A Little Seduction Omnibus (17 page)

Yes, there had been times when she had longed almost passionately for her mother, when she had wondered, especially as she had matured, just how different she might have been had she had the benefit of a maternal womanly influence. And, yes, there had perhaps been times when she had felt that her father’s standards were almost impossibly high, when she had felt that he was a little too remote, when she had longed a little rebelliously for her life to possess more fun and less responsibility, less duty.

The kettle was boiling. Dee made herself a cup of coffee, carrying the mug with her as she walked from the kitchen into her study.

On her desk were the notes she had made on the scheme she was hoping to persuade Peter to lend his support to. It
was
ambitious; she knew that. Foolhardy, she knew others might say, although she preferred to use the words ‘innovative’ and ‘adventurous.’

Whilst, technically, she and Peter had charge of the finances of the foundation her father had established before his death, morally she felt obliged to take into account the views of the other committee members, especially since part of the charity’s income came from public donations.

What Dee really wanted to do with the money was to establish workshops where local youngsters could learn a proper trade. She couldn’t lay claim to her idea being original. Anna’s husband, the millionaire philanthropist Ward Hunter, had already done something similar in the northern town where he had been brought up.

There had been a time when Ward and Dee had been at loggerheads, due to a misunderstanding between them, but now they got on extremely well together, respecting one another’s financial acumen and moral strengths.

Ward had already promised to give Dee all the help she needed in setting up her workshops, but, of course, Ward could not convince the foundation’s committee to support her.

She had already found an almost perfect site for her venture: a large, empty late-Victorian villa on the outskirts of the town, with plenty of land and, even better, a large range of outbuildings.

Ward’s apprentices learned their trades in a similar environment, but Dee, her maternal streak coming to the fore, also wanted to convert rooms in the main house into small bedsits for her young trainees.

It was, she knew, a very ambitious scheme, and to show her own belief in it she had decided that she would make a large—a very large—private financial contribution towards it.

Once it was finished it would bear her father’s name—a further tribute to him—a personal tribute from her to him.

Only the previous week, when she and Anna had been talking about Anna’s coming baby, Anna had asked her gently if she had ever thought of marrying and having a family herself. Anna, gentle, kind, compassionate, was not the sort to pry, but Dee had been able to guess what she was thinking. They had been looking at the beautiful delicate layette, the little hand-embroidered items which Anna had bought for her baby, and Dee knew that her own envy had shown as she’d gently touched the tiny little garments.

She had smiled painfully, shaken her head and told Anna wryly that she was far too bossy and set in her ways for any man to want to put up with her. Of course Anna had demurred, but she had seen that Dee hadn’t wanted to pursue the subject.

How could she have? How could she have said to Anna that deep within her own tender, vulnerable heart she knew
that there was no way she could marry a man she did not love totally? No way she could marry a man she could not commit herself to utterly and completely, no way she could marry a man she could not trust utterly and completely. Only a man to whom she could tell her most secret hopes—and her most secret fears—and to whom she could reveal her inner self totally. And such a man, quite simply, did not exist.

There was no one, could be no one, to whom Dee could ever tell her deepest, darkest fears, to whom she could ever reveal her deepest and darkest secret. How could she, when the secret was not really her own, when to reveal the fear that had haunted her for so long would mean a potential betrayal of the man to whom she owed the deepest bond of loyalty there was—her father?

Once she had told someone else,
anyone
else, about the fear that lay over her life like a dark bruising shadow, once she had shared her fear, her doubt with someone else, it would be like opening Pandora’s box. It would be like... Dee started to shiver.

‘Sometimes I think you love your father more than you love me,’ Hugo had once told her almost accusingly, when she had explained to him that she had to go home for the weekend to see her father.

‘Not more,’ she had reassured him. ‘He’s my father,’ she had tried to explain.

Hugo had a different relationship with his parents than she’d had with her father. For a start he had two of them, a father
and
a mother, and he had siblings, an older brother and two sisters. And, in the tradition of the British upper classes, he had been sent away to boarding-school, and so, to him, the closeness which had existed between Dee and her father—their mutual dependence on one another, the loyalty and love she’d felt for him—had been hard for him to comprehend.

Hugo...

