The Englishman (48 page)

I make him sit as before, with his back against the headboard, and he pulls me into a bear hug, nuzzles his face into what passes for my cleavage and exhales such a deep, heart-felt sigh that I have to laugh, though it sounds more like a sob.

“I know!” I whisper into his hair, against his shoulder. “Giles, I—” He freezes in my arms, so ready to expect a rebuke. “I don’t think I need a lot more foreplay.”

Again that spurt of laughter, and then he kisses me.

He runs his fingertips slowly down my spine, up my sides and over my breasts, over and over, like butterflies, like a length of silk, still kissing me. He is unexpectedly expert at caressing tiny tits, very unlike a man who is used to handling those sizable jugs that fill the former Mrs. Cleveland’s blouse, very gentle, suckling them, flicking at them with his tongue, raking his fingernails along my back with just enough pressure to make me shiver. Now I
really
don’t need any more foreplay. I raise myself on my knees, clasp the base of his cock—
he
doesn’t need any more foreplay either, judging by the state of it—and—

Just a naked man. Just a cock
. It will feel lovely, because I am burning to have him—it—inside me, but I mustn’t picture us—Giles and Anna—in this hotel bed, me crouching over him, Giles clasping my waist with both hands, because if I could see that, his hands round my waist, both of us looking down although we can’t see more than hazy outlines, looking down to where we will be joined and fused—if I could see all that, I’d panic.

Control. Keep mine. Make him lose his.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!”

He rears up as if in pain, and I gulp for breath but manage to do it soundlessly. It does feel like pain, the stimulation overload as he slides into me, just slides in, smoothly and easily, all the way, all in one simple, fluid movement. I am so ready for him, have been, for such a long time. And because that felt so good, I do it again. All the way up till he almost slips out of me, till we almost lose contact but not quite. His fingers tighten around my waist, and this time he pushes me down, bucks his hips in anticipation, and I can’t suppress a groan of pleasure as he fills me up.

Fuck, yes.
This.

“Make me last,” he whispers when I start to ride him, not fast but thoroughly, to feel as much of him as possible with each thrust. If I want to pretend to myself that he is just a man, just a cock, I will have to close my eyes, because we can see each other now, in the silvery darkness. I can see his gleaming eyes and tousled hair and the slim, angular outline of his shoulders that feel solid under my palms as I am holding on to him. He feels so solid and strong, strands of muscle and sinew under warm, smooth skin, but he looks almost fragile, like a specter, like a phantasma. Like a boy. I remember watching the side of his neck in the car this morning, and how on the plane he made a little nook for us with his body, and the pleading expression in his eyes when he turned to me in the restaurant and said
I don’t want them! I want you!

“No,” I murmur against his lips and set to work.

I am neither surprised nor disappointed that he comes about three minutes later. I meant him to. I made him. What does surprise me is how close I was to coming myself. I don’t, usually, with a new man, not right away, not the first few times, not if it’s someone I care about. Surely not with Giles Cleveland!

Almost. I am seconds away from an orgasm, but also seconds away from falling asleep; it is the most bizarre feeling. If I roused myself just a little more, just stretched that little bit further, I would crash on the other side of a huge climax and then…I don’t know what then. Sleep for a hundred years.

I fall asleep. The last thing I remember is wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my cheek on his naked shoulder. No, the last thing I remember is the insidious bite of doubt whether he would want me to stay or to leave.

“Don’t leave…” The bedclothes rustle; his fingers touch my thigh and close around my knee as I scramble onto my haunches. “In the fairy tales the princess always has to stay with the ogre till the morning.”

“Ogre?” I can hear the smile in my own voice.

“To break the spell.”

I am amazed at how well he understands what this is about, and yet I have to ask, “Is that what we’ve been doing here?”

“I thought that was the idea.” Warm, gentle fingers are inching their way up my thigh. “I’ll feel horribly lonely when you leave.”

