Questing Heart: Fighting Heart Erotic Bad Boy Romance Series Book 2 (6 page)

She laughed. “Almost. But, to seal our more professional footing, I really must have one final kiss. Think of it as sealing the ending on our briefest almost-relationship. You do kiss rather well, Mr Barnes.”

“Um. Are you sure that’s
wise
, Joanna?”

“No. Wise-schmise. But look I’ve just taken you to dinner, we can have a little kiss, and then go to our separate beds. How about that. Maybe one day, I will be your muse.”

Joanna smiled - his pretty agent. Surely she deserved one final kiss. Just one… They leaned close together and Cody pressed my lips gently to hers. Their mouths opened instinctively, and their tongues reached for one another. No. Cody pulled away feeling the electric heat coming from Joanna taking hold of him. Cody put his arm out for her to link with hers and they began to walk together, slowly like two old friends. But ahead of them, beneath the archway of the York city gate a slender young woman, her pale face framed by a curtain of blonde hair stood stock still. Cody froze, mirroring her body language. It was unmistakably Ashley. And she had seen every moment of the kiss. It was written all across her face. Ashley made an unhappy smile, crossed her arms and walked away. No. No way, thought Cody. Not like this. His heart turned over in his chest.
It couldn’t end like this…

So you could say my first night in York didn’t end as well as it began. I checked in to a joint called the White Rose B&B. For the same price as a Travelodge I was going to get a free breakfast, and from what I’d seen the place was homely and full of lovely old-school chintz. It reminded me a little of the home I’d grown up in, but not enough to make me miss it. Even so, I needed to get out for some air. After thinking about Cody’s eyes, his smile and his enthusiasm at seeing me, I regretted turning down his offer of going out to dinner. But I still think Joanna, could have turned against me if I’d gone, and who needed that? But I was still hopeful of seeing him, in an accidental kind of way. So around nine-forty five I headed out for a walk. I wasn’t dressed for a date or any kind of romantic tryst. I just wanted to see him again to talk, and to say goodnight. I wanted to surprise him, so I walked along the road within the vast walls of the old Roman city, and looked in each of the restaurants that studded the route from The Great Stag. I spent fifteen minutes looking before I decided to give up. They weren’t in the pub, and didn’t seem to be in any of the other restaurants nearby, and many of them were so big, dark and deep I couldn’t hope to see inside. I realised I was being dumb. I headed back to the White Rose to sleep it off when I suddenly heard voices behind me. They came from nowhere, but they caught my imagination. I must have recognised them. There was talk of a kiss. And it was then I turned round, recognising them with my heart in my mouth. I quietly swallowed it back down in the shadows of an ancient stone archway. I saw Cody and Joanna locked in an embrace, kissing. It was a tender probing kiss - the type of kiss I had secretly hoped for when I left the B&B to find him. She had stolen it before me. Why didn’t Cody tell me they were lovers? Maybe he didn’t want to upset me. Maybe there was another reason, but from now on, all I knew was that Cody had been taken by the sophisticated woman in the sexy suits. I would have to respect that. From now on, Cody was just a friend. But I hoped he could still be the friend I needed.

Later that night, after I barricaded myself in the B&B Cody sent me a text message. I didn’t want to read it, having lived through a bundle of male excuses in the last month. I closed my eyes and finally read it over my greasy full English breakfast as I pondered my long journey to no home and no hope in London.

Hi Ashley. I know what you thought you saw. Things are not as they seem. Please don’t go. Stay and meet up with me tomorrow, ok?

Yeesh. The first half of the text sucked. What I thought I saw? It was such a man-excuse that I almost discarded the second part of the text. But I couldn’t. I needed Cody, and in spite of what I had seen I knew he wasn’t a bastard like Brandon.

Please don’t go. Stay and meet up with me tomorrow, ok?

I looked at my phone. “Okay Cody. I’ll stay for one more day.” After all, what did I have to go home for? I picked up a copy of the festival brochure and scanned for Cody’s name on the programme. There. Under today’s date was the venue and time with Cody’s name beneath in small print. Another day, another country pub venue. I had almost two hundred and fifty of my wages left from Purdy’s. I intended to go back to London before I wasted any of my hard earned savings pursuing whatever I was pursuing in York. And I decided to let Cody wait instead of replying to his text. Maybe it was a little cruel, but by keeping Cody on his toes, I guessed I would be able to gauge the real level of his feelings towards me and Joanna. I liked Cody and I wanted to trust him… but hey, once bitten twice shy.

