For Revenge or Redemption?

Making a lunge for it, and dropping another bag in the process, she sucked in a breath as a motorbike suddenly cruised to a halt in front of her and a black-booted foot nudged the first errant carrier to the side of the carriageway.

‘Hello again.’ The sexily curving mouth of the leather-clad figure on the bike was unmistakable: Seth Mason. She remembered her grandfather casually referring to him on the way home the previous week, and had hugged the name to her like a guilty secret. Her heart seemed to go into free fall as he spoke to her, then felt like it was beating out of control.

‘You’ve bitten off more than you can chew.’ He looked amused at her plight. His voice, though, was deep and so warm that she fell in love with it just standing there on that rural road as he bent to pick up the one bag she still hadn’t retrieved and restored it to her flustered arms. ‘You look as though you could do with a lift.’

Every instinct of survival screamed at Grace to refuse, to listen to the nagging little voice of wisdom that warned her that involving herself with this man would definitely be biting off more than she could chew! But everything about him was exciting, from his dark, enigmatic features to his hard, lean body and the heavy pulsing of the motorbike’s engine between those powerful, leather-clad thighs.

‘I’m Seth Mason…if you’re wondering,’ he stated dryly, after she deposited her bags in the pannier and sat astride the bike.

‘I know,’ she said, easing down her mini-skirt that had ridden up to reveal more golden thigh than she wanted him to see.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me your name?’ A distinct edge crept into his voice as he added, ‘Or do you think I should know it?’

Grace had laughed at that. ‘Don’t you?’ she asked cheekily.

From the look he sent over his shoulder, he wasn’t particularly impressed.

‘I’m Grace,’ she told him quickly in the light of his challenging, brooding gaze.

‘Here.’ He thrust a crash helmet into her hand. ‘Put this on.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘If you want to ride with me, you do.’

He was responsible for her safety, that was what he was saying. The thought of having his protection sent a little frisson through Grace.

Somewhat nervously she said, ‘I’ve never been on a motorbike before.’

‘Then hold on to me,’ was his firm command.

Even now, letting herself into the flat, Grace could still remember the thrill of putting her arms around his hard, masculine body. Of laying her cheek against the warm leather that spanned his back while the bike had throbbed and vibrated like a live thing beneath them.

‘Lean when I do!’ he shouted back above the engine’s sudden roar. ‘Don’t pull against me.’

Never in a million years! the young Grace sighed inwardly, utterly enthralled, though she kept her feelings to herself for the unusually lengthy journey home.

‘You took the long way round.’ She pretended to chastise him, stepping off the bike. Her legs felt like jelly and for more reasons than just the vibration, or the speed with which he had driven the powerful machine along a particularly fast stretch of road.

Something tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘Well, they do say a girl always remembers her first time.’

Her cheeks felt as though they were on fire as she took off her helmet and handed it back to him. ‘I will. It was truly unforgettable. Thanks.’ But her voice shook at the images his comment about a girl’s first time gave rise to. What would he say, she wondered, if he knew that there never had been a first time in that most basic of respects? That she was still a virgin? Would he lose interest in her? Because she was sure there was interest there. Or would he regard her as a challenge, like a lot of the men she’d dated had, backing off when they’d realised she wasn’t an easy lay?

He was looking at the impressive security gates, and the big house with its curving drive visible behind them, but as she moved to retrieve her purchases from the pannier he said, ‘Would you like a hand carrying those in?’

Setting the electric gates in motion, she laughed, saying, ‘I don’t think that’s really necessary, do you?’ But then, impelled by something outside her usually reserved nature, she was shocked to hear herself adding provocatively, ‘Or do you?’

It was a game she had been playing with him; she knew that now—in hindsight. Now that she had the benefit of maturity on her side. But she had wanted him, so badly, even while she’d known that a relationship with a man like Seth Mason was strictly taboo.

She cringed now as she thought about her behaviour at that time. Even so, she couldn’t stop the memories from spilling over into every nook and cranny of her consciousness, no matter how much she wanted to hold them at bay.

‘Exactly what do you want from me, Grace?’

