The Object of His Desire (erotic romance suspense) Read online

  All focused on that spot where we joined, where he filled me, where that hard pubic bone ground up against my clitoris.

  A slight shift, and there was a stab of pleasure, an involuntary tightening. I held still, held that sensation, and felt the heat building in my belly, my hips, my legs. Sometimes, when I climax, it’s very focused, an orgasm in my pussy, my belly, my clitoris. But occasionally, it’s more than that, a wave of pleasure and tightening that sweeps over my entire body, and this is what I experienced just then, as I pinned Charlie down on that family gravestone in a tiny churchyard in the middle of nowhere, Norfolk, England.

  My back arched, my head threw itself back, and every muscle in my body tightened. I must have cried out. I can’t believe I wouldn’t have cried out in response to such a massive climax, but I don’t remember what wild animal sound I made, only the rawness in my throat afterwards.

  I collapsed on him, slumped in a heap, the repeated surges of climax ebbing with each wave, and then he started to move against me, spurred on by the bucking and tightenings of my body against his.

  “Oh no,” I said. “Remember who’s in charge?”

  I slid up, one long, languorous tease, and then off him. He grunted in surprise, disappointment, confusion... I don’t know which – probably a combination of all three.

  I couldn’t let it finish like that, with him inside me. No underwear... That could get very embarrassing!

  I kneeled back and took him in one hand, two. So wet and hard. My hands ran over him, along him, sliding and rubbing, teasing with soft touches, then gripping hard, pulling and twisting, together and in opposing directions.

  He squirmed and pressed, his hands free now, down at his sides, pressed flat against the stone, the tendons standing out with the tension in his body.

  I lowered my head towards him, remembering that he was blindfolded still, could only feel my hands twisting and pulling and stroking. I blew against the swollen wet head of his manhood, softly at first and then hard. I pressed the tip of my tongue against the underside, dragging it delicately down his length and then back up, pressing harder, the fleshy part of my tongue sliding against him, wrapping around him, and then curling and twisting around the head when I reached it again.

  I closed my eyes.

  I should never have closed my eyes.

  That vivid imagination thing... it struck again. It wasn’t Charlie there any more. Good old Charlie. Familiar Charlie.

  It was a man I’d only spoken to briefly, a man I’d never seen before today, a man who dressed like a tramp, but a tramp whose well-made suit just hung off that athletic body in a way that made me... made me want to...

  I took him in my mouth, my lips wrapped around that head, my tongue flicking and lapping across it as my head twisted from side to side and my hands gripped his shaft firmly, pulling down against his length so that everything was stretched and exposed.

  Slowly I slid down, taking him deeper, keeping my tongue pressed up hard so that the space was small, tight, as he slid into my mouth, deeper and deeper, until he hit the back of my throat and I swallowed against that swollen head. Swallowing over and over so that my throat tightened around him, and my hands squeezed the base of his shaft tight, and he gasped sharply, a gasp that turned into a long, drawn out groan, an animal sound like the one I must have made earlier.

  Charlie. It was Charlie. He surged, my mouth filled, I swallowed. Over and over I swallowed, and I opened my eyes and it was Charlie, and in my mouth he started to go soft.

  Gently, I carried on sucking, savoring the changing sensation, the intimacy, as he softened.

  Charlie.

  Just Charlie.

  §

  I couldn’t look him in the eye.

  He must have thought I was embarrassed, coming down from the sex-driven, need-driven high and crashing back down into the reality that I’d just turned to my ex for a quick fix, that he still had it, that he could still make me feel like that.

  He was smirking. That’s exactly what was in his mind.

  He didn’t know that I was flustered for an entirely different reason, that I was flustered because in my head things had been very different. The ex-sex may have been a quick fix but in my head I’d been fantasizing about Will... Charlie and Ethan’s old college buddy, the brother of my new sister-in-law.

  For a few seconds there I’d been totally gone. My eyes closed, and ... it was Will.

  Why?

  There was something about him, yes, but nothing I would ever act on. It was a whim. A brief fantasy, nothing more.

  Was there more to it than that? More than just a convenient way to scratch a particularly urgent itch?

