Season of Desire: Complete Edition (7 page)

‘That’s okay,’ he replies softly. His blue eyes look black in the shadows, the firelight burns a line of gold around his cheekbone. ‘It’s my job after all.’ He gives me a sideways look. ‘Unless I’ve been fired?’

‘No . . . no.’ I laugh, despite myself. ‘I’d like you to keep the job – if you want to.’

‘I’ve got a three-month notice period anyway,’ he says with a smile. ‘I’m stuck with you for a while longer, and you’re stuck with me.’ He leans in to tuck the sleeping bag around me. ‘Sleep tight, sweetheart. See you in the morning.’

The touch of his hands sends all sorts of curious feelings zipping over my skin, and a strange excitement curls in my belly.

Stop it,
I tell myself firmly. I murmur, ‘Goodnight.’

He gets up and walks over to the fire, where he sits down and starts reading something he’s taken from one of the windowsill boxes. I watch him for as long as I can, his dark form stark against the orange light, but within minutes my eyes have slid closed, and I’m asleep.

Chapter Four

I wake in the night, not knowing where I am. I’m in pitch blackness, my body is stiff on the hard wooden planks, and I’m freezing despite my jacket and the pungent sleeping bag tightly wrapped around me. I’m moaning with the pain in my chest, a throbbing ache that feels as though someone is continually squeezing me tight, homing in on the tender area with unerring aim.

Panic sweeps over me with the confusion.
What’s happening? Where am I?

I’m accustomed to different beds, moving the way I do across the world from hotel to apartment, to villa and mansion. But no matter where the beds are, they are always the same: luxurious with soft mattresses and crisp clean sheets, cool in summer and warm in winter. This experience is entirely different – the unforgiving boards, the cold and the dark. In fact, I’ve only known this once before in my life and the memory of that rears up in my head like a black ogre.

I’m there,
I think, agonised with fear.
I’m back there.
I cry out, ‘Mama! Are you there? Mama?’ I sit up suddenly, wild with panic and slump under the pain that washes over me.

The next instant, Miles is beside me, hushing me, wrapping strong arms around me and rocking me gently. His cheek is against my head, and I let myself fall into his embrace, sobbing a little as the terror subsides.

‘Hey, it’s okay, sweetheart, it’s fine,’ he says. ‘You’re all right. I’m here.’

‘I thought—’ I choke on the words. I can’t begin to explain what I felt.

‘I know. You’re afraid. But you’re safe, I promise.’

It’s not just that.
I want to tell him that I’m not simply frightened of our situation, to explain about the fear, but I can’t begin to find the words. For one thing, I’ve never talked about it with anyone, not even the shrinks they sent me to.

I can’t see him but that somehow makes it easier to accept the comfort of his body in a way that might not be possible if I could. I press up against the warm strength of his chest, inhale a comfortingly masculine scent, and feel the roughness of his stubble against the side of my head. He murmurs in his soft Scottish accent, ‘You called for your mother. She died when you were young, didn’t she?’

I can’t speak. My throat feels as though it’s closed up and there’s a pressure in my skull that will be released as tears if I try to talk, so I nod, feeling the soft wool of his jumper on my face.

‘You poor wee girl. I’m sorry. That’s tough for anyone.’

I take a deep breath and manage to say, ‘Please don’t be nice to me.’

He laughs and I feel the rumble in his chest. ‘Freya, you’re a one. Don’t be nice to you?’

‘It will make me . . . lose it,’ I say, my voice coming out thickly. I really don’t want to cry.

‘I understand. You’re strong. But it’s all right to be scared. This isn’t a great situation, I’m not pretending it is. But our chances are good, I promise.’

‘How long do you think it will be before they find us?’

He’s quiet for a moment and I sense him turn his head towards the window although there’s only blackness outside. ‘It depends on the storm. It’s quietened down for now. Maybe that means they can start looking for us. There’s no point otherwise, they’ll never see a thing with the visibility at almost zero. Hey now . . .’ I feel him turn back to me ‘. . . you’re cold.’

I realise I’m shaking lightly. The fire has died and the bitter cold is returning as the heat fades away.

‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we can’t have that. I’m going to sleep here with you so we can share body warmth. I’ll get the other sleeping bag.’ He gets up, moves cautiously in the direction of the fireplace and finds his sleeping bag.

I feel comforted. A body close to me is what I want most right now. I move to make room for him on the narrow planks and gasp.

‘What is it?’ Miles asks, returning with his bag.

‘My chest. It’s still hurting.’

‘Okay.’ His voice is serious again. ‘I’m going to take a look now.’

‘But—’

‘No buts. Come on, it won’t take a minute.’

Maybe it will be easier in the dark. He won’t be able to see my face.

He goes back to the fireplace where he’s obviously left the torch in easy reach, and comes back. He helps me sit up straight and I don’t bother to protest any more. I’m worried about this pain and I want to know what’s wrong with me. He switches on the torch and the cold white beam lasers through the darkness. It blinds me momentarily, then the light swings away from my eyes and onto my body. He sits down next to me and puts the torch on the bench so that its beam illuminates me.

‘That’s right, let’s get this coat off you. Not for long . . .’ He’s unzipping my puffy jacket and gently pushing it off my shoulders. My sweater is underneath. ‘Do you want to lift this up for me?’

I nod and roll the soft cashmere upwards, exposing first my stomach and then my chest. I’m wearing a plain white cotton bra, the straps embellished with small cotton daisies. My skin prickles into goosebumps as the cold air hits it. Miles lifts the torch and focuses the beam on my breasts. I look down and see the icy light playing over my flesh; it looks white in the cold beam, the soft mounds of my breasts rising from the bra cups, but there’s something else.

‘I thought so,’ Miles says. He’s focused the torchlight on a livid purple mark that crosses my chest from the top of my left breast and straight down the centre of my chest in a long diagonal line. ‘You’ve been badly bruised by the seatbelt. You must have been thrown very hard against it.’

Relief flows through me. ‘Is that all?’

‘That’s my hunch. I think we would know if you had a punctured lung – you’d have an accelerated pulse, wheezing and probably a good deal more pain. It’s possible you have a broken rib but the pain would be intense at all times. My guess is you’ve got some severe bruising and it will go down after a while. We could put an ice pack on it . . .’

I shiver at the thought. ‘No thanks.’

‘Well . . . you need to take it easy, that’s all. And we’ll get you properly checked by a doctor as soon as we can.’ He drops the beam of light away from my chest and I pull my sweater back down. ‘Let’s get some more sleep. There’s nothing else we can do right now.’ Miles helps me put my coat back on and zips it up. I’m glad of the warmth.

He shifts on the bed so that he is between me and the stone wall and lies down. ‘Come in here,’ he says. ‘Get up right against me.’

I lie down so that my back is turned to him and shuffle back into the curve of his body. The warmth and strength that comes from him is intensely comforting. He wraps his sleeping bag around the two of us, and puts his arm around me. My heart, for some reason, is racing and I remember his words about an accelerated pulse. Is my lung punctured after all?

Or maybe it’s something else entirely . . .

A strange lightness fills my body, a sort of heady excitement. For the first time, I feel comfortable, almost luxurious.

‘Are you all right?’ he murmurs and I feel his breath against my neck. It sends waves of almost unbearable tingling over my flesh. I start to tremble lightly.

Surely he’s going to notice what he’s doing to me!

‘Yes,’ I say in a small voice. ‘I’m fine.’ But I have a fierce urge to turn over so that we are face to face, to press my body into his and offer him my mouth.

What the hell are you thinking?
I’m filled with mortification at the way my body is taking my thoughts in this direction. It would be wrong to cross that line with him. It’s bad enough that he’s witnessed me lose my dignity entirely in the last twelve or so hours. Now I want to humiliate myself entirely by trying to kiss him?

His words from earlier play through my mind.
He thinks I’m a spoilt princess. He thinks I’m stuck up and rude.
He laughed at me when I tried to tell him what to do. He refused to go out for my scarf.

