Emma Darcy - Burning With Passion

‘Please, David...couldn’t you give me today? I’ll make you happy.’

‘I am happy. I’m delirious with happiness. Thank you for already making me so happy.’

To Caitlin’s mind he didn’t look the least bit happy. His words sounded sarcastic. She was quite certain he wasn’t at all happy with the way things were developing between them.

‘I want you to stay with me.’

Caitlin knew she was on very dangerous grounds with that plea. She was also probably wrong to put such a demand on him, but her need was acute. In a desperate attempt to interest him she pulled a long tress of her hair forward to dangle between her breasts, reminding him of the foreplay he enjoyed.

He gave her a sharp, penetrating look. ‘Are you saying I didn’t satisfy you?’

She flushed, unable to deny that he had brought her to a tumultuous climax. He was well aware of it, too. But, in a far more important sense than the purely physical, he didn’t satisfy her. Caitlin wanted—needed—intimate contact with his innermost feelings.

‘I want us to spend more time together,’ she said, willing him to respond with some suggestion that would help make things better for her.

‘We spent the night together,’ he said drily. ‘How many nights do you want?’ He reached for his trousers.

Caitlin fought against a sense of worthlessness and failure. She knew that in David’s mind nights were associated with sex. He wasn’t getting the message at all.

‘I want to talk to you. About something serious.’

‘In another two hours we’ll be in the office together. Isn’t that serious enough?’

‘It’s not the same,’ she retorted, hurt by his lack of understanding, knowing she was losing but too frustrated by his intransigent attitude to back off from the disagreement.

‘You want more?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘I’d very much like, just for once, for our pleasure and togetherness to come before your business.’

The act of rebellion was complete. Words had been spoken which could never be retrieved. The Rubicon was crossed. Caitlin waited to see what stormy waves she had stirred. The cobalt-blue eyes took on a wary, calculating look.

David never mixed business with pleasure. It was one of his rules. In the office, he was the boss, she was his assistant and amanuensis, and he never did or said anything to lead anyone to suspect they were lovers. That was private. It was personal. It was never to be revealed.

The two separate phases of his existence were divorced from one another. Caitlin couldn’t help thinking the arrangement suited his convenience. She worked his hours. She was free when he was free. But business was business and nothing else was allowed to interfere with running that part of his life as he saw fit. Nothing!

‘It wouldn’t hurt to take one day off and spend it together,’ she pressed.

‘What would it achieve that we haven’t already achieved?’

‘It would be something spontaneous, unplanned.’ She made one last attempt to get through to him. ‘It would make me feel good.’

‘I left my schooldays behind me a long time ago, Caitlin.’

He was downgrading her to ‘petulant schoolgirl’ status.

‘You could cancel your appointments today. I’ll make the excuses for you,’ she pleaded.

‘No.’

‘You could come back to bed and hug and cuddle and kiss me.’

His look of disdain downgraded her from schoolgirl to child.

He tucked in his shirt, zipped up his trousers, then sat on the stool, stony-faced as he began to pull on his socks.

‘Those are yesterday’s socks,’ said Caitlin with an uncharacteristic spurt of bitterness. ‘You’ll have to go home and change.’

‘I know that ,’ he replied with some asperity.

She had invited him to leave a fresh set of clothes in her apartment for the times he stayed overnight. It would have saved him the trouble of going home to change. He would not have to rise so early. He could stay and have breakfast with her.

His reply had been succinct and dismissive. He wouldn’t burden her with his dirty laundry.

He didn’t burden her with anything. His only concession to practicality about their relationship was to keep a toothbrush, a shaving kit and a comb in her bathroom. To Caitlin it smacked of a clinical detachment from getting involved in any way except the obvious. She didn’t like it.

It hurt.

It made her feel temporary.

She desperately wanted to feel special to him, more special than any woman he had been with before.

‘Why don’t you ever invite me to your home, David?’ she asked, driven to wring some sign from him that she meant more than a pleasurable convenience and receptacle.

‘It’s easier for you if we stay here. You can do as you please and be answerable to no one,’ he replied, not bothering to look up from tying the laces on his shoes.

Her convenience. That was a nice twist. In effect, she was kept excluded from his home life. Caitlin knew he lived at Lane Cove, not far from his business headquarters at Chatswood. Within the ambit of the northern suburbs of Sydney, it was no further away than her place at Wollstonecraft, but their intimacy was contained to her apartment.

Caitlin was chillingly conscious of how expedient this situation was if David chose to end their affair. No bothersome complications. He could simply walk out and never come back.

Her sense of insecurity with him deepened.

He rose from the stool, fully dressed apart from his tie and suitcoat. They had been discarded in her living-room. He would pick them up on his way out. His gaze skated over the long sprawl of her slender legs, paused at the deep indentation of her waist, skipped to the wild disarray of hair framing her face and shoulders, then fastened directly on her eyes. There was a dark, ruthless glint in his.

‘I hope you find the energy to move yourself in good time to get to the office at nine, Caitlin. I wouldn’t like to think you were taking advantage of your situation.’

It was a warning. Softly spoken, perfectly controlled, no direct threat involved, yet Caitlin’s spine crawled with the sense of having stretched beyond what was acceptable to him. The protective urge to quickly backtrack was shrivelled by a flare of burning resentment.

Did she have no importance in his life apart from being an efficient secretary and a ready source of sexual satisfaction? It was the final insult. She had worked herself to boneless exhaustion for David Hartley.

‘You have the sensitivity of a rhinoceros,’ she muttered darkly, more to herself than to him.

‘I’ll let that remark pass and pretend you never said it,’ he said testily.

‘Big of you,’ she complimented him.

The need to find out what she really meant to him surged through her with passionate intensity. Even if his heart was cold to her, his body wasn’t. She must mean something more than just being a body.

She swung her legs off the bed with a lithe, feline grace that captured his attention. She lifted her arms and flicked back her hair as she stood up and turned to face him, knowing the action tilted the firm fullness of her breasts into greater prominence. Her nipples hardened as the desire to seduce raged with white-hot heat. She rolled her hips, sliding her thighs against each other as she walked towards him, a sensual smile curving her generous mouth.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

His chest expanded. His shoulders squared with tension. His hands clenched. He was definitely unhappy. He was tempted. His mind warred against the stirring of his desire. He had a schedule to keep. He didn’t allow anything to interfere with that. His face set with resolution but the glitter in his eyes had more to do with lust than determination. His feet stayed rooted to the floor. He didn’t move forward.