  I’d seen what Ethan had, seen what he’d married into. His new wife, his new family. I wanted some of that, too, but Charlie was the closest I’d ever found. Was that good enough? Was it bad to settle for the familiar, rather than keep putting yourself out there?

  He was smirking. Sitting back on that slab, his pants around his ankles, smirking.

  He thought he knew what was in my head.

  He had no idea.

  “Come on,” I said. “We have a wedding reception to get to.”

  §

  I had a little black Mini with a Stars and Stripes roof. As Charlie folded himself into the passenger side I lowered myself carefully into the driving seat. So wet, and no panties... Not a good combination when you’re wearing a cornflower blue dress.

  I started the ignition, slipped my shoes off and hit the gas, barefoot.

  “We’re not an us again,” I said, eyes on the road. I didn’t know if Charlie was still smirking. I didn’t look. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, finally. “Sure. Whatever. And we didn’t just...?”

  “Just can it, Charlie. Okay?”

  “Okay. Sure. Whatever.”

  6.

  So much for the small, intimate wedding Ethan and Eleanor had wanted.

  Sure, the chapel was sweet, and it couldn’t have handled any more guests than the fifty or so who attended. But the reception at Yeadham Hall was something else altogether.

  An entire field to the rear of the Hall had been turned over to parking, and there was a team of red-jacketed stewards waiting at the gate to park the cars as guests arrived.

  I pulled up, slipped my shoes back on and climbed out. The guy waiting to take over was slim, about twenty, with that cute gingery look I’d noticed so much over here: pale complexion, and the bluest of eyes.

  What’s gotten into you today, Trude? You’re like a dog on heat.

  Weddings. Maybe it was just the whole wedding thing.

  “Easy, tiger,” Charlie whispered into my ear as he took my arm. He could read me so well. “Shall we go in?”

  Guests had spread out over the gently sloping lawns, and waiting staff worked among them with silver trays of canapés and champagne. A band played Charleston music in a small marquee under a stand of trees, its canvas sides furled up so that it was more gazebo than tent.

  There was a terrace to the side of the Hall, where an ornate wrought-iron orangery adjoined the building. Its sides were open, the glass doors pulled back, and more guests drifted in and out.

  It was like a scene from a film, a period piece. Something Victorian, with heavy touches of The Great Gatsby thrown into the mix.

  The orangery was hot and stuffy, despite all the doors being open.

  The air was full of music, bird calls and the sound of running water. At first I assumed it was piped sound effects, the sounds playing over and over on loop. Then I saw a tall, bell-shaped cage suspended from the roof, full of jewel-toned songbirds. If there were birds there would be... yes, a stream ran through a long raised bed to the rear of the orangery. I should have known.

  Charlie took two glasses of fizz and gave one to me.

  “To the happy couple,” he said, and he was smirking again.

  “God, Charlie,” I said, in muted tones. “Give a boy a blow job and...”

  We chinked
glasses, eyes locked, and I took a sip. So crisp and dry! Perfect.

  “Neil, Ahmed, long time!”

  That proprietorial hand tucked into the crook of my elbow again, as Charlie steered me towards a small knot of guests. I recognized Neil, one of the All Hallows crowd. He’d been skinnier then, and less assured than he seemed now; the glamorous blonde with the model looks at his side might have something to do with his newfound confidence. I remembered Ethan saying something about how Neil had made it big in software. Anti-virus, or something.

  It took me a few seconds to place Ahmed, then I remembered Hammy, as he’d been nicknamed then, an earnest young student from Pakistan, if I recalled correctly.

  We smiled, hugged, kissed cheeks, and I was introduced to their partners, and the four others in the small group. There was an Amber and a Penelope, a Freddie and a Solomon, a Simon and a Ling or a Ning or similar – I didn’t quite catch her name over the background noise.

  “Hey, Trudie,” said Neil, moving closer.

  I smiled, and got a dagger-like look from his model appendage. “Long time,” I said. Neil had always been a bit too geeky for my tastes, and I’m not sure I liked the more worldly version before me much more, but Hell, he was one of Ethan’s buddies.

