The British Bachelors Collection

‘That’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, you could say that it makes the situation much more interesting.’

‘I’m not an interesting person.’

‘Leave the character assessment to me...’ He smoothed his hand over her thigh, slipped it underneath, sandwiching it between her legs, his own personal hand warmer.

Violet knew exactly what sort of character assessment he was talking about. It had nothing to do with her personality.

‘So we’re here...and we’re sleeping together. You might say it adds a great deal more veracity to the situation. No need to pretend...’

Except, Violet thought, they were still pretending. Pretending an emotional connection that was absent, even though there was now a physical one.

‘You’re still frowning.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Live for the present.’

‘I’ve never been good at doing that. When our parents died, I was left in charge of Phillipa and the last thing I could afford to do was live for the present.’

‘I get that,’ Damien murmured. He wasn’t one for soul-searching conversations but he was feeling incredibly relaxed. ‘With a sister like her, you had to carry worries about the future for both of you.’ He gently parted her legs and slipped his finger along the crease that protected her femininity like the petals of a flower.

‘I can’t...talk when you’re doing that...’

‘Fine by me. Touching and talking don’t go hand in hand. At least...not unless the talking’s dirty...which I’ve discovered turns you on...’

‘But we have to talk...’

‘Wouldn’t you rather...’

‘Damien!’ She could feel her body tensing and building up to a climax. His caressing hand was doing all sorts of things to her and yet there was stuff that needed to be said.

‘I know. Irresistible, isn’t it? And you can feel how much it’s turning me on as well...’

Violet wondered how it would be were they to make love fully, properly... Her imagination soared as the rubbing movements against the pulsating bud of her clitoris got faster and faster and when she came it was an explosion that left her drained.

She curled against him. ‘What happens now...?’ She hadn’t wanted to pose the question but it was one that needed to be asked.

Damien stilled. Questions of that nature always left him cold. However, in a strange way, this was a far more straightforward situation. ‘You come up next weekend. As agreed. But I won’t be working till one in the morning and leaving the bedroom by six. It has to be said that the prospect of sojourns in the countryside has taken on a distinctly upbeat tempo.’

‘But I’m not your real girlfriend...’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Do we communicate during the week?’ She worried her lower lip as she tried to get her head round a relationship that wasn’t a relationship. ‘Or do we just become involved when we’re here? I mean,’ she added, just in case he got it into his head she would spend Monday to Friday pining for his company and putting her life on hold, ‘what if I meet someone...? I have quite a busy social life. Teachers like going out after school. Most of us feel we need a drink after a day in the company of high energy kids.’

‘Meet someone?’ He shifted so that he could look down at her.

‘I’ve been thinking about getting back into the dating scene. For some reason, it’s always been difficult with Phillipa around. I guess she just took up so much of my energy. I spent so much time worrying about what she was getting up to and listening to her personal sagas that there never seemed to be much time left over for myself. With Phillipa in Ibiza now...’

Damien’s brain had come to a screeching halt at the words getting back into the dating scene. They had just made love! He was outraged. How could she even be contemplating the prospect of some other guy when she was lying next to him, her body still hot and flushed after her climax that he had given her?

‘Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.’ He flung himself back and stared up at the ceiling with its ornate mouldings which he could hardly make out in the darkness. He felt her shift next to him so that she, likewise, was staring up at the ceiling.

‘I’m not following you...’

‘Explain to me how, on the one hand, you say that you don’t climb into bed with random men whilst on the other telling me that you want to start going to nightclubs and sleeping with whoever takes your fancy at the time...’

‘That’s not at all what I said!’

‘No? It sounded very much like that to me. And I am very much offended that you would even think of raising a subject of this nature after we’ve spent the past hour and a half making love. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about other men. Right now, I should be the only man on your mind.’

‘The game’s changed,’ Violet said calmly on a deep breath, ‘and now there are different rules.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Why do you have to be so arrogant?’

‘It’s one of the more endearing aspects of my personality. You were going to tell me about these new rules.’

