The Pleasure Principle: A steamy standalone romance. Jane O'Reilly

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      Then his hand is on my shoulder, and he’s turning me round, and I don’t even try to stop him. God, he’s got good hair. And great shoulders. And his mouth is all sort of soft, and I really want to kiss it. And if I hadn’t been given two stars on ratemyshag.com, maybe I would.

      ‘I have to go,’ I say, fumbling behind me for the door handle.

      ‘Will is a dick,’ he says. ‘You know that, right? Everything he put on that website was complete crap.’

      I stop fumbling as my stomach goes into freefall and my face burns with the humiliation. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I tell him. I want the whole thing to just disappear. I wish I could take the past month and completely undo it.

      ‘Just tell me one thing,’ Cal says. ‘Is it true?’

      ‘Is what true?’

      ‘Is it true that he never made you come?’

      I laugh, then. ‘I don’t know what you were reading, but it clearly wasn’t the same thing as me.’

      ‘So he did make you come?’

      ‘Are you deliberately trying to embarrass me? Is that what this is?’

      ‘I just want to know. It’s not a difficult question, Verity. Either you came or you didn’t.’

      ‘I didn’t, okay?’ My whole body seems to have gone rigid, and I can’t seem to stop myself from shouting. ‘But it had nothing to do with him. He was fine. It was me. I’m completely useless in bed.’

      ‘I see,’ he says. ‘Well, I’ll have to do something about that.’

      ‘What do you mean, have to do something about it?’

      ‘Exactly what I said.’

      I don’t really see him move, but suddenly he’s stood on the edge of my step. He’s so close to me in height, maybe half an inch shorter, but he’s strong and broad, and there’s nowhere for me to go except back against the front door. I grab for the handle again, but I can’t seem to find it. My fingers stumble over the gloss painted wood. ‘What do you think you’re going to do? I laugh again. It sounds dry and nervous. ‘Persuade me to go to bed with you and then show me it wasn’t me, it was him?’

      ‘Pretty much.’

      ‘Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

      He lifts up a hand, brushes the back of his knuckles over my cheek. The contact feels like an electric shock. My heart is pounding, and I make that sound again, the one I made back at his house when I saw those three people on the sofa. ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because I can’t,’ I whisper. ‘Not with him, not with you, not with anyone.’

      ‘Did Will tell you that?’

      This is all getting to be too much for me now. He’s too near, and I am way too close to being persuaded. I want to be persuaded. And I want Cal to persuade me. But the thought of failing with him is more than I can bear. My hand finds the door handle behind me, and I pull it. ‘Never going to happen,’ I tell him. ‘So don’t even bother trying.’

      I shove the door open, spin my way inside my house, and shut the door in his face. I stand there inside my little hallway, in the darkness, with a rock in my stomach and an ache between my thighs. I close my eyes. I want to scream, or cry, or break something, preferably against a delicate part of Will’s anatomy.

      I’m so tired of hating myself. I’m so tired of feeling inadequate. And I’m frustrated. And I’m horny. And I think Cal Bailey just offered to have sex with me. I open the door. He is at the bottom of the steps, hands tucked in his pockets, moonlight glinting off his hair. ‘Persuade me,’ I say.

      He turns, and my knees wobble just a bit. ‘What?’

      ‘Persuade me,’ I say again, before I lose my nerve for the second time. ‘Do whatever it is that you do to get women to go to bed with you.’

      ‘Usually I just show up,’ he says.

      ‘You’re going to have to try a bit harder than that, I’m afraid.’

      ‘How much harder?’

      I think about closing the door. ‘A lot harder.’

      ‘What do you want, Verity?’

      ‘I want sex,’ I blurt out.

      ‘Is that all?’

      I nod vigorously. Because suddenly, it is. I don’t want to be romanced, to be seduced. I don’t want to be fooled into thinking that someone cares when they don’t. I don’t want to think it’s anything more than it is. I just want to get rid of this hot ache between my thighs. I want some new memories, ones to paint over the ugly, heavy, sore ones that Will left behind.

      ‘OK then,’ he says. And then he’s climbing the steps to my front door, stepping into my hallway, closing the door behind him. ‘Where’s your bedroom?’

      I point to the stairs without thinking, but I don’t move towards them. ‘Not there,’ I say. Not in my bed, with the lace and the scatter cushions and the pretty brass bedstead. It’s not the sort of room you have casual sex in. Plus I can’t remember if I left my underwear to dry on the radiator or not.

      ‘Then where?’

      ‘In here,’ I say. I grab his hand, pull him into the living room, towards the huge overstuffed armchair that I got cheap after someone got biro on it.

      ‘Slow down,’ he says.

      But I can’t, I can’t. The ache between my thighs is too much, and I have to do this before I lose my nerve completely, before I collapse into a sobbing heap and cry all over his cashmere jumper. You see, the problem isn’t that Will rated me a two. It’s that I think he might be right. And if I think about that too much, I’ll never have sex with anyone ever again.

      I push Cal back into the armchair. He collapses into it, sprawling back with his thighs wide and his big hands resting on the padded arms of the chair. My dress is loose and lets me straddle him without difficulty. His thighs are hard, warm, the white leather of the chair cold against my bare knees. I pull my bag off my body, toss it to the floor, then shove my hands between us and start tugging at his flies.

      He catches my wrists. ‘Verity,’ he says softly. ‘What’s the rush?’

      I tug my hands free, pull off my jacket, throw it in the general direction of my bag. I’m hot, so hot. ‘I just want this, that’s all,’ I say.

      And then my fingers find his erection, and the room seems to tilt slightly on its axis. Surely that can’t be right. I open my hand over it, grope around the general area. I lean back, fumble open the zip, unfasten the waistband of his jeans and tug them out of the way.

      Oh. Apparently it is right.

      I sit there dumbstruck for what seems like an age, until Cal leans to the side and switches on the lamp on the table next to СКАЧАТЬ