Chapter 21
21
M arc stepped away from Cassie instantly as if he couldn’t bear to touch her. Cassie gently dropped her bags on the floor. They were both silent as they heard Lucy say something to either Anita or Iris, then the sound of a door closing and Lucy’s footsteps becoming fainter until they couldn’t be heard at all.
One quick glance at Marc’s frigid face was enough to know that he was still angry with her. Why did Cassie find his disapproval, and the things it did to his cheekbones, so sexy? What was wrong with her?
It was a big room. Not the biggest the manor had to offer but big enough for a huge bed, which would have looked tempting at any time. The walls and ceiling were painted a grey so dark it was almost charcoal and the bed and its quilt and its many cushions and pillows were dressed in dark blue and black. There was a dark-blue velvet bench at the bottom of the bed and matching armchairs in a little seating area, with an occasional table between them.
That was where Marc sat now, legs crossed, arms folded, face like granite. Cassie remained standing by the door, because she’d already decided that she wouldn’t be staying long. Their positions made her feel like a naughty schoolgirl hauled up in front of the headmaster for snogging boys when she should have been in a maths lesson. Like Marc was suddenly going to put Cassie over his knee and spank her.
Where were these thoughts coming from? They were coming from fifteen minutes in the walk-in pantry, that’s where. It had also been months since anyone had touched Cassie with any kind of erotic intent. Not since she’d hooked up with the least offensive of her ex-boyfriends because they were both horny and still single one Saturday night.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Marc had obviously decided that he’d given Cassie the silent treatment for long enough. ‘What happened earlier, it was the heat of the moment. Emotions were heightened. It wasn’t meant to give you ideas.’
Cassie made the universal scoffing sound for ‘Are you on crack?’ Then she treated herself to an extravagant eye-roll. ‘Oh, please, don’t flatter yourself. Like I begged you to go down on me? I don’t think so!’
The look Marc gave her was no longer angry, but more cool, considered. ‘Well, you certainly didn’t object. Quite the opposite.’
This was all going very off-message, very fast.
Also, there was a very simple explanation as to exactly what Cassie had been playing at. ‘They looked so happy, Lucy and Russell, when they thought we’d got together.’ She shrugged. ‘So I said what I said.’
‘But we’re not together,’ Marc said witheringly. ‘God, we’re already the keepers of one huge, horrible secret.’
Cassie couldn’t help but take offence at the notion that Marc considered pretending to be her boyfriend as yet another horrible secret.
‘OK, fine,’ she snapped. ‘You can be the one to tell them tomorrow that we’ve broken up already. Because you’re an arse. I’m sure it won’t come as that much of a shock.’
She picked up her bags. It was fine. In fact, she was relieved she’d be spending the night scrunched up on a too-small bunk bed with a base made of cheap plywood, but before she could leave, Marc was on his feet so he could stand between Cassie and the door.
‘I want Lucy and Russell to be happy,’ he said quietly, as if he was tempting fate even saying the words out loud. ‘Of course I want that.’
‘I don’t know if you looked at them while everyone was teasing us but they even high-fived each other. So, it just popped out,’ Cassie explained, matching Marc’s change of energy and dialling down the belligerence. ‘It wasn’t planned. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
‘But this …’ Marc gestured at the two of them, him barring her exit, Cassie still in flight mode. ‘I mean, how long can we do this for? What if he goes into remission?’ he added wistfully. ‘For years, decades. It could happen. It does happen.’
Cassie sighed a little longingly herself as she let her bags drop again and stepped into the room properly so she could perch on the end of the bed. They were clearly going to have to chat this out, so she might as well be comfortable. ‘If there’s an outside chance that Russell goes into remission and we have to keep acting like love’s young dream, then it would be a small price to pay, wouldn’t it? So, can’t we just suck it up for the time being … ?’
She blushed at her turn of phrase. Then Cassie also couldn’t help but look at Marc. Their eyes met and there it was again: that skin-itching tension.
