Canada Square (Love in London #3) (21 page)

It feels strange, holding hands with him. His fingers weave through mine and his thumb brushes the inner skin of my wrist, and nice turns altogether dirtier.

I'm not sure why his hands fascinate me so much. It's not as if he uses them for much more than typing on a keyboard, yet they're strong and long and when I look at them I can't help but remember what they did to me that night.

In his house.

This
house.

Oh God.

“Hang your coat up there,” he says when we've walked into the hallway, pointing at a row of hooks. “I'll go and open a bottle of something and get started on dinner.”

“Good, I'm starving.” I've recovered my equilibrium enough to give him a cheeky grin. “Hop to it.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he calls from the kitchen, then under his breath he mutters, “Cheeky bitch.”

“Oi, I heard that.”

“You were supposed to,” he replies, good humour lacing his voice. “Because you are a cheeky wee bitch.”

“Wee?” I walk into his kitchen, my eyes raised. “Did you really just call me 'wee'? I'm not sure whether to be more offended by that, or the way you're a walking stereotype.”

He puts down his knife, gently laying it on the chopping board. There's a glint in his narrowed eyes, a playful anger that sets my heart racing. Then slowly, deliberately, he walks towards me.

I back up until my hips are pressed against his black granite work surface. A minute later, he’s against my front as he towers above me, so tall it feels like I'm craning my neck.

When he's this close it makes it hard to breathe. Though I'd never admit it, he does make me feel 'wee'.

“What?” I manage to get out.

The corner of his lip flickers, but otherwise his expression remains neutral. I wait for him to say something, but instead he stares, his dark-green eyes never wandering from my face. A lump forms in my throat, big and rough.

After a long moment, he wraps his hands around my waist and lifts me until I'm sitting on the work surface. Though the granite feels cold through the fabric of my skirt I don’t complain, because all I can think of is the way he's pressing his hips into mine, and the long, hard ridge of his cock.

“What are you doing?” I murmur.

“This.” He pushes again, the movement sending a thrill that makes my toes curl. Then his hand is on my chin, tipping it up until our lips meet. He pushes his tongue inside the seam of my lips at the same time as I wrap my legs around his back. We're kissing and rocking, hands everywhere they shouldn't be, the only sound in the room our loud, embarrassing gasps.

Callum stands straight, his hands underneath my bottom. For a second I think he's going to turn around and carry me into his bedroom, but instead he pushes his hand under the hem of my skirt, his fingers seeking out my warmth. He slides one inside me, then two, his thumb pressing against me in the most delicious way. I close my eyes tightly, my thighs flexing like a clamp around his hips.

“Amy,” he whispers. I barely hear him. Blood rushes through my ears like a swollen river. I rock my hips, creating a rhythm that matches my heartbeat, unashamedly riding his fingers as my body reacts to his touch. Then he fumbles for his zip, releasing his hard, pulsing cock, and I reach for it. The next minute I'm pulling my knickers to the side, guiding him until his tip is brushing against my slickness. He pushes until I open up for him.

Callum steadies me, his hands holding me firmly, lifting me up and down until we're both panting loudly, breathing into each other as we kiss. I can feel the pleasure building and swirling at the pit of my stomach, radiating out with every thrust. Though we're both dressed—my skirt ruched around my waist, his trousers pooled at his feet—my nipples are hard enough to press through my thin bra and blouse, rubbing against his muscles.

That's when I feel it. The crescendo. The high. It takes me over, cell by cell, until I feel like I'm melting into him. Electricity courses through me, fizzing at my skin, and I freeze in his arms. My mouth is open and my voice silent as I ride the sensual, dizzying wave.

“Amy,” he says again, his lips trailing down my throat, nipping at my skin. “You feel fucking amazing when you come on me.”

He waits for my orgasm to settle before he moves again, reigniting the flame I thought had gone out. I squeeze around him and he moans, his thrusts becoming erratic and hard, and I can tell by the way his breath stutters that he's reaching his peak.

“Callum,” I whisper in his ear. “I want to feel you come inside me.”

