Bad Girl Read online

“Can’t you remember? When we first met?”

  “Of course, I remember,” I tell him.

  “No, I don’t think you do. Or you don’t remember the significance of one particular conversation.”

  “Tell me.”

  I keep my eyes on his, his on mine.

  “Quite soon after we started sleeping together, you told me in no uncertain terms that you weren’t looking for love and that love was the last thing you ever wanted. You told me you didn’t have time for it, it wasn’t for you. That if someone loved you, it might feel like a punishment or too much like a cage and you couldn’t deal with that. You made it very clear if I were to say that I was in love with you, you’d chuck me for no reason other than you didn’t want romance or love or any of that.”

  A lump forms in my throat and I cover my eyes with a hand, hating myself.

  “You don’t remember?” he asks.

  “I remember, now you’ve mentioned it, I remember.”

  “That’s why, Chloe,” he says, the gravel in his voice unmistakable.

  “Why you went along with stuff, even though you didn’t really want to.”

  “Yep.”

  I slide down into his arms and onto his chest, crying. He holds me close.

  “I’d just been so hurt. I was a different person then, Cole. I’ve changed since. I had no idea how I was going to change. You’ve changed me, I’m no longer that person. I don’t recognise her anymore.”

  I cry and he holds me as I weep. I’ve never wept in his arms before. Ever. Not even when I was really homesick in Oz. When I was, I’d cry in the shower or when I was on my own, nowhere near him.

  I realise as I cry this is what Adam was talking about at Christmas when he was messaging me. We’re not the same people anymore. Our cells have replicated since we were last together and we’re not only entirely new because it was over seven years ago, but things have happened in our lives to make us question the things our past selves did and the words we spoke which we now no longer relate to.

  “I don’t care about that any longer,” he says, teeth chattering, “I feel bold enough and reckless enough now to think fuck it, whatever, because I just love you so damn much and want you to be my wife. I don’t care if my confessions push you away, not anymore. I can’t keep this in, I have to let you know, I need to tell you how I feel so we don’t make the biggest mistake of our lives and throw away everything we have. I’m done being scared, Chloe. I’m so done.”

  I lift my face to his and wipe away his tears, stroke his cheek and kiss his lips gently, softly, reverently. I need him to know I love him too, that it’s killing me, that it’s killed me for months holding this in but I was just so scared of what it all meant and how it would change everything.

  Our kisses deepen and the fever he always creates in my veins sets in, making me want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything else before in my life.

  I wrap my arms and legs around him as he rolls me to my back, his weight on top of me, his lips kissing mine with fury and wild abandon.

  “Oh god,” I moan, my insides pulsing with lust, the contractions already starting inside my pussy.

  He pushes into me and I still as he fills me completely, subduing all my worries and cares.

  Cole leaks tears as he makes love to me, his kisses ravaging my face and neck, my chest and arms and shoulders. His brutally hard penis stretches me open wider than ever before, my body on fire, my pussy excruciatingly open to him. Every time he moves in and out of me, I’m filled and stretched so much, my clit feels raw as his body brushes against my nubbin.

  “I love you,” I tell him, in a fit of pleasure and desire.

  “I know,” he says, “I know, baby.”

  He kisses me until I can’t see anything but stars and explosions of love behind my eyes, my body convulsing wildly beneath his.

  I fall asleep wrapped in his love, never safer, never more his.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the morning as I’m working in the office, all I can think about is how it was between us last night and how I can still feel his touch on my skin, his frantic kisses all over my body and the sensitivity between my legs, his cock having made me come so many times. All I want to do is get back home to him and fall under his spell – allow myself to surrender again and again and again. I thought we knew one another so well but last night taught us we hadn’t really known each other at all. Cole is much more vulnerable and sensitive than I ever imagined. I’ve never been with a guy before who cried in my arms. It made me feel utterly protective of him. He always thought I wasn’t interested in love or a lasting relationship or any of that, but those words I spoke all those years ago now weren’t truthful – they were words I spoke in a bid to protect myself, not only from his expectations, but also my own. I didn’t want to get my heart broken. They were throwaway words I tossed out into the wind to give him the perception that I wouldn’t ever want to be tied down. To a certain extent, I didn’t. But that was before we spent time together… that was before we recently allowed ourselves to consider the future and what it is we really want. And I want him.

