In Too Deep (19 page)

‘So, do you come here often?’ I ask, and we both burst out laughing, dropping temporarily out of role. Our giggles raise a curious look from his cousin, who arrives with our champagne, but, the soul of discretion, she simply opens the bottle with a professional smoothness, then leaves us to it with a slight smile on her face.

Is she in on this? I suppose so. But it doesn’t really bother me. I’m focused on Daniel, and Daniel alone. Oh, and Nemesis …

‘Yes, actually,’ he says at length, still smiling, ‘it’s one of my favourite hotels.’ He pauses, favouring me again with that sexy, blatantly undressing gaze. ‘Probably because the women in here are always so beautiful.’

I laugh again. I can’t help myself. I know we’re flirting and playing games, but in my heart and my gut I know he really means it. Am I beautiful? Tonight, I choose to believe so. Not sure how to answer, though, I pick up my champagne flute and hold it towards him for a toast. The clink of glass is communication enough.

The wine is superb. I’m no expert, but somehow its smooth complexity connects on every level with my senses. Its delicate effervescence is the very embodiment of the excitement between Daniel and me. Watching him take a tiny sip from his glass makes me quiver and yearn to feel him deep inside me. His mouth touches the rim of the glass and a little of the champagne glistens on his lip. Slowly, his tongue sweeps out to lick the wine from the soft and sensuous curve. My body shudders and clenches hard, just from watching him.

‘So?’ he says softly, setting his glass down with a click on the bar.

Fuck it, I don’t want to play games any more. Correction,
I
just want to play
some
games. Sexy games with Daniel, up in his room. All this dancing around, pretending to be other people, it just gets in the way of me getting close to him.

Daniel’s long fingers play up and down the stem of his glass, and he looks at me, slightly sideways, as if he’s reading me.

‘Don’t you want to play?’

It’s as if I’ve had the breath knocked out of me. I swig some champagne and only just avoid sneezing at the bubbles going up my nose. How the hell does he always manage to know what’s going on inside my head?

‘Yes, I want to play.’ I put my glass to my lips again, then replace it on the counter. ‘But just a simple game. Just you and me. Never mind all this argy-bargy with N–’

In a swift, accurate movement, he reaches out, places his fingers across my lips. They’re warm and their touch makes me feel weak.

‘Just a simple game, eh?’ He looks at me intently, his eyes softly brown behind his glasses. For just a second a shadow moves in their depths and he frowns ever so slightly. Then it’s gone in a flash, and he smiles. ‘That works for me.’ He strokes my lips very delicately, then withdraws and reaches for his glass again. He’s very abstemious. He only takes a minute sip.

I take another sip of champagne too, determined that, no matter what the cost, I’m going to drink this stuff regularly. A bottle a month from Tesco – I’m sure I can afford that to rekindle memories of a special night like this.

Suddenly, things start to move rather fast. Daniel asks for the rest of our bottle, plus a second one, to be taken up to his room. I drain my glass, but he looks at his, leaves it and leads the way out of the Lawns Bar, across the foyer and into the lift.

It’s just a short ride up, but it feels like an eternity. I want
to
touch him, kiss him, but he gives me a stern-playful look and retreats to the corner of the car, staring back at me, his fingertips pressed together and resting against his lips. I might have thought he was meditating if his eyes didn’t burn so, behind his glasses.

It dawns on me that I’m not in control any more. I was, but, without registering the exact moment it happened, I’ve ceded it to Daniel. I have to dance to his tune, and the realisation makes me feel giddy, bubbly like the champagne. And filled with raw lust. Mad fantasies rage through my mind, fragmentary scenarios from the secret porn stash at the library and from dark depths of my subconscious that I wasn’t aware of.

Daniel is Nemesis now, and I’m panting to do anything he desires.

When we reach his floor, he directs me along the corridor, still without speaking, and we pass several room numbers – 11, 15, 17 – until at last he pauses in front of number 19 and takes out his key-card.

He ushers me inside.

I shudder as I precede him into the room, finding it difficult to breathe. This feels like more, so much more than our minor escapades in the library archive and amongst the mops at my building. There’s a sense of ritual and formality, and the image of Daniel in that leather mask rises up again from the murky depths of my imagination, bringing a fresh surge of yearning to my sex.

