Chapter 12
12
Later that evening, with the wind blowing a gale outside, Paige and Oliver were sitting on the couch in the darkened media room watching Pinocchio – the original 1940 animated version. What else? She’d known the song she’d sung this afternoon wasn’t from Cinderella . That had been the whole point. She’d been trying to lighten the mood or at least distract from Casper leaving and she knew her getting film facts wrong drove him bonkers.
But, she’d obviously tripped something in his head because he’d announced over an hour ago that he was going down to watch it and she’d found herself following, pleased for the distraction of a wooden puppet who wanted to be a real boy. Or maybe it had been because seeing him go downstairs without the dog at his heel had broken her heart a little and the house had seemed oppressively quiet without the white noise of doggy pants and toenails tapping on the floorboards.
For goodness’ sake, the damn dog had been a device. A way to annoy Oliver – to create chaos in his pristine, controlled world. Sandy paws, daily baths, loud barking, slobber and all the dog hair. But he’d become so much more – to both of them.
He’d become a… member of the family. Such as they were.
Sheila had told Casper he’d been lucky to end up here but Paige was pretty sure they’d been the lucky ones. Oliver for sure. Walking Casper on the beach each day had given him a routine and a reason to get out there and also the perfect environment for creative flow. If it hadn’t been for Casper, she doubted Oliver would have been anywhere near as productive these past weeks.
They were in their usual positions on the couch. Him, in his standard boxers and T that sat snug against his abs emphasising everything at one end and her, in her voluminous, bilious-green velour, yoga pants and her baggiest oversized shirt which covered her from neck to knees and left everything to the imagination, at the other.
She’d thrown them on as a defence against this taut thread of awareness that had vibrated like an invisible trip line between them since their hallway make-out sesh. They were the two most unflattering articles of clothing she’d brought with her and, combined, they were really something else. But she needed the barrier to keep a physical and mental distance from him.
Especially tonight. With a Casper-sized space – or maybe that was hole – between them, lowering defences she’d been shoring up all week.
It certainly felt like the elephant in the room right now and Paige was pleased for the distraction of a wooden puppet who wanted to be a real boy.
A blur of light in her peripheral vision drew her attention to Pavarotti who was doing laps on his wheel. It was good to see him active again. After Casper’s departure, Oliver had peered into the hamster’s cage and said, ‘Looks like it’s just you and me now, kid,’ and Pavarotti had barely moved since.
Paige hadn’t expected the rodent to understand such a cryptic phrase but clearly, he’d picked up what Oliver had put down and wasn’t best happy with the situation. In fact, if it was at all possible for a hamster to look glum, Pavarotti had looked glum, his normally jaunty quiff droopy as he sat near the bars of his cage, his beady little eyes trained on the distant door as if he was expecting it to open at any moment and for Casper to bound in barking.
And she’d known exactly how he felt.
This week hadn’t started well and it sure wasn’t ending that way either. Between the teeth-aching politeness between her and Oliver since snog number two and the Bella and Chase fiasco which had unfolded with her Just Desserts peeps, Casper leaving had been the mouldy, rotting apple core on top of the mud pie that had been the week.
Oliver hugging her in the doorway had been nice – comforting nice, not a prelude to something else nice – to start with anyway. But it had quickly sent a buzz through her veins and a flood of heat pooling in her belly as it morphed into something decidedly not nice. Something which she was sure he’d also felt if the way his heartbeat had suddenly thrummed a little harder against the wall of his chest.
So, the arrival of the duck had given her the perfect opportunity to step away without either of them having to acknowledge the intimacy.
She’d give anything to be hugged again now as the yawning gap between them echoed the yawning hole inside her. Oliver was out of the question – she was just too damn aware of him – but she knew her co-conspirators, who she’d messaged earlier today about the Casper development, would be up for a huge group hug.
Sure, she’d be seeing them all soon in New York when her, Sienna and Astrid planned to surprise Bella at the pre-opening party for Chase’s gallery but she wanted to be wrapped up in their love now, damn it.
It was at times like this she was insanely jealous of the other three. All living in the States meant they were actually able to get together face to face. On a whim if they wanted. Hell, Bella and Astrid (thanks to her uncle’s apartment) were both in New York! Sure, video calling was a good alternative but it wasn’t the same as actually being with them.
Although, right at this moment, it was probably Bella that needed the group hug the most. There’d been much jubilation when the hatchet job article had appeared in print, thrusting Chase into a very hot spotlight but it hadn’t lasted long. Bella had discovered some inconvenient truths about Chase that had set her in a real spin.