He pulled something out of the back pocket of his jeans. A scrap of black cotton. ‘I think these belong to you.’
Part of Cassie was grateful that Marc had retrieved her knickers before anyone else could find them, and another part of her felt hot and heavy as she remembered how they came to be in his possession. ‘Yeah. Well. Obviously.’ Her voice was very husky and it was very hard suddenly to remember how to breathe.
‘What happened in that pantry, what I did, it wasn’t planned either …’ Marc said, fingers stroking the small bundle of black cotton.
‘Like you said, heat of the moment,’ Cassie said in a choked voice, though she was trying hard to feign detachment. She turned her face to stare blindly at the wall.
‘Look at me, Cassie.’
It was more of a plea than an order. Forcing herself to meet Marc’s eyes felt as hard as running a marathon or solving quadratic equations. His stare was dark and fathomless.
‘Did you come?’ He made each word sound like a promise.
She shook her head. ‘Heather was a bit of a mood-killer.’
He pushed himself away from the door. ‘Do you want to pick up where we left off?’
The air in the room felt as thick as treacle. Cassie still couldn’t look away as Marc slowly approached the bed. There were times when she hated how arrogant he was. But now, as he prowled towards her with that little half-smile, it made her feel as if she was about to come to the boil.
‘Do you, Cass?’ he asked her again.
He came to a stop as Cassie wriggled back on the bed. Then she slowly, ever so slowly, raised the hem of her long dress.
First she treated him to the sight of her ankles.
Then, in a tempting whisper of cotton along her shins, she uncovered her knees.
Marc’s eyes were fixed on her, his tongue swiping at his bottom lip. Considering that he’d been married to a woman who’d walked for Victoria’s Secret, Marc’s enthusiastic reaction to the slow exposé of Cassie’s very unremarkable legs was … pleasing . She rewarded him by taking even more of her own sweet time, so that empires rose and fell, tectonic plates shifted position and took whole continents with them, as Cassie delighted in the tickle of the material against her skin as she leisurely and unhurriedly bared her thighs.
With each centimetre that she revealed, Marc took a step closer to her. Then, just before she got to the good part, Cassie stopped and leaned back on her elbows.
‘Get on your knees,’ she said in a raspy voice that didn’t even sound as if it belonged to her.
Immediately, obediently, Marc dropped to his knees, so close that when Cassie stretched out one leg, her foot came to rest on his chest. She was sure she could feel his heart beating, positively thundering away, beneath her toes.
Marc bent his head to kiss the top of her foot, his lips hot against her skin. ‘I want you so much,’ he murmured reluctantly as if the words had been pulled out of him under duress. ‘I know you want me too.’
It was as if the time that had lapsed since he’d been on his knees before her in the pantry had melted away and Cassie was right back to that here and now when she’d been all sensation. Her nipples were hard, her breathing heavy, a deep, dark need uncurling and unfurling.
But Cassie was also feeling something else. Something that wasn’t so urgent because it had been sixteen years in the making.
Triumph trumped her own treacherous desire every time.
‘Look at me,’ she commanded and Marc tore his gaze away from her still quite unremarkable legs so he could look her in the eye. ‘Poor Marc. Do you want me to put you out of your misery?’
‘How are you going to do that? Because I’ve got some ideas of my own.’ Marc smiled. It was a good smile, dirty and flirty, full of promise of what he could do with that wicked mouth of his. He was so certain that he had Cassie all worked out. But he didn’t know the half of it. The half of her.
‘You have no idea what I want to do to you,’ Cassie said with a smile of her own. His eyes dropped down to her breasts, which to be fair were positively heaving, then back to her legs, one foot still resting against his chest because her core strength from all the yoga was impressive. What a pity that Marc was never going to benefit from exactly what she could do with that core strength when she really put her mind to it. ‘But it probably contravenes the UN’s policies on torture.’