It was eight o’clock when I walked into The Rusty Shovel, an old Tudor pub with a low ceiling. It was full of chatter. Inside this little pub there was barely room for a stage, and there were people wherever I looked. I found an empty stool at the end of the bar, ordered a small glass of white wine and took out my festival brochure before any strangers had the chance to bother me. When I’d settled in, I looked around. I had one goal tonight. I wanted to talk with Cody, and I wanted to talk to him alone. If he was just a friend, that was fine, but I needed to speak with someone I could trust. Yeah, I admit I wanted more, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. Cody as a friend was better than no friend at all. I looked all the way around the pub, scoping it for Cody and his sophisticated squeeze. I saw there was a brown door through to another bar, but I didn’t much fancy traipsing around with drink in hand, lest I stumbled into some local letch. No. The reading and signing area was at the end of the room flanked by pop-up signs. I decided to stay put and wait it out. Unfortunately, among a wall of posters about new writers, I saw a close-up smiling photograph of none other than Brandon Lynes. I just hoped it wasn’t some kind of omen.

Cody passed me by from the other bar, the beautiful Joanna Laws following close behind him. Her good looks upset me, and her chic suits annoyed me. She was all over him like a rash. Why hadn’t I seen what a catch Cody was before now? He didn’t see me until after he took his place behind a lectern. As he said Good Evening, his eyes passed over my face and latched onto me. His eyes brightened and smiled without smiling and I felt it. I smiled back without wanting to. I could feel his warmth. His voice changed, and as I heard him read a piece some things began to make sense to me for the very first time.

“This girl was more than just the usual girl. She wasn’t simple two dimensional prettiness, or enough to catch the eye and draw you into some idle reverie. No way. This girl was more than three dimensional. She was heat and light and sound and taste. She was the Eureka feeling of a new discovery, she was the burst of warm pleasure upon seeing spring trees in blossom. She was the gentle whisper of a forest breeze on a summers day. She was all of these things and much more. And yet I was in the grey and cold while she was in warm and haze of summer. Not because she was cold to me, no, but because she was so beautiful but she just couldn’t enjoy the shine of her own sun. She was so busy running she didn’t look in the mirror. She was so busy fighting, she didn’t know her beauty brought peace.”

His eyes fell on mine more than once. I felt the audience was disappearing and the gap between us shrinking. I knew Joanna was still there, but she was dimming from my view. I saw only Cody.

At the end of the reading Cody crossed the floor, parting the crowd as they clapped him. I heard one guy next to me say “clever but a bit too much purple prose for my liking…” and I gave him dagger eyes. Cody reached me. Across his shoulder I saw Joanna Laws, her head arcing up over the crowd until she found us. I watched her eyes widen and her face change as Cody seized me. He hugged me as I sat on the barstool. I hugged him back, and then he pulled back to look at me.

“All this crap is so surreal, Ashley. I’m so glad you’re here. I was worried that you thought I was…”

“Having an affair with your agent? That’s none of my business, Cody,” I shrugged, trying to sound matter of fact. But after what I had heard him read that so wasn’t easy. His writing was personal. I was sure his writing was for me.

“Having an affair? Jeez! That’s exactly it. I’m not having an affair with anyone whatsoever.”

“Cody,” I softened my voice. “Cody. It’s fine. It’s none of my business. But we are still friends, right? Because I really need a friend right now.”

He stood a little way back and appraised me. “What happened?”

“It’s Brandon. Things have changed and I need your help to get away from him…”

Cody nodded.

“Of course, Ashley. Remember at the café? You told me everything and I’m telling you everything here. There is no affair.”

“I saw that kiss, Cody. Please, just be my friend.”

He was about to say more, but I saw him change his mind. “I’ll always be your friend, Ashley. Don’t ever doubt it.”

“Good,” I said. I squeezed his arm.

“Now, I was supposed to be signing books right now. I’d better go. Wait, okay?”

“Yeah. And you should probably tell Joanna who I am. She looks a little jealous right now.”

