Temporary Mistress: Mistress for a Weekend / Mistress on Demand / Public Wife, Private Mistress

He bent his head and sipped at the swollen tips, lapping at her with a delicate greed that made her head swim. She couldn’t believe she had come so far so fast. Instead of the long, slow build-up she was used to, everything was happening with breakneck speed. With a little moan Nora sank her hand into his thick black hair, the silky strands sifting through her fingers as they clenched in convulsive pleasure. The bevelled edge of the desk, lightly padded by the folds of her discarded coat, cut into her bottom and trapped her crumpled dress around her hips as he tipped her back, attempting to rid them of the annoying impediment to greater intimacy. Squirming to help, Nora gasped as her elbow knocked against a neat stack of files, sending them spilling across the desk and floor.

He stifled the apology that automatically rose to her lips with a fiercely impatient kiss, sweeping her off her feet and stepping over the scattered mess to perch her on the padded arm of the nearby sofa, her dress still twisted around her legs. Nora clung to his satin-smooth shoulders, her mouth eagerly responding to his fiery demands, her heart knocking as she felt his left hand touch her knee beneath the folds of her dress. His teeth tugged at her lower lip, his hand sleeking up the inside of her thigh, finding the elastic top of her stocking and exploring the petal-soft skin just above it. Liquid heat exploded in her belly and she tried to clench her legs together to ease the ache he was creating, but his heavy thigh intruded, forcing them further apart.

Nora could feel the tension quivering in his whipcord muscles, the carnal hunger crouching for the kill. His body exuded a musky male scent that drugged her senses, her hands slipping on the sheen of sweat which coated his tawny skin. She dimly realised that she was no longer in control, if she ever had been.

‘Wait—’ she panted, jerking violently as she felt the brush of his fingers against the thin fabric which hid the creamy heart of her desire, almost fainting at the gush of pleasure released by the brief contact.

‘I can’t—’ His prickly jaw rasped across her skin, creating a stinging trail of sweet pain as he ate his way down to her throbbing nipple. He suckled hotly, pushing up his knee until she was astride his leg. ‘I need this too much…and so do you,’ he growled roughly. She felt his arm tighten around her waist, dragging her weight down against his contracting muscles, setting up a friction that turned the delicious pressure between her legs into an electrifying thrill. ‘Come on, baby—ride me,’ he invited hoarsely, rocking her against his powerful thigh until she adopted his urgent rhythm. Her breathing quickened, her fingers digging into his naked chest, her eyes glazing over as her body responded recklessly to his primal urging. He threw his head back, his glittering eyes darkly triumphant as she began to ripple with tiny convulsions.

‘That’s right, baby, ride me all the way home…Let me make it happen for you…’ he coaxed huskily, his knowing fingers finding again that secret sweet spot, tracing the blossoming dampness of her bikini panties in a way that made something inside her ripen and burst. Her world shattered into a million pieces, an exquisite avalanche of pleasure cascading through her, carrying her over the brink of a sweeping precipice and flinging her far out into star-studded space. Suddenly she was in a floating free fall…spiralling into nothingness, and yet there was no fear, just a soaring sense of release, the wondrous freedom of realising that she could fly…!

When her eyes fluttered back into focus the fractured world had re-formed around her, forever changed. She was conscious of the damp bloom of her skin and the small after-shocks which rolled over her as she eased back against Blake’s locked arms and met his hooded gaze. She could feel the coiled tension in his muscles and felt mortified as she realised what had happened.

She bit her lip and winced at its swollen sensitivity. ‘I’m—’

‘I hope you’re not going to say you’re sorry,’ he interrupted her with a growl.

‘But I—you—’ Her freckled face was so enchantingly dismayed that his rigid jaw flickered with sultry amusement.

‘I said I couldn’t wait. I wanted you wild for me,’ he said in a voice like smooth dark chocolate. ‘I got what I wanted.’

‘I—you did?’ Her golden eyes were still muddied with doubt.

‘It was incredibly sexy seeing you lose control,’ he said, flexing his hips between hers, letting her feel the iron-hard proof of his words. ‘Wanna play turnabout?’

