Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (12 page)

‘
Flicka…
’ He shook his head sadly, sitting up immediately in the bed and kneeling next to her. Taking her right hand in his, he kissed her palm, then slowly pulled the glove over her fingers, adjusting it on her hand, pulling it tight. Then he ran his finger down the sensitive inside of her wrist and forearm. The hair on Luna’s neck rose – again, as much at the intense, almost painful pleasure of someone else caring for her as in answer to his innate understanding of her body.

He took her left hand and again kissed the palm, then bit the soft pad of her thumb, taking it into his mouth, sucking it gently as he trailed the other glove along her body, over the sharp angle of her hip bone, into the hollow of her stomach, between her breasts. His eyes glimmered in the darkness, never leaving hers as he repeated the process of fitting it to her hand.

Lacing his bare fingers with her gloved ones, he climbed on top of her and straddled her waist. He pushed first her right and then her left hand down onto the mattress. Luna’s sex prickled and filled, swelling for him as he dragged her hands down to the sides of her thighs and extended his body over her.

‘Open your legs, Luna,’ he instructed, and when she complied he said, ‘Wider.’ He slid down her body, licking the love bite on her neck, running his tongue along the scratches on her chest, kissing her ribs. When his tongue delved into her naval, Luna tried to extricate a hand from his, to bury her gloved fingers in his beautiful hair, but Stefan shook his head against her stomach and said, ‘No.’

He unlaced his fingers from hers and positioned her hands palms up on the bedspread, giving her an intent look, silently compelling her to leave them where they were. He slid down further till his nose pressed into the soft cleft between her outer labia and her thigh. She heard him inhale, felt his nose against her hairline. And Luna waited, waited for him to put his mouth on her.

But instead he lifted his head, placed his left hand over her wrist and encircled it with his fingers. And did the same with his right. She saw him looking first at one, then the other, studying them, awaiting her response. She knew then, what he expected of her, and curved her own gloved fingers around his wrists. He inhaled again, eyes consuming the image in front of him, and swiftly lowered his mouth to her.

Luna panted once, twice, then twisted her cheek into the pillow. He was so
good
at this, his tongue homing directly in on her clitoris in a way that would have been unbearable were it not… aahhh, so soft against her, so gentle, so insistent. Persuading her to feel more; finding her vulnerability and plundering it.

She moved her heels up the bed, felt his fingers grip her wrists, his forearms holding them against her thighs. ‘Stefan,’ she moaned as the movement of his tongue became agonizing and the keening joy of it overtook her, reaching up, up and over, subsuming her.

When she’d finished surrendering to him, gasping her release, Stefan covered her body with his again, lifted her gloved hands above her head, forced them down onto her pillow. And drove his cock straight home.

*

He left on Tuesday morning, having spent most of Monday entertaining himself while Luna worked. She felt guilty about it, but he’d been quick to reassure her.

‘I’m a big boy,
älskling
,’ he’d said, ladling a helping of scrambled eggs onto her plate in the kitchen and looking at her so purposefully that she immediately started shovelling them into her mouth. ‘I will find things to do.’

And find them he did. Luna returned from a meeting with the local tourist board at just after 4pm to discover him chatting with Malcolm and George in the field outside, surrounded by sheep. And she couldn’t but be impressed when he listed everything he’d gotten up to, including bleeding the radiators in her bedroom, replacing the washer on a leaky tap in the bathroom, and visiting the fish market and textile museum down in Lerwick.

‘They
love
you at that museum, Luna,’ he reported enthusiastically. ‘When I told them I was your boyfriend I got the special tour and a go at using their loom.’ He was pan frying fish on the Rayburn, his tablet propped up on the kitchen table, open to a cookery website. Luna warmed inwardly at his characteristic exuberance, as well as his description of himself.

Later, she reached down from the bed to rest her hand on the radiator on the adjoining wall, marvelling at how much more heat it put out now that he’d bled it.

‘You know how to do everything, don’t you?’ she said, only half-jokingly.

‘Everything that counts,’ he replied, promptly pulling her ass against him, lifting her knee, and gliding his hand between her legs.

So it was a thoroughly…
replete
Luna who accompanied Stefan to the front door on Tuesday morning. Clad only in her vest and sweatpants, she found herself feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy as he said he’d send his flight details for Friday, and issued final eating instructions for the rest of the week.

‘No more skipping breakfast, yes?’ he said, kissing her in the open doorway. Luna heard the sound of gravel crunching on the drive and peered past him to see Dagmar’s car. Her heart sank a little; she’d hoped to put this off for a while. And did she just imagine it, or having clocked Dagmar’s approach himself, did Stefan’s kiss linger just a little longer, and his hand reach a little lower to clasp her waist?

