In the Mists of Time Read online

  He groaned, drowning out her choked-off cry of shock and pleasure. But there was no time to get used to his thickness within her, to savour the sensation of heat and hardness; he thrust again, fiercely, all the way in this time, and with a mindless cry, she pushed up onto him. She’d never been so turned on, so desperate for completion, in her life.

  As the mist swirled around them, she writhed and strained with the stranger, the ex-con she’d never met before. She gave herself without inhibition, taking greedily for herself his every hot caress. She seemed to be drowning in his wide, dark eyes. Almost black with passion, they never left her face as he hammered into her, still holding her hands above her head, sometimes using his other hand to hold her hips steady against the rock, for his pounding, at others to knead her naked, hard-peaked breasts.

  His every stroke was bliss, raising her higher and higher with impossible speed. Louise, who’d always needed a patient lover, reached for her orgasm with her whole joyful body, and shattered around the almost-fully clothed stranger in moments. Even better, her involuntary clenching seemed to drag him with her. He collapsed on her with a panting shout, burying his face in her hair, his breath hot and shuddering against her cheek.

  “God, you’re amazing,” he whispered when he could speak.

  Her hands, released at last, flopped around him. Or at least around his open rain jacket. Unsatisfied with that, she burrowed underneath it, and his sweater, to find smooth, hot skin, damp from his exertions.

  “No, I’m just amazed,” she managed.

  He raised his head, his eyes searching hers. “It was too quick. Over too quickly. I want you again.”

  She tried to laugh. “You can’t! Not yet!”

  But his deliberate thrust inside her denied her disbelief. And, God knew, he was right. It couldn’t be over yet. She wanted more, much more of him.

  He slid out of her.

  Appalled, she tried to grab him back, but his hands were already on her shoulders, lifting her, turning her so that her front was pressed into the rock and her grazed bottom exposed to the cold, misty air. This time she sighed as he pushed inside her. He slid his hands down her arms, stretching them around the rock, entwining his fingers with hers.

  He began more slowly this time, as if to make up for the wild, almost rough first bout. But, somehow, it wasn’t enough for either of them, and after a few delicious moments of slow, sensual fucking, he groaned and thrust in hard, and that was even better. She pushed back into him, encouraging him, and again he pounded her, hard and fierce. Her naked breasts were pushed against the rock, but she welcomed the pain as part of the whole amazing, totally necessary experience.

  When his breathing quickened even further, and she could hear his groaning voice in it, he released her arms, wrapping his around her upper body instead, straightening and pulling her back against him as he thrust into her. His hands closed over her breasts and his mouth latched on to her nape. She cried out, so close, so close…

  He pushed into her with a muffled shout, emptying inside her once more. At the same time, his shaking hand left one breast and slid down to close over her pussy. His fingers moved, as if playing a scale on the piano and Louise came with him, just as hard as before.

  I must be dreaming this… I never left home this afternoon, just fell asleep on the sofa.

  “What you do to me,” her lover murmured breathlessly. Slowly, he eased his weight off her. His hands moved, finding her tangled bra, drawing it around her, fastening it. “Do you know I could do this again?”

  Louise’s heart still thundered. So could I… Do it, then, do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s insane…

  But he was fastening the buttons of her top, and slowly, almost reluctantly, he withdrew from her, adjusted her damp, mangled knickers for her, and drew down her skirt. By the time she turned to face him, his jeans were fastened.

  “Next time,” he said, “you must wear jeans. And a chastity belt.”

  An involuntary laugh spilled from her lips. “I never realized my old coat and hippy skirt were so sexy. Maybe it’s the boots.”

  “Maybe it’s you.” His arm came around her shoulders. His fingers pushed up her chin until he could kiss her mouth, long and sweet and sensual. Somewhere during it, he began to walk, and she had to break off and pay attention, guiding them both toward the safe path.

  He said, “The question is, rather, what was it about me?”