Not exactly sure what he was suggesting, Nora nervously licked her lips and he uttered a sharp groan. ‘I take it that’s a yes,’ he said, divesting her of the trailing dress with a few quick tugs and sinking into a crouch to slide her daring shoes off her unresisting feet. On the way back up he trailed his fingers over the front of her stockings and plain white panties, while he pressed kisses into her dappled skin. But as he rose between her breasts he froze, a frown thundering across his brow.

‘My God, what’s this?’ He touched the crimson abrasions on the side of her breast, recoiling as she winced.

‘It’s nothing…I told you before, I have very sensitive skin,’ she said dismissively.

He swore under his breath, his eyes following the tell-tale path of reddened patches. ‘Damn it, stop trying to take the blame for something that’s entirely my fault!’ He dragged his hand across the coarse black stubble on his chin. ‘I haven’t shaved since this morning; no wonder I almost rubbed you raw,’ he castigated himself.

He sounded so horrified that she almost smiled. ‘But you didn’t. Really, it’s all right.’

‘No, it’s not,’ he said grimly. ‘I hurt you. I wasn’t thinking—’ He gently stroked her reddened breast and she trembled.

‘Neither was I,’ she tried to convince him. ‘How could I have—uh—you know…if I thought what you were doing was painful?’

His eyes flamed. ‘I’m likely to be a great deal less restrained in the throes of an orgasm,’ he said bluntly, disdaining her feeble euphemism. ‘I’m bigger and stronger than you are. I don’t want to risk hurting you like that when I’m inside you—I’m going to have a shave before I touch you again,’ he said, stepping back from temptation.

Nora immediately felt self-conscious, wrapping her empty arms around her semi-nude body to disguise her lack of curves.

With a smouldering look at her innocently provocative pose, Blake bent and picked up his shirt, dropping it loosely around her shoulders from whence it hung almost to her knees, scooping her hair out from under the collar and fluffing it out around her oval face.

‘Better?’ he commented, drawing the open sides across her breasts where they peeked at him from her sheltering arms, not hiding the fact that he found her unexpected shyness arousing.

‘Hadn’t you better pick up your jacket, too?’ she said jerkily. ‘You’re supposed to be arranging for your suit to be cleaned—’

‘I thought that was just an excuse for you to get my clothes off,’ he murmured, and she lowered her eyes guiltily.

‘It’s still going to need professional treatment.’

‘Especially since we seem to be adding a new category of stain,’ he goaded, drawing her attention to the damp spot on his trousers where she had straddled his thigh.

Nora blushed at the graphic evidence of her violent excitement, her flustered reaction turning his mockery into smouldering concupiscence.

‘Maybe I should have that shave before this conversation goes any further,’ he said, dropping a quick hard kiss on to her parted lips. ‘Feel free to help yourself from the mini-bar; anything I have is yours…’

And with all my worldly goods I thee endow? Nora flinched at the interpretation that popped into her head. She knew he was talking about a glass of wine and a bag of nuts, not a lifetime of loving trust and mutual sharing.

Nora snaked her arms into the sleeves of his shirt as he headed for the bathroom, her eyes falling on the shambles they had made of the desk. In her confused emotional state it suddenly seemed vitally important to restore a sense of order to her physical surroundings. Perhaps that way she might bring some order to her chaotic feelings, find her way back to that liberating sense of rightness that she had felt whilst in his arms.

‘What are you doing?’

She turned, papers slipping from her nerveless hand, her eyes widening at his altered appearance. He wore a plush white three-quarter length towelling robe with the hotel’s monogram discreetly embroidered on the breast pocket. He was frowning, but more in impatience than suspicion, and she waved one hand helplessly in the air.

‘Just tidying up—trying to make myself useful…’

‘Forget it,’ he ordered dismissively. ‘I didn’t bring you here to play the domestic.’ He caught her fluttering hand and tugged her towards him, lifting her palm to his still scratchy chin. ‘I’ve decided I need a shower as well as a shave. I came to the party straight from work, in the same clothes I’ve been wearing all day.’

He lowered her hand to the burnished wedge of chest revealed by his loosely tied bathrobe, holding it there as he walked slowly backwards, drawing her along after him. ‘If you have a compulsion for neatness, I’m sure you prefer your lovers to be freshly laundered…’

Nora could feel the heavy beat of his heart reverberating through flesh and bone. ‘You don’t have to bother on my account,’ she said breathlessly, obliquely informing him that she liked his earthy male aroma.

