Carol Marinelli - One Summer Night

And the question that yesterday had been probing felt different now, more like natural conversation, but if he answered with truth, if she glimpsed his hate, she’d be gone. All Zander knew was that he did not want that, he wanted this day, so his answer was guarded instead. ‘I’ve never known my mother.’

‘Did you always know that you had a twin?’

‘I thought Nico was off limits,’ Zander said. ‘Your rule.’ He gave her a smile as he stood and put down some money for the bill. ‘Come on, we can ride to the hills.’

It was a day that was, for both of them, different.

For later, as afternoon turned to evening, as they parked the scooters and walked high in the hills of Xanos, the air chilly now, he was not plotting revenge, or thinking about tomorrow. Instead, he was thinking beyond that to a place he had never been—could almost see her in his world.

‘I have hotels and casinos across Australasia. I do a lot of travelling …’ They stopped at a flat rock and she nodded when he suggested that they take a moment to relax. She sat on the rock, enjoying the view, not just of Xanos but of a world he was painting for her. ‘You’ve been to Singapore?’

‘Not on my route.’ Charlotte smiled.

‘Then you have missed an amazing place. There is good shopping, amazing salons …’ She gave a wry smile, for dressed in her work best, with her finger- and toenails painted and her roots freshly done, her eyebrows newly shaped, it was a natural assumption that this was how she lived. Despite the coolness, her cheeks reddened, for all the lies she had told, the weddings and cocktails and long lunches with friends that had never happened. ‘Unlike your boss, I would want my PA to be around …’ He saw a blush darken her cheeks as he gently explored what was becoming an option. A job that was a hundred per cent glamour. He could give her this every day, instead of it being a rare treat.

‘I thought we weren’t talking about Nico.’

‘We’re not,’ Zander said, ‘we’re talking about work.’

‘I’m very happy with what I do now.’ She stood as if to catch her breath, but instead it was to bite down on a sudden urge to weep, for he was offering her the world, and how she wanted to say yes, to be the woman he thought she was—if only she could be.

‘I would pay you more.’ He wanted his way, he always got his way, and he would have it now.

‘It’s not about money!’ Her voice came out shrill, too sharp, too strained to pretend she was not upset. She could barely manage to keep up the façade for a week, let alone permanently.

‘I would look after you better than he,’ Zander said, and he meant it. For he would look after her and that would start now.

Zander was at his most potent. The walk in the hills that had seemingly so naturally unfolded had been absolutely contrived. This was a route he had trodden so many times in his youth. It was no convenient rock they had ambled towards—this was his stomping ground, here, where with women he had always got his way. The letters ‘AK’ were carved in the rock beneath the moss where her bottom had sat.

‘Zander, I don’t know if I’ve …’ How could she say it, how could she tell him about her real and drab life? She had not set out to lie, but knew of course that she had. ‘I think I’ve misled you …’ She saw his face darken. And darken it did as he braced himself to hear that Nico was, as he surely had already known, far more than a boss. ‘I haven’t told you—’

‘Don’t,’ he interrupted her, for he did not need to hear it. He did not need an angel, Zander reminded himself, he was here only to get revenge. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’ And then he said something else, something that, despite the cool Xanos breeze, made her warm inside, had her sit back down when his hand took her wrist. ‘Let us enjoy our day.’ She wanted that, wanted so very much this escape. She did not want to cloud it, to spoil it, to bring reality in to this magical place. ‘Maybe you’ll think about my job offer later, maybe …’

‘I …’ How could she say that she wouldn’t think about it when it was all she would ever think about, even if it could never be? She closed her eyes and entered the luxury of his offer, working for him, seeing more of him, and then as his lips dusted her mouth, they confirmed the full extent of the debauchery behind his proposition. Yet it did not offend, it was the most delicious sensation she had felt in years, his lips warmer than her cool ones, his mouth so much more in control than hers. All she did was feel it—feel the warm pulse of his flesh on hers. She relished the weight of a mouth that moved slowly, a mouth that warmed rapidly, and she took his breath into her and held it, and held it some more, and then breathed it back to him and now they were one. It was one kiss that both were sharing, for now her mouth moved on his, now she tasted him, and their kiss was a slow one, a warning, a heady warning that there was so much more to come.

When Zander kissed, it was always with intent, a means to an end, a temporary place where he’d prefer not to linger, and now, in a minute, his hand would wander. Soon, in a minute, he would press her back to lie on the mossy stone, but there were things in this kiss that he had never noticed before, that her eyelashes swept on his temple and that the tip of her tongue was like a balm that made him forget the hell.

Sex made him forget, he reminded himself, kissing her just a little bit harder, for surely that was where this must lead, but she seemed to want more of a taste of him and, yes, he actually liked her tongue’s tentative exploration, liked the faint taste of their breaths mingled. Had it not been so delicious he would have taken her right there on the hillside, would have moved his hand from A to B and then a moment later a little lower again—would have worked the trusted formula that never failed. Had their kiss not been so unusually pleasing, he would have had her panties in his hand just about now, except all they were doing were kissing, and he did not want Charlotte bare-bottomed on a hill.

Oh, but he did, Zander thought as his mouth still moved hers and his ardor deepened as, not on formula but instinct, his hand moved beneath her waist to the low rise of her shorts. He wanted his fingers to slip in there, wanted where this could so, so easily lead, but he did not want her embarrassment afterwards. He resisted the lure of her zip and his fingers moved to the hemline, dug into her tender inner thigh as he attempted a rapid halt but it was she kissing him now, her tongue calling the shots.

She hadn’t been kissed in so very long, and never more thoroughly than now—so expert his tongue, so blissful his hands, so faint-making his scent, all she wanted was to give in to the press of his mouth and move backwards, to lie down under him, to relish the bliss of his hands—hands that slid from her arm to her waist. There was the faint brush of his thumb on her nipple and the sound of foreign birdsong, and so easily he took her away, so tenderly he removed each splinter on her mind, each shackle to her heart that with one kiss she forgot what she knew. With his kiss she lost the hurt and forgot to be wary.

His hands were near her bottom and then moving around to the front, the weight of him pinning her down, then the bliss of his fingers pressing into her thighs, climbing and then resting and then slowly climbing again as her mouth beckoned him on and, with his kiss, it was hard to remember she was here to work, here as Nico’s PA. Somehow, as his mouth dragged her under, as his kisses pressed her down to the mossy rock beneath, her mind fought its way to the surface, resisted delicious temptation and remembered the reason she was here.