Sexy as Hell Box Set (95 page)

There I went again with that word. Anything.

She laughed too, lightly, the sound full of whimsy. “No, they didn’t do that, thank God.”

“Ah, so you’re prepared to thank Him now?” I sat beside her, took her hands from her lap and held them in mine. Pried her fingers open until she relaxed them. I raised them to my lips, kissing each one in turn.

They were cold.

She sat there and let me do it,
still stooped. I wondered what was going through her mind. Was she seeing
them
again? What they’d done? What else would we need to relive in order for her to get better? This weekend was meant to be romantic, yet so far we’d been pretty far out.

Romance can wait for another time. If we manage to squeeze a bit in between now and going home, that’ll do me.

“Sort of prepared to thank Him.” She paused. “Yes. If I had to go through what I had for us to be together…” She sighed, looked at me, her eyes watery. “Then I’d go through it all again. It was worth it.”

Oh, Christ, that got me where it stung good and proper. I couldn’t imagine feeling as though I’d go through that hideous bollocks a second time around, the crap they’d put her through. Then again, if our positions were reversed… Yes. Yes, I’d do it all again too. I’d push Catherine to her limits, be a bastard,
feel
a bastard if it meant I’d be where I was now—with Zara, us as a couple.

I felt overwhelmed with everything—our past, our present, our future.

“I love you. Really bloody love you,” I said.

“I know. It’s good, isn’t it?”

I heard a smile in her voice and propped my chin on top of her head. Drew her to me, holding her with one arm around her back, the other across her front, my fingers laced. No way was I going to let her move. She needed this contact, the feeling being hugged produced.

I know I did.

If it could be like this all the time, just me and her, life would be so bloody brilliant.

But it couldn’t. We both had lives to return to, and although we’d be together in one sense, this feeling, this
oneness
, might not recur for a while. She’d have Sexy as Hell to deal with, checking, I assumed, that Fifi and Carlos had taken care of it well enough in her absence. I couldn’t recall if she’d said she still had constructors in, so if she did there would be that to contend with too.

And I had the task of seeing Mary again when I walked back into my office reception. She’d be furious that I’d upset her niece Catherine, that I’d had the gall to end it with her. I suspected she’d have a thing or two to say to me, had probably been rehearsing it all this time if I knew her like I thought I did. A good old telling off waited for me at home, no doubt about it, but… Oh, who the fuck cared? If she felt she couldn’t work for me anymore, so be it. I’d find another secretary, one who didn’t think it was okay to pry into my private life. Yes, she’d been a fantastic employee in most respects, but enough was enough. I should have put a stop to her behaving that way a long time ago, but she’d been so motherly, so…nice—when she’d wanted to be.

“What have you got going on when we go back?” I asked.

Zara sighed. “I have plans to get a top-up loan
to develop the back rooms of—oh, the bank manager…bloody hell, I was wicked to him, too, and was just about to think of being wicked to him again.” She paused, then, “I need to apply for another loan—legitimately, without coercion this time—to expand my business. I want to have a glory hole installed.”

I widened my eyes—not at the glory hole, that hadn’t surprised me at all
because she’d said about that already, but the other snippet of information had. “What do you mean, without coercion?” Did I want to hear what she’d have to say? Had she fucked the bank manager? Taught him all her delicious tricks?

She laughed quietly. “Let’s just say the bank manager likes his secrets kept as just that—secrets. From his wife. I…reminded him of that fact. You know, that she might think he was a raging pervert and divorce him if I set a scandal racing around his corporate world
about the things he liked to do with a squash ball and a pair of high-heeled shoes. I can’t remember if I actually said that, but he knew what I’d been getting at.”

I smiled, if a tad uneasily. The thought of her doing things with other men churned my guts now
, and a squash ball? Really? Where had she put that? “By doing what exactly…?”

“Oh, nothing like you’d think. I’ve never fucked him. He has a fetish. The heels of shoes
on his back and a ball in his mouth. And he just likes to fiddle with himself at the same time as me pressing the heels into his skin.”

Relief spread through me.

“Oh, right,” I said. “So he gave you a loan after you’d…reminded him of what he likes? What he has to lose?”

I had to admire her
brass neck.

“Yes, I shouldn’t have, but I was desperate to make a mark, do something by myself,
for
myself. Sexy as Hell, it’s my baby. You’d understand that, what with having your own business.”

“Yes, I totally understand, and if that place is your baby, then I’ll just have to help you bring it up, won’t I? Raise it into a fully grown adult. I’ll give you the money, you don’t need to ask that w—banker.”

She shot upright, pulled away from me slightly, and looked into my eyes. “No. No, you won’t
give
me the money, but I’ll do something I never would have done this time last week. I’ll accept a loan from you. Pay it back in monthly instalments. You can be my bank manager. And who knows, maybe you’ll like heel play.”

She gave me a cheeky grin, and I laughed—really laughed—throwing my head back. She was adorable, my Zara, switching her mind to sex inside a second, turning her time with the banker to her—and my—advantage.

“Hmm, I’m not sure about that,” I said, gathering her to me harder, closer. “I mean, do you stand on people with them? As in, your full body weight?”

She settled her cheek against my chest, wrapped her arms around my back and snuggled in. “Some like that, but others—and the banker liked it this way—just want the tips pressed into them. So I’d have one foot on the floor, the other on his back,
d’you see what I mean?”

Oh, I saw what she meant all right, and if I pushed out the image of her doing it to some faceless banker and put myself in his place, the visual was extremely pleasant. I imagined her in black pull-up stockings, thick strips of lace at the top, heels and…nothing else.