She remembered those words like they’d been spoken yesterday as, helmet removed, he’d come round to the rear of the bike and helped recover the last of her bags.

She took it from him with a hooked finger, laughing, but nervously this time. ‘Who says I want anything from you?’

He studied her long and hard, those penetrating grey eyes so disquieting that she was the first one to break eye-contact. Distinctly she remembered now how vividly blue the sky had been behind his gleaming ebony head, and how the colours of the busy Lizzies in the borders along her grandparents’ drive had dazzled her eyes almost painfully with their brilliance as she averted her gaze from his unsettling regard.

‘You know where to find me,’ he drawled, turning away from her with almost marked indifference, so that she felt deflated as she moved along the drive.

The starting up of his bike was an explosion of sound that ripped through the air and which brought her round to see only the back of his arrogant figure as he shot off like an avenging angel down the long, steep hill. The roar of his engine seemed to stamp his personality on every brick and balcony of the quiet, prestigious neighbourhood, and seemed to linger long after he had gone.

She didn’t go down to the boatyard again. She couldn’t bring herself to be so totally brazen as to let him think she was actually chasing him, even though it was torture for her not to make some feeble excuse to her grandparents and sneak down into town to see him.

In fact it was completely by accident when she met him again. With her grandparents visiting friends farther afield for a couple of days, she was out walking alone, exploring the more secluded coves along the coast.

Climbing over a jutting promontory of rocks, she clambered down onto the shingle of a small deserted beach some way from the town. Deserted, except for Seth Mason.

On the opposite side of the beach, wearing a white T-shirt and cut-off jeans, he was crouching down, his back turned to her, doing something to the lowered sail of a small wooden dinghy.

Grace’s first instinct was to turn and head quickly and quietly back in the direction she had come from, but in her haste she slipped, and it was the crunch of her sandals on the shingle as she fought for her balance that succeeded in giving her away.

He looked round, getting to his feet, while she could only stand there taking in his muscular torso beneath the straining fabric of his T-shirt and the latent strength of his powerful, hair-covered limbs.

‘Are you going to join me?’ he called across to her, sounding unsurprised to see her there, as if he had been expecting her. ‘Or are you just a vision designed to lure unsuspecting sailors into the sea?’

She laughed then, moving towards him, her awkwardness easing. ‘Like Lorelei?’

‘Yes. Like Lorelei.’ He was watching her approach with studied appreciation. ‘Have you been sent here simply to bring about my destruction?’

She laughed again, but more self-consciously this time, because his masculine gaze was moving disconcertingly over the soft gold of her shoulders above her strapless red top, travelling all the way down to her long golden legs exposed by what she suddenly considered were far-too-short white shorts. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Didn’t she have a song so sweet it could make any man lose his course?’

She wondered if he was applying that analogy to her, and knew a small thrill in guessing that he probably was.

‘And do you have one, Seth Mason?’

He turned back to the dinghy perched on its trailer, and started to hoist the sail, checking something in the rigging. With a hand shielding her eyes from the sun, Grace watched the breeze tugging at the small orange triangle.

‘Do I have a what?’

Turning her attention to the bunching muscles in those powerful arms, she said, ‘A course.’

Solid and purposeful, his work taking all of his attention, he didn’t say anything until he’d drawn the small sail down again.

‘Why,’ he enquired suddenly, turning back to her, ‘does everything you say sound like a challenge?’

She remembered being puzzled by his remark. ‘Does it?’

‘And why do you answer every question with a question?’

‘Do I?’ she’d exclaimed, and then realised what she’d said and burst out laughing.

As he laughed with her it seemed to change his whole personality from one of dark, brooding excitement to one of devastating charm.

Caught in the snare of his masculinity, she could only gaze up at his tanned and rugged features; at the amusement in those sharp, discerning eyes; at those strong, white teeth and that wide, oh, so sexy mouth. Madly she wondered how that mouth would feel covering, pressing down on, plundering hers.

