Twice The Pleasure

www.spice-books.co.uk

“So, what have you been doing for the last ten years, Caitlyn?” inquires Melinda Johnson, her chin wobbling as she devours yet another of my smoked salmon canapés.

“Cooking, mainly,” I answer, glancing around. Yet again.

I’m kidding myself that I’m checking to make sure that everyone seems to enjoying my food. Really, I’m looking for one person. One person who probably won’t even turn up. I’m being pathetic, I know, but if I’m honest, he’s the real reason I agreed to cater this bash. If it wasn’t for him, I most likely wouldn’t have attended at all.

Unfinished business.

They say you have to get it out of your system, or you can drive yourself insane and never move on.

Meanwhile, I have to make nice with people like Melinda—who I never liked back when we were in our high school years together at Walton Wood College, and I’m liking even less now that she’s cramming down my finely wrought hors d’oeuvres at top speed, without even giving herself time to taste them properly. I give her my usual spiel about how well Caitlyn Cooks is doing, but all the time my eyes are skittering constantly towards the door, hoping, hoping, hoping to see a tall, broad, hopelessly handsome man appear—and light up the room with his charisma, the way he always did.

My hand shakes, and I nearly tip over a tray of mini kebabs.

The thought of that body makes me tremble. Even after ten years, I can still feel his hot skin beneath my fingers, smell his sweat, revel in the hardness of his muscles and the long shape of his cock beneath his gym shorts.

I excuse myself. I can’t take any more of Melinda chattering on. She was a round-faced, self-absorbed girl ten years ago, and she’s just the same now, if not ten times as bad.

Handing the tray to one of my well-trained servers, I rush out of the old assembly hall at a trot, heading for the cloakroom. Then, in a toilet stall, I sit on the flipped-down seat, and take deep, shaky breaths…and remember.

Damn Drew Hartley! How the hell can he still affect me this way? How sad is it that I still have the hots for him? A schoolgirl sex crush should have fizzled out years and years ago.

Alas though, it hasn’t. And that day in the gym store seems like yesterday. Or this morning…

Our little “interlude.” Our moment. Our “thing.”

A fifteen-minute fumble after I watched him play basketball. The thought makes me cringe, but it still turns me on.

I can barely remember the lead up to it, or anything that happened afterwards, but I can remember every second, every heartbeat of “during.”

There’d been a five-a-side football match. An argument. Some shouting. Drew and his best friend Steve facing off against each other like pit bulls; I’ve no idea what about. Drew stomped off, shaking his head, still furious, while the game went on. I slunk off too, after a discreet interval. I knew where he’d go.

The gymnasium here has an old storeroom, where people used to sneak off to for a crafty smoke, or a beer or an illicit make-out session. I expect they still do…for all three.

And that was where I found Drew, sprawled on the piled-up mats, his flopping blond hair dark with sweat, and a black look of fury still in his eyes. From somewhere, he’d produced a bottle of mineral water, and he was swigging from it in short, angry pulls.

“What’s wrong?”

My words earned me a glare, and I started to back away.

“No, don’t go…” His look became odd, narrow and assessing, as if he was weighing me up somehow. “Come here…. Have a drink…. I could do with some company.” His sculpted mouth twisted. “It’s only water. I wish it was something stronger, but hey…”

It was like offering a juicy Aberdeen Angus steak to weak-willed dieter who’d been on lettuce for a week. I scuttled forward and perched on the mat, close but judiciously out of touching distance.

Me touching him, not him touching me.

I was eighteen, one giant hormone, and just inches away was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. He handed me the bottle, and I was trembling as I sipped. Especially when he peeled off his gym vest and crumpled it into a bundle to wipe away the sweat from his chest and his underarms.

Oh God, I almost tipped the water right over my head. I was burning hot, probably sweating more than he was, and desire was molten metal in my belly, surging through my loins as he flung the vest away and turned towards me.

He was a young god. Perfect, toned, golden, magnificent—everything a woman or a girl could desire. When I passed the bottle back to him, our fingers touched and I jumped an inch into the air as if he’d zapped me.

His blue eyes narrowed. His stare was complicated. Confused. He looked as befuddled as I felt, and that shadow of doubt, in the midst of confidence, was fatal.

Before I could stop myself, I leaned across and kissed him.

For a moment, his mouth was quiet beneath mine, then he muttered something like “Oh, what the hell…” and started kissing me back, sliding his arms around me and rolling me onto the mat.