The Red Collection (28 page)

Not that she was complaining. It had been long, long and utterly dry spell while she’d been through diagnosis, surgery and recovery, and one orgasm down in the garden wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to feel this beauty she’d just had in her mouth deep inside her. Her fingers, and her lips and tongue, told her he was amazing, even though to her eyes he was just a vague, but weighty, reddish shape.

With the skill of an accomplished lover accustomed to positioning women for sex, he flipped her neatly onto her back and slid his hand between her thighs. His big fingers paddled in her wetness, testing and fondling.

Suddenly a stark thought sprang into her mind, and for a moment her libido was doused by cold, hard doubt.

‘What’s the matter, beautiful Megan?’ Guy purred, coming up and over her. For a moment, she gained a tiny bit more clarity, and she imagined she could see a frown, an expression of concern on his broad, tanned face.

‘I … um … I don’t have any protection … any condoms or anything.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He placed a light kiss on her lips, then reached out and pulled open a drawer in the nightstand. ‘I told you I’d been here before, didn’t I?’

A few moments later, he guided her hand to him, and her fingers encountered the familiar feel of superfine latex.

Who the hell are you?
she thought as he moved over her again, the muscular immensity of his body coming down on her like fate.
Are you a burglar? Are you the tramp and you’ve already broken in now and again to pilfer the place? When I finally see your face will it be in a police line-up, for God’s sake?

But then all doubts, fears and thoughts were expunged as he pressed his cock against her and began to enter.

Oh God! Oh my! Oh hell!

What had felt pretty big in her hand now felt enormous as it slid, slowly, slowly, millimetre by millimetre into the sensitive portal of her sex. And yet, despite the size and the strangeness, she felt a deep, sweet sense that somehow both she and Guy were finally coming home. In intimate juxtaposition their bodies fitted each other and were perfectly matched.

Yet again, tears sprang into her eyes, but this time they were thankful tears of joy. She’d known Guy less than an hour, and she couldn’t see the features of his face clearly, but in this simple moment she had a sudden feeling of fate. It was completely crazy, but she knew that in one way or another, she’d been meant to make love with this man.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, ‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’ Taking his weight on one elbow, he stroked her face, fingertips delicately searching out the teardrops and smoothing them away. The action was so exquisite, so precise, that it seemed a shocking contrast to his great presence between her legs. She found herself gasping again, and great sobs wracked her body.

She shook her head because she couldn’t manage words, and as he began to kiss her again, with reverence, she knew he understood.

And as he began to move, all her fears and doubts were shattered. Only pleasure existed. Only pleasure, sublime pleasure, with a loving stranger. As they rocked and jerked and thrust at each other, limbs entwining and sexes combining and working against each other in glorious syncopation, the gates of joy and light and hope were thrown wide open.

Gorgeous sensations rocketed around Megan’s body, colliding with skin and nerves and pumping glands and always returning again and again to her core, and to Guy. She knew she couldn’t hold out long against orgasm, and she didn’t want to. She cried out his name and came and came and came again, her senses filled with his warmth, his weight and the intoxicating scent of his skin.

As she moaned and thrashed, she knew in her heart he was the best she’d ever had or was likely to have.

He lasted the longest too. Exerting some kind of control she couldn’t honestly comprehend, he hung on, and on, while she climbed the hill to climax and plunged back down it time and time again. Eventually, she had to plead with him, or lose her wits.

‘Please, love … Please come … I can’t take any more! It’s just too lovely!’

With a low, husky rumble of laughter, he generously complied, and then almost deafened her with a downright primal shout of triumph.

A few moments, or possibly hours, later, Megan found herself wondering if this was what it might feel like to survive a tropical cyclone or a hurricane. She felt as if she’d been buffeted by a tidal wave or a thunderstorm, but in a good way. There were going to be bruises in all sorts of unexpected places tomorrow, she suspected, but she was almost looking forward to exploring her nooks and niches to find out where they were.

And Guy, like a typical man, was now fast asleep.

Never more than now had she been impatient for her eyes to right themselves. She prayed for just one second of twenty-twenty vision to see his broad face in repose, but it just didn’t happen. He remained a vague shape, hazed with red.

