Damaged Goods (A Dangerous Passion, part one) Read online

  §

  You don’t have to like the people you clear up for.

  Holly kept reminding herself of this, as she cleaned the bedroom and bathroom, clearing up the evidence of what had evidently been a night of drunken passion. She found fresh bedding in a cupboard off the lobby, the sheets still in their plush packing.

  Just one of my tarts. Good riddance to her.

  She’d dealt with some pretty unpleasant people before. Friday night pulling pints in The Bull, was always a good yardstick, and Nathan Blunt was right up there with the stupidest drunken cricketers at turning out time. Just one of my tarts, indeed...

  The old bedding all went into a sack marked with the name of a local linen service for cleaning, and the new sheets went on, crisp and perfectly smooth.

  The bedroom was actually quite girly, with the canopied bed and pastel colors. This reinforced Holly’s belief that the whole place had been furnished by someone who didn’t know who would be living here, given a brief by someone who didn’t really care.

  She lined up everything on the dresser and bedside tables, got the curtains perfectly aligned, straightened the plush stool where it was tucked away under the dresser. This OCD need for order was what she did when she was cross, when she was bottling something up.

  You don’t have to like the people you clean for.

  It was like a mantra, going round and round in her head now, as if repetition might make her actually believe it.

  §

  “I’m done now.” She did her best to force brightness into her tone.

  At first she thought he hadn’t heard her, then he looked up and slid the earphones back. His first reaction was that bark, the instant look of suspicion, of hostility, and then it was as if he forced himself to put his friendly face on.

  That first response sparked something in Holly, though, and before she could stop herself, she said, “And good riddance to me, eh?”

  His face clouded and he stood, and there was a long, awkward pause as they stood across the study from each other.

  “Not good riddance at all,” he said, his tone surprisingly soft. Then he spoilt it by adding, “You’re not one of my little tarts, after all, are you?”

  So why did she have to get so angry on behalf of someone who, as far as she knew, was a little tart?

  “That’s no way to talk about people,” she said.

  “No?” he said. How had he got so close, so that now he was standing almost toe to toe with her, fixing her with those chilly gray eyes? “You know her, do you? You can speak on her behalf?”

  Holly looked away. There was something about the intensity of that look, the way it triggered a response she didn’t like, an adrenalin rush, a fighting response, all anger and frustration mixed up together.

  “It’s just... just not nice. That’s all.”

  He reached out, put a finger under her chin, his touch cold and dry, and tilted her head up to face him.

  He was smiling. Was he laughing at her? His mouth turned up more on one side than the other when he smiled.

  “I...”

  She pulled her head away and backed through the doorway.

  “I have to go.”

  All the way home her heart was pounding and there was a fire in the pit of her belly and her head was a swirling rush of thoughts that she could barely grasp.

  She walked fast, her head dipped down, oblivious to the gold and copper of the beech trees, the thin blue of the autumn sky, the crunch of leaves on the ground.

  How had that happened? That thing. That playground thing where antagonism turns to something else? Where your body’s reaction takes you completely by surprise.

  That touch, the pressure of his finger under her chin. The look in his eyes as he tipped her head up, as if all the barriers had suddenly fallen away. Briefly. So briefly.

  All the way home she went over it in her head. Her response to that touch; the electricity in the air; the sudden intensity.

  But how old was he? Almost old enough to be her father, for starters. Mid to late thirties. Since when had she had a thing for older men?

  Even if you could put his age aside... his personality, for God’s sake!

  He was arrogant, hostile, angry. He was rude and dismissive. He was a cold shell of a man who seemed to delight in being unpleasant to people.

  Yes, she would admit to liking a man who could take control from time to time. She had no interest in weaklings. And yes, men her age... men in their early twenties rarely had the maturity, the presence, that she liked in a man.

  But her reaction in that moment hadn’t been the true her. It was just an artifact of the adrenalin rush, an anger thing, mistaken for desire. A different kind of passion.

  It shouldn’t have disturbed her nearly as much as it had, and finally she forced herself to slow, to enjoy the light of the setting sun and the way it turned the Cotswold stone of the village’s buildings a vibrant, honeyed gold.

  Finally, finally, her racing heart slowed and she was able to breathe.

  It was nothing. Nothing at all.

  Just a stupid little thing.

  §

  She’d forgotten Ruby was coming for dinner that evening. Ruby was a year younger than Holly, still in her teens. She’d moved out when she was sixteen, not long after their mother had died. She’d gone to live with friends in Cheltenham, and Holly had never let on to their father that Ruby was living in a squat with junkies and anarchists. Their father doted on Ruby. The wild child who’d fled because she couldn’t bear all the doom and gloom had always been the apple of his eye.

  Holly was in the kitchen when Ruby pulled up in the back yard in her little Mini. She’d certainly gone up in the world, in a very short space of time. New car, designer clothes, shoes with needle-thin heels that had her towering over Holly as the two hugged.

  “Hey, baby,” said Holly.

  “Hey, sis’. How’s college?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Holly. She was in her second year of a four-year Business and Finance degree, always juggling to fit her study in around the various part-time jobs she had taken on. “How’s things with you?”