Cody nodded with an awkward smile. “She’s just a friend, Ashley.”

“A very good one, I’d say,” I said. I tried not to be bitter, but my real feelings may have slipped out. Maybe he regretted things getting as far as they had with her now that I had shown up, or was I simply just flattering myself? Either way, I needed his help and I wasn’t going to be put off by Joanna. Maybe I’d failed in winning Cody’s love, but I certainly needed his help to rebuild my life. In fact, even if you included my own family, I felt Cody was the only one I could trust…

Brandon Lynes sipped from his hip flask and looked at himself in the mirror. In one hand he held a paperback. A photograph of his own fine face was set into a square on the back cover. In his other hand was a silver hip flask. He looked into the mirror as he read, enjoying the quirks of his face and the timbre of his voice as he rehearsed the sound of different words. Should he lengthen that syllable, or lengthen the final one of the sentence? One way was cool, the other was cooler still. He laughed at himself and remembered the way Ashley mocked him with fondness. When she laughed - back in the earliest days when it seemed like she would love him - it made him melt and filled him with desire all at once. He remembered the playfulness of her laugh. He remembered the way her eyes squinted when she was happy. Then he recalled her softness, and the sweetness of her neck as he nuzzled and the warmth which overcame him as her arms drew him near. Brandon looked at his face in the mirror and his humour faded. He slung the paperback on his bed and left the room.

In her room Amanda was studying, sitting on her bed surrounded by a mess of study books and novels. She heard the knock and put a pen to her lips and contemplated the visitor. The knock came again, and Amanda stood up from her bed. “Wait a minute,” she said, and swiped her hand across the duvet, dragging the books down the length of her bed until they spilt into the empty tub she kept to store them. She looked into the mirror, especially at her brown eyes, full of hope and sorrow all at the same time. She smiled so hard and she almost believed it. Her face lit up the mirror as if someone had turned on the lights. She teased the string of her vest down over her shoulder, exposing the soft skin. She changed her face to cutesy neutral and went to the door.

She opened the door and pressed her body to its line, so her curves were emphasised. She had played this game before, and she knew what worked. Brandon stood blinking at her, and then his eyed roamed down her body. He saw the exposed shoulder, leaned and teased some of her hair in his fingers.

“Look at you, Amanda. Just look at you. You will always be my best girl.”

Amanda rolled her eyes, hoping Brandon didn’t see the effect his old lines had on her all the same.

“So you tell me, Brandon but you share your bed with Ashley. I heard you, Brandon. I heard you yesterday, the pair of you in that room.”

Brandon made a small apology of a face, and then shrugged. He rubbed Amanda’s shoulder. “That’s history.”

Amanda’s face changed. Her eyes started to shine.

“What’s history?” she said, waiting expectantly.

“Yesterday is always history,” he said. He pushed into the room and closed the door behind him. Amanda stepped back, enjoying the man’s forcefulness and capitulating inside. She knew this routine. He wanted her and she loved seeing the want in his eyes.

“
Yesterday
? Is that it?”

“Yeah. All I care about is today. You and me. The whole flat is empty, Amanda.”

“I know,” she said, her body responding to him without her permission. Her stomach fluttered and she felt the same headiness, warmth and weakness in his presence.

“Aren’t you feeling a little lonely? I know I am?”

Amanda wanted to say a hundred things in response about all the loneliness he’d made her feel. All the rejection, but instead she melted a little more.

“Brandon… you don’t have to be lonely. We were lovers…”

He stepped towards her. “We
are
lovers,” he replied.

“Yes… yes…” said Amanda breathily. “But we could be full-time lovers again…” she waited. Brandon didn’t say a word. He stepped towards her, his height filling her presence. Her head tilted back under his, and Brandon scooped an arm around her waist and picked her up.

“You should be a supermodel, baby. You really could.”

“I could be
your
supermodel, Brandon.”

“You already are, honey.”

He laid Amanda on her bed. Her eyes glistened with tears of hurt and she blinked them away so he wouldn’t see. He knelt on the bed and towered over her. Her one joy was feeling the heat of lust in his eyes. It gave her some comfort, but not much. He held her slim waist and squeezed her, peeling her leggings down over her slender thighs. She lifted her backside and her legs to help him. He gazed down at her hips and traced the line around the front triangle of her flimsy little panties with his finger. Amanda shivered. His touch, his gaze was amazing. She was growing warm and moist, tingling inside. It was involuntary. It was what Brandon did to her.

