The Season To Sin

There was one summer I spent with a family who used to surf. They took me out with them, taught me how to ride a board. There is an art to keeping your balance; it’s a constant seduction. Every tiny movement shifts your power and one wrong breath may mean you tumble into the ocean.

If I allow Holly to have this power over me, she will roll me into the sea.

I won’t let that happen.

I stand, my eyes pinning her to the spot so I see the effect I have on her. She tries to cover it, but you can’t hide desire. Not really. There are markers that I have seen often enough to recognise easily now. Her cheeks flush along the ridge of bone, her pupils swell to cover almost her whole eye and her breathing is rasped, her chest moving up and down, so that her round breasts push forward. Jesus, that shirt sweater thing looks soft. My fingertips itch to reach out and touch it. To scrunch it against her skin, to feel her through the fabric.

I stand just a couple of inches away from her and she keeps staring up at me, her big red lips parted, her eyes whispering seduction even when I know she’s doing her best to hold the professional line.

I wonder how long she’ll keep that up.

‘On one condition.’

Her frown is infinitesimal. Her eyes drop to my lips and my gut jerks, wanting to pull me forward, begging me to kiss her.

Nah, not to kiss her, that’s far too sweet a word for what I want to do. I want to pull her lower lip between my teeth, I want to push her back against that window, I want to fucking own her.

‘What’s that, Mr Moore?’

It’s an attempt to put us back on a professional footing. Her own surfboard is tipping.

I lift a finger, touching her cheek lightly. She flinches with surprise and her eyes lift to mine slowly. She’s in the water; it’s threatening to consume her whole. ‘For every one of your questions, you answer one of mine. Same rules.’

Her breath is soft, warm. I feel it on my inner wrist. Imagining it elsewhere on my body, I throb with heat and need.

‘I told you last week.’ The words are uneven. ‘I’m not on the agenda.’

It’s an intentional reproof. My smile shows amusement at her attempt to put up barriers. ‘Oh, I think you are, Holly.’ But I drop my hand and step backwards. ‘Do we have a deal?’

She swallows, her throat bobbing. She’s torn. Drowning and trying not to—drowning and asking me to save her all at once.

‘I suppose it’s fair,’ she says after a beat.

Fuck, yeah, it’s fair. If she expects me to pour out my heart, then she’d better believe I want my pound of flesh along with it.

She nods, as if to reaffirm to herself that she’s going to go through with this. ‘Shall I start?’

I ignore the twisting in my gut. I’ve agreed to this and I’m not afraid of much, least of all having a fucking conversation.

She is, though. She weighs her words carefully, studying me as she thinks. Her eyes are crazy beautiful. Huge and bright blue with a dark black rim around the iris and flecks of black close to the pupil. She has a tiny scar above one brow—like a line about half a centimetre long. I want to run my tongue along it—the certainty that one day I will fills me like cement.

‘Did you have a favourite toy as a child?’

Of all the questions I expect, it’s not this. I laugh—a dry sound that cracks from my throat.

‘No. My turn. Did you think about me after I left last week?’

Her eyes widen and her throat jerks as she swallows. Her gaze darts to a space on the wall behind me. ‘Of course I did,’ she says, the words thready and soft. She darts her tongue out, licking her lower lip. ‘You’re my client.’

‘No, I’m not. So far, I’m just some man you know.’ My smile is wry and I lean closer, my words mocking. ‘And you know that’s not what I meant.’

‘That’s the question you asked,’ she volleys back, fire and spirit firing in her eyes. ‘My turn. What’s your favourite thing to do?’

I stare at her for a second, a sense of discontent rifling through me. A hobby? She wants to know what my hobby is? I drop my head close to hers, and when I whisper it’s right in her ear, low and soft. ‘Fuck beautiful women.’

I pull away so I can see her reaction. She’s looking at me with something close to pity, though, and that fires me up. ‘My turn.’ I skim her face thoughtfully, then purposely drop my eyes to her rack. Jesus Christ, they’re great breasts. ‘When did you last get laid?’

