upon layer, higher and higher, fed by each calculated withdrawal, each powerful thrust.
Until there was no place to go, no place higher or brighter or more wondrous as the sensation, the friction, the furious rhythm of his pounding body all melded together into a cataclysm, taking her with it.
She screamed her release, throwing her head back against the wall, her muscles clamping down hard as he shuddered his own frenetic release.
She didn’t know how long they stood together that way, she couldn’t tell, too busy trying to replace the oxygen consumed in the fire of their coupling while her body hummed its way down from the peak. But slowly her feet found the floor, slowly her senses and sensibility returned. To the knowledge she was standing barely dressed between a wall and a near naked man she barely knew but with whom she’d just had mind-blowing sex.
‘Wow,’ she said, embarrassed in the aftermath as he dispensed with the condom and she remembered her own wantonness. Had she really pulled his shirt apart in her desperation to get inside it? Had she really cried out like a banshee?
And he laughed, a low rumble in a velvet coat. ‘Evelyn Carmichael,’ he told her with a chaste kiss to her lips, ‘you are just one surprise package after another.’
He didn’t know the half of it. She found the straps of her dress, pulling it up to cover herself before she started looking for her underwear.
‘Leave it,’ he said, his hand around her wrist. ‘There’s no point. It’s only coming off again.’
‘Agai n?’
His eyes glinted. ‘This book I was telling you about. It’s a long book,’ he said. ‘That was only chapter one.’
She blinked up at him, her dress gathered in front of her, and he pulled her arm away, letting the dress drop to her waist, then slide over her hips in a whisper of silk to pool like a lake on the floor.
And even though they’d just had sex, she felt nervous standing there before him wearing nothing more than lace-topped stockings and spiky sandals. She hadn’t been with anyone since Sam’s father. She didn’t have the body she’d once had, her belly neat but traced with tiny silvery lines and softer than it had been before bearing a child.
She held her breath. Could he tell? Would it matter?
‘You look,’ he said, ‘like a goddess emerging from the sea.’ And some tiny, futile creature somewhere deep inside her grew wings and attempted a fluttery takeoff.
‘And you look like a pirate,’ she countered, reminding herself it was just a game. It wasn’t real and that pointless tiny creature inside her would soon die a rapid death, its gossamer wings stilled. ‘Ruthless and swashbuckling.’
‘Uncanny,’ he said, his lips turning in a half-smile as he swung her into his arms. ‘However did you know?’
‘Know what?’ she asked, feeling a secret thrill as he carried her into the next room.
‘The goddess of the sea and the swashbuckling pirate.’ He winked at her and he laid her gently on the king-sized bed. ‘That’s the title of chapter two.’
It was a long and detailed chapter. There were passages Eve found agonising going, like when the pirate sampled the goddess, tasting every last inch of her except there, where she craved his detailed attentions the most, and then there were the passages that moved at what felt like breakneck speed, where he feasted on her until she was bucking on the bed.
And even when she lay, still gasping, after her latest orgasm, the chapter didn’t end and he joined her in savouring the final few pages together until that final breathtaking climax.
Outside the lights of Melbourne winked at her, the skies unusually clear, a heavy full moon hanging above the bridge over the Yarra.
Inside the suite, Eve’s breathing slowly returned to normal as she savoured the feel of Leo’s arm lying pro-prietorially over her stomach as he lay face down alongside her, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, his thick black hair mussed into bed-head perfection by her own hands. He wasn’t asleep, she knew, but it was a wonder given the energy he’d used tonight. Definitely a pirate, she thought. And very definitely a magic night. But it was late and magic nights had to end, just as goddesses had responsibilities too.
Oh, my, he’d actually called her a goddess! And she felt that tiny winged creature launch itself for another lurching spin around her stomach.
‘I should go,’ she said, with a wistful sigh for the ill-fated beast before she returned to sensible Evelyn Carmichael again and considered the practicalities of not having a functioning hot water service. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower before I go?’
And his eyes blinked open, the arm around her waist shifting, scooping higher to capture a breast. A smile played on his lips while he coaxed a nipple into unexpected responsiveness. ‘I’ve got a much better idea.’
She swallowed. Surely it wasn’t possible? But still her body hummed into life at the thought. ‘Chapter three?’
He nodded, his busy fingers hard at work on the other nipple, adding his hot mouth to the mix, guaranteeing the result. ‘The goddess returns to the sea only to find the pirate lurking in the depths, waiting to ambush her.’
‘That’s a long title.’
‘It’s a long chapter,’ he said, rolling off the bed and scooping her up into his arms. ‘In which case, we should get started.’
An hour later Eve had bubbles up to her chin and warm jets massaging all those newly found muscles of hers she hadn’t realised would so appreciate the attention. From the bedroom came the sound of Leo’s voice on the phone as he arranged her car. In a moment she’d have to prise herself from the bath and shower off the bubbles but for the moment she lingered, her limbs heavy, feeling languorous and spoilt and thoroughly, thoroughly spent.
It was easy to feel spoilt here, she thought, quietly reflecting on her opulent surroundings, committing them to memory as part of the experience. For if the size and scale of the suites had amazed her, the sheer lavishness of the bathroom had taken her breath away.
Marble in muted tones of sun-ripened wheat and golden honey lined the floor and walls, the lighting low and warm and inviting, the spa and shower enclosure—a space as big as her entire bathroom at home—separated from the long marble vanity by heavy glass doors. It was utterly, utterly decadent.
And if there hadn’t been enough bubbles, he’d found champagne and ripe, red strawberries to go with it. He’d turned what she’d intended simply as a shower into another erotic fantasy.
What a night. Three chapters of his book, all of them different, every one of them a complete fantasy. If chapter one had been desperate and frenetic, and chapter two slow to the point of torture, chapter three had showed the pirate at his most playfully erotic best. The slip of oils on skin, the play of the jets on naked flesh and the sheer fun of discovering what lay beneath the foam.
She closed her eyes, allowing herself just a few snatched seconds of imagining what it would be like if this was her life, all posh hotels with views of city lights and an attentive lover like Leo to make her feel the most special woman alive, with no worries about broken-down appliances and falling-down houses.
But then there was Sam.
And she felt guilty for even thinking of a world that didn’t include him—that couldn’t include him. For Sam was her life, whereas this was a fantasy that had no other course but to end and end soon.
She slipped under the water one last time, letting her hair fan out around her head, relishing the big wide bath, before she sat up, the water sluicing from her body. No regrets, she told herself as she squeezed the water from her hair, she wouldn’t allow it. She’d made her choice. She would live with it. And whatever happened in her life after this, whatever her everyday suburban life might hold, she knew she would have this one secret night of passion to look back on.
‘The