Dee wrapped her hands defensively around her coffee mug, giving up any attempt now to pretend that she was going to work. It had been such a shock to see him again, but nothing like as much of a shock as it had been when he had kissed her. And yet Hugo and kisses were linked inescapably together in her mind, her memories. The one impossible to detach from the other.

Hugo and kisses...

Dee sat back in her chair and let her mind drift...

CHAPTER FOUR

‘M
MM
... Just imagine what it would be like to be kissed by that...’ Dee’s companion murmured appreciatively as she rolled her eyes and cast a slumberously eager glance in Hugo’s direction.

‘Don’t you mean him?’ Dee corrected her primly, affecting not to be impressed by the picture of stunning male sensuality that Hugo made, taut muscles rippling down his back and arms as he pulled powerfully on the oars of the boat he was helping to crew.

‘Mmm...what I wouldn’t give for an hour on my own with him,’ her fellow student breathed excitedly, ignoring Dee’s disapproving shake of her head.

‘Oh, come on,’ she protested when Dee refused to relent. ‘You can’t pretend that you can’t see how scrumptiously sexy he is.’

‘He’s very good-looking,’ Dee conceded sedately.

‘Good-looking! He’s a hundred, million, zillion times more than just good-looking,’ Mandy breathed blissfully. ‘He’s just a living, breathing, walking, talking hunk. He’s... Oh, no, he’s looking at us. He’s looking at us,’ she whispered frantically to Dee. ‘Dee, he’s looking at us...’

‘No, he’s not; he’s squinting because the sun’s in his eyes,’ Dee corrected her, but for some reason her own heart had given a funny little throb as Hugo had turned his head and appeared to look over in their direction. She knew perfectly well what her companion had meant when she’d tried to find the words to describe Hugo’s sexual appeal.

‘Lord, but I think I’d die if he ever actually spoke to me. I mean, Hugo Montpelier.
The
man...
the
hunk...
the
dreamboat. He could have any girl he wanted, but he doesn’t sleep around and he doesn’t have a steady. One of the third years actually tried to ask him out, but he said that he didn’t have time and that he was too busy. He’s quite definitely hetero, though, no doubt about
that
. One of the girls taking Modern Languages told me that she’d managed to get a snog with him at one of last term’s parties and that it was just to die for. She said she practically felt she might have an orgasm there and then, on the spot...’

Dee looked away. Her own sex drive was healthy enough, but her upbringing had been slightly old-fashioned. She had had dates, kissed boys, that kind of thing, and she knew that when she fell in love there would be no holding back from her, but she knew too that her passionate nature meant that she would only feel safe and secure giving herself completely in a relationship if she knew that her feelings were returned. Casual sexual experimentation, playful dabbling in the shallow waters of sexual curiosity were not for her. She was made for the deep, dangerous ocean, the primitive, primal life force of a sexuality that commanded and demanded total commitment from both sides—total commitment and total love.

But that did not mean that she was totally immune to the powerful aura of Hugo Montpelier’s strongly male sexuality. He wore it like a banner, proudly and fiercely, and yet at the same time he wore it like a shield, protectively and defensively. Dee had heard all the gossip and speculation about him, the excited girl-chat that went on in the hyped-up, female-hormone-drenched atmosphere of their first-year halls. She had listened to the fevered and feverish uninhibited fantasies of her peers, which ranged from the foolishly idiotic to the frankly obscene.

Less than two months into her first term at university, she might still physically be a virgin but mentally her sexual knowledge had been expanded in a way that quite frankly had left her feeling slightly shocked.

One of the fantasies she had heard expressed regarding Hugo was whether he could last long enough to fully satisfy an excited pair of girls who had graphically described just what they would like to do with him if they had him in bed with them, and just what they would like him to do with them.

‘Didn’t you know? It’s every man’s special fantasy,’ one girl had purred when she had seen Dee’s shocked expression. ‘And I should know,’ she had added tellingly, grinning at Dee. ‘Ask my twin sister. There isn’t a man alive who doesn’t think that he’s got what it takes to satisfy two women at the same time.’

‘Nor a woman alive who doesn’t
know
that he hasn’t,’ another girl had muttered sardonically to Dee as she’d overheard the other girl’s remark.

