The First Time We Met: The Oxford Blue Series #1 (8 page)

He regards me levelly, only for a second, but it seems a hell of a lot longer. I feel as if he’s weighing up his opponent and deciding on a course of action. My blush heats my face, but to my relief he glances down at his chest with a sigh of resignation. ‘I’ve been to a mess dinner with some colleagues, straight from, well, from where I was earlier today.’

‘And these?’

Before I realize what I’m doing, I reach up and touch one of the tiny airplanes on his lapel with my fingertip.

‘The Paras. I’m a captain in the Parachute Regiment.’ Pride adds a richer texture to his voice as he says this and he can’t help lifting his chin a little. So I’ve found his true passion. Not his degree, not his estate, but the army. For some reason, I’m shivering inside, but I still can’t resist teasing him.

‘So, no guarding Buckingham Palace in a bearskin? I thought you might have been in some kind of Guards regiment.’

His tone turns icy. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’

I drop my fingers from his lapel, aware I touched a raw nerve. ‘What makes you think you’ve disappointed me?’

‘People make assumptions.’

Wow. That was spiky, but I won’t back down now. ‘So, it’s Captain Alexander Hunt, but that’s not all, is it?’

‘Immy must have told you about the rest by now. I’d be amazed if she hadn’t.’

‘She said your father’s a marquess although, frankly, that means nothing to me.’ He laughs softly and it’s
clear my remark has amused rather than offended him, but he continues with faultless politesse.

‘Actually, it means precisely nothing as far as I’m concerned too. Other than the fact that, by an accident of birth, I’ve been extremely fortunate. Or perhaps not, depending on how you look at it. My father wants me to leave the army and learn how to run the estate properly.’

‘And you don’t?’

He looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy. ‘Of course not. I want to carry on in the service. I’m not ready to swap the uniform for tweeds and a wax jacket and spend my days poring over accounts books and meeting land agents. I’d rather die.’

My skin prickles at the vehemence in his voice. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Perhaps, but I’m not going back to manage Falconbury until I absolutely have to.’

I notice there’s no mention of a mother, which must mean she left, or worse, and he has a thorny relationship with his father from what I can gather.

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, when it comes to family expectations … I can understand those. I love my parents to bits, and they’ve always had big aspirations for me, but …’ His thigh bumps mine through the confection of my skirt and I can hardly keep still with him so close to me. Whether he likes it or not, I have to edge away.

I get up and cross over to the billiard table and pick up a ball because I need something – anything – to distract me from his sheer animal presence.

‘So your parents didn’t expect your aspiration to involve flying halfway round the world to get away from them?’

I am so surprised at this insight that I laugh out loud. ‘No, they didn’t. Like you, I suppose I deliberately went against their expectations. My mother is a wonderful woman, but I think she envisaged me at least being in the same country; she said she couldn’t really understand why I couldn’t do my master’s in the States. My father thought the same, but he might have been more worried that something would “happen” to me. I had such a hard job to make them accept I was coming to Oxford.’

‘Well, I’m very glad you chose Wyckham or we’d never have met.’

‘That’s luck for you,’ I say lightly.

‘Oh, I don’t believe in luck, Lauren, and by the way …’ His gaze flames me from head to toe. ‘… have you any idea how fucking sexy you look tonight?’

Any words stop in my throat. How can I reply to that?

‘That dress is … something else, and at the risk of getting my face slapped you have the most amazing breasts in Oxford.’

‘Only Oxford?’ I murmur as he gets up slowly and deliberately from the chaise.

‘Perhaps I could extend it to the whole county. Your bottom is pretty sensational too. I’d go so far as to say it’s the most spectacularly pert arse I’ve ever seen.’

Frozen in position, I’m trying to crush the ball to
powder. Alexander lifts up my wrist, opens my fingers and takes the ball from me. He drops it on the table and it rolls across the baize until it bumps the cushion with a soft thud. We’re so close now you couldn’t slot a business card between us. The next thing I hear is my intake of breath as he pulls me tight to him. My back bumps the edge of the table and he takes my face in his hands, tilts my chin upwards and kisses me.

