The Gift (21 page)

His touch was light, incredibly measured and circumspect given what must be happening within his own body. It was like being stroked and gently roused by some incredible computer-driven sex robot. Or maybe cyborg, formed of warm human flesh but with the millimetre-perfect accuracy of a machine. An image that had amused her before made her grin. Surely only a Terminator was capable of operating in the face of such conflicting forces.

‘What is it?’ he purred, leaning over her. She could hear a smile in his voice, just as he seemed to read the slight smile on her face. He couldn’t know what had provoked it, could he?

‘Nothing. Just crazy thoughts. All this sex is making me mental.’

Jay paused, his fingers stilling between her thighs, at her breasts.

‘No! Don’t stop!’ she cried, the stillness making her realise that her arousal was winding up again and she wanted – no, desperately needed – him to work her up to its conclusion.

‘Your wish is my command.’

His fingers started slicking, slicking, slicking again, in her sex. But as he did so his mouth started moving in a track, down over her shoulder and on down her spine.

Before she knew it, suddenly the pleasuring was all about her again. Jay moved back a little way, presumably still as rampantly erect as before, but now his mouth was kissing the small of her back, then her tailbone. And below.

And then he was kissing the pucker of her anus. Tickling it with his tongue, lightly probing and flicking with the furled point.

‘Ooh … no,’ she crooned, years of inhibition speaking for her while every nerve and desire in her body screamed, yes, yes, yes!

‘Yes!’ confirmed Jay, his breath searing hot against the cheeks of her bottom and the little vent that pulsed with excitement in time to the tremors of imminent orgasm that shimmered in her vagina.

He prodded her with his tongue. He gently squeezed the bud of her clit with his thumb and finger. With the power of his mind, he somehow silently said ‘Come!’

And she did. A massive wrenching orgasm that sent waves of dark transgressive bliss surging through her pussy and her entire pelvis. Incoherent, she let out a raw uncouth cry and slumped hard against the side of the bathtub, her sex pulsating and her anus pouting against his tongue.

For a few moments he held onto her, sweetening the sensations with his fingers and his tongue. And then he let go of her where she rested against the side of the bath and reared up over her. Summoning her last energy, Sandy twisted, craning to watch him behind her as, like a scarred and pagan god of sex, he pumped his cock in rough, almost angry strokes, then spurted semen over her bottom, shouting and snarling as incoherently as she had.

But as he slumped back, and took her with him, half falling onto the bathroom floor, he whispered, ‘Princess …’, and then repeated it again and again and again as he held her body, still wet and sticky, tight and close against his own.

In her dream, Prince Charming was leaning over her, his glorious features full of concern, his dark shaggy hair dangling forward over his brow. His grey eyes offered comfort and sympathy.

The fear and shock slid away, and she reached up to touch that dear face. But he receded, speeding away from her as if on a camera dolly, down a long menacing tunnel.

She called out to him, ‘Jay! Please come back … Jay!’

A hand touched her face, but not Prince Charming’s, and she sat bolt upright in a strange bed in a room smelling of potpourri, her heart thudding and her pulse racing, totally disorientated.

But the arm that came around her felt just as good as the one that had encircled her all those years ago. And it was probably far stronger.

‘Hey, are you all right, love? You were shouting and thrashing in your sleep.’ Jay’s fingers curved round her cheek and he made her look at him. With his other hand he brushed back her hair where strands of it had fallen across her face as she slept and into her mouth. ‘You shouted my name. I hope I wasn’t a monster in your nightmare.’

Sandy gave him a cautious little smile, still not quite sure what she was feeling. She glanced around the room, at all the chintz. Ah yes, the Waverley. The bathroom door was open and, seeing the gleaming white tiling beyond, she felt a rush of heat, and a blush rising in her face. She seemed to feel the slick of his tongue, licking her skin and probing wickedly between the cheeks of her bottom.

Oh boy …

Unable to look at him for a moment, she continued her perusal, and blushed more. At some point while she’d been taking the nap that she hadn’t realised she’d needed until she’d laid her head down, someone had come and taken the tea tray, replacing it with a trolley laden with sandwiches, cold cuts, bread and cheese, wine, coffee in a cafetiere. They’d seen her sleeping in a guest’s room. Sandy focused in on the beautiful presentation of fine food in an attempt to stop thinking about that. And about Jay’s wicked tongue. And the deeper implications of her dream.