Mortified, they’d all put their heads together and come up with a plan to fix things. Paige had everything crossed that it would work because Bella’s guilt was real. And hell, if she didn’t she know all about that? It seemed like Paige wasn’t the only one learning that things weren’t always so black and white.
The strains of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ dragged her attention back to the movie although with Jiminy receiving his golden badge it was just about done now and she’d barely taken any of it in. Beside her, Oliver’s hand slid to the empty couch cushion between them as it had done several times tonight.
She supposed given Casper had been there every night for the last month, it had been reflexive, his quick withdrawal each time, when his hand had found nothing but couch, squeezing at her ribcage. But, as the credits rolled on the screen, he didn’t remove his hand, his fingers absently smoothing the cushion and ugh , now it was her heart being squeezed.
It was just so damn sad.
Without thinking, Paige slid her hand across and placed it over the top of his. She didn’t know why, it just felt right. Like the hug in the doorway.
Solidarity.
But then his movement stilled and he looked from the screen to where her hand was laid over his before slowly lifting his gaze and, just like the doorway, the buzz was back. Paige’s breath stilled in her throat as those blue eyes lingered on her mouth before they locked on her hazel ones and everything faded – the music, the flicker of the television, the lights from the hamster wheel.
Even the race of her pulse became a dull beat in her ears.
It was a strange moment. Something that started on impulse and had been meant for comfort but was already teetering on something else entirely. Her blood throbbed with awareness of him, each lub-dub of her heart pushing the throb to every nook and cranny, every cell, every millimetre of her skin.
Oh crap. This wasn’t supposed to be happening again.
Paige forced a lacklustre smile across her mouth, all friendly like. All, nothing to see here . He returned it with equally lacklustre conviction. ‘It’ll take a while to get used to, I suppose…’ Her voice was stupidly husky and she swallowed against the tightening in her throat.
‘Yeah,’ he murmured, his gaze not leaving hers, his voice rasping at just the right octave to stand every infinitesimal hair on her body to attention in one sweeping wave.
Her nipples followed suit and a brief thought about her sexually repellent, decade-old sports bra that would have looked perfectly at home on a sumo wrestler, flitted quickly away as Oliver turned his hand over beneath hers, his palm hot as his fingers slipped between hers and furled tight.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Paige swallowed. ‘What for?’
‘For Pinocchio .’
Because she’d brought it up? Because it had been a distraction? Because she’d kept him company? But those questions faded to black as he slowly, slowly lifted their conjoined hands off the couch.
She supposed she could have stopped him. Pulled her hand back. He didn’t exactly have her in a vice-like grip. She could have opened her mouth, used her words.
But she didn’t do any of it. She couldn’t .
She was transfixed by the slow ascension of their hands across the gap, the glow from the flickering TV strobing shadows along her arm. Anticipation crackled through her blood like an atmospheric charge just before a storm, humming through her veins. As he drew her hand nearer, her body automatically followed, his action nudging her a little closer.
Finally, their eyes still locked, her hand met his mouth and Paige watched helplessly and with great fascination as he brushed a lingering kiss to the back, breathing fire into the network of blue veins and injecting a slug of rocket fuel to her system.
Oh, dear lord , she wanted him beyond all reason. This feeling hadn’t gone away merely because she’d insisted it be ignored. If anything, as she stared at him across a dog-sized space, her breath like static in her lungs all haphazard and disorganised, it had grown.
It was now an unholy behemoth demanding to be fed.
‘Oliver,’ she whispered.
She had no idea why she said his name, what thought she was going to express. Her need? Her desire? Her torment?
It certainly wasn’t to tell him no or stop.
And it sure as hell didn’t matter, anyway, as his eyes flared blue light and her blood pounded thick and slow through her temples, her neck, her belly. All flowing to the almighty ache growing between her legs.
‘Paige.’
Her name hung between them. One beat. Two. And then suddenly, the TV screen went black as the movie ended, plunging the room into full darkness and it was like the universe had not only given them permission but the cover of night. All Paige’s moral fibre, all the reasons for not fucking Oliver Prendergast, disintegrated under the cloak of darkness and the weight of her carnal urges.
They met halfway with a clash of mouths and a combined moan that echoed around the room, bouncing off the walls and hovering in the air, spiking it with a heady dose of lust. His hands slid either side of her neck as his tongue licked fire and brimstone into her mouth which she met with her own, her fingers tangling in his shirt as their heads twisted, their mouths roving restlessly as the kiss went deeper and deeper.
