CHAPTER THREE
SHE’D NEVER LIKED tea with milk. The very idea of adding boiling water to cow’s milk turned her tummy, even as a child when Nanny Anderson had made little cups each morning for Ivy to sip.
Ivy liked it plain, and weak. Just a few seconds of submersion and then the teabag was removed. Nanny Anderson had taught her economy, too, so for many years Ivy would hang the tea bag over the sink, drying it for a second, third and fourth use.
Steven had always laughed at that. “Tea bags cost about four pence a pop. I think you can afford to waste a few.”
“That’s not the point,” Ivy had grinned. At the time, she’d never really noticed that he talked about ‘you’ more than he did ‘we’. It was one of the many things she got stuck on when she examined their relationship.
Back then, though, she’d used enough ‘we’s for both of them.
We’d love to have you for dinner. Oh, we love Game of Thrones. We don’t really eat spicy food, even though Ivy in fact had loved chilli at one time in her life. At what point had she stopped thinking of herself as a person, and started to see herself only as Steve’s adjunct? As someone who didn’t have a full life unless he was in it?
She moaned, low in her throat, as a warm, strong hand cupped her breasts, fanning her flesh with heat and awareness. Her lips tickled into a smile and she flipped over.
Disorientation fogged her mind for a second as the last cobwebs of her dream disappeared.
“I fell asleep,” she said quietly, her eyes latched to Rafe Santoro’s. He looked down at her and something strange lodged in her throat. Desire flooded her body.
“I noticed.” The words were a drawl, tinged with humour. His hands dragged lower, over her flat stomach.
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.”
“Mmm,” she smiled. “Still early.”
“Are you hungry?” He asked. “We didn’t eat dinner.”
His fingers were light and yet somehow demanding. They drew little swirls across her flesh and it was like the gentlest of breezes. She dragged her lip between her teeth and shook her head from side to side.
“Not yet.” She blushed to the roots of her hair when she realised what she’d said.
“Not yet?” He teased, moving closer, so that she felt his warm breath tantalisingly close to her mouth.
She dared herself to be brave; to be honest. “I want to have my way with you again and then we’ll eat.”
His laugh joined hers and it was the sexiest rumble she’d heard. It curled her toes and lifted her heart. It was silenced – all the laughter stopped – the second his lips pressed against the sensitive flesh at the top of her thigh. He was so close to her that she held her breath. Waiting. Hoping.
And he didn’t disappoint.
His tongue against her nerves was impossible for Ivy to compare to any other feeling. It was so intimate and so heaven-sent. She was immediately awash on the sea of desire. He kissed her expertly, and she cried out as the sweet, sensual invasion almost brought her to tears. On the brink of orgasm, he paused for a moment and she opened her mouth to object, but he was back, his arousal thrusting inside of her, hard and so big, giving her what she hadn’t known she needed again.
She arched her back and writhed beneath him, her nipples taut – everything taut. Her nerves were stretched beyond breaking point. She was balanced on a tightrope high above the city and with his next movement she dropped, crashing at velocity, flying through the sky, weightless and crazy with the feeling.
“You’re so sexy when you come,” he whispered in her ear.
She found it to be a bizarre thing to say – an observation that surely wasn’t true. She didn’t want to think about what she looked like while in the throes of passion, face scrunched, hair messed – but as he moved inside of her and her body tried to cope with the wave of sensations, it was easier to believe what he was saying. To let the words knot inside of her and give her the sense that she was, in fact, in some way, some manifestation of a Sexual Goddess. A wind-up one, that only he seemed to know how to operate.
His hands found her wrists and he pinned them beside her as he moved and his mouth came to her breasts now. He was all over her body and she had never felt so pleasured or turned on.
“Everything about you is sexy,” she heard herself murmur, lifting off the bed a little – no easy feat when he was holding her arms – and pressing her lips to his chest. She felt him shudder beneath her kiss and she dragged her mouth lower, to the nipple that was nestled in coarse chest hair. She flicked it with her tongue and then pressed her teeth together around it, lightly, but enough to make him groan and thrust harder into her, almost like a punishment, or an assertion of power.
Mmm, she liked that idea. She pushed higher off the bed, freeing her arms, and pressed her hands to his shoulders. He hadn’t expected the challenge and so when she pushed, hard, he fell to his side, momentarily breaking their connection. His eyes were wide in his face and she smiled, as she straddled him and took him deep inside, moving her hips in time with the ancient rhythm that was pulsing through her.