He groans and angles his hips, fingers tightening on my behind, pressing in so hard I know he's going to leave marks. But I don't care, because nothing else matters apart from his pleasure, so I squeeze him tight until he mutters against my chest.

“Fuck, shit, fuck I'm going to come.” His accent broadens, as if he can't even control that. His eyes are shut, his lips swollen and red, and all I want is to see his expression when he lets go.

My wish is fulfilled a minute later, when his hips slam into mine, a low groan escaping his mouth. He stills, his hands holding me tight, his face glorious as his orgasm overtakes him. At that moment I realise I could spend my whole life watching Callum Ferguson come.

It takes a moment or two for him to recover, but when he does, he pulls out of me, gently lowering me to the floor. A thin, white line of semen rolls down my inner thigh, and he watches it, licking his lips.

“That might be the sexiest thing I've seen,” he says, his eyes still trained on my leg. “I might have to make you eat dinner just like that.” He presses his finger to my thigh, spreading the wetness, then moves his hand up until he presses the pad against my mouth.

“Lick,” he orders. For some reason I do exactly as I'm told, peeking my tongue out. His fingers tastes salty and wet—a curious mixture of him and me—and I suck it into my mouth.

“Are you trying to turn me on again?” he asks gruffly. “Because it's fucking working.”

I smile. “No, I'm just bloody starving.”

We spend the next few minutes cleaning up in his bathroom. He washes me gently with a flannel, lingering on my thighs, and pulls my skirt down, trying fruitlessly to smooth out the creases. His trousers are already fastened, but I'm pleased to see they look as messed up as my clothes.

The other thing I notice—which surprises me—is the lack of awkwardness between us. We talk easily as we leave the bathroom, laughing and giggling, and I love the way everything slots together so perfectly.

Pun absolutely intended.

Callum returns to peeling potatoes and chopping onions, passing me the glass of wine he poured out before we were distracted. I sit at the small glass table in the corner of his kitchen, sipping Sancerre and admiring the way his bottom looks beneath the dark blue wool of his trousers.

“I should have asked you about birth control,” he says, slicing a red pepper into thin strips. “Although the words 'closing the stable door' and 'after the horse has bolted' spring to mind.”

“Did you just compare yourself to a stallion?” I tease, still shocked by my lack of embarrassment. I remember how things were with Luke, when I could barely bring myself to say the word 'condom'. “And I'm on the pill, thanks for asking.”

He turns around, knife still in hand, and fixes me a grin. “It's not my fault you're so fucking gorgeous I lose all common sense.”

I roll my eyes. “The excuse of stupid men everywhere. This is why the planet's overpopulated.”

He frowns. “Because you're gorgeous?”

“No!” I protest, laughing. “Stop trying to sweet talk me. All I'm saying is that birth control is a two-way thing. I knew I was covered, but you...”

“I just wanted to see me dripping down your legs,” he says, his pleasant tone belying the dirtiness of his words. “And yes, I'm an idiot for not talking about protection before, but for the record I'm clean. I wouldn't put you in any danger.”

I soften. “I'm clean, too.” I made sure of it after seeing the photo of Luke with that girl. “For what it's worth.”

Even when he turns back to resume chopping, I can tell he's smiling from the tone of his voice. “Not from where I'm standing, babe. Everything you've done tonight suggests you're very fucking dirty indeed.”

21

I'm not sure what wakes me up. Perhaps a strange middle-of-the-night creak, or the shaft of lamplight that sneaks through the velvet drapes covering Callum's sash windows. Whatever it is, I roll over in his unfamiliar bed, frowning when all I come in contact with is a cold, empty mattress.

It takes another moment to realise what's wrong. I'm used to sleeping alone—especially after breaking up with Luke—but I'm not used to doing it in a strange man's bed. I rub my eyes with balled-up fists, trying to wipe away the thick sleep that sticks my lids together.

“Callum?” The air is frigid enough to make me shiver. I pull the sheet around my chest, but the cotton does little to stave off the cold.

There's no answer. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I realise he's not in here, and swing my legs around until my feet hit the wooden floor.

I pick up a t-shirt and pull it over my head, unwilling to walk naked through his house. It doesn't matter that we spent half the night unclothed and glistening with sweat, because right now, I feel vulnerable.

