Chapter Forty-six
Robyn
A bang woke me, and I sat up in bed and rubbed at my sleepy eyes trying to work out what the noise had been. It was dark, so presumably we’d ended up accidentally falling asleep after our deliciously tiring sexy time. Thoughts of what Oliver had done to me had me grinning, and glancing at my discarded boots and suspender belt – from the response they’d created in Oliver, those items would be getting a lot more use in future – but the further sounds of shuffling and movements from downstairs made my ears perk up again.
Thinking it might be an intruder, I quickly looked towards Oliver to see if he was awake.
His eyes were indeed open, but he didn’t look nearly as startled as I felt. In fact, he seemed to be resigned to something as he sat up and grimaced, before drawing in a long, deep breath and closing his eyes in apparent frustration. ‘This is just great.’
I was about to ask what he meant, when a woman’s voice floated up the stairs. ‘Oliver? Darling? I’m home, are you in?’
Darling?
Who the fuck was that? And she’d definitely said I’m home, indicating that she lived here. Suddenly Chloe’s words of warning were ringing in my mind again – how she’d seen him looking very cosy with a blonde, and how he’d had his arm around her – and I had a sudden feeling that I may have been well and truly tricked.
He did have a girlfriend, or wife! Why else would there be a woman downstairs proclaiming she was home, and calling him darling?
After all his talk about not tolerating lies he had outright lied to me. The hypocritical fuck!
I was such a gullible idiot. Chloe had told me what she’d seen, but I had blindly ignored it, choosing to trust my gut and believe that Oliver was being honest with me.
Leaping from under the covers, I had to stifle a yelp at the faint twinge of pain from my healing wounds. I turned my most affronted glare to Oliver while also pointing an accusing finger at him. ‘You fucking liar! You live with someone!’ I dragged the sheet from the bed, wrapped it tightly around myself, and glared at him as the first sting of tears hit the backs of my eyes. ‘I asked you outright when we first met, and you lied to my face!’
Ignoring my outburst, Oliver shook his head in irritation. ‘Typical, this is the night she chooses to come home early,’ he muttered under his breath, but it was loud enough for me to hear, and only acted to further heighten my fury.
Oliver at least had the grace to look a little awkward as he climbed from the bed and checked his watch, but he didn’t try to deny anything, which just sent my anger sky-rocketing. ‘Fucking hell! You utter bastard! You’re married, aren’t you?’
His expression suddenly changed to that of his dominant persona. He stood there, stark naked, with his legs splayed wide, and arms crossed over his bare chest as he stared at me intently. Even under these horrific circumstances it was a bloody impressive sight. ‘No, and watch your language, Robyn.’
‘Fuck off!’ I screamed, really close to either crying my eyes out, or smacking him around the head. ‘Does she know about me?’ I demanded, not sure why it was important, but somehow finding the words leaving my mouth anyway.
Oliver’s shoulders slumped. ‘No.’
‘Fucking arsehole.’ Acting purely on impulse, I tore the sheet from the bed and spun on my heel, wrenching the bedroom door open as I decided to set his wife, girlfriend, or whatever she might be, straight about his low-life cheating ways, then get the hell out of here.
‘Stop swearing! Robyn, come back. Let me explain. You don’t want to go down there yet, believe me.’
Ignoring his call, I hiked the sheet up around my knees and charged down the stairs towards the kitchen and the noise of clanking crockery. My bare feet slapped across the tiled hallway as I barrelled towards the door. With my palm outstretched, I hit the door at full pelt, bursting into the brightly lit space only to skid to a very sudden, and rather shocked halt.
Oh. My. God.
Instead of finding Oliver’s wronged woman as I had envisioned, I had instead come face to face with four, no wait, five smartly dressed women. All of whom appeared to be around their mid-sixties, and all of whom were staring at me with rapt fascination.
‘Oh …! Hello, and who might you be?’ asked the woman currently holding a coffee pot mid-pour as she looked at me with a mix of open curiosity and shock.