  Actually, it was a damned good question. He was a handsome bloke with a nice body—a very nice body, as it turned out—and a hint of danger about him. But she knew many handsome men, some, like Glenn, also with the danger thing going on. But she’d never been remotely tempted to screw any of them with the first hello.

  Maybe you just asked. She wasn’t sure which of them that answer insulted more, so she kept it to herself. She refused to feel down now about something that had felt so bloody good at the time.

  She grasped his jacket, pulling him with her to the easiest path down the hill.

  “You must know these hills very well,” he said curiously.

  “I’ve lived in Ardknocken all my life. This was our playground.”

  “Even playgrounds look different in the mist. Glenn was right, I shouldn’t have come up here in this. I just never expected it to be quite so impenetrable.”

  “Neither did I,” she confessed. “I’ve never known it so thick.”

  “And yet you see right through it.”

  “Sort of,” she agreed vaguely. “I always have.”

  He turned her face up to his once more. Her stomach dived, just like before. She parted her lips in anticipation.

  He paused. “What was that? Is someone crying?”

  Louise listened. They seemed to have come down out of the worst of the mist. A faint, muffled whimper drifted towards them. A second later, someone appeared around the edge of the hill, half running, half scrambling down the steeper slope.

  Instinctively, Louise and her companion veered towards the figure, who emitted another sob. Louise recognized her.

  “Nicole?” she called. “Are you okay?”

  The girl stopped. Louise always felt vaguely sorry for her. The general view of the village was that Nicole wasn’t all there. She was certainly odd, but Louise suspected she was more eccentric than insane. Mind you, Nicole was a few years younger, so they’d never known each other all that well.

  “Fine,” Nicole said. Her gaze flickered over Louise’s companion and widened before they flew back to Louise. “Are you?”

  “Of course. Can you see through the mist? Do you want to walk down with us?”

  “No,” Nicole said. “No.” And she began to run again, slipping and sliding her way down the hill.

  Louise frowned after her. “I don’t think she is okay. I’d better make sure she gets home.” She looked around her. The mist had lifted. Even higher up, the sun was beginning to penetrate, a pale, almost eerie light. “If you walk straight down this path, you’ll end up by the big house. I’m going to follow Nicole.”

  “Wait,” he said, holding her still at his side a moment longer. “Will we meet again? I don’t even know your name.”

  She swallowed. After what she’d just done, she wasn’t sure she should admit to it. “Louise,” she confessed at last.

  And for some reason, he smiled. He had a really gorgeous smile, sort of mischievous and shy, all at once, and Louise’s heart turned over.

  “Then we’ll meet again,” he said. His head swooped, and he kissed her mouth once more, a little hard and blatantly sensual.

  Part of her ached to stay just where she was, to take his hand and bring him with her, to take him home and maybe to bed for more of his delicious sex. But reality was setting in fast and with it, appalled shame. So although she kissed him back, she slid out of his arms as soon as his mouth released hers, and ran down the hill after Nicole. S
he was afraid to look back in case he was still watching her. Or in case he’d vanished without a second thought about her.

  * * * * *

  “Wow,” Izzy whispered as Glenn finally eased himself down beside her in the bed. “What brought that on?”

  Glenn smiled sleepily. “You tell me. Temptress.”

  “Not sure who tempted whom,” Izzy admitted in the interests of honesty. “But it had a pretty spectacular result.”

  Glenn’s eyes darkened, his smile turning just a little wolfish.

  Izzy touched his lips, tracing their shape. “I do love you,” she whispered.

  His lips moved, kissing her fingers. His arms tightened around her. “I still don’t know why.”

  “It’s the sex,” she teased. “You are rather fabulous in bed.”

  “You’re mistaking fabulous for desperate.”

  “You couldn’t have been desperate just now,” Izzy pointed out. “We made love before we got up this morning.”

  “I was desperate,” Glenn insisted, “for you. In fact, I’m getting pretty desperate again.”

  Izzy’s calming heart began to gallop again. “Don’t we have a busy day?” she asked breathlessly. “Preparing for tonight’s workshops and everything…”

  “Later,” Glenn said, rolling over her and pushing inside her still tingling body.

  “Oh my,” she gasped, thrusting up onto him, throwing both arms around his neck. “Later, whenever…”

  Over his moving shoulder, the window of their attic bedroom looked white with opaque, swirling mist.

  Chapter Two

  When Louise woke up at six the following morning, she had difficulty separating yesterday’s wild and sexy interlude in the mist from her dreams.

  It must have been a dream, she thought, with a weird mixture of relief and disappointment. She didn’t want the discomfort of having behaved so far out of character, the shame of screwing a total stranger on the strength of no more than a hello. More than that, she was appalled by what that might tell him about her loneliness, her desperation for a man. Any man.

  On the other hand, the guilty memory was exciting and sweet, and the dark, bold part of her wanted it to be real. That part of her wished she were more like that girl in the mist, a girl who could have no-strings fun, a temptress.

  Of course, the other reason for the incident to be merely an erotic dream was the fact that they’d used no protection whatsoever. And there was no excuse for that. Louise was not that stupid and never had been, not before this.

  Six o’clock. Time to get up and get breakfast on. There were two guests staying at the B&B. A solitary fisherman had taken the self-catering flat, although he sometimes came in for breakfast. And Kev, one of her regular lorry drivers, had his usual room on the first floor. Kev had an early start.

  Crossing the bedroom, she shrugged out of her pyjama top and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She paused, staring, then walked closer to the mirror. Her left breast had a faint red graze across it, just above the nipple. As if she’d fallen awkwardly. Or rubbed against a rock while getting fucked from behind.

  Heat flamed. It was real. It had to be real. The heavy, slightly stinging discomfort between her legs was nothing to do with period pain—her period had ended only a couple of days ago, which was just as well in the circumstances—but with being deliciously and furiously screwed. Twice.

  “Oh God,” she whispered, dragging her robe from the back of the door and leaving the room, heading for the family bathroom like an automaton. How could she ever hold up her head again? What if he’d told everyone? What if Glenn and Izzy and Chrissy knew? Her brother, Aidan, would hear and accuse both Louise and her lover, whose name she didn’t even know, of God knew what. He’d be right too. She really had indulged in a moment of madness, had unprotected sex with a stranger, an ex-con.

  Shit, she’d need to do something about this, get tested…

  But she couldn’t think about it right now. She needed to forget about it and start her day. At least he would realize she was Aidan’s sister—he had seemed to recognize her name—and keep his mouth shut. And for Izzy’s sake, surely Glenn himself would frown at any such gossip…? Damn, if she were really that wicked good-time temptress she’d thought she was when she was screwing a stranger in the mist, she wouldn’t care about gossip, would she?

  In Ardknocken, you had to care about gossip if you wanted to live here.

  * * * * *

  The morning rush helped. She checked on her parents, took them tea, then set the guest dining room table and cooked Kev his favourite fry-up. While he ate it, she caught up on all the latest doings of Mrs. Kev and the little Kevs. Ron from the top flat hadn’t come in by the time Kev left, so she dumped the dirty dishes for later and went to help her parents get up.

  This was much easier now that a carer came to help, particularly with her father. His dementia was deteriorating rapidly, and he needed to be lifted out of bed and to the stairlift, and then into his chair for the day. Occasionally he still tried to get out of the chair by himself, but, mostly, he couldn’t really be bothered.

  She and her parents had had breakfast together and she’d just settled them in the living room when the doorbell rang.

  “Must be Cerys,” Louise said. “Bright and early!”

  Cerys was the girl from the village who ostensibly came to help Louise with the housework, but whose first priority was really to look after her parents so that Louise could concentrate on other things—like the business and shopping and sanity. Only eighteen years old, Cerys was a breath of fresh air: full of life and fun, and yet caring and sensible. In the last three months, Louise had come to value her hugely, and, more importantly, both her parents liked having her around.