As he walked to his rental vehicle, Dagmar emerged from the driver’s seat of her car. She looked first at him, then at Luna, still standing in the door.

‘Dagmar,’ Stefan nodded in greeting, not smiling. Then he got into his car and drove away.

As her boss went to retrieve her bags from the car boot, Luna briefly considered her options. She could wait for her, offer some limited explanation of what had occurred between her and Stefan that weekend. Or she could behave as she had tried to behave throughout her career, drawing a line between her personal and professional selves.

Luna turned back into the cottage. And climbed the stairs to her room, off to get dressed for work.

‘Du t’ink I’m bein’ trawirt,’ Magnus Petersen said, drawing on his pipe ruminatively.

It was Tuesday afternoon, and Luna was standing with the farmer next to his ‘lammiehouse,’ a stone outbuilding in his field that he was cleaning out prior to the start of lambing season. His strong Shetland dialect was tricky to understand, but Luna thought she caught the gist. ‘Trawirt’, she knew, meant difficult, awkward. And Petersen
was
being awkward.

She’d come to talk to him again about joining the wool cooperative. Like Malcolm, Petersen was a crofter, with a flock that currently numbered somewhere near two hundred sheep. At the moment, he bred mostly white sheep, whose fleeces fetched the best price on the market. And he wasn’t convinced by the offer on the table from Sören. He wasn’t getting any younger, he told Luna, it would take effort to completely transform his flock, and besides, what was in it for him?

Luna took a sip of the tea he’d made her, trying not to think about the grime inside and out of the mug it was in.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I think possibly you’re being short-sighted. Mr Lundgren is offering you an extremely generous deal, where he will pay you 126 pence per kilo for black fleeces, the same price you would get for white. You would be provided free of charge with the services of a prize-winning black ram to serve your ewes, plus advice and support from Malcolm Couper.’

Petersen blew out his cheeks and made a dismissive sound, as if to say he needed no advice from the likes of Couper.

‘And you would become part of a cooperative that will represent your interests in the future.’

Petersen grunted. ‘I’ve ’eard dine man Lundgren wants to charge more den a t’ousand poun’ for dese coats, is dat right?’

Luna lifted her eyebrows at him. ‘The coat is a bespoke item, aimed at an extremely select market.’

‘I’ll say. Rich folks. And he t’inks he can actually sell ’em?’

‘He
knows
he can.’

‘Well den, dint sound like much of a deal to me. Tying me to a t’ree-year contract wit no price increases.’

‘We are paying you
double
what black fleeces would capture on the open market,’ Luna said, ‘and the three-year commitment is non-negotiable.’

And she swore, she swore she heard Stefan’s voice just over her shoulder then, saying, ‘Cut this conversation short, Luna. He’s playing you now.’ Draining her cup of tea, she handed it back to Petersen and said, ‘Thanks for the brew and for your time.’ Zipping up her Gore-Tex jacket, she retrieved her helmet from the stone bench outside the lambing shed.

She took a risk then, and channelled Nancy, the most steely-nerved negotiator she knew. ‘I have two more meetings with farmers tomorrow, and then a conference call with Mr Lundgren on Thursday. You have my number. If I haven’t heard from you by Thursday morning, I’ll assume you aren’t interested and proceed with other options.’

A deadline. Something to concentrate the mind, as Nancy would say. It was a calculated risk, as well as a bald-faced lie. Luna had no call with Sören on Thursday, but she sensed that Petersen would drag this out indefinitely if she didn’t force the issue. She needed him more than she’d let on; their Scottish funding relied on a significant percentage of the cooperative being made up of crofters. But if she wasn’t going to get him, she may as well find out now.

It started to rain as Luna drove back to the cottage, her work for the day finished, and she slowed the bike to a crawl when she saw a car a quarter of a mile ahead of her aquaplane on a stretch of waterlogged tarmac.

Luna wasn’t particularly looking forward to getting home. Her boss had been even more dour than usual with her that morning, and Luna caught her shaking her head when she opened the fridge to find it fully stocked. Had Dagmar witnessed Stefan wooing previous paramours with gifts of provisions? She was going to have to ask him where this powerful mutual dislike was coming from, for she’d seen it on his face that morning too.

Dagmar wasn’t home when Luna got in, so she quickly stripped out of her suit and hung it in front of the Rayburn to dry, then went into the living room to empty out the ashes in the wood burner. She was just shovelling them into a bin liner when her mobile rang.