Another swallow. ‘Noah.’ The word is half scold, half plea.

I shake my head, my eyes locking her to the spot and her intention. ‘No lying.’

The room pulses heavily with silence.

‘A long time ago.’

‘That’s not a precise answer,’ I push, a thrill of something like triumph turning my blood to lava.

She expels a breath. An angry breath. ‘Five years ago,’ she snaps and then pulls herself together with effort.

‘What’s your mother’s name?’

I don’t bat an eyelid—not so much as a blink. ‘Alison Parker.’ She might have birthed me, but calling her a ‘mother’ is a step too far. I’ve spent thirty-six years wishing her name wasn’t even in my mind, let alone her blood in my veins.

‘Are you close to her?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s my turn, remember.’

A look of panic colours her spectacular eyes. She moves away to grab a glass of water from her desk. I follow her automatically and my eyes drop to the picture to the right of her. A little child, so exactly like Holly that it must surely be a relation, sits in a frame. ‘Who’s that?’

She looks at me and catches me looking at the frame. For a second I think she’s not going to answer, or that she might lie, but then she shrugs. ‘My daughter.’ Her hand lifts betrayingly to a necklace she wears. A locket?

‘Are you close to your mother?’

I was expecting this question. ‘No.’

‘You don’t like her?’

I move my body closer—she braces her hands on the desk and looks up at me, and the air cracks like a whip as tension tightens between us.

‘No.’ Her expression flickers as she analyses this. ‘Have you thought about me, other than professionally?’

Once more her eyes dart away from me. Such a giveaway gesture for a woman as smart as she is. I would have expected her to have a better poker face. ‘I...’ A very faint peach colour spreads over her cheeks.

‘It’s a yes or no question, Doc.’ I brace my hands on the outside of hers, bending my body forward so that I’ve effectively caged her on her desk. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, drawing in a breath like she wants to draw me with it. When she speaks, it’s with a courage I admire. A strength and determination—a fearlessness.

‘Yes.’

I tighten all over and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to push her back on the desk and rip that leather skirt off, to make her mine.

‘You weren’t raised by your parents, were you?’

She’s still got her eyes closed, but the question is no less cutting or incisive for that.

If she were looking at me, she might have seen how off-kilter it momentarily knocks me. But I recover quickly. She has asked the right question but phrased it wrong. Who raised you? might have been better. That would have forced me to document the myriad foster homes I was passed through, or to explain that no one really took the time to raise me—that I was left to raise myself.

‘No.’ She looks at me now and, with her eyes fixed on mine, I move so close that my lips are almost brushing hers. ‘Do you want to fuck me?’

She gasps and, before she answers, I do it. I do what I’ve wanted to do since I first saw that perfect Cupid’s bow. I put my mouth to hers, lift my hand to the back of her head, wrap my fingers in her hair and invade her with my tongue. She makes a moaning noise and then she’s kissing me back, her tongue clashing with mine; one leg lifts and hooks around my waist, holding me locked to her, my cock pressed hard against her cunt. She tilts her head back to give me all the access I want and I fucking plunder her. I kiss her to punish her for making me talk about my fucking mother. I kiss her because I can’t not.

And she kisses me back.

But she hasn’t answered my question and I want her to. It’s not enough to feel her wants—I want her to own them. To confess them to me. I have seen her courage, her spirit—but still I want more. I want to hear her be brave for me.

So I pull away but, before she can pretend she wasn’t affected by what we shared, I thrust my cock against her, grinding my hips, and she moans, lifts her fingers to my chest and digs them in. She tilts her head back again.

Hell, if she hasn’t been screwed in five years, I could probably make her come right now. To test my theory, I push against her again and she says my name, low and soft, huskily, a beg, a plea.

‘Noah...’ Just a whisper, but so heavy with need and desire. ‘God, Noah...’

I laugh low in my throat and she looks at me with abject confusion, but then I drop my hand to her breast, finding her nipple and flicking it.

