I go down and check. It’s an electronic lock. Automatic. My worries are unnecessary here.
I’d kill for a cup of tea but settle for a glass of water, which I bring with me on my second inspection round. This one is a little more thorough.
Hey, I’m just making myself at home!
The bar is filled with high-end liquor, and spiral stairs next to the elevator lead down to a basement.I’m not investigating down there. Nope, not in the dark and after midnight.The library is filled with all kinds of books from ancient-looking, leather-bound tomes to a battered Jilly Cooper romp. I tilt my head to read the spines until I get a crick in my neck.
There’s a TV in the lounge concealed behind a cabinet, expensive looking artworks but no family photographs on display. I slam a few billiard balls around the table with my hand, spilling a little water on the baize—oops!
I eventually make my way upstairs to do the very thing I’ve been avoiding.
Snooping. I’m dying to snoop in Beckett’s bedroom.
I flip on the light and step into the huge room, running my hand along his bed as I travel, the linens super soft under my fingertips. I poke around the two nightstands; he sleeps on the left, evidenced by the reading material stacked on one end. No Jilly Cooper, sadly. Boring business books and one on Turkey.The country, not the feathery thing.The contents of the drawers are likewise. Boring, though I steel myself for the box of condoms I’m sure I’ll find but don’t.
Why does that feel sort of gratifying?
I flip on the wall-mounted TV, wondering what it is he watches.Ugh, the news. How uninteresting.Then I pull throw pillows from the sofa to see what treasures this might yield.Nada. Nothing. Not even a penny.
Then I make my way through to his dressing room, where his suits appear to be colour coded.And the pockets empty. A couple of Tom Ford, more that are bespoke, a Gucci in grey, a Paul Smith number in blue. Handmade shirts and leather oxfords and brogues, Armani trainers and Gucci loafers. Balenciaga jeans, and all manner of designer T-shirts. This room is like the menswear department of Selfridges.
Leaving everything as it should be, I make my way into the bathroom, and pull off the lids and sniff at least six of his bottles of cologne. Stopping at the one that smells most like him, I squirt a little on my wrist, then I stick a finger in his moisturiser—okay, aftershave balm—and slather it on the back of my hand. I open the cabinets and poke around the contents.Towels, all exceedingly fluffy and white and in all sizes. Unopened bottles of products stocked behind the opened bottles.
I flip off the light and stalk back into the bedroom, annoyed. Why has my snooping yielding no information? If someone were to dig around my home, I’m sure they’d learn so much about me. My kitchen might not be full of food, but it is full of cookbooks, and there’s always a bar of chocolate stashed somewhere, and a half full bottle of wine in the fridge. I read the type of books where the heroine always gets her man, or the detective collars his serial killer, because I like my endings to be happy, and my bathroom would reveal the kind of analgesic I take for period pain.
And my bedside cabinet? I dread to think. Pink dicks and purple pricks. Plastic ones, obviously. Not that I’m obsessed or anything, but a girl has to have options, especially when she’s been single for a while.
Fists on my hips, I turn and survey the room. Other than the clothes hanging in his vast and tidy closets, it could well have been a hotel room. There’s nothing personal about the house at all. It’s beautiful, for sure. And worth millions, and I dare say the same for its contents. Turn of the century antiques and contemporary artworks. But who is the man behind the tastes? Who is Alexander Beckett?
Just the man I’m tied to for the next six months. Minus threedays. God, has it only been three days? The Botox I’ll need by the time this experience is over. I’ll age a dozen years at least.
I move back to the bed and lean my hands down on it. It’s a big bed.For a big man.Because the Alexander Beckett I know, I understand only physically. I know it takes two of my hands to span one of his biceps and how the ladder of his abdominals react to even the slightest caress. I’ve become familiar with at least a dozen variations of his smile, from the Arctic twist of his lips when his patience is wearing thin, to the sardonic smirk he wears when he imagines he’s winning. I know the way his gaze darkens when he’s turned on, and I’m familiar with the low growl he makes as he comes.
I dip my head to the mattress, ignoring the heavy pull between my legs.
‘Oh, God, I’m so screwed,’ I whisper. The things I know about him are the things I want to study more. I inhale deeply. The linens have been recently washed, the evidence in the flowery fresh scent.If you’re going to stalk, you may as well cover all the bases.
For a split second, I consider what it would be like to be married to Beckett properly. To sleep with him in this bed. I mean, I’d probably commit mariticide, but I expect I’d be acquitted. You know, on the grounds of extreme provocation or something. The jury would understand, I’m sure. But what would it be like to crawl into bed with him each night? His long arms slung around my waist. My head nestled in the dip between his chest and bicep. But then, maybe the bed is a ruse. Maybe he doesn’t sleep but hangs upside down like a bat in his basement or maybe he has a silk-lined coffin down in his creepy basement. It’s hard to tell how he sleeps—if he sleeps. I’ve twice ended up in bed with him yet woke alone.
I lift my arms and stretch as I wonder what time it is. Then, like a child, I give in to the sudden impulse to lean back and flop into the middle of the bed. I giggle as my body bounces, the mattress yielding under me, then wriggle into the middle, my head suddenly buried under an avalanche of pillows. For a moment, I feel like I’m being suffocated and, in my panic, begin flipping the things from my face and the bed.
What the hell am I doing here? Not here, in this house, which is crazy enough, but here on his bed? Sniffing his sheets and rattling his drawers for evidence of who he is? This isn’t like any kind of jet lag I’ve ever experienced.
‘I am seriously losing it,’ I whisper at the ceiling as I close my eyes and rest my forearm over my face, the scent of Beckett’s cologne on my wrist awakening a sensory memory. Beckett’s whispers hot in my ear, his body over mine and blocking out the light.
‘I shouldn’t want him.’ But it doesn’t alter the fact I do, and it doesn’t alter the fact that just the scent of him triggers a wave of need so great I’m sliding my hand over the satiny front of my pyjamas.
The honeymoon is over.His words echo in my ear, and I find myself answering. ‘Maybe for you.’
Cupping myself, I squeeze my thighs together, my sigh a stuttering thing as I press down with my palm. I know I shouldn’t, but the badness calls to me.
His bed. My orgasm.
‘Yes.’ My whisper echoes in the air as I loosen my thighs and slip my hand under the elastic of my pyjamas, coating my clit in my own arousal as I recall the feel of his fingers trailing from my ankles to my thighs. His breath against my shoulder as he’d taken my hips in his hands, the stubble on his jaw abrading my skin.
I’ve never felt so possessed, so thoroughly owned as I do when I’m with him. But from now, it looks as if I’ll be relying on memories as I begin to circle and pet, my fingers picking up their well-practised rhythm.
Spread your legs.