A kind of turmoil rises up in me. On the one hand, I want to reinforce the difference between us: he’s the hired hand, I’m the lady of the house who ought be given respect and deference. It doesn’t matter what our situation is, he still has to show me that I’m the boss. And yet . . . I need him. Right now, I need strength and comfort and the way that he’s reducing me to a quivering jelly is discomforting and deliciously pleasurable at the same time. My body is lighting up like an electric bulb, delighted at the way this man’s closeness is firing up the snapping synapses of pleasure. It wants to respond. It felt that torchlight over my breasts as acutely as if he was running his fingertips over me. Now it’s hungry for skin, for touching and caressing and sucking and kissing . . .

Oh God! Stop it!
I can’t help twitching with the force of what I’m feeling, as a treacherous warmth spreads out from my groin.

‘Everything okay?’ he asks, his voice triggering more of those rippling tremors over my skin. ‘Are you in pain?’

‘No,’ I say.
Not in the way you think.
‘I’m all right. Really.’

He mustn’t know. He obviously isn’t affected by me at all. I can’t give him the satisfaction of turning me down.

I remember the last time I had sex. It was with Jacob, a night spent romping in a bed after an evening dancing at a club in St Tropez. That was before I knew he had a habit of paying for sex with prostitutes and call girls. I’d had to have the full range of tests afterwards, once it had all come to light. Thank goodness I’d been clear. I hadn’t been able to stomach seeing him again, not after the things I’d witnessed on that film. But I had loved him, and sex with him had been enjoyable. I have a flashback to Jacob, naked, his cock rearing up, as he parts my legs and gets ready to enter me . . .

I shiver again, and Miles’s arm tightens around me in response.
He thinks I’m cold.

I command myself to stop thinking about sex. It isn’t helping. I have to put it out of my mind, and make myself sleep. The sooner I can sleep, the sooner I’ll be able to wake up and move away from Miles’s disturbing proximity. And then he won’t guess my guilty secret, which is that I’m being eaten up with desire.

I don’t know how long I lie awake but at some point I drift into sleep and the next thing I know, I’m awake, blinking into greyish light that’s coming in through the tiny window. I’m warm, properly warm for the first time in a long while. Miles’s body is still pressed against mine, and I can’t resist snuggling into it, relishing its muscled firmness. He’s asleep, I can tell by his deep and regular breathing, and I wriggle slightly backwards, pressing my bottom against his groin. A hardness there presses against my buttock, and I frown, wondering if he has something in his pocket, before my face turns hot as I realise what it is. I’m wiggling up against his morning erection.

I freeze, not knowing what to do. The hardness is unmistakable, a steel rod up against me. And it’s impressive too, solid and long. I can’t help imagining how I could release it, free it so that it can do whatever it wants . . . All the feelings of the night before come racing back and a needy wetness instantly appears between my legs. We’re so close. His erection is only inches from where I can feel longing buzzing and calling.

Miles groans softly in his sleep and the arm around me tightens, pulling me closer to him so that his erection is now pressed against the cleft in my buttocks. He’s moving against me, his hips shifting so that the hardness rubs against me.

Is he awake or asleep? He must be asleep! It must be unconscious . . .

I let myself revel in the sensation of his hard cock pressing so close to where I want it. Then he moans again and moves away slightly, so that the pressure between us is reduced. I’m disappointed, still hungry for it, my desire now well stoked. But he’s obviously asleep and unaware of what’s happening between us.

This is going to drive me mad.

Impulsively, I move, twisting round. ‘Miles?’

His eyes flick open at once and he’s wide awake. ‘Yes? Everything all right?’

I was right. He was asleep. He hasn’t got a clue.

‘I . . . I need to . . .’ I stumble over the words. ‘Could you go outside for a moment?’

His puzzled expression clears as he grasps my meaning. ‘Sure. Sure. Of course.’ He seems to become aware of his own morning arousal, as he looks suddenly uncertain of himself, and the merest hint of embarrassment crosses his face. Moving quickly, he climbs nimbly over me and is standing up, stretching, keeping his back to me. Then he goes to the cottage door and lets himself out, a gust of freezing wind entering as he leaves. I sit up and feel the familiar ache in my chest but it’s definitely lessened since yesterday. He was right – it’s a bruise. I’ve been incredibly lucky.