Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

She nodded, stood up and took her clothes off. Just like that. She had no sense of embarrassment, she didn’t play around, turn it into a striptease, simply took off her clothes and stood before him naked.

‘You have a beautiful body,’ he said in that same low voice.

‘It’s a miracle,’ she said. And it was, too, the way she lived.

‘My miracle,’ he told her.

She hadn’t expected him to be soppy at all about sex.

‘Lie down, now,’ he instructed.

Again she did as she was told, the excitement rising in her.

She lay down beside him and immediately he pushed her legs apart and buried his face in her. He didn’t touch her with his hands at all. It was immensely exciting. And he carried on and on, until she began desperately to want him inside her and told him so. She needed that in order to reach a climax. She nearly always did the first time.

After what seemed like for ever he pulled his face away from her. She braced herself for what she expected to come next. Instead he wriggled up the bed and lay beside her. His lips brushed hers lightly. She could smell and taste her own sex.

She reached for him. He pulled slightly away.

‘I’m afraid I’ve lost it,’ he said. He was still wearing his trousers, which was fairly ridiculous. She realised there was no hardness there at all now.

‘Do I put you off that much?’ she asked lightly.

‘The opposite,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was the whisky. I can’t understand it. I’m like a fucking machine usually.’

She giggled.

So did he. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Can I stay with you? In the morning it will be different, I promise.’

‘Shouldn’t you go home? What about your wife?’

He shook his head. ‘She’s used to me,’ he said.

I’ll bet she is, poor cow, thought Joanna. But she wasn’t really in a position to be moralistic. And she certainly didn’t want him to leave.

He undressed and she saw that he had a good body too, long and rangy, and covered with a down of sandy hair just a little darker than the hair on his head. He kept his underpants on, which made her smile, crawled into the bed beside her and wrapped his arms round her. Within minutes she could hear his breathing slow and become more shallow and even. He was asleep. It took her longer. She was too excited to fall asleep easily. She needed sexual release quite badly, but it appeared that she was going to have to be patient.

Ultimately, though, she did not have to wait until morning after all. Having fallen eventually into a fitful sleep lying on her back, some time during the night she was woken by the weight of him on top of her. She opened her eyes. His face was inches away from hers and he was smiling at her. They had left the curtains open and there was a full moon. She could see him quite clearly.

He looked very happy, suddenly, and very intent on what he was doing. ‘God, you’re wet down there,’ he muttered appreciatively. In the next second he was inside her.

She came almost at once and he muttered encouragement to her. She managed another orgasm before he reached his own climax and she had never felt quite so fulfilled. He did things to her that were entirely new to her. He had no inhibitions and neither did she. Not with him. In the past there had always been something holding her back from complete sexual abandon. Not with him, there wasn’t. With him she just felt so at ease. They lay together afterwards, limbs entangled, at peace. They barely spoke. They did not need to.

It was the best sex she’d ever had. By far. It was in fact so superior to anything she had experienced before that it was almost like the first sex she’d had in her life. At the age of twenty-eight for God’s sake. She really could not explain why — but the fact remained that it was so wonderfully, stunningly, amazingly good that it frightened the living daylights out of her.

Fielding felt much the same way. He left her shortly after dawn. And he didn’t want to. He wanted to fuck her all day. And then all night. And then all the next day. Actually, he didn’t think he was capable of even one more time. But, he liked the idea of trying.

He felt elated and bewildered. How many women had he had? He’d long ago lost count. All shapes and sizes and ages. Even a couple of professionals. Most of them willing and eager to play any kind of sex game he fancied. Getting laid had, after all, always been just about his number one aim in life. That and the job, of course. Work as hard at seduction as he did and you were bound to get your share of success. So how was it that he had never felt like this before? How come sex had never been as good as this before? Come to that, he thought, smiling to himself, how come he had never been as good as that before?

He couldn’t understand it. He shook his head to clear his brain. He really had to be sensible about this. Best not to see her again, probably. He had enough problems, after all. The last thing he needed was an affair with a Fleet Street journalist. He’d cool it, that was the only thing to do, he reckoned.

Meanwhile Joanna lay in bed reliving the night she had just enjoyed. She was not in the mood to be sensible at all. Her whole body glowed and she wanted more of it. She wondered how long she could string out her trip to Devon, and began to torture herself thinking of the kind of sex she and Fielding might have the next time — which she sincerely hoped would be very soon.

Then the phone rang. It was the news editor, Reg Foley, calling from his home at just after 7 a.m. to tell her that the editor wanted to buy up James Martin O’Donnell.

Joanna was not enthusiastic. She still thought Jimbo was a guilty man, didn’t like the idea of her paper throwing money at him.

‘He’s been acquitted, Jo,’ said Foley. ‘That makes him innocent, OK? Anyway, it’s what the editor wants, so let’s give him what he wants, shall we?’

Taylor was already on the case but naturally Tom Mitchell wanted his chief crime correspondent to mastermind the buy-up attempt — which meant Jo was needed back in London pretty damn smartish. So that was one question answered. Her trip to Devon was over already. She would certainly not be seeing Fielding again that day and she had no idea how long it might be before she did.

Obediently she packed her small bag. Before leaving the room she called Fielding at Heavitree Road. He hadn’t arrived yet. Well, it was still not quite eight o’clock. She left a message, in what she hoped was a businesslike manner, saying that she had been called back to her office in London and would he please phone her there later that day.

He didn’t phone. Not that day. Not the next day. Not all week.

Joanna was offended. She left a second message at Heavitree Road. Then she phoned twice more without leaving a message at all. She supposed she would have to accept that for him she had just been another quick lay. After all, she knew his reputation well enough. She had even told him that. Why should she think for a moment that their one night in the sack would have been any different for him than all the other times. She had thought so, though. And that was the problem. For her, certainly.

Apart from any other considerations, his silence made her feel cheap. Fortunately she had little time to dwell on it. The Jimbo O’Donnell buy-up took all her time and energies. First she was involved in the negotiations and then, when the Comet succeeded in outbidding its rivals, Mitchell assigned her to do the interviews.

In spite of her feelings about O’Donnell it was always exciting to be at the sharp end of a big story and Jimbo was the sharp end all right. They took him to a remote hotel on the outskirts of Epping Forest in order to keep him away from the opposition until the series the Comet planned to run had been published. Joanna was booked into the room next to Jimbo and found that she was quite grateful that a Comet photographer was also booked into the hotel, plus another reporter whose job was primarily to act as a kind of extra minder.