The hallway echoes to the sound of my bare feet slapping against the floor. A strange wistfulness weighs me down like a heavy blanket. I come to a stop in the doorway of the living room and look around, spotting him sitting in the large, leather wingback chair that's placed next to the open fireplace. He has a glass of whisky in his hand, the ice tinkling as he circles it around, and there’s a serious look on his face.

A long minute passes until he notices me. His eyes rake up and down, taking in the thin, white t-shirt that's scarcely decent, and my bare thighs that emerge from the hem. Though there's a melancholy expression on his face, there’s also a fire behind his eyes.

We stare at each other for longer than is comfortable. It's awkward yet compelling, pinking my cheeks and sending a shot of desire through my body. Then—almost without thinking—I walk across the room.

“I woke up and you were gone,” I say, my voice wavering. “I didn't know where you were.”

His thick, dark lashes brush his cheeks as he swallows the final mouthful of his whisky. “I had a bad dream.”

For a moment he’s almost child-like, awakening some dormant instinct deep inside me; the need to console is almost too strong to ignore.

I climb onto his lap, tucking my feet beneath me, and wrap my arms around his neck. He places his hands in the small of my back, burying his face in my shoulder.

Softly, I stroke his hair, murmuring sweet words into his ear. My fingers drag against his scalp, and I feel his breath hitch once, then twice.

What the hell is wrong? After a night of frantic lovemaking, it's almost frightening to realise he's so vulnerable, and I've no idea what to do.

“Tell me about your dream,” I whisper, not loosening my hold on him.

He looks up at me, blinking. “It was a nightmare,” he says. “The same one I always have. I wake up and she's there.”

I start to feel sick. “She?” I ask.

“Jane. She's there, holding me, I can't get out.” He's still so muted, his voice a monotone. “Her arm is pinning me down and no matter what I do, I can't get her off me.”

His eyes are glassy, unfocused. I wonder how much he's been drinking. I've no idea what the time is. Although it feels closer to morning than night-time, the last thing I remember was falling asleep just after 1:00 a.m.

I cup his face with my hands, his half-beard scratching my palms. He looks at me as if I have all the answers, and I find myself wishing I did.

“Shh, it's okay,” I croon, as if I'm talking to my baby nephew. “It was just a dream, I'm here. You're going to be okay.”

When we kiss, there's a sweetness to it. His lips are soft, whisky-coated.

“Tell me about her,” I say. “Tell me about your wife.”  

Callum says nothing, though his arms tighten. His wrists cut into my waist, almost hurting, but I can’t ask him to stop. Instead I continue stroking his hair as if he's a little boy, breathing in the earthy, masculine scent which tells me he definitely isn't.

It feels like forever before he finally speaks. “I graduated from University in 2003 and walked straight into a job at Richards and Morgan. Back then they used to take on about fifty graduates a year, it was the boom times. So there were a lot of us competing for the best projects, and trying to see who could drink the most on a Friday night.”

“Sounds familiar,” I mumble.

“I met Jane in my second week. She’d graduated from Cambridge the year before, although she was the same age as me. Even so, she had this air of ‘been there and done that’ I liked. It seemed a simple step to ask her out, see where things went.”

I don’t want to hear this, but I think I need to. This girl—this woman—has played a huge role in his life, leaving scars I didn’t know were there. I have to force myself to say, “Go on.”

“As I said, we all worked hard and played hard. Stayed at the office until ten, and then headed straight to the bars. Sometimes we’d have enough time to stumble home, take a shower and drag ourselves back into the office. It wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t healthy, but it was what everybody did. So that’s how I lived for four or five years.”

I can remember Lara telling me the same thing about her experiences working in the financial district. There was constant pressure to excel at everything, whether that was getting the most prestigious projects or being able to handle alcohol. Somehow it’s hard to picture Callum—this strong, big man—having to fight his way to the top. In my mind he was always there.

“But something changed?”

He clears his throat. “
I
changed.” He pours another splash of whisky into his glass. “I got bored of doing the same thing, day in day out. I wanted to be awake at work; I wanted to give my clients everything I had. I didn’t want to just coast along. A year later I was offered a promotion and a great job in the Edinburgh office, and I asked Jane to come up with me.”