Three-in-a-bed romps might be what were in the minds of some of the girls who drooled over Hugo, but so far it seemed that none of them had managed to persuade him to join them. He had been seen escorting one girl, but she had simply turned out to be a friend of a friend and already virtually engaged, and he had been seen at a drinks party escorting the daughter of one of the university’s Chairs, but she had since gone to America to finish her education.

‘So it’s open season on him,’ one girl had declared gleefully. ‘And don’t forget, whoever gets him, we all want a full report...’

Dee had left at that point. She wasn’t a prude but... But what? But the images the others’ comments had conjured up in her brain were far too private to be acknowledged, never mind shared. Not that Hugo was likely to ask her out. She suspected that she simply wouldn’t be his type. He was so popular, so sought after, that no doubt when he did date a girl he would choose one who...who what? Who would make no bones about the fact that she was quite happy to jump into bed with him and have sex with him simply for sex’s sake? Whilst she, Dee... No, they would have nothing in common.

Three days later, as though fate had overheard her and decided to teach her a lesson, she found out just how wrong her judgement had been.

There she was, riding her hired bicycle across the cobbles, struggling to control it, when Hugo came racing round the side of the building, the full weight of his body hitting her sideways on.

Neither she nor the cycle had stood any chance. He was six feet three and a sportsman, she was five feet nine and slim, the cycle was nearly twenty years old and rheumaticky; the result was inevitable. Regrettably the cycle, venerably ancient though it was, was left to fend for itself whilst Hugo went to Dee’s rescue.

She was picked up, carefully dusted off, and even more carefully inspected for damage, and all the time Hugo was apologising to her in his deep rough voice that made her feel rather as if a cat was licking her skin with its rough tongue. But his hands as he touched her were anything but rough; he was so careful and tender with her. Her shirt, a neatly buttoned-up affair, had a rip in it and her jeans had dirt stains down one side. The combs had fallen out of her hair and there was a nasty patch of grazing on her index and middle fingers, where they had come into contact with the gravel, but otherwise she was all right—as Dee gravely assured Hugo.

‘Thank goodness for that,’ he said in relief. ‘For a moment I thought I might really have hurt you.’

‘It was an accident,’ Dee felt bound to point out. It was very chivalrous of him to shoulder all the blame, especially when both of them knew that she shouldn’t really have been cycling where she had.

‘Look, I was on my way to a meeting, but would you let me buy you a coffee? You never know,’ he told her gravely, ‘you could be suffering from shock.’

There was no ‘could be’ about it, Dee admitted inwardly, though her shock wasn’t caused by her fall but by the fact that he had actually offered to buy her a coffee, which must mean...

‘You
have
hurt yourself,’ she heard Hugo saying tersely as he suddenly caught sight of her fingers.

‘Oh, my hand—that’s nothing,’ Dee denied, trying to tuck her grazed fingers out of sight behind her back just in case he decided that their gravel-pitted state meant that she wasn’t fit to be seen in a coffee shop.

‘Nothing...let me see.’

Before she could stop him he had taken hold of her hand and was gravely inspecting it. Dee wasn’t small, and her hands were elegantly long and fine-boned, although when compared with Hugo’s they suddenly looked almost deliciously frail and feminine.

Her heart tripping excitedly against her ribs, Dee watched as he carefully brushed away the bits of gravel adhering to her skin.

‘This should really be cleaned,’ he told her gravely. ‘I’ve got rid of all the gravel, but...’

‘It’s fine,’ Dee started to say, and then stopped, unable to speak, unable to draw breath, unable to do anything as Hugo lifted her fingers to his mouth and slowly and carefully started to suck on them.

Dee felt as though she was going to faint. The sensation was just so unbelievable, the warmth, the wetness, the slow, rhythmic sucking movement of his mouth.

She tried to protest, and managed to make a sound that came out like a small whimper, the merest breath, more easily recognisable as one of intense appreciation than one of protest.

Much later Hugo told her that he hadn’t initially meant his action to be sexual. He had simply been genuinely concerned about the state of her hand and had reacted promptly and very much in the fashion of his own practical, prosaic country-bred mother, who had, when he was a small child, often ‘cured’ small childhood cut fingers and bruises with a cleansing maternal lick.

