I’ll be a little late getting you home,’ he said as he drew her through a doorway, switching on a light as he went. ‘I’m sure Dora will forgive me.’
The room was, naturally, a bedroom. A huge bedroom with polished wooden floorboards, high ceilings, antique furniture and a wide brass bed covered in a silvery grey satin quilt with matching pillows. The lamps each side of the bed had brass bases with white shades and long fringes. The chandelier overhead was crystal and brass. Lace curtains covered the long windows on the wall adjacent to the bed. In the opposite wall was another door, which was open and led into an en suite bathroom. The light shone in just far enough for Jessie to see it was more modern than the rest of the house, being all white. Possibly a recent renovation.
It was a beautiful bedroom, only the colour of the bedding betraying that a man slept here, and not a woman.
Although, of course, women could have slept here. With Kane. His ex-wife perhaps. And others Kane had forgotten to mention.
Jessie didn’t like that thought.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kane said immediately.
‘Nothing,’ she lied.
‘Come, now, Jessie, don’t lie to me. You looked at that bed and something not very nice came into your mind. What was it?’
‘I guess I didn’t like to think of you having been in there with other women.’
‘But I told you. There have been no other women since Natalie.’
‘What about Natalie?’
‘What about her?’
‘You slept with her recently. I know you did. I overheard both of you in the office the other day. I went to thank you for the book at lunch-time that day and you were discussing her pregnancy and she said you weren’t to worry, because it wasn’t yours.’
Kane stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you say anything before this?’
‘I…I didn’t want to.’
‘You just kept it to yourself and held it against me. Hell, Jessie, I wish you’d said something.’
‘Would it have changed anything? You did sleep with her, didn’t you?’
His grimace showed true anguish. ‘Look, it was three months ago and only the once. We’d met up in her flat the night our divorce papers came through. She’d offered to cook me dinner as a kind of celebration, to show there were no hard feelings. We had too many glasses of wine over dinner and she said how about it, for old times’ sake? If I hadn’t been drunk and lonely it would never have happened. I can’t tell you how much I regretted it afterwards. So did she, I think. It wasn’t even good sex. We were both plastered. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want you to think I was one of those guys who get rid of their wives and then keep sleeping with them when they feel like a bit, as a lot do. I’m sorry, Jessie. I wasn’t trying to deceive you. I just wanted you to believe me when I said on that first Friday night that I wasn’t in the habit of picking up women. You were a one-off, believe me. You still are. I want you, Jessie, more than any woman I’ve ever known. And I know you want me. Please don’t keep finding excuses to push me away.’
Jessie knew he was a good talker. A clever persuader. But there was a sincerity in his voice and his eyes that touched her. Surely, he had to be telling the truth.
‘You really haven’t been with anyone else?’ she asked.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to die, Kane,’ she murmured, stepping forward and snaking her arms up around his neck. ‘I want you very much alive.’
He groaned, his mouth crashing down to take hers in a kiss of mind-blowing hunger. Their tongues met, danced, demanded. Their bodies pressed closer, and closer. Their hips jammed together, then ground against each other.
‘No, no, not that again,’ he gasped as his mouth burst free from hers. ‘I haven’t waited the last three days for that.’
Her head was spinning but she concurred wholeheartedly. That was not what she wanted, either. She wanted him naked, and inside her. She wanted it all.
She reached round behind her back to untie the bow.
‘No,’ he said swiftly. ‘Let me…’
Kane started undressing her as no man had ever done in her life. So slowly and sensually, his eyes smouldering with desire, his hands not quite steady. First to be disposed of was her skirt, leaving her standing there before him with nothing below her hips but that skimpy G-string.
‘Arms up,’ he ordered, then he took her top by its hem and began to peel it upwards over her head.
The action covered her eyes for a second or two, Jessie quivering in her momentary darkness, turned on by the thought of how she must look with her arms up, her face masked, but her body being more and more exposed to his gaze. She’d never thrilled to a sex-slave fantasy before but she did so now, imagining herself having been bought by him, being a helpless prisoner to his passion, with no other purpose than to be an instrument of pleasure.
Not her own.
Suddenly, her own pleasure seemed irrelevant. This was all for him. Her lord and master. Her soon-to-be lover.
Even when her top was thrown away, she kept her eyes shut, enjoying the sensation of being outside herself, looking in on what was happening with her mind. She heard him gasp. In admiration, she hoped.
And then his hands were on her again, still soft, but just as knowing. He took her G-string off first, which surprised her. She wobbled a bit when he picked up first one foot and then the other. She stiffened expectantly when he straightened, sucking in sharply when one of his hands stroked over her belly. Her eyes squeezed even more tightly together when it drifted lower, a startled gasp torn from her throat when both his hands slid between her thighs. But he didn’t touch her there, just eased her legs apart.
‘Yes, like that,’ she heard him say.
And then his hands were gone, only to be felt again on her bra clasp. When it gave way and her breasts were finally naked before his eyes, she felt no embarrassment, only the most all-consuming craving to have them touched.
But he didn’t touch them.
‘Open your eyes,’ he told her forcefully.
Of course she obeyed. How could she not? It was the voice of the master.
Opening her eyes, however, brought a wave of dizziness.
‘Watch it,’ he said, and grabbed her shoulders to steady her swaying body.
Once she was still, his hands moved up to dispose of the scrunchie, letting her hair tumble in wild disarray around her shoulders.
She had never been so turned on, or so compliant.
‘I want you to just stand there like that,’ he murmured, ‘whilst I get undressed.’
Of course, she thought. What else would I do?
