The Dare Collection August 2019. Christy McKellen

‘Yes.’

      The glaze to her eyes tells me she’s too far gone to care whose fantasy this started out as and who’s in control.

      ‘I trust you too.’ Giving her what she wants is the easiest thing in the world.

      She cries out, her hips bumping up and down on my lap. ‘Yes, Reid.’

      With every downward stroke, my finger skirts her rear, each fractured cry, each moan telling me I’m right on target to amp up her pleasure while staving off my own. Because I want her ruined, as she’s ruined me. I want her broken and desperate and out of her mind, because that’s where my head is.

      Reluctantly dragging my eyes away from the sight of her riding me, her hair wild and her face flushed, I turn my head sharply to the left, catching our reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, our reflections erotic, like our own, private adult movie.

      She looks too, as I’d known she would, her gasp followed by a long, low moan.

      ‘Touch your nipples,’ I order, because I need both my hands to finish this the way I want to. She obeys, her finger circling and pinching where mine have left off, and I grip both of her arse cheeks, adding upward tilts of my pelvis to her down-strokes so every thrust drags a cry from her arched throat.

      ‘Reid, I’ve got you.’ She tears her eyes from our wildly fucking reflections to stare down at me.

      ‘I’ve got you too—come with me.’ I pull her cheeks apart, grinding our hips together while my fingers probe deeper into her crease to stimulate more nerves.

      She cries out, her orgasm wracking her entire body rigid and I feel her spasms around my dick and against the tip of my finger.

      I buck up into her tight, clasping warmth a handful more times and join her with a roar of release that rivals any I’ve ever experienced.

      By the time speech is possible once more, we’ve been sprawled on the sofa in a naked tangle for several minutes. There’s still a furnace bubbling inside me, but I spy goose pimples on Blair’s arm, so I tug the throw from the back of the sofa over us. That’s when I feel the rhythmic shudders of her chest against mine, which tell me she’s laughing.

      I lift her chin from my chest, forcing her to look up at me. ‘Great...that’s what every man wants after some of his best moves—to be laughed at.’

      She covers her mouth, ungainly snorts she can’t hold in escaping. ‘I’m sorry—I just...’ She presses her lips together and then gives up, freeing a cascade of chuckles.

      I join her, although I have no idea what we’re laughing at, but it’s infectious. She’s infectious, effortlessly worming her way under my skin and into my psyche. Offering tantalising glimpses of what might be, glimpses I’d thought I was long past craving. Dangerous.

      ‘I’ve never met anyone who finds sex that hot funny,’ I say, kissing the top of her head and breathing in coconuts. ‘So hot my sofa is scorched.’

      She collapses on top of me, kissing her mirth into submission. ‘It’s not that. I just... I can’t believe you tripped over your shoe. It was hilarious.’

      My ego could take a battering, but with her I don’t seem to have any. I grin. ‘Oh, good—I was aiming for sexy.’

      ‘Oh, it was that, too. And I told you I’d catch you.’ She snuggles back into my side and a sigh of contentment leaves me, but doubts sneak in to fill the void, doubts that she could want more, because after that, after today with my family, seeing how perfectly she fits—I’m certain I want more than sex. But does she? Could she take this seriously outside of our sex-only arrangement? I’ve been so long entrenched in my single life, safe, secure, steady. Could I have more? Could I have it with this amazing woman? Would she want it with me? My track record speaks against me, and while our age gap works for a casual fling, would she want something more with a man my age? And surely the fact that she’s still hung up on her ex’s cheating, wanting to banish ghosts, as she said, means she’s not fully over him.

      Her fingers toy with the hair on my chest. I pull her hand away so I can kiss the tips of her fingers as I grapple with that last revelation. I should get up, make us a drink, suggest a shower, offer to drive her back to her car. I’m sure we both have a long day ahead tomorrow. But a part of me can’t leave it alone, perhaps the part which feels the flicker of jealousy that while I’m imagining dates she’s thinking about ways to exorcise her ex.

      I choke out a question, the only honest thing I feel comfortable asking. ‘So did you make some new memories?’

      I feel her nod against my cheek and the whoosh of air she eventually releases, and grip her closer on instinct.

      ‘The day after Josh left me,’ she says, ‘I rushed out and bought a new sofa, knowing I’d never be able to look at the old one, let alone sit on it. But it’s funny—no matter where I place the new one in that room, it never looks quite right.’ She huffs. ‘Or perhaps that’s just my designer brain being a perfectionist.’

      I stroke my fingers through her hair, trying to untangle some of the strands without hurting her. ‘It’s okay to be a perfectionist. It’s who you are.’ I allow the weight of my hand to settle between her shoulder blades before I add, ‘Has he ever apologised?’

      ‘Josh?’

      Her body stiffens and I shift my leg so I can tangle it with hers to stop her escaping. ‘Yeah.’ I know he can’t help the way he felt for someone else, but he should have come clean from the start instead of risking her finding out the way she did.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she says in clipped tones, telling me she doesn’t want to talk about this, that I’ve gone too far. But she’s laid me open, used our attraction to each other and my growing feelings to pry confessions from me. Time to even the balance. And she can’t be fully over him until she’s had some closure.

      ‘What do you mean? Has he tried?’ Unease slides over my skin.

      She shrugs, her eyes shuttering the emotion from the green-brown depths of her irises. ‘I changed the locks after he left. I’ve never answered his calls or read his emails. I don’t care if he’s apologised because I don’t want to hear it.’

      My belly twists, banishing the last of the high from the incredible sex. She hasn’t forgiven him, so she’s not free to move on. Does she still harbour feelings after all this time? And where the fuck does that leave me and my newly acknowledged revelations?

      I frame my words in a soothing tone. ‘I don’t want to patronise you, but until you allow him to apologise, what he did to you becomes compounded. You can’t move on until you’ve given him the chance to at least say he’s sorry for deceiving you.’

      She raises her head and levels her bullshit look on me. ‘Is that what worked for you with Sadie?’

      Now it’s my turn to stiffen, her attack close to the very heart of me, as exposed as I feel. ‘That was different.’

      ‘How? Because it happened to you?’ She juts her chin, her barriers rebuilding.

      A sense of claustrophobia presses in on me. Am I being a fool here? ‘No—’ I extricate my limbs from hers and slide to the edge of the sofa, restless with vulnerability and the hangover of literally having my emotions fucked from me. ‘Because she attacked more than me. She went after my business, my family, my father in particular, and threatened the future of the Faulkner Group for Kit’s unborn child and any children Drake and Kenzie might have.’

      The room grows tense with our silence. When I look her face is ashen with shock, or perhaps revulsion that I allowed myself, my family and business to be so vulnerable. But if I believe the latter, I’ll have to punch some inanimate object. Instead I stand and search for my jeans.

      ‘How?’ she whispers.

      I’ve been exposed enough over the past hour, but the power balance has shifted, as if she’s freed me somehow from