  “It is, Trudie, it is. Tell me, what are you up to these days? Still trying to get into journalism?”

  “Publishing,” I said, accepting the champagne flute he pressed into my hand to replace my empty. “Yes, that’s what I do. I’m commissioning editor for an imprint at Ellison and Coles.”

  He looked blank, which I didn’t mind. I turned half away, but he had a hand on my arm. And then there was Ahmed. “Hey, Hammy,” I said, with too much enthusiasm.

  “Trudie. So good to see you.” His hand replaced Neil’s, and then Charlie was back, slipping in by my side, taking my other arm. For a moment I thought I was going to be the rope in a well-dressed tug-of-war, and I raised both arms, shrugging them free and nearly spilling my champagne.

  Like a pack of dogs. That’s what suddenly flashed through my mind. A pack of well-dressed dogs, all sniffing around their bitch. Was the sex on me that obvious? The flush to the face, the smell of sex, the body language of someone who had just done what Charlie and I had just done – with style, I might add – in that little Norfolk churchyard? Had they somehow detected that underneath my rather gorgeous cornflower blue dress I was exposed, open to the elements?

  Knickerless, I smiled at the dog pack, raised my glass and said, “Cheers. To Ethan and Eleanor.”

  Like the obedient dogs that they were, they raised their glasses and echoed my toast.

  Leaning close to Charlie, I whispered, “I need to freshen up. You know?”

  He looked blank, then caught up, and nodded hurriedly. “This way,” he said, and led me away from them.

  “You do know where you’re going, don’t you?” I said to Charlie, as he led me through double glass-paneled doors from the orangery and into the Hall itself. Suddenly everything was high-ceilinged, the walls of dark polished wood panels, the atmosphere taking on a more oppressive, cloying feel.

  The narrow corridor opened out into a kind of foyer, chandeliers suspended from a high, vaulted ceiling, and heavy paintings were suspended all around the walls. A wide staircase ascended from opposite what must be the Hall’s main entrance.

  “Upstairs,” said Charlie.

  I stopped. “Really? You’re kidding me. They don’t have a downstairs bathroom in a place this size?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Sure they do,” he said. “I’m not trying to jump your bones, if that’s what’s bothering you. There’s some at the top of the stairs. I know from when I stayed here years ago.”

  Just then, I heard a voice, a man’s, with familiar, clear tones I couldn’t quite place. Over to one side, a heavy door stood open. As I crossed to the stairs, I peered in, and there was Will. Brother of the bride. What did that make him? My brother-in-law? Brother-in-law once removed?

  Did that make my little fantasy at all incestuous? I shuddered, and just then he looked up. He had a phone pressed to his right ear, and damn it but I was blushing again, all because of that stupid fantasy and the look in his eyes as he saw me, recognized me.

  Why did he have this effect on me? Why did he make me feel like some stupid college kid, just out in the big world?

  I turned away from him, and hurried up the stairs, muttering to myself about how arrogant he was, that he had a phone call more important than his own sister’s wedding, and what could a spoilt rich brat like him have that was so important?

  Upstairs... I don’t know what I’d expected. When I first came to England I did my fair share of sight-seeing: guided tours of country mansions run by the National Trust or English Heritage, inside views of some of the Cambridge colleges that the public wouldn’t normally see, all the touristy things in London – the galleries and museums, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and a dozen places whose names escape me now.

  But this wasn’t a historical mansion; it was someone’s home.

  And yet... the stairs branched, to left and right, off an intermediate landing that was about twice the size of my living room. The wood-paneled walls were heavy with paintings in ornate, heavy frames, and I was reminded again of some of the galleries I’d visited in London. And then–

  Surely not?

  One of the paintings, not the large Victorian family portrait at the centre of that wall... a smaller one, just above the righthand flight of stairs... Dark, gloomy atmosphere, lots of murky shadows, a single sitter, a man in semi-profile with a strange floppy hat perched on his head. I couldn’t quite make out the signature, but damn me if that didn’t look like a Rembrandt, and one that I’d seen somewhere before – in a book, or on a postcard or something. Or maybe it was just a reproduction of one I’d seen in a real gallery; that was probably it.

