Dark Nights (5 page)

Then, as if they were executing a complex mating dance, she made a move, gave him the contact he yearned for. She brought her hands up behind his neck and pulled him to her. He leaned down, and brought his lips on to her open mouth. She tasted of all things sweet; honeyed fruit, sun-ripened syrup. Her tongue sought him out, played with his. Her body pressed against him, she hesitated a second on feeling the gathering erection bulging at his fitted trousers, then moulded herself into it as their kiss deepened. His fingers skittered over her back, he felt the tremors of desire vibrate through her and he could bear it no longer. He had to see her, drink her in fully. Seb gently peeled her away, held her in front of him, watched the sheaf of her dress rise and fall as she panted. Then, edging the straps of her dress down her shoulders, he let it fall and crumple to the floor. She was wearing not a stitch apart from a little gold chain and an amulet at her neck, her naked body glowed in the half light and he knew he wanted to consume her. Every tiny morsel of her.

He knelt in front of her and buried his face in her thighs, felt them tighten with expectation. The music rose through the floor, vibrating through her. She placed her hands on his neck and pushed his face into her bush. Soft, delicate, scented, he needed to taste her. He couldn’t wait any longer. He stood, picked her up in his arms and flung her on the bed, watching her full breasts jiggle tantalisingly to rest. In an instant, he had spread her legs, was kneeling at her entrance and staring at her splayed like a decadent white and pink orchid before his eyes. He took his fingers and parted her, then in a second was tasting her, had his lips against her throbbing clit and was swirling it with his tongue. He played her like the finest musicians were playing their instruments, bringing his hand up cupping her warm eager breast, watching her stretch and curl in response. His fingers grazed over her nipple, raising its peak to hardness, feeling her shudder with ecstasy.

He needed to be inside her. As the music grew louder, its power firing his rock hard cock he needed the bliss of her closing around him. He raised himself, threw his jacket to the floor, began to undo his belt but then, as the music changed, softening and mellowing to a lull, Breeze took over. She sat up and pushed him to lie down before her. She knelt, almost demure, and released the clips in her hair to let it fall over her pendulous breasts. He gasped at their heaviness – they were like rich ripe fruits hanging from the tree ready to be plucked and he reached to fondle their fullness. She ran her hands up his shirt, undid each button with trembling fingers, unfolding the rich cotton to reveal a muscular chest. Then she moistened her lips with her tongue, leant down and placed them full over his nipple. 

He was surprised at this move; no woman had treated his nipples to this delight. Then, as she straddled him with her buttocks trapping his throbbing member, she started to wriggle on him while she suckled his nipples with her mouth. She jiggled and bucked her sex against him squeezing and riding his erection, driving him wild. He realised as she slid her cunny up and over his cock moistening it with her juices, covering it in her musky scent, rubbing its length along her swollen clit that she was in danger of bringing herself off. He squeezed her tits harder, hearing her squeak at the little jolts of pain as he gripped her nipples, her fleshy globes full and heavy in his hands. He could bear it no longer. He wanted to win the prize of bringing her to orgasm while he was inside her. Grabbing one of her glorious bouncing buttocks in his hand, he raised and stilled her while he grasped his throbbing cock in the other. 

Its shaft was glistening with her moisture, its length solid from the pressure of feeling her buttocks and clitty ride over it. He found her gash and thrust himself inside her, her squeal of ecstasy drowned in a crescendo of violins as Seb grasped her tits again. His fingers were wet from her beautiful juices and her eyes flickered shut as she rode him like he was a bucking bronco and she was a rodeo rider. His expert massaging of her moist tits pushed her into overdrive, her buttocks slammed against his thighs, her slickness drove up and down over his cock, her tight passageway sucking and pulling at him as he delighted in her superb wetness lubing him. Oh God, he could stand it no more, her voluptuous body shaped like a guitar was the perfect instrument for driving him wild, he opened his mouth and cried out as he felt the spunk forced up inside him shoot into her as she pumped mercilessly, opening her eyes and connecting with him, looking into his soul as she drove him, rode him forced him, to mind-blowing orgasm just as the drums thumped, the cymbals crashed, the might of the whole orchestra filling the Albert Hall drowned out his yells of orgasmic fulfilment.  