She shakes all over, her body trembling near mine. I can’t tell you how much I want to finish this. To make her beg for me right here, right now. She’s so close. I don’t think she knows what day of the week it is.

Yeah, I want to fuck her, but here would be too rushed. Such a waste of an opportunity to really make her ache for me...

‘Do.’ I pull her earlobe between my teeth and roll my tongue over it. She whimpers.

‘You.’ I scrunch her sweater in my fist and lift it out of her skirt, feeling its softness in my palm before running my hands over her naked side. She makes a guttural noise of pleasure.

‘Want.’ I push it higher still, until my fingertips touch the lace sides of her bra and then nudge beneath it so the ball of my thumb is on the underside of her sweet, rounded breast.

‘Me.’ Her leg that’s wrapped around my waist jerks me closer, telling me not to keep her waiting. I laugh again, a sound of appreciation for a woman who knows what she wants.

‘To.’ I grip her ankle behind my back then run my hand along her calf. Holy shit, she feels so much better than I’d imagined. So soft and smooth and feminine. I pause in the hollow of her knee, watching her fevered face as her eyes darken and her cheeks glow. I run my fingers higher then, slowly, until I reach her inner thigh and she moans, once again digging her fingers into my shoulder and arching her back.

‘Fuck...’ I shove the elastic edge of her underpants aside and, with my eyes holding hers, mocking her for the fact she tried to pretend this wasn’t happening between us, I nudge a finger inside her warm, throbbing heart. She’s so goddamned wet I feel a drop of my own cum spill out, but I don’t stop. I push deeper inside her and she whimpers, her fingers now scratching into me.

‘You?’

She blinks, glaring at me for a second, and then she nods, just a simple tiny movement that is the release I crave.

Fuck, I needed that. I move my finger around and her breathing gets hotter. I pull my other hand away, but with no intention of ignoring that delicious breast. I drop my mouth to it, taking her nipple into my mouth through the bra, and I use my free hand to jerk her skirt up higher and then one thumb rubs against her clit as my finger moves inside her.

She is mine within a minute.

She cries out so hard and loud that I have to give up her beautiful breast and claim her mouth instead, if only to silence her. I absorb her scream and cries as she orgasms around my finger. Her pleasure saturates the room, vibrating around us heavily—it’s heavenly.

It’s a start, but it’s nowhere near enough...

‘It needs to go higher, Mummy.’

‘Up here?’ I hook the ornament across and press it into the branch carefully.

‘Nooo...’ She sighs with exasperation that defies belief for a four-year-old. Ivy’s mannerisms are captivating, except when they’re frustrating. ‘Way up there!’

I can still feel tingles in my body, unfamiliar and heavenly all at once, throbs of pleasure like little waves that rock me out of nowhere.

I blink and see the way he was afterwards. After he’d pulled his finger out of me and straightened my skirt with almost clinical detachment, stepping away from me and nodding, like I was an item on his ‘to-do’ list and he’d ‘to-do-ed’ the heck out of me.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’ That was all. No ‘What time suits?’ or ‘We should talk.’ A directive rather than a question—a decision. A firm instruction.

And I’d nodded! What the hell had I been thinking? I should have told him no. That we couldn’t see one another again.

I should have told him how wrong we’d been to do...that. Oh, God. My insides are knotted. I know that when I slip away from Ivy and take a bath, my underwear will be wet with proof of my desire, that my body has been changed by Noah’s possession and he didn’t so much as show me his chest.

I can’t see him again. I must see him again. I’m so torn. I draw in a deep breath. I know I can’t see him professionally.

Our relationship isn’t formalised—he hasn’t filled anything out. I haven’t billed him. I sweep my eyes shut. That’s a technicality and I know it. But if I spell it out to him, making sure he understands that I can no longer have him in my office, no longer treat him as a patient, does that leave me ethically free to see him in other ways? And am I really okay with that?

‘Mummy!’ Ivy stamps her foot. ‘You’re just staring into space!’

