His Innocent Seduction Page 13

  ‘Oh, my God...’ I sink my teeth into my lip and push my head back. It connects with the wall and his hand curves up, bracing me, as pleasure radiates through my body, striking me as a whip. ‘Oh, my God,’ I moan again, and now he kisses me to silence me, swallowing my moans and my cries, swallowing his own name deep in his body. He kisses me to silence me and I’m glad. In that moment I am so crazy with pleasure, I could have said anything.

  I’m shaking when he pulls away from me and I blink, trying to regain sense of my control. I look around, my cheeks warm and my eyes, surely, fevered. As I watch him, still trying to make sense of this pleasure, he lifts his fingers to his lips and kisses them, tasting me, tasting this.

  My legs almost drop out from under me.

  ‘You think you can’t?’ he asks, watching me with a smile.

  I look out into the bar. No one is near us. There’s risk but...that risk is oddly, strangely alluring. And suddenly I don’t want him to be as in control of this situation as he is. He’s always in control, I realise with a sense of discontent. Even when I went down on him on the plane, he stopped me before I could drive him over the edge. I want to unsettle that control, just like he does with me.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ I amend, smiling, my hands finding his trousers, toying with the belt.

  His breath is low and raspy as I unzip him and grab his cock. Every good-girl instinct I possess rips apart inside me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks as I curve my fingers around his rock-hard dick.

  ‘I thought this was part of my education?’ I lift my leg, pushing aside my doubts, and take his tip inside me.

  He swears and says my name, but I push higher and then his hands are around my ass, lifting me, and he’s filling me and I have to bury my face against his shoulder to stop from screaming out. It’s so fast. So intense. I explode, squeezing around him, my muscles tight, his cock throbbing inside me, his body supporting me; I’m jelly all over. Limber and weak, yet strong too. Strong like Boadicea or Cleopatra or Elizabeth the First. Strong in the way of all the strong women who’ve come before me. Strong because I wanted him and I took him and God it felt good.

  Strong because I made him lose control.

  Strong because I unsettled him.

  Strong because I feel sexually empowered.

  When I lift my face, there is triumph in my expression and it echoes the satisfaction in my soul.

  He looks at me with absolute terror. His expression is charged with things I don’t understand. He eases me to the ground and his expression only intensifies. ‘Jesus Christ, Millie. That was crazy.’

  I frown, and then push a brave smile into place. ‘You’re the one who said public sex was part of...’

  ‘I didn’t use a condom,’ he interrupts, dragging a hand through his hair; he’s completely freaked out. And for a second I am too. I really am. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake. I know enough about the risks of unprotected sex to get that it was foolhardy in the extreme.

  But then I take a breath and I look at things logically and a sense of calm returns. ‘Michael, it’s okay.’

  He’s not mollified. ‘Fuck, it’s really not.’

  ‘It is.’ I straighten my skirt, focusing on him, hoping my calm will somehow be contagious. ‘I went on the Pill the day after you agreed to sleep with me. You’re the first person I’ve ever been with. I’m clean. And I’ve seen you with protection. I’d bet you are, too, right?’

  A muscle jerks in his jaw and he nods, looking away from me. ‘Yeah. But that’s not the point. Jesus fucking Christ, Millie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen.’

  And suddenly my desire to rob him of control seems pathetic and childish. ‘Michael—’ I lean forward slowly, kissing the pulse point at the base of his neck ‘—it’s fine. It’s my fault. I didn’t exactly give you much of a chance to think, much less say no.’

  ‘Believe me, wild horses weren’t going to stop that.’ He pulls his pants closed and then looks at me, his eyes piercing my soul. ‘But I should have known better.’

  He leaves the bar not long after.

  And the certainty I had that I’d go home with him fades. Guilt is a twisting snake inside my gut. Because I wanted to make him lose control and I succeeded, and I should be ashamed of that. I am. But I’m more ashamed of how hot what we did was. How even thinking about it makes my stomach quiver and my insides clench.