‘I … uhhh … sorry …’ I tried to reverse out of the room, but suddenly my back bumped into something warm and unrelenting as I realised that Oliver had joined me downstairs.
‘Good evening, Val. You’re home early,’ Oliver remarked dryly from just behind me.
Val? Who the hell was Val? Leaning close behind me, Oliver gave a wry chuckle. ‘I see you’ve made quite an impact on my aunt and her friends.’
Aunt? This was his aunt? Looking again at the woman in the centre I realised that if I ignored the dyed blonde bob, I could see a definite family resemblance. Facially, she looked a lot like his sisters that I had met in Spain, except considerably older. Oh fuck! It really is his fucking aunt!
‘Ladies. You’re all looking rather smart this evening,’ Oliver continued smoothly, nodding politely to the gathered crowd with his usual impeccable manners.
‘Shame I can’t say the same about you, eh, Oliver?’ his aunt murmured, as a wicked glint twinkled in her eye and a grin threatened to crack on her lips.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Val, I rather like the view,’ the woman next to her said, elbowing Oliver’s aunt in the ribs and grinning at something beside me.
Noticing that all the eyes had left me, and were now focused just to my right, I glanced across and saw to my horror that Oliver had obviously hightailed it down the stairs after me, because he was dressed in just a pair of black boxer shorts. As well as being practically naked, he was sporting his tousled post-sex hair, which, combined with his muscular physique, made him look well and truly sinful. Holy smokes! He was going to give one of them a heart attack swanning around like that.
Clearing his throat, he ignored his aunt’s pointed remark and slung an arm around my bare shoulders, pulling me firmly into his side and leaning causally onto the doorframe. ‘How was bridge club, did any of you win?’
God, this was bloody surreal. I was dressed in nothing but a sheet, Oliver was in his boxers, and yet he was calmly greeting these women and discussing bridge! He sounded completely unaffected by the entire situation.
He might not be acknowledging my fidgeting verbally, but as I shuffled yet again on the cold marble floor, he gently stilled me by gripping my shoulder tighter and giving a small squeeze.
His contact went some way to reassuring me, but glancing at the clock I saw that it was only nine-thirty in the evening, so it really couldn’t be more obvious what we’d just been up to. My cheeks were absolutely burning by this point, and the only thing stopping me from turning and dashing back upstairs was the fact that my feet were tangled in the bloody sheet and I’d probably end up dropping it and flashing them all my naked arse as I ran away.
‘Forget bridge, Oliver! Aren’t you going to introduce us to your … um … friend?’
He slid his arm down so it now rested around my waist, positioned himself slightly behind me, and settled his palm on my stomach, pulling me flush against his body. ‘This is Robyn,’ he said simply, his voice soft with an affection that he then backed up by placing just the smallest, briefest kiss on my temple.
I saw his aunt’s eyebrows rise at the gesture, before Oliver indicated to the room with his free hand.
‘And this is not a phantom wife or girlfriend as you assumed, but my father’s sister, Valarie, or Val for short. And these are her bridge friends, Edith, Margaret, Caroline, and Joan.’ He hadn’t introduced me as his girlfriend, but his obvious display of affection was rather pleasing, even if it was in front of an audience.
Several of the ladies murmured a polite “hello” while still openly gawking at us, but I was frozen to the spot in shock. I mean, as far as first times meeting a family member of your new man can go, this surely would go down in history as one of the most disastrous.
‘What do you mean “wife or girlfriend”?’ Valarie asked with a comical frown.
‘Robyn heard you come in and assumed I hadn’t been entirely truthful with her. She jumped to the conclusion that perhaps I was married.’
Valarie chuckled, and rolled her eyes. ‘The chance would be a fine thing. He’s so absorbed with work he doesn’t even date!’ Pouring the final coffee, she looked up at us again with an inquisitive tilt to her head. ‘Although perhaps our boy is finally changing his ways?’
