Chapter 9
Lucy
Iwaited for the sense of rejection to hit like a blow. But it didn’t come, because Jamie wasn’t looking at me as if he wanted to end things. He’d found me six months ago.
And he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me right here in the snow. I said carefully, ‘You’ve had three years to end it, Jamie.’
‘So have you.’ He threw another snowball and I ducked and gathered up snow and reciprocated with a little more force.
I was vaguely aware that I should be shivering with cold but I wasn’t. Because something was crackling between us and I felt hot all over.
‘We could have had it annulled the morning after.’ I fired across another missile and this one landed inside his coat, near his collar. I was jealous. I wanted to lick the snow off his neck.
‘But we didn’t.’ He threw a lump of snow at me and it landed on my breast. I looked down at the wet patch and back up. I said, ‘No. That’s interesting though isn’t it?’
I took more snow and walked towards him. His eyes were so dark – like bottomless pools, but I knew they had gold flecks of light.
He said, ‘We had to get flights. We didn’t have time.’
But it sounded like a weak argument.
I said, ‘We could have made time if we’d really wanted to, and then we wouldn’t have had anything binding us for the last three years.’ I was close enough now to have to tip my head back to look up at him.
I saw something flare in those dark depths. ‘What are you saying Lucy?’
Ha! He wasn’t going to get me to fess up to something I hadn’t even fully articulated to myself yet. ‘Nothing, just that it’s... interesting.’
I still had snow in my hand and I reached up and pulled out his top and dropped it down his chest. He sucked in a breath. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Collins.’
‘Am I now?’ I felt breathless and giddy. Something had shifted out here and I felt we were being honest for the first time since I’d arrived.
He bent down and got snow and had it between his hands moulding it into a perfect ball. Then he calmly pulled my (his) jumper out and the jumper underneath and the flimsy silken T-shirt and dropped it down. I gasped at the shock of cold against my skin.
My fingers were almost blue and numb but I barely noticed. I dropped down, gathered up a pile of snow and then reached for Jamie’s trousers but he put a hand on mine.
He was looking at me so fiercely that I nearly combusted on the spot. There was no doubting what we both wanted now, the air was thick with it. Desire.
He said, ‘It’ll take a lot more than snow to put that out.’
I looked down and my eyes got bigger when I saw the bulge of his erection.
I almost whimpered. It had been a long time.
Three years. But I’d been too cowardly to be honest about that, alluding to having been with someone.
But before I could say anything Jamie had his hands on my arms and the snow was out of my hands, on the ground, and our mouths were clamped together and I was climbing him like a tree, drowning in sensations I thought I’d never feel again, arms clamped around his neck.
He had one hand under my bottom and another on my back and I wanted to climb into his skin.
After long drugging moments reacquainting ourselves with each other’s mouths, he pulled back. I was glad he was holding me because I felt dizzy.
He looked up at me and I felt a rush of things – relief, tenderness, white hot desire.
He said, ‘This is just unfinished business, right?’
There was something slightly desperate in his tone and even though my conscience was saying something different, I agreed. ‘Yes. Unfinished business.’
Jamie carried me back to into the castle, George slipping in alongside us. He kicked the door shut behind him and then carried me back through the kitchen and up into the main part of the building and to the stairs.
‘I can walk,’ I offered, suddenly feeling conscious that I wasn’t exactly a teeny petite little slip of a thing.
But Jamie’s arms tightened and he huffed out, ‘No way.’
Something in the way he said that as if he’d meant it in, like, a literal sense made me quiver inwardly.
But I knew that was dangerous. This was just tying up some loose ends from three years ago.
The chemistry had been insane and neither of us had expected it.
Plus the quickie wedding had been a bit of a buzzkill the morning after.
I’d often wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t actually got married.
He kicked open a door in the same corridor as my room and I had a sense of dark furnishings and a big bed. Clothes were strewn on a chair.
He let me climb back down and I landed on two feet. I looked up at him and he was just staring at me. He put out a hand and touched my hair, taking a lock and wrapping it around a finger. ‘Luce, I can’t believe you’re really here. I’m still not sure that this isn’t a dream.’
Luce. He’d called me that before. No-one had ever shortened my name. Not even my folks.
My heart thumped. ‘I’ve had a few of those.’ Mainly X-rated. I blurted out, ‘Are you still mad that I came here?’
He frowned, ‘I wasn’t mad... I was just shocked to see you like that.’ His frowned disappeared and now he looked hungry, ‘I’m glad you’re here now.’
We were meant to be getting divorced. Not admitting to having dreams about each other. It wasn’t meant to be snowing. I should be in my car driving back to Edinburgh airport having done what I came to do.
But I wasn’t. I was here and the world had stopped outside and all I wanted was this.
I reached up and pressed my mouth to Jamie’s, relishing those firm contour and feeling the scratch of his stubble on my skin.
I welcomed the burn. I wanted more, I wanted the burn of him thrusting inside me, spreading me wide. ..
‘Naked, Luce. Now. I need you... this...’
I needed no encouragement. I kicked off the boots, pulled off the top jumper and undid the jeans, stepping out of them. Jamie was reaching for my other jumper, tugging it up. I lifted my arms and it came off, along with the under T-shirt.