“Do you want to see what you do to me?”

Amanda smiled. “I love seeing that…”

Brandon grinned and pointed to her panties “Take these off and then I’ll show you.”

Brandon dipped his finger into Amanda’s panties and pulled them down slowly exposing the soft mound of her downy brown pubic hair. He tossed the panties aside, and exposed her, all pretence gone, she was hungry for him, forgetting her bitterness. Amanda gave into her own want. She knew what he craved and opened her legs wide to be sure he saw everything she had for him. His eyes fell down to her to gaze upon her naked vagina. “Now you can find out what you do to
me
,” she whispered, hoping her beauty and the feelings in her body would finally count for something in the world of Brandon Lynes.

“I love that too…” His eyes were fastened to her slit. Amanda’s hand trailed to Brandon’s crotch, past the pressure of his erection pushing against the denim. She unzipped him, and his thick penis broke free, charging violently past the open zip. The head of his cock was already engorged, the foreskin peeling back from the tip.

“Do you like?” he said.

“Yes, baby. Let me show you how much…” She leaned up and kissed the top of his cock, trailing her tongue over its head. And then she lay back and opened her arms.

“Take me if you want me...”

Brandon didn’t wait. He dropped his jeans and pushed forward over Amanda’s body. He lifted her legs over his shoulders so they folded and her ankles draped down his back. She felt his fingers find her and sink into to her heat and wetness. Yes, she was ready. He enjoyed parting her lips with his fingers. She helped him, laying her hand over his, and their eyes engaged, locked together in lust.
There
. The head of his cock pushed through the tightness of her pussy, then forced higher into the fullness of her. Amanda sighed and groaned. Brandon threw his head back. She laid her hands on his manly forearms and ran her fingers up to his biceps and seized hold of them.

“My supermodel,” he said, over and over as he thrust into her, shifting his position to please her. Amanda sighed knowing she was utterly undone by the sense of him over her, dominating her from within, totally claiming her as his once again. She bit her lip and sighed loudly as the waves of joy ripped across her body, until she could contain it no more. She groaned as her body threw itself into an intense, unbearably sweet orgasm. Brandon fell down over her body, and with a few final pounding thrusts, then unloaded into her at her deepest so that the orgasm lingered in Amanda and started over, claiming her whole abdomen and beyond. Then they were quiet, gently wrecked, and totally entwined.

She stroked her head as he lay over her. And a smile of victory crept across her face. His penis and seed were deep inside her. Her ‘supermodel’ beauty had won out. Amanda dared hope for a new beginning, starting now. A moment later, Brandon pushed up, and his softening cock withdrew from her.

“Amanda?”

“Yes, honey…?” she said with hope rising in her chest, as she felt his cum inside her.

“I… I”

“What is it, Brandon?”

He looked back across his shoulder. “I miss Ashley.”

What? Amanda’s world titled painfully on its axis. It was like being struck on the head, reeling and trying to stay conscious. “
You what…?
How could you even
say
that to me…? After what we…?”

“I’m just telling you the truth, Amanda…”

Amanda sat up, pulled her legs to her chest and turned her face away from him.

“What? Amanda?!”

She looked at him, hate mingling with the heat of passion.

“Penny told me Ashley’s finished with you, Brandon. It’s finished, so get over it.”

“What?”

“Penny told me Ashley’s gone to Yorkshire. Professor Cantor told her. She’s gone to Yorkshire to find her new literary star. You might even know him. Cody Barnes. That’s right. Cody won a prize and is going to be published, Brandon. I guess Ashley must be as fickle and selfish as you!”

“You vicious bitch!”

“Is that what I am? I thought I was your lover, your supermodel!”

Brandon stepped away and zipped up. Without a goodbye, he stormed to the door and slammed it behind him, leaving Amanda half naked and weeping on her bed. As soon as Brandon got to his room, he opened his laptop. He went to Google. He typed in

Cody Barnes Yorkshire Literature Festival.

Opening up another page, Brandon typed quickly into the search bar.

Train times London to York