‘Do you do anything else but mess about with boats?’ Her voice cracked as she asked it. In her heady state she wondered if he might have guessed at the way she was feeling and wondered, mortified, if he might take her question as another kind of come-on, because where he was concerned she couldn’t seem to help herself.

‘That’s about the size of it.’ His tone reverted to that familiarly curt and non-communicative way he had of answering her, like he was challenging her to criticise all he did—the person he was.

She walked round to the other side of the dinghy. ‘Is this one yours?’

A hard satisfaction lit his face at that. ‘She’s not worth much.’ Lovingly he ran a hand over the boat’s smooth contours, a long, tanned hand that had Grace speculating at how it might caress a woman’s body. ‘But she delivers what she promises.’

She sent him an oblique glance. ‘And what’s that?’ she quizzed, wondering instantly why she had asked it.

Heavy-lidded eyes fringed by thick, black eyelashes swept over her scantily clad body, and there was a sensual curve to the hard, masculine mouth as he uttered in a deeply caressing tone, ‘Just pure pleasure.’

And he wasn’t just talking about sailing his boat! There was a sexual tension between them that screamed for release, unacknowledged but as tangible as the hard shingle beneath her feet and the sun that played across her face and bare shoulders.

To break the dangerous spell that threatened to lead her into a situation she didn’t know how to handle, she searched desperately for something to say. Remembering his reference to the sea-nymph, earlier and deciding that there was much more to him than she could possibly guess at, without thinking she found herself suddenly babbling, ‘Where did you study the romantic writers?’

‘I didn’t.’ He started pushing the boat towards the water’s edge. ‘Not everyone’s lucky enough to go to university.’ She wondered if that remark was a dig at her, and her family’s wealth and position, but she let it go. ‘I have a widowed mother.’ Foster mother, as it had turned out. ‘And foster siblings to support.’ The boat was down in the water then, released from its support, bobbing on the gentle waves. ‘I pick things up.’

Nothing would escape him, Grace decided, before he said, dismissing the subject, ‘Right. She’s ready.’ He was holding the rope that was still attached to the trailer. ‘Do you like the water?’ he threw back over his shoulder. ‘Or would it be another first for you if I took you out for a spin around the bay?’

‘Are you asking me?’ Her heart had started to beat like crazy.

‘Is that a yes?’

She nodded, too excited because he’d asked her to say anything else. But quickly, as he leaped into the boat, she slipped off her sandals and started wading in.

‘You’re right, this is a first. I’ve never been in a dinghy before,’ she gabbled, too conscious of the callused warmth of the hand he extended to help her, although she couldn’t avoid adding with a provocative little smile as she was climbing in, ‘My grandparents have a yacht.’

Suddenly she was being yanked down so forcefully beside him that she gave a little scream as the boat rocked precariously, and she had to make a grab for the soft fabric of his T-shirt to steady herself.

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ he drawled.

Caught for a moment in the circle of his arms, aware of the deep contours of his chest and the heavy thunder of his heart beneath, she thought that he was going to kiss her as he dipped his head.

Instead, with his lashes coming down to hide any emotion in those steel-grey eyes, he said, ‘Take the rudder while I get the sail up,’ before moving away from her, leaving her fiercely and inexplicably disappointed.

It was an unforgettable afternoon. They sailed until the sun began to dip towards the sea while they seemed to talk about nothing and everything. She learned about his background—how he had never known his father and how he had been given up by his mother when he was three years old; about the orphanages he’d lived in and the foster homes. He had been with the family he was living with now, he told her, since he was fifteen. Now they were his responsibility, he stated with a surprising degree of pride. Just as they had made him theirs in the beginning.

He reminded her of how she had asked him earlier if he had a course, and he told her of his interest in architecture and his intention one day to build a new house for his foster mother. Marina-side, he said. With a view of boats from every balcony.

She laughed at that and said, ‘All yours, of course!’

He didn’t share her laughter, lost as he was in his personal fantasy. ‘I think I’ll put it there,’ he speculated, pointing to the piece of derelict industrial wasteland where the tall chimneys of a disused power-station created a blot on the landscape.

‘There?’ She frowned, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘I don’t think she’d thank you for that!’ She laughed again.