  “Good, good.” Ruby worked at a country house spa, and made no secret of the fact that she’d risen from receptionist to assistant manager by sleeping with the owner. “How is he?”

  Holly shrugged. “Same old, same old,” she said. Their father. He’d be sitting in the living room, watching Antiques Roadshow or doing the Times crossword. Three years ago he’d lost everything, and ever since then he’d been a broken man.

  “And you?”

  It was funny. This Ruby had changed so much in the last year or so. From torn jeans and purple hair to this immaculately-turned out young woman – and she was still only nineteen, for goodness sake. She’d gone out there and lived; she’d done that old clichéd thing of finding herself.

  And what had Holly achieved in that time? Muddling through a degree, cooking and cleaning for their father, going out to work where she served people with a smile plastered over her face and then went to another job to clean up after them.

  “I’m good,” she said, suppressing a big sigh.

  “Yeah?” said Ruby, clearly not believing her. “And how about Tommy Lefevre?”

  Tommy. Holly’s childhood friend who’d become something more while they were at school for a time, but when Mum was ill, well, Holly had needed to prioritize. “Tommy’s fine,” she said. As far as she knew. She saw him around the village every now and again and they chatted. They were still friends, just not as close as they’d been.

  “Come on,” Holly said, decisively. “Let’s go inside. He’ll know you’re here. He has a sixth sense for you, you know that.”

  §

  They sat around the small kitchen table eating cottage pie, the conversation stilted and mostly revolving around Ruby’s work and the bad feelings among some of her colleagues about her rapid rise.

  “I was up at the Hall today,” Holly said. “Cleaning job.”<
br />
  “Ooh... hasn’t that just been bought by that movie star? Oh, what’s his name again?”

  “No,” said Holly, shaking her head. “He’s no film star. Just some bad-tempered, misogynistic Yorkshire man, living there with his dog.”

  “I heard it was some kind of industrialist,” said their father. Holly didn’t think he really talked to anyone apart from his two daughters, but clearly he did. She needed to get him out of the house more.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Mr Nathan Blunt, of BI Incorporated.”

  “Blunt... Blunt,” said their father. “Wasn’t that...? There were Blunts who used to come to the store, way back. Got to know them a bit. Wonder if it’s them?”

  “Nathan Blunt,” said Ruby. “He has big parties, doesn’t he? One of the girls was talking about it the other day.”

  “That’s the one,” said Holly. “You should have seen it this afternoon. There was a whole team of people in to clear up the mess.”

  “You know why he’s like that, of course?” asked Ruby.

  “Like what?”

  “Shuts himself away, then has big parties and throws his money around like it’s going out of fashion.”

  Holly shrugged, reluctant to show too much interest.

  Ruby glanced at their father, then went on. “He’s a widower,” she said. “Some time last year, I think it was. Big car crash. They’d been to a party, some big gala do, and she was driving. Flipped the car head over heels. He ended up lying in a field, his back broken, but she was still in the car. Sandy was telling me about it only the other week after she’d been to his party and Googled him. After the crash he just gave up on everything...”

  Another glance at their father, before she continued. “He used to be a bright young thing, but then he started just shutting himself away. He used to be a philanthropist. That’s where they’d been that night: a big charity bash, a fundraiser.”

  They fell quiet, then, and Holly wondered what was in her father’s head, whether he’d even made the connection between the story of Nathan Blunt and himself. He didn’t seem too put out: maybe he’d blanked it all, like he blanked so much about the world that he no longer liked.

  And Blunt. Nathan Blunt.

  Ruby’s story explained a lot. The anger, never far from the surface. The way he lashed out and mistreated people. The fact that he’d bought himself a country residence where he could shut himself away from the world.

  Holly felt guilty for leaping to judgment. Maybe he didn’t deserve her condemnation, but rather her sympathy.

  “He seems very angry with the world,” she said softly.

  “Oh yes,” said Ruby. “That’s what Sandy said, too. He drinks, she says. And he has these wild parties where he chases anything in a skirt. Just uses women and then chucks them away. Doesn’t want anything to do with them afterwards. He may have been a lovely bloke once, but not any more. You should watch him, sis’, if you’re working up there at the Hall. He’s not the kind of man you’d want to be messing with.”

  Holly looked down at her plate. She’d eaten barely half of her dinner.

  Later, as they said their goodbyes in the back yard, Ruby hugged her sister hard, and then, still holding onto her, said, “I meant it, sis’. I saw that look in your eye. Your Tommy Lefevre look. This guy may be some mysterious, rich playboy type, but I’ve not heard a good thing about him.”

  Holly shrugged. Did Ruby really think she would be interested in a man just because he was a rich playboy? That was much more a Ruby thing than Holly.

  “Don’t worry,” she said now. “He’s a rude, sexist pig and that really doesn’t work for me. You take care now, you hear?”

  §

  Kath called the next morning.

  “Hey Holly. How was it up at the Hall yesterday? All okay?”

  “You might have warned me he’s a rude, sexist pig,” said Holly.