“Did she?”

He looks down. “She didn’t want to. She liked being in London, she liked the party lifestyle. She found it a lot easier than I did to get up in the morning after a heavy night out. It took a long time for me to realise what she was doing to help her function.”

My heart catches in my throat. I know exactly how people cope with alcohol consumption on a night out. I’ve seen it before—the traces of powder, the glassy eyes. Cocaine can be an excellent anti-hangover cure.

“She was a user?”

“She didn’t see it that way. She thought it was a casual thing, something she did just to help her through the day. She swore she could stop whenever she wanted.” He laughs harshly. “Idiotic isn’t it? All addicts say the same thing, until somebody actually challenges them.”

“Did she stop?”

His pupils dilate as they take in light. He blinks rapidly as if to acclimatise himself. “We agreed to make a fresh start in Edinburgh. We got engaged, bought a flat, and started our new jobs. I thought everything was fine, that she was happy. I’d forgotten how good she was at hiding things.”

“But you got married,” I prompt. “So things must have been okay?”

“As I said, I was oblivious. Too busy at work, too busy trying to get my next promotion. I didn’t realise how unhappy Jane was, nor how she was trying to deal with her depression. We were both too ambitious to accept we could be anything less than perfect.”

I close my eyes, picturing that wedding photograph. The beautiful couple, their beaming smiles. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t genuine. How often do we hide our emotions behind a fake smile?

“Two years ago, things came to a head again,” he continues. “I was running late for work and barged into the bathroom to clean my teeth. She was leaning over the sink, snorting a line of coke. I went fucking ballistic, told her it was over, that I couldn’t take it any more. I said some things I regret, shouting I’d never have kids with her, that she’d be a shitty mother. By the time I left for work we were both boiling over.” His voice cracks. Regret seems to seep from his every pore.

I relax my hold on him, moving my hands up to cup his face. “It’s okay,” I whisper.

It’s as if he doesn’t hear me. “When I came home from work that night she was nowhere to be seen. I did what I usually did, ate some dinner, cleared my emails, went to bed. I didn’t bother calling her, didn’t bother trying to find out where she was. As far as I was concerned, she wasn’t my problem any more.”

He pulls my head to his, until our foreheads are touching. “I took a couple of sleeping pills—prescribed by my doctor for anxiety—and fell asleep. According to the police, they think Jane came home around one in the morning. They had witnesses to say she was in a bar on Rose Street until midnight. They thought she took a taxi home, though the driver never came forward.”

I shiver, in spite of the flames burning in the open fireplace next to us. Callum puts his hands over my own, holding them there, as if he’s afraid I’ll let him go. But I don’t want to release him; I want to touch him until the anguish disappears. I want to make everything right, I just don’t know how.

“I didn’t wake up until the alarm went off, just before six. The clock was on Jane’s side of the bed, and she always used to sleep through it. Normally I’d just roll over her and reach for the snooze button. But this time I couldn’t move.” He shudders, caught up in the memory. “The pathologist says I woke up at the worst time, just as rigor mortis was setting in. She’d been dead for four hours.”

This time it’s me who starts shaking. I can’t begin to imagine waking up next to a dead body. Especially somebody you loved.

I press my lips to his cheek. “She died next to you?”

“Officially it was classed as Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, although cocaine usage was a secondary factor. The reason I couldn’t move was because she was half-lying on me, her body weighing me down. It wasn’t until I was fully awake that I realised she was gone.”

“Is that why you woke up tonight?” I ask. “Because I was cuddling you?”

“It just reminded me...” He breaks off. “I didn't want to think of her with you lying next to me.”

When he starts to cry I kiss away the tears, tasting their salty sweetness. I kiss him all over, on his mouth, his nose, his forehead. I stroke his face and murmur softly, telling him I’m here, that I’m not leaving.

That’s where we stay for the rest of the night, until the morning creeps its way in, reminding us that even when our lives are rocked, the world still goes on. In the course of those pre-dawn hours, as we talk and caress, I realise I’m in love with Callum Ferguson.