He felt sleepy, exhausted, fulfilled. If the world ended in that second he would be a deliriously happy man. The bed was superb, gilded, over the top. The beautiful Albert Hall, rich and red, was extravagant, echoing the way he was beginning to feel about Breeze lying next to him. Ice Queen, she was not. He turned towards her supine beside him and noticed goose bumps. ‘You’re cold.’ He gently covered her over, pressed the warmth of his body close to hers. A sudden rush of protectiveness engulfed him as he swept his hand around her and hugged her close. He didn’t want her to be cold, didn’t want her to be hungry or unhappy. These were new alien sensations to Seb. 

In his offices, she had been icy. When he had caught her stealing from him she had been fiery, everything about her said, “keep away”. But after he had possessed her, she was like some secret garden fenced off with iron railings which once the gate had been unlocked was soft and fragrant, dewy and feminine. The music floated upwards to them, they lay as if in their own secret tent. The rest of the world, the hundreds of people below didn’t matter. It felt to Seb as if he had waited a lifetime to feel this close to another human being and now he had a glimpse of what the rest of the world meant when they said that money couldn’t buy you happiness. They meant moments like this. The warmth, the closeness, the intimacy. He reached to the gold chain at her neck, a heart encasing a tiny diamond. ‘This is pretty, a gift from a lover?’ A pang hit him somewhere deep in his chest. Jealousy! Something he had never experienced before. It hurt.

‘No,’ she looked on it fondly, ‘From my sister, for my 18th birthday. She saved for a year to buy that. I wear it all the time; it’s my most treasured possession.’

Seb let the light shine on it. ‘You’re lucky to have a sibling you care for. I had a brother, once. An elder brother.’

‘You had a brother, what do you mean?’

‘He was ten years older, and the complete opposite to me. He was artistic, a photographer. He went to all the exotic parts of the globe, shot the most amazing things; I still have a portfolio of his work. My father idolised him, the first born son and all that. He died in an accident in South America photographing in the jungle. My father never got over it. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I devote myself to business. I wanted to prove to my father I could be a success too. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body; my only talent has been in building businesses. It’s ironic though because my father has no respect for business, he thinks we’re all crooks, that we do nothing to enrich the world.’

‘That’s sad.’ She turned moss green eyes on him that shone with compassion. ‘You’re so successful. Your father should be proud of you.’

‘I wish someone would tell him that.’ Suddenly, Seb felt exposed, raw. And he wondered why he had shared that with her. He would never normally betray such weakness to anyone. What was happening to him? It made him feel slightly uneasy. Then he remembered their lovemaking and realised that she had still kept something from him. Perhaps even duped him, then he had to smile, she had played her part of Scheherazade to a “t” she had held something back, kept him wanting more. Driving here this evening, thinking about her as he had done for days on end, anticipating their coupling, he had wanted the ultimate. He had wanted her to surrender totally to him. The French called it “the little death” the act of orgasm, that final giving of yourself to another. He had wanted her to give him that prize, to trust him enough to sacrifice herself to him totally while they were locked together as one, while he was inside her. And yet, she had focussed entirely on his pleasure. She had known what she had been doing when she’d ridden him to completion. And here she was, lying next to him, with the concert and the searingly emotional music coming to an end, the strings of the orchestra sublime in their beauty and she had kept that one prize from him. Like Scheherazade, she had left him wanting more. A quote of Shakespeare’s came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He hadn’t thought of it since school days but it was about Cleopatra and now he remembered thinking he would never meet a woman like that: “age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.” It might just be, Seb wondered with fascination, that he had met the one woman who could keep him interested. The thought excited him and terrified him in equal amounts.

Chapter Six

BREEZE HAD TOTALLY AVOIDED Seb at work. Hot-desking was one of the company’s policies so even though she had an office of her own she could work wherever she chose. She had been astounded Seb hadn’t sacked her on the spot when he found she had been scamming him but he obviously knew he had enough of a hold over her for her not to do him any more wrong. At lunch time, instead of eating at her desk as usual, she’d opted ever since that fateful day to take lunch out at one of the many cafes in the square mile. 