  I had sex with Michael Brophy in the back of the bar. When anyone could have walked past and seen us.

  And I’m glad.

  I leave the bar at one o’clock in the morning and check my phone.

  There’s nothing from Michael.

  * * *

  I run as though the devil himself is in pursuit of me. I run as though I can undo the idiocy of last night, as though I can remember to use a fucking condom. I run as though I can wind back time and not lose my mind so completely.

  My watch buzzes, telling me I’ve beaten my minute-to-mile best score. I run harder. I run faster. I run to obliterate Millie from my mind, just for a fucking moment of peace. I run because the repetitive motion of step after step, of burning breath, usually focuses my thoughts on work.

  I run because it’s my sanctuary.

  But not today. Every step is a whisper, a spell. ‘Mill-lie. Mill-lie. Mill-lie.’

  I close my eyes, stopping beside the River Liffey, watching as a ferry pulls out of the port. It’s a big boat, lots of lights on. I hold my breath as it moves, my body screaming in agony at the deprivation of air when my lungs are overworked from the run.

  At the point where I feel like I could black out, I breathe again.

  Millie.

  Her name whispers through my brain, and then it roars.

  Fuck it.

  I reach for my phone, dialling her number, ignoring the pulling sense of dread, the presentiment of disaster.

  ‘Hey.’ Her voice is warm, like warmed butter on my flesh.

  My gut clenches, my dick tightens. ‘What are you up to?’

  There’s a small pause. I look at my watch and grimace. It’s eleven o’clock at night. ‘I’m in bed.’

  Crap. I don’t want her to feel like this is a booty call. And yet that makes no sense. Sex is the premise of our relationship—it’s not even a relationship! I shake my head, grinding my teeth together. We’re two people who are fucking, that’s it.

  Except it’s not. I don’t know when that shifted. Was it when we were in New York? And she cried, watching the ballet, and my chest felt like it had been blown up full of air? Was it when I first made love to her, and she fell apart in my arms? When she looked at me, so completely trusting, so absolutely lost?

  I drop my elbows onto the railing, staring out at the ferry as it moves towards the ocean. ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

  I hear her soft exhalation and the breeze rustles past me at the same time, lifting my shirt a little. ‘I told you, Michael—’ I love how she says my name ‘—it was my fault. I wanted you. I’m the one who forgot about consequences.’

  ‘Remember how I told you you should only ever be with a guy who looks after you?’

  Another sigh. ‘Tell me you’re not still beating yourself up about this?’

  I focus on the darkly rippling water beneath me. ‘What would be the point? It’s happened. All I can do is make sure it won’t happen again.’

  ‘You can’t control everything, Michael.’

  She yawns, and I freeze. She’s right, and I hate that.

  ‘Why don’t you come over? Let’s talk about this in person.’

  I want to. God, I want to. My body pulls towards hers. I want to bury myself inside her and forget that she is not a strength but a weakness. But, first and foremost, Millie is an addiction and I know the importance of managing those.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘I
know.’ Her smile is in the words. ‘And I’m naked, in bed.’

  Fuck.

  ‘I’m holding my breast, feeling it, rolling my hand over my nipple...’

  Jesus Christ.

  ‘You know what I love?’

  ‘What?’ My voice is gruff.

  ‘When you bite down on my nipple just as you push your big, hard cock inside me.’

  Okay. I’m about to come. Standing here on the bank of the River Liffey, surrounded by darkness and lewd mental images.

  ‘And I love it when you go down on me.’

  I can feel her against my mouth, taste her sweet surrender as though I really was there with her.

  ‘Come over, Michael.’

  She’s an addiction. I need to control this. And yet...

  ‘I’m moving my hand lower...oh, God, I’m so wet, Michael, so wet.’ She stops talking, and all I hear is her breathing, faster, needier, sweeter.

  Fuck.

  ‘Come...over...’ she implores between snatched breaths. ‘And fuck me.’

  She’s an addiction; I am addicted. I’ll fight the consequences of that tomorrow. For now... I need my next Millie fix.