I open my mouth to speak, not knowing what I’m going to say, but Daniel sets his fingers very softly across my lips again.

‘This is a simple game, remember? No reservations. No complications.’ His hand, so warm and forbidding, is still across my face, so I just nod. ‘I’d like to be in control. Total control. Is that agreeable to you?’

His power makes me feel fainter than ever and I nod again, feeling a wild whirling, as if I’m being lifted out of the realm of the real and the normal by a powerful twister. I’ve never been more afraid or more excited in my life.

He takes his hand from my face and retreats a few steps to sit in one of the large, over-stuffed, chintz-covered armchairs. He lounges back, his arms along the armrests, and seems perfectly relaxed. His eyes are still on me though, sharp and dark, like a raptor’s. The eyes of Nemesis. Not the flattering cajoling Nemesis of the letters and messages, but a new one, who knows exactly what he wants.

In the absence of any formal instructions. I don’t know what to do. I just stand there, clutching my little evening purse while I feel his assessing gaze slide over me. All I can do is listen to the silence, aware of the blood, hormones and fluids pumping and sliding around my body and my skin. Sweat prickles between my breasts and in the creases of my groin, and between my thighs I’m already wet.

‘Show me your panties.’

His voice is quiet, matter-of-fact, but it still makes me jump. It’s such a simple request but it feels as extreme and outrageous as if he’d asked me to lie down on the carpet naked and bring myself off with a vibrator. With shaking hands I place my bag on the bedside table and start to slide up my skirt. The action reminds me of when I did more or less the same thing in the library basement, but that seems to be a hundred years ago, and performed by an entirely different person.

Slowly, and still trembling, I display my red lace French knickers, and the elaborately decorated tops of my stockings where they attach to my garter belt.

His face remains very calm, very still, but behind the lenses of his glasses his eyes flicker with seething fires. I can feel the heat from where I stand, burning and burning me as he keeps
me
there, held in place by the weight of his stare for what feels like hour after hour after hour.

The sweat, and other secretions, gather and flow.

After an age, he says, ‘Remove them, then bring them to me.’

It’s as if there’s a band round my chest. It’s difficult to breathe, I’m so excited. I’m not sure I can peel off my knickers without falling over, never mind do it with any grace. But I’ve had my instructions and I have to comply.

I compromise by leaning on the bedside table while I reach round under the bunched folds of my skirt and pluck at my knickers’ elastic. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to seek support like this or keep my pussy exposed throughout the process, but Daniel remains superficially unmoved by my efforts to retain a modicum of elegance.

The flimsy lace is in danger of winding itself round the slim heels of my shoes as I grapple with it, but the gods smile and I manage to get my pants off without falling on my face or my backside. Defiantly, I let my skirt drop and cover me, then walk slowly towards him and hold out my offering.

‘Are you fragrant?’ His lips curl impishly and he lifts his hands and steeples his fingers in that sage academic way of his. What does he want? Does he want me to smell my own knickers in front of him? My decorum rebels, but I hold the red lace up to my nose for a moment and make a show of sniffing. They’re already ripe with the oceanic smell of arousal, but that doesn’t surprise me. Who wouldn’t be soaked and aromatic under the spell of the beautiful man who sits before me?

He holds out his hand, and I dart forwards and almost throw my bundle into it. This wins me a wider smile, twinkly and familiar, much more the Daniel that I know and love so dearly. Unfolding the flimsy garment, he studies it as if it’s an artefact he’s uncovered in his research. His thumb slides over the lace,
gauging
its sheerness and assessing its texture, then he lifts it by the waistband and examines its construction. Which makes me blush furiously, not because they’re my knickers and they’re scented with the odour of my lust, but because to fit a girl like me they’re not exactly tiny.

Daniel’s eyes flick from my underwear to me, and it’s as if he reads me completely.

‘They’re gorgeous. And so are you.’ He tips his head to one side, doing that professor-despairing-of-a-thick-pupil thing again. ‘Skinny women don’t interest me. I like curves, flesh, womanliness … as most men do, my lovely Gwendolynne, as most men do.’

‘If you say so.’ Although he’s not said as much, I know I’m not supposed to speak, but I can’t help blurting it out. I’m happy that he’s said what he said. I sort of knew that in my heart already, but it’s good to hear it straight from his lips.

