Summer's Edge Page 20

  But he wasn’t going to be fooled that easily. "Is something worrying you?"

  "No." She hoped the lie didn’t make her voice sound hollow.

  Stewart stroked the hair back from her face.

  Suddenly she burst into tears, hating herself for it, feeling like an idiotic child. But she still couldn’t tell him, it would only make it worse.

  He put his arms around her and she wept into his chest. It was where Alice wanted to be but she couldn’t quell her thoughts and fears nor communicate them to him. She felt that she was leading him on, even though she wanted to be with more than anything else in the world.

  He searched around for ideas. "Do you want me to drive you home?" At first she thought he was rejecting her but then she saw the love and concern in his eyes and it made her want to cry even more.

  She didn’t want to leave him but she also wanted to clear her head. She had thought that being with him would blot out her doubts but she felt guilty the more kindness he showed her.

  "I’m sorry," she said, managing to recover. "I didn’t mean to be a downer."

  He put his arms around her. "If you’re worried about anything, you can tell me. We’ll fix it together."

  But she couldn’t tell him. Together might be the whole problem.

  "I’m fine, I really am. I’m sorry for waking you." She lay back down with him and he held her in his arms. He soon fell asleep again but Alice lay awake for what felt like hours.

  She was torn. Torn in terms of wanting to be with him but fear that she was being selfish in doing so.

  * * *

  The worst thing was that she wouldn’t see him for all the next week. Stewart had to take the Fairmount cricket team to a five-day tournament across the country. And now she had made a complete mess of their last night together.

  The morning had still been uncomfortable and Alice was frustrated with herself. She should be totally happy, he hadn’t made any demands on her after all, but the fear that he might have different expectations to her continued to ring in her head. She tried to act normally but he could tell something was still up.

  He drove her home, and when he kissed her goodbye she felt herself melting into him all over again. Even though it was broad daylight she wanted to make love with him then and there, in the car, Hilary Bowes’ twitching curtains be damned. She wanted to give him something to remember her by, other than her being a basket case the previous night.

  She started trying to unbutton his shirt, wanting to run her hands over the muscles of his chest.

  "Do you want me to drive somewhere more discreet?"

  Alice directed him to a dead-end lane a short drive away, a popular place for parked cars with steamed up windows on weekend nights. On Saturday morning there were only a couple of empty cars there, probably people walking their dogs in the fields beyond.

  He parked the car and leaned over to her to kiss her again. But she pushed him over to his side and sat on top of him, straddling him. She loved feeling the hardness of him through his clothes, all for her.

  So she unbuckled his belt, opening his fly and tugging it apart. His erection sprang up into her hands almost instantly, freed from the restrictions of clothing. As she brought her mouth down on him he caught his breath and a part of her rejoiced that she could have such an effect on him.

  "If someone walks past…" his breathing was ragged. But he wasn’t going to stop her.

  She could feel his own desire, pent up again even though it wasn’t that long since the last time.

  He didn’t let her continue for long before he pulled her up and against his chest. He pushed her underwear aside and was quickly inside her. Hot, hard, tight.

  In this position he could easily touch any part of her body, through her clothes and under her clothes, rub her against his fingers. And he did so. He drove her wild.

  They were face to face, looking into one another’s eyes. She read love there, desire. She wanted him so much that any good resolutions she had to be sensible or to be patient simply evaporated.

  She was grinding onto him, loving the depth, the connection. He pulled her close against him and she clung to him, her face against the side of his neck, breathing in his scent to try and store it in her mind for the time they would be apart.

  "How am I going to manage for a week without this?" he asked her as he gripped her hips with his hands, working her to his rhythm. Then the light in his eyes softened. "Without you?"

  Alice didn’t know how she was going to manage either which was absurd since she’d coped just fine without him or anyone else before.

  But she was hooked now. They both were. She wanted to be with him all the time. She just needed it to be in the moment, not thinking too far ahead.

  "Will you be thinking of me?" she asked.

  "All week. Dreaming about you as well, I should think."

  "What kind of dreams?"

  "You know what kind," he told her.

  "Will I do this?" She twisted on him and squeezed, knowing that if she kept it up she could easily make him lose control.

  "You will now."

  "Will you forget what I look like?" She was obviously teasing him now as she lifted her top, exposing her body to him. His hands went straight to her breasts, fondling them and making her whole body tingle with pleasure.

  "I think this image should stick in my mind."

  The extra stimulation as his thumbs brushed her nipples was bringing her close to the peak, and as he shifted beneath her suddenly, driving in deeper, she lost it just ahead of him.

  He held her for a while afterwards. They talked, half serious, half joking, about how much he would miss her during the week.

  "If you had a phone in your bedroom I could call you up at night," he said.

  "I could use the hall phone. No one would hear if they were all asleep." Though the ringing might wake them, she supposed.

  "You’d need to be in bed for what I’d want to tell you to do."