He tipped his head to one side, his mellow voice caressing. ‘For my sake, then.’

His eyes ran over her pale limbs, glimmering at him through the gaps in his shirt. ‘I rather thought I might entice you to join me. You can make yourself useful as my soap bearer…’

He had reached the door of the steamy bathroom, the sound of the pulsing shower-head within almost drowned out by the thunder of blood in Nora’s ears.

‘Perhaps while I’m shaving you might like to wash my back—and anything else that takes your fancy…’ he drawled.

He must know that she found everything about him wildly fanciable! The provocative admission trembled on the tip of her tongue, until she glanced past him and saw the gleaming empty bath next to the heat-misted glass shower cabinet.

In her mind’s eye the bath expanded to take up the whole room, her memory filling it with a kaleidoscope of flickering images that made her desire curdle in her stomach.

Nightmare reality crashed into her fantasy-fuelled dream world.

What on earth was she doing?

She fell back, slipping her hand out of his, flattening it defensively over her heart.

His eyebrows rose. ‘No?’ Clearly, rejection was a rather startling novelty.

‘I—I think…I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ she managed lightly, edging further out of sight of the bath and the spectral frolics that had visited her with a degrading sense of déjà vu.

She braced herself for a backlash of wounded male pride, but Blake’s grey eyes were merely quizzical.

‘Don’t tell me that you have a phobia about water, too?’ he said.

Nora shook her head dumbly, tucking a curl behind her ear with a nervous gesture that caused his eyes to flicker upwards and an enlightened smile to dawn on his saturnine face.

‘But of course…you don’t want to get your hair wet—I quite understand.’ His good-humoured resignation spoke of an intimate knowledge of the vanity of women. ‘In that case, I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He turned her around and sent her on her way with a caressing pat of her sleek bottom. ‘Meantime why don’t you slip into something more comfortable? I’m sure you’ll find the bed a perfect fit…’

Out in the hallway Nora put her shaking hands up to her hot cheeks. He was expecting her to be nestled on his pillow when he got out of the shower, eager and willing for another hot bout of mindless sex. Only this time he wasn’t planning to restrain himself, and he had every reason to expect her to deliver the full bill of goods.

What had she been trying to prove with her craziness—that she had no more respect for herself than Ryan did?

She had never subscribed to the throwaway society. She had secretly felt sorry for those people who drifted from partner to partner, substituting sex for emotional intimacy. And yet here she was, about to leap into bed with a total stranger. If she went through with this, Nora knew that she would utterly despise herself tomorrow.

She was shivering as she hurried back into the main room and scrambled into her own clothes, terrified that he was going to finish showering before she escaped.

She briefly thought about leaving him a note, but didn’t dare take the time to hunt for pen and paper. Besides, what would she say?

Thanks for the mind-blowing orgasm, sorry I can’t stick around to return the favour.

He was going to be furious enough that she had run out on him; there was no point in adding insult to injury by rubbing his nose in the fact. She couldn’t even explain her behaviour to herself, let alone to him.

She snatched up her umbrella and bag and bundled her coat off the desk, her heart stuttering as she heard the low roar of the shower suddenly cease. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. ‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,’ she chanted under her breath, darting for the door of the suite, shoes in hand. To her horror she discovered that Blake had flipped the security bolt when they came in and her sweaty fingers slipped on the shiny metal as she tried to disengage it without a betraying click.

Unfortunately, as she dashed out into the hallway, the inside door handle caught on the ankle strap of one of the dangling shoes, jerking it off her crooked finger. It banged against the wall and bounced back inside the room with a soft thump.

‘Nora?’

Nora stared helplessly back at the stranded shoe as the door snicked closed in her face. It only took her a split second to decide to cut her losses. She ran down the hall and jammed the end of the umbrella on the button for the aeons that it seemed to take the lift to arrive, all the while casting panicked looks over her shoulder. He might glance out into the hall when he discovered she was gone, but surely he wouldn’t bother to follow her? And, even if he did, he would have to dress first—that gave her at least a couple of minutes’ grace.

