Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (18 page)

The smile faded from her lips as she looked first at Mika, then at Stefan. Suddenly, the real purpose of Stefan’s visit was becoming clearer to her. Eyes blazing, she shoved her shot into his hand and said, ‘Here. Have mine.’ Then turned on her heel, walking away from them both.

At first, Luna flew blind, wading through the thrall of people around the bar, a hot current of anger propelling her forward. But then she passed Liv coming the other way and the Norwegian woman hissed something at her – ‘Toss,’ it sounded like – and flounced off toward the ladies loo.

Luna ground to a halt. She didn’t need a Norwegian–English dictionary to guess at what ‘toss’ meant. Turning on her heel for the second time in as many minutes, she stalked in Liv’s wake, entering the loo and locking the door behind her.

Liv was standing in front of a small mirror over the only sink, reapplying her red lipstick. Her eyes met Luna’s in the mirror and she whirled around in surprise.

‘You have something to say to me?’ Luna asked quietly.

Liv flushed, then replied coolly, ‘No.’

‘I think you do,’ Luna said, leaning back against the bathroom door as if to say,
I have all night.

Liv turned back to the sink, flicking on the tap and running her hands under it. Playing for time.

There was a knock on the door and Luna shouted, ‘Use the gents. We’re going to be a while,’ to the sound of muffled grumbles outside. Liv looked at her in the mirror, realised she wasn’t getting out of this, and turned off the tap, reaching for a hand towel in the basket under the sink.

‘It isn’t enough for you English girls,’ she said, drying her hands, ‘that you have one man. You have to have
all the men.
Every man you see, you have to have them all.’

Her upper lip curled at these last words and Luna experienced a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time, like a tuning fork being struck next to her ear. ‘Ah, I
see
,’ she nodded, a thin layer of frost forming over her eyes, ‘You want me to
share.
You should have said…’

Exactly one minute and twelve seconds later, Luna emerged from the loo. Nodding genially to the queue of women waiting, she said, ‘She’s finished now,’ and went off to search for Dagmar.

She found her boss sitting alone at a table in the corner of the bar, nursing another glass of red wine. Luna sat opposite her and got straight to the point: ‘What’s the deal between Stefan and Mika?’

She realised then just how drunk Dagmar was by her laughable attempt to cast her features into an expression of innocent incomprehension. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Dagmar said, entirely unconvincingly.

‘Uh huh,’ Luna said, rolling her hand in a get-on-with-it motion. ‘You brought Mika here for a reason, didn’t you?’

‘Yesh,’ Dagmar slurred. ‘He ish talented man.’

‘Yes, and…?’

‘And he ish friend of mine.’

‘And of Stefan’s too, right?’ Luna said. ‘Only, it looks to me like they have a bit of a strange friendship.’

‘They are a little… competitive,’ Dagmar allowed. She took a gulp of her red wine and Luna briefly contemplated confiscating her glass. Instead, she gave the Swedish woman a hard look and Dagmar added reluctantly, ‘With shport, with career… with women…’

‘A little competitive,’ Luna repeated.

‘There was a friend of ours, Ashtrid. She dated Mika, then Shtefan shtole her away from him.’

‘Bloody hell, that Astrid gets around,’ Luna remarked incredulously, shaking her head. ‘So, the two of them compete for women, is that what you’re saying?’

Dagmar looked up at the ceiling, clearly wishing she was someplace else.

‘And you brought Mika here.’ Luna shook her head again, this time slowly, with a measure of distaste. Placing her hands on the table, she rose and stared down at Dagmar, who was by now looking thoroughly miserable.

Stefan was standing at the bar talking to Magnus as Luna made her way back to the function room to collect her laptop and jumper. Mika, meanwhile, was sitting at a table with Britta perched on his knee, his assignment as mischief-maker-in-chief clearly having reached a successful conclusion.

Luna was just getting ready to turn out the lights in the function room when Stefan entered, pint in hand.

‘I’m going home,’ she said.

Stefan made a show of looking at his watch and Luna saw red, walking up to him and jabbing her finger in his chest.

‘You aren’t here to surprise me,’ she said furiously. ‘You’re here to check up on me, aren’t you?’