She loved the City of London, ever changing, history oozing out of the very cracks in the pavement. She could walk the streets that Pepys walked, see where the great fire had started, and marvel at the fabulous buildings designed by Wren, architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. Such masterpieces were interspersed by modern structures which made their mark like the gherkin which always reminded Breeze of a massive cigar emerging up and piercing the skyline with such audacity it was even visible from her bedroom window high up on the hills of Crystal Palace. Sometimes on a clear day, she took the lift up to the top floor of Seb’s skyscraper headquarters just so she could look in the direction of the house that meant so much to her. It gave her peace to look towards the hills of Crystal Palace and think of her mother reading in the wonderful old conservatory that had been restored with the help of Breeze’s previous scam. Her sister grew orchids there, perfect in their symmetry. Her mother deserved the comfort it afforded her, especially after bringing up two girls on her own, and defending them from their father’s reckless gambling.

Breeze had scammed in a dozen places, following carefully chosen temp jobs, gathering a thousand here, fifteen hundred there all carefully milked and never had she been discovered. Each time she had found the money to repair a roof or mend the sash windows. Her mother and sister had been so grateful and had admired her so much. Twinges of guilt stung her but she drove them away. She was the only breadwinner in the house and it was a house that had fallen into dire neglect under her father’s hand. She had only ever stolen to order, only ever when she had had to, to avoid their home falling around their ears and always she had managed to get away with it. But now, with Seb she had felt the net closing in. Resentment welled up in her but also respect. Not only did he know his company inside out, but he had laid a careful trap for her. The two of them were as resourceful as one another and like a sly fox admiring a rival fox’s tactics, she had to admit a sneaking regard for the man who had trapped her.

Breeze wandered down to The Jamaica Wine House in St Michael’s Alley. Dating back to 1652 she loved the place with its little mahogany partitions which formed tiny rooms within rooms where she could sit anonymously drinking her coffee. At lunchtime it was murder but taking a late lunch the little booths were quiet. She ordered her coffee and as she waited for it at the bar counter, noticed Richard Waters, Seb’s assistant slide into one of the booths, looking around him like a rat scared of a cat. Breeze had never taken to Richard. He followed in Seb’s wake and picked up his every word like a beggar snuffling up crusts at a king’s table. He had wheedled and engineered himself up the corporate ladder and she had heard rumours of people he had treated badly on the way up. Never a good policy she thought as you may well encounter those people on the way down. Sebastian Dark was intelligent and quick but he couldn’t watch every company employee and Breeze had a feeling Richard had a heart as black as night which he hid from public view. 

When, out of the corner of her eye, she caught the rotund figure of Mr Vanhoffer, so recently defeated by Sebastian Dark, she suddenly had a burning desire to know what on earth the unholy alliance of Richard Waters and Mr Vanhoffer could be up to, hidden in the darkness of the booths. She took her coffee and slid silently unseen into the booth adjoining theirs. 

‘You’ve got the information for me then, have you, all of it?’ asked Mr Vanhoffer.

‘Of course I have. That’s what we agreed wasn’t it? Once this is over, you set me up, like you said you would as Managing Director in your new company and I give you the means to ruin Sebastian Dark’s share prices. His company will be a shadow of what it is now by the time we’re done. No one must know where this information has come from – you can promise me that?’ Richard’s voice dripped with venom.

‘You can rely on me. I want to see Dark ruined and you want to be top of a company rather than playing second fiddle to that bastard. It’s a deal made in heaven.’

Breeze craned to listen but her plan was compromised when a large rowdy group arrived celebrating a birthday, drowning out the conversation she was straining to hear. Frustrated, she slipped out of the back entrance and back round to the front. After about ten minutes, Mr Vanhoffer emerged alone, and bumbled off down the street. That was her moment to pounce. Making sure her makeup was pristine, her hair sexily dipping over one eye, she undid her top button and re-entered The Jamaica Wine House sniffing and wiping her eyes with a tissue. Richard was right where she’d expected him, at the bar, ordering a bottle of champagne no doubt to privately toast his newly planned success.