What's Yours Is Mine (31 page)

It's one of my better days. I've actually managed to shower and dress, albeit in faded jeans and a thick Sherpa fleece. I don't bother to check my reflection before going through to the kitchen. There really doesn't seem to be much point.

It's an oversight I regret when I see Blake on the other side of the paned glass. Automatically I smooth my hair, and then hate myself for being so stupid and quickly mess it up again.

He smiles warmly as if he's expected when I open the door. “Hi.”

I stare blankly. What can he possibly imagine we have to say to each other? He slept with my sister, and broke my best friend's heart. He kissed
me
. A Mafia mobster has more scruples.

“Can I come in?”

He doesn't wait for an answer, easing slipperily through the door like a snake-oil salesman.

“She's not here,” I say, finding my voice.

“Come on, Grace. I didn't come to see Zee.”

I'm uncomfortably aware of the way my body is responding to his proximity. I busy myself with the kettle to
put some distance between us. “Why did you come here, Blake?”

“Tom's a fool,” he says brusquely. “He always was too high-minded for the real world.”

“Blake, I really don't have time for this. I've got a lot of work to do—”

This time, I see the kiss coming. I turn my head, and it lands on my ear. Blake shrugs regretfully and straightens, but doesn't move away.

“I think you should go,” I say nervously.

He ignores me, leaning casually against the Aga as he watches me fluster with the kettle, his stormy gray eyes amused. He looks as if he's stepped from the pages of a catalog, in his old-fashioned striped rugby shirt and perfectly distressed jeans. He is ridiculously sexy and good-looking. And I am totally immune to his charms.

“Do you imagine Tom will stay on his own for long?” he asks softly.

It feels like a blow to my solar plexus. “I hadn't thought,” I manage.

“Sure you have.”

He reaches towards me. I flinch, but he simply pushes my tangled hair from my face. “You are extraordinarily beautiful,” he says simply.

I know it's a line. I know he's used it a thousand times on a thousand women, one of them my own sister. And yet I still flush like a schoolgirl and my heart still thuds uncomfortably in my chest.

“I've wanted to fuck you since the moment Tom
brought you home,” he says conversationally. “I don't know what it is about you. Maybe the way you never gave me the time of day. I used to lie awake at night listening to you and Tom fucking next door. I'd jerk off, imagining it was me in your bed. I only asked Claudia out because I thought it'd be a way to get to know you better.”

I never gave you the time of day because I knew you were out of my league
, I think.

The talk of sex has raised the temperature in the room. I can't get the image of Blake touching himself out of my head. There's a painful throb between my legs, and my nipples tingle with little electric shocks. “I think you should go,” I repeat.

He brushes the pad of his thumb back and forth over my lips. “Don't tell me you haven't imagined it,” he murmurs. “I've had blue balls thinking about you since that kiss. You have to know what you're doing to me. You're driving me crazy. I think if I don't kiss you again I'm going to go out of my fucking mind.”

This time, I don't move. I can't. The kiss is hot and sweet, like wine. It sends eddies of desire rippling through my body, and without conscious thought, my arms snake around his neck. His hand slides beneath my fleece, up to my bare breasts, and he pinches my nipples until my legs shake with lust. I barely notice him dance me backwards, his free hand slipping down the rear of my jeans and cupping my buttock. His finger slides between my legs and I shudder as he brushes the entrance to my pussy. The back
of the sofa is against my knees, and I fold onto it, deliberately disengaging my brain and allowing my body to take over. I don't want to think about Tom and his red-haired girl. I don't want to think at all.

I've only ever had one lover: Tom. Susannah has had more men than I've had hot dinners. Just this once, I want to be like her. I want her life. I want her lover.

I need this
.

I raise my arms like a child, and Blake pulls my fleece over my head, and then I stand and let him tug down my jeans. If he notices my healed scars, he doesn't say anything. He's too busy shucking off his own clothes and flipping me onto my belly. His knee pushes my legs apart, and he tangles his hand in my hair, pulling my head up so that I arch like a bow against the velvet cushions. It hurts, and I start to protest, but Blake is pushing his fingers inside me, and suddenly I can't decide if I'm feeling pleasure or pain.

His hold on my hair tightens, and suddenly he's pushing his erect penis between my legs. I try to guide him towards me, but he bats my hand away, and spreads my cheeks. Before I realize what's happening, there is an agonizing, searing pain, and he's forced himself inside me and is sodomizing me. It feels as if I'm being ripped apart. I cry out, but he either takes it as a sign of my enjoyment or he simply doesn't care.

His weight crushes me against the pillows. His fingers are still thrusting inside my vagina, and the pressure in my anus intensifies. There is no pleasure here. The warm
heady sensations of his kisses a few moments ago seem a distant dream. This isn't erotic or exciting. It's cold, uncomfortable, brutal, and humiliating.

His thrusts grow harder and more rapid. I bite down on the pillows until my lips bleed, praying for it to be over. Suddenly he groans, and collapses against me. I keep still, my anus burning with pain. Tears slide between my tightly closed lids.

Blake rolls off me, and reaches for his jeans. “I knew it'd be good. The Ice Queen cometh. Good, right?”

I grope for my fleece and gather up my clothes. “I need to shower,” I whisper.

He nods laconically. I flee upstairs, my chest tight with sobs. I have no one to blame for this but myself. I climb into the shower, and scrub myself until my skin is raw. How did I imagine meaningless sex could make anything better? All it has done is make the ache in my heart worse.

Is this what it's like for Susannah?
I think suddenly.
This empty? This pointless?

I stay upstairs until I'm sure Blake has gone. I wrap myself in my toweling robe and go back downstairs to lock the doors. I don't want to see anyone. I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want to crawl into bed and try to forget this ever happened.

But when I walk into the sitting room, Blake is still sitting on the sofa, bare-chested, the smell of sex still hanging in the air.

And standing in the center of the room, his face a mask of shock, is Tom.

I may not be a brainiac like Grace, but I wasn't born yesterday. It takes me all of five minutes to figure out the kidney I'm getting is hers.

“Come on, spill,” I tell Mark Jaylor, as they wheel my trolley into the operating theater. “I know it's her. Where else would a kidney with my exact same rare blood group miraculously come from? I've only been on the transplant list, like, two seconds. No way did I just get
this
lucky.”

“Even if I wanted to tell you, Zee, I couldn't. Rules. You know that.”

“What did you say to get her to change her mind? You haven't just had a baby, have you?”

“What?”

“Forget it. Just my little joke.”

A nurse in pink scrubs hooks an IV to the needle in the back of my hand. “Ready whenever you are, Doctor.”

Shit
. I'm really freaking nervous, even with the Valium they've already given me. Like the doc kept saying, every surgery has risks. Some people apparently go into a
kind of anaphylactic shock when foreign tissue is implanted in them. Given this kidney's coming from Grace, I'd say my risk is higher than most.

“See you on the other side?” I say.

“See you on the other side.”

For the second time in as many months, someone is poised with a scalpel over my belly. At least this time, I won't have to listen to Grace going into raptures while they slice me open. Yay for anesthetics.

I don't really know the ins and outs of what happens next, details are more Grace's thing than mine, but when I wake up, I have a brand-new kidney pumping out piss like a racehorse. Actually, I have three, because they don't take out the old crap ones, too much effort and fiddly sewing, they just stick the new one in below them. Should make my autopsy a bit more interesting if I get hit by the proverbial bus one day.

I'm not expecting to feel like I've had a day at the spa, but seriously, I think I'm going to fucking
expire
from the pain. It feels like an elephant is taking a shit on my stomach.

“You gotta give me something,” I plead, as the nurse takes my temperature and examines my catheter like it's the Holy Grail.

“You've already had twice the
normal
dose,” she says snottily. “Doctor says no more till bedtime.”

As soon as Mark Jaylor appears to check on me, I'm on his case. “You didn't say it was going to hurt this much,” I complain. “Can't you give me a fucking epidural or something?”

“If I'd told you it'd hurt this much, you'd have made a fuss before the operation as well as afterwards. It's not that bad. And you're doing really well,” he adds, scrutinizing the sodding cath bag again. “Lovely color.”

The fascination with my pee continues over the next five days. I mean, I've got a nice pair of boobs, if I say so myself, and I'm wearing my best strappy silk negligee (well, Grace's), but no one is interested in anything happening above my waist. Even my second husband, who had a thing for golden showers, didn't show my bodily fluids this kind of attention.

It appears I'm doing brilliantly: “top of the class,” as Jaylor puts it. I wouldn't expect anything less from one of Grace's body parts.

I still don't get why Grace changed her mind. She's savvy enough to know you don't hand over your hostage before the other side has delivered the ransom. Why would I give her Ava when I've already got her kidney safely hidden in my intestines? But if she's not doing this to get Ava, then why? Tom isn't going to come crawling back unless he knows what Grace has done, and she's clearly gone to major lengths to make sure it's kept quieter than a fucking state secret. It doesn't make any sense. My sister isn't generally given to anonymous good deeds. Something's going on.

When Jaylor finally discharges me with a sackful of pills, I decide to see Grace and have it out. I've got to know what her game is. I can't spend the rest of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It takes a few days for me to feel strong enough to walk
over to her place from Michael's. I haven't said anything to him about it being Grace's kidney: she's keeping it under wraps for a reason, and until I know what it is, I'm not blowing the advantage of surprise by telling anyone, not even Michael.

The next time he's at work, I pull on my Uggs and Grace's winter coat, and tramp down the lane. I'm as weak as a kitten, but I duck my head against the miserable frigging November sleet and persevere. Amazing what a driving force curiosity can be.

I'm just turning into her drive when I notice Blake sidling into the back garden ahead of me. There's no other word for it: he's
sidling
. He looks like he's about to burgle the place: glancing around furtively, and hugging the walls of the house. I don't get it. He's over here all the time—though less so now Tom's moved out, I'd imagine—so why the 007 routine?

Unless—

She
wouldn't
. Would she?

Sorry, but this is too intriguing to worry about the niceties. I make my way around to the front door as sneakily as Blake, and lift up the funny-shaped rock where Grace keeps the spare key.

Letting myself into the house, I tiptoe into the dining room, and hide behind the double doors. Through a narrow gap between the jamb and the wall, I see Grace let Blake into the kitchen. I may only be getting a small slice of the action from here, but I don't miss a thing.

The fucking bastard!
I expect him to cheat on Claudia,
not to mention the rest of his women; that's par for the course with a man like him. But Tom's supposed to be his best friend! He's kept all Blake's dirty little secrets for years. And now Blake pays him back by fucking his wife the minute his back's turned?

I don't blame Grace. This whole baby thing, and Tom leaving, has been a total mind fuck for her. She doesn't know whether she's coming or going; and Blake knows it and is playing her like a fucking violin. Sleazy asshole. He's got her when her guard is down, and he's totally taking advantage.

I duck back into the shadows as they spill out of the kitchen, their hands all over each other. Grace looks like she's not even there: her eyes are closed, and it's like a stranger is making use of her body.

I started this
, I think guiltily. I put the idea that Grace fancied him in his head. It was supposed to be a
joke
. I never thought he'd take it this far.

I'm trapped in the dining room, since the only way out of the house is back through the lounge, right past the two of them. I retreat to the far wall and put my hands over my ears.
La la la la la. I can't hear you
.

Finally, the grunting stops. I hear Grace's light feet running up the stairs, and then moments later, the sound of the shower. I don't have to see her to know she's scrubbing and scrubbing, trying to get clean. Damn it. I wish I could've stopped her before this happened. Grace needs love, and what Blake does is sex. Dirty, mind-blowing, totally emotionless sex.