That didn’t matter though. Not really. Whatever he looked like, she’d always believe in her heart he was beautiful.

But as she leaned over him, straining to see, the sound of the phone ringing, down in the hall, made her jump in her skin.

‘Rats!’ She slid from the bed, fumbling and feeling about for her clothes.

‘You don’t have to answer it,’ murmured Guy sleepily, also feeling about, but for her, not for clothing.

Megan managed to locate her top and skirt but not her panties. ‘I think I have to. It might be Sylvia, and she’ll probably send the police around if I don’t answer.’

‘Mm … come back soon.’

‘I will,’ said Megan, making her way cautiously to the door, and feeling her way along the passage and down the
stairs
. It seemed to take an age, and still the phone rang on and on.

‘Megan! Are you all right?’ demanded her friend, just as she’d expected.

‘I … um … um … fine.’

That was a massive understatement, but she didn’t know how to begin to explain that to Sylvia.

‘Are you sure? You sound a bit weird. Sort of spaced out. Has something happened?’

‘No! Nothing. Everything’s fine.’
Except for the fact that I’ve just had sex with a total stranger
. ‘All’s quiet here.’

Sylvia’s suspicion almost seemed to ooze out of the receiver.

‘Really. I’m fine. I’m having a lovely, restful time.’

‘No sign of that vagrant I told you about?’

‘Nope …’ She crossed her fingers. ‘But out of interest, if I could see, what does he look like?’

‘Well, he’s really old for a start, and he doesn’t have any teeth and he has a funny foot. But actually, Bernice heard he’d been taken into a hostel or something.’

‘That’s good.’ So Guy definitely wasn’t the tramp then.

‘But it’s not him I was ringing about,’ Sylvia went on briskly. ‘I just wanted to warn you that you might be getting a visitor any day now.’

‘A visitor?’

‘Yes, it’s my cousin Guy. Well, he’s my second cousin, really. He’s back in the country, and he often turns up at the cottage when he’s on leave or whatever. He likes the peace and quiet.’

‘Leave from what?’

‘Oh, well, it’s all very hush-hush. He’s in some kind of elite Special Forces unit. SAS or something similar. Deep cover,
covert
ops, you know. He’s been in the Gulf or Afghanistan or somewhere ultra-sensitive. He’s a bit like a cross between Rambo and James Bond. Fiercely patriotic, but he can be ruthless in the field.’

Yikes, her mysterious stranger was a professional mysterious stranger!

‘Anyway, he’s a lovely man. I’m sure you’ll like him, but he can be a bit … well … unforthcoming. He’s the strong, silent type and all that, and he has to be pretty circumspect in his line of work, so he’s sort of cagey generally. Doesn’t tend to offer much information about himself, so be warned if this great big hunk of a gorgeous manly chap just turns up on the doorstep without much in the way of an explanation.’ Sylvia paused, and sighed regretfully, ‘It’s an awful shame your eyes aren’t A1 yet because Guy’s really, really good looking! An absolute hunk!’

‘I thought he might be.’

‘What do you mean, you thought he might be?’ Sylvia’s voice was filled with a sort of benign suspicion, ‘Have you met him? Has he turned up already?’

‘Erm … yes, he has.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

There was a long pause, but Megan could just imagine Sylvia’s triumphant grin. ‘You shameless hussy, Meg! You’ve bonked him already, haven’t you?’

‘I might have …’

‘There’s no might about it, I can tell from your voice.’ Her friend laughed softly, ‘Well, good for you! It just shows you’re well on the road to recovery … Vital juices flowing and all that.’

Megan smiled, happy and feeling mischievous. ‘And the
worst
of it is, I didn’t know who the hell he was and I still went to bed with him!’

Sylvia laughed even harder. ‘God, I know I shouldn’t ask, because he’s my cousin and all that, but I heard from a friend of a friend who used to go out with him before he went overseas, and she said he was dynamite in the sack. Is he?’

‘He might be. But I’m not going to divulge the sexual secrets of a member of your family to you, am I?’

Sylvia protested, but eventually, Megan was able to get off the line with the promise of a long, boozy lunch sometime in the near future. Much as she would have loved to have a girlie chat with Sylvia straight away, she had other, more compellingly delicious priorities to attend to. She had to get back to bed and back to the adorable stranger in it.