His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh but not controlling her. She was in charge and it was a heady, addictive sensation. She dropped her mouth to his, kissing him, running the tip of her tongue across his lower lip before dragging it lower, to flick his pulse point, before peppering kisses across his powerful, warm chest.
He groaned and then, his hands on her hips moved her faster, dragging her deeper, until she felt she was out of control and weak and needing from him something she didn’t know, couldn’t express. He guided her effortlessly, his eyes shuttered as passion danced around them, wrapping them in a mist of need.
She cried his name into the air as her orgasm burst over her and he pushed up, freeing himself from restraint, riding the wave with her, his breathing as tortured as her own.
She collapsed against his chest, tired yet exhilarated, exhausted and full of adrenalin.
It was the third time they’d made love.
No. Scratch that. She was silly to think of it in those terms. This wasn’t love; it wasn’t sweet. It was savage animal sex. And it was the best thing she’d ever felt. She pushed up a little and smiled down at him.
“The cat who got the cream,” he murmured, lifting a hand and pushing her dark hair back from her face, looping it over one shoulder.
“Yep.” Her expression was full of happiness. “Now I’m hungry.”
He grinned. “For…?”
“Something.” She shrugged, and fell back against him again. He shifted her slightly, pulling her to his side, so that she lay with her head on his chest and his hand continued to stroke her hair, gently.
“That was…new,” she said, shy in a way that surprised her. It annoyed her too. She was a sensible, confident woman. Why was she talking like a fourteen-year-old? Because this was new. Because she had no idea how any of this worked. “No one’s ever done that before,” she clarified softly.
The admission surprised him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Completely serious,” she whispered, knowing she’d come too far to take the words back.
His eyes narrowed. “And what did you think?”
She smiled, just a small flicker. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
He arched a brow.
“I like it. A lot. Though maybe you’re just some kind of world-champion at oral sex. I shouldn’t say I like ‘it’ so much as I really bloody liked you doing that.”
His laugh was a rumble. “Semantics.”
“Hey, semantics matter,” she said with a smile. English wasn’t his first language and yet he spoke it very well. Colloquially. As though he’d spent a lot of time in an English-speaking country, though his accent was still the stuff of Mediterranean dreams, every word kissed with exotic mystique.
“So how is it possible that you’ve never had a guy do that?” He shifted once more, so that he could see her, and she shrugged her shoulders. A small lift that conveyed her uncertainty.
“My ex really wasn’t into it. He found it off-putting.”
“Your ex was an idiot,” Rafe said with confidence.
Ivy dropped her gaze. She didn’t know if she agreed with him or not.
“Why did you break up?”
Panic burst inside of her. That sense that she was being strangled came to her. Sometimes it was almost impossible to believe they had broken up. It was a bad dream she was caught in the middle of. “His aversion to oral sex,” she said with a lightness that hid her broken heart.
He ignored her attempt at humour. “This was recent?”
“Six months ago.” Six months wasn’t recent, but it felt like yesterday. “I’m starving,” she lied. Steve – thoughts of Steve – were making her feel guilty. As though she’d cheated on him or something. A crazy, idiotic idea, given that he was engaged to another woman.
He appeared to let the conversation drop. “Then let’s do something about that, mmm?”
He reached across the bed and grabbed his iPhone, loaded up an app then handed it to her.
An array of restaurants was featured. She scanned them. “What do you feel like?”
“Whatever,” he said with a shrug, his skin so tanned that she could almost feel sunshine when she touched him. “You choose dinner; I’ll choose breakfast.”
Her heart ratcheted up a notch. Breakfast? She wouldn’t be here for breakfast. That’s not how this worked; nor what it was.
She hid her doubts behind a smile. “Can it be called dinner at this hour?”
“Supper?” He shrugged. “Sustenance?”
“Refuelling?” She agreed.
“Definitely.” And he kissed her, hard, passionately, and in a way that lit new fires in her body; fires that would demand his attention. Possibly before food arrived.
“I don’t care what we eat,” she moaned into his mouth.
He pushed her back to the pillows, his kiss a challenge she was ready to meet. “Nor do I.” He took the phone and broke their kiss for a second, pressing buttons before tossing it on the bed and bringing himself over her. The weight of his body was its own aphrodisiac.
It was a kiss.
A long, sensual kiss that filled her up with strange new feelings.
Just a kiss. His hands on her hair, his body on top of hers, and his mouth teasing and tormenting her to the brink of insanity.
When he flipped onto his back, she was out of breath with stars in her eyes and a heart that was racing harder than ever before. For a one-night stand, this was an awakening she suspected she’d never forget.