Oh, his eyes lit up at that, like Cassie was all ready to don a shiny PVC catsuit. ‘I’m not really into pain but—’
‘Enough!’ she snapped because he was derailing everything again. She flexed her foot with enough force that it was clear she was pushing him away. That …
‘It was just the heat of the moment. And now I’ve come to my senses,’ she enunciated each word with relish as Marc sat back on his heels to put some distance between them. ‘Me having sex with you again? Dream on. It’s never going to happen.’
Marc put his hands up like Cassie had just arrested him. His smile was now that condescending twist of his lips that made her want to flex her foot again so she could kick him in the teeth. ‘OK, yeah, whatever you say,’ he said, like he didn’t believe a word of it.
It also made Cassie want to repeat her vow to never have sex with him again. Fiercely. And very loudly. But she wasn’t going to give him that kind of satisfaction – or any other kind of satisfaction, come to that.
Pretending to be a couple and having to share a room was always going to be hideously awkward. Cassie had just made the situation even worse but it was totally worth it. It didn’t matter what had happened in that pantry; they were still sworn enemies and she needed to remember that.
As Marc stood up – without even wincing, which made Cassie even more annoyed – she raised her arms above her head in a lazy stretch like she didn’t have a care in the world. She even managed a condescending smile of her own. ‘Just as well that it’s a big bed,’ she said. ‘We’ll put some pillows down the middle and I’m sure we can manage not to kill each other for a weekend.’
Marc looked up at the ceiling, like he was hanging on to his sanity or his temper by one very frayed thread. But when he looked at Cassie, his face was expressionless. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. The weekend is still young. Now, do you want the bathroom first?’
When she emerged from the bathroom in a black lace-edged camisole and sleep shorts, Marc was sitting in the armchair, the miniature bottle of whiskey from his goody bag empty on the table next to him. Like she’d driven him to drink. Then he stood up and, without a word, but with narrowed eyes, he walked to the bathroom.
While he was in there, Cassie did seriously think about doing a runner but then she sat down on the bed. Its mattress was firm, its pillows numerous and even if things were awkward, at least they’d be awkward on sheets that had to be at least 600 thread count.
‘I’m a duvet-hogger,’ Cassie warned Marc when he came out of the bathroom in just a pair of black boxer shorts. It was best to lay all her cards on the table. ‘I can’t sleep unless I’m wrapped up like a burrito.’
She tried to avert her eyes but she could see that he had a really good body for his age. Or just a good body. Period. End of. Not open for discussion.
He was lean, thanks to running a couple of marathons a year, but he clearly did a lot of strength training too, because his muscles were beautifully defined. The room was lit only by Cassie’s bedside lamp so her ogling and subsequent blushes went unnoticed as Marc put his phone on charge then walked towards the bed.
‘I don’t like to have the covers on me at all,’ he said, eyes narrowing again as he caught sight of the decorative scatter cushions stacked down the middle of the bed. ‘Are you ready to turn out the light?’
Cassie waited until he’d got into bed then plunged the room into darkness. Right on cue, before she could do any breath work or meditative exercises to try and relax her mind, the panic arrived.
It wasn’t even her usual existential dread or her grief about Russell; it was a panic that could be summarised in ten words, the letters six feet high and in lurid neon.
WHY, CASS, WHY? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?
The pantry had been bad enough. But pretending they were a couple, even if it was for the best of reasons, was sheer fucking madness. As was goading Marc and scoring cheap points when they needed to be a team, a united front. Fat chance of that now.
What was even worse, maybe the worst thing of all, was that he’d asked if she’d come and she hadn’t. And now, lying next to him, even with a duvet tucked tightly around her, Cassie wanted to come more than ever.
She tried not to squirm with longing. She didn’t even realise how restless she was, how insistent her wriggling, until his hand landed hard on her hip.
‘Go to sleep, Cassie,’ he said sharply.
It was a warning; an order, which Cassie decided it was best to obey.