He looked at me. ‘Your breasts... They’re so fucking beautiful.’
They really weren’t that special. Slightly bigger than average but under his gaze I felt like a sensual goddess, instinctively thrusting them out a little more.
I turned around and tugged my hair over my shoulder. Jamie undid my bra and I pulled it off and turned back around to face him. His cheeks were flushed. He muttered, ‘I still can’t believe it.’
I pinched his chest and he looked at me. ‘Ow. What was that for?’
‘I’m right here and I’m practically naked, would you please undress?’ Because I couldn’t wait to see his body again.
He didn’t tease. He took off his clothes with efficient precision until he was naked, his very hard cock standing out proudly from the darker hair around the base. Balls heavy.
Between my legs gushed. I let my gaze rove over him hungrily.
He was even more than I remembered. His muscles were even more ripped.
But then I sucked in a breath. There was a rough-looking scar to the left of his lower abdomen.
It still looked fairly new. I touched it.
‘What’s that? You didn’t have it before? ’
‘It was an emergency appendectomy, not long before I came home.’
I looked up. ‘Where were you?’
‘South America. A jungle. But there was a hospital nearby. Basic. But equipped enough to do the operation.’
I felt cold inside. ‘You could have died.’
He caught my hand. ‘But I didn’t.’
There was an edge to his voice that caught at me but he was pushing me back onto the high bed. The sheets were still crumpled and I could smell his scent. I lay back. I didn’t feel cold anymore. I was burning up again.
Jamie came forward and tugged my underwear down and then he stood back and said, ‘Let me see you, Luce. Open your legs.’
I raised my knees, feet on the bed and then opened them. Jamie’s face was flushed, eyes dark and burning. I reached down and touched myself, feeling the slickness. I’d touched myself so many times in the last three years, reimagining what we’d done.
He put his hands on my knees, pushing them even further apart and lifted my legs over his shoulders. He came between my legs and I took away my hand so he could replace it with his mouth, sucking and tasting and licking and making my limbs shake.
It was fast. The orgasm ripped through my body like a freight train, robbing me of any ability to play it cool. Christ. He’d barely touched me and I’d gone off like a fire cracker.
He came up alongside me and I felt dizzy. He smoothed a hand up over my still quivering belly and cupped a breast, trapping a nipple between his fingers.
He said, ‘Sometimes I thought it couldn’t have possibly been as good... but it really was, wasn’t it?’
He sounded as bewildered as I felt when I had thought of it. I’d been sure that I’d exaggerated our chemistry but I hadn’t.
I nodded. I really wanted to ask him if he’d been with anyone else but was too scared of the answer so I reached for him, putting a leg over his hip and kissing him.
His dick was between us, hard and long. I held him in my hand, squeezing gently and then firmly, letting my fingers slip up and down the shaft, loving how his skin glided over the thickness.
Then he reared back. ‘Shit, Luce, I’m going to come... wait.’
His eyes were glassy and perspiration beaded his brow. Giddy on hormones and everything, I didn’t listen. I wanted to tip him over the edge as easily as he had done to me.
I gripped him and worked him and he fell onto his back and his entire body tensed before he came in a hot rush against my hand.
He turned his head and looked at me, eyes still dark... but also golden. He reached for me, and I went, sliding my leg between his.
After a few minutes, he sat up and tugged me with him into the en suite bathroom where there was a large walk-in shower.
He turned on the spray. Gloriously hot. We stepped under and he lathered up with soap and moved his hands over my body, exploring every single dip and curve.
He stood behind me and reached down between my legs, stroking my clit, still slick.
His other hand found my breast and cupped it, squeezing the flesh. My legs wobbled.
I turned around in his arms, afraid he’d get me off again before I could stop him. Not that I wanted to stop him. But I wanted to feel some measure of control.
‘I want you inside me, Jamie.’ I’d waited so long.
He was hard again. He left me for a second and found protection in a drawer and came back, rolling it onto his dick. I was on the pill but somewhere in the recess of my functioning brain, I found the wherewithal to be safety conscious.
He lifted me up against the tiled wall and I clamped my legs around his hips. We moved together like I remembered, as if we’d done this a million times before. Another rush of tenderness. Shit.
I put my hands on his chest and let the wall take my weight. He was looking at me. And then he bent his head and put his mouth on one nipple, sucking the tip hard before flicking with his tongue. Then he did the same to the other one.
I was groaning. Moaning. Hips moving against him in a not very subtle demand. He lifted his head again and smiled at me and suddenly I couldn’t seem to focus on the sex when there was a boulder in my chest.
‘Hungry, Luce?’
I nodded. ‘Starving, Jamie. Please...’
He adjusted us and then I felt the head of his cock at my entrance where I was slick and swollen and needy.
But he was controlling the movement and he brought me down slowly, letting my body take him in, lips being spread to the max as his thick head pushed in, steadily.
.. and then, all the way... Until he was seated deep inside me, filling me up and I couldn’t speak.
Or breathe. A rush of emotion joined the tenderness. I never thought I’d feel this again.