His hand slips round my waist, the flat of his hand against the small of my back; the mattress sags, and he pulls himself toward me. I only realize what he is about when I hear him groan and feel his cheek on my thigh and his face nestling against my naked belly.

Never in a million years had I expected Giles Cleveland would be so open, so trusting as a lover. It disarms me completely, and at the same time it exasperates me. What on earth
was
the trouble between him and Amanda? He is lovely. Just lovely.

Curled around me like a lanky dog, he offers me access to all parts of his body, and it is only because I am tenuously holding on to the resolution to go back to my room that I do not avail myself of this opportunity. One hand in his hair, the other on his neck, I try not to think of the long strands of muscle along his spine, and how easily I could run my hand down to the smooth, taut globes of his buttocks…
and the demesnes that there adjacent lie
. I drop a kiss onto the temple that is facing up, hoping that this will help me preserve a state of maternal tenderness.

“And there’s another thing,” he murmurs against my skin.

“What other thing?”

“In the fairy tales the magic number is always three.”

The sensation of his lips between my breasts clarifies the meaning of this remark more efficiently than my addled brain can decode it.

“Giles—don’t!” I clutch his hair roughly, but of course I cannot push away a man who has both his arms wrapped around my waist.

“Have you already had enough of me, after that pathetic little performance? Don’t I get a chance at a make-up exam?”

“I haven’t had enough of you.” Saying it out loud sends a shiver of anxiety over my skin, but it is dark, and so I say it like it is. “But I know I will be lonely tomorrow, and I want to go back now. To find out how bad the loneliness will be.”

“Presbyterian mentality.”

“Your lot doesn’t have the premium on guilt, you know.”

“Guilt-shmuilt,” he murmurs, and a heartbeat later we are shaking with giggles like an eight-limbed blancmange.

“Oh, Giles!”

“I hate the idea of flying back home without you.”

He is breathless with laughter, but there is defiance in his voice now, and a little resentment, too, but what can I say? So I bend down again and kiss the cool skin of his shoulder. What else can I do? There is nothing I can do about it. So we will both be lonely, but there it is.

“I hate the idea of a whole week’s holiday,” he insists. “And what I would do with you if I had a whole week to do it in.”

“Don’t…”

“And when you get back you’ll pretend this never happened.”

A sensitive man, who, inevitably, has moments of tetchiness.

“No, not pretend it never happened. But it can’t happen again. We agree on that, don’t we?”

His arms around my waist tighten and for a few seconds he presses his face hard into my belly. “Giles! We do agree this is a…one-off, don’t we?”

“Please stay with me tonight. The whole night. Will you?”

I don’t know about this. I am getting really cold—wouldn’t be surprised if I am catching something, naked and sweaty in the cool hotel room—and after the first post-coital languor I can feel a wave of anxiety rolling toward me. I would rather be alone when it hits me. It will carry me far, far away from Giles, and I don’t want to be in the same room with him, let alone the same bed, when it breaks.

“Someone once asked me to assess, on a scale from one to ten, my ability to make myself happy,” he says. “I thought at the time it was about three and a half.”

“Are you asking me?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know whether this—coming here, tonight—falls into the category of making myself happy, or the opposite.”

He raises himself onto his elbow and gently kisses me on the cheek.

“Happy,” he says.

My cheek finds its place in the warm, fragrant crook of his neck; my shoulders relax in his embrace. He pulls me down, and our chests roll against each other, his ribs hard against mine, cushioned by the soft squishiness of my breasts, and our hips, pelvic bones colliding, and the smooth, musky skin of our bellies, and then our legs as we huddle under the blankets again.

“Come closer. While you’re still here, come close…”

I worm one arm through the narrow gap between the mattress and his body, slip the other around his waist, and nestle against him as if I could by some osmotic process become one with him. He catches his breath in the darkness above my head, and a large, determined hand clasps my buttocks.

“Every bone in my body turns to jelly when you do that,” he breathes.

