The Gift (16 page)

Sandy tried to imagine the pain, and the fear of that particular injury, but it was difficult. It clearly affected him, but it didn’t affect her.

She still thought his body was beautiful. The scars were savage but, to her, not repulsive. Dropping a kiss on his cock-tip, she then tracked her way down his length with
more kisses, and progressed from there to his belly and the nearest of his scars.

This she kissed and licked and nuzzled with all the fervour she’d applied to his erection. She ran her fingers lightly up and down it, then plunged in again, with another kiss. A dream, a memory from the past flitted through her mind, and she murmured, ‘Kiss it better …’ before pressing her lips to the scar once again.

Jay’s body shook under her mouth, wracked by a long shiver, and his hands tightened in her hair. ‘Oh God,’ he gasped, still trembling, and for a moment Sandy thought he was about to come. Either that or push her away. When she glanced up, he was staring at the sky, his face a strange anguished mask, and his eyes over-bright. Not with lust, she realised, but what looked suspiciously like moisture.

‘Jay! Are you all right? I haven’t hurt you or anything?’ His expression worried her, even though just inches from her face his erect penis was unwavering, despite the cold. ‘What is it?’ she demanded when he didn’t answer.

‘Nothing.’ His husky voice sounded as if the word was wrenched from his very gut. ‘Nothing at all.’ He looked down again, his mouth working. Then he smiled, his gaze flicking from her face to his erection, and back again. ‘Aren’t you going to do anything about that?’

‘Do you want me to?’ She was still concerned. He was smiling, but he was still tense. Maybe it was just that he had the mad horn and needed to come? But she had a feeling it was something else entirely.

‘Need you ask?’ Jay shifted his hips, moving against her, manoeuvring his cock close to her lips.

The proximity of his heat, his hardness, was irresistible. Sandy enveloped him, folding her lips around the crown of
his penis and starting to lick and tease and suck all over again. His taste was fine and salty, raw but not rank, warm and healthy. More silky pre-come flooded onto her tongue and she went, ‘mm … mm …’, savouring it.

His jeans fit snugly, and she couldn’t reach in to caress his balls, so she slid her hand beneath to cradle them lightly through the denim. Even though the cloth was sturdy, she could almost feel them tensing, crawling, rising, ready to shoot his semen as he came. He was right at the edge and she felt powerful, in control.

Forming tight suction around the tip of his cock, she sucked hard, flicking beneath it with her tongue at the same time. With her free hand around his shaft, she lightly pumped.

Jay cried out incoherently, his hips beginning to work in the age-old jackhammer action of frantic orgasm. He pounded her, his cock knocking the inside of her cheek as he lost all semblance of control, and she lost the ability to control him. His fingers contorting against her scalp, he shouted, ‘Princess! Oh – oh God!’ as he jerked and filled her mouth with hot sweet come.

Shocked but thrilled, Sandy struggled to breathe, loving the taste of him, and greedily swallowing his essence. She’d never done this, not willingly, but now she wanted to. She wanted to absorb this little part of him into herself, and she would have swallowed more if there had been more of it to come.

After a few moments he began to subside and she let him slip from between her lips, not wanting to hurt him if he was hypersensitive. She felt him release what had become a death grip on her head and, as she drew away, she dropped just the lightest feather of a kiss upon his softening penis,
barely a breath, and then another one upon the livid scar. Taking a gasp of air, she laid her cheek against his thigh.

The hands that had almost clawed her scalp now settled gently against it, curved in a gracious arc. She felt his thumbs lightly stroking as he seemed to come back into himself and return from that other place, the realm of orgasm. It was soothing, almost soporific, and she rested more heavily against him, breathing in the blended scents of semen, expensive cologne and woods and snow and earth. High in the tree beside them, some unknown bird sang a winter song, pure and sweet.

They sat like that for a while, not talking and, in Sandy’s case, barely thinking. The presence of Jay was calming, easy somehow, and even the icy air against her naked breasts didn’t feel cold or disquieting. His hands were still against her head now but, even so, she imagined she could sense the very whirls and whorls of his fingerprints where they rested against the mass of her hair.

She felt so relaxed that the question she was afraid to ask seemed unimportant. Kneeling against him, slumped between stile and tree, for the moment it didn’t matter who he was.