‘Sorry,’ I mumble, turning my attention back to the job at hand.

I loop the ornament on the second-highest branch and, apparently satisfied, Ivy nods before reaching into the box and carefully unwrapping the next one along. Ivy has always been very careful. Even as a one-year-old she would take care when doing anything. She has always eaten neatly, used a napkin to wipe her fingers, placed her shoes side by side at the front door. She is the definition of particular.

In other words, the opposite to me.

And her father, come to think of it.

I have always thought certain areas were black and white, but this is one with many, many shades of grey. Noah came to me for help and, though our relationship isn’t that of patient and doctor, I worry about how this development might affect him. And, yes, I worry about how it will affect me.

‘What’s this one?’ She wrinkles her nose—so like Aaron’s—and passes me the ornament.

I force myself back to Ivy, the tree, and try to ignore the fuzzy worries on the periphery of my brain. ‘Ah. I made this when I was ten years old.’ I stare at the little decoration, the small foam ball that I painstakingly stuck fabric to, then dotted with sequins. I remember sitting on the floor of my parents’ lounge, my knees covered in a blanket, my hair long around my shoulders, determined to make the decoration according to the instructions. ‘It took quite a long time.’

‘Really?’ Ivy probably doesn’t mean to sound so scathing and I can’t help but laugh.

‘Yes, dearest.’ I push the ornament into the branches and wait for another decoration.

‘Ebony James says it’s too early to put up the tree,’ she says, her eyes darting to mine and then flicking away, as if afraid of the sacrilegious assertion she’s just repeated.

My smile is kind. ‘Everyone has different traditions. Perhaps in Ebony James’s house they put their tree up later.’

‘Do most people put their tree up now?’

I shrug. ‘They’re up in shops, aren’t they?’

Ivy nods but looks far from convinced.

‘Why shouldn’t we enjoy the tree for a month? Christmas only comes around once a year and it’s such a waste not to enjoy it fully. Don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’ Her smile is more genuine now.

She goes back to unboxing ornaments and I go back to hanging them, but my mind keeps threatening to drag me back to Noah, my desk, my office and that pleasure.

Decorating the tree is one of my favourite pastimes. We have a real tree, but of course it’s too early to have a chopped tree, so ours is potted. I water it every few days to keep it fresh and then, after Christmas, once it’s denuded of decorations once more, I put it on a trolley and push it back into our small courtyard garden. There it remains all year round, dormant and hibernating, waiting for its time to shine—literally—with the strings of lights we weave through its greenery.

I love doing this, and even more so now that Ivy is old enough to join in with me, but I’m barely in the moment.

By the time Ivy is in bed, and I have had dinner, I am itching to crawl between my sheets and surrender to the dreams of him that I know will follow.

I check my emails quickly first—a habit I’ve fallen into since having Ivy and needing to do some of my work from home—and his name is the first I see.

Noah Moore—Bright Spark Inc

I click into it faster than I can believe.

It’s a short email. Just a few words. But they rob me of breath and make my knees sag.

I can smell you on my hand. Tomorrow I want to taste you.

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS EMAIL SPINS through my mind all day. I hear the words he’d written, voiced in his inimitable accent. Australian with a dash of arrogance and a bucketload of don’t-give-a-fuck. I guess having squillions of pounds could give someone that attitude, but I don’t think that’s the beginning and end of it.

I’d put money on Noah having been like this for a long time—before having money and commercial success. I think his arrogance is stitched into his being; every cell of his body is made up of the same.

But my lines of deduction are now very blurry. As a therapist, I would have the ability to look beneath that arrogance and see what he’s trying to hide—to guess at what makes him tick. As a woman, I see only the arrogance and it’s sexy as all hell. I don’t want to push at it. I don’t want to guess what’s beneath him.

Professionally, that makes me redundant.

I make a soft groaning noise and dip my head forward, catching it in my hands.

‘I’m heading off. You need anything before I go?’ Beatrice steps into my office. ‘Are you okay?’