Stefan gave not an inch, enquiring smoothly, ‘Why do you ask? Do you think I
need
to check up on you?’

She had to stop herself from screaming at him in frustration. Waving her hand toward the bar, she fumed, ‘Dagmar’s been telling me about the little “friendly competition” between you and Mika.’

‘Only,’ Stefan continued, casually ignoring her, ‘I’ve just walked into a bar to find my girlfriend in another man’s arms.’

‘Oh, you bloody— don’t you dare. Don’t you
dare
accuse me of—’ Luna said, at which point she was interrupted by the sound of Magnus clearing his throat in the doorway.

‘Jus t’ought du should know,’ he said cheerily. ‘Dat Swedish wumman is spewin out front.’

Fifteen minutes later, Stefan was driving his rental car slowly through the thick fog while Luna sat in the back seat with a prostrate Dagmar. Their argument continued unabated.

‘You couldn’t have just told me what Mika was like, could you?’ Luna was saying. ‘Oh no, it was all, “You will like him, Luna,” and, “He’s just
Finnish
, Luna.”’

‘You wanted a warning?’ Stefan laughed sarcastically, bending over the steering wheel, peering out into the fog. ‘I’d like to hear how
that
conversation would have gone. “Just so you know, Luna, Mika might try to get you into bed. He’s an attractive fellow, so, you know, watch out for yourself.”’

At this, Dagmar, who was slumped against the car door, began to make gagging noises and Stefan said ominously, ‘I swear to God, if she’s sick in this car…’

Pulling swiftly to the side of the road, he glared at Luna in the rear-view mirror as she hurriedly exited the car and ran around to Dagmar’s side, dragging her into the nearby grass. Kneeling next to Dagmar, rubbing her shoulders, Luna heard Stefan get out of the car and turned to see him leaning against the bonnet, half obscured by fog. He said something in Swedish she couldn’t quite catch, clearly directed at Dagmar.

In response, Dagmar groaned and heaved, moaning, ‘
Förlåt mig
.’

‘Ah,
now
she wants forgiveness,’ Stefan said. ‘Maybe next time you try to seduce another man’s woman, you don’t hire Don Juan as your assistant, eh? Eh, Dagmar?’

Luna had to practically carry Dagmar into the house, Stefan refusing point blank to help. She got her undressed and into bed, was on the receiving end of a few parting
förlåt migs
herself, then walked to the kitchen, where Stefan was sitting at the table drinking Mika’s good whiskey.

Luna placed her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘Anything to say for yourself?’

To which Stefan lifted his glass and tilted it toward the top of the fridge, where Luna’s motorcycle helmet and Mika’s new red helmet were sitting side by side.

‘Have you,’ he asked quietly, ‘been taking Mika out on your bike?’

He caught her off guard with that one. A brief, guilty image of Mika’s chest pressed against her back and his hand resting on her stomach flitted through her mind and Luna involuntarily bit her lip.

Only to hear Dagmar, back out in the hall, moaning, ‘Luna…’ Saved by the drunk! She turned and walked back out into the hall to find her boss staggering, stark naked, in her direction. Luna was just about to guide her back to her room when Dagmar opened her mouth. And projectile vomited all over her.

It took some time, with no help from either Stefan or Dagmar, to clean her up, get her back to bed, then mop and disinfect the hall. She was in no mood to talk to Stefan by the time she returned to the kitchen. Standing in front of the washing machine, she started peeling off her clothes, breathing through her mouth.

‘Really?’ came Stefan’s voice behind her as she lowered her skirt to the floor. ‘
These
are the knickers you wear for a business event, when your boyfriend is seven hundred miles away?’

Gritting her teeth, Luna stripped off said knickers and threw them in with the rest of the wash, switching on the machine and walking out of the room without another word.

She spent a half-hour in the shower, running it as hot as she dared, inundating the bathroom with steam. When she was finished, she wrapped a towel around herself and stomped up the stairs to her room.

If Stefan thought she was going to come beg his forgiveness, well, he could Fuck. Right. Off.

An hour she lay in bed, waiting for him to come up. An hour of tossing and turning, running their argument through her head again and again, concluding each time that it was she who had been wronged, him whose behaviour was completely outrageous.