  I count down the minutes until I can escape, then go back to him and be in his arms.

  Finally, when I leave on the dot of one o’clock, racing down the stairs to get to him as quickly as possible, I have an idea and detour into the city centre, stopping at a couple of shops to pick up some nice things for us.

  Polly from work texts me: Enjoy your time off, can I keep you in mind if I have an emergency?

  I laugh to myself before texting: Absolutely fucking not.

  Let’s see what she thinks of that. Besides, I plan on switching my phone off as much as possible.

  I get back to my car and try not to drive too fast in my haste to get home.

  By the time I walk through the door at 1.45, I smell food cooking and hear the sound of him singing along to the radio.

  I dump all my stuff on the floor in the hallway and rush into the kitchen, catching him off guard when I throw my arms around him as he stands with his back to me, his attention on something at the stove.

  “You escaped,” he says, “I was wondering.”

  “I escaped,” I confirm.

  “Now the fun can really begin, huh?”

  “I don’t know, last night was pretty fun.” I push my hands into his jeans pockets and my fingers brush the edge of his cock and balls. A throaty laugh erupts from his chest and he turns around and kisses me while smiling.

  “It was,” he tells me, kissing me once more. “Why don’t you get out of those stuffy clothes, hmm?”

  “Certainly, coming right up.”

  I chase away and up the stairs, carrying my purchases from town as I go. I strip out of my suit and hang the jacket but put the skirt on the chair in the corner because it needs dry cleaning. I undress until I’m fully naked and grab my new lingerie from its bag. I bought myself a white, lace bodysuit with a split crotch. It might only last one day but I bet it’ll be worth it.

  I grab my other clothing purchase and rip off the tags even though I haven’t even tried it on yet. I just know it’ll fit and look good, too.

  Over the bodysuit I pull on a white cashmere jumper dress with a cowl neck. It’s tight and hugs all my curves in just the ways I anticipated. Cole loves me in white and in tight things that show off my curves and my big butt, which he loves. I bought some new white panties in lace, too. Those can stay in the bag for later, if I need new underwear – perhaps if this bodysuit doesn’t last.

  I arrive downstairs just as he’s serving up. I see he’s made a warm chicken salad with chickpeas and peppers, little pots of salsa and spicy rice on the side for us to help ourselves.

  But then he sees me in the jumper dress and it’s like a hunter just caught sight of its prey. I am really hungry but I’m also not averse to being admired.

  He tosses away the tea towel he was keeping over his shoulder and it slips off the edge of the sideboard to the floor but he’s not even looking
at that.

  He comes towards me, puts his hands on my waist and slides his hands along the curves of my body, gripping my hips tight in his hands.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asks.

  “A little something I bought at the shops before I came home.”

  “Oh, I see. What else did ya buy?”

  I step back from him grinning. “You want to see?”

  He bites his bottom lip. “Sure as hell.”

  “Close the blind, then.”

  He does as he’s told and closes the blind.

  I lift the dress up and let him see what I’m wearing beneath. His eyes almost pop out of his head. I’ve never, ever done sexy underwear before. Ever. Not for any man. I usually wear cute little bras and knickers, but nothing ever like this, nothing so extravagant and elegant.

  “Holy fuck,” he groans, as I tug the dress all the way off and stand in front of him.

  His eyes roam my body, taking it all in.

  I step towards him and place my hands flat on his chest.

  “What do you think?”

  “You look stunning,” he says. “You’re wearing the earrings, too.”