‘Luna Gregory,’ she answered, dragging a stray strand of hair out of her mouth.

‘Petersen here,’ came a gruff voice on the phone. ‘I accept Mr Lundgren’s offer. Bring me the contract da moarn ’n’ I’ll sign.’

Luna was still staring at her phone when Dagmar came in.

‘
Hur går det
, Luna?’

‘
Tack, bra
,’ Luna replied, giving it a bit of Swedish understatement. And then she beamed and said, ‘Keep your coat on. I’m taking you out to celebrate. That was Magnus Petersen on the phone.’

Dagmar sat down in the chair opposite Luna. ‘And?’

‘We’ve got him. He says he’ll sign the contract.’

Her dour boss smiled then, a big, excited, relieved smile. ‘Well done, Luna! It is me who will take
you
out.’ She reached for Luna’s cheek, rubbing it gently. Soot from the wood burner, Luna realised. Then Dagmar squinted. ‘But don’t we have—?’

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Luna slapped her forehead. She’d completely forgotten they were hosting knitting club tonight.

Two hours later and knitting club had become something of an impromptu party. Thanks in part to Stefan’s provisioning generosity, they’d gotten through four bottles of wine and almost a case of beer, and done very little knitting. Judith Andersen, who was on her third glass of Pinot Grigio, was regaling them all with tales of her misspent youth, including some surprisingly saucy revelations that had Ruth Ollason laughingly covering daughter Maisie’s ears.

In due course, the event spilled over to the kitchen, where Luna and Ruth sat at the table, Luna giving Ruth a detailed account of her exchange with Magnus Petersen.

‘God, I can’t wait to tell Chris,’ Ruth said, draining her bottle of beer. ‘He swore you’d never talk Magnus around. I want to watch him eat his words.’

As Luna rose to fetch two more beers for Ruth and herself, Liv sat down at the table, a glass of red wine in the hand and an expectant look on her face.

‘So, Luna,’ she said, ‘dating the boss’s son, eh?’ Clearly she and Dagmar had been talking. If she wasn’t on her third beer, Luna might have been tempted to unleash a cold stare on her. The fact that Stefan was her employer’s son was neither here nor there, and certainly none of Liv’s business.

But Luna had found that the cold stare didn’t work so well when she was tipsy, and besides, Ruth interjected at this point, ‘Is this the one who was at the textile museum yesterday? Kat rang me the minute he left.’ Jesus wept, Luna thought, Shetland really is a small island. ‘She was practically hyperventilating at how gorgeous he was. When do I get to meet him?’

‘He’s, um… he’s back on Friday.’

‘Keen, eh?’ Ruth grinned.

‘Dagmar says he’s quite the ladies’ man,’ Liv noted. ‘You’d better keep an eye on him.’ On you, more like, Luna thought frostily.

But overall, it was a good night. After she and Dagmar sorted out taxis for the inebriated knitters and took a joint decision to leave tidying up for the morning, Luna climbed the stairs to her bedroom feeling a warm sense of accomplishment. She stripped off her clothes and let them lie where they fell, climbing into bed completely naked. Yawning as she pulled on her cotton gloves and stretched under the covers, she marvelled anew at how much warmer her room was now.

Her mobile rang a half-hour later, just as she was drifting off to sleep, and she was tempted to leave it. But it was Nancy’s witching hour, New York’s post-cocktail period when she often phoned to gossip, so Luna climbed out of bed and retrieved her phone from the floor. It wasn’t Nancy, but the number looked familiar.

She answered in professional mode, ‘Luna Gregory.’

‘
Flicka
,’ came Stefan’s voice. Ah, she’d forgotten to add him to her contacts on the new phone.

‘Hi,’ she replied, diving back under the covers. ‘How was your flight back?’

‘Uneventful. And you? How was your day?’

‘Good,’ Luna said, briefly telling him about that evening’s knitting club festivities, feeling again, unaccountably shy.

‘What is it you are knitting,’ he asked playfully, ‘in this club of yours?’

‘I am knitting a scarf,’ she said. ‘Badly.’

Stefan laughed in a way that indicated this didn’t completely surprise him. ‘And the ladies of the textile museum gave me a good report, did they?’

‘“Gorgeous” was the exact word they used.’

‘Ah, the women of Shetland, renowned for their discernment…’

*

The only other occurrence of any note that week was the visit by representatives from the Italian company making the silk lining for the coat, as well as silk scarves for their accessory range. They had tried hard to wheedle out of it, the Italians, when the idea of a meeting in Shetland was first mooted, but Dagmar had been insistent.

