Tom Cain - Carver

‘That’s one presumption, yes. But anyway, keep your eyes open. Check out as much as you can. See if it helps you in any way to find out what the hell Zorn’s up to. When you get back we can discuss what you plan to do about him. Assuming you know.’

‘Oh, I know what I’m doing,’ said Carver. ‘I just don’t know if it’ll work.’

He ended the call and looked at Alix.

‘Were you talking about me just then?’ she asked, with a spark of humour in her eyes. ‘When you said you didn’t know whether it would work?’

‘Of course,’ said Carver. ‘What else could I possibly be talking about?’

‘I can’t imagine,’ she murmured, leaning towards him and gently putting her hand back between his thighs.

Lambeth

‘ Sorry about this,’ Carver said as he opened the door to his flat. ‘It’s not exactly five-star.’

‘But you’re in it,’ Alix said, gazing at him.

‘Yes I am.’

‘Then I love it.’

He took her in his arms then, holding her body against him with the fierceness of a man who never wants to let go. He felt himself get hard, and the press of her hips as she responded to it. The scent of her — not just her perfume but her skin, her hair, even her breath — filled his senses as intoxicatingly as any drug. He covered her mouth with his, and kissed her with a decade of pent-up longing and frustrated desire.

Alix needed the strength of his arms around her. Without them she might not have been able to stand upright. After all this time she was still not immune to him, still failing to retain her self-control as sensations buried for years flooded back with all their old overwhelming power. She felt her body mould to his without any need to think what she was doing. There was no artifice, no tension, just the knowledge that she felt so close, so intimate and so absolutely known to this man that she could barely tell where she ended and he began. The softness of his lips, the rasp of his chin, the way his tongue entered her mouth, the taste of him, the smell of him… It was ecstatic and yet also destabilizing. All her resolution, her determination to remain strong, independent and separate, dissolved. They stumbled through the flat, their lips still locked together, their arms entwined as he led her into the bedroom.

Carver kicked open the door, and only once they were standing right beside the bed did he let go of her. Alix stepped back from him, and in a single fluid movement reached behind her neck, pulled at the bow and let the dress fall to her feet. She stood there in her knickers and her heels, and the sight of her stopped him dead. All this time he’d been imagining what it would be like to see her again, and still he wasn’t prepared for the reality of it. He shook his head in disbelief, and with deep seriousness said, ‘My God, you’re so beautiful.’ And then he was kissing her again, and her fingers were prising open the buttons of his shirt, undoing his belt, unzipping him and slipping under the waistband of his underpants.

As she took hold of him she giggled and said, ‘Hello, old friend.’

Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her again, lifted her off her feet, and they tumbled together on to the waiting bed.

Alix gave a little gasp of pain the moment that Carver entered her, followed by a long, sighing moan of pleasure. The physical sensation of him filling her was matched by an overwhelming rush of emotion, a profound recognition of how different she felt making love with Carver than with any other man she had ever known. The intimacy between them was deeper, their connection more intense. He had always made her feel completely vulnerable, and yet totally safe from harm: she could feel anything, do anything, be anything with him. He could kiss or stroke her with gentleness, almost delicacy, one moment, then overpower her with raw strength the next. And to her amazement, nothing had changed. She knew, with absolute confidence, how wonderful it was going to be, and any intention she might have had of hiding her true feelings was swept away. She wanted him to know the effect he was having on her, and she felt a profound desire to give all of herself to him.

He was looking down at her now with intense concentration, as if he were reading and constantly responding to every one of her desires and emotions. Yet he seemed also to be toying with her longing for him. Sometimes he drove into her so hard and so deep that she wondered how she wasn’t torn apart, only for him to withdraw almost completely, teasing her and moving his hips away from hers as she struggled to get him back before he plunged into her again.

And all the time he was kissing her, stroking her and murmuring in her ear, his defences as abandoned as hers, telling her how he had longed for her, how incredible it felt to be with her and in her again.

She came with a sudden, hot burst of ecstasy that made her cry out. He had not taken his eyes off her face, and the half-smile that played around his lips told her of the pleasure he had taken in her orgasm. But she knew that he had held himself back. Now she needed Carver to come, too.

‘I know what you want,’ she said.

Carver didn’t need an explanation. Alix slid out from under him and knelt on the bed with her back to him. For a second he just looked at her perfectly rounded arse, her slim waist, the arch of her back, and the mane that tumbled around her shoulders. Then he leaned forward and wrapping his left hand around hers pushed it against the headboard.

‘Take my hair,’ she said. He heard the arousal in her voice, and his right hand took a firm hold of her hair, making her gasp. He nibbled at one of her earlobes, feeling her shudder of delight. His chest pressed against her back, and he felt the hot sweat between their skin. Then he took her again.

Up until now, he’d been taking his time with Alix, reading her responses as his cues until she came. As incredible as it had been to be making love to her again, part of him had remained detached, bringing the same cool precision to sex as he did to death. But this time his only concern was for his own pleasure. He was going to fuck her, and that was the beginning and end of the matter.

‘Do it,’ she said.

Now there was no teasing, no variation, no great subtlety. Now he just went at her in a hard, steady, driving rhythm. As he grew more excited he covered her neck and shoulders with kisses whose fierceness increased until he was biting at her skin with quick, sharp little stabs of his teeth. Her moans became louder and higher, and Carver gave a deep animal groan as he felt himself swell still more inside her. He knew she felt it, too, by the way she responded, pushing against him, wanting more and more of him.

Carver felt his orgasm build inside him, the feeling becoming stronger, surging through him, closer and closer to the edge, until at last, with an explosion that felt like someone had just fired a bullet of pure sensory euphoria through his head, blowing his brains out of the back of his skull, he came.

They lay in bed, their bodies still slick and glowing, grinning in postcoital smugness. Alix felt as though she had been defined anew by the experience of being with Carver again. ‘This is who I am,’ she thought, ‘and where I’m meant to be.’ No one else had ever been able to make her feel this way. And yet the fear still gnawed at her that they had not been able to make their relationship last before: why should this time be any different? She should be wise, and get out now, and yet she could not help wanting him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. Having him next to her only reminded her of the emptiness of her life without him.

She began to say something, trying to express how she felt, but then stopped herself.