The Couple in the Dream Suite Read Online Free PDF Page B

caring. He couldn’t think straight, with her hands on his clothes, yanking his trousers and his underwear down. Her lips were swollen, naked. His own must be streaked with her lip rouge. Her cheeks were flushed. And then her hands were on him, her fingers with their sharp, crimson nails curled around him, and he could feel himself tightening, and she felt it too, for she gave a little growl, and let him go, just enough time for him to slip on the condom, before she pulled him towards her again, and her mouth was on his again, and her leg wrapped around his, and her arms around his neck as he nudged against her, then into her.
    ‘Hard, and fast,’ she urged him, as if he needed any urging.
    He picked her up, bracing her back against the stone wall, and thrust higher. She cried out. He gritted his teeth, determined not to come. Not yet. She bit him, bit his shoulder. Sharp teeth. Her fingers digging into him. He could feel her tightening too. Thrust. She was so tight. Achingly, perfectly tight. He thrust again, and she held him, pushing herself against him, friction and heat and wet, an off-key, not-quite-perfect rhythm, but enough, more than enough, for her to come, for the wave of her climax to send him over, making him cry out, a feral sound he had forgotten, ripped out from deep inside him, as he came.
    ***
    It ought to have been embarrassing. Vera discovered that instead it was liberating. She rested her head back against the cool stone of the wall and laughed. She stretched her arms up above her head, and lifted her face to the deep velvet of the sky, felt her blood coursing back through her body, making her cold limbs tingle, as if she were being brought back to life.
    Her stockings were ripped. Her gold bodice was ripped. No doubt her mascara had run, and her lip rouge was smeared over Justin’s face and chest. He had a bruise blossoming on his shoulder. She vaguely remembered biting him. She vaguely remembered scratching him too. ‘I’m sorry,’ Vera said, feeling not the least little bit so, ‘you look like one of the war wounded.’
    She meant it lightly, but the sated smile on his face faded abruptly. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, pulling up his trousers, ‘I need to…’
    He disappeared into the suite. Deflated, Vera picked up her Fortuny gown and Justin’s dinner jacket, following him inside, casting the clothing down on one of the opulent white sofas. There was a bottle of champagne on ice – or what had been ice. Still cold. She opened it expertly, and was pouring two glasses when he came back into the room. ‘I’m sorry, bad joke,’ she said.
    ‘No. I’m sorry.’ He took the glass from her, and downed it in one.
    Vera did the same. ‘Were you?’ she asked, once she had replenished both glasses. ‘One of the war wounded, I mean.’
    ‘I know what you mean. I don’t want to talk about it.’
    He was bare-chested and bare-foot. When he bent down to put a match to the fire that was set ready, despite the warmth from the steam heating, she noticed that she had indeed scratched him, several scores of raw flesh on the breadth of his back. His muscles rippled under his skin when he moved. His back tapered neatly down to a trim waist, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders. She had forgotten how different a man’s naked body was from her own. She hadn’t looked at one for so long. There was no sign of a scar on his back or his chest. Leg? Head? She had seen many such wounds. When he got up, there was such a bleak look in his eyes. She had seen that too, far too many times.
    ‘I’m really sorry,’ Vera said. ‘I forgot. No, not that. I wasn’t thinking.’ She tried for a smile. ‘It was nice. The not thinking.’
    Justin ran his hand through his hair. It was damp. His face was clean of her cosmetics too. In the flickering flames of the fire, his chest gleamed. ‘It was,’ he said, trying for a smile of his own. ‘It was nice.’
    Vera took a sip of her champagne, eying him over her