It’d been Prince Charming, she was certain of it, his face clearer than usual in her memory. But Jay had been the one she’d called for as that face had sped away.

Why do I keep linking the two of them? Surely, it’s not possible that …

She shook her head. It was ridiculous and unlikely, and even so, if it was true, she hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening years, even if Prince Charming had. Her face and her hair were just the same, and he must have recognised her, even if he was unrecognisable himself.

‘Sandy?’

He was staring at her in concern, and perhaps a bit of suspicion. Was he really Prince Charming and even now realising that she’d sussed his true identity?

What the fuck is your true identity?

‘Just a weird dream. I’m OK. Nothing to worry about.’

He frowned at her. For a face that had been stitched together by a surgeon’s skill, his was extraordinarily expressive, especially now the goatee beard was history.

She decided to test him.

‘It was about something that once happened to me, and someone I once met.’ Shaking herself free of him, she slid off the bed and went to the tray, poured some coffee into a cup, then added milk. ‘I was at the seaside, and someone tried to mug me on the sea front and steal my bag. They knocked me over, and this young man helped me.’ She took a sip of the brew. It was rich and aromatic. Under normal circumstances she would have sighed with pleasure and made a point of remembering to ask at Reception about the brand, but instead she went on, ‘He was kind and sweet and he sat with me until an ambulance came. But then he had to go and catch a ferry with his friends, and I never saw him again.’

‘And he never tried to contact you again? Or you him?’ Jay’s voice was neutral, unrevealing. He wasn’t Prince Charming, obviously. Disappointment stabbed her, even though she’d not seriously thought it was possible.

‘No, alas, we never exchanged names.’

She heard him get up, come to stand beside her. Almost felt the heat of his body as he approached, even though he was wearing a hotel bathrobe, just as she was.

‘But you still think about him.’ It was a statement, as he too poured coffee, black and strong.

‘Yes. Somehow in my mind he’s become some kind of perfect fantasy hero. A kind of Prince Charming. The very embodiment of nobility, of chivalry … and romance.’ She
put down her cup, picked up a sliver of cheese and nibbled it. ‘I know it’s ridiculous. He’s probably not like that at all. He could have turned out to be the most horrible, lying conniving git, a total bastard.’

‘You’re probably right.’ Jay reached out and took some of the same cheese. ‘We men are like that, mostly.’

‘Maybe so. But it cuts both ways. If he met me now, he’d probably find that I’m not a bit like the girl he remembers. There’s nothing I need rescuing from. I rescue myself.’

There was a long silence. No sips of coffee. No nibbles of cheese. It was as if they were frozen in time, preserved in amber.

‘Yes, I get that. I admire you for it,’ said Jay eventually. Sandy half-expected him to reach for her, but he didn’t and her body cried out for him. And not just her body.

Don’t be stupid
, she told herself.
You’ve only known him a day, and he’s obviously not here for long. It’s like a one-night stand, but without the night. Just quick, but wild and gorgeous sex. Nothing wrong with that.

In fact, as she looked around, she saw things had changed. A sombre charcoal-grey suit hung alone on the wardrobe door now, along with a shirt in anthracite and a tie in the same shade. The laptop had been stowed in a case that matched the attaché case. When she glanced back at Jay, she saw that beneath his robe, where it gaped open, he was wearing grey jersey jockey trunks.

He was leaving.

‘Time to go now?’ she said as lightly as she could, giving him what she hoped was a casual untroubled smile.

His eyes tracked over her face, as if he were assessing every feature, just as the Terminator would, and making
calculations based on the configuration and tension of muscles to assess her mood and her responses.

‘Just for a couple of days. I have some meetings down in London, but I’m coming back here at the weekend. I’ve retained this room.’

She forced herself to stay cool, but Jay must have seen the response on her face because his own expression morphed into a smile, smug and male.

‘OK! I’m pleased,’ she admitted, her head coming up. ‘I … I like the sex! We have fun. I’d like a bit more of it. So, yes, I’m glad you’re not leaving for good just yet.’

