Craving Jamie. Emma Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ willed strength into her quivery legs and preceded him out of the elevator, straight-shouldered, maintaining an air of dignity despite her state of exposure, heart thundering in anticipation of his next move, mind set on holding her own throughout this encounter with Jim Neilson.

      He switched on ceiling spotlights as she stepped from a tiled foyer to a carpeted living room. Her high heels sank into the thick, dove-grey pile. She paused to take off her shoes and drink in Jim Neilson’s habitat. It had the obvious luxury of spaciousness and the stark impact of almost characterless modernism.

      The furnishings looked clinical—chrome, glass, black leather, a grey vertical blind blocking out the end wall, which was undoubtedly glass for what had to be a spectacular view from this high up. The chairs and sofas and tables were certainly functional, probably state-of-the-art in their styling, but they seemed more like showpieces than home pieces.

      A disturbing Brett Whitely painting seemed to leap off the wall facing her, strident in its lines and colour. She was staring at it, feeling it was like some nightmare she wouldn’t like to live with, when she felt hands at her waist, the release of the button at the back of her skirt, the zipper drawn down. A gentle pull over her hips and the garment circled her feet.

      For a moment, all she could think of was how much more exposed she was, the sexy lace panties reduced to little more than a G-string slicing between her buttocks, the garter belt holding up her stockings offering no better protection. Then warm palms slid down to cup the soft, naked roundness of her bottom, fingers splaying over it.

      Her heart leapt into her mouth. She had to do something and do it fast. No way was she going to be Jim Neilson’s sexual victim. She wouldn’t let him think it, either. He was her chosen lover for the night.

      She sucked in a deep breath and swung around, her fingers digging into the waistband of his jeans, her mouth homing in on his nipples as she ripped the stud apart and tore his zipper down. The art of surprise wasn’t all his, she thought savagely, feeling his stomach contract, his chest expand.

      She tugged and licked at the relatively small protusions of flesh, exulting in his hardening reaction to the stimulation. She pushed his jeans and underpants down his loins, extracted the taut, hefty piston of his manhood, weighing it deliberately in her hand as she drew back to look at it, a mad boldness seizing her mind.

      “The equipment is first class,” she mocked, rubbing her thumb over its moist tip, stroking her fingers along its full length before dismissing it, turning away to sashay to the blind at the end of the room. “I also like to take in every view,” she added silkily, finding the cords that operated the slats and yanking them to sweep the blind to the other side of the window.

      A stunning panorama of the harbour gleamed at her, the huge coat hanger bridge looming beyond the busy ferry terminal at Circular Quay, the magnificent sails that roofed the Opera House curving brightly into the night sky, the massed foreshore lights of the northern suburbs winking like thousands of fireflies. The realisation hit her that she was standing in what had to be a million-dollar penthouse apartment. And the owner of such prime real estate was used to having whatever he wanted.

      She heard the thud of shoes landing on the carpet, the swoosh of clothes being discarded, the soft pad of footsteps, the crackle of paper being torn. Paper? No, a packet of some sort. He probably carried condoms in his wallet. He’d be mad not to practise safe sex in a situation like this. She’d be mad, too.

      She was probably certifiably insane as it was, but normal rules didn’t apply to this night. It was time out of time, and there was a fever in her blood that demanded a sense of completion, come what may.

      Her skin prickled with anticipation. The next move was his. She adopted a relaxed stance and ignored his presence behind her, fixing her gaze on the harbour traffic far below. She didn’t care that he could view her naked backside at leisure. In some perverse way she enjoyed flaunting it at him. It excited her, thinking of him looking at her, planning what he would do next, sizzling with the need to reduce her to his plaything again.

      Fingertips grazing over the backs of her knees. It was an act of will to remain absolutely still. The tantalising touch sliding up her thighs, muscles tensing. The suspenders of her garter belt unclipped, back and front, fingers trailing up the lacy leg edge of her panties, flesh crawling with sensitivity, belt removed and tossed away, a nail-thin caress up the curve of her spine, raising an uncontrollable, convulsive shiver, bra unfastened, thumbs hooking under the shoulder straps, drawing them down her arms, letting them fall, a soft, silky rolling down of her stockings, ankles and feet tantalisingly caressed as he lifted each one in turn.

      It was the most erotic undressing Beth had ever experienced. It electrified both her body and her mind to an acute awareness.

      She could feel his breath, sense his heat even before he positioned his body against hers, the hard roll of his erection sliding up towards the pit of her back, his arms encircling her waist, palms pushing up over her nipples and subjecting them to a teasing, rotating motion that had every muscle in her body clenching.

      “You seem quite transfixed by the view.” The mocking murmur was close to her ear.

      Beth fought to remain clear-headed over the turmoil he was wreaking in her body. “Do you enjoy it or is it simply a status symbol to you?” she asked, reaching back to draw her fingernails over the rock-hard muscles of his thighs, wishing she could dig under his skin.

      “I like climbing mountains,” he answered. “Getting to the peak.”

      The sexual allusion to what he was doing to her was not lost on Beth, yet she sensed he spoke the truth about himself. Jamie must have climbed a hundred mountains on his way to becoming this man. She wondered if he saw this apartment as a place where he was finally unassailable from ever being dragged down again.

      He cupped her breasts, possessing them fully for a moment before sliding his hands over her stomach, burrowing under the flimsy lace that still covered her most private part.

      “But valleys have their points of interest, too,” he said, and with an expertise that was shockingly exciting, he parted her hidden cleft to a more accessible opening and began a stroking that aroused almost unbearably exquisite sensations.

      She felt like hot putty melting under his touch. Her legs started to tremble. Desperate to maintain some self-control, Beth clutched at another question that had flitted through her mind. “Why did you choose the Brett Whitely painting?”

      It distracted him momentarily, giving her a breather from the sweet torture. “It’s a scream of the soul,” he answered darkly and resumed his tactile concentration on the valley as he expounded further. “It’s in every one of us, golden girl. You feel it, too... the scream for all that’s unattainable.’

      Yes. It was the scream that had brought her here with him. But what did he dream of? What did he crave? What was he missing in his life, this brave, new world he had conquered?

      “That’s why you’re here, wanting this,” he went on, his voice a drum in her ears.

      No. She wanted more than this, she thought. The unattainable. And sadness for what could never be with the Jamie who was lost to her surged into her heart, drowning it, even as her flesh cried out for its intense excitement to be appeased.

      The low beat of his voice continued. “No matter what we do, how we live, what we have, most of the time we hide from our souls, repress the truth, pretend...” His finger teasing the rim of her vagina, slowly working inwards, her muscles convulsing. “But deep inside, deep inside, golden girl...we scream.”

      The СКАЧАТЬ