*
Ivy Hennessey looked as though she’d been thoroughly and repeatedly ravaged. She stared at herself in the mirror, hardly recognising the woman she’d become. Swollen lips, smudged eye make-up, tousled hair that only a leave-in conditioner would be able to tame, shadows under her eyes that spoke of a sleepless night. The kind of sleepless night she’d never had before.
A good one.
A sexy one.
She tilted her head so she could look into the master bedroom at the still-sleeping body of Rafe Santoro and something like pain rolled through her.
She had to leave.
Before he woke up.
Wasn’t that the point of nights like this? None of the messy emotional stuff in the morning? No awkward waiting for her to leave so he could get on with his day?
Ivy had no real point of reference, but it felt like what she should do, even when it was the exact opposite of what she wanted to do.
She lathered her hands with soap and splashed water over her face until her make up was all washed off. It was a man’s bathroom. There were no other cosmetics or products that she could rub into her face to improve her appearance, but it wasn’t yet six o’clock, and her plan was to get straight into a cab.
Her dress was crumpled in the mid-section, and she thought about borrowing a business shirt of his to knot over the front, but knowing Rafe Santoro as she somehow felt she did, his shirts would probably have cost a week’s salary and she didn’t really want to take something she was obliged to return.
She tiptoed out of the bathroom, allowing herself one moment of weakness to stare at his beautiful sleeping body, exposed from the waist up where the sheet was draped carelessly across his mid-section.
In repose he was stunning; strong and relaxed. A sleeping giant.
She resisted the urge to kiss him, even as it overwhelmed every fibre of her being.
It was what it was. A single night. An adventure. An exorcism.
And now it was over.
*
Rafe’s smile was forced.
Amari was someone he’d known for a long time. Slept with whenever they both happened to be single and available. She was stunning, sexy, intelligent.
Yet he was bored.
He kicked his long legs out in front of him, nodding as Amari continued to tell the story about … he wasn’t sure what.
It was only that it was unusual; no one had ever walked out on him before. Usually he was the one making coffee and then excuses, sending his lover du nuit packing before they could get the impression he was offering flowers and sonatas.
But Ivy hadn’t been there when he’d woken. Her pillow had been cold, and his apartment showed no signs of her ever having been there. She’d disappeared, without a trace, and it was only as he walked from room to room, confused by her absence, that he realised he knew nothing about her. Nothing that would allow him to call her and say, “What the hell?”
He’d wanted her again, too. He’d needed her.
That’s why his mind had kept wandering back to that night.
That, and he was back in London. In his apartment. The apartment he’d made love to Ivy in, again and again, pleasuring her body and watching her fall apart as though the very idea of sexual satisfaction was a wholly new concept.
He shifted in his chair as his arousal stoked to life. Three weeks of remembering the way her body had felt, smelled, tasted, and he was sick of the raging hard-on that never ended.
He needed to get rid of Amari. He wasn’t interested in her, or anyone else. Not now that he’d tasted the perfection of Ivy Hennessey.
Eventually, he’d forget her; he had to. But for now? He was happy to remember, to relive that night again and again, remembering her touch, her sounds, her taste –
She had been perfection, and for a brief few hours, she had been his.
*
“We’re out of teabags, Lizzie!” Ivy shouted, pushing down the annoyance that her cousin was perhaps the worst house-guest known to man. Coming and going at strange hours, buying groceries that, while generous, were utterly bizarre. Truffle oil, gravadlax, chocolate scented coffee pods.
“Sorry! I’ll grab some today, okay?” Lisette called back, sauntering out of the bathroom in Ivy’s robe, her hair wrapped in a hand towel.
And Ivy’s annoyance disappeared.
Lisette was the closest thing she had to a sister, and having her around for the extra few weeks – while a little unexpected – had been just the distraction she needed. Besides, she’d be going soon, and Ivy would miss her like crazy, so she’d just have to put up with the strange grocery habits.
Steve was still in her head. She thought of him often. But less and less.
Ivy told herself that had nothing to do with Rafe.
Even when her dreams seemed to revolve around the unbelievably hot Spaniard, she knew it was just because he’d been her most recent sexual experience. Even that wasn’t fair. Rafe had been… everything. Perfection.
And there had been something so deliciously elicit about their affair. A single night out of time – a night she hadn’t planned for that had been all the more thrilling for its unexpectedness.
Steve would have had kittens.
“Crap! I’m so late!” Ivy stared helplessly at the boiling water, wishing she had one of Nanny Anderson’s dried pre-loved tea bags dangling about somewhere so she could at least throw back a few sips of her favourite morning drink, but it wasn’t to be.