‘I... For some weird reason I find I’m attracted to you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You’ve told me that I should live in the present and I guess this is my one-off opportunity to do that. I never expected it to happen, but there you go.’

‘So...other guys...out of the question. Nightclubs and sex after two drinks...likewise out of the question.’

‘In which case, the same rules apply to you.’

Damien rolled to his side and looked at her. In accordance with a serious conversation, she had tucked the duvet right up to her neck.

‘Gladly.’ He pulled the duvet down, exposing her breasts and he gently nuzzled a rosy tip until it stiffened against his tongue. ‘Gladly?’ Violet tugged him up so that he was looking at her, although her body was aching for him to carry on doing what it had been doing so well.

‘I’m a one woman kind of man...’

Violet wondered whether that was because he happened to be temporarily stuck far away from the action but then she conceded that, however arrogant and infuriating he could be, his ground rules would be fair.

‘And besides...’ he nibbled her lower lip, tugging it gently between his teeth ‘...this works...’

‘You said you first thought that getting involved like this...’

‘Falling into bed together and making love until we’re too exhausted to move...’

‘...would complicate things.’ Violet didn’t know what she wanted him to say. She had knowingly thrown caution to the winds and yet she still felt confused. She had never felt so physically satisfied—never ever—and yet the road ahead still seemed opaque and clouded with uncertainty. He might not want to put a label to what they now had, but effectively they were an item. For real. And yet why didn’t it feel that way? And did she really expect him to set those niggling anxieties to rest?

‘I wasn’t thinking out of the box. I’ve found that women seem to associate fun in bed with meeting the parents and eventually shopping for a wedding ring. You...’ seemingly of its own volition, his hand caressed her breast; he couldn’t get enough of her ‘...fall into a different category. You know how the ground lies. I’m not looking for any kind of commitment. Been there, done that, won’t be revisiting that particular holiday hotspot in the foreseeable future. But what’s going on right now...mind-blowing...and I’m not one to throw around superlatives lightly...’ He shot her a smouldering smile that made her toes curl. ‘I won’t be casting my net anywhere else and, if it makes you happy, you can communicate with me all you want to during the week. In fact, you’ll need to be updated on my mother’s progress. I’m sure she’ll also get in touch. It would be abnormal for you to be ignorant of how she is doing. So I’m guessing all your questions have been sorted...’

They were having fun. Plus it was convenient. But he was trusting her not to get emotionally wrapped up. When he said that they would communicate during the week, she knew that their conversations would be about Eleanor, that there would be a specific reason for them to happen in the first place. They wouldn’t be passing the time chatting about nothing much in particular. Violet decided that she was fine with that. She had never been the sort of person who kept the various sections of her life neatly boxed away and separated. This was how it was done. Of course, it would take a little getting used to but she would do it because, like it or not, she was greedy for the physical exhilaration he had introduced into her life, which, on that level, now seemed bland and nondescript in comparison.

She parted her legs and felt his hardness rub against her. No penetration but the sensation produced was still powerful and she moved in time to increase the pressure.

‘And when things fizzle out between us...’ she volunteered breathlessly.

‘It’s called the natural course of events.’

She could hardly imagine him being so deeply in love with a woman that he would want to take it to the very limit, that he would propose marriage. She couldn’t get her head around the notion of him offering commitment rather than talking about the natural course of events. For a man as intensely proud and intensely passionate, she could understand how he could have been permanently damaged by the most significant relationship in his life going belly up. Eleanor had never broached the subject of Annalise again and neither had she. Damien’s past was none of her business. This was the here and now. Everything he said made sense. This was her one opportunity to ditch her comfort zone and there was no point having a mental debate on the pros and cons of the clauses attached.

‘We’ll go our separate ways but as long as we’re lovers you’ll find, my darling, that I am exceedingly generous...’

‘Your money doesn’t mean anything to me.’ She tried not to feel hurt at the implication that she could be shoved into the predictable mould of one of his women, eager to take whatever gifts were on offer. ‘That’s not why...I don’t care if you own the Bank of England. I don’t want anything from you.’

Damien thought that whilst she might say that now, her tune would change the second he presented her with her very first diamond-encrusted bracelet or top-of-the-range sports car.