‘Thank you.’ As he spoke, Jay leaned down and kissed the top of her head. His fingers slid under her chin, and lifted her face. ‘Thank you,’ he repeated, then kissed her brow exquisitely chastely.

‘Nothing to thank me for. I enjoyed it.’ Again, she acknowledged the truth of it. Giving oral sex had never been a favourite of hers, but with Jay it was different, like the divine duty of some sacred priestess. She laughed at the thought, and he looked perplexed for a moment, then laughed along with her.

‘I didn’t used to like giving blow jobs,’ she admitted, touching her fingertips to his cock, still exposed, and watching it twitch and thicken. ‘Selfish, I guess. Nothing in it for me. But you seem to taste nicer than most. Very yum, in fact.’ He seemed to stir more vigorously, as if from the praise as much as her touch.

Jay drew in a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t so much the blow job as the other thing.’ He laid a hand over his abdomen, pressing the cotton of his T-shirt against the scar beneath. ‘Not being bothered by the scar there.’ His mouth tightened suddenly. ‘Although that’s by no means the full extent of the scarring. There’s a lot more.’ He looked away from her a moment, as if he were physically going away, rather than simply glancing into the middle distance.

‘It won’t faze me, no matter how many scars you’ve got. You’re strong, you’ve got a good body. They’re just marks, Jay, nothing more.’ She laughed softly. ‘Everything works, and that’s what matters.’

He grinned. Beamed even. He looked like an adolescent boy, discovering the phenomenon of his erection for the very first time.

‘Indeed it does. Indeed it does.’

He inclined over her again, finding her mouth for a kiss this time. A deep one, long, and moist and probing. Reaching down, he cupped her bare breast as he tasted her, thumb delicately strumming her nipple.

When she was gasping for air, he broke away from her, his bearded face still alight and happy.

‘Look, I want to make love to you. Long, slow, lazy love. But not out here in this bloody freezing lane.’ He nodded to the field, the stile. ‘I want to treat you to a bit of luxury, not a roll around in muck and snow, with twigs sticking into our
arses and goosebumps forming on all the bits of us that aren’t actually rubbing together.’

‘We could go back to the Teapot. I think Kat’s gone off somewhere with Greg. I think he’s got the afternoon off too.’

Sliding his hands to her waist, Jay lifted Sandy with him as he rose to his feet. While she fumbled with her bra catch, her fingers really chilly now, he zipped himself up. She felt a pang of loss, denied the sight of his magnificent cock rising again.

‘No, let’s go to the Waverley. Get some room service. Indulge ourselves.’ Covered again, he reached across and deftly fastened her bra for her, then her top, as if he buttoned up women’s clothing every day. ‘Would you like that?’ he asked, pulling her jacket tightly around her again, to warm her up.

‘Yes, I would. That’d be great.’

Yes, it would be fun to see more of the infamous Waverley Grange. She tried to imagine it as he led her along the path. She’d only seen the public rooms so far, but she couldn’t forget the blatantly erotic art. Did the rooms and suites have kinky pictures and photographs on their walls, to turn the guests on? She only really had local gossip to go by, and Greg’s tall tales. But then he might have been exaggerating to turn Kat on!

When they rounded the corner, the lovers and their car had gone, and the coast was clear. Her heart lifted as they strode back over the cold earth, towards the Aston. What could be better? The infamously naughty hotel, a bit of luxury … and Jay.

Chintz! Good God, she’d never seen so much of it in her life!

The décor of the most notorious hotel in the entire borough area wasn’t quite what Sandy had expected. It was cosy. Almost homely. Intimate but old fashioned. There was a picture of a topless woman on the wall, but it was tastefully bland and conveniently soft focus.

Jay had a medium-sized room, nothing too ostentatious. It had obviously been serviced since he’d left it that morning. There were fresh tea and coffee fixings on the courtesy tray but, as she wandered around, he rang down for a proper afternoon tea to be brought up for them.

Courtesy copies of several local magazines lay on a chest of drawers by the window, along with the
Kissley Gazette
, the county paper and the
Financial Times
. There was also a very plain but obviously expensive attaché case beside the papers, along with a high-end laptop, a personal organiser and two mobile phones.