  So, Louise opened the front door with a flourish and a smile, a long-standing joke already forming on her lips—and beheld not Cerys but a tall, dark man who was no longer a stranger. Her lover from yesterday.

  Blood rushed through her body into her face. How dare he come here to my parents’ house? she thought in panic, and not entirely reasonably. Shame and outrage mingled with insidious excitement, and through it all, awareness that even though she felt oddly persecuted by his appearance, he still looked gorgeous. While she wore old jeans and a tunic no doubt splattered with bacon fat, had her hair dragged back from her face and tied any old how. Unglamorous was the most flattering description she could bring to mind.

  “Hello,” he said, his eyes steady and serious on her face. “I understand you have a computer problem.”

  Oh God. “You’re Glenn’s computer man,” she blurted, appalled.

  “Thierry Duplessis.” He actually offered her his hand.

  Were they going to pretend yesterday had never happened? Well, that was fine with her. It would make everything much easier.

  She took his hand, very briefly since her own was shaking, and muttered, “Louise Grieve. Come in. The computer’s through here.”

  She almost raced past the living room to the tiny space she used as an office, then stood aside to let him go in. She knew she was behaving badly. This wasn’t a paid tradesman. Leaving yesterday aside, he was a friend of a friend who’d offered to do her a favour. At the very least, he deserved the decencies of hospitality.

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, trying not to sound stiff. “Breakfast?”

  He was already walking towards the computer. As he bent to switch it on, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Coffee would be nice.”

  At least it got her away from him. She wanted to shut him in the office so no one would know he was here. Stupid. Glenn and Chrissy would know he was here.

  She made a big pot of coffee and took a cup each to her parents before venturing back to the office with her own and Thierry’s. He’d thrown his jacket over the office chair. Beneath it, he wore a slightly crumpled button-down shirt and fad
ed blue jeans. He’d taken the side off the computer to reveal its guts, and was clicking so fast at things on the screen that Louise couldn’t see what they were.

  This, surely, was the man who’d stolen millions from an insurance company by computer fraud. Robbing a B&B that was only just solvent again would be a bit of a comedown. Hell, if he fixed her computer, he could have the twenty pounds and forty-two pence that was still in the business account.

  Not that she truly expected to be robbed. He was a friend of Glenn’s. And though Glenn had an exceedingly dodgy past and was just a little scary, she trusted him. This man…she’d trusted him well enough yesterday to have unprotected sex with him.

  The cups wobbled as she set the tray on the edge of the desk, desperately trying to dislodge the image of his lust-filled face moving above hers as he pushed and pushed inside her…

  She swallowed hard. “Have you found my problem?”

  He glanced at her. “I’m afraid you have many problems. Your hardware is old and you have too little memory. Plus, you’re clogged up with temporary files and several nasty little viruses.”

  “Oh dear.” She sat on the rickety old kitchen chair at the side of the desk. “Can you fix it?”

  “I can clean it up for you, give you a bit more memory. But if you want my advice, get a new computer.”

  She gave a crooked smile. “Can I get one for twenty pounds and forty-two pence?”

  “Maybe,” he said, still gazing at the screen and clicking.

  She blinked. “You didn’t hear what I said, did you?”

  He cast her one of his flashing smiles and her heart dived annoyingly downwards. “Yes.” Casually he reached across the desk, curling his long fingers around one of the mugs.

  Brought to herself, Louise asked hastily, “Milk? Sugar?”

  “No, thanks.” His mouse hand had stilled, and for the first time she sensed she had something like his full attention. She wasn’t sure if this pleased or terrified her. “I have a lot of stuff in my workshop from when we upgraded the computers at the house. Some of it’s new, some secondhand but still better than you have here. If you like, I’ll check out what’s there and see if I can build you a new computer.”