‘And what about you? Do you have a dream, Grace?’ His tone was slightly off-hand as though he didn’t think too much of her making fun of his dreams. ‘Or do you have so much that there’s nothing left worth striving for?’

‘No. Of course not!’ she stated indignantly. ‘I intend to settle down. Marry.’

‘What—some ex-public-school type that Daddy’s vetted who’ll give you two-point-five children and a houseful of business associates to entertain?’

She didn’t tell him that her father didn’t figure in her life, that he’d given up his paternal duties after she’d caused her mother’s death simply by being born. Those things were too private—too personal—to share with a total stranger, however handsome or amazingly sexy he might be.

Instead, guessing that it was mere envy that made him speak so derisively of her future, she asked, ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

‘And that’s all you intend to do?’

‘No,’ she argued, wondering why he made it sound so mundane, unromantic, as she watched him lowering the sail. ‘There’s the company. I’m earmarked to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps one day.’

‘Ah, yes, the company. And that’s it—cut and dried? With no deviating from the pre-arranged course, no surprises, no dreams of your own?’

‘Dreams are for people who crave things they haven’t a hope of ever attaining,’ she stated, feeling a little piqued. ‘We inhabit different worlds. In mine the future’s carved out for us, and that’s the way I like it.’

‘Suit yourself,’ he said dismissively, giving all his attention then to securing a rope around a mooring buoy, while Grace had been glad to let the subject drop.

A little later, when he was leaning back relaxing for a few minutes with his face to the sun, she took a small sketch-pad from the big silver beach-bag she’d brought out with her that morning and drew a cormorant sitting on a rock drying its outstretched wings in the early-evening sun.

‘You’re good. You’re very good,’ Seth praised over her shoulder, making her clasp the drawing to her, warmed by his compliment, but suddenly terribly self-conscious at her efforts.

‘You’re too talented to be embarrassed about it. Let me see,’ he insisted, but in reaching for her pad his fingers accidentally brushed the soft outer swell of her breast beneath her top, and it was that which had put the spark to the powder keg waiting to blow.

‘Would you care for a swim?’ His voice was suddenly thickened by desire, the grey eyes holding hers communicating a message that was as sensual as the feelings that were raging through her.

‘I—I don’t have any swimwear,’ she responded, excitement coiling in her stomach.

His mouth compressed wryly. ‘Neither do I.’

She looked away from him, suddenly nervous as she’d laid down her sketch pad. ‘OK. But turn around.’

He laughed, but did as she requested, while she made short work of stepping out of her shorts and pulling her red bandeau-top over her head.

Without looking at him, she stepped nimbly out of the boat and plunged into the sea, gasping from the unexpected coldness of the water.

Coming up for air some way from the dinghy, she heard the deep plunge of Seth’s body breaking the surface of the water just behind her.

They were moored near a small cove with a beckoning crescent of soft golden sand. Above and around it rose the sheer rugged face of the cliffs, making the small beach inaccessible to anyone without a boat.

Scrambling ashore first, Grace stood there on the wet sand in nothing but her flesh-coloured string, wondering how she could feel so free, so uninhibited. What she hadn’t reckoned on was the impact of Seth’s masculinity as he emerged from the water, hair plastered to his head, rivulets cascading over his hair-coarsened chest and powerful limbs; he was like some marauding sea-god, bronze from head to toe and unashamedly potent in his glorious nakedness.

None of the men Grace knew would have dared to walk naked like this, and she could only stand there and let her eyes feast on the sheer perfection of his body.

She should have crossed her arms over her own nakedness, turned away, but it didn’t even occur to her—and anyway, she couldn’t have torn her eyes away from him even if she’d wanted to.

Instead, raising her arms, she slipped her hands under the wet sheet of her hair, lifted it up and let her head tip back, revelling in the proud glory of her femininity.

She knew how she would look to him with her body at full stretch, the opposite to everything he was. Her long legs were silky and golden, her flat stomach smooth between the gently curving bowl of her hips and her breasts high and full, their sensitive tips hardening into tight buds from the excitement of all that she was inviting.