A couple was all she needed. When the lift doors finally opened Nora blundered in, elbowing aside a clutch of Japanese tourists in order to take command of the controls.

For the price of a shoe, her freedom was won.

Chapter Five

NORA watched Kelly bounce out through the front door of their apartment building and down the short flight of damp steps to the footpath, her short shock of bright red hair glowing like a match in the bright morning sunlight.

Nora sank lower in the seat of her ageing Citroön, her hands whitening on the steering wheel, thankful that she had pulled in behind the line of parked cars near the end of the street to wait for her flatmate to leave for work…late, as usual.

Kelly was a PA in the public relations department at Maitlands, but her hours were hugely flexible thanks to the amount of social junketing with clients she was obliged to do.

When her previous flatmate had decided to move to Sydney a few months ago, Nora had posted an ad on the company’s computer bulletin board. Kelly’s outgoing personality and enthusiasm for life had persuaded her that the bubbly twenty-one-year-old would be fun to have around. It had only been after she moved in that Nora had begun to realise that their ideas of fun didn’t always coincide.

She watched Kelly walk jauntily off towards the bus stop around the corner. It didn’t seem fair that the hard-partying Kelly should be brimming with health and vitality, while Nora squinted through bleary red eyes, her mouth puckered with horrible dryness, her head squeezed in the vice-like grip of a vicious hangover. Of course, Kelly had been able to enjoy all the comforts of home last night, whereas Nora had had to make do with a depressing motel room and the spurious sympathy of a bottle of eighty-per-cent-proof vodka. And she didn’t even like vodka!

The feeling, she had since found out, was entirely mutual.

As soon as Kelly turned the corner, Nora coaxed the Citroën’s temperamental engine back into life and eased out from the line of cars at the kerb, driving down to slot into her usual parking place amongst the other residents’ vehicles.

She got out of the car, moving carefully so as not to jolt her painful head, still brooding over the reasons for her enforced exile.

By the time she had reached her car last night she had been alternately sweating and shivering, almost semi-hysterical with relief. As she’d navigated her way through the saturated streets she’d vowed that she would never, ever, behave so irresponsibly again—no matter what the provocation. Or the temptation!

Operating on auto-pilot, she had instinctively headed for the security of her own home and had been shattered when she’d turned into her street and spied a familiar silver BMW parked outside the apartment and the lights in Kelly’s corner bedroom glowing cosily behind drawn blinds.

Ryan certainly hadn’t wasted any time, she had thought numbly. He must have left the party straight after Nora and raced over for more fun and games with Kelly. How many other times had the pair of them taken reckless advantage of Nora’s absence?

Anger balled in her stomach. Ryan always liked to have the last word in an argument. What if he had arranged with Kelly to wait around and confront Nora when she eventually arrived home?

Home. That was a laugh. A home was supposed to be somewhere you felt safe, a protective fortress against the slings and arrows of misfortune.

And now that had been taken from her, too.

Nora had wanted to storm inside and scream at the pair to get out. The lease of the compact two-bedroomed ground-floor apartment had always been in her sole name, so she had every right to ask Kelly to leave, but she couldn’t very well do it tonight—not in her current woefully vulnerable state; not until she had shored up her defences again.

She had several friends who would put her up, but most of them were friends with Ryan, too, and right now she felt too emotionally exhausted to run the gauntlet of the inevitable questions if she turned up distraught and begging for shelter.

So she had put her foot back down on the accelerator and sought out the nearest low-rise motel, a rather down at heel establishment which included an hourly rate on its dog-eared price card. Unlocking her door, she had noticed the neon-lit window of a liquor wholesaler across the road, in which a sexy female mannequin sported a sign promising a free T-shirt with every purchased bottle of famous-brand vodka.

When Nora had walked out of the store she’d been carrying not only the vodka and a black T-shirt but also the mannequin’s fluorescent green leggings. She might have been stranded in the twilight zone but she wasn’t going to spend a minute longer than necessary in the dress that had come to symbolise her stupidity.

And, having bought the vodka, it had seemed a good idea to stave off some of her misery by opening it. It would make a fine title for a reality TV show, thought Nora, as she opened the car boot: When Good Ideas Go Bad!