  I tuck my hair behind my ears so he can see them. A few days after Christmas I was delivered of a pair of diamond earrings at work. I had to sign for them and a security tag had to be taken off the box and everything. I wear them almost every day for work and clean them every night because I love them so much. They add a touch of class to everything I wear and I adore that it was Cole who sent them to me. They must have cost a fortune.

  “Put your hand between my legs,” I tell him, and he tentatively does as asked, his eyes betraying concern… that I’m perhaps duping him about what it is I want.

  Then he gets a surprise when he discovers parts of me aren’t as covered up as he thought.

  “Oh my god,” he groans, slipping his finger between my drenched lips and finding he could easily slip inside me. “On the table. Now.”

  I move one of the chairs away from the dining table and lie back, my heart in my mouth as I watch him untuck his cock from his jeans and come towards me. He holds my legs open and slides straight into me, groaning, his body shaking as he finds himself able to bury himself so swiftly and easily into my engorged depths.

  “I love you,” I moan, “god, I love you. Fuck me.”

  “I’m gonna blow any second. Fuck. You look insane. Your tits… your nipples. Oh my god, is it a thong, too?”

  “It is, baby. You could do me from behind. Watching my ass.”

  “Orr, yes, babe. Yes.”

  He lifts me off the table and spins me around, slapping my bum.

  “Fuck, fuck,” I groan, as he pushes me over the table and lifts my knee onto it, spreading me open.

  He rams into me and I scream, the depth of his penetration now almost unbearable and the tightness of my swollen pussy almost too much as he grows thicker with every thrust, his desire out of control and desperate.

  He slides his hands down my body and back up, grasping my tits as he strokes his cock through my wet folds, gasping every time my soaked depths drag him in, deeper and deeper.

  “Ah, god,” he cries, firing into me.

  My muscles spasm around him, milking him – purely because I can feel his cum inside me – but then when he rubs my clit furiously, I come even harder and it goes on endlessly as he continues stroking into me, his seed coating me inside, over and over again.

  Cole pulls me up and I stand with my back to his front, my hands and arms resting over the top of his. He kisses my throat, holding my breasts over the delicate lace, then I turn my head and we kiss deeply, slowly, savouring it.

  “I love you,” he groans. “Too much.”

  “Now you know what to buy me in future. Although I’d just as happily be fucked in only these diamonds. They’re a girl’s best friend, you know. The only thing in this whole house I value.”

  “I’m glad you liked them,” he murmurs. “I wanted you to have something special.”

  “They’re special.”

  He tucks himself away and groans, “I’d love to take you again, but this salad isn’t going to eat itself and I could eat a whole fucking crocodile right now.”

  “Believe me, so I could I, honey. So could I.”

  In the kitchen of my rented house I dry myself on a bit of kitchen paper and wash my hands at the sink. He doesn’t wash up before tucking into his food with a knife and fork, hungry like a bear.

  I pull the white dress back on and I just know from the look in his eye that as nice as the dress is, the only message he gets from it is that it needs to come back off.

  We manage to eat though there are messages being passed back and forth, just with our eyes. The food is delicious and I can’t get enough of it, eating like a starved peasant at Christmas, given my first proper meal in months.

  I laugh the entire time he’s carrying me upstairs, but as soon as we’re naked together with just my diamonds the only thing either of us is wearing (except I guess the subtle earrings he wears in the shell of his ears), it’s not funny anymore. It’s just desperate as he kisses every inch of my body and we lose ourselves fucking, making love… making memories… making each other happy.