He came up to her and she lifted her head, her blue eyes beneath her long, wet lashes slumberous with desire, a desire such as she had never known before.

He didn’t say a word and Grace gasped from the wet warmth of the arm that was suddenly circling her midriff, pulling her against him. The damp matt of his chest hair was a delight against her swollen nipples; he was already erect, and she’d felt the thrusting strength of his manhood against her abdomen.

His breath was warm against her face as his other hand shaped its oval structure; his fingers, first tender, then turning into a hard demand as they capped the back of her head, tilting her mouth upward to accept the burning invasion of his.

His hands moved over her with such possessive mastery that she became like a wild thing in his arms, her pleasure heightening out of control, as he slid down her body to take first one and then the other of her heavy, throbbing breasts into his mouth.

There was no need for words. She scarcely knew him, but she didn’t need to know any more. From that first instant when their eyes had met in that boatyard, she had known instinctively that he was destined to be the master of her body. And when he peeled off her wet string and laid her down on the sand, positioning himself above her, she knew that every glance, every word and every measured sentence that had passed between them since they met had all been a prelude to this moment—the moment when he pushed through the last boundary and the taboo that separated them to claim the surprisingly painless gift of her virginity.

It had all been her own fault, Grace thought now as she went through into her rather bijou kitchen to fix herself some supper, berating herself, as she had done so many times over the years, for the way she had encouraged him. But as she filled her kettle, reached into the fridge and took out a carton of milk, some cheese and margarine, then hunted around for her tin of crackers, she knew that she hadn’t had it in her power to stop it happening.

Her lower abdomen tightened almost painfully as she recalled how tender a lover Seth Mason had been even then, as a very young man—which led her to the reluctant speculation of just how experienced he would be now, until she realised what she was doing.

Did she care? He might be married, for all she knew. And, even if he were, what was it to her? Now? After all these years?

Finding the crackers, she started to spread margarine over one of the small discs with such vehemence that it split in several places, sending a shower of brittle crumbs across the worktop.

A mild little curse escaped her as she went to grab a piece of kitchen roll and dampen it under the tap.

What she had felt for Seth Mason had been crazy and totally irrational, a teenager’s crush on someone who merely excited her because she knew her family wouldn’t approve. Forbidden fruit—wasn’t that what they called it? Her brows knitted in painful reverie as she began mopping up crumbs from the work top.

In spite of that, though, she had made a date with him for the following evening, arranging to meet on the beach where his boat was kept, because her grandparents were back by then and she had strictly forbidden him to pick her up from the house.

But she had forgotten the dinner party that she had been expected to attend with her grandparents that evening, which she hadn’t been able to get out of, and she’d had no way of contacting Seth without anyone finding out. She’d forgotten to get his mobile-phone number, and she hadn’t been able to ring him at the boatyard as she’d learned that the owner—his boss—and her grandfather were old friends. So she had broken their date without a word—no message of regret, no apology. Which would have been rude enough, she thought, straightening up and dropping the soiled kitchen-paper into the bin, without that final blow to his ego.

The following day she had seen him again when she’d gone down to town with her grandfather and Fiona, the daughter of a neighbour just a couple of years older than Grace who had elected to come with them.

Having left her grandfather at the newsagent’s, Grace was walking along the high Street with Fiona when she suddenly looked up and saw Seth coming out of a shop.

Seth saw her too, and started to close the few yards between them, but then he held back, waiting for her to make the first move. She noticed the burning question in his eyes: where were you last night? No one with half an eye could have mistaken his smouldering desire for her that he made no attempt to hide.

A flame leaped in her from the memory of their mutual passion, of his hard hands on her body and the thrusting power of his maleness as he had driven her to a mind-blowing orgasm. But panic leaped with it, along with shame and fear of anyone finding out that she’d been associating with him and telling her grandfather. Fiona Petherington was a terrible gossip, as well as the biggest of snobs. ‘Look at the way that boy’s looking at you!’ she’d remarked witheringly. ‘Who is he? Do you know him?’