Digging Deep (Xcite Romance) (7 page)

Chapter Seven

The old building had probably housed goats once, but now it was little more than a shelter from the worst ravages of the weather and a storage area for old tools. Its walls were intact, but cracks had opened in the dried-out wood, providing a plentiful range of spyholes should anyone wish to see within without necessarily being observed in return.

Each step they took across the groves towards the broken-down hut felt like making a move closer to insanity. The entirety of the past two days didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever to Beth, who forced herself to focus on the reality of the situation and not supposition. Come on woman, she told herself, you’ve got a brain. Work this out. Find a way to sort this without having to sell your soul to the devil.

Harrison thinks Candida is jealous because he likes me. Ryan is trying to seduce me because he has a bet on – which he is going to lose – and somehow Linda hopes to gain from this madness. So maybe …

‘Hang on.’ The hut only metres ahead, Beth retreated a couple of steps. ‘I’ve got an idea; one that might spare us from having to make the ultimate sacrifice.’

‘Tell me.’ Harrison’s eyes darted around the vista as he listened.

‘Why don’t we use Candida’s weapon against her?’

He tilted his head towards Beth. As she whispered into his ear, a broad grin spread over his face. ‘I take it all back, you’re not nuts. You are brilliant!’

‘It might not work.’

‘I’d rather pretend to talk to Linda on the phone and “tell her everything” than have to pretend to be attracted to that harpy. And don’t even ask how I was going to cope knowing you were coming on to Mr Adonis!’

Beth was about to say she’d had no intention of letting Ryan do more than think he was about to get his end away when a strangled murmur from the shack alerted them both. It was of such a pitch that it could only have come from Candida.

Indicating to Beth that she should stay where she was, Harrison moved closer to the building. Crouching, he peered through a crack in the wall, before inclining his head in Beth’s direction. It was all the confirmation she required. She opened her mouth in surprise. A rush of vocalised hope that Candida and Ryan had got together after all, and would therefore leave her and Harrison alone, was stifled by the swift application of Harrison’s hand over her mouth.

Quietly kneeling next to him, Beth peeped through another of the breaks in the once green-painted wood. This time, she clapped her own hand over her mouth to prevent the gasp that was hurtling up her throat.

Her mind reverted to what Harrison had overheard about how Candida couldn’t imagine anyone begging another person for a fuck. She grinned to herself. Not so in control are we now, Miss Infection!

Ryan’s back was to them; his denim shorts were in place, but his shirt was off. Any excuse to show off his pecs, Beth thought, knowing she shouldn’t be watching, but finding it difficult to tear her eyes from the spectacle before them.

It wasn’t the shapely muscles of her student’s arms or the smooth length of his back that held her attention, however; it was the girl on all fours behind him.

There was no chance Candida would see she was being observed, for Ryan’s shirt was tied over her eyes, trapping her golden hair to the back of her neck. Her naked body was so still that only the slight swing of her breasts proved she was a real woman and not just an incredibly realistic sex toy.

Increased pressure around her hand bought Beth to her senses. Moving a few steps back from the wooden wall on tiptoes so as not to alert the students to their presence, she and Harrison regarded each other, mouths open in mutual shock. Already aroused by the blowjob she’d given him, Beth felt an extra tug at her crotch when she clocked the conflicting lustful emotions on Harrison’s face.

Not wanting to risk being overheard by the occupants of the hut, Harrison took out his iPhone. Switching it to silent, he tapped urgently against the screen, before passing it to Beth to read.
Fuck! I know I shouldn’t find that hot – but hell! Now what?

Beth took the phone and typed her reply.
Stick to the plan. Wait until they’re dressing, then we’ll make a noise as if we’ve just arrived. Then u pretend to phone Linda.

Glancing pointedly at his own groin, Harrison virtually ripped his cell from Beth’s hands.
If we stay here watching that I am going to explode.

Stifling the urge to giggle, Beth added to their silent correspondence.
If I can control myself, so can you. You’re already a climax ahead of me!

But we can’t watch! They’re our students.

I can. That girl has made the last 48 hours horrid. I want to see her grovel – and we might learn something if we listen to Ryan talking to her. U can go if u like.