  It’s early evening when I wake from my afternoon nap. I turn over to see he’s still asleep. I will need to wake him soon or he won’t sleep tonight. I stare at his face, mapping every inch of it. Usually when we’d sleep together in bed, he would always wake before me and I’d never get chance to lie here, just to watch him sleep. He has a Greek nose, perfect and unassuming, his cheekbones and chin the more prominent features of his face. He has a Brad Pitt forehead and a similar hairline, so hopefully he won’t ever go bald. Not that it would matter. All that really matters to me is that he’s the best kisser, has the best hands and arms and cock of any man. His mouth looks so appetising while he’s at rest, so plump in its relaxed state, the odd small gust of air leaving between them – the flight here having made his nose a little dry, probably. He’s just so beautiful and though I always knew that and people always said it, I didn’t really see it until now. I want to wake him so badly just so I can see his green eyes and the light shining out of them. I wonder if we had kids what colour eyes they would have. My eyes are a light blue-green. My mother’s family are from Ireland, hence where I get my surname from – McCarthy. My mother has deep green eyes and red hair (she has to dye it now). I’ve often imagined what my biological father might have looked like – perhaps Scandinavian like me, with naturally golden hair and blue eyes maybe. Would my children with Cole look like both of us, or would my mother’s recessive gene jump a generation and we’d end up with a ginger? I smile at that thought.

  Not knowing about that other half of me has driven me a little bit mad whenever I get onto the subject. Is my father still alive? Do I look like him? Or did his mother have blonde hair and blue eyes and that’s why I do? Do I get my stubbornness from him? My mind? Does he too derive pleasure from creating order from chaos? – one of the reasons I wanted to be a lawyer. What does he do for a living? Is he in law? Or might he be an artist of some sort or an animal lover like me? Where did she meet him? Was it only one night? Why won’t she tell me his name or what happened?

  Often, I start to imagine the worst… that I’m the product of rape and that’s why she hates me so much and doesn’t want to say. But if it was hate she felt for me, why didn’t she abort or tell me what I am? If she ever thought it would make me feel shit about myself, surely if she hated me she would have told me by now how I came into being.

  I have a feeling she doesn’t want to admit it was a one-night stand, that she never got his name… that they didn’t even love one another. Deep down she’s a romantic. A hopeless one. Or why else would she keep going through boyfriends? This is the story I’ve decided is the truth. It’s the one I can cope with and accept. Knowing what it’s like to grow up without that other half of your identity, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. At the same time,
I often look at my friends and see that many of them are nothing like either of their parents, so maybe my dad is nothing like me. Perhaps I would have hated him. Was he a kiddie fiddler? Was it one of my mother’s teachers who betrayed her trust? She was only sixteen when she became pregnant, seventeen when she had me.

  Lily is nothing like her mum and dad. She’s much taller than even her dad. The only thing she shares with her parents is her mother’s hair and eye colour. The rest is a miracle that happened in the womb. Theo, too, I can see a lot of Allegra in him – the artist part – but he’s much stronger than his mum ever was and he’s much more conformist than his father will ever be. He’s a classic romantic, something his own father would confess to being the opposite of.

  Adam is cleverer than both of his parents combined; Paul is the carbon copy of his father and that’s no exaggeration, he is; Saskia isn’t anything like her own mother, who is ugly and twisted, vindictive and nasty, and as for her father, who knows? I never met him. Meanwhile Cole is the best of both of his parents. His upbringing was really the model everyone should aspire to. He has a lot of his father’s practical skills such as mending and cooking and being a good listener. Meanwhile he also has his mother’s analytical mind. She works high up in the justice system in Australia. The Jackson family name means something up there, so no wonder he got a good job so quickly. His father runs a carpentry company and his hands are like the hands of someone who never missed a day’s work in his life. His mother Tracy stayed home when the kids were little but then went back to work and always encouraged her kids to do good – if they did nothing else, just do good. I love that idea of doing good. I would love to live by that idea that whatever it is you’re doing, as long as you’re doing good, that’s all that matters.

  Marie followed in her mother’s footsteps and married young, had kids young, and she’s trying so hard to work a full-time job and be all things because her mother did that, too. It hurts me to see her struggling sometimes, the few times we get to see her anyway. She’s in a difficult place right now.