The Baby Scandal(15)

       
           



       

"Am I hurting you?" she asked, dabbing the grazed knuckles with the antiseptic ointment.

"No, but you probably could."

"Sorry?" She looked up and he flushed darkly, quite startled at what had emerged from his mouth.

"What  I meant was that you probably could hurt me if this ointment  wasn't  completely ineffective because it's probably been in the  cupboard for  ten years," he improvised.

"It does look a bit dodgy, doesn't it? Why have you brought talcum powder?"

"Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"Just in case you wanted to mop things up."

"Oh. Well, I don't think it'll be necessary."

"You've  missed a bit...there." He pointed to a scratch that was almost   invisible to the naked eye, and as she bent to squint at it, braiding   her hair in a make. shift plait to keep it away from her face, he was   afforded the sweetest sight he could have imagined possible.

The tempting indentation of cleavage, separating the full swell of breasts

She held his hand between hers, her fingers soft and gentle, and stroked the spot he had pointed out. "I don't see anything."

"Are you sure?" His voice was rough and unsteady.

Rough and unsteady enough for her to look at him, her hand stilling as she read the flaring attraction in his eyes.


"I think it's time I left," she said. A similar flush was spreading over her, and her voice sounded wobbly and high pitched.

"Of  course," he said gruffly. "You need to get to bed." Neither of them   moved a muscle. The silence in the room was now resounding. In her own   ears, she seemed to hear the booming of her heart. She had never felt   anything as powerful as this. The heat in his eyes scorched her. She   felt, literally, as though she was burning up.

"I...I..." she began, unable to rip her gaze away from his.

"You  have the most exquisite skin." He lifted one hand and stroked it.  It  felt like satin beneath the sensitive pads of his fingers. He  watched  her pupils dilate, saw the very slight flaring of her nostrils,  the  fleeting drop of her eyelashes as his finger touched her face, and  the  impact those physical responses had on him was the equivalent of a   powerful electric charge. She tilted her head back a millimeter and  her  breathing became more ragged.

Looking at her, Franco felt as  though he had never before experienced  the pull of the passion. It was  like being hit, full-on, by a freight  train.

Her lips parted, and  he leant forward and gently touched her mouth with  his, tracing the  contours of her pink lips with his tongue, and Ruth  gave a moan of  desire.

The force of wanting him was so tremendous that she  abandoned herself  to it. She pulled his head towards her, melting  exquisitely as his  gentle mouth became hard and hungry and the kiss  deepened into a wild,  mutual exploration with tongues. She was gasping  as his hands found her  shoulders and tugged down the lightweight shirt.

Pure  sensation seemed to have taken her over, like an alien force,  rendering  her power to reason completely useless. It was as though her  brain had  been temporarily switched off at the mains.

She closed her eyes  and arched back, supporting herself on her hands.  Her legs couldn't be  still. They fidgeted of their own accord,  lubricated with the feminine  moisture oozing like honey from between  her thighs.

He leaned to kiss the slim column of her neck and her head fell backwards, her braid coming undone.

With  his hand, he roughly unraveled what remained tied back and pushed  her  up the bed, moving with her so that their bodies remained no more  than  an inch or two apart.

As the palm of his hand pressed between her  legs, a firm, moving,  rousing pressure through the thick fabric of  her...denim jeans, she  released a long, shaky moan. He undid the button,  tugged down the zip  and then slid his hand down beneath the tiny  underwear, pushing his  finger against the pulsating bud of desire and  inducing a sharp, sweet  feeling of satisfaction.

His finger moved  and rotated and she fumbled eyes still closed, with  her tight, cropped  top, finally pushing it up and over her breasts in  sheer frustration.  Her nipples were large and swollen with excitement,  and as his finger  kept moving against that magical place and his mouth  covered the  throbbing tips of her breasts, she could no longer contain  her mounting  need for fulfillment. The thrill of orgasm ripped through  her body and  she felt herself tense as the waves of pleasure rolled  over her.

As  she turned to him, appalled at the wanton abandon of her response,   wanting only to touch him as he had touched her, the telephone rang.

One loud, shrill summons, followed by another, and another.

"Answer it," she said, her face stamped with mounting horror as she contemplated what had just taken place between them.                       
       
           



       

"No way." He pulled her towards him, but she pushed herself away.

"No!"  she cried wildly. She scuttled away from him, rapidly trying to  put  herself in order and avoid his eyes. "I shouldn't have... Oh, dear   Lord...what have I done?"

"Ruth!"


"Please!" She was almost weeping with shame. "I'm sorry. Please!"

The phone had stopped and she ran, as fast as she could, past a bewildered George as if the devil was after her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Franco  had been utterly sure that Ruth would stop working alongside  him. The  certainty, as he had lain on the bed, cursing himself volubly  and aloud  for his inept, stupid, thoughtless and downright juvenile  handling of  this shy ...woman-child, had twisted in his gut like a  blunt knife.

Eight  days later and here she was. She hadn't jacked in the assignment,  as he  had feared, and he could only assume that some little voice in  her head  had preached to her the values of maturity which would be  exemplified  if she refused to allow their all too brief moment of  exquisite carnal  pleasure to come between her and her job.

Now, with their last  evening together drawing to a close at a little  after midnight, he could  feel a disturbing sense of panic that when  they parted company now, it  would be for good.

He stared at her broodingly, watching how she  handled the woman sitting  next to her, asking questions without  stammering, nodding, murmuring  sympathetically now and again, leaning  forward to say something so that  her hair brushed the sides of her face.

She had grown in confidence with every passing day, but far from diminishing her appeal it had added to it.

When  the woman finally stood up and took one last long drag on her   cigarette, he went through the motions of shaking her hand and thanking   her for her time, but he could barely keep the agitation out of his   body.

"Do you think we've managed to get enough for the article?" Ruth asked, slipping on her denim jacket.

"I should think so."

She  yawned, and he tried to suppress a childish desire to insist that  she  give him her full attention. She wasn't even looking at him when  she  spoke. In fact, she hadn't looked at him since the little incident  in  his apartment. Not once had she mentioned it, but he knew that she   hadn't put it to the back of her mind.

The awareness was there  all too powerfully in those carefully averted  eyes, the surreptitious  sidelong glances when she thought he was  looking elsewhere, the way she  shifted her body away from him whenever  he got too close to her, as  though she thought that proximity might  lead to combustion.

He  was experienced enough to recognize all those little give-away  signals  that told him just how much he still excited her.  Unfortunately, he was  powerless to do anything about it. His attempts  to tease her into  relaxing were met with a blank politeness that had  driven him crazy.

Now,  she was getting ready to go, sticking her little notepad into her  bag,  checking her jacket pockets, the way she did every night, to make  sure  that her house keys were tucked away safely in the inner pocket on  the  inside. In a minute she would get irritated with her hair and  shove it  into the back of the jacket.

He felt as though he knew her intimately and, worse, still wanted to find out more. Everything, in fact.

Panic was burgeoning into desperation. It was an emotion so alien to him that he could hardly cope with it.

When  had he ever been desperate about any woman? His repertoire of  emotions  when it came to the opposite sex ranged widely from desire to  mild  curiosity, but certainly never desperation.