If Beth thought she’d seen Harrison coloured with longing before, that paled into insignificance compared to the blaze in his steel blue eyes now. It was positively radioactive. Her insides contracted with a sharp jolt. It would have been so easy to haul him into the groves, to feel his cock slid inside her, giving her body what it craved so badly. But even her desperate desire to investigate every inch of him, to lick his torso and tease his shaft between her fingers, wasn’t enough to outweigh her need to hear what Ryan and Candida might say to each other.

Taking hold of Harrison’s hand, Beth steered him back to the hut. If she was going to risk her reputation by spying on her students, so could he. Sitting side by side on the dusty soil, she placed his hand on her breast, showing him in no uncertain terms how aroused on she was.

Harrison glanced at Beth with his eyebrows raised. Of all the things he’d had her down as a voyeur wasn’t one of them. And yet, he thought as he felt the swell of her right breast poke a nipple into his fingers, she is the girl who just gave me an incredible blowjob in the middle of a field … They say it’s always the quiet ones. So much for British reserve. I wonder exactly how unreserved she can be …?

The second the idea crossed his mind, he regretted it. The texture of Beth’s lips as she’d manoeuvred his length around her mouth was an experience he’d never forget. Her tenderness, which had been undercut with a definite urgency, had left Harrison in no doubt that she wanted him for a lot more than a quick spot of oral.

As Beth’s digits crept from his hand to his bent thigh, Harrison let go of the last hope that he hadn’t been completely suckered by Linda, and finally accepted that her physical affections had only been perfunctory; not one ounce of emotion had been involved on her part.

Beth was regretting putting Harrison’s hand over her tit as much as she was enjoying it being there. Even though a bra and two additional layers of cotton stood as a barricade between her bare flesh and his, the stealthy motion of his fingers over her nipple, repeatedly buffing its tip, was flooding craving through her chest, while her eyes remained fixed on the spectacle before them.

An unmoving Ryan towered over Candida, who he seemed to be torturing with inaction. As Beth watched, the throb of Harrison’s pulse echoed from his leg through her palm and up into her pussy. The moans from Candida, which had been of the pleading without words variety, were beginning to increase in volume; suddenly, the moment that Beth was waiting for arrived as Candida’s lipstick-smudged mouth yelled, ‘Please, Ryan.’

His caressing Welsh accent responded more quietly, and Beth had to strain to hear what her student said as her own fingers walked to the base of Harrison’s backside. ‘Please, Ryan, what?’

‘Please, Ryan, touch me! Do something!’

Mentally doing some calculations, Beth tried to guess how long Ryan had kept Candida in that position. If, as the amount of uncollected field scatter would suggest, they’d come straight to the shack that morning without doing any walking at all, it could have been for some hours. But how did he get her like this? Begrudging admiration for Ryan’s seduction skills made Beth wonder if, should he have cranked the charm up a notch, it could have been her on all fours before him?

The idea of being there, air bouncing off her flesh, her chest hanging down, with a handsome naked man before her was not unappealing. But Ryan was the wrong handsome man. Beth’s continuing line of reflection on the sheer bizarreness of the last few days was finally making her think clearly for the first time in what felt like weeks. Hang on a minute, she thought. Ryan had the chance to try it on with me. We spent a day on the roof together. Although he was flirty, he never went too far. Is his heart in this bet …? Is there even a bet at all?

As Harrison’s hand continued to massage her nipple, Beth’s imagination transposed the couple before them with herself and her companion; a scenario which caused every sensual fibre in her body to rush headlong to her groin.

She badly wanted to study Harrison’s face; to see if the vision of Candida naked was having as much effect on him as it was on her. But Beth didn’t look. She didn’t want to risk missing anything as Candida yelled. ‘Touch me, damn it!’

‘Not until you agree to tell everyone the truth!’

Every hair on Beth’s body stood up. This time she did look at Harrison. The expression on his face coincided exactly with what she was thinking. Which truth?

‘Still not talking? OK.’ Ryan took his mobile from his pocket. ‘I think some insurance would be a good idea don’t you?’

As the camera on his phone clicked, Ryan moved around the swaying body. Beth barely dared breathe, not wanting to alert her student to their presence.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’

Candida’s head swung from side to side as Ryan responded in soothing tones, ‘Come now, Candida, I thought you’d approve of me having evidence of all the rumours I intend to spread about you. That’s how you work, isn’t it? And if there isn’t evidence to be gathered, then you create some.’