  Alice shivered at the thought. She’d heard of people having phone sex but never tried anything like it herself. The prospect of Richard or her mother picking up one of the extensions was dreadful. Plus the ringing might wake everyone up.

  "I’ll see what I can do." The hall phone might just reach into her bedroom, if she threaded it through the bannisters. What her parents would think was quite another matter. Perhaps if she put a blanket over the phone it might muffle the ring and not wake them.

  Just thinking about it was starting to turn her on again, and she started wondering if he would have recovered enough stamina yet.

  Then she saw someone walking along the lane towards the car. She had totally forgotten where they were and the fact that anyone could see in. Quickly she pulled her top down and dived back onto her seat, hoping the morning dog-walker wouldn’t notice anything unusual.

  Stewart grinned. "You don’t want to give him a show?"

  "No. And it’s a she, anyway." The mortifying thought that it might even be someone she knew was enough to bring Alice back down to earth.

  He drove her back home, he was already running late due to their diversion so couldn’t come in for a drink. Parting from him felt harder than it ever had before. What on earth was it going to be like when she had to go overseas and he had to go back to Australia? She decided to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.

  "So you’ll call me?"

  "Of course. I don’t want you getting bored and finding other diversions." He was joking but she sensed the same, slight insecurity in him that she felt herself. He was still not completely sure of her feelings for him. Her emotional outburst last night wouldn’t have helped. And although he never said anything, she knew he was conscious of other guys like Joe Jackson hanging around the sidelines.

  Not that he had anything to worry about. What terrified her was how completely and absolutely she wanted him and no one else. But he was her first, and she knew nothing else. He of course did, and in the moments when she wasn’t fretting that she
was leading him on and getting in too deep, she worried that she might not match up to the women in his past.

  Was love always like this? Did something so wonderful also have to be so tricky and so nerve-wracking?

  32. Separation

  Alice was lingering around Richard’s study once again, not really sure what she wanted to ask him or even if she wanted to ask him anything at all. She couldn’t ask her mother for reassurance, because it was her mother’s view that had disrupted her peace of mind in the first place.

  "You did like Stewart, didn’t you?" she said at last.

  "I found him to be a very decent and intelligent man." Decent and intelligent. From Richard this was high praise.

  "Do you think I’m too young? That it’s a mistake?"

  Richard didn’t answer immediately, and Alice could see he was thinking.

  "Certainly not a mistake, because no experience in life is a mistake," he said. "As for your age, you are both consenting adults. It’s perhaps more an issue of timing."

  "Timing?"

  "The stages of where you both are in your lives. You’re due to travel the world. He’s going through a time of career transition. You know that significant changes lie ahead for you both, which is challenging."

  He understood. Somehow, he always understood, and he never judged.

  "If I keep seeing him, and it gets more serious, will it just make it harder?" Alice asked.

  Once again Richard paused for thought. "I should think it would make it easier. At least you’ll have a more definite picture of what you both want."

  "But then we have to go our separate ways."

  "That’s not a difficult thing. Painful, perhaps. A more difficult situation would be confusion or uncertainty about what you wanted to do."

  Alice looked at all the books lining the shelves of the room. Easily a lifetime’s reading.

  "What if I change my mind?"

  "The sky won’t fall if you do."

  It felt better hearing this from Richard as a man. If he thought it was something that could be taken on the chin, perhaps Alice was worrying unduly.

  * * *

  During the next few days Alice tried to take her mind off things by throwing herself into work. She didn’t want to be one of those girls that sat waiting by the telephone. Still, she wished he would ring. Every time the phone went her heart leapt and then she would kick herself for feeling disappointed when it turned out to be one of her mother’s friends.

  Jules was less than impressed when Alice answered her call with an "oh, it’s you."

  "I suppose that tone means you were hoping for your coach to ring. Hasn’t he called you yet?" she asked.

  "No. It’s stupid but I keep stressing he’s changed his mind."

  "Hardly. Weren’t you the one who was worried about him liking you more than you liked him, only last week?" Jules said.

  That hadn’t been quite Alice’s concern, though if she had ever doubted her own feelings, the separation had been enough to assuage any concerns. She burned for him. Cheltenham felt bleak and empty without him there.

  "It’s only been four days, Alice, how on earth are you going to manage when we go travelling?"

  Five days. It was Saturday when she had last seen and spoken with him, and it was now Thursday without word. Each day became a little more agonising.

  "How are you going to manage without your cricket captain beau?" Alice asked.

  Jules and Mike Jackson were surprisingly still infatuated though Jules swore it was just lust. Mike was also away on the tournament with Stewart so she was a fellow cricket widow that week.

  "Let’s go and drown our sorrows at the Dog & Duck." Jules had started doing some bartending shifts there which meant they could now get the occasional free drink.

  Alice thought it might add to her sorrows, being the place she had first properly met Stewart, but she agreed to go. Anything was better than another night of sitting by the phone.

  They didn’t stay out late as Alice had to get up the next morning to work at the veterinary surgery, so she was back home by around half past ten. For the past few nights she had been taking the hall phone into her bedroom, with the aid of an extension cord she had found in a drawer, and putting it under a blanket to muffle it in case it rang.