I nod, masking my doubts with ease for her. It’s only Noah who seems to have unstitched my defences, to have robbed me of my stock-in-trade ability to conceal my feelings and thoughts.

‘I’m fine. Thank you, Bea.’

My smile feels wooden, but hers is natural, as though nothing is wrong. As though everything is fine. She leaves and a moment later I hear the clicking of the outer door.

It’s Friday and that means I’m alone—no need to rush home. Ivy is spending the night with her grandmother—Aaron’s mother, not mine. It’s part of our agreement, one I didn’t have to enter into but felt would be best for Ivy. Aaron might be an A-grade asswipe, but that doesn’t mean his mother is. And it doesn’t mean Ivy should lose all connection with that side of the family—just because I never want to see him again.

I can smell you on my hand. Tomorrow I want to taste you.

My stomach swoops and I fix my gaze to the screen, forcing myself to skim through my patient notes as though I’m not falling apart at the seams.

An hour later and I can’t ignore the fact I’m disappointed.

Because he’s my kryptonite. I barely know Noah, but there’s something so indefinable about him. His cockiness and the haunted vulnerabilities I have glimpsed flash for a second before they are once again concealed beneath the surface. Far beneath the surface, out of my prying hands’ way.

He makes me raw and exposed with just a look. Should I run a mile? Away from him? Or to him? Should I pursue this? Do I dare?

‘You know, you frown when you’re concentrating.’

Jesus Christ! My heart slams into my ribs and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge. Survival skills I had thought long since discarded leap to the fore, making my body tremble with its adrenal response, my eyes naturally darting to the door for an escape.

But it’s not Aaron.

It’s okay. I’m safe.

No, I’m not safe. I’m in more danger than I’d realised because Noah Moore is in the sanctuary of my office, staring at me like he has every right, and I am speechless.

‘What are you doing here?’ Slowly my heart finds a different rhythm. Still far faster than it should beat, but for a different reason.

He’s wearing a suit.

A suit. All tailored and professional and smart-looking, but it’s Noah Moore and he’s as hot as ever. No, more so like this. The perfect contradiction.

He strolls towards me and places his hands on the edge of the desk, his body once more invading my personal space, his scent inviting me to breathe deeply. I do just that and see the quirk of his lips, like he knows what motivates me. It sobers me and I swallow, turning my gaze downwards.

‘What do you think I’m doing here?’ The words are drawled out slowly and they pour over my flesh like sun-warmed butter.

My heart skips a beat. ‘I don’t know,’ I hear myself murmur, wondering at the fact I’m still able to speak at all. ‘But, Noah, I have to talk to you. If you’re here for therapy, I need to tell you that I absolutely cannot see you again. Professionally, I mean—’ my cheeks flushing ‘—not after what happened. I’m a professional and I can’t treat someone who’s...who I’ve...’

‘Yes?’ he drawls.

‘I just can’t be your therapist, okay? I have to say that to you now, loud and clear. It’s a line I’m not prepared to cross.’

‘That’s good. Because I don’t want fucking therapy.’

There’s a dark edge to the words. They are honest and plainly spoken. I cannot misunderstand him, and yet I ask: ‘So what do you want?’

‘You.’

There is only the sound of my own breathing. Fast and sharp. He is watching me, waiting for me to speak, and I can’t. I fear I’m my own worst enemy. I cannot give in to this desire—not again! I don’t do this kind of thing. Do I?

‘Yesterday was a mistake.’ I say the words bluntly, hoping to avoid his perception that there’s any wriggle room. ‘As you obviously know, it’s been a long time since I was intimate with anyone and I...obviously...feel attracted to you.’ Heat simmers in my blood; embarrassment clips at my heels.

‘Why was it a mistake?’

I swallow. ‘Where to begin?’ I’m going for humour, but there’s nothing lighthearted in the way he’s looking at me. I stand up, reaching for my handbag, hiding the way my fingertips are shaking.

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