Driving Me Mad, page 15
Her hand abandoned my breast, and it ached for her return. However, in mere moments I felt her tugging my shirt from my jeans, then her fingers moving on my skin. There was no preamble, no foreplay to what was about to happen. She didn’t trail her fingers lightly over my skin. No. Her hand cupped the whole of my breast and squeezed. My legs buckled slightly, and my breathing came in rasping gulps. Clare pushed her thigh between my legs and pressed against my apex. Need sizzled through me, and I couldn’t help grinding against her insistent leg.
A lift and a push, and my bra moved away to expose my breast to her. I heard her sigh as she held it, ran her thumb over my nipple. Sensation formed at the peak and spread like spilt water throughout my body.
Clare moved her head downwards, her face pushing past the material gathered around my chest. Hot lips captured my nipple and an avid tongue flicked it, making it stand up and beg for more. Her hips were building a rhythm as they pressed against my need. As the wetness collected, I matched her thrusts, the pulsations complementing her sucking, licking, flicking, and pressing. My hands grabbed her hair and pulled her closer to me, and her thrusts became harder. The door banged behind me each time she pushed into me, and the sound kept time with our frenzied connection.
Her other hand moved to the button of my jeans, and she fumbled at it. Her teeth moved aside the cloth covering my other breast, then her lips began to nibble.
Pop. Button open. Zip ripped downwards. Fingers grabbed the side of my jeans to push them down. God, I wanted her. Wanted her to slip her fingers inside me, wanted her to feel how wet she had made me in such a short time.
I heard her growl of frustration as the jeans, still slightly damp from being out in the rain, barely moved. Instead of trying again, she lifted her mouth from my breast and claimed my mouth again. Her kiss was hard, demanding. Fuck. I was so fucking turned on.
Fingers pushed inside my panties and along slick folds. I was wet, more than ready for her to take me, to make me cum. Clare pulled back and down, back and down, and I found myself riding her hand.
“God, baby.” Her voice was thick with arousal. “I’ve missed this so much.” Her fingers were at my opening, although my jeans were delaying her entry. “I love you so much, Ellen.”
Ellen! What the fuck?
Initially I was too shocked to say a word, but I could act. I grabbed her hand and pulled it out of my jeans, the wetness trailing onto my stomach. I shoved her away from me, noting her confused expression as I did so. She stepped closer, her hands held out to me, but I sidestepped her and slipped along the wall of the room, using it for support as my legs were still unsteady.
“Becky, I—”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I was thankful that my voice box had started working again.
“I don’t know what… God! What happened?”
My laugh was shrill, manic. “Don’t give me that shit. You were fucking me up against the door, and then you fucking called me Ellen!” And I hadn’t tried to stop her, until she called me by her dead grandmother’s name. I’m not an innocent when it comes to having sex, but I’m not a slut either.
Clare took a single step towards me, but I backed away. She held her hands up in the air as if she was giving herself up to be arrested. “Honestly, Becky, I…I…I don’t know what happened.”
I narrowed my eyes and took her in. She did look confused; so was I. She was flushed; definitely like I was. Her eyes were shifting from my face to my chest, and then to my open jeans. Her face scrunched and her mouth moved as if she was working something out. I pulled my top down, zipped up my jeans, and fastened the button, all the while watching her.
“No!” Her disbelief was loud. Her eyes widened in realisation, and, if it hadn’t been such a tense moment, her facial expression could have been described as comical. She started to move towards me, then realised she shouldn’t and pulled back. “Please, please tell me I…I didn’t…do that.”
It was the sob when her voice broke that got to me. What had happened between us after we entered the room was not reality. Clare hadn’t been herself when she came into the room. She looked the same, tasted the same, smelled the same, but the actions of the woman who had pinned me against the door were those of someone else.
I released a long, shaky breath, my shoulders slumping with my mood. “Sit down, Clare. We need to talk.”
Her hands dropped to her sides in resignation. She gave a small nod as she pulled out her office chair and slumped down onto the leather. She rested her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands. Clare’s shoulders were quivering. The room was quiet for a moment, and then I heard a muffled sob, another sob, a sniff, muffled words.
The pain cracking through my chest took my breath away. Seeing Clare crying was agonising. I hesitantly moved forward, my hand outstretched, but she flinched when I touched her shoulder. I moved my palm in slow, soothing circles, the heat of me travelling into her. Then, and only then, did she seem to relax.
“I can smell you on me.”
Not exactly what I was expecting her to say, but it was a start.
Clare lifted her head, squared her shoulders, then looked into my eyes. There was such confusion in her eyes, such sorrow, that I knew I would forgive her anything. If there was anything to forgive.
She looked away. “All I remember is opening the door to my office. The next thing, you pushed me away.” She shrugged, adding a slight shake of her head. “I have no clue as to what happened in between. None.”
Kneeling beside her, I let my hand rest on her shoulder whilst the other guided her face to meet mine. “It wasn’t you, Clare. Whatever, or whomever it was, it wasn’t you.”
Clare released another sob. “Who…who was it?”
At that precise moment, her office phone rang. Clare looked at it but made no move to answer, just stared at it until it fell silent.
