d had to beg for sex from any woman.

After careful thought Lewis went and sat on the arm of Harriet’s chair, then he tenderly stroked
her hair and the side of her face. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’

She laughed. ‘Do I have to be ill before I say no?’

‘Of course not. I had the apparently incorrect idea that what we had was special for both of us. It’s difficult for me to have my hopes for a wonderful evening dashed, that’s all.’

It was hard for Harriet to maintain her attitude of indifference when he was touching her so tenderly, his hand massaging her scalp in slow easy movements before travelling in a lingering caress down her neck. Despite herself she began to tremble.

Lewis felt her reaction. ‘Please, Harriet,’ he said huskily. ‘I don’t know what your real reason is for refusing, but I do know that it isn’t because you don’t want me. If it’s Rowena, forget it. For all I know she and Chris haven’t even gone to the opera, they may be at some party together. It doesn’t matter to me, and this wouldn’t matter to her.’

‘It isn’t Rowena,’ Harriet assured him. ‘After James I’m not very keen on getting involved with anyone on a regular basis.’

‘But we’re good together,’ he protested, deciding that whatever else happened he wasn’t going to pass this scene on to Mark; it was too humiliating ever to repeat aloud.

Harriet decided that she’d kept him waiting long enough, and he was certainly sufficiently unsettled to think twice before he took her compliance for granted again. ‘Well, perhaps a bath would be nice,’ she conceded. ‘Usually I take showers.’

Lewis was amazed by the wave of relief that washed over him. His heart was beating rapidly and it took all of his self-control not to simply take Harriet there and then on the floor of the drawing-room.

Instead, pausing only to collect a bottle of chilled Chardonnay and two glasses, he led her upstairs to Rowena’s bathroom and there filled the tub with water, adding plenty of erotic Japanese sandalwood oil which engulfed the room with its subtly arousing fragrance.

Slowly he undressed Harriet, then let her undress him, and all the time he kept touching and kissing her, whispering in her ear exactly what he proposed to do during their time together.

He sat her between his outspread legs with her back to him and the warm water came up to her breasts. Tenderly he soaped her along her spine using long featherlight strokes. Harriet felt herself dissolving beneath his touch and when he laid her back in the water so that her head was against his chest she expected him to move on to her breasts, which were tight and aching, but instead he washed her arms, ending with the hands which he lingered over, teasing every finger until the rest of her body was screaming for attention.

It seemed an eternity before his hands picked up the soap and he lathered it over her stomach, causing the muscles to leap and jump in a dance of their own. Once he brushed her breasts, but it was such a faint caress that she could almost have imagined it and it served only to increase the aching sensation behind each nipple.

After that he got her to move so that she was on
all fours with her head at the tap end of the bath. Then she had to raise her buttocks high above the water. He proceeded to cover the cheeks of her bottom with the suds before lightly running a finger between them. The slight tickling of the bubbles was incredibly arousing, and when he washed them off with bathwater she wanted to ask him to do it again, but Lewis had other plans.

He turned her over again and this time crouched above her, straddling her body in the water until at last his hands were washing each of her breasts in turn, taking particular care over the nipples, which he covered in suds until they vanished from sight.

Again the bubbles burst, tickling the tender flesh and causing her breasts to harden and the veins to become visible. Lewis smiled at her, then took a sponge and held it high above her before squeezing the contents out in a steady stream over her nipples.

Harriet gave a gasp of pleasure and Lewis repeated the procedure, this time holding the sponge above the soapy breasts for even longer until she was begging him to let the water cascade down.

He had intended letting her wash him, but their love play had aroused him more than he’d anticipated and he didn’t want to wait any longer before possessing her.

Pushing her soapy hands gently off him he climbed out of the bath. ‘I’ll take my turn another time,’ he promised. He then wrapped her in a warm towel, picked her up and carried her out of the bathroom, through Rowena’s room and into his own. Once he’d laid her on his bed he went
back to the bathroom for the wine and together they drank from opposite sides of the same glass, stopping now and again to exchange kisses and let the crisp refreshing liquid pass from one mouth to the other.

They were both frantic for each other now, but Harriet had already discovered the joys of delaying the ultimate pleasure and it was she who got Lewis to lie on his stomach so that she could pour some of the wine on to the top of his spine.

His body jerked at the unexpected coldness, then as it trickled across each vertebra he felt her soft warm tongue licking at it. Her tongue and the wine were an incredible contrast to each other. This time he was the one to writhe against the duvet, and Harriet watched his movements with fascination.

‘Keep still,’ she told him, remembering her own struggles to control her body, and beneath her Lewis stiffened, then forced himself to obey, fascinated by this change in the balance of power.

After working down his spine with her tongue, Harriet dipped her middle finger in the wine and then eased it between the cheeks of his bottom, stopping every time he gave an involuntary jerk.

For Lewis it was the most delicious torment as he tried to quell his excitement sufficiently for her finger to reach its ultimate goal. She refused to let him hurry her, or to move except when he was still, but eventually the tip of the finger touched his prostate gland and he felt his already hard erection swell. The pressure in his tightly drawn up testicles seemed unbearable.

When her finger caressed the gland again he had to move to stop himself from coming.
‘Harriet, stop! I can’t take any more,’ he murmured, and she felt a surge of triumph as she withdrew her teasing digit and let him roll onto his back.

Lewis saw Harriet looking down at him and for the first time since their affair had begun he reached his hands up, pulled her face down and kissed her long and deeply on the mouth. His tongue teased the insides of her soft lips and then flicked round her teeth before easing its way between them. Her own tongue responded, and she licked the corners of his mouth before the tempo of the kiss increased and he started to thrust his tongue deeper into her mouth, duplicating the urgent thrusting of his erection.

They were lying locked together now, Harriet on top of him, revelling in the feel of his muscular body beneath her, and when he rolled her on to her side so that they were face-to-face she stared deeply into his eyes, trying to read something from their expression.

Lewis stared back. His breathing was still rapid and his hands unable to leave her alone as they moved down her side, over her hipbone and down the slender flank. His penis strained against her lower abdomen and he moved down the bed so that he could use it to caress her clitoris with tiny teasing movements, then watched as her eyes darkened and the pupils enlarged with her growing excitement.