“Good, Anna, good.” John’s voice was dark and triumphant, his breath steaming her neck. “My mark on you. You like that, don’t you?”
“Mmm, oh.” She made the lace of her bra snag his jacket buttons, so he had to throw off the jacket and then bring his ravenous mouth to her breasts. First he sucked through the lace until it was soaked, then he pulled the cups down and feasted on the soft, white flesh with its stiff tips of pink.
“Mine, Anna, all mine.”
“Please…” He knew he drove her crazy; he knew how much he made her want it. The expensive knickers were slippery and scented with her arousal. When would he just rip them off and have at her, the way she wanted?
“Every inch of you,” he muttered, shooting a feral glance up at her. “Every inch is mine. I want to mark it.” He licked and sucked and bit a trail from her breasts down across her belly, then he flipped her onto her stomach, wrenched down the knickers and added his signature to her bottom until it had to be patterned with little strawberry bruises from the fleshy globes to the sensitive undersides. Anna kept her thighs stretched wide, knowing that John was approaching no return, would have to obey his body’s imperative to mount and enter her before much longer. Oh, he was so close, so close…
He rolled her back over and knelt on the bed, undressing with that speed and finesse she always admired, before leaning over her, his eyes meeting hers, overpowering them, filling her head with that strange fizzy feeling.
“It’s our wedding night. You should be a virgin.”
“I can’t change the past,” she said, confused, unsure whether this was a criticism or a lighthearted remark.
“I can.”
“John?”
“Look at me. Look. You’re a virgin. Look at me. You’re a virgin, Anna.”
He looked blue, green, blue again, his face constant yet mutating, and when he grabbed her by the legs and threw them over his shoulders, she almost felt as if it wasn’t her he was handling, but some doll, some other girl, whose sensations were filling her by proxy. She felt his cock sweep into her at last and then there was something holding it back, something, oh, it did feel just the way it did the first time. How could that happen?
“Good girl, keep calm, it might hurt a little but I’ll be gentle, keep calm,” John murmured into her ear.
But I’m not…but I am…I’m a virgin?
It was like her first time, and yet it was also utterly different and better. The first time, with a fumbling Social Policy student at a grim all-night party, had taken place on a bed of coats and handbags and had hurt a lot. Anna recalled three blunt pushes, a cry that came from her, a low dragging pain and an apology from her deflowerer, who had reached his own release within half a minute of transferring her out of maidenhood. It had been so disappointing that she had avoided sexual situations for months afterward and, until John, she had still unconsciously steeled herself every time she opened her legs for a lover.
But John had made everything new, and now it almost seemed literally so—a new maidenhead, which he was taking with an infinity of gentleness and patience, edging through the barrier with smooth blandishments in her ear. He held her at the wrists, preempting any sudden panic at the moment of defloration, and swept triumphantly past, all the way in.
“There,” he said. “Yes.”
And Anna could feel that ragged edge of pain below. It was so real. How had he made it so real? She tried to be curious, tried to be fearful, but he was working on her now, muting her thoughts and opening up her sensations, keeping her in that enthralled state he, and only he, could create. She let her questions drift and evaporate; now only his, taking him, accepting him, giving herself up to him until the bed seemed to spin and drop and they were all that existed in a realm of infinite ecstasy.
“Nice.” Liam threw himself on the bed, as if testing the mattress for springiness and resistance. “Can you afford this? We should go dutch.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Mimi’s response was a mutter. Her shoulders tensed as she peered through the edge of the curtains, over to the wing that housed the bridal suite. “And just because I could only get a double room doesn’t mean…”
“I know, I know. I’m not the creep you seem to assume I am, you know.” Liam opened the minibar with a hurt air. “Fantastic, Cobra beer!”
“I’m sorry,” Mimi said, dropping the curtain and joining Liam at the fridge. “Crack open one of those for me, will you? I’m just a bit on edge. Can’t help thinking about what that man wants with Anna. I just can’t make it out.”
“Perhaps he fancies her.”
“I’m sure he does,” Mimi said, exasperated. “But that doesn’t mean he has to marry her, does it? Why has he gone and done that? So soon after the death of his first wife?”
“Rebound? Loneliness?”
“He’s dealt with the loneliness by throwing himself into this odd save-the-ozone-layer project he’s got going. Why would a man go from hedge fund management to the outer limits of exploratory physics? Is that even possible?”
“Umm…not really an expert in either of those fields, to be honest.”
“Well, neither is he. I looked him up—he has an A-Level in Physics, but that’s all. He did Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford. How can he be involved in this cutting-edge research? How has he persuaded the government to help fund it? He doesn’t even work with anyone. Nobody else knows anything about it.”
Liam shrugged, sipping from the beer bottle.
“I think he’s pulling a lot of wool over a lot of eyes. I don’t want Anna to get hurt. God, I wish I could have talked her out of this.”