Not sampling but tasting, full and hearty, their breathing as loud and hungry as the winter wind howling at the door, as hungry as the howling banshee inside her commanding full and utter capitulation as lips ravaged and hunted.
Seeking, demanding. Giving, taking. Decadence and debauchery.
‘Christ, Paige,’ Oliver panted, his warm breath fanning her face as he pressed his forehead to hers. ‘If you want this to stop, you better say now because I don’t know how much control I’ve got over it.’
Well, that made two of them. But she understood, despite the sticky globules of lust clinging to synapses like dew to a spider’s web, what he was doing. He was giving her an out. And had the lights been on and Casper lying between them, she might have considered it. Hell, who was she kidding? They wouldn’t be here like this had that been the case.
But it wasn’t the case and for sure she was going to hell for this but, after four lonely years eschewing any whiff of physical closeness with another human being, she needed this like she needed her next breath.
Tomorrow she’d deal with the inevitable fallout. Tonight, she needed this to keep going on . She kissed him then, hard and sure before pulling away. ‘I don’t want to stop,’ she muttered.
Getting to her feet, Paige quickly pushed down her velour pants and stepped out of them as she lifted her baggy shirt over her head leaving her in just her mismatched underwear. Had she not been so lust addled, she probably wouldn’t have been so bold. But she was completely drunk on pleasure and the shadows were her friend.
‘Holy fuck,’ he swore, his eyes roving her body, like she was wearing the finest Victoria’s Secret lingerie instead of rainbow-striped knickers that sat too low to cover the soft rise of her stomach and her ancient sports bra.
And hell, if her heart didn’t skip a beat.
Drinking in his patent admiration for her curves, she stepped between his legs, dropping a knee to the couch beside his thigh, reaching for his shoulders as she dropped her other knee, looming above him temporarily as she straddled his lap. She sucked in a breath as he strung kisses across the valley of her cleavage, the husky serration of his breath sending spirals of sensation straight to her nipples.
Their heights equalised as she lowered herself, settling her centre against his. But where she was wet and soft he was hot and hard. Very freaking hard and she shivered as she ground against all that heat and thickness, dragging a low groan from his lips as he nuzzled the hollow at the base of her throat. She ground again and his fingers sunk into her ass, clutching her tight against him.
‘Shirt,’ she gasped as a furnace roared to life between her legs and a ripple undulating along muscles deep and low told her things were escalating fast.
Falling back against the couch, Oliver yanked his shirt off his head, exposing his flat abdomen, his smooth, firm pecs and the broad spread of his shoulders. Pillows of muscle in his belly contracted as he tossed his shirt, his gaze drifting slowly up her body, licking heat with those smouldering blue eyes until they met hers.
‘Bra.’
Awarding him mental points for not calling it that depressingly functional contraption strapping your titties in , Paige complied eagerly. Her nipples were painfully tight and aching to be free. It still didn’t stop her hands from trembling though as she reached for the back clasp, his gaze intent on the show. Considering Paige had almost, on several occasions throughout her adult life, been strangled to death while trying to get out of a sports bra, the hooks and eyes cooperated first time and the bra straps slid down her arms, exposing her breasts to his full view.
‘Christ, Paige,’ he said on a reverent exhale as he leaned in and dropped a gentle kiss next to each taut nipple. ‘You’re so fucking beautiful.’
Every disparaging thought Paige had ever had about her body – and God knew, there’d been plenty of them – completely disappeared from her head because, right now, with him looking at her like that she felt like goddamn Eve.
The OG temptress.
His hands slid to her breasts and, on a groan, he sunk his face into them, his fingers stroking and kneading as his hot mouth found a pale pink bud and sucked.
Paige cried out it was so exquisite. Raw and base and perfect as his teeth scraped against the engorged tip. Her head fell back as Oliver switched from one nipple to the other in a never-ending loop, hot darts of sensation arrowing south from where his tongue flicked to where the slick heat at her centre met his steely girth.
Paige was riding a fugue of lust so strong, she didn’t even notice she was tipping backwards until the couch cushions were beneath her and her head was semi propped on the arm as Oliver’s big, hard body settled between her legs.
So. Freaking. Good.
She stretched, undulating her body, revelling in the full-length experience as he kissed her, deep and slow for long drugging moments before he was gone again, his mouth teasing a nipple, his hand sliding into her underwear.
Paige’s eyes flew open as his fingers delved into the all the slick between her legs and deftly found the perfect spot. She gasped and clutched his shoulders at how damn good it felt.