Jay touched a finger to her chin and looked down into her eyes. ‘You’re a special woman, Princess. Your fantasy hero guy was an imbecile not to stay around and get to know you. I’m going to try to not be quite so stupid.’

Sandy’s heart leapt, wondering what the implications of that were.

But as he brought his mouth down on hers, she saw shadows in his eyes.

‘Why the hell don’t you just Google him and be done with it?’ demanded Kat, gesturing wildly with the breadknife the next morning as she and Sandy made sandwiches for the lunchtime trade.

It had occurred to her. In fact, last night when she’d returned home late from the Waverley, Sandy had fired up her laptop, put Jay’s name into the search engine and had her finger hovering over ‘Google Search’ for several seconds. But when it had come down to it, she’d closed the browser and opened email instead to send a few messages to her family and far-flung friends.

It came back to that hunger for more of the sex, the
closeness they were sharing. The pleasure that might come to a standstill if she found out something about him that made her dislike him, or be disillusioned in some way. Her gut said there was some secret or other, and that it wasn’t a very good one, but her body and, yes, her pussy, said don’t pursue it.

And not just her body. Her mind preferred to remain in their special bubble of time together too. He was intriguing, unusual, intelligent, and also profoundly and mysteriously glamorous in his scarred and troubled way. How likely was she ever to be involved with a man who drove an Aston Martin again? Her ex had been quite well off, but nothing like in Jay’s obvious league. The car, the beautiful clothing, and everything about him really, screamed that he was wealthy in a way beyond her modest world.

‘I don’t want to,’ she told Kat, tamping down a turkey and cranberry sandwich with a polythene-gloved hand. ‘I don’t want to know anything about him, really. It’s just a brief “thing” while he’s in the area, nothing more. Why complicate it by knowing who he is and potentially spoiling everything?’ She sliced the sandwich neatly, and slid it into the plastic container, then sealed it and slapped on a holly sticker ‘This is the first time I’ve had a full-on, just sex and pleasure relationship, and I’m going to make the most of it. You of all people should appreciate that, the way you are with Greg.’

Kat gave her a long look. ‘Greg and I talk, and have fun out of bed as well as in it.’ Unable to stop herself, Sandy glanced at the replacement butter dish, and when their eyes met again, Kat laughed. ‘You know what I mean. Non-sex fun out of bed. I like him, I really do. And you
could probably like Jay that way too, if you knew you could trust him, by knowing more about him.’

‘No. I’ve made up my mind. Why mess with a good thing?’ Something in her heart told her that Jay’s entrance into her life would be followed fairly quickly by his exit again, and she was determined not to muck up the intervening days.

‘Fair enough,’ conceded Kat. ‘But if you won’t find out more about him, and he’s going to remain a mystery man, you’re completely free to tell me all about his kinky sex preferences.’ Sandy’s mouth dropped open, but Kat went on blithely, ‘And don’t try to tell me he isn’t kinky, because he’s just got that look of a delicious pervert written all over him.’

‘How can you say that? He might be totally conservative in bed for all you know.’

Sandy felt hot. Memories were already flooding in. She felt prickly and embarrassed to be thinking about all the things she and Jay had crammed into their so-brief acquaintance, right here, in the company of her friend. She wasn’t Kat. She’d always been more the willing listener, not the one to tell every lurid detail about herself.

‘Well, we didn’t do anything all that pervy and fetishy. It was more a kind of vanilla, but intense, you know what I mean?’ Which she supposed was a true representation, thus far. Not to say that Jay hadn’t talked about such things, whispering outrageous scenarios in her ear while he’d fucked her fiercely, face-down across the chintz duvet cover after their improvised congress in the shower. He’d murmured of erotic toys and spanking, of bondage and erotic games, but the sex itself had been straight, hard and workmanlike. He’d obviously been thinking ahead, planning
his London trip and his business, whatever that was, while he’d been thrusting inside her. Men!

‘Early days, hon, early days,’ observed Kat sagely. ‘A man like him, he’s a dead ringer for a master. The sort of guy who’d dress you in leather lingerie, tie you up and spank your bottom, then fuck you senseless until you couldn’t see straight, and begged for mercy.’