He gives me a stern little look, and seems just about to reprimand me, when there’s a soft knock at the door.

‘Ah, that’ll be our champagne. About time.’

Moving faster than seems possible, he leaps to his feet and gives me a hard kiss on the mouth, then sort of tangos me back to the bed and makes me sit down. He gives me another lightning-fast kiss, then calls out, ‘Come in!’

11 Games

THE DOOR SWINGS
open. Oh, God, it was unlocked throughout the whole business of me taking off my panties. What if room service had done just the cursory knock-and-enter thing? Fortunately at the Waverley they have a little more decorum, and there’s a short tactful pause before a tall, very dignified woman with beautifully coiled black hair pushes a trolley into the room.

‘Your champagne.’ Her smile is discreet, neutral, unreadable. ‘And strawberries, courtesy of the management.’ Next to the jumbo-sized ice bucket, with our existing half bottle of bubbly plus a new, unopened one, there’s a silver bowl full of large succulent-looking strawberries. Two tall flutes stand alongside, delicate and sparkling. All very
Pretty Woman
.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ enquires our waitress. Although, come to think of it, I see that she really isn’t a waitress at all. She’s wearing a very elegant and severe black suit, with a discreet name badge on her lapel saying ‘Saskia Woodville, Assistant Manager’.

‘Yes, thank you.’

She proffers a folder with a chit to sign, and, as Daniel’s back is to me, I don’t see the transaction, but I see a faint, complicit smile warm the Assistant Manager’s face. Is she part of the charade too? After all, this is Daniel’s cousin’s hotel.

The tall woman turns her smile on me, and it’s pleasant, open and genuine. ‘Good evening, madam,’ she says quietly, then retreats. At the door she pauses and, for just a second,
her
eyes flick to the chintz armchair where Daniel was sitting a moment ago. The corners of her red-painted mouth curve fleetingly, then she’s out of the door and gone, closing it soundlessly.

Only when I follow the track of that quick last glance do I realise that my red knickers are lying there on the seat, clearly visible. My face burns pink with mortification, but then I relax. What’s the big deal with a pair of naughty knickers on show? The Waverley is a wicked hotel with a wicked reputation. And I’m a wicked woman in a wicked relationship. Ms Woodville probably wouldn’t have turned a hair if I’d been stretched out on the bed naked. Or even if Daniel had been stretched out on top of me, giving me his all.

‘You’re not embarrassed, are you?’ Daniel returns to his armchair, picks up my red lace frippery on one tapered fingertip and lets it swing slightly. ‘They see much naughtier things every night in this place,’ he adds, confirming my suspicions as he flings himself back into his chair, and begins to fondle my knickers again in a slow contemplative way that only makes me wish he was fondling me with such deliberation. Now that my crotch is naked I feel my sticky, silky fluid begin to well and seep, and as Daniel gives me a puckish little smile, accompanied by a waggle of his dark eyebrows, a thick trickle of it slides tellingly down my leg until it reaches the lace top of my sheer stocking.

‘I’m sure they do.’ I’m getting nervous again now. Edgy, energised, popping with readiness, but not sure what I should be readying myself for. Anticipation is like thin bands of steel wound around me, hampering my breathing, controlling my body, my limbs. I try not to gasp and give myself away.

‘Pour me some wine,’ says Daniel casually, still handling my underwear.

Am I supposed to serve him? Act as his handmaiden? A part
of
me rebels at such a subservient role, but most of me thrills to it in some ancient, primal way. Another dribble of hot honey wets my stocking-top.

Trying not to shake, I cross to the trolley and pour champagne into one of the tall, pretty glasses. When I pause and look across at Daniel, the bottle hovering over a second glass, his eyes narrow warningly behind his spectacles. Clearly I have to earn my champagne, but in what way I’m not quite sure yet.

I serve him, and he drops my panties on the chair arm before taking the glass from me. He takes a very small but very lingering sip again. He’s barely drinking tonight, and for some reason I get the impression it’s not really of his choosing. I start to wonder about that, but all the while his eyes are locked on mine, and I can almost imagine that he’s forbidding my speculations. Having drunk only the tiniest amount of the fine wine, he puts the flute on the table beside his chair.