I tried to connect the dots inside my head. The obvious culprit making love to me so roughly was Annabel. She loved Ellen, ached for her. I opened my mouth to share my observation, but the phone rang again.
Clare didn’t even look in its direction this time.
“Maybe it was Annabel.” That had sounded so much better inside my head.
Clare pulled back, her face exhibiting how angry she was.
I took a deep breath to try again. “Look, we were supposed to get together to find Ellen. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen Annabel since a week last Saturday.” I waited to see if that was sinking in before I continued. “Maybe it was Annabel’s way of reminding us that she is about.”
That was a stretch of the imagination, but at least I was trying to come up with something.
“But why do that?” Claire asked. “Why not just appear like she has before?”
I shrugged. “Could be to give us a graphic demonstration of how much she loved Ellen.”
Another stretch. I vaguely wondered to what lengths the imagination could be stretched.
I sat back on the floor, and my hand slipped from her shoulder to rest on her knee. I thought back over what had happened and decided that my deduction could fit. Yes, the passion was there. Yes again to the desperation. The behaviour would be consistent with that of someone who hadn’t seen the person she loved in a long while. But something didn’t ring true. Clare, or Annabel, or whoever it had been, was a little aggressive in their need for sex. The kiss was harder than it needed to be, considering it was completely unexpected. There was no lead up at all. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed it; I had. And the forcefulness of the attention to my breast, the lack of preliminaries when it came to feeling it naked, just seemed out of place. Also, there had been obvious frustration at being unable to shove my jeans down and push inside my underwear to take what is there.
The phone rang for a third time.
“I think you’d better…”
Clare nodded and leaned over to take the call. I stood up and moved away to give her some privacy, but there was really no place to go in the small room. I could hear her side of the conversation, and it made me feel like vomiting.
“So, he’s awake now?” Clare’s face was ashen. “What did the doctor say?”
I figured she must be talking about Freddie. Clare hadn’t really mentioned any other males in her life, at least no male that would warrant a phone call to her if anything was to happen to him.
A few minutes later, she clicked off her phone. Clare stared at the plastic object, seemingly transfixed.
“Everything okay?” Of course I knew that it wasn’t, but it’s the thing a person says at times like that—state the obvious.
Clare’s eyes widened, and her mouth moved as if she was working the jaw muscles. She looked at me. “Granddad had a turn about fifteen minutes ago. Seems like he…like he…died for a few moments.”
“Died? For a while?” Personally, I didn’t care if he died for good, but I knew that Clare loved him. “How is he now?”
“Stable. That’s what they said. They’ve moved him to the hospital to monitor him.” The air around her seemed thick, almost as if a cloud had enveloped her and was now settling.
I quickly rounded the desk and took Clare in my arms. She was trembling, almost vibrating. I pulled her close, stroked her back, kissed the side of her head.
Her arms gripped me. When she spoke, her words were muffled against my hair. “I have to go and see him.”
I leaned back and looked into her eyes. Worry filled them. It was obvious that she believed her granddad was not long for this plane. I couldn’t let her go like this, couldn’t leave her to deal with all of this alone.
“When are we leaving?”
“We?”
I cupped her cheek. “You didn’t think I would let you drive up there all on your own, did you?”
Clare pulled me against her, sobs wracking her body, words of thanks spilling onto my shoulder.
No. I definitely wasn’t going to let her drive all the way to Kirk Langley whilst she was upset. That would have been an accident looking for a place to happen.
As I held her, my mind was racing. It was not good thoughts that came through, not good thoughts at all. It seemed more than a bit of a coincidence that Freddie had a brush with death at just about the time Clare tried to fuck me against the door in her office.
It was obvious to me now that it wasn’t Annabel who had possessed Clare; it was the mean spirited Freddie Howell. I couldn’t let Clare walk straight into his trap. If he wanted to play dirty, I was his woman. Too damned right.
Part 3
“Kiss me again, but don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”
Emily Bronte
Chapter Eleven
After the phone call, Clare asked Dale and Sally if they could pop in and feed Maggie, then she went home to pack, and so did I. I phoned work and told them I wouldn’t be in, feigning sickness. My supervisor was more than a little surprised, as I never took time off for ill health. It was difficult enough for the company to get me to take the holidays I was entitled to, because all I’d ever had before was my job. Past tense. Now I had something else, someone who would be part and parcel of my future.
We’d been driving for over four and a half hours, but this time we took turns, and also made sure we stopped to eat and use the restroom. Clare called the hospital several times to be sure that Freddie was okay. Unfortunately, he was. I know that sounds callous, but that man did not deserve to live to a riper old age after what he had done. Too many good people die in this world, leaving the bad ones to continue living, something I thought was totally unfair. He also had his granddaughter travelling over a hundred and forty miles, in the dark, just to make sure he was still breathing. I was only going because of Clare. End of.
Although we had been in the car for a fair amount of time, I hadn’t yet mentioned to Clare what I’d worked out about our encounter earlier that day. It’s not the kind of thing one tells the woman she is falling for. Imagine me saying, “By the way, you know when I thought you were trying to have sex with me earlier? It was your granddad. No, listen, love, it’s not what you think. He was dead at the time. Why are you so angry? After all, he’s alive again.” That probably wouldn’t go down too well. Exactly. Mouth well and truly shut.