Beside me, Oliver made a small agreeing hum in the back of his throat. ‘Yes, it would certainly appear so. Perhaps Robyn and I will go and get dressed.’
‘Oh! Don’t go yet!’ Valarie seemed exceptionally keen to keep us in the room, whereas I couldn’t wait to get out of there. God this was just so mortifying.
‘Don’t panic, Tía, we’ll return once we are … more appropriately attired.’
Tía? I thought he said her name was Valarie? Seeing my confused look, he grinned. ‘Tía is the term for aunt in Spanish. In my family we also use it as an affectionate title. Much like you might say auntie.’ Looking across at his aunt again, Oliver bowed his head slightly. ‘We will be back shortly.’
‘Oh good! I’ll make another pot of coffee.’
Forget coffee. I was going to need a quadruple rum to recover from the shock of this encounter.
With some difficulty, Oliver steered my frozen body back out of the kitchen. He guided me towards the stairs with a chuckle as I grabbed the handrail and let out a horrified groan.
‘I can’t believe that just happened!’
‘I did warn you not to go downstairs straight away.’
Finally finding my tongue, I licked my dry lips and stabbed my finger into his solid chest. ‘You said you didn’t live with anyone!’
Shaking his head in amusement, he crossed his arms over his bare chest and leaned back against the wall, looking like the picture of calm. ‘No. If I recall correctly, you asked if I was married, or had a girlfriend, which I am not, and do not, so I replied honestly with a simple “no”. You never actually asked if I lived with anyone.’
As he ran a hand through his hair, his shoulders sagged a little and he shrugged, seeing my need for further explanation. ‘When you said Chloe had seen me with a blonde in her office, I knew exactly what you were referring to, but at that point things hadn’t developed between you and I, so I didn’t feel the need to explain myself. Val is investing some of her savings, and I was with her that day as a guiding voice.’
‘Oh my God, Oliver, why didn’t you just tell me then that it was your aunt, and that you lived with her?’ I grumbled, wondering how I was ever going to look the woman in the eye again.
He stopped abruptly and turned to me with a frown. ‘I don’t live with my aunt, she lives with me, and it’s only temporary while the sale of her house goes through. My father’s side of the family are mostly still based in England. Unfortunately, my uncle died a little over three years ago now. At first Tía didn’t want to go back to their house, because it was too full of memories, but she didn’t want to sell it, either, so she’s been travelling and staying with various family members. She’s been with me for the past six months and has finally decided to sell up and buy a small flat. The sale is taking longer than predicted to go through.’ Scrubbing at the back of his neck, he gave me an embarrassed smile. ‘And the reason I didn’t tell you is obvious. I’m over forty; it’s a little embarrassing to tell you I share a house with my aunt.’
He was over forty? Well, even if this did go down as a nightmare first encounter with his aunt, at least I was finally getting a clue about his real age.
‘As embarrassing as having me run into a roomful of her and her friends wearing nothing but a flimsy sheet?’ I blurted, mortification sweeping me as I relived the memory of his aunt and her friends staring at me as I charged into the kitchen.
Oliver snickered and pushed off from the wall to stalk towards me. ‘Well, no, now you come to mention it, it wouldn’t have been as embarrassing as that,’ he replied with a deep chuckle, apparently loving my discomfort.
Rolling my eyes, I slumped forwards and rested my head onto his chest which was still shaking with his laughter. ‘So you’re over forty, huh?’ I murmured teasingly, and in response I saw Oliver grin and roll his eyes.
‘Hmm. I let that slip, didn’t I?
‘You did,’ I agreed with a wiggle of my eyebrows.
‘I said I was old enough to know better.’
‘So do we have to keep playing this game, or are you just going to tell me how much over forty you are?’
‘I’m fourteen years older than you. Happy?’ I was twenty-seven, so that made him forty-one. I wasn’t far off with my guess of thirty-eight, then.