  “Yes, but then you wouldn’t have gone and you’d have blamed me for putting you off the chance to earn a little money, wouldn’t you? So, anyway, he’s asked for you again. Wants you to do a couple of hours Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Think you can fit that in?”

  Holly’s first thought was that she would have to juggle the hours to fit around college and working at The Bull. Her second was a rush of memories: of Blunt’s brusque manner, and the way he had referred to that girl as just one of his ‘tarts’; of the way he always responded with an anger he only sometimes managed to suppress; of the touch of his finger on her chin, the look in his eyes, the response she had felt to that touch.

  “I...”

  “That’s a ‘yes’?”

  “It’s an ‘I don’t know’.”

  “You don’t have to like the people you clean up for.”

  You don’t, but it helps you get through.

  §

  Tuesday night she dreamed of him, and that only served to confuse matters even more.

  It wasn’t him at first, Blunt. It was Tommy Lefevre, as he had been around the time they split up: his hair, bleached by the summer sun, was just a bit longer than he wore it now, long enough to take on a bit of curl; his features still had a touch of puppy fat, and the stubble on his jaw still had that tendency to grow thin and soft rather than a real man’s stubble.

  He was laughing.

  They were down by the bridge that crossed the brook. There was a way down there, through the nettles, and local kids used to go there to smoke and make out and drink Diamond White from cans.

  But now... now it was just the two of them and he was laughing, and his whole face lit up when he did that.

  She didn’t want him to laugh though. She was serious. Deadly serious.

  She took a handful of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss, using her lips and tongue to still that laughter.

  She’d lost her virginity to Tommy Lefevre right on this spot, this little clearing by the bridge hidden from view to anyone who wasn’t already halfway down through the nettles. Hard and urgent, standing on trembling legs, her back against the stonework of the bridge, his knees bent so that he could drive upwards and into her.

  But now... now she was the one in control, kissing him long and deep, feeling his whole body relax into the kiss, everything settling, slumping, apart from that one bit that was hard, pressing against her.

  Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.

  She woke, briefly, that kind of waking where you never quite fully emerge from sleep, where you heave and turn. Where you’re just conscious enough to realize how hot you are, how you have both hands pressed down there, between your legs, your knees drawn up, your thighs clamping those hands in place as you squeeze and press and knead. And you’re so wet and hot...

  ...and then you slip back into sleep, fall back into that dream.

  She was on her knees, pulling at his jeans, freeing the buttons and then pulling them down past his hips until they stopped around his thighs.

  His shorts were black, the fabric tenting around his erection. Wet with his pre-come and with her saliva as she closed her lips around the head of his cock through that stretched black fabric.

  He was big. His manhood was long and broad, far bigger than she remembered it being.

  Her hands hooked into the waistband of his shorts and started easing them down. So big!

  Now exposed, she took that large member in her mouth again, unimpeded by the fabric now. Pressing her lips hard together around the shaft, she pushed against him, feeling him fill her mouth, feeling him hit the back of her throat, and still she hadn’t taken him all in.

  When she looked up and made eye contact, it wasn’t with those boyish blue eyes of Tommy: the eyes were cool and gray, the face older, smooth and yet somehow craggy, angled.

  That eye contact!

  She swallowed, and the swollen head of his manhood entered her throat and then slid back into her mouth again and those eyes rolled heavenwards.

  She swallowed again, deliberately taking him into her throat and then feeling him slide out.


  She should be gagging. She knew she should, but somehow...

  She swallowed again, and kept swallowing and at last he entered her completely, her chin pressed hard against his balls, her forehead against his belly, her lips clamped tightly around the base of his shaft.

  His hands at the back of her head held her there, and suddenly his shaft was pulsing, throbbing, and there was an eruption in her throat, a gushing sensation, and she sucked and swallowed for all she was worth...

  ...and then she was awake again, her hands pressing hard, a wetness between her thighs, and her whole body was heaving with muscular spasms as orgasm took her. Wave after wave of tightening passed through her pussy and her belly, as she twisted from side to side and fought hard not to cry out loud.

  Finally, her breath still ragged, her body slumped, and she pulled her wet hands away. She’d never dreamed like that before, never woken in the heat of orgasm, soaking wet with her own juices...

  It was a long time before she settled again.

  §

  On Wednesday afternoon, she changed after college and went straight to the Hall.

  As she walked there, she reminded herself that this man was damaged, blinded by emotional scars. He had once been a good man, and the Nathan Blunt she saw now was the result of what he had endured since that awful accident.

  And when she couldn’t quite let that excuse his manner, she reminded herself, again, that you don’t have to like the people you clean up after.

  The dream complicated things.

  When she arrived she wasn’t quite sure what to do. Knock at that grand front door, or go round the back and in through the kitchen? Should she just go in, or announce herself somehow? He saved her from her dilemma by opening the front door as she approached.

  She stopped before him and he nodded in greeting. “I think we might have got off on the wrong footing the other day,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself. I haven’t really been myself for some time now.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “No worries. Shall I just go up and get started?”

  She kept her tone bright and fought hard to suppress memories of the night before, the dream.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes.