Caress (2 page)

“You’re not at all aroused,” said Amber, running her fingernails around the sensitive rim of his glans. “Let’s hope Amy can help change that.”

Andrew’s body tensed as he felt Will parting his buttocks and then Amy’s small fingers were probing softly at the entrance to his rectum, pressing against the inner walls and then moving until they located his prostate gland. He drew in his breath sharply, but after a few seconds she stopped. Then, as Amber’s mouth closed over his rapidly hardening erection, he felt a thin tube being inserted between his buttocks.

“I don’t want to do this!” he protested.

Amber smiled at him. “You sound just like a guest! Besides, your body is saying something totally different.”

He wished that it wasn’t, and felt his bowels churn as warm water slowly filled him and the pressure built in his pelvic area. Amber lifted her head for a moment, staring into his eyes. “You love this,” she said softly. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t. Let yourself go.”

“It’s too intense,” he protested. His erection was so hard that it was hurting him, but still he couldn’t come. Then the tube was withdrawn, the water slowly left him and once again Amy started massaging his prostate as Amber closed a warm mouth over his purple glans, letting her tongue flick into the tiny slit at the top. With a deep moan he felt the pleasure rising up and then it was spilling into her mouth and she sucked so hard on him that the pleasure only lasted a few seconds before turning to discomfort and then pain.

Still Amy continued to stimulate him from behind, and now as his hard cock began to shrink, Amber’s mouth closed around the head again, only this time her mouth was ice cold, and he shouted with shock, even though he could feel himself stirring again and his testicles started to tighten once more.

“That will do,” said Amber, and immediately Amy withdrew her fingers, Will untied him and the two of them left him alone with Amber, alone and still not totally satisfied.

“Excellent!” exclaimed Amber. “A suitable punishment for your stupidity, and a successful test for a trial. If you want my opinion, you need a different kind of woman from Grace anyway, someone more sparky, less easily shocked perhaps. You should find someone and bring them along as a guest once Grace’s time with us is over.”

Driving back to his home as dawn was breaking, Andrew remembered her words. Despite everything, he still thought it possible Grace might well succeed, and that Amber was right to be afraid of the curvy, dark-haired girl with the long-lashed brown eyes and deceptively innocent smile.

If she wasn’t right, but Grace didn’t turn to him when David discarded her, he thought he would like to bring a guest to the Dining Club sometime in the future.

He wanted to experience what David was feeling, but he could never do that with Grace because she wouldn’t be allowed to do the trials again. So, should he be thwarted in his efforts to make Grace fall in love with him, it would be exciting to find a woman he felt deeply about. However, finding the right person would be very difficult, and it was still Grace he dreamed about at night.

* * *

That night Grace was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of her phone ringing. Virtually no one she knew used her landline these days, and she fumbled with the switch on her bedside lamp and then nearly dropped the receiver because the phone cord was tangled.

“Hello?” she said breathlessly.

“Grace darling, it’s me. Are you all right?”

“David?” she asked incredulously. He’d never phoned her from a work trip abroad before. “Is something wrong?”

“Of course not, I just wanted to hear your voice. Did I wake you?”

She glanced at her bedside clock. “It’s three in the morning, of course you woke me!”

“Sorry, I lose track of time when I’m working. How was the play?”

“The play?” she queried, quite forgetting having seen
The Winter’s Tale
and worried that somehow he knew about her meeting with Andrew, which she sensed wouldn’t have pleased him.

“Yes, at the King’s Head. You went with Fran to check out an actress as I recall. Was she any good?”

Grace was totally bewildered. Although he did take an interest in her work, it was totally out of character for him to ask her about such a relatively unimportant theater trip. “Not brilliant, but adequate,” she said, still struggling to emerge from a deep sleep.

“What did Fran think of her?”

Grace didn’t have a clue, because they hadn’t yet discussed it. “We’re going to talk about it more next week. Fran wanted an early night and the play went on quite late,” she explained.

“Are you missing me?” he asked tenderly.