  I ascended the second sweep of stairs and pushed at a heavy door, and I was in another large room, an enormous claw-footed bath occupying one corner. I pushed the door shut behind me and leaned back against it.

  Pull yourself together, Trudie. Do what you need to do and then get back to the champagne!

  I freshened up, thinking again about the way Neil and Ahmed had descended on me in the orangery. Had it really been that obvious, the air of sex about me when I’d arrived? Like bees to honey...

  Back on the stairs, I paused before that painting once again.

  “He’s about my ten greats-grandfather, on the Dutch side.”

  Will. Somehow he’d stolen up quietly to stand behind me while I studied the painting. I was by no means an expert, but it looked genuine to me. The frame alone looked centuries old and you could see the brush-strokes.

  Then Will’s words sunk in.

  Rembrandt had painted this family. Will’s family. The family Ethan had married into. We’d grown up in a well to do New York family living in Connecticut; we were accustomed to big cars and big houses, but this was another world entirely.

  “Wow,” I said softly, my best effort to fill the silence. Hell, I felt myself coloring up again, and I resented him then for making me feel like that.

  “You like?” he said, a sudden light coming into those dark eyes. “Art’s been a bit of a thing in the family. You want to see more? Come on. Come have a look.”

  With that, he took my hand and we were hurrying back up the stairs and onto a corridor that led off a kind of mezzanine area. There were paintings all along this passage, but we barely paused. As we rushed, I tried to take them in: lots of pastoral miniatures... landscapes, horses, hunting. I was suddenly convinced that I was being led past a collection that would take pride of place in any big city museum.

  Will burst through a set of double doors, dragging me in his wake. His grip on my hand was tight, almost painfully so, but I didn’t want it to stop, and so I felt cheated when he released me and swung his arms wide, taking in the whole of the bedroom we’d just entered.

  A four-poster bed occupied
one side of the room, draped with wispy white fabric, and the whole room was flooded with light from a wall of south-facing windows.

  I turned, and gasped. A single, massive canvas occupied the wall opposite the bed, the only color in the room, a wash of vivid orange and yellow daubs.

  I looked at Will, and then, pointedly, at the bed. “You think you’re going to get me into bed so easily, you’re going to have to do a whole lot better than a measly Van Gogh, sunflowers or not. You got that?”

  Those eyes briefly clouded, and I thought he was pissed with me, and then he tipped his head back and laughed, and we were rushing back out into that long corridor once again.

  The next bedroom was darker, largely because the walls were heavy with paintings of rural scenes. I didn’t recognize the artist, but I was sure I should have been able to.

  The next room had another single large canvas opposite the bed: rolling fields, a band of dark trees, a country mansion added almost as an afterthought, a mere element of the broader landscape. It was Yeadham Hall, seen from the chapel.

  “Constable,” said Will. “Friend of the family. We have a few more of his in the vaults, but we keep this one out for obvious reasons.”

  “It’s going to take more than that. Where do you keep the Gauguins? Anything more modern? A bit of Warhol, perhaps? Some Jackson Pollock?”

  You and your big mouth, girl . I could tell from the look on his face that he could rise to that challenge.

  “Is there anything you don’t have?” I asked softly.

  He shrugged, spread his hands wide. “We have everything,” he said, simply. “We’re a wealthy family.”

  “And you?” The spoilt son... his family owns all this, but what did he do, apart from brag and try to look important? Tough life.

  “Me? I run it all. I have power of attorney.” A broad sweep of the arm. “All this... it’s mine.”

  He stepped towards me, but I was having none of it. All that college girl stuff – the blushing, the getting flustered, the idle daydreaming – all that was over with. He was an annoying, self-centered jerk. Yes, that semi-slept-in look might be carefully engineered, with his carefully tended stubble and his – I could see now – very expensive tailored suit, but he was arrogant and he thought phone-calls were more important than his sister’s wedding and he thought he could get me into bed just by flashing his wallet and his Van Gogh, as if I was some up-market hooker.