I press my face against his shoulder and wonder whether he can feel that I am giggling again.

“And one bit of…um…jelly turns into a bone-er…”

A quiver runs through his chest and his hand on my ass squeezes in involuntary response.

“I had hoped you would notice…”

Leaning back on my trembling arms, I am mesmerized by the moonlit sight of our gyrating hips as Giles slams his cock into me, and because I am again half sitting on his lap, he has his hands free and puts them to good use on my breasts. Kneading them with his palms, tugging at them, a little harder now than before, as if he knew it was time. As if he knew I was riding the wave. Then he slows down, and frustration makes me want to cry out in protest, but I am determined not to surrender myself to him, to it—whatever
it
might be, my need for him—so I cautiously inhale, as calm as I can be while he is still inside me. God, this is so bizarre. Giles Cleveland’s cock inside me, utterly bizarre.

He clasps my hips and moves hardly at all, only his thumbs, stroking the sensitive skin above my ovaries, inching lower—I can’t believe he is doing this. Pushing my lips apart, away from his shaft, unfurling them to expose the swollen hood. I can feel it’s wet because it’s cool in the night air, then hot under the tender, tentative pressure of his thumb.

“Can I make you come…like this?”

“No,” I lie, and just in time my clit and the sensitive surrounding area are released from the firm, circling attention of the ball of his hand. I gulp for breath, relieved, frustrated.

“Show me how,” he says softly, but I can hear the tension and the excitement in his voice.

“No!” I almost don’t have breath enough for that one syllable.

“Yes.” And then, even more softly, “Please.”

He gives me a second or two, and when I don’t comply, he leans forward, and while he is kissing me, makes me fall flat on my back by the simple method of jabbing the crooks of my elbows. I try to protest, but his mouth is back on mine, and when he finally releases me and sits up, his cock still hard in my belly, he takes my hand and guides it between my legs.

“You’re safe. I’ll be watching you the whole time.”

There is a faintly malicious note in his voice; he is still angry with me for switching off the light. He settles my butt on the mattress and stretches out next to me, his legs tangled with mine, careful not to slip out of me. Props himself up on one elbow, draws me closer with one arm around my waist. Clasps my uncommissioned fingers with his other hand. Pins my left arm above my head when I try to free myself.

“Giles, no! This really isn’t—”

“You look extremely sexy like this, you kn-know that?”

I can tell that he means it; his voice close above my head is so strained it cracks.

“No, I don’t!”

He thrusts himself into me again, slowly but deliberately, and it’s as if a vial of hot oil had been poured onto his cock.

“Liar,” he whispers into my hair, and I giggle and groan at the same time. I hate that he knows how much he is turning me on, hate even having to admit to myself how much it turns me on to be pinned down like this, by his body and his cock, held like this, exposed.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire…” he whispers. Hesitates, almost stops breathing. “…cunt on fire…Show me how to make you come.”

I couldn’t say whether he pushed my hand back between my legs or whether it crept there of its own accord, but I don’t care anymore. I press my face against his chest. His skin is hot and smells of sex and fresh sweat.

And then I show him.

Sometime later, I float up from what feels like twenty thousand leagues under the sea to find that gentle fingers are caressing the back of my neck, kneading the muscles in my shoulders. A body lies warm and naked against mine, and a voice whispers like an echo from the deep.

“I can’t keep my hands off you.”

I grunt softly and arch myself against his fingers in languid invitation. They need no encouragement. Slowly but inevitably they work their way down the long strands of muscle next to my spine until a large, sure hand molds itself around the warm globes of my buttocks. It needs no more than that. Or perhaps it is because my defenses are down. I want to spread my legs, but at the same time I don’t want to show my need to be touched so blatantly. Down my thighs his hand travels, to the back of my knees, and up again on the inside of my thighs. I only realize that I have lifted myself up and toward him when I hear a noise of amusement next to my ear.