It’s a slower, more considered kiss than the one on the dance floor. Maybe it’s because we’re alone now, or it’s quiet, but I’m alive to every sensation. His mouth is warm and he tastes bitter-sweet from the whisky he must have been drinking with his army buddies earlier. It’s a gentle kiss at first, but quickly becomes harder, insistent and greedy. I can’t help myself; I crave his body under my hands. As we kiss, I tug his shirt out of his trousers and slip my hands beneath the cotton.

It is the first time I’ve felt his bare flesh beneath my fingers and I feel almost faint with lust as my hands settle on the smooth skin of his back. The bunched muscles tense and ripple as I press my fingers against them. There’s intense pleasure in his sigh when I slide my hands higher to the ridges of his shoulder blades. His response makes me dizzy with power. The tiny down hairs on my neck rise and my skin tingles as his tongue explores my mouth. His fingers drift lower, stroking the bare flesh between my shoulders and my whole body tightens with desire.

‘Oh …’

The rasp of a zip is loud in the quiet room. Cool air
whispers across my back as the side of my dress opens under Alexander’s guiding hands. He runs his knuckles from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine. Any lower and he will reach my panties … It’s only the pressure of his chest against mine which is stopping the front of my dress from slipping down.

A shiver wracks me as he pulls the front of my dress away from my breasts. My inner muscles clench almost painfully as his hungry gaze travels slowly up from my now bare breasts to my face.

‘You’re beautiful.’

He lowers his head and his lips close around my nipple. My sigh of pleasure feels as if it’s coming from a place deep inside me that’s been buried for a long time. I have fantasised about him touching me like this, kissing me and undressing me. I’ve fought against those fantasies and now – the flesh-and-blood reality is beyond anything I’d imagined. He flicks his tongue over my nipple and it puckers instantly in response. Then he alternates the flicks by blowing softly on my breast until I squirm with pleasure.

‘Not going too fast for you this time?’

My fingers dig into his back so hard I must be hurting him but I don’t care. I’m selfish, abandoned, and reckless. ‘I’ll um … ah … let you know.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

The table digs into me as his mouth comes down on mine again, stealing away my reply. My breathing quickens as he presses his pelvis into mine, leaving me in no doubt of how aroused he is. When he nips the soft skin
on the top of my shoulder I whimper out loud with pleasure. He instantly then soothes the place with his tongue. It didn’t really hurt and the remedy makes my knees feel soft and the inside of my mouth tingle deliciously. He kisses his way across my décolletage and down to my cleavage, leaving a trail of fire.

Then he stops and looks into my eyes. ‘You have far too much on, Miss Cusack.’

‘You think?’ My voice is ragged, my resistance in shreds.

It’s a second before I realise what is coming next because Alexander has sunk to his knees in front of me. He slides the dress over my bottom to my feet, slowly and deliberately, teasing me. Only my panties, and there’s not much of those, protect me from the full force of his gaze.

He stands up, shrugs off his jacket and tosses it on to the floor. It’s my turn to devour him now as he pulls off his bow-tie and unbuttons the top of his shirt. Those trousers leave nothing to the imagination and I can see how much he wants me. I want him too, my nipples are like pebbles and my muscles clench in anticipation, ready for him. Shamelessly, I run my hands over his backside, revelling in the hardness of his glutes. He needs no further encouragement and his hands cup my bottom, lifting me up on to the edge of the billiard table. Under the baize cloth, the slate bed of the table is hard against my body. From outside the window, there’s a shriek and laughter … and I am almost naked, lying on a billiard table in a stranger’s house, with Alexander
Hunt above me, looking at me as if he wants to devour me whole.

He hooks his fingers into the side of my panties. My damp panties … I want him to take them off; I want him inside me. I’ve never wanted any man to make love to me like I want Alexander to,
but
–

He’s in a hurry, pulling down his trousers.

Without warning, my body tenses as I think of how I have ended up here. We’ve had one proper conversation in our lives, I don’t know a thing about him and I’ve let him strip me naked. The dance, the private room, the locked door, the careful lowering of my defences … was it really that easy for him to wear me down?

What Alexander wants, Alexander gets and now I am one of his conquests.

And, yes, he’s given me a glimpse of a different side to him, but did he share it because it was one more way of getting me where I am right now?

A scream from outside pierces through the quiet then a cork pops and the sash rattles. People must be right under the window. They can’t see us
but
… Alexander is above me, trousers and shorts down. Oh
fuck
.