  ‘Be there in ten. Don’t you dare move.’

  * * *

  I’ve left the door to the apartment unlocked so when Michael arrives I hear it push inwards and smile. I’m exactly where I was when he disconnected the call. Naked, in bed, my hand on myself, my cheeks pink, my eyes fevered. Desire is a fever in my blood, possession by Michael the only antidote.

  ‘I want a photo of you like that,’ he groans as he walks in, undressing quickly as he crosses the room.

  I stare up at him, the moonlit night casting him in silver and grey. His face is so familiar to me, so achingly familiar. I commit it and this moment to memory. He pulls a condom on quickly—he’s already hard, completely ready for me and this. He parts my legs with his hands and his eyes hold mine as he drives into me and I cry out, pushing up, burying my face in the curve between his neck and shoulder, wrapping my legs around his body.

  ‘You are so fucking perfect,’ he mutters, the words slamming into me, digging into me, wrapping around me and doing something to the core of my being, the fibre of who I am. ‘What are you doing to me, Millie?’

  Something snaps in my chest but pleasure is taking over, making thought impossible. I shake my head, then search for his lips, finding them, kissing him, tangling my fingers in his hair as my mouth seeks his.

  He pulls his cock out of me and I moan into his mouth, feel his lips curve into a smile as he drives himself into me again, fast and hard, so deep, and I groan because it’s perfection—absolute, complete perfection.

  I dig my feet into the mattress, pushing my hips up, meeting him thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke. His tongue clashes with mine, rolling me, and then he rips his head away, pinning me with the intensity of his moonlit stare for a second before he drops his head to my breast and does just what I asked him to, clamping a nipple in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue so I’m incandescent with need and then biting his teeth on the edge, the sensitive, over-stimulated tip.

  I whimper, completely lost to this, to all of this, pleasure a fire in my gut, release so close.

  ‘I’m coming.’ I tilt my hips and he drops his hands, holding me where I am, pushing into me, reaching deep inside me, his eyes watching me, and I don’t look away. I stare back at him as every cell in my body reverberates and tears, stretching, ready to explode. I watch him watching me as finally I tumble off the edge of sanity, my orgasm robbing me of breath, light, vision, sense. I am atoms and earth dust, nothing more.

  He thrusts into me and I squeeze him tight; he says my name as he comes hard, his body racked with the force of his pleasure.

  The intensity of this tightens like a blade at my chest.

  I stare at him and for a second, for the smallest second before I can control the direction of my thoughts, I wish I could stay like this for ever. With him for ever. The pull of what we share is so strong, so powerful; it’s like quicksand and I can’t have it.

  Michael is temporary. A pit-stop on my world tour. Nothing more. He took my virginity, he’s taught me about sex and pleasure, but he’s not going to get in my way. Nothing is.

  This is just sex—full-stop. There’s no need to be thinking about how good it feels in his arms and how much I want to stay here.

  I smile up at him, reassured, lifting a hand and pressing it to his chest, where I can feel his heart hammering against his ribs. He’s staring at me, a stare that sees all of me, I think.

  ‘That was...very nice.’

  His laugh is unsteady. ‘Nice? I’m so glad you think so.’

  ‘Better than nice,’ I promise, his cock twitching inside me, making me aware of every single nerve ending and desire I possess.

  He drops down, pressing a kiss to my lips and then rolls off me, onto his back. I push up on my elbow to look at him, his strong face, his handsome features, his broad chest, his body burned into my memory—thank God.

  ‘Thanks for coming over.’ I reach out, running a fingertip over his nose to his lips. He angles his face to mine.

  ‘Any time.’ He grins. ‘I was worried you’d think this was just a booty call...’

  I feel a sudden pang in my chest. ‘It was.’ I soften the words with a wink. ‘I wanted sex. You obliged.’

