Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Wow,’ he breathed.
She examined his eyes. He looked astonished. But not disgusted. He didn’t take his hand away. ‘He gets to send out letters and postcards or make phone calls. He sends them to my sister Jessamine or to Billie — who finally dumped the boyfriend — and they send them to me as emails.’
She could see his mind working. Computing. Coming to the obvious conclusion. ‘So, what’s Billie to him, now?’
‘I think she’s still just his friend, because if she’s more, why is he sending me message after message and saying he wants to see me? But the town certainly thought that there was something going on between her and Stef, judging by the looks — sympathetic or knowing — that came my way.’ She stopped. Dropped her eyes to her watch. ‘Look . . . I’m tired and I have to be at the Eastingdean Teapot at eight—’
Instantly, he let her off the conversational hook. ‘Of course. I’ll take you home.’
The night was much cooler, now, and she crossed her arms and scrunched her shoulders as they hurried back to his SUV. He reached across and pulled her up into the seat again. ‘Thanks.’
It wasn’t until he stopped in her drive that she spoke next, words that just seemed to have made their own decision to be spoken. ‘I told him that I couldn’t put up with things any more. I’m tired of it and we’re over.’
His face turned to her, in the darkness. She could smell his clean, warm smell. ‘No one could blame you,’ he said, gently. ‘Effectively, he lost you your job. And you’ve lost face in front of the town where you live.’
‘To the point of humiliation,’ she agreed. ‘But the main issue is that I don’t trust him any more. I don’t expect a man to look after me in the old-fashioned way but I don’t expect him to drag me into his crappy mess, either. He shouldn’t expect me to wallow around in his dirt. He keeps sending messages about me being his wife and visiting him in jail and I’m just not going to do it. That wasn’t in the vows.’
Tears prickled, suddenly, and she fumbled with the door catch, hearing Martyn’s door opening and shutting as she struggled with the weight against the ever-present clifftop wind. Screwing round in the seat, she tried reversing out to see if it was any easier than going forward, muttering, ‘Holy crap,’ as she battled with her bag and the stupid mules that, she vowed, she would never wear again in any vehicle more than one foot from ground to seat.
And, as if the gremlins were listening in, the heel of her right mule caught on the sill and was wrenched off and she was suddenly hurtling backwards into space.
‘Oof!’ said the solid body she collided with. Hot hands grabbed her in mid-air, an arm around her chest and a hand on her thigh for a long, still moment. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. Then lowered her to the ground.
But, ‘Ow!’ she yelped, as spiteful stones bit into her tender soles. ‘I lost my shoes.’
His hands grabbed her waist, lifting and turning her carefully until she was back on the edge of the passenger seat, her hands falling on his shoulders as she fought for balance. ‘Thanks—’
But the words stuck in her throat when, instead of moving away, he moved closer, and his hands slid down from her waist to her hips. Nearer, nearer, as if drawn by a string, so that her hands slid past his shoulders and her arms went around his neck as his body nestled against hers in all kinds of places.
The chills she’d experienced since exiting the warmth of that swanky club gathered into a giant shiver. Yet heat emanated from him in waves, as his hands tightened. He groaned. ‘Wow, Honor—’ Then, despairingly, ‘I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing. But I want you so much, all the time.’
She knew she ought to pull away, pat his cheek and say, ‘A pretty thing it would be if I told you that I want you, too, with my husband in jail. They have names for women like that, you know.’ And she ought to think of Robina’s feelings, too. Not that Robina cared a whole lot about anybody else’s.
But her heart was flying and her insides fizzing, and her thoughts turned to words. ‘I’m so tired of doing the right thing. I’ve done the right thing all my life. I’ve made a point of it. It really hasn’t made me happy. How about we do the wrong thing and see how it works out?’
‘Yes!’ He yanked her right out of the seat and held her in his arms as she gripped her arms around his neck and he pressed against her as if trying to burrow through her clothes, kissing her harder than she’d ever been kissed, his tongue in her mouth, smooth and sweet. She heard the car door slam behind her and beep as it locked. The kiss just went on and on as he swung around and began carrying her to the house.
She broke away to squeak, ‘My shoes!’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll get them tomorrow.’ He pulled her legs up and around him and she gasped and pressed against him as her skirt pinged up around her waist revealing, the heat of his hands and the deep noise in his throat told her, more naked buttock than panties. She entrusted him with navigating the steps in the dark whilst she fumbled behind his head to get her door key out of her purse and gave it to him. ‘Quick,’ she whispered.
‘Quick seems to have deserted me.’ He cursed as he fumbled behind her back.
‘If you put me down—’
‘Not an option.’ The lock gave up the fight, the door sprang open and they fell into the hallway. Having had it drummed into her by Karen that a woman coming home alone should take sensible precautions, she’d left a lamp burning in the bedroom, and Martyn followed its light like a moth, his arms fending off the walls to protect her from bumps.
