heard about people having wildly tasteless sex at wakes, just to prove that they were still alive. Maybe this was something like that.
But she suspected not.
Sarah wanted to believe that it was love behind her behaviour. But she was beginning to wonder if it was more a matter of lust. She’d never experienced the kind of sexual pleasure that she’d had earlier that evening. And she wanted more.
By the time she heard the Rolls throttle down in the driveway, Sarah was beside herself with excitement. When Nick strode into the room already stripping off as he went, desire had rendered her totally mindless.
This time he did not speak and neither did she. Their coupling was fast and furious, a raw, animalistic mating that sent them both hurtling over the edge in seconds. Afterwards, they clung to each other, their skin pearled in sweat, their bodies stuck together.
‘I didn’t use a condom,’ he muttered into her hair.
‘I know,’ she rasped.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ she shocked herself by saying. ‘I liked it.’
Oh, what an understatement. She’d gloried in his hard, unprotected flesh surging into hers, wallowed in his flooding her womb.
His head lifted, dark eyes gleaming. ‘But you’re not safe. You’ve just opened the dungeon door, Sarah, big time.’
Her sex-glazed eyes searched his. ‘What dungeon is that?’
‘The one I’ve kept my X-rated fantasies about you imprisoned in all these years.’
Sarah’s eyes widened at the rather menacing metaphor.
‘Don’t ever imagine I’m in love with you,’ he snarled. ‘Love doesn’t live in a dungeon. Now, go to sleep. I’ve had enough for one night and I’m bloody exhausted.’
‘SOMETHING to drink, Sarah?’
Sarah’s head turned. She’d been staring through the plane window at the panoramic vista below. They’d not long taken off from Mascot Airport and hadn’t yet reached any clouds.
‘Yes, please,’ she said to both Nick and the hovering stewardess. ‘What can I have?’
‘How about a glass of champagne?’ Nick suggested.
‘At seven-fifteen in the morning?’
‘Why not?’
‘Nick, you are terrible,’ she chided, but jokingly. ‘OK, champagne it is.’
‘And you, sir?’ the flight attendant asked.
‘I’ll have what she’s having.’
Sarah’s laugh enchanted him, as did she. There was no artifice in her, no pretend sophistication. She was a pleasant change from the kind of woman he usually dated.
Once she was handed her glass of champagne, Sarah turned back to gaze intently through the window, her nose close to the rim.
Truly, she was like a child on her first flight.
Nick stared at her as he waited for his drink. She looked about sixteen this morning, wearing little make-up, no jewellery and a simple black and white sun-dress. Her hairstyle was young too, the sides scooped up into schoolgirlish combs, the rest falling loosely down her back.
The flight attendant was probably thinking he was a shameless cradle-snatcher. Nick detected a knowing glint in the woman’s eyes as she handed him his glass of champagne.
Not that he cared what she thought, or anyone else for that matter. Nick had become so besotted by Sarah that he was already considering extending the length of their affair.
Of course, a month of non-stop sex with her at his holiday house on Happy Island might return him to a wiser course of action. He really hadn’t had enough time to burn out his lust for Sarah since the first night they’d spent together.
Apart from anything, they’d been very busy, visiting Flora at the hospital and seeing to her health needs.
Fortunately, the specialist had located the source of the angina, a minor blockage in one artery that had been successfully cleared without the need for open-heart surgery. When the doctor had suggested a holiday for his quickly recovering patient, Nick had offered Jim and Flora his penthouse on the Gold Coast, which was fully serviced, with meals readily available, either in the restaurant downstairs or delivered to their apartment door. They’d jumped at the chance of an all-expenses-paid jaunt and Nick had seen them off at the airport three days ago, New Year’s Eve.
Which had left him alone in the house with Sarah.
As Nick settled back to sip his champagne, his mind drifted back to the thirty-first of December…
He’d chilled some white wine, ordered in a five-star meal from a local restaurant, then set everything up on the balcony to the master bedroom, the perfect setting for a romantic, candlelit dinner. The perfect setting for New Year’s Eve as well, with the uninterrupted view of Sydney Harbour—the water, the city and the bridge—which was always the showpiece of the fireworks.
Not that they got to see the fireworks, either at nine or at midnight, each occasion finding them otherwise occupied inside. After nearly a week of abstinence, he was insatiable, both for Sarah’s beautiful body and her rapturous responses, Nick wallowing with wicked selfishness in the transparency of her feelings for him.
Nick could not get enough of her that night. Or the next day. Oddly enough, he didn’t want to try out lots of different positions. He was content to just be in bed with her.
That evening, however, she suddenly called a halt, claiming she was exhausted. That night she slept alone, in her pink-quilted, little-girl bed.
Nick didn’t argue. He could see she was determined. But he wasn’t happy, resolving during that long, restless night that the following morning he would persuade her to go away with him to Happy Island, where she wouldn’t be able to escape him.
Fortunately, he hadn’t cancelled the airline tickets he’d booked for himself and Chloe.
Sarah’s reaction to his invitation over breakfast seriously surprised Nick.
‘Surely you can’t expect me to go away with you on the same holiday you planned with Chloe!’ she threw at him.
Nick quickly saw that his sensitivity meter was registering very low, Sarah making it clear what she thought of his suggestion.
He had to work hard all day to make Sarah see he wasn’t treating her as a substitute for Chloe. Some tender lovemaking seemed to soften her stubborn attitude a little. But he finally struck the right note when he said that he’d never taken Chloe—or any of his other girlfriends—to Happy Island before. She would be the first female to share
