With or Without You (29 page)

Anthony worked his fingertips down my sides to my waist, and gripped me here. He held me steady, and then he slowly brought his cock against me. So slowly. Slipped it between my thighs and pressed forwards, teasing me with just the tip. This was delicious, dreamy, and the languidness made me realise what I’d missed for so long with Byron. We had equality, I suppose: you come first this week, I’ll come first next. We were diligent score keepers, focused on our rights. We had the give and take of a modern relationship.

Screw give and take, I thought now.

Anthony pressed forwards, agonisingly slowly. My body accepted him, pulled on him, but he would not be rushed. ‘Wait, baby,’ he said when he felt me pushing my hips back against him. If I’d been in charge, the whole thing would have been over in minutes. In seconds. A flash of white-hot light and we’d be at the finish. Anthony wasn’t interested in a big bang. He slid a bit deeper inside of me, and now he used his hands to split apart my nether lips. Cold air rushed over me, and I felt my heart throb.

‘Oh, God,’ I murmured, lowering my chin towards my chest, forcing myself to trust him. To let this scene unfold at his pace. I wanted to rush. I wanted to scream. Anthony had his own plans.

He thrust the slightest bit forwards, and I would have collapsed if he had not been holding me steady. He fucked me in slow motion, at his speed, his rhythm. I could not force him to go faster. I could not make him do anything at all. I had to abide by his wishes, play by his rules. My thoughts spiralled out of control, as if making up for the slow quality of this lovemaking session.

Sometimes what’s important is not equality. Sometimes who goes first doesn’t matter in the slightest. I realised with a sudden unexpected clarity that what I wanted most was to be taken, and Anthony took me.

Would there ever be something that he could do that I wouldn’t like?

I didn’t think so. I couldn’t imagine.

On the train to Athens, Anthony spoke perfect Greek with the conductor. When he caught me giving him a quizzical stare, he shrugged, embarrassed. I wasn’t accustomed to this gesture from him, but I recognised it as one of my own. Anthony looked as if he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

‘You’re good,’ I said. ‘Why would you tell me you’re not? Modesty aside, you really are excellent at speaking Greek.’

‘Ancient Greek is different from modern Greek.’

I continued to stare at him. ‘Come clean,’ I said. ‘I know you’re teasing me, I can tell when you are, now. But I don’t know why. What aren’t you telling me?’

Anthony leaned in towards me and said, ‘Can you keep a secret?’

I nodded.

‘I’m Greek.’

I continued to stare at him, baffled.

‘Half-Greek, really, on my mother’s side. My father was English and my parents split when I was young. I spoke only Greek until I was in my early teens. Then I went to school in London and learned English there. Hence,’ he said grandly, ‘the accent.’

I was in shock. ‘But why on earth wouldn’t you tell me that? Why would you pretend it was so difficult for you to do the translation? You made me trade you things, made me dare you, when you could have done the whole thing in your sleep.’

‘Ancient Greek really is different from modern Greek,’ he insisted. ‘Plus, if I told you I could do it all in an
evening, I wouldn’t have had the chance to really get to know you.’

I let his words sink in for a few seconds before responding. ‘So you knew from the start? You made it seem as if you were working so hard at deciphering the pages. But you knew.’

He hesitated. ‘Would I be on a train with you right now going to Athens? It would have just been a job. You would have dropped off the manuscript. I would have typed it up neatly. Then you would have gone on your merry way.’

‘The pages would have still been porn.’

‘But you might not have discussed them with me. You might have looked at me as if I were simply a helper. An assistant. You might have spent hours pondering the pages with Nora, rather than with me.’

I considered what he said, and decided he was right. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t entirely honest, Anthony. After all that –’ I hesitated ‘– that trauma over me going behind your back. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘You thought I was lying to you, so you went behind my back to check up on me. I simply left out a bit of information that I didn’t think was necessary to our relationship. And it was worth it, right? You’d never have seen my model train set, or ridden on my Harley. Or anything …’ He let the sentence remain, unfinished, between us, and I instantly visualised Anthony behind me on the fire escape, the cold night air on our naked skin. I blushed, no great surprise there, then said, ‘You never know. Nora believes it was fate that made me break that urn, fate that led me to your office with those tattered pieces of paper. That if it hadn’t happened in that way, we would have ended up here due to some other circumstances.’

‘Nora,’ Anthony said slowly, ‘is your very best friend in the world. I know this. And I’ve kept my mouth shut about everything you’ve said so far that she’s told you. But now I must tell you exactly what I think. Best friend,
or not, Nora is also a little bit crazy. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.’

I looked at him.

Anthony clarified. ‘I believe that we had one chance, or, really, I had one chance to get you to notice me. And it worked.’

‘You’d already gotten my attention,’ I reminded him, ‘at the Christmas party, under the mistletoe, with your –’

Anthony silenced me with a kiss, as warm and deep as it had been on that night, but now that I knew what a kiss like this could lead to, this one meant even more.

When we parted, Anthony looked at his watch. ‘Twelve more hours,’ he said sadly. ‘How am I ever going to make it for that long?’ He caressed my face gently, stroked my hair and then smiled broadly. He has an impish look when he smiles like that. ‘And how are
you
going to wait that long?’

‘Who said we had to?’ I asked, not even believing myself as I uttered the words. Was I really going to be daring? Why not? The dark-haired conductor strolled by us, and Anthony flagged him down, requesting a blanket and two pillows. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes as Anthony covered us both with the soft grey-and-white-striped blanket. He didn’t do anything else, at first. I didn’t make a move either. I knew that Anthony would set the pace.

I was right.

Anthony reclined his seat to match mine. His hand slid beneath the blanket and found my fingers. He squeezed my hand once, then let it go and allowed his fingers to continue wandering. I was wearing a dress that buttoned from neck to hemline. Anthony deftly undid three buttons in the centre of the dress, and I sighed. He pressed his lips to my ear and murmured, ‘I’ve never done it on a train, with all my love of engines.’

‘Now?’ I asked, suggesting it.

Anthony’s fingers slid into the opening of my pale-yellow dress – quite a change from my staid black suits
– and then moved downwards, searching out the waistband of my panties. I was wearing a pair purchased with Nora on our latest lingerie escapade. For once, I had gone to the racks of colour, shunning the black I’ve worn my whole life. These ones were white satin and rode low on my hips. Anthony pushed them down even further, feeling skin he had shaved bare himself, parting the lips of my pussy very gently and then stroking between my lips with his third finger. Wetness enveloped his finger and he pushed it in further, slipped it in until I sighed and leaned my head back.

‘Tell me how it feels,’ he whispered to me. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

Once again, as they had so often in the past few weeks, words failed me. But this time the lack of mental ability was a good thing. This time, the failure to find the right word came because of the happiness in my chest, making it difficult for me to speak, making my breath start to come in a rush from only the tiniest touch of Anthony’s fingers.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ he said again.

Even with my eyes closed, I knew he was watching the change come over me. He had said that he liked to see it happen. That witnessing my arousal was more intense than any other foreplay he’d ever experienced. As his fingers moved in and out slowly, I could sense that he would take his time.

That was fine with me.

We had all the time in the world.

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First published in 2006 by Cheek, London

Published in the UK in 2013 by
Rouge
, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company

Copyright © 2006 by Alison Tyler

Alison Tyler has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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