I grab his wrist as he starts to slip my panties over my hips.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Stop!’ I struggle onto my elbows. ‘I don’t think we should be doing this.’

‘You don’t think
we
should be doing this?’ His jawline hardens, but he lifts me up from the table until I’m sitting, painfully aware of my nudity. ‘Why not?’

Oh, shit. How did I let things get this far? This situation, this Lauren, is not quite
me
. It’s not only the champagne. I don’t know myself tonight otherwise I’d never have let Alexander manoeuvre me into this situation.

‘It’s a bad idea. Terrible, in fact.’

His hiss of frustration cuts through the air. ‘For you or me? It didn’t seem terrible half a minute ago.’

‘For both of us, trust me.’

He sneers. ‘Well, thank you for your concern.’

I open my mouth, shut it then shake my head, knowing he wouldn’t understand me if I tried to explain why I have to leave. If I let him make love to me, I’ll be lost, another of Alexander’s conquests, and, boy, I made it so easy for him. He snapped his fingers and I dropped my panties. But that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that I wanted to make it easy for him; I wanted to be conquered and after Todd I vowed I’d never feel that vulnerable again. And I sense – no, I
know
, that Alexander is ten times more of a threat to me than Todd ever was.

‘Wait. Let me help you.’

‘No. I can manage.’

Ignoring me, he lifts me down off the table to the floor where my dress and his mess jacket lie tangled in a heap like two casualties of war. My face is burning as I wriggle my panties back up my thighs and snatch up my dress from the rug. I tug it over my chest and struggle with the zip.

Then I make the mistake of catching sight of my face in the mirror on the wall.

Oh God. Are those my cheeks flushed with booze and sex? My lipstick smudged like I applied it in the dark? My hair half down like I got dragged through a hedge backwards?

Alexander’s face appears behind me, his expression unfathomable, buttoned up as tight as his waistcoat. ‘I hope you’re not regretting this.’

I can’t give him an answer. ‘I should go now or Immy will guess what I’ve been doing.’

‘I doubt that will be too difficult.’

Oh shit. Does everyone know that I have been fucking Alexander? Except I haven’t.

‘I’ll unlock the door.’ With no more than that brittle comment, he produces the key and turns it in the lock. I hover by the door, my only aim to get out of here before anyone sees me; to sober up and try to make sense of what just happened.

‘Wait. Don’t run away.’

‘I’m not running.’

‘That’s not the way it seems to me.’ There’s a sharp edge of irritation back in his voice as he blocks the way to the door.

‘I
don’t
run away.’

He folds his arms. ‘Really? Prove it, then. Walk out of here with me and fuck what anyone else thinks.’

Oh, the bastard. He
must
know that I would never back down from a challenge like that. Now I’m caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; I either do as he wants or I prove him right.

‘I have absolutely no problem walking out of here
with you but first’, I reply, ‘it might be a good idea to zip up your dress properly.’

I’ve been so focused on getting out of here I haven’t even realized. The brush of hands on my skin as he draws up the zip awakens my senses again and when he drops a parting kiss on the back of my neck I want to scream with frustration.

He locks the door behind us and I give a silent sigh of relief that the library is empty. Maybe no one will, after all, know we were in there because, no matter how cavalier Alexander is about anyone guessing, I really want to keep our encounter private while I calm my raging emotions. He may think the world can go to hell and be able to cast off the snide remarks and innuendo, but he’s been born to it; he has a hide as tough as a rhino. I don’t find it so easy, no matter how confident I may sound.

The music ramps up in volume and the shouting and laughter are louder as he follows me through the book-lined room to the outer door that opens into the vestibule. At the door I hesitate, knowing that I will have to face Immy and the rest of the guests. Will what we have done be written on my face?

Alexander twists the handle and the light and noise hit us. People dash across the hallway, girls giggle on a padded bench, a guy is passed out next to them and a couple are entwined under the stairs. A uniformed butler opens the front door and Rupert, drinking from a bottle of champagne, walks in. My stomach tenses sharply. Was it him underneath the window? Was he
spying on us? I tell myself that not even he would have sunk to that, but then he catches sight of us and his mouth turns up in a triumphant smile.