‘Frankly, my mother would expect it.’

‘She already knows that I’m not the materialistic kind.’

‘More confidences exchanged during one of your cosy tête-à-têtes?’ But he liked her protestations of wholesomeness. What guy in his position wouldn’t? Even if, sooner or later, the moral high ground took a bit of a beating? Greed and avarice were frequent visitors to his life. It was nice not to have them knocking on the door just yet.

‘We don’t just talk about you!’

‘I’m hurt. I thought I was never far from your thoughts...’ He moved fractionally against her and she squirmed and her eyes fluttered. To stop herself from losing control altogether once again, she reached down and firmly held him in her hand. The steel thickness of his girth made her shudder with wicked pleasure.

‘You’re not in my thoughts,’ Violet denied vigorously. Having someone in your thoughts implied a connection. Even jokingly, she didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to let him think that he might be anything more to her than she was to him. ‘You crop up in conversation with your mother because you’re the person we have in common and, under normal circumstances, a girlfriend would be really happy to hear her stories about the guy in her life from his mother. It’s natural that your mother would want to talk about you. Now, though, we talk about other things. Art, the garden, life in a small community, the treatment and what it might involve...and I don’t just have conversations with your mother. I talk a lot to Dominic as well. He has a lot to say. You just have to be patient. He gets frustrated because he can’t communicate as fluently as he’d like, but he’s smart.’

Damien gently removed her hand from him. Reluctantly. Of course, warning bells shouldn’t be ringing. They were, after all, singing from the same song sheet but still...just in case...

‘Don’t get too wrapped up, Violet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean...we might become more involved with one another than either of us anticipated or probably even wanted, and your role might have been extended beyond what I envisaged, but don’t start nurturing ideas of permanence.’

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ She pulled away from him. ‘And you don’t have to warn me! You’ve already made the parameters of what we have perfectly clear. I understand, Damien. It suits me! I’m not an idiot.’

‘But you’re forming links with my family,’ Damien said drily.

‘I’m having conversations!’ But she could detect the coolness in his voice. This wasn’t a gentle caution. This was a warning shot across the bows, a blunt reminder that she was not to go beyond the Keep Out signs he had erected around himself. If she did, and the message was clear though unspoken, she would be ditched. He would enjoy her but that was as far as things would go. In short, don’t start getting any ideas...

‘I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself. And because the women you’ve dated in the past might have wanted more from you than you were prepared to give, that’s not the case with me. I’ve always been careful. I’m just having a go at what it feels like not to be careful for once in my life. And do you always have a list prepared of dos and don’ts when you start a...something? With a woman? Or is this specially for me because I happen to have met your family?’

Violet knew that she shouldn’t be pursuing this. This wasn’t part of her decision to be daring for once in her life.

‘I’m always upfront when it comes to women. I let them know that I’m not in it for the long-term.’

‘Because you’ve been hurt once doesn’t mean that you have to spend the rest of your life keeping your distance.’

‘Come again?’ Damien said coldly.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ But had he laid down loads of rules and regulations for Annalise? No. She wasn’t in the same category—of course she wasn’t—but neither did she need to be subjected to a hundred and one boundary lines because he thought she was too gullible or too stupid to know how the land lay.

‘Let’s move on from this conversation, Violet. My past is not fertile ground for discussion.’ And he was willing to let it go. His magnanimity surprised him because he categorically did not invite anyone’s opinions on certain aspects of his life. Naturally, he didn’t want to engineer an argument. He hadn’t enjoyed the past few days of awkwardness. And also, for once, he was thinking with that part of his body which he always had under control. Never had elemental desire been so important a factor in his response.

‘As I said, I understand the parameters and it suits me.’

‘You’re using me, in other words.’ His voice was light and amused.

‘No more than you’re using me.’

Not quite the response he had expected. He gave a low laugh. Fair’s fair, he thought. Wasn’t it? He’d never had any woman admit to using him before. So what if the feeling didn’t sit quite right? He wanted her. She wanted him. Trim away the excess and that was all that mattered.

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