Immediately she was certain that he knew. Somehow he knew that she’d met up with Andrew and that he’d come back to her flat. Despite being half-asleep she had to decide quickly what to tell him. “Yes, I am,” she said truthfully. “It was made worse tonight because I saw Andrew at the King’s Head. He was there drinking when Fran and I came out of the play.”

There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line. Clearly David hadn’t expected her to tell him the truth. “And that made you miss me more?” he asked.

“Yes, it did.”

“How much do you miss me?”

Grace wished she wasn’t so tired. She felt she needed to be more alert to cope with the conversation, but her brain wouldn’t function properly. “A lot,” she said.

“Then touch yourself for me.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “David, I’m half-asleep, I…”

“Darling, I want to think of you touching yourself.”

Even though she was half-asleep she noticed that he didn’t sound aroused or excited, it was more as though he was determined to remind her that she was his.

“This isn’t the Dining Club,” she pointed out. “I don’t have to do what you want.”

His voice softened and deepened, and she felt a flicker of excitement. “I know that, and if you don’t want to do it then that’s fine. I wish I was with you and could touch you myself. I’d begin by running my fingers along the insides of your arms and the backs of your knees. Then I’d kiss the sides of your neck, before moving lower to lick your nipples as they hardened. Are they hardening now, as I talk? Tell me the truth, Gracie,” he urged her.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Excellent. Now let your fingers stray over your stomach, moving slowly down to where you’re starting to ache and feel heavy. That is happening, isn’t it?”

She could hardly answer she was so aroused as she obeyed his instructions. “It is,” she said at last, feeling a heavy pulse beating between her thighs.

“Press the palm of your right hand over your pubic bone, and let your fingers part your sex lips,” he urged her. “Isn’t that good?”

She heard herself make an incoherent sound and then whimpered with pleasure at the blissful feelings the pressure of her palm was causing her. Her skin seemed too tight for her body, and she was damp with desire.

“Tell me how wet you feel,” he said, his voice like velvet now.

“I’m very wet,” she said breathlessly, letting her fingers slip and slide over the throbbing area around her clitoris.

“How wet?”

“Very wet,” she admitted, her voice little more than a whisper.

“And you like the way you feel?”

“Yes, yes!” She could hardly wait for his next instruction.

“Good girl,” he murmured. “You’re wonderfully easy to arouse these days. I can’t wait for our next weekend at the Club. You get back to sleep now, my darling. It was selfish of me to phone you at this hour.” With that, he put down the phone, leaving her unbelievably aroused, soaking wet between her thighs and with the sound of a dead phone line in her ears. She wanted to weep with frustration.

So that had been his way of punishing her, she thought to herself. The call was a punishment for chatting to Andrew, and perhaps for taking him back to her apartment, since it was possible that somehow he knew that as well. Now she was fully awake, aroused and alone again. Yet, despite what he’d done she felt elated. For the first time he’d shown that he was capable of jealousy, which in her mind could only mean one thing. That he was falling in love with her.

It was the day before Grace’s final trial at the Dining Club, and she’d spent six hours in a small, airless room with Fran interviewing possible lead actresses for Fran’s play.

“That was the last of them,” she said with relief, stretching her arms above her head and tilting back her chair. “I still think the one who played Hermione at the King’s Head will be best. The fact that she’ll be playing David Tennant’s love interest in a TV series only weeks before we open is good too.”

“Yes, definitely bums on seats if viewers like her,” agreed Fran.

“So you’re happy if we go with her?” asked Grace, glancing at her watch.

“Very happy; are you in a hurry to go somewhere? I thought we’d have a coffee down the road and chat a bit more. It’s too early for a drink, more’s the pity.”

“I’m out for a meal tonight, I don’t really have time,” apologized Grace.

“With David?”

“Yes of course, who else?”

“I wondered about the hunk from the pub.”

“Fran, he’s not for me. He’s good-looking, fun and I like him, but I’m in love with David. You know that!”

“Good,” said Fran with a grin. “Give me the address of the Club then.”

Grace looked at her in total shock. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I say; if you don’t want him, I’ll have him! Where’s the Club?”

“I can’t tell you that,” protested Grace weakly.

