Miranda Lee - Contract with Consequences

Scarlet had been rendered speechless by the decidedly R-rated images which had sprung into her mind. She was seriously glad that John couldn’t see the burst of heat which flamed into her cheeks.

‘Come now, Scarlet, you must know how very desirable you are.’

Now Scarlet felt hot all over. A shiver ran down her spine at the realisation she might shortly find out just how desirable he thought she was.

‘I hope your silence doesn’t mean you’ve changed your mind about this?’ he said, his voice sounding curiously expressionless.

‘No,’ she choked out, still blushing at her earlier train of thought. Thank heavens they weren’t face to face!

‘Good.’ His voice relaxed again. ‘When can you get yourself up here?’

Scarlet swallowed, then sat up straighter. She’d always been more comfortable following a plan.

‘I thought as soon as possible,’ she said briskly.

‘How about the beginning of next week?’

‘Well, I’ll have to get stuff organised at work…’

He rode over her objections. ‘I’m sure you can sort it. Once you’ve booked your flight next week, text me your time of arrival and I’ll be at the airport waiting for you.’ He sounded equally brisk, and it was as difficult as ever to guess what he was feeling. ‘Don’t send the text to this number. Send it to my mobile. I’ll be back in Darwin by then.’

Scarlet rolled her eyes in exasperation. Why was it then men wouldn’t listen ? ‘Where are you, anyway?’ she asked.

‘Camping out in one of the national parks.’

Scarlet had been doing some mental calculations. ‘Wait-next week is way too early. I can’t possibly fall pregnant till a week after that. I never ovulate before day fourteen on my cycle. I know this for a fact because I’ve been taking my temperature every day for the last year and-’

‘Scarlet,’ he interrupted. ‘If you want to get pregnant, then let’s try this my way.’

Truly, he could be as irritating a man as he’d been an irritating boy! ‘Which is?’ she snapped.

‘Not taking your temperature every day, for starters. Not caring about when you bloody ovulate either. Because, let’s face it, that method hasn’t been working too well for you up till now, has it?’

‘I guess not,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘I suggest you leave this whole operation up to me. Put yourself entirely in my hands. No arguments, no more buts.’

‘Yes,’ she bit out.

‘Good,’ he said, smiling wryly to himself at the thought that ‘yes’ wasn’t a word Scarlet was used to saying. But she was going to say it a lot during their time together. He would make her say it. No, he would make her want to say it. For that was what he craved all of a sudden. Not just Scarlet’s compliance but her complete surrender.

The thought excited him unbearably. Was this what had been lurking at the back of his mind? Not just desire for sex, but a desire to seduce? To possess? To control?

The idea perturbed him. He’d never been into that kind of thing. Sex for him was usually just a physical release with no strings attached. He’d always steered well clear of becoming emotionally involved with the women he slept with. John could see, however, that this was a different situation entirely. If truth be told, his emotions were already involved. The problem was which ones?

He almost told her to forget it then; that he’d changed his mind. But it was too late. The roller coaster of destiny was already moving and he was solidly strapped in. There would be no escape till it came to rest at the end of the ride.

BECAUSE she had a window seat and her head was too fuzzy to read, Scarlet spent most of the four-and-a-half-hour flight to Darwin staring down at the landscape below. With no clouds in the sky, there was nothing to hinder her view of what was really an incredible sight. What a big country Australia was, big and rugged and mostly uninhabited. The last frontier, some people called it.

Scarlet had never flown over the outback of Australia before. Or been in the outback, for that matter. Holidays before her dad had died had been confined to trips to Sydney, or the Gold Coast. Once, they’d gone to the Blue Mountains where they’d visited the Three Sisters and the Jenolan Caves. After her dad had died, she and her mother hadn’t gone on holidays for years. Eventually, they had started going to Fiji each year, because it was reasonably close to Australia and good value for money.

She’d never been to Darwin. But she knew quite a bit about the place. Or she did now, having looked it up on the Internet this past week. Scarlet was not a girl who ever liked to appear ignorant. Up till now her knowledge of the capital city of the Northern Territory had been rather superficial and sketchy. Although she already knew that Darwin had been struck by a cyclone in the seventies, she hadn’t realised it had happened on Christmas Day, of all days, which she found very sad. She also hadn’t appreciated the devastation it had caused. The photographs of the aftermath had been horrendous. Understandably, it had taken decades to rebuild the city but it was now a thriving mining town and tourist Mecca, the gateway to Kakadu National Park and lots of other famous Aboriginal sites. Its harbourside position in the extreme north of Australia meant its climate was very hot and humid in the summer, but wonderfully mild in the winter.

She’d dithered considerably over what to bring, in the end packing probably more than she would need. But it had been so hard to choose. Scarlet had always loved nice clothes, and had a wardrobe full of outfits for every occasion. Her mother had thought she was crazy putting in a couple of pretty dresses, but that was because she believed Scarlet was going to spend her ‘holiday’ either lazing around the pool of the hotel she’d supposedly booked, or going on day bus-tours, all of which required nothing more than Bermuda shorts, solid shoes, a hat and insect repellent. Her mother had stopped criticising her choice of wardrobe when Scarlet reminded her about that nice man she might meet.

‘Who knows?’ she’d added for good measure. ‘He might ask me out to dinner!’

Which she’d assumed John would at some stage.

But what if he didn’t? Scarlet now wondered.

During the past week, Scarlet had tried not to think about what John’s plans were for the next ten days. For what was the point? She’d already agreed to his terms, whatever they were.

But, now that the moment was at hand, it was almost impossible not to wonder, and worry. Maybe she should have warned him that she was a bit of a lemon in the bedroom. It was one thing to have private fantasies where she stripped off without a qualm and had multiple orgasms every single time she had sex. The reality was totally different. She was rather shy at being naked in front of a man.

Her stomach tightened as she tried to imagine what it was going to be like, having sex with John. For some crazy reason she was terrified of disappointing him. She wanted him to find pleasure in her body.

The announcement that they’d begun their descent into Darwin tightened her stomach further. If Scarlet hadn’t been so besieged by nervous tension, she might have noticed that she’d stopped thinking about what she’d come to Darwin to achieve. All her thoughts were on one subject and one subject only: John.

Seeking distraction, she stared once more at the ground below, surprised to see that the red and brown of the outback had given way to a greener landscape, one with lots of trees and, yes, water out to the left of the plane. It looked like a harbour but obviously not Darwin harbour. There were no houses along the foreshore and not many boats on the water. Of course, it always took a good while for a commercial jet to descend into an airport, so they weren’t over Darwin yet.