Finally, at just gone midnight, she pulled on her terrycloth robe and went downstairs. The light was off in the kitchen, so she walked into the front room, where Stefan was sitting in the leather armchair, half-drunk tumbler of whiskey in his hand, the almost empty bottle next to him. He didn’t look up as she entered and, despite her best intentions to come down and make peace, she felt her hands moving to her hips again.

‘So, you’re here for one night,’ she said, ‘and you’re going to spend it sitting there, drinking yourself into oblivion.’

Lifting his glass to toast her, Stefan replied, ‘Looks like it.’ And drained it.

‘And this is somehow all my fault, I take it. That you’re behaving like an idiot. Even though I had absolutely no idea about your little notch-post game with Mika.’

‘And Dagmar?’

‘What about her?’

‘
Josses
, Luna, are you really that clueless? She has a crush on you.’

‘That’s ridicu—’

‘She has a crush on you,’ he insisted, rolling his eyes, ‘and I am just as capable of being jealous of a woman as I am of a man.’

‘What I don’t understand is why you’re jealous at all!’ Luna exclaimed. ‘For you to be jealous, you’d have to seriously believe that I was somehow tempted by Mika or Dagmar. That it wasn’t just Mika playing that stupid game the two of you play.’

‘It’s been a
long time
since we’ve played that game. Since
I’ve
played it. I’m not that man anymore.’

‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ Luna said. ‘And me, what kind of woman do you think I am? Do you think I’m interested in
anyone
but you?’ Stefan opened his mouth, but Luna cut him off. ‘And let me just tell you – the only right answer is no.
No
, Luna, I don’t. So you’d better say it,’ she warned him. ‘You’d better say you don’t for a
second
believe that I was tempted by either of them!’

He studied his hands for a moment, then placed his empty tumbler on the table beside him. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think you were.’

Luna prepared to exhale a sigh of relief, only for him to continue, ‘But here’s what I
do
think. I think that after two long months apart, when I was suffering the fires of hell, and you were suffering too, and now another two months when I am working my ass off down at Arborage, dealing with Helen’s craziness and Augusta’s intransigence, when I am alone in my bed in London, and missing the hell out of you, I think part of you took secret pleasure in getting on the phone with me every night, telling me about your adventures with Mika, and how well appreciated you are by your lovely boss, and what a wonderful time you are having up in Shetland now. No, you weren’t tempted, but I think a small part of you enjoyed the possibility of me thinking that you were. Me, seven hundred miles away, unable to do a thing about it.’

Luna stared at him, open-mouthed. Then shut her mouth. Then said, ‘I refute that. I
categorically
refute it.’

It was as if he didn’t even hear her, because he went on, ‘And the problem is, what this makes me want to do.’ He clenched his fists, eyes transfixed by them like they weren’t his; didn’t belong to him. ‘It makes me want to punish you. To
punish
you, Luna.’

Silence. Her staring at him; him staring down at his fists. From somewhere far away, she heard her voice saying, ‘Maybe you should.’

Again, he didn’t hear her, not at first. But then his eyes lifted to hers and oh, the warring expressions on his face.
Did she just say what I think she said? No, no. But… did she just say what I think she said?

Really, she could almost have laughed in his thunderous, vexed, confused face. But instead she heard the hum of a tuning fork inside her ear for the second time that night. And said with glacial dismissiveness, ‘Well, if I have to spell it out for you…’

She turned and left the room. If she’d been any further up the stairs, she might have missed his quiet, two-word response: ‘You don’t.’ She heard it though, and increased her pace on the steps as he entered the hall below her. She got to the top landing and moved swiftly into her room even as he climbed up after her.

She was preparing to shut the door against him when there he was, forcing it open, hauling her up against him, kicking the door shut with a resounding bang.

His hands moved to the sash of her dressing gown, untying it, pushing the robe off her shoulders, and pushing her into the room, across the floor, till he’d backed her into the foot of the bed. It made a warning creak and Luna flinched involuntarily, glancing at the floor beneath them.

