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He pressed the doorbell and instantly lost his train of thought at the sound of her approaching footsteps.
From inside the house, Violet felt that familiar shiver of tingling, excited anticipation. After the first month, and once he had ascertained that Eleanor was responding well, Damien had split his time. He always made sure to spend weekends in the country and often Mondays as well, but he was now in London a great deal more and Violet liked that. On all levels, what she was doing was bad for her. She knew that. She didn’t understand where this driving, urgent chemistry between them had sprung from and even less did she understand how it was capable of existing in a vacuum the way it did, but she was powerless to fight it. Having always equated sex with love, she had fast learned how easy it was for everything you took for granted to be turned inside out and upside down.
She had also fast learned how easy it was to lose track of the rules of the game you had signed up to.
When had she started living her week in anticipation of seeing him? Just when had she sacrificed all her principles, all her expectations of what a relationship should deliver on the high altar of lust and passion and sex?
She had told herself that she was throwing caution to the winds. That most of her adult years had been spent being responsible and diligent and careful so why on earth shouldn’t she take a little time out and experience something else, something that wasn’t all wrapped up with doing the right thing? She had practically decided that she owed herself that. That she was a grown woman who was more than capable of handling a sexual relationship with a man to whom she was inexplicably but powerfully attracted.
So how was it that it was now so difficult to maintain the mask of not caring one jot if he never discussed anything beyond tomorrow? If he assumed that whatever they had would fizzle out at some point? More and more she found herself thinking about Annalise, the wife that should have been but never was. He never mentioned her name. That in itself was telling because three weeks ago, on one of their rare excursions out for a meal at a swanky restaurant in Belgravia, he had bumped into a woman and had afterwards told her that he had dated her for a few months. The woman had been a flame-haired six-foot beauty, as slender as a reed and draped over a man much shorter and older. Afterwards, Damien had laughed and informed her that the man in question was a Russian billionaire, married but with his wife safely tucked away in the bowels of St Petersburg somewhere.
‘Don’t you feel a twinge of jealousy that he’s dating a woman you used to go out with?’ Violet had asked, because how could any man not? When the woman in question looked as though she had stepped straight off the front cover of a high-end fashion magazine? Damien had laughed. Why on earth would he be jealous? Women came and went. Good luck to the guy, although he had enough money to keep the lady in question amused and interested.
‘Was she too expensive for you?’ Violet had asked, which he had found even more amusing.
‘No one’s too expensive for me. I dumped her because she wanted more than money could buy.’
Violet had thought that that had said it all. The woman in question had wanted a ring on her finger. Damien, on the other hand, had wanted casual. Which was what he wanted with her and the only woman to whom those rules had never applied was the one woman who had broken his heart.
And yet, knowing all that, she could still feel herself sliding further and further away from logic, common sense and self-control. Forewarned wasn’t forearmed.
She pulled open the door and her heart gave that weird skippy feeling, as though she were in a lift that had suddenly dropped a hundred floors at maximum speed.
It was Thursday and he had come straight from work, although his tie was missing and his jacket was slung over his shoulder.
‘Damien...’
‘Missed me?’ Deep blue, hooded eyes swept over her with masculine appreciation. No bra. Ages ago, he had told her that it was an entirely unnecessary item of clothing for a woman whose breasts were as perfect as hers. At least indoors. When he was the male caller in question...
He had been leaning indolently against the doorframe. Now he pushed himself off and entered the tiny hallway, his eyes glued to her the whole time.
His smile was slow and lazy. With an easy movement, he tossed his jacket aside, where it landed neatly on the banister, then he wrapped his arms around her, drew her to him so that he could try and extinguish some of the yearning that had been building inside him from the very second he had set foot in his car. Her mouth parted readily and he grunted with pleasure as his tongue found hers, clashing in a hungry need for more.
Violet braced her hands against his chest and stayed him for a few seconds. ‘You know I hate it when the first thing you do the very second you walk through the front door is...is...’
‘Kiss you senseless...?’ Damien raked his fingers through his hair. Frankly, he wasn’t too fond of that particular trait himself. He didn’t like what it said about his self-control when he was around her, but he chose to keep that to himself. ‘Is that why the last time I came, we didn’t even manage to make it up the stairs?’ he said instead. ‘In fact, if I recall...your jumper was off on stair two, I had your nipple in my mouth by stair four and by stair eight, roughly halfway up, I was exploring other parts of your extremely responsive body...’
Violet blushed. As always, it was one thing saying something and another actually putting it into practice.
Right now, although he had done as asked and had drawn back from her, the one thing she wanted to do was pull him right back towards her so that they could carry on where they had left off.
It was only a very small consolation that these little shows of strength helped her to maintain the façade of being as casual about what they had as he was. She knew that she had to cling to them for dear life.
‘I’m going to cook us something special.’ She led the way to the kitchen and retrieved a cold bottle of beer from the fridge, which he took, tilting his head back to drink a couple of long mouthfuls.
‘Why?’
Violet contained a little spurt of irritation. Shows of domesticity were never appreciated. He had never said so but, tellingly, his chef would often prepare food, which he would bring with him, stuff that tasted delicious and required an oven, a microwave and plates, or else takeaways were ordered when they had been physically sated. The ritual of eating was usually just an interruption, she sometimes felt, to the main event.
‘I’m trying it out as a meal for my class to learn,’ she lied and he shrugged and swallowed a couple more mouthfuls of beer before retreating to the kitchen table, where he sprawled on one chair, pulling another closer and using it as a footrest.
Violet bustled. Now that they weren’t tripping over themselves, tearing each other’s clothes off in a frantic race to make love, she wished that they were. Her body tingled at the knowledge that he was looking at her. She loved it when his eyes got dark and slumberous and full of intent.
‘Tell me how your mother’s doing,’ she said, to clear her head from the wanton desire to fling herself at him and forget about the meal she had planned.
She listened as he told her about recent trips into the village, her upbeat mood, which so contrasted with her despair when she had initially told him about the situation, recovery that was exceeding the doctor’s expectations...
Violet half listened. Her mind was drifting in and out of the uncomfortable questions she had recently started asking herself. Occasionally she said something and hoped for the best. She was a million miles away when she jumped as Damien padded up towards her and whispered into her ear, ‘Must be a complicated recipe, Violet. You’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes.’
Violet snapped back to the present and turned to him with a little frown. ‘I’ve got stuff on my mind.’
‘Anything I’d like to hear about?’
She hesitated, torn between not wanting to rock the boat and needing to say what she was thinking.
‘No. Just to do with school.’ She cravenly shied away from doing what she knew would ruin the evening.
‘What can I do to take your mind off it...?’ Just like that, Damien felt his tension evaporate. He thought he might have been imagining the thickness of the atmosphere, her unusual silence. He turned her back to the chopping board, where she had been mixing a satay sauce, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. ‘Looks good. What is it?’ He slipped one big hand underneath her loose top and did what he had been wanting to the moment he had set foot through the front door. He caressed one full breast, settling on a nipple, which he rubbed gently but insistently with the pad of his thumb. With his other hand, he dipped a finger into the sauce, licked some off and offered the rest to her. Violet’s mouth circled round his finger and she shivered at the deliberate eroticism in the gesture.
She moved across to the kitchen sink, carrying some dishes with her, and he released her, but only briefly, before resuming his position standing right behind her.