“Why the hell not? Is it some kind of posh gym that you have to be invited to join? If so, and if it’s expensive, you’re being robbed because you don’t look any different from the days when your idea of exercise was stumbling to the tube station early in the morning!”

Relief washed over Grace. She realized how stupid she must have sounded, but for a moment she’d thought that somehow Fran had heard about the Dining Club. “You do have to be invited,” she said quickly. “It’s only a small gym and membership is limited.”

“So how did you get in?”

Grace’s mind raced. “David has a stake in it,” she replied.

“Well fancy that! I bet he’s got a finger in more pies than Little Jack Horner ever ate. You must be mad going out with someone like that. Do you do weights or cardiovascular stuff? I remember even yoga made you put your back out!” she added, laughing at the memory.

“I really only use the swimming pool, that helps my back,” said Grace, thinking that she should be the one writing plays if she could invent things this quickly.

“Damn, I really fancied him. Maybe you could sound him out about me? On second thoughts though, don’t. He fancies you, so that wouldn’t help me at all.”

Grace gathered up her notes and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go. We’re out to dinner tonight and then away for the weekend. Let’s meet on Monday and we can talk about Sandra Fisher a bit more before we actually contact her agent.”

Fran looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re obsessed with David, aren’t you? I’ve never known you like this before. Is he really hot in bed? Sometimes those cool, controlled types can be dynamite when they let themselves go.”

Grace didn’t answer.

“You’re actually blushing!” laughed Fran. “I bet I was right the first time, when I said I’d heard he was into some pretty extreme stuff. You are a dark horse,” she added. “Who’d have guessed it? Now if it was me, no one would be surprised, but you!”

“You’re talking rubbish,” said Grace. “You’re just fishing, but I’m not biting! My private life is staying private. I might as well tell the Town Crier as tell you anything!”

“See you Monday then, and you can just say hi to Andrew for me when you next have time for a leisurely swim at your posh gym.”

“Will do!” promised Grace, dashing out of the door and into the gloom of a wet Friday afternoon in London.

* * *

“You didn’t eat much, darling. Are you nervous about the weekend?” asked David, watching Grace push her almost untouched plate of food away from her.

“A bit,” she confessed. “I think I’m also too tired to eat. We were auditioning almost all day. I’ll need an early night,” she added.

“Sounds good to me,” he said with a grin as the waitress cleared their table. “Shall we spend tonight at my place and then pick up what you need for the weekend tomorrow morning?”

After what Andrew had told her, Grace knew that he was deliberately hoping to tire her, so that when she arrived at the Dining Club and had to face a two-day trial she would struggle. She wanted to ask him why he felt the need to make it extra difficult for her, and if he wanted her to succeed or fail, but she couldn’t. That would mean admitting Andrew had broken the rules and told her about the weekend in advance, and she didn’t want to get him into trouble. The realization troubled her, niggling away at the back of her mind and unsettling her.

“I don’t think I could cope with sex tonight and the weekend,” she protested.

“We’ll just hold each other and sleep then,” said David.

She glanced across the table at him. He was wearing a dark blue shirt, open at the neck, and light gray trousers. The blue of the shirt emphasized the blue of his eyes, and just looking at him made her stomach tighten with desire.

“I don’t know if I could manage that,” she admitted.

He smiled. “You mean I have to sleep alone because you can’t control yourself? That’s not kind of you! We haven’t seen each other much this month, and it’s not exactly private at the Dining Club.”

Grace wanted him as much as he seemed to want her, and she couldn’t keep refusing, because he was bound to become suspicious if she did. Anyway, to her shame she was finding it difficult to control her need for him.

“All right, but I will need some beauty sleep,” she said firmly.

“Of course, that’s a promise.”

All the way back to his flat he kept touching her lightly on the knee, telling her how much he wanted her. Her excitement grew as he told her what he wanted to do to her, and how he’d touch her. Then, the moment they were in the front door he pulled her to him and started kissing her, his hands expertly removing her top and bra, so that he could lower his head and let his tongue roam over her naked breasts.