The walls faded from blue to grey outside the oval pool of light and the bed quilt glowed white. He came to a halt, hands hot, breathing fast. She kissed his throat and he groaned. ‘This is where I’m supposed to give you time to think—’
‘Don’t do that!’ she gasped, scared that thinking might wake her conscience.
He kissed her again, urgent, almost savage. Then pulled back. Slowed down. ‘I’ve wanted you since that first day.’ He let her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor and then he was stooping over her, fingers busy as he unknotted her shrug and slid it down her arms. Touching her with his eyes as well as his hands. ‘I’d love to undress you slowly but I don’t think I can bear to. This dress has been begging all night to be whipped off over your head.’
She reached for the hem.
‘Don’t! That pleasure’s mine. Lift up your arms.’ And as she did, the dress whooshed up past her face and her hair flew around in a blast of static. For several moments he held the dress around her wrists, just looking. Then he let her hands down and turned her so he could slide open the catch on her bra. He slid the bunched fabric off her arms and she found herself in nothing but her panties.
‘Whoa,’ he breathed. ‘You are beautiful.’ He wrapped his arms around her, gave a quick breath out and suddenly she was standing on the end of the bed, her breasts level with his mouth. A mouth that was hot. She forgot to breathe as he used it to explore her, plucking gently at her nipples with his teeth then sucking them hard, making her jump and thread her fingers through his hair, just in case he had any ideas about getting away.
His hands ran up and down her back. ‘OK?’
She gulped. ‘Sure am.’
He stroked her waist, her hips, her buttocks; his fingers against her skin awaking her to almost unbearable sensitivity. His fingertips ran around the high leg line of her underwear. ‘What do you call these? They leave so much of you uncovered. I love them. If I’d known they were all you had on under that short dress, I think I would have exploded.’ His breath shivered across the wetness left on her breasts by his tongue.
‘Cheekies,’ she gasped. ‘Cheeky panties. Don’t you guys have Victoria’s Secret, here?’
‘I don’t know but it ought to be made law that we do. We don’t have panties, we have knickers.’
‘Knickers?’ She didn’t mean to make it a question, she knew perfectly well that the British called them knickers, but his prowling hands made her voice somehow squeak up at the end of the word.
‘Mmm. As in, “I’m going to take your knickers off.”’ His fingertips hooked themselves in the elastic, drawing them down.
‘But you’re getting all behind,’ she protested, shakily, making her fingers, which had been gripping his shoulders, move to the top buttons of his shirt.
‘Let’s catch me up.’ He began working up the buttons as she worked down, his mouth keeping up a deliciously damp contact with whatever came close enough, her wrist, her nipple, the inside of her elbow, until he could shrug the shirt on to the floor. Then, in the impatient way of men, flicked open belt, button and zipper and somehow the beautifully cut trousers hit the deck, and he was running his tongue up and down her abdomen as he swung her up and fell with her sideways on to the bed. ‘Height difference more easily overcome when horizontal.’
In college, Honor’s roommate had invariably referred to sex as ‘rolling around in the sack’. Until now, Honor had never been able to equate the phrase with the act, but Martyn was so relentlessly physical, hauling her around until she hummed with excitement, that she totally got it. The pillows scattered and slid, the quilt joined their clothes on the floor and Martyn complained, ‘This bed’s way too small,’ as his long limbs kept ending up in thin air.
Then, suddenly, he changed gear.
The night went into slow motion.
He stared into her eyes. He positioned himself. And began a slow slide, hot, hard, until he was inside her. Transfixed by his gaze and by the sensation of him taking her over, she stilled. And just allowed herself to feel.
‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long.’
‘Yes,’ she croaked. ‘Oh, fuck. Oh, wow. That’s good.’ Her muscles flexed around him, accommodating, feeling, wanting.
His eyes flickered as his breathing increased. ‘Yeah. Do that again.’ He dragged in air. ‘No, you’d better stop! There’s only so much—’
But then he was moving, helplessly, ‘You’re still doing it! But don’t stop.’ And his eyes closed as slow became fast, then faster, and she held on tight as she was picked up and carried on his wave, and they crashed, together, into a whole new world.
During the night, when they’d made love again, slow and intense, he curled around her on his side, hooking her legs over his so that he was snuggled nicely against her behind, his chest rising and falling warm against her and joked, ‘I was right, you’re hot, Freedom Lefevre.’
She stilled. It made her feel toe-curly to hear him speak that name out loud, so casually, as it might have been used if her life had run along a different track. ‘I’ve always been Honor. Not Freedom.’
He kissed her ear, then licked it. ‘I like Freedom. It’s part of you, the whole you. The you that you were born to be as well as the you that life made you.’
She stared into the darkness. ‘I guess I’m acting a lot more like Freedom than like Honor, right now.’