‘Always it is “come to Milan, you must come to Milan” from these ones,’ she said when Luna reported their reluctance. ‘It is good for them to get out.’

Luna began to suspect that her boss had a hidden mischievous streak when she accompanied the three Italian designers on a tour of Malcolm’s farm, followed by lunch at the Fisherman’s Rest. As the lead designer, whose expensive hand-stitched leather shoes were never going to be the same after their encounter with sheep droppings, picked his way through a shepherd’s pie, she could imagine what he’d be telling his stylish friends back in Milan about today’s outing.

Later, after Luna drove them back to the airport and she and Dagmar were sitting in the kitchen going through the samples again, she encouraged her boss to talk, to explain why one sample was better than another, or fit the concept of the line more closely. She was freshly struck by how clever Dagmar was; how creative. Luna lifted one of the scarves, which featured a motif of lushly entwined birds, and said, ‘This one’s my favourite, of course.’

The design on the scarf was Dagmar’s, and Luna had been with her at its inception. The two of them had taken a hike together around a local nature preserve a month ago and Dagmar had brought along her coloured pencils and pad, quickly sketching out abstract drawings of some of the birds they’d seen. When Luna praised her artistry, she’d been quick to demur. But she’d been thinking, she ventured hesitantly, that it might be nice to subtly incorporate some local wildlife into the line.

‘Probably Sören won’t agree,’ she said doubtfully, but Luna insisted she sit down at the kitchen table on their return home to make a sketch the silk company could work to.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Luna said now, stroking the fabric with one hand and resting her other hand on Dagmar’s shoulder. ‘You must show it to Sören.’

Dagmar looked at her and smiled slightly, and for a moment Luna thought she would reply, but instead she began folding the samples up, placing them in a box along with all the leather samples for the gloves in the accessories range. Still, Luna made a point of reminding her about the scarf when she drove her to the airport on Thursday afternoon. She’d asked if she could use the car that weekend and, though Dagmar had promptly agreed, Luna could see she was biting her tongue, or whatever Swedes did to prevent themselves from telling you what an awful mistake you were making, getting involved with that man.

*

Luna was chopping potatoes in the kitchen whilst braising cubes of stewing beef on the Rayburn. It was mid-afternoon on Friday and she was due to pick Stefan up at the airport at 6pm; although he’d cleared the rest of his Fridays for the next few months, he had a meeting he couldn’t get out of today.

Not a problem for Luna, who was glad of the time to tidy up the house, buy wine and beer to replace what had been drunk by the knitting club, and work on tonight’s meal. She’d been slightly stung by Liv’s comments about her cooking skills, or lack thereof. Luna actually prided herself on being a perfectly good cook, thank you very much, though admittedly she hadn’t been particularly motivated in that regard whilst living on Shetland. Still, she didn’t want Stefan to think there was any truth to Liv’s jibes.

This recipe, for beef stew with dumplings, was an old standby, one she had made many times for her father, and later for the girls when they shared a house in Manchester. She liked it for all the sous cheffing it entailed; mindless chopping and dicing of vegetables. Checking her watch, she reckoned that if she added the beef and veg to the beef stock simmering on the Rayburn quickly, there’d be just enough time for it to cook for the requisite three hours before Stefan arrived.

She felt oddly nervous, for reasons she couldn’t entirely explain. Stefan had kept his word about daily calls, phoning her at roughly the same time on Wednesday and Thursday night, but it was hard for him, she could tell, to completely change the habits of a lifetime. So while he asked interested questions about her day, people she’d talked to, places she’d been, he volunteered little about himself, responding… politely to her own questions. It shouldn’t have made her feel insecure, his reticence. But it did.

She stood and checked on her beef, draining the fat and carefully pouring the cubes into her stock, followed by the diced onions, potatoes, the red pepper and celery. Dipping a spoon in to taste the stock, she quickly ground a little more black pepper into it and replaced the lid.

She thought about what she was wearing: jeans and her light grey Shetland sweater. And her hair, currently in a braid down her back. She’d found the French twist she customarily wore it in at Arborage just didn’t work here on Shetland, not least because of the wild weather. But maybe she should put it up? Stefan did, after all, like to watch her taking it down. And her clothes, maybe she should change to something less utilitarian?

She heard the dogs barking out front and looked out through the kitchen window to see a taxi pulling up. Going to the door, she opened it to find Stefan paying the driver, his leather duffle bag in hand. He was dressed in his dark grey business suit, a favourite of hers.