  He laughs, pushing up onto his elbow, matching my posture, like bookends in this bed of mine. ‘I see.’ He catches my hair in his fingers, holding it, before arranging it over my shoulder. ‘And to think you were just a shy little virgin two weeks ago...’

  ‘I don’t know if I could ever be classed as shy.’

  ‘Fair point.’ He drops his head down onto the pillow, facing me. ‘I guess someone who propositions a guy she doesn’t know for sex is hardly retiring...’

  ‘Exactly.’ I bring the duvet up to cover my body but he snakes a hand beneath it, his fingers finding my nipple and flicking it. I bite down on my lower lip, pleasure exploding inside me. ‘Though I was kind of terrified you’d say no.’

  He pulls a face. ‘Let me tell you something about men, Millie. There are very few of us who’d have said no to the offer you made.’

  ‘To have sex with a virgin? Who has no idea what she’s doing?’

  His look is droll. ‘To be your first lover? Hell, yeah.’

  ‘So that’s some kind of...male fantasy?’

  His eyes hold mine and he strokes my side beneath the duvet and I suppress a shiver as my nerve endings reverberate. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s why you agreed to this?’

  The smallest of frowns tugs at one side of his lips. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I say with a smile. ‘I mean, I’m glad it was you.’

  His eyes home in on me, looking deeper, peeling away my layers. ‘What would you have done if I hadn’t agreed?’

  I drop my gaze.

  ‘Did you have a backup plan?’

  Did I? I can’t remember. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘So if I’d told you I didn’t want to get involved in this, you’d have just packed up and moved onto France?’

  ‘I mean, I guess so. I wanted to lose my virginity, Michael, but...’ I swallow, a tricky path before me. A path that has darkness at the end and rose bushes, thorny and barbed, on either side.

  ‘But?’

  I step with care, choosing each word slowly. ‘I wanted you.’ My eyes lift to his bravely. ‘I didn’t know I had a sexual bone in my body until you came into the bar that first time. And I was terrified. I felt like... I had this visceral reaction, desire permeated me. I literally felt like something was tugging me towards you. I wanted to strip you naked and throw you against the wall and climb on your cock.’

  He laughs at my description.

  ‘I never knew I had t
hat in me. It scared me.’

  ‘You spent a long time pretending you didn’t even see me.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t exactly know what to do about how I felt...’

  ‘What changed?’ he pushes, his hand moving lower, curving around my ass and pulling me towards him. ‘Why’d you decide to approach me?’

  ‘Knowing I was leaving,’ I say with a lopsided smile. ‘I had nearly three weeks left and, on the one hand, I knew if I didn’t ask you, I’d regret it. But it was a safe time to proposition you because, if you’d turned me down, I didn’t have to see you often before I left.’

  ‘Ah! But think of what would have happened if you’d asked me two months earlier. So much more fun...’ He grins, and he’s joking, it’s all very light-hearted, but the darkness at the end of this path is growing nearer.

  I shake my head, pulling away from him a bit. If I’d asked him two months earlier, I know where I’d be right now. Head over heels in love, undoubtedly, completely lost to his raw power, attraction, appeal, his magnetism, my plans to travel, my promise to Mum in tatters at my feet.

  ‘The timing was right,’ I say simply, detaching from him completely, moving to the edge of the bed and standing. ‘Do you want anything before you go? Shower? Coffee? Beer?’

  He looks at me for several seconds, the air heavy with words he’s not saying.

  ‘I’m making myself a tea,’ I say awkwardly. ‘It’s no trouble...’

  ‘You’re kicking me out?’

  I smile to hide the darkness that’s swirling through me. Because I am kicking him out. I’m kicking him out to avoid the blurring of any more lines between us. ‘Yep. That’s the point of a booty call, isn’t it?’

  Something flashes in his eyes and I feel him wanting to fight, wanting to argue, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head a little and stands up, disposing of the condom and reaching for his shorts in the same movement. ‘Yeah. That’s the point of a booty call.’

  My stomach lurches. ‘Are you...annoyed?’

  He pins me with his gaze. ‘No. Why would I be?’