Anything but Vanilla(58)

‘Poor Ria.’

‘She collapsed with post-partum psychosis. Delusions, self-harm... The baby was taken from her, she was sectioned and by the time she had recovered her mother and my father had arranged for the baby to be adopted. She’s been trying to find her son, my brother, ever since.’

‘That’s how you met?’

‘I found letters from Ria, from her mother, amongst his papers after his death. He’d paid her mother...’ He broke off.

‘You contacted Ria? Hoping to find your brother?’

‘Yes. If they’d gone through the proper channels I could have registered with them in case he ever decided to search for his mother. But it was a private arrangement and he was taken abroad.’

‘Alexander...’ Her hand tightened around his fingers. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish she’d trusted me enough to tell me.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not you, Sorrel. She never talks about it. She still feels terrible guilt.’

‘She shouldn’t.’

‘No.’

‘I’m glad she had you to support her.’

‘I’ve done what I can. Tried to make amends. I hoped that the ice-cream parlour would give her a focus.’

‘I can see why she loves you.’

‘I love her, too. But not like this,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’

Like this?

Sorrel heard the words and Alexander was looking at her so intently that for a moment she thought he meant something more than the sexual frisson that had been burning up to the air between them from the moment they’d set eyes on each other.

Which was ridiculous. He hardly knew her.

She hardly knew him and yet her entire world was in turmoil. She couldn’t think, could hardly breathe. It was as if she had been in suspended animation and had suddenly woken, seventeen again and on the brink of something amazing...

‘Like this?’

Heart pounding, she reached out and touched his face where the lengthening shadows threw into relief the scars that ran in faint lines from his temple to his jaw, followed their path with her lips, trailing soft kisses across his cheek, the stubble of his beard sparking tiny flashes of electricity that buzzed through her. As her fingers reached his mouth she paused, raised her lashes and looked at him.

He would leave, she knew that, but he wouldn’t steal her heart: she was giving it to him. Here, now, this was her day.

‘Forget the pub,’ she said. ‘We can send out for pizza, but right now the only thing I want to eat is you.’

She didn’t wait for his answer, but caught his lower lip between hers, sucking it in, wanting to taste him, devour him, and he responded like a starving man offered a feast.

The kiss consumed them both and she had no idea how they made it up the stairs to the small apartment she’d created for herself beneath the eaves.

She was only conscious of his mouth, of his hands beneath her skirts, on her thighs as, stumbling in their haste, she backed up the stairs, leading the way, pulling his shirt over his head, desperate to see, to touch what had until now been no more than tantalising glimpses of silken skin.

They tumbled through the door to her bedroom, breathless, laughing as he unzipped her dress. It fell in a whoosh of green cotton and white petticoats in a heap around her feet, leaving her standing in a white-and-green polka-dot bra, matching pants and lacy-topped hold-up stockings. And suddenly neither of them was laughing.

‘Pretty...’ His voice was thick as he stroked away the straps and kissed the curve between her neck and shoulder. She leaned towards him, wanting more, and he slipped the hook so that the bra joined her dress. His thumb lightly touched a painfully tight nipple, then his tongue, and she gasped as the shock of it went through her like a lightning rod. ‘Very pretty...’

‘Alex...’ His name was a plea. She wanted to feel him, see him, possess him, and he lifted her, taking her down onto the bed with him.

Nothing she had done with a fumbling teen had prepared Sorrel for this. She wanted to throw herself on him, grab the moment, but the siren instinct, as old as Eve, was clamouring through her veins and, curbing the urgency to know, to be complete, she lowered her lips to a chest spattered with sun-gilded hair.

It tickled her lips as she feathered soft kisses down his throat, along his collarbones and he seized her as she flicked her tongue over his nipples.

‘Wait!’ she commanded. ‘Wait...’ She wanted him to remember this when he was on the other side of the world, up to his neck in jungle or lying on a hammock, or walking along a tropical beach. She wanted to remember this when that was all he was—a memory.