‘Don’t say it,’ Stefan growled, placing his hand on her chest and shoving her onto the bed, causing the springs to squeal in protest. ‘Don’t you fucking say it,’ he repeated, loosening his tie and beginning to unbutton his shirt. Luna scooted back on the bed, heart going a mile a minute. She’d asked for it, Lord knew she’d asked for it, and now she’d have to live with the consequences. Ah, he was taking his trousers off and, Jesus wept, it was like his cock was made of stone.

There were no preliminaries, no gentle words or gestures from him. Instead, he climbed onto the bed and roughly pulled her down into a supine position, taking her head between his hands and lowering his face to hers, eyes open, silently compelling her to keep hers open too as his mouth crushed down on hers.

His lips were voracious and his teeth rasped against hers. Luna felt one of her own teeth cutting into her lip; tasted blood. His tongue jabbed its way into her mouth, and when Luna offered him hers in return he ran his canines along it, like he wanted to consume her, every bit of her. His eyes all the while boring down on her, daring her to falter, to withdraw.

In answer, she lifted her hand to his nape and buried her fingers in his hair, grabbing it and twisting it. And moved her other hand down his back to his buttocks, drawing her claws, stabbing them into his skin. A rumble rose up from deep within him as Stefan tore his mouth from hers and glowered down at her.
Game on.

He got swiftly down to business, jerking her legs apart, placing his hand on his cock and guiding it to her, smiling triumphantly to find her wet and ready. Luna clawed her nails deeper into his ass at the exact moment he entered her and he gasped with combined pain and pleasure. He drove himself into her till it felt like he was fixing her to the bed, then reached behind him and removed her hand from his buttock, forcing it onto the pillow above her head. And did the same to her other hand. When he was satisfied that she was subdued – at his mercy – his hips began to move, pumping into hers, grinding against her.
Rutting,
Luna thought fleetingly,
that’s what he’s doing. Rutting.

Minutes later he released her hands, moving his own up to grasp the top of the headboard. Luna scarcely registered the sound of the bedsprings screaming and the headboard juddering against the wall, her eyes transfixed by his perfect stomach muscles straining before her, and his cock sliding in and out of her. At length, she looked up and exulted to see the agony of tightly stretched self-control written on his face. Short-lived exultation, for at that moment Stefan looked down at her, saw her watching him… and placed his hand over her face, pushing her down onto the pillow, forcing her eyelids shut with his fingers and covering her mouth with his palm as he convulsed above her, rutting to the last.

His hand was still on her face and his cock still hard inside her when she heard his voice, deep and low, asking, ‘Do you need the loo? Or water? Or anything?’ He lifted his hand and she opened her eyes, blinking at him.

‘I—’ she began questioningly.

‘It’s going to be a long night, Luna,’ he said. ‘So if you want anything, now’s the time.’

A moment’s silence. Then, meekly, ‘No, I’m fine.’

Stefan nodded his head once. Then lifted her right knee to his chest, crawling over her left till his body was perpendicular to hers. And commenced fucking her again.

They did it five times that night, in total. Twice to start, followed by a short nap that ended with him snaking an arm under her sleeping body, pulling it on top of his, thrusting himself up into her warm, soft somnolence.

And later, when she stood up on the bed to open the skylight, let in a bit of cool air, pausing to stare at the Milky Way laid out like a glimmering cloak above her head. And felt a hand reaching round her ankle, up her calf. So descended to him, kneeling at his side and trailing her hair along his stomach, his hand twining in it, reeling her downward to serve him with her mouth and tongue.

When next she woke she was on her stomach, head turned to one side, fist pressed into her chin. This time it was Stefan kneeling next to her, hand caressing her buttocks. He, ah… she felt warm and smooth and… slick where his fingers were reaching into her – finding her, stroking her. She made to roll over, but he held her in place, fingers delving further, entering her. And so it continued until she was panting for him, her ass undulating under his hand.

He mounted her from behind, nudging her knees apart with his, and bent his lips next to her ear. ‘The safe word is “Lerwick”, do you understand?’ She bit her lip and nodded, but he insisted, ‘Say it, Luna.’

‘The safe word is Lerwick,’ she repeated.

He placed his hands on her hips, then braced them on the mattress beside her. She felt his cock resting on her cleft. Then slowly insinuating itself into her, just its head. And then, just as she was becoming accustomed to it, he withdrew. Luna made a noise of protest, twisted her head back to look up at him and, seeing his hesitation, arched her back and said challengingly, ‘I didn’t say Lerwick.’