I shifted a bit in an attempt to stop my cock getting hard. Felt the now familiar sting on my arse cheeks from a good session the night before. “Does it hurt? Ever had it done to you?”

“Um, no, I’ve never wanted heels dug into me, thank you, so I don’t know if it hurts. But I imagine it can’t be all sunshine and roses. Think about it. Those heel tips can be a bit sharp.”

“But I take it you’d still like me to have one pressed into my poor abused arse?”

“I might do…”

“You bloody
do!
” I said, sliding my finger beneath her chin and tipping her head up. “God, you’re such a saucy little woman. A tease.”

“Less of the little,” she said, easing back to let her towel drop then cupping her tits. “These are
far
from small.”

“They’re more than a handful, I’ll give you that.”

She laughed then, full and throaty and with abandon. “A bit like me, but you love them anyway.” Her smile lit up her face.

“I do. And I love you. More than you’ll ever know.”

Her smile dropped just a tiny bit, and she blinked, a cloud of…something passing over her eyes. “Oh, I know how much you love me. Believe me, I know.”

I’d thought it before, but it bore repeating. Victor was the light of my life, the buoy in my sea, the thing I’d cling to when the water got choppy. We’d kissed for a long time on the bed, lightly skimming our hands over one another,
featherlight glides that spread more love through me than any rough handling ever could. This making love—it wasn’t half bad, was it—and we didn’t even have penetrative sex. Just the kissing, the touching, had been enough, had left me feeling so sated I could gladly have fallen asleep in his arms.

But food had called, and now we sat in the hotel restaurant, me totally at ease because Helen and Geoffrey had gone. I hadn’t realised their presence had bothered me until they were no longer here. I
supposed me feeling relieved had something to do with the fact that this weekend was meant to have been just me and my virgin, and life from home had so rudely intruded. Who would have thought our exes would have turned up? Who would believe the crap me and Victor had been through?

But those were the key words, weren’t they? We’d
been through
it, and now we had a pretty future ahead—all right, maybe with a few ugly spots here and there—and we could finally begin to breathe.

And that’s what it felt like, sitting opposite Victor at a nicely laid-out table waiting for the waiter to come and clear our dinner plates away. We were breathing. Taking time to just be. I hadn’t really done that my whole life, and it should have felt alien, something that would take a bit of getting used to, but it didn’t. They fitted well, those breaths, filling my soul with goodness and purity. That was what it felt like anyway.

That visit to the church had possibly turned me a bit funny in the head. I wasn’t usually so fanciful, so…romantic.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Victor asked, reaching across the table to cover one of my hands with his. His sleeve caught the end of his fork, which toppled
from his plate to the table, splashing peppercorn sauce on his shirt. “I could get used to this.”

“Peppercorn sauce splashes will be par for the course in our kitchen. I’m
not a fancy chef like you are. And I know you didn’t mean the sauce, by the way. I’m just being…me. So, as for you getting used to this, my answer is good, because you’re going to have to.” I hadn’t been able to help tacking that last line to my response, and I didn’t regret the firm tone I’d used either. I wanted him to know how deadly serious I was about us. Yes, I’d told him already, but earlier, when we’d been discussing the banker, he’d seemed a bit far away. Anxious, even.

“Is that a promise?” he asked, rubbing the back of my hand with the pad of his thumb and ignoring the sauce splash.

“Of course.” I stared at him, letting a swell of emotion take over me. It wasn’t such a frightening thing, was it, this love business. I’d shut it out for a long time so that feeling it, receiving it, giving it…I never would have imagined I could. It was amazing what the love of a good man could do. “What shall I cook you first? You know, when we’re living together. I don’t think you’re the kind of man to put up with takeaways or pre-packed sandwiches from the supermarket all the time. I’m not usually very into cooking, but I’d like to give it a go. Try my hand at being…normal. Creating a meal for my man after he’s had a long day at work.”

“What the fuck is normal?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “Hang on, didn’t we have this conversation once before?”

“I think we did…or if we didn’t, I’ve most certainly thought about what normal is supposed to be. I’ve decided it’s whatever makes you happy, whatever you’re comfortable with. How about you?”

He nodded, lifting his wine glass with his free hand and taking a quick sip. A lock of his hair swayed across his forehead, and I had the urge to grip it in my fist, draw his head to my tits and demand that he suck them. God, would I ever get enough of him? I squirmed, pushing my arse harder into the seat. A trickle of wetness seeped from my slit, and the brief thought that my knickers would be damp by the time we made it upstairs flitted through my mind.

“The same,” he said. “So we’re both normal. It feels good, doesn’t it? To be at ease with yourself?”

I only had to think about that for a second. “Yes, it feels bloody good. It’s weird, but it’s like I’ve… No, it sounds stupid. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, Vi
ctor, but I’ve suddenly got what I’d usually consider a load of crap floating in my head.”

“Tell me,” he said. “Just say what you were going to say.”

My cheeks were heating—what the hell?—and I squirmed again, but this time from feeling embarrassed. And that was daft, wasn’t it? How the bloody hell could I be embarrassed with him? He’d seen me in all kinds of poses, in all kinds of states, yet when he’d asked me to tell him my innermost feelings, I wanted to stall.

It dawned on me that it was because his opinion mattered. Really mattered. That what he
thought about the things I said was important to me. It had been before, but not like this, not in that gut-gnawing way that had me wanting to change the subject like I always had, just so I didn’t have to face things, say things.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Oh, come on now,” he said. “Don’t even try to tell me you’re shy. Just tell me.”

He had that glint in his eye, the one that said:
I’m your Master, do as you’re told
.

“It’s like I’ve been reborn,” I blurted. “See, told you it was stupid. Now, let’s talk about something else.”