Putting the phone away, Ryan sat cross-legged in front of his captive’s bowed head. ‘Now then, honey, you were telling me earlier that Beth and I were having an affair?’

‘Only because you said you were!’

Ryan shook his head. ‘And why do you think I said that? Do you think I might have made it up? A lie down an empty telephone line to see if you were listening in on other people’s private conversations, perhaps?’

‘But …’

‘Didn’t you think it odd that the other students aren’t talking about it? You’ve been on enough digs to know that few groups of people can gossip like archaeologists facing a landscape of mud or sand.’

Ryan moved to Candida’s side, dancing a single finger up and down her slender spine. ‘Just say if you’d like me to stop touching you, honey. I would hate you to accuse me of acting improperly.’ He lifted his hand away. ‘Shall I stop, Candida?’

Beth could feel the knot of tension bunch in her throat with the effort of not prompting the conversation in the hut. Ryan, it seemed, had decided to trap Candida with a fake call, just as she and Harrison had planned to.

Another two seconds passed before Candida spoke, her famously loud voice muted to a humiliated squeak. ‘Touch me, Ryan. Please. I’ll explain if you do.’

‘Certainly.’ Shuffling around to her backside, Ryan stood facing the wall that Harrison and Beth were peering through.

As one, the supervisors retreated a fraction, but not so far that they couldn’t see or hear how his hand outlined the petite round of the nude buttocks. ‘I’m glad. You have a beautiful posterior, Candida. I’ve wanted to touch it for some time. I must repeat, however, that if you wish me to give you the fucking you so obviously want, then a full explanation had better be forthcoming.’

A sharp gasp shot from Candida’s mouth as Ryan’s hand disappeared from view, making Beth suspect he’d just inserted a finger in or around her pussy.

‘You have a magnificently tight little hole, honey. And so wet! Are you sure Beth is the one who’s a slut and not you? Because the evidence here seems to be to the contrary! And, as archaeologists, we should always take the evidence of our eyes
very
seriously, don’t you think?’

Beth knew she was in real danger of screaming in frustration as Harrison’s hand continued to move over her clothes, but not beneath them. She needed to feel him directly upon her skin. Now.

Not averting her eyes from the scene before her, Beth grabbed Harrison’s hand, pulled up both the tops she wore, and manhandled his unresisting palm up inside. Biting into the insides of her cheeks to prevent a groan of ecstasy as he flipped down the cup of her bra and clasped her pliant flesh, Beth replied by fondling his buried cock through the material of his shorts.

Still they watched, like rabbits caught in the headlights of sexual craving, the wrongness of watching outweighing the need to hear what was said.

Ryan was stroking Candida’s rump now, ‘Honey, I think you should talk, don’t you? I mean, I would put money on Beth or Harrison turning up to find out why the hell we haven’t done any work this morning fairly soon.’

‘But they don’t know we’re here!’

‘For fuck’s sake, Candida! Where else could we be if we aren’t in the fields, at the house, or on site? Think, woman. I know damn well you are intelligent, so use that brain of yours and work out what’s best. I could easily walk out of here now, complete with my nice new photographs of you, and leave you horny and desperate.’

Candida growled, ‘You want me too much for that!’

‘Don’t kid yourself, honey. Yes, I’m stiff for you. You’re bloody hot, and if you’d just stop all the stalker informer crap, then I’ll admit I’d like to have serious fun with you! In the meantime, what’s to stop me wanking off over your body and heading off to collect pottery without you? Nothing at all.’

Beth frowned. She couldn’t understand why Candida didn’t just stand up.

Risking edging forwards a bit, hoping that Ryan was too intent upon his comrade to notice any alteration in the shadows, Beth rose up on her knees, and peered through a higher crack in the wood to get her first view of the dirty floor, and Candida’s hands and feet.

The tape measures, which should have been lined up in the fields to mark off any major discoveries in the olive groves, were looped around her hands and feet, joining all four of Candida’s limbs together in an elaborate figure of eight. Although it wouldn’t have been impossible for her to escape, it would have been difficult.