And so the night finished with something new, for Luna, Stefan walking the tightrope between self-restraint and dark, carnal pleasure till pleasure won out, and he groaned his release into the night sky.

*

The next morning found Luna and Dagmar at the kitchen table, Dagmar cradling an undrunk cup of tea in her hands, looking positively grey. Luna perched… carefully on the edge of her chair, drinking coffee.

There came the sound of footsteps descending the stairs and Stefan bounded into the kitchen, looking chipper and immaculate in his work clothes. Bending to kiss Luna, he stole a quick gulp of her coffee and looked at his watch.

‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you day after tomorrow.’

Wincing slightly, Luna made to stand, but he put his hand on her shoulder, grinning, ‘No, you stay where you are,’ and leant down again, kissing her more thoroughly.

And then he was off, out into the hall just as Mika entered. Any tension from the night before apparently forgotten, Stefan said something to him in Swedish that Luna couldn’t quite follow, the cadence of which sounded a hell of a lot like
look what the cat dragged in.

As Stefan’s car pulled away, Mika sauntered into the kitchen carrying a cardboard box.

‘I brought bacon sandwiches,’ he said, sitting down at the table.

It was too much for Dagmar, who stood hurriedly and ran for the bathroom.

‘Give me those,’ Luna said, reaching for the box like a ravenous wolf.

Luna spent the rest of the morning with Malcolm, working to seal the deal with the supermarket buyer before he flew back to Edinburgh, and in the afternoon she drove over to the building site to give a tour to the representative from the Scottish Tourist Board. When she got home, she made more tea and some toast with butter and brought them in to Dagmar, who remained prone in her bedroom. To no great surprise, her boss remembered little of the previous evening.

‘Did I dream it, or did you put me to bed last night?’ she asked, taking a sip of her tea, causing Luna to smile; it was probably just as well her memories were incomplete.

Mika, meanwhile, made himself scarce. He and his team were flying back to Stockholm the following morning and Luna suspected he was taking a last opportunity to hang out with them, Britta in particular, at the Fisherman’s Rest. She herself felt she’d seen more than enough of the place for one week, so she prepared a quiet dinner of cheese on toast and sat out on the picnic bench outside the cottage, enjoying the evening sun.

George wandered up at one point with the two dogs and she broke out a pack of chocolate fingers, munching companionably with him until Liv emerged, back into hausfrau mode in a handmade smock and head kerchief, to call him home, sparing nary a glance for her neighbour, which was fine with Luna.

Later that evening, as she sat cross-legged on her bed working on her laptop, her phone vibrated on the bedside table. Stefan.

‘Hi,’ she said softly.

‘Hey.’

A long, laden pause, followed by a purely perfunctory exchange about how their respective days had been (‘Fine’ seemed to be the consensus), followed by another long silence so full of sexual tension that Luna thought her phone was going to melt in her hand.

He told her, then, that he’d arranged for a car and driver to pick her up at Glasgow Airport on Friday afternoon, to take her to the hunting lodge where he would be waiting. When Luna demurred, saying she was sure she could make her own way to the lodge, Stefan simply said, ‘It’s arranged. I insist.’

So that was that.

*

‘He made you cry, Lou,’ Nancy said angrily.

It was Thursday evening and Luna’s round of phone calls to her friends to let them know she’d reunited with Stefan was going about as badly as she’d feared. There was Jem, who she called first and who, predictably, was hurt to discover how long Luna had kept this secret.

‘Since right after the party? Really?’ she asked, and Luna could practically hear the abacus in Jem’s mind clicking into action, totting up how many times she’d felt sorry for Stefan or worried about Luna since then. And what could Luna say in response except, sorry, I’m sorry?

And now more sorry, I’m sorry with Nancy, who felt that Luna had betrayed the sisterhood by even contemplating getting back together with Stefan. ‘You think I didn’t see him at that party, looking at you like he wanted to rip your clothes off?’ she yelled down the phone line. ‘I’m not
stupid
, Luna. But guarding you like a fucking dog in a manger, that’s not love.’