Seduction (11 page)

He reached behind him to grab the jug of wine, and took two bottles out of her crate. He grinned as he tipped the liquid into the slim bottles until they were full. Still staring at her, he ripped a label off her roll, swiped one across his wet tongue, and stuck it onto the elegant brown glass flank. Then he banged a cork into the mouth and dumped it back into the crate before spreading out his hands triumphantly.

‘Job done! How hard can it be?' She couldn't help clapping her hands. ‘Christ, you are a wicked man!'

He laughed then, a kind of husky breath, filled up the other bottle and tipped some more into her laughing mouth. This time it splashed all over her breasts, dripping onto her nipples, and they both stopped laughing. They looked down at the dark-red, pointed nipples, wet with wine. He remained kneeling. She reached up, and pulled him down on top of her. He hesitated, then let himself sink down. He took her arms and held them above her head. The rough sacking scratched where her blouse had ridden up her back. She raised her spine off the bale to escape the prickles. Her torso was arched towards him and so were her breasts. Straining desperately towards him, his hands, his mouth. The most natural position in the world.

‘They told me never to speak to you,' she said. ‘But they didn't tell me not to touch you.'

He smiled then, and nodded as if he'd heard her, and the warmth inside her turned to fire. His nostrils were flared with the effort of breathing calmly. He was heavy on her legs. Her breath was shallow, barely there. One hand held her arms down while the other started to move down to her breast, feeling its weight against the palm of his hand. Then he bent down, muscles bulging in his arm as he supported his weight, and sucked the wine off her nipple. She moaned and flung her head back. He put one knee between her legs, still sucking, opening her, then he lifted her skirt, her petticoat, to reveal the cumbersome bloomers. Caterina squirmed with confusion, trying to cover the horrible undergarments, but he pushed the skirt and petticoat up to her waist, unaccustomed air playing on her thighs, and took hold of the bloomers. The slight ripping sound as he yanked them down was electrifying in its quiet violence and she opened her legs for him as he touched her, right there, in her wet crack.

Through the thin material of his trousers she could feel the thick outline of his cock jutting right up against her thigh,
nudging against the cleft between her legs. The rain rushed through the door like hushed voices.

She became frantic now. She wrenched her hands free from his and grabbed at him to unbuckle his belt. She tore at his jeans. She wanted him inside her, his cock pushing up her. He grabbed her wrists again, pinning them down with one hand while he drew his cock out. It was hard, jumping in his hand. She wound her legs round his hips. The hay scratched into the crack of her bare bum.

Zorzi paused for a moment as if asking her permission. His eyes were glazed with desire as he searched her mouth for an answer.

‘Yes,' she gasped. ‘Fuck me, Zorzi.'

An explosive rush of excitement spurted through her, crazy and hot. She was lost. Any more words were stopped by her moans of pleasure as he started to run his cock up the soft skin of her inner thighs, guiding it to her swollen wet lips. Like some kind of harlot she knew to wriggle until he was deeper inside her. No niceties, no teasing as it slid inside and she gripped him tight inside her. The pleasure darkened to a hot peak ready to shatter her, no waiting, no possibility of waiting.

He pulled back for a tantalising moment, just as she'd envisaged, running the head of his cock round the tender groove, then he thrust into her, scraping her against the sacking, lifting her with his violence, until she heard her own animal shrieks of pleasure. He crushed her as he fucked her then shuddered violently, lying on her to kiss her again, licking and biting her mouth and her face as the excitement burst inside her, too, splitting her willing virginal body wide open.

Caterina let her arms and legs flop sideways and took his weight as he rested on top of her for a moment.

‘If this is the Garden of Eden, that makes me Eve,' she said lazily, kissing his fingers.

The bell started tolling. ‘The way you watch my lips all the time,' she said. ‘That's because you're reading my lips?'

‘No. It's because I want them wrapped around my cock.' His voice was deep and sexy and so shocking that he lifted her easily to her feet. ‘That's going to be lesson number two.'