‘Sure it won’t make you change your mind about me?’ he enquired, his tone dropping and a flicker of concern crossed his brows.
‘No. I’ve told you that before.’
We stood there like that for several seconds, then I groaned as the events of the kitchen flooded my mind again. ‘God, I can’t believe I just did that!’
Oliver eased me away from his body and slowly shook his head. ‘No, neither can I.’ Crossing his arms over his chest, he lowered his head slightly so he was looking at me through his lashes. As I took in his dominant expression, awareness zinged through my body. Woah. Where had this come from?
‘I think perhaps you need a reminder about our bond of trust, hmm?’
Swallowing loudly, I pulled the sheet around me. ‘What… what do you mean?’
‘What do you mean, Sir,’ he corrected me.
My eyes widened, and my mouth went dry as anticipation sizzled in my belly. God, I loved it when he was like this.
‘I told you I wasn’t married, but you still assumed the worst of me, and I asked you not to rush downstairs immediately when you heard Val, but you ignored me. Both of these errors require a correction.’
A correction? He hadn’t used that term with me before, and I frowned. ‘What’s a correction, Sir?’ I asked in a nervous whisper, making sure to use his title this time.
‘A correction is a punishment. It will remind you not to make the same mistake again.’ He had a wicked glint in his eye as he took my hand and led me towards the stairs.
Well, this was unexpected, but undeniably a relief. I’d worried that the situation with Dominic might have affected the Dom/sub bond between Oliver and me, because we hadn’t done a scene since the abduction, and he hadn’t properly assumed that role with me, either. Even earlier, when he’d teased me with the ice, it had been mostly vanilla, but from his body language now, things certainly seemed to be looking up.
As we made our way back downstairs half an hour later, I winced at the remaining sting in my buttocks, then grinned broadly. The moment we had got back to his bedroom, Oliver had produced a flogger from within his wardrobe, and proceeded to demonstrate to me exactly how skilled he was with the toy. My shocked yelps had been smothered by the pillow below my face, and Oliver had somehow managed to make each flick of the leather tabs almost completely silent. It had been a rather pleasurable punishment, really, but when I’d laid there begging for him to make me come Oliver had grinned wickedly and then denied me. So, basically, I’d discovered that I was not a fan of orgasm denial, and Oliver had effectively made his point.
Knowing his aunt and her friends were downstairs had made the whole scene even more erotic, and I couldn’t deny that I rather liked the feeling of naughtiness that surrounded me as we ventured back towards the kitchen, both still aroused.
Just as I was about to push the kitchen door open, Oliver gave my bum a gentle squeeze, causing a shot of pain to flash across my skin, and eliciting an aroused gasp of surprise from my lips.
He grinned, apparently loving me in this unsatisfied state, and jerked his chin towards the kitchen. ‘Just so you know, I wasn’t trying to hide you from Val, I was planning on introducing you to her in the morning over breakfast.’ Suppressing a laugh, he rolled his eyes. ‘I think your entrance trumped any introduction I could have made, though.’
I groaned, happy that he wanted me to meet his aunt, but absolutely mortified at how that meeting had occurred. ‘Come on, let’s go in, she’s going to love you.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I could see how excited she was. Valarie hasn’t seen me with a woman for a very long time, so don’t be surprised if she’s a little over the top with you.’
As we entered the kitchen, I saw that Valarie’s bridge friends had left, thankfully. From the keen smile on her face, and the half-full coffee cups scattered around the kitchen, I suspected she had chucked them out so she could focus on getting the gossip from Oliver and me, but I didn’t say anything.
I was still too embarrassed to initiate conversation, but Valarie brushed it off, and pulled me into a tight hug, clearly very excited to meet me.
‘Let’s move to the lounge for our drinks, shall we?’ Oliver and I followed behind her, choosing to sit in the end of the room where the sofas were clustered together within a sea of dust sheets. The painters had at least left the rooms usable, even if they didn’t look particularly great yet.