The vodka idea would certainly go down as famous in the annals of bad decisions she had made. She drank, but never to excess, and now she wondered why anyone would knowingly court this kind of physical torture.

Carrying the company laptop she had forgotten to take inside when she had eagerly rushed home to try on her new dress, and with the rest of her things stuffed into the liquor store carrier bag, Nora nudged the boot of the Citroën closed with her elbow, wincing as the heavy thunk rattled her aching skull.

A tall solidly built man in a rumpled white shirt was getting out of a black van across the road as Nora approached the steps, her mind concentrated on getting to the top without her head falling off. The first thing she was going to do when she got inside was make a huge pot of coffee, she thought longingly.

‘Excuse me?’

Nora looked gingerly around at the politely forceful voice. The rumpled shirt had a face to match—fiftyish, lived-in, blandly unremarkable except for sharp periwinkle-blue eyes.

‘Miss Lang?’

She was trying to work enough fur out of her mouth to answer, conscious of his arrested survey of her vodka-touting T-shirt and bilious leggings, when he added, ‘Miss Nora Lang?’

There was a hint of amusement in his tone which rubbed at her raw nerves. ‘Who wants to know?’ she said with uncharacteristic rudeness.

‘These are for you.’

He held up the sheaf of red roses he had been carrying half-concealed at his side, and Nora was startled into feeling a momentary lift of her spirits.

Her mouth began to curve into an involuntary smile. ‘For me? Are you sure?’

‘If you’re Eleanor Lang from apartment 1A.’

‘Yes, that’s me.’ Her elation died and her smile inverted itself. Only one person she knew had any reason to send her flowers. She recoiled as if they were plague-ridden. ‘I don’t want them!’

He seemed taken aback at the heated response. ‘Look—I’m just making a delivery, OK?’

She glared. Any colour would have been unacceptable, but red was rubbing added salt in the wound. They were even more offensive considering that Ryan had never bothered to send her flowers before.

‘Then you can just deliver them right back where they came from,’ she declared, her contempt recharging her dwindling stores of energy. ‘And you can tell that—that snake who sent them that he’s a moron if he thinks he can bribe me with a measly bunch of flowers! He’s never going to get back what he lost. And when this goes public I’m going to make sure that everyone knows how it went down. Maybe people won’t be so quick to trust him in future, if they know his personal morality stinks!’

She stumped up the steps, feeling slightly better for having vented her spleen, even if only at an innocent bystander. The poor guy had looked quite stunned by her outburst. She glanced back as she went into the building and saw him walking back to his van with the rejected roses, cell-phone plastered to his ear…reporting his aborted mission, no doubt, she thought with a bitter sense of satisfaction.

Entering the flat, Nora felt none of her usual welcome sense of homecoming. To her dismay she felt alien in her own environment, tense and resentful of all the signs of Kelly’s occupation—the open fashion magazine left on the couch, the unwashed dishes in the sink, the pile of ironing draped over a chair, the drips of nail varnish on the coffee table. Usually Nora was tolerant of her flatmate’s habitual untidiness, but now her thoughtlessness seemed insultingly close to contempt.

It had been too much to hope for that Kelly had already started to pack up her things, Nora brooded as she switched on the coffee-maker, but surely she must have realised that she would have to move out? Until she did, the atmosphere in the flat would be hideously strained and uncomfortable.

A prowl around showed no evidence that Ryan had ever been there, but venturing into the bathroom made Nora’s gorge rise and she hastily snatched up her toothbrush and retreated. For the sake of personal hygiene she knew she’d have to get over her atavistic horror at the sight of her bath. Maybe she should get the place ritually exorcised!

A quick brush of her aching teeth and an ingestion of freshly brewed coffee made Nora feel a trifle less like dying. Anxious to change out of the tacky clothes, she paused to look at herself in her bedroom mirror and grimaced. Her eyes looked glassy and sunken and the stubborn remnants of her mascara deepened the bruised shadows that surrounded them. She had washed her hair at the motel, using the meagre courtesy sachet of shampoo, but the establishment hadn’t run to hair-dryers and now her curls were an uncontrollable tumble around her pale face, her bleached complexion accentuating the ginger freckles and the faint whisker burns glowing on her cheek as well as on the skin above the drooping neckline of the baggy hip-length T-shirt.