When I realised that Clare was taking us to Annabel’s house, I felt a little unnerved. I had assumed we would be staying in a hotel, but Clare apparently had other ideas. I hadn’t noticed the black bag stuffed down behind her seat that contained fresh bedding, or the box of food on the floor in the back. All I had done was throw my travel bag in the boot of her car and grin stupidly at the thought of going away with Clare Davies for a few days.
When I stepped outside the car into the dark November evening, I felt as if someone was watching me. I furtively looked over my shoulder. There was no one there, just blackness.
Clare carried some things to the porch, unlocked the door and switched on the porchlight. The artificial yellow beams spread like cheap margarine over the driveway, and instead of making me feel more at ease, it unnerved me even further. I scurried around to the boot, grabbed a bag, and scuttled to the porch.
Slam. Boot shut. Slam and slam. Doors shut. Thunk. Car locked. That was Clare. I thought I did well waiting outside until Clare had finished off, but the truth was, I was a little apprehensive about going inside the house alone.
“You okay?”
Clare was next to me, the black bag in her arms. I nodded, looked stealthily into the darkness beyond the lit driveway, and then picked up another bag from the porch.
It still amazes me that some people don’t have the light switch close to the front door. Why would someone purposely put it halfway down the hallway? And why was I such a bundle of nerves?
Entering the living room, I was bombarded with memories of the last two times I had been there. The fireplace was empty, the ashes gone, but there was wood stacked to the side, ready for a blaze to burst into life again. Instead of hurrying over to claim my chair next to the non-existent fire, I stood and just stared at it, bags in hand. My breath appeared in visible puffs, as the room was freezing.
“Do you know how to start a fire?”
Clare’s voice came from outside the room, and I could hear her rustling through the bags in the hallway.
“Not really.” How could an answer be “Not really?” It was either yes or no, wasn’t it?
Clare’s voice seemed muffled, as if her head was inside a blanket. The words “emersion” and “on” floated to me from the vicinity of the stairs.
Setting my bags on the floor, I moved closer to the fireplace, knelt down, picked up a piece of wood and stared at it.
A laugh came from behind me, and I dropped the wood. The loud clatter it made on the floor made my nerves scream, and my teeth clamped together.
“You’re not going to get it lighted like that. Here, let me.”
Clare knelt beside me, her hand reaching out and taking the wood. “Go and find some newspaper or something, will you?”
I nodded and stood, scanning the room. Everything was as I expected it to be—the leather sofa, the chair, the coffee table. Unlike the last time I had been, there were magazines on the table. My teeth worried the inside of my cheek. Nerves, I think. Would they be dated 1953, like the first time I had been there? Or would I, with relief, find copies of Bella and Woman’s Own?
“I think I left some newspapers in the kitchen that I can use to help start the fire.” Clare looked at me briefly before continuing to stack the wood in the grate. “I was wrapping up Annabel’s things in it.”
I didn’t relish the thought of going into the kitchen on my own, but I wasn’t about to tell Clare that. My ego wouldn’t allow it.
The kitchen was exactly how I remembered it. The Aga was still there, looking even more dated than I remembered. The wooden table was pushed to the side, the chairs stacked on the top. The only major difference was the fridge. It was a newer model than the one I had seen on my first visit. I don’t know why, but that made me feel a little better.
I spotted a stack of newspapers to the side and went over to grab them. Just as I picked up the heap, I heard a noise from behind me and automatically looked towards the window. But I knew the noise hadn’t come from there; it had come from the corner of the room.
Most people probably would have thought it was rats, that the scraping sound had been caused by tiny feet. Not me. I’d had experiences in this kitchen before, and none of those happenings had been due to rats.
Closing my eyes, I swallowed down the fear. It refused to go anywhere. I tried to swallow it again. Tentative, I opened one eye, then the other. I had to look.
Hugging the newspapers to my chest as if they would protect me, I turned so my back was against the kitchen counter. The wooden table was in the centre of the room, the chairs tucked neatly underneath. I couldn’t make a sound. But even if I could’ve, I was too busy trying to keep my heart from launching out of my mouth.
Click.
The noise came from the side, and I shifted my attention from the table. The back ring on the Aga had lit on its own. Lit. On. Its. Own.
I shuffled towards the door, the newspapers clutched against me. I didn’t want to turn my back on whatever was in there, but I also didn’t want to stay in the kitchen alone.
When I reached the doorway, I turned and ran back into the living room. Clare was just standing as I got there, her expression alive with pride because of her ability to stack wood for the fire.
“Piece of… What’s the matter? Becky?” Clare strode over to me, reached out and grabbed my shoulders, her face full of concern. “What’s happened?” Without even waiting for an answer, she was off towards the kitchen. “What? Oh.”
It was then I realised I was in the living room on my own, and I hastened after her.
“You’ve put the kettle on.” She beamed. “I never could work out how to use that thing.” She opened the cupboards and lifted out the teapot and cups, the same teapot and cups Annabel had used when I had been there the first time.