He was her unforthcoming, secretive, sexy, virile, gorgeous, secret agent soldier man, and he might have to go away again before she really got to know him.

But even so, she smiled.

She knew now that no matter how long it took, she’d wait for him. Because without knowing why, she knew that he’d return to her and when all the red haze and fuzziness had cleared at last, she
would
finally see the face of the man she was falling in love with.

Strawberry Shortcake

‘I CAN’T SEEM
to do a thing right for him these days, no matter how hard I try!’

The women were in the kitchen, supposedly putting the final touches to the strawberry shortcake for dessert, while the men talked about the company, and politics and football. It had all begun very light-hearted and girlie, but suddenly it had morphed into ‘Caroline’s Agony Hour’, with overanxious Maggie the one in the confessional.

‘How hard have you tried?’ Caroline tried not to shout, but it was difficult over the clatter of her noisy old coffee grinder. By rights, the husbands wouldn’t be able to hear what she and the other woman said to each other, because the kitchen was a fair way down the hall from the dining room, but knowing her Jonathan, Caroline really couldn’t be sure of that. He was so clever and wily he might well find a way to listen in.

‘Very!’ protested Maggie, ‘I know a lot of it’s my own fault. And Allen is really good to me. It’s just that his standards are so high. He likes everything just so, and sometimes I just think “Oh, sod it!” and I want to do my own thing.’

‘That sounds familiar.’ Caroline stared wistfully around the kitchen for a moment, knowing just how Maggie felt.
She’d
suffered the same sort angst herself in the old days, wanting to be the perfect wife and a successful career woman all rolled into one, and getting stressed and uptight and not doing very well at either. Until she and Jonathan had found a way to resolve all their tensions.

‘Did you have problems too?’ Maggie’s blue eyes were round and appealing, as if begging for answers, for ‘the secret’. She was a sweet-natured woman, and Caroline had been happy to take her under her wing when her husband Allen had come to work in Jonathan’s department at the company. ‘You and Jonathan are so great together. You’re like the perfect couple. I can’t imagine you ever being anything else but chilled out and contented.’

Ah, sweetheart, if only you knew how we got here. I wonder if you’ll understand if I tell you?

‘We did have our ups and downs once.’ Caroline busied her hands with the coffee preparation, trying not to look upwards, to where certain slightly unexpected objects hung amongst the pans on the kitchen rack. They were hidden from the casual eye, unless you knew exactly where to look. She was convinced that Maggie and Allen were ripe for the answer, but it was a radical solution, and not for everybody. It could bring a glorious new dimension to what looked to her like basically a very happy marriage, but there was always a risk when trying to initiate someone new, who might not understand. ‘But we were lucky enough to find an answer, a way of accommodating both our natures.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Anguished, Maggie fiddled with a strand of her long, dark hair.

Caroline’s heart twisted. She’d been there. She had to take the risk.

‘It’s like this,’ she said, beginning to set the tray. Routine,
displacement
activity always helped her to frame her thoughts in any situation; right now, it also tamed a flare of anticipation. ‘Jonathan has a strong personality. He’s kind, an absolute sweetie in many ways, but he also needs to be a leader and a manager. A master in his own house.’ A cup rattled but she steadied it. ‘But I’ve got a strong nature too. I’m unbelievably stubborn and I like to live my own life and do my own thing.’ She caught sight of Maggie nodding in recognition. ‘But I want to please Jonathan by showing that I respect his dominance too. I suppose a shrink would call it a form of subconscious submissiveness. But it’s only really confined to one specific area. In every other way, I’m a card-carrying feminist and I make my own decisions.’

‘What specific area?’

Caroline smiled. There was hope for Maggie. The other woman had immediately picked up on the crux of the matter – and she sounded interested, and just a little bit excited.

‘We could demonstrate, Jonathan and I,’ Caroline said, turning fully to face Maggie and looking her straight in the eye, ‘but it might surprise you … and it might not be the right answer for you.’

‘I’ll try anything,’ the younger woman said solemnly, ‘and I’m sure Allen will be up for it too. He’s really a sweetheart, just like your Jonathan, and he’s always prepared to work through a problem.’