His capriciousness was wearing her down, she admitted after he had gone. It made her feel uncomfortable and on edge; wary and defensive. She had begun to feel so isolated and alone here since Mark had gone… isolated, alone… and… and vulnerable.
* * *
She shouldn’t have changed the décor of the bedroom in such a rush, Deborah acknowledged as she stripped off her suit and pulled on her leggings and a thick sweater. The blue which had looked so pretty on the paint chart seemed cold and hard on the walls, the bedlinen she had chosen too stark and plain. The room still smelled of paint and she woke up in the morning with her head aching.
Increasingly she felt reluctant to go home at night, dreading the moment when she would open the door and walk into the empty flat.
She went into the kitchen and made herself a meal which she then pushed around her plate for twenty minutes before admitting that she didn’t want it.
She was just scraping her food into the waste-bin when the doorbell rang. Automatically her stomach muscles locked even though logically she knew it wouldn’t be Mark.
It wasn’t… it was Ryan.
She stared at him blankly for several seconds until he stepped past her and into the flat.
‘Ah, good, you are in… I was just leaving the office when I remembered that I hadn’t gone through those files with you. So I nipped back and got them. You’re not doing anything, are you…?’
‘No… No, I’m not doing anything,’ Deborah agreed, too surprised at seeing him to say anything else.
‘Good, that gives us the whole evening… without any interruptions.’
Warning bells rang suddenly in her brain. But it was too late; he was already inside…
* * *
‘Good… You’ve got a nice quick mind, Deborah. I like that,’ Ryan told her approvingly as he closed the last file.
He leaned back against the settee, stretching luxuriously, his chest wall lifting against his shirt as he breathed deeply. He had discarded his jacket earlier, pulling off his tie as he did so. Beneath the fine cotton of his shirt Deborah could see the dark shadow of his body hair. He was a man who exulted in his own sexuality, she recognised; a man who was vain of his masculinity… proud of it… arrogant about it.
Watching him now, as he stretched, she realised that it wasn’t only the muscles of his chest that were being revealed for her admiration, and it was hard work for her not to fall into the trap of hurriedly averting her eyes; of being flustered into pretending she had not seen the way the fine wool of his trousers had momentarily pulled against his thighs and crotch.
Somehow that brief outlining of his body had been more erotic than if he had had a full erection, and she suspected that he knew it… and had deliberately manufactured it? His action irritated her.
‘How about some. coffee?’ he suggested. For a moment Deborah was tempted to refuse, but decided she was probably over-reacting.
Tonight, apart from that one provocative stretch, he had behaved towards her as the perfect male mentor, praising, explaining, encouraging without any hint of sexuality in his manner towards her, until now…
He had even managed to make her laugh as well, to forget, even if only for a handful of seconds, her own unhappiness as he’d related a couple of incidents from his own early career. But now she felt uneasy and edgy and would really have preferred him to leave.
She had just finished making the coffee when she heard him coming into the kitchen. She tensed automatically, turning round to face him, and then saw that he was laughing at her.
‘Why so nervous?’ he asked her. ‘Not because you’re alone with me, surely? Is it me you’re really afraid of, Deborah… or is it yourself? It must be hard… being on your own…’
He was moving close to her, coming between her and the kitchen door, and in the constricted space of the small room there was nowhere for her to go.
As she tried to edge past him he caught hold of her, swinging her towards him as he told her, ‘Don’t play coy with me… You know how much I want you… and what you do to me… don’t you…?’
He was holding her waist with one hand and her wrist with the other and now, as he spoke, he took hold of her hand and carried it down his body, watching her as he held it against his erection, moving his body against her palm, blatantly enjoying what he was doing, and equally blatantly impervious to her shock.
‘Mmm… doesn’t that feel good?’ he asked her as he leaned forward. ‘Very, very good,’ he murmured against her ear as he wedged her between the worktop and his body, the hand which had been on her waist travelling up towards her breast. ‘Bigger that what you’re used to, is it?’ he laughed. ‘Well, you just wait until you’ve got it inside you… I promise you, you’ll…’ His hand was on her breast, his thumb pushing aside the fabric of her sweater.
Anger galvanised Deborah into life. She pushed hard against his chest and pulled fiercely away from him. ‘Ryan, stop it!’ she demanded. ‘You’ve got it all wrong; I’m not interested.’
‘No…?’ He was still smiling at her.
‘No,’ she told him evenly, adding quietly, ‘I’ve always made it clear to you that I’m not in the market for an affair… for sex. You know that…’
Determinedly she held his gaze while he looked at her.