Valarie clicked her tongue and looked to Oliver and me. ‘I left the milk jug on the counter. Would one of you grab it while I pour, please?’
Keen to send Sasha and Chloe a text telling them that I had finally solved the mystery of the woman he’d been with at Chloe’s work, I jumped up and went to get the milk.
I rushed out a text message telling the girls about Valarie, and that everything was fine, and also mentioning that his house was fricking incredible. I was just returning from the kitchen when I overheard Valarie’s voice saying my name, so I paused outside the room to listen.
‘Robyn. It’s such a lovely name. So, where did you meet her?’
‘At the club.’ A shiver ran over my skin at his mention of the club, but I quickly contained the images of Dominic that flew to my mind, and pushed them away. Oliver’s reply surprised me, because I wouldn’t have expected his family to be aware of Club Twist, or what went on there. Perhaps he’d just told her it was a bar, or nightclub?
‘Oh.’ Valarie’s voice audibly tightened. ‘I see.’ From her tone, I could only assume she was well aware of what type of club her nephew was part owner of. How weird. It was a sex club, for goodness’ sakes. There was no way I’d tell my family something like that, let alone an aunt who I lived with.
I think my parents would faint if they knew where I now chose to spend my Friday nights, so it was definitely a secret best kept to myself.
Sneaking closer, I looked through the tiny gap in the door, fairly certain that I couldn’t been seen from there.
Huffing out an impatient breath, Oliver shook his head. ‘Don’t look like that, Tía. It’s not like you imagine at all. Besides, Robyn’s a writer. She was in the club on a research visit and I agreed to answer some of her questions. We got to know each other, and things went from there.’
Which was all completely true, although I noticed that he didn’t tell her I was now a fully paid up member, thanks to Sasha’s generosity. There was a pause, then Valarie’s face softened again. ‘She’s very pretty, Oliver.’
Oliver bowed his head for a second, then looked across at his aunt with an uncharacteristic blush on his cheeks. ‘She is. She’s also a perfect match for me.’ A smile broke on his lips which warmed me to my core, and transformed him to his utterly handsome best.
There was another pause, and I was just about to re-enter when Oliver sighed heavily. ‘I can see the look you’re giving me. If you have something to say, Tía, just say it.’
A tingle of worry skittered across the hairs on the back of my neck as I craned closer to listen. ‘I … well, I was just going to say that you seem very happy. Don’t let memories of Abi ruin it, will you?’
Abi? That was the ex he had mentioned when we’d spoken about our previous relationships. He’d said it was just lust, not love, but from the way his aunt was talking it was clear that the relationship had been important to him. My stomach did a nervous flip, because the tone of Val’s voice was really strange. Had he loved Abi?
‘Abi was a very long time ago.’ The dismissive coldness to Oliver’s tone when he replied shocked me, and made goose pimples appear on my arms.
‘I know, but …’
‘No buts. This conversation is over.’
The mention of Abi was certainly sparking some serious reactions from Oliver, and I felt decidedly uneasy.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring a downer on your good mood. So, you and Robyn … it’s serious, then?’ His aunt’s tone was lighter now, as if trying to cajole him into a better frame of mind. I was aware of the fact that I had probably been away too long, but there was no way I could burst in without first hearing the answer to that question.
‘I’m introducing her to you, what do you think?’
‘There’s no need for that tone, Oliver.’ Valarie made a dismissive tutting sound with her tongue. ‘I think you look happier than I’ve seen for a very long time.’
‘I am,’ Oliver agreed, his voice sounding warm and raspy again, and making me relax my stiff shoulders. ‘And yes, it’s serious.’
Hearing him tell his aunt it was serious gave me a warm feeling in my belly, and as I joined them in the room I placed the milk jug down, sat beside him again, and immediately picked up his hand and gave it a firm squeeze.
I still had unanswered questions about why Abi was such an intense subject for him, but for now at least, I was content. The mystery of the blonde had been solved, and my questions about Abi could wait.