‘All mother animals do it,’ he told Dee simply.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, doe-eyed, ‘but you weren’t...you aren’t my mother.’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘I’m not your mother.’ And then he gently continued with what he had been doing, which was peeling her pretty lace bra away from the fullness of her breasts so that he could expose the dark pink crests to his ardent gaze and even more ardent mouth...

Although the area of the campus they were in when the accident happened was normally a busy one, today, for some unaccountable reason, no one else seemed to be around and they were, to all intents and purposes, alone, so that there was no one else to hear the small anguished sound of shocked virginal pleasure that Dee made, nor the totally male, all-male, all-possessive look that Hugo gave her in response. His gesture might not have begun nor been intended as sexually erotic, but by the time he slowly relinquished her fingers neither of them was in any doubt as to what it was or how it was affecting them—nor what it portended. Peter’s meeting—their shared destination—was forgotten.

Dee walked at Hugo’s side in a daze as he guided her, guarded her almost, keeping her body protectively and possessively close to his own, towards the café. Her bike he had disposed of, propped up against a wall. She would, no doubt, have to pay a hefty fine to the firm she had rented it from for the damage caused, inflicted on its ancient frame, but Dee didn’t care. Quite simply she wasn’t capable of caring about anything or anyone right now, and nor was Hugo.

The café Hugo chose was small and dark, smelling richly of fresh ground beans and thick with cigarette smoke. He guided her downstairs to its dimly lit cellar and to a small table tucked away in a natural alcove, his body shielding her from anyone’s curious or predatory gaze.

He ordered for them both, a cappuccino for her and a coffee, plain, black and strong, for himself.

‘I got used to drinking it like this last summer, when I was doing volunteer work in Africa,’ he told her when their coffee arrived.

A simple enough statement, and yet it proved to be both the cornerstone and the basic foundation on which they went on to build their relationship, promoting between them a sense of shared purpose, an intimacy which Dee, with her upbringing, might have found very difficult to reach out for had they taken the route of learning about one another simply through their sexual desire for one another.

Much, much easier for her to let down her guard and express a very natural and enthusiastic interest in his voluntary work than to respond to him or acknowledge her sexual awareness of him. Much easier for her to be herself, to show herself and all the charming complexities of her delicately drawn personality through the questions he then asked her in return than if he had only been able to communicate with her through the guarded protective response she might have made to merely sexual overtures—which was not to say that there was no mental or verbal communication between them; there was, very much so. It surrounded them almost visibly and physically, crating so powerful an aura that the girl bringing them their second and then their third cups of coffee sighed enviously as she went back to the kitchen to tell the girls there about the pair of besotted lovers sitting at one of their tables.

They talked for so long that they missed Peter’s meeting completely.

‘I don’t want to let you go,’ Hugo told Dee as they left the coffee shop and stood together on the busy street outside. ‘There’s so much I want to tell you...so much I want you to tell me. I want to know everything there is to know about you, right from the day you were born.’

Dee laughed, flushed, and then laughed again, before protesting, ‘Oh, but that would take all night.’ And then she flushed again, but it wasn’t embarrassment that was making her skin glow so warmly. It was the way she was feeling inside, just thinking about what it would be like to spend the night with Hugo.

She saw that Hugo was smiling, a male glittery smile that made her heart flip over. It made him look so dangerous, so attractive...so...so...sexy...

‘So...?’ he whispered.

‘I...’ Dee felt herself floundering, flustered and incoherent as she fought for some semblance of adult sophistication, some slick answer that would defuse the exciting tension building up between them.

But where another and more experienced girl might have teased, tongue-in-cheek—‘so...persuade me’—all Dee could manage was a stammered, ‘I can’t... I don’t...’ She stopped and shook her head, and then told him with honest simplicity, ‘I don’t do things like that.’ She saw his eyes widen before he gave her a swift, comprehensive look that rested on her mouth, her breasts, and then lower, before returning to her eyes.

‘What...not ever?’ he asked her gruffly.

From somewhere Dee found the courage to meet his eyes and hold his steady look.

‘Not ever,’ she confirmed.

‘The tribe I was working with last summer have a tradition that whilst a girl has to marry a man chosen by her family she has the right to choose for herself the man who will be her first lover. It’s considered the greatest honour a woman can bestow on a man, to choose him and to choose him out of love, to bestow on him her love and herself, and I happen to agree.’