‘Right there?’ he asked around her nipple, clearly not planning on relinquishing it.
‘Yes,’ she panted. ‘ Exactly there.’
Her eyes fluttered closed on a surge of pleasure as his finger circled lazily, his tongue slowing to mimic the pace. But when she moaned and shoved her hand into his hair, he picked up the pace, flaying her nipples with attention, his fingers working her clit in simpatico as she panted and moaned and writhed beneath him, her pulse like a hammer through her head as she hurtled towards orgasm.
‘Oliver!’ she cried out as that low ripple became two, then three, then more pulling everything to an excruciating, concentrated pinpoint of pleasure until it broke on a powerful whoosh flooding every inch of her body, showering her in a kaleidoscope of colour and soaking her in warm, electric rain.
‘ Olllliver .’
It was a moan this time, low and sonorous, coming from somewhere other, somewhere she’d buried so deep for so long, it felt like the earth was cracking open as she let it go, writhing and panting, clutching his shoulders, holding tight to him as her body bucked through the rigours of her climax and all the time he was whispering in her ear, ‘ Yes, yes, Paige… just like that… Yes… I got you… yes. ’
And, as the ripples ebbed, his finger action gentled and he dropped butterfly kisses on her cheeks and eyes and mouth but a fever still had her in its hold, her blood thick with the beat of it and she was greedy for more. Greedy for the feel of him pushing into her, for the rise of him over her, for the moment he lost himself because of her.
Reaching for his boxers, she pushed them off his hips but the erratic thump of her pulse made her dizzy and her fingers next to useless. She gave a frustrated little growl as she met his gaze. ‘Off,’ she panted. ‘I want you inside me.’
The blue of his irises flared at her guttural request. ‘Fuck yes ,’ he muttered.
As he swooped in to kiss her, Paige got lost in the mastery of his lips, only vaguely aware of him tugging at clothes and cursing their recalcitrance against her mouth as he awkwardly fumbled them both out of their underwear withou t breaking the kiss.
And suddenly he was right there. No barrier between them. The thick, blunt prod of him so damn good as she wrapped her legs around his waist and whispered, ‘Please.’
They both gasped as he slid inside her, thrusting to the hilt in one buck of his hips. ‘ Fuuuck ,’ Oliver panted into her neck. ‘I never want to be anywhere else.’
Paige concurred. Utterly. But if she thought about it too much she’d ruin the here and now. Future Paige could worry about such a potentially calamitous statement. The Paige on this couch, under this man, joined as intimately as was possible for two people to be joined?
She was in the moment.
Furrowing her fingers into his hair, she turned her face, her lips close to his ear as she whispered, ‘ More .’
So he gave her more. And more. And more again. Pounding in and out until they were both breathing hard, each withdrawal a prelude to the next breathtaking penetration which only stoked her fever – their fever – higher and higher. And when he draped her leg over his shoulder and rose up over her, the angle changed and he went deeper and harder and her orgasm was upon her before she could even comprehend what was happening, crying out his name again as it spun her around and around and around.
He joined her moments later on a long low, ‘ Yeeeeesssss ,’ the rhythm of his thrusts changing as he rode his own release. His arms trembling, their gazes locked as they weathered the storm of pleasure together.
The fever broke as abruptly as it had started, leaving them in a panting heap of arms and legs. Oliver’s big body was pleasantly heavy slumped on top, the tickle of his breath on her neck pleasantly intimate as the afterglow hummed around them and their breathing slowly returned to normal.
A rattling noise stirred them from their stupor and they both looked over to identify the source to find Pavarotti running on his wheel.
‘Bloody hell,’ Oliver said, his voice still a little gravelly as he stared at the blur of lights. ‘Do you think he saw that?’
Paige blinked. ‘I don’t see how he could have missed it.’
‘Oh God.’ Oliver looked at her, endearingly askance. ‘What if we’ve damaged him? Is there a special place in hell for people who expose their animals to…’ He paused as if he wasn’t sure what to call what had just happened. ‘Rumpy-pumpy?’
Paige hooted out a laugh. The man was naked and still semi hard inside her after nailing her to the couch like he did it for a living and yet still managed to sound delightfully posh. ‘Animals don’t seem particularly bothered exposing us to their rumpy-pumpy, ’ she reasoned.
‘Ah. Yes.’ He brightened. ‘Good point.’
And then he laughed too, all warm and husky as he lowered his forehead to hers and it would have been easy to feel guilt and shame and recriminations right now but there was laughter and Paige’s heart just about floated right out of her chest.