It should have been a sign – perhaps it was, in hindsight. She got to the tube station as her train pulled away and then it was an interminable wait for the next, meaning the platform was squished full of commuters and the train was a hot mess of sweat and stench when she managed to fold herself into it. She rode with her face in some man’s armpit, and no matter how she tried to twist and evade it, she couldn’t reposition herself. It was one of those trips that was completely flawed and she thought longingly of the train behind which was probably much emptier. Why hadn’t she waited?
Because of this damned meeting! All management staff had been told the day before that they needed to attend, and her boss Margerite had given Ivy the distinct impression that failing to be there on time and make a good impression would lead to certain death, or worse. “Shoot, shoot, shoot,” she whispered into the armpit, as the tube stopped deep in a tunnel and everyone collectively heaved a groan.
When it finally pulled into Embankment, Ivy scampered out and climbed out of the tube station as a shaken bottle of soda with the lid popped off. It would be quicker to jump onto another tube but she had a public transport-induced form of PTSD and couldn’t face the idea. It was only a marginally longer walk and, though Margerite’s threat had been explicit, Ivy found it hard to care.
She walked quickly and, as she turned the corner into the street on which her office building stood, she bumped into another woman with a similarly harried and hurried bearing. Unfortunately, she’d armed herself with a coffee. A coffee that Ivy was now wearing down the front of her vintage Dior dress.
“Shoot,” she snapped, but at the other woman’s look of abject apology, she forced a smile to her face. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
Mentally, she tried to recall what she had in her desk drawer at work. She generally kept a couple of spare outfits for the rare days she remembered her gym membership and went to a spin class. A cardigan would suffice.
Her security card wasn’t working when she reached GBRTV and now she felt like she could almost cry. What a flipping day, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.
“Problem, Ivy?”
Reg, the ancient security guard strolled over at a pace a snail would have found meandering, his broad smile making his chin whiskers wobble.
“You could say that. My card’s broken.” It’s not his fault, it’s not his fault, she told herself, fidgeting her fingers as he took the piece of crappy technology and scanned it on his computer.
“You’ll be needing a new one then,” he nodded, pulling drawers out and looking through them with a confused yet intent air. “You’ve got coffee on your front,” he added helpfully. As though she had somehow been doused in liquid and not realised. Or perhaps dressed in a dirty outfit.
“Thanks,” she nodded crisply, watching with mounting frustration as his rifling continued with the enthusiasm of a vegetarian at a steak-house. “Any chance you can just buzz me up and I’ll grab it at lunch? I’m really late for a meeting,” she explained, suppressing her impatience with real effort now.
“I wouldn’t usually,” he said, and Ivy held her breath. “But for you…” He pressed a button and the metallic barrier swept open, allowing Ivy into the building.
“You’re a star,” she waved, hurrying to the bank of lifts. With the morning Ivy was having, she expected the lifts to conspire to keep her waiting, but one pinged open as she arrived and, for a moment, she wondered if perhaps her luck was changing.
“You’re late,” Ronda chimed as she emerged on the twenty-seventh floor. “And a mess.”
“I know. Bloody tube. And yes, I know.” She grimaced. “Do you think I’ve got time to grab a change of clothes.”
“Sure. Margerite loves being interrupted.” Ronda rolled her eyes. “Spilled coffee is definitely better than blood. Get in there.”
Every curse Ivy knew fired through her head as she walked quickly through the studio offices. Cubicles were filling up, including the one she’d occupied when she’d first started working at the company. Her office was on the mezzanine overlooking the rabbit warren of computers. She flicked a gaze to it, thinking longingly of whatever clothing she could have put on that might have presented a slightly more professional air, then deciding her lateness would scupper it anyway.
The meeting had started. She could see, through the frosted glass doors, Margerite’s face as she spoke. The woman was never more at home than when addressing a crowd. Whether two or two hundred, she was a natural pontificator, always best-pleased when extolling her knowledge to a captive audience.
Ivy pushed the door inwards, mouthing, ‘sorry!’ towards Margerite as she stepped into the room.
“Ah! Good of you to join us, Ivy.”
Ivy winced. “The tube was a nightmare this morning,” she mumbled, not daring to look at her colleagues. She could feel her face flushing with heat.
“Yes, well.” Margerite’s words rang with stern disapproval. “You’ve missed the announcement so let me get you up to speed. As of last night, the network was sold. We have a new chairman. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”
It was like a lightning bolt had slashed right through her. Because she just knew!
Before Margerite even said his name, a strange and unmistakable presentiment flooded her body. She turned to look at him and it was as if she might faint.
Because it was Rafe Santoro staring right back at her.