‘I haven’t had a great time recently. I’ve hidden myself away, not gone out, not really even spoken to anyone, hoping I could avoid the glaring issues in my life that need sorting out but not quite having the confide
nce to do that, to move forward.’
‘Throwing yourself into work definitely helps,’ he said, moving his thumb and forefinger up the stem of his glass.
‘But this work, your work, has done more than that. You asked why I became an archivist. When I was younger, I loved the idea of being a journalist, but it always felt beyond me. I remember in my first week of uni I went down to the student paper. I put my face against the window of the office and I just stood there, looking in, too afraid to open the door. To be honest, that could be the story of my life.’
Elliot glanced at the bill and put a handful of roubles on the table.
‘Abby, believe me when I say you’re a bloody good journalist. The way you were with Gorshkov . . . direct, fearless. People with ten years’ experience, let alone ten minutes’, couldn’t charm the pants off him and get him to talk the way you did. I was proud of you.’
‘Fearless. I like that word.’
She noticed a frown line between his eyes.
‘Come back to the hotel with me.’
For a moment she almost missed what he had said.
His eyes challenged hers and her heart started beating faster, and before she knew it, she was nodding.
He stood up, and held out his hand for her to take. She felt her cheeks flame with shame and desire as they weaved through the tables out into the alley, where the crisp night air cooled her cheeks but not her longing.
Still holding her hand, he spun her round and kissed her, his moist, wine-scented lips pressing against hers and pushing them apart. His hands were holding her face now and she could hardly breathe as they stepped back against a wall.
‘Let’s hope the hotel isn’t too far from here,’ he said, nuzzling her ear lobe. ‘I’ve no idea what the Russian laws against indecency are like.’
There was time to think about what she was doing during the five-minute taxi ride to the hotel, but she didn’t let herself. She felt as if she were being carried along by the breeze, like a crisp autumn leaf turning and bobbing helplessly in a gust of wind.
They walked through the lobby holding hands, not saying anything, not even looking at each other. But as soon as the lift doors closed, they came together and kissed once more, softer but still impatient. Heady with the promise of what was to come.
There was a ‘ping’ and the doors opened on the fourth floor. Elliot put his arm around her shoulders as they walked and then ran to the door of her room, forcing the key card into the lock until they fell inside, not bothering to switch on the lights.
This time, she kissed him. She drank him in, enjoying the faint smell of his aftershave, the raw sensation of his tongue in her mouth. She couldn’t ever remember a kiss like this. Pure longing and heady desire.
She could feel his fingers unbuttoning her jeans, and the only way she could respond was to do the same with his. Pulling her T-shirt over her head, he unclipped her bra and rubbed his palm across her nipple.
‘Why didn’t we do this sooner?’ he whispered, rolling her knickers over her hips with one smooth movement.
She groaned as a fierce tingle seared between her legs, but the noise was lost in his mouth.
By the time they got to the bed, they were both naked. His body was as incredible as she had suspected. Sculpted torso, wide shoulders that narrowed to his hips. She lay back and he straddled her, scooping down to kiss her neck, her belly and her breasts. She tipped her head in pleasure, and he parted her thighs, licking his fingers and pushing them inside her, stroking her and then easing himself into her until she was dizzy with pleasure and all she could think about was how good he felt, how good he made her feel. She felt the sweet swell of orgasm gather in her belly, drawing it tight and making every nerve ending contract in desire. He quickened his pace, kissing her with hunger, with longing, and she grabbed his hair, pulling him closer, desperate to feel him deeper and deeper inside her. She gasped as her body seemed to lift higher and higher, exploding into one almighty release of pure, undiluted pleasure that made her cry out loud.
‘That was good,’ moaned Elliot, collapsing on top of her.
‘Sensational,’ she agreed, realising at that moment that nothing could ever be just sex.
Chapter Nineteen
Abby and Ginny had signed up for a course of ten Pilates lessons. It had sounded simple enough. Fifty-five minutes long, a smiling, benevolent-looking fifty-something teacher – or so she had seemed from her photograph on the website – and a bunch of testimonials confirming how it had improved people’s posture no end. But the hour-long class that Abby had just taken with her sister-in-law could only be described as torture – leg pulses that seemed easy enough after the first couple, but after sixty repetitions fired a burning sensation from thigh to toe.
Abby couldn’t help but think that it was some sort of punishment for what had happened in St Petersburg. Of course she had woken up feeling guilty in that gigantic four-poster bed in the Russian hotel. That was what happened when you opened your eyes and found yourself lying naked next to a man when you were still technically married to someone else.
When she thought back to it, as she had done almost every hour of the intervening four days, the idea of sleeping with Elliot Hall was as alien as the weird Cyrillic letters she’d seen on signs and posters all over St Petersburg. Girls like her – normal, ordinary, nice girls – just didn’t have nights like that with men they barely knew in exotic hotels a thousand miles away from home.
But guilt wasn’t the only emotion she had felt when she’d woken up in bed with Elliot. Abby didn’t really have anything to compare it with – she had only slept with two men other than Nick Gordon, both of those brief sexual liaisons occurring in her first year at university, boys rather than men – but her catalogue of experience was enough to tell her that the sex and the chemistry she had experienced with Elliot was pretty potent. So she hadn’t just felt guilty; she had felt exhilarated, she had felt sexy, she had felt like a completely different person, as if she had shed a dour and weathered old skin, and for that, the Scottish Presbyterian in her felt as if she needed to be punished. Pilates style.
‘I enjoyed that,’ smiled Ginny, rolling up her mat and pushing it into her Louis Vuitton tote.