  Of course it would be this night, after she’d had too many drinks and needed to get an early night, that he finally called.

  Alice practically leapt across the room to silence the phone. Even underneath several layers of blanket it sounded like a million decibels at this late hour. She hoped her mother and Richard hadn’t heard. Their room was some distance away, insulated from hers by the bathroom and the boys’ room, so hopefully not.

  "Hello?" She hadn’t even considered the possibility that it might not be him. But it was, and just hearing his voice made her flood with joy.

  Stewart apologised for not having called earlier. "There’s only a broken payphone where we’re staying. I finally managed to get to a phone box in town, I’m sorry to call so late. I’ve missed you."

  She had missed him too. She told him so.

  "Where are you now?" he asked.

  "I’m in my room, I was out with Jules earlier but I’ve got work tomorrow."

  "You’re alone?"

  Of course she was. But she realised why he was asking.

  "Yes, everyone else is asleep," she told him.

  He was silent for a moment and she could almost feel him there in the room with her.

  "I wish I was with you," he said.

  She nearly cracked a joke from nerves, about her parents not appreciating a midnight visitor, but instead she said "I wish you were too."

  "You know what I’d be doing to you right now?"

  Even this far away from him, she shivered. She was clinging to the phone handset, holding it as close as possible to her ear as though that could somehow bring him nearer.

  "What would you be doing?" She had a feeling he was going to tell her, so she slipped back into her bed, cradling the phone between her ear and the pillow.

  "I’d have you naked with me. And I wouldn’t be letting you sleep."

  The thought of it made her throb for him. She wondered if he was also turned on. He must be standing in a phone box somewhere, in the dark. She hoped the coins wouldn’t suddenly run out.

  But she couldn’t answer him. She felt shy, even though he couldn’t see her face.

  "Do you want me, Alice? Right now?"

  Of course she did. "Yes, I really do."

  "Touch yourself."

  She didn’t dare disobey. She was gripping the phone with one hand for dear life. She let her other hand slide down beneath her clothing and felt how incredibly wet she was for him, even with him being so far away.

  "How does that feel?"

  "I wish it was you doing it to me."

  "I will be, soon. But right now I want you to imagine it’s me."

  He instructed her how to move her hand and where. The speed, the pressure.

  She complied. She was so wet, so turned on. She couldn’t speak, she could barely breathe. She was half panting, half gasping over the phone as she followed his commands.

  He continued to tell her exactly what to do. His voice grew huskier as he issued each direction.

  She grew wetter, more swollen, more sensitive.

  "Now I want you to come for me."

  She was in his hands. Even though he wasn’t there. He was guiding her, step by step. She followed everything he told her to do.

  "Swirl your finger around. Right where I know you want it."

  She had to muffle her own cries as she came, hoping no one would hear, longing for him to be there to plunge inside her and press her to him and give her the fullness of it. "I want you. So much. Why aren’t you here?" She was breathless.

  "I will be there, this weekend. And I want you for the whole of it. You’re going to stay with me and show me exactly what you did tonight."

  "A repeat performance?" It ha
d been hard enough doing it on the phone with him, she couldn’t imagine doing it in front of him. In person, with him watching her.

  But the thickness of desire in his voice told her how much he wanted it. Wanted her.

  "I love you, Alice. Sleep well. I’ll pick you up on Saturday night at eight. We should be back by then."

  She couldn’t sleep though. He had made her orgasm, but it fanned the fire rather than quenched it. She lay there, needing him again, needing him more. Just thinking about what he had said to her and made her do triggered all her desire again.

  Plus the thought of what he might have in store for her that weekend. If she felt this desperate for him after only a few days absence she could only imagine what he might be feeling. And tonight had been all about her.

  She couldn’t believe how late it was when she looked at her bedside clock. Had they really been on the phone that long? Thank god he had called her, or she would have had some awkward explaining to do when the phone bill came with such a lengthy, late-night, long-distance call.

  33. Resolution

  Alice was ecstatic to see Stewart again when he picked her up on Saturday evening. But she was nervous too. The intensity of how she felt scared her.

  He looked more tanned, having been out in the sun all week at the tournament.

  "Did it go well?" she asked him.

  "If you mean did we win, then yes," he told he.

  "How did Mike do?" she asked, out of interest for Jules.

  "Jackson? Two half centuries, I don’t think he’s going to have many worries with county selection."

  Jules would be so happy for him, Alice thought. Even though she would probably pretend she wasn’t bothered.

  "So what are we doing tonight?"

  "After eating boarding school food for a week, I need a decent meal," Stewart said. The tournament had been held in the grounds one of the schools taking part, and the teams and coaches had all been accommodated there.

  They managed to find a restaurant that had a free table at that time on a Saturday night. He ordered steak and chips and Alice followed his lead. She wasn’t actually that hungry, she’d been too wired all day with anticipation about seeing him again.