Primula Bond is the author of the Black Lace novels
Club Crème
and
Country Pleasures
, and the Nexus novel
Behind the Curtain
.

THEY SNAKED THROUGH
the narrow gorge, on roads running alongside sheer drops that would take them plummeting into the lush valley below were he to make the slightest error of judgment. She glanced, every few minutes, surreptitiously, almost shamefully, at her husband. The word still seemed strange to her, sometimes, as if she were living a dream – a dream that had lasted fifteen years now. Long enough for them to be making this trip, this second honeymoon. Why then did saying ‘husband' still leave such an odd taste in her mouth?

She wasn't afraid; her stolen glances assured her that all was well, that he was in control of the little red convertible. He had always been a confident driver. In fact, that was one of the things that had first attracted her to him.' his calm assurance, his hands lax yet firm on the wheel. He'd driven her out to country pubs, in the early days, and his prowess at the wheel had impressed her then, excited her even. On the way home he'd pull up somewhere – on an ill-frequented lane or in the gateway to a field – and, leaning over her in the passenger seat, push her mini-skirt up over her hips, yank down her knickers with the same assurance that he showed at the wheel, and finger her in the darkness. When she was on the verge of climax, he'd climb over onto her, fumbling for the side lever, and, once she was prone beneath him on the lowered seat,
push his proud cock inside her and fuck her until the car shook to their rhythm.

She looked out of the window at the clefts and creases of the Provençal valley in all its green splendour. She missed those days so hard it hurt; sometimes she felt she would do almost anything to recapture the flavour of them, if only for a few moments. But the barrier of years stood between them and the present, making it seem impossible to re-experience them by any means except this burning nostalgia, a fire in her belly. Years of recriminations and resentments, years of spats and petty injustices batted between them, years of point-scoring. Sex was no longer something uncomplicated and spontaneous, but instead just another tool, or weapon, in the armoury of married life.

A second honeymoon, then, with the kids safely installed at their grandmother's house, watching too much TV and eating food forbidden at home. Bad habits instilled that it would take her weeks to undo. She glanced at Nick again, raising her hand and letting down her hair so that it swung with the movements of the car on the increasingly tight bends. As it brushed her bare shoulders in her halter-neck top, she felt a little freer: forget the kids and what they might or might not be eating – this was about her and Nick. It was a long-overdue break from the domestic and from the strains of his over-taxing career; a respite from daily cares and chores and from the fatigue of being responsible for other lives. A chance to find themselves again.

He slowed down as they ascended a road into one of the scenic
villages perchés
that dotted the hillsides of this region, and as he did so he turned his head a little and caught her eye.

‘What?' she said, flustered for a moment, and she wondered what it was in her own regard that made him look so questioning, ill at ease even.

She shook her head, and he looked back at the road, a frown tautening his brow as he saw the streets narrow ahead. She
watched his hand on the polished leather of the gearstick as he shunted the car down a notch and eased it around a corner into the labyrinth of the town centre. As he did so, she heard him sigh. She looked down at the map, traced a tiny white line on it with one fingertip.

‘Not far now,' she reassured him. ‘About three kilometres beyond Tourettes – this town – we cross a main road and the village is about another five kilometres from there.'

‘And the hotel?'

She bit her lip, rustled through the papers on her lap. ‘Mmmm – don't seem to have a street name on the email I printed out. But it's pin-sized on the map, the town. Can't be that hard to find.'

She watched as he nodded, checking the rear-view mirror at the same time, and though her instinct was to reach over and place her hand on the top of his thigh, as she had so many times in the past, she couldn't bring herself to act on the impulse.

The car swept down the broad driveway of the
mas
, bordered by silvery olive trees and aromatic lavender bushes, and entered the small car park. Beside the sleek black Porsches and glittering pewter Mercedes, their modest sports car lacked lustre. Sweaty and rumpled in the clothes she had worn for the flight, she felt unglamorous, middle-aged, although she knew thirty-five was considered still young these days. She glanced appraisingly at Nick; with his five o'clock shadow and salt-and-pepper hair, he too looked worn, past his sell-by date. She swallowed, wondering if they should have saved their money, spent it on improving the house. God knows it needed it.

