The Second Time I Saw You: The Oxford Blue Series #2 (26 page)

The letter trembles between my fingertips, yet I can’t tear my eyes away from the words.

I know you’ve hated me at times – perhaps most of the time – and especially now, but I swear this: if I ever get the chance, I’m going to make good on all the things I’ve lain awake promising myself I’d do.

Sweet dreams.

With love,

Alexander x

He hasn’t quite reached the bottom of the page. There’s still an inch or so of white space beneath the sign-off and the kiss. The solitary kiss.

I lay the letter across my lap, shell-shocked. I can see the blue marks on the page but I can’t read them any more. The ink smudges and blurs and I have to push
the paper away from me before his words merge into one inky blot and I literally can’t read it. I ask myself the question: does this letter make any difference to the way I feel about him? Do I want to see him again? Touch him? Have him make good on his threat?

The answer won’t come, or rather so many conflicting answers invade my head at once that I can’t find the right one. Maybe there is no right one.

I get back into bed and lie down.

I’m going to carry you off somewhere and lock the door on the rest of the world
.

The curtains are drawn; they’re black-out curtains to shut out the neon-orange street lamp outside the window.

How do you think this letter got into your bag
?

I reach for the rocker switch on the lamp and the room is plunged into darkness. Total blackness at first, but gradually my eyes adjust. I hold my hand in front of my face, turning my fingers this way and that. I think I can see the outline of my hand, or maybe my brain is filling in what my eyes can’t see.

I strain my ears; of course I can hear things. This is London, an apartment block. Even on Sunday morning, through the double glazing, there is noise: cars in the street, birds singing, the creak of floorboards and footsteps above me. The world is waking up but I turn over and lie face down, the pillow soft against my cheek, the darkness absolute now because I have my eyes closed.
He said he’d peel off my knickers
.

I push my hands down the front of my pyjama shorts.

I touch myself, trying to remember how it felt to have his hands upon me, caressing my breasts. The ache in my breasts as he undressed me and the tight, almost painful contraction deep inside me when he looked at me.

I wriggle my pyjama shorts down my hips and press my fingers to my clit, now a swollen bud that blossoms under my fingers. In my fantasy, the door closes and the scrape of a key in the lock echoes around the room. Alexander bears down on me, the sensual intent burning in his eyes, while I back away. My legs bump against the bed and I know there is nowhere to hide or run.

All I can think about is having you back in my bed, naked
.

He reaches out suddenly, grabbing my arm. I overbalance and cry out in shock when he pushes me down on to the bed, pinning my arms over my head, flattening me on to the duvet.

I’m going to make good on all the things I’ve lain awake promising myself I’d do
.

Without warning, he sits astride me, pinning me to the bed, both iron-hard thighs planted either side of my legs. I’m saying ‘no’ inside my head, but the sound isn’t coming out. He undoes the button of my jeans and tugs them roughly down my thighs. Then he gets off me, and I’m still paralysed, body and tongue, when he strips my jeans down over my legs.

He moves back on to the bed, kneeling beside me, so
swiftly; everything is happening all at once and some of it over and over. Before I can do anything, his hand is at my waist and finally I cry out at the sting of lace and silk being torn from my hips, at the ripping sound. Then I hear and see and feel it again, even more vividly this time: the brutal parting of my panties from my flesh, the destruction of the delicate lace, the exposure of my intimate parts.

As I replay this violation again, I squirm against the duvet, touching myself, imagining that it’s him – longing for it to be him – stroking me, teasing me, bringing me slowly towards my climax.

The bed dips as the fantasy Alexander climbs astride me. I think he would tie me up – yes, with the cords to the bedposts. I’m helpless and blinded. I have some kind of mask on – he put it there – and the springs creak and the hair on his thighs brushes against the tender inside of my legs as he kneels between them. His erection is huge, hard, hot and thick. A voice keeps saying ‘no’ in my fantasy, yet I still open my legs wider, inviting him, teasing him, waiting for him.

‘I’ll have you until neither of us has the energy left to walk or speak or even think,’ he tells me, nudging inside me
.

He drives straight into me.

I screw my eyes tightly shut, and my body spasms and my orgasm overtakes me. It pulses through me, and just when I think it’s over, it takes me again. It’s half a minute before I open my eyes to find the room still dark, and the same workaday noises intrude again. There’s no
Alexander standing by the bed, of course. It was pure fantasy, on his part and mine. There’s no sound of Immy either, moving about in the bedroom next door or making coffee in the kitchen down the hall.

I get up to use the bathroom, take the Advil and crawl back under the duvet, hoping the world will just go away.

There’s a buzzing in my ears. I’m not sure where it is or what it is, but I don’t like it. It goes on and on while I pick clothes off the bed, looking for the source of the noise. I throw the pillows on the floor, pull open the drawers of the dresser, rip my dresses off the hangers. I can’t find it and I know I have to. I have to find the buzzing noise or something terrible will happen. Just as I find it and realize it’s my phone, the buzzing stops.

Almost immediately, it starts again and my eyelids flutter open. It is my phone, not a dream or a fantasy but real. It’s right next to me on the nightstand, throbbing angrily, accusing me of ignoring it.

I make a grab for it, knocking it on to the wooden floor with a clatter. I scrabble for it and stab in the code.

‘Immy?’

The phone’s clamped to my ear as I lie across the bed, half in and out of the covers.

‘Ms Cusack? Ms Lauren Cusack?’ An English voice, crisp, female, unfamiliar, speaks. It’s barely eight a.m. Who would call at this hour on a Sunday? How does this woman know who I am?

I answer slowly, reluctant to own up to my name. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘I believe you know Captain Alexander Hunt, of Falconbury House, Oxfordshire?’

‘Yes, I know Alexander, but who is this?’

‘It’s Sister Dixon from the Royal Infirmary here. I’m sorry to tell you that Captain Hunt has been involved in a serious incident.’

I’m still lying half on and off the bed, the blood pounding in my ears. ‘What? What are you saying? Oh Jesus …’ Icy fingers clutch at my stomach.

‘Before he went into theatre, Captain Hunt asked us to contact you because his sister is underage.’

I scramble up on to the bed. My heart feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest. ‘What happened? How is he? Is he going to be OK?’

‘He’s in theatre at the moment.’
That’s not what I asked you, damn you; I asked if he’d be
OK
.

Her cool, crisp voice resonates against my ear. ‘Is there anyone who can come with you to the hospital?’

‘No. No one. No one but me.’

There’s a pause, one that seems to go on for ever. ‘I see. If you can get here, I think you should come as soon as possible.’

Once again I have so many people to thank for their help with the research for this book, including Leah Larson, John Schulze, Catherine Jones, Lizzie Forbes, Debra Ross and my US friends. Also many thanks to Nell Dixon and Elizabeth Hanbury for their continued encouragement, hugs and the coffee and cakes.

I also want to apologize for the fact that while I’ve tried to be as feasible as I can re military and Oxbridge ways, etc., this book is wholly fictional – which is why the Boat Race is two weeks earlier than in Real Life. If I’ve backed the wrong winner, I’m sorry.

Thanks to Broo, my agent, who is a gem beyond price, and to the awesome team at Penguin, especially Alex Clarke, Clare Bowron, Charlotte Brabbin, Bea, Emma and the energetic publicity, sales and marketing team.

To Charlotte and James, I couldn’t have written this without you, and to John, I hope this one gets the neighbours talking again. ILY.

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First published in Penguin Books 2014

Copyright © Penguin Books UK Ltd, 2014

Cover photography © Craig Fordham

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The moral right of the author has been asserted

Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes

ISBN: 978-1-405-91705-6