What do you do, Jay?

It was a change from
Who are you?
she supposed. The
FT
and the electronic paraphernalia suggested business to her,
and she puffed out her cheeks, feeling uneasy, her stomach crawling inexplicably. She’d wanted to come here, but suddenly it didn’t seem quite such a good idea. Suddenly, she didn’t want to know who he was, or what he did. Not at all. In the café, and down Adultery Alley, things were simpler. Just sex, and maybe a little bit of fondness.

The sound of springs being depressed by a body’s weight made her spin around.

Jay was sitting on the side of the bed, watching her intently. She could see he wanted her. He’d been partially aroused most of the way here in the car, even though he’d driven in silence, apparently deep in thought. Once or twice he’d compressed his lips as if grappling with some difficult decision or problematic concept, but, when he’d glanced at her, his grey eyes had still been fiery with sexual heat.

Right now, he looked perplexed, as if his body was tugging him one way – towards fucking her – and his mind was pulling him another, towards something far less pleasant.

‘What is it?’ Better get it over with.

She walked to the bed and sat down, not touching him even though she wanted to. The knot of his erection, straining the denim at his crotch, called to her fingers, and she wanted to see not just it but also the rest of his body, to assure him that any number of scars couldn’t diminish his raw attractiveness.

He didn’t reach for her, even though she sensed he wanted to just as much as she wanted him to. His mouth twitched again, and he rubbed quickly at his beard, biting his lip.

What the hell is it? Something was chipping away at what she’d thought was über-confidence. Even his concerns over his scarring hadn’t affected him quite this way.

‘What is “what”?’

Oh Christ, he’s married!

The classic snafu. People did these things. Men on business trips, playing around. Women bored or disappointed with their husbands, seeking solace elsewhere. All kinds of reasons for all kinds of people. She could understand it in some cases, but it wasn’t her scene. It would fuck things up pretty irrevocably.

She opened her mouth to speak, not sure what would come out of it. ‘You’ve got a look on your face as if you’ve got something unpleasant to tell me. Why don’t you just spit it out?’

‘And if I don’t, is that the end of things? Can’t we just have our fun, no questions asked?’

Heat twisted in Sandy’s chest. She didn’t want to feel this way, nagging and needy. She wanted to be sexy and sophisticated, take her pleasure while she may. Jay could be gone tomorrow, or the day after, without a backward glance. It was probably better not to know too much about him, less painful that way.

Yet still she wanted to know things. Discover his secrets. Oh hell, she wanted to lay claim, and that made her a bloody fool!

Jay was on his feet beside her, tall and towering. She turned to face him, and he looked strong and rocklike and watchful. Unapologetic too, she noticed, but vaguely defensive.

Why would he feel that way? He was the one who’d said it was just fun between them. Just sexual exploration. The image of him on his knees before her, out in the cold gardens beyond the window, rose before her eyes. She remembered the feel of his hot mouth and his nimble
tongue beleaguering her sex, so real that her clit burned with need. But still she couldn’t speak, and Jay frowned at her silence, as if frustrated by it.

‘You didn’t ask any questions when you let me lick your pussy.’

‘Must you be so crude?’ How ridiculous a thing was that to say? It wasn’t crude. It was true. And she’d loved it. She’d love it again right now too, despite his sudden evasiveness.

‘OK, but what do you want me to call it?’ he countered.

‘I don’t know. But I wish you hadn’t done it.’

‘Liar. You enjoyed it. The fact that we’ve only just met doesn’t stop you responding to what I can do to you, does it?’

‘It might do now.’

‘Bollocks.’

She glared at him. He looked back, face more masklike than she’d ever seen it. His scars were suddenly starkly vivid, but he was still the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And in his eyes, something … something indefinable. Fugitive. Almost familiar.

‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Close the gap between us and let me touch you. And then tell me that you can’t get wet for me again.’

‘No.’

‘Coward.’

‘Fuck you!’

‘I wish you would.’

Anger swirled, desire coiled into it, indivisible. She’d never been a coward and she wasn’t one now. She’d take this strange secretive arrogant bastard of a man and use him. Then throw him away, and try to make the best of her life and her café, chalking Jay Bentley down to experience and the desire to experiment.