But it was too late; already a porter was making his way over to them from the entrance, offering in faultless English to help them with their luggage. As the man opened the passenger door, he smiled down at her, and she felt a rush of blood to her face. His bronzed perfection, his flashing white teeth, the
pressed black linen of his designer suit made her feel even more dishevelled and flustered. Accepting the hand he proffered her along with his smile, she stepped up and out of the car, smoothed down her skirt, attempted to smile back. Her mouth felt small and pinched, measly.

In their room, five minutes later, she opened the bath taps, poured in some of the complimentary algae salts, and then opened the windows onto a heart-stopping view over Provence hills and the perfume city of Grasse, shimmering in the sunlight like a mirage. Absently unbuttoning her shirt and slipping off her skirt, she stood mesmerised in her bra and knickers, letting the soft fragrant air caress her skin, teasing out the weariness of travel.

A flutter of fingers at her elbow brought her back to herself. Involuntarily she flinched. She knew Nick would be eager to make love, without preamble. He never seemed to understand that she needed some time to herself, to soak up the unfamiliar surroundings, to bed down in a new place and make it, in some sense, her own. His haste, his insistence, turned her off now, where once it had thrilled.

He sensed her reticence but persisted, and after a few minutes she had to shrug him off, telling him she needed to check that her bath wasn't overflowing. But the words were barely out and already he was turning away, expecting this.

At the bathroom door, she looked back over her shoulder, felt a pinch around her heart as she saw the same old dejection on his face, like a stain. He tried to hide it but never could; she knew him, and it, too well by now. How little it would take, she told herself, and not for the first time, for her to open herself up to him. Yet again and again she turned away. She frowned as she bent forward to swoosh the bathwater with one hand.

Freshly bathed, skin warm, pink and glowing beneath her fluffy white bathrobe, she found him gone, and was ashamed
to feel relief. He must have set out to explore the hotel's abundant hanging gardens that they had admired together on its website; perhaps he had stopped for a cool drink in one of the hammocks strung between the fig trees, or was investigating the three pools – a large and a small swimming pool and then a hydrotherapy pool in the Japanese gardens by the spa. Beside the latter was one of the
mas
's two open-air Jacuzzis. She wondered if the place were busy at this time of year or quiet now, a few weeks ahead of the season. She'd seen no other guests as they checked in. She and Nick might be lucky and have the place to themselves, or almost – there were always the staff flitting about, attentive to all needs, immaculate in their sharp black linen.

From where she was now sitting on the end of the bed, she let herself flop back, her bathrobe falling open around her, the sunlight pouring in on her from the open window. Her head on a pillow, she gazed down at her breasts, at her belly, with their fine hairs glimmering in the light. She thought of herself by the poolside, beside honed bodies fresh from the beaches of Cannes or St-Tropez. How would she measure up? Dare she go out there in the bikini she had splashed out on at the plush little lingerie shop that had just opened up around the corner from her house? And the spa? Would the French masseuse sneer secretly at this less-than-perfect body, marked by time, childbirth and the accidents of life?

She took a breast in each hand, brushed her nipples with the pads of her thumbs. A shiver ran through her, making her arch her back. She closed her eyes and pushed the rear of her head further down into the pillow, so plump, pliant and luxurious it must have been filled with the finest goose-down. Her eyelids burned acid-yellow. She emitted an involuntary moan, and let one of her hands move down to burrow itself between her legs.

She was surprised to find herself wet, already. Was it thoughts of the tanned bodies from the Côte d'Azur, or was the
bronzed Adonis of a porter still in her mind? She shook her head. No – despite, or perhaps because of, his perfection, the latter couldn't stir her. Looks like that intimidated her, rather than inflaming her. The same went for the beach-buff bodies. For the first time in years, it seemed, she was finding pure pleasure in herself, in the feel of the breeze and the sunlight on her bare, cleansed flesh.