Under His Influence

“What made you like this? What happened to you?”

“Never mind.” His lips were under the flap of her earlobe. She felt unaccountably safe, even as she faced terrible danger and uncertainty. “I’ll move you into the house. I can say that I want you to be around for Anna, a bit of female company. I can spend more time in here then. But I don’t want to share a bed with Anna anymore. How can we organise that?”

“You’ll break her heart.”

“I don’t want her. I want you. And you want me.”

“I want Anna to be happy. And I hate you. Don’t think that wanting you has changed that, Stone.”

“I like your hatred for me. It gives you that extra fire I enjoy so much.”

John paused to show Mimi once more exactly how fully and inextricably he was now linked into her physical desires, kissing her until she had to grind her pelvis mindlessly against his. “You see,” he gloated. “Fire. Desire. Want. Need.”

“You are cruel.”

“I know. I can’t help it though. We’ll think of something to do with Anna. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt her. I need that child.”

Mimi was only half listening, locked inside her body, trapped by its treacherous current of lust for John Stone. She wanted nothing more than to wrap a leg around his hip and impale herself upon him. His touch was like every euphoria-inducing drug in the world magnified by thousands. She was already addicted.

God help me, she thought, and for a moment she couldn’t work out why John was laughing so long and so loud.

“He won’t. Nobody can help you now, Miranda.”

Chapter Nine

Liam had wanted to move his arm for a good half hour. It was both numb and painful, a state of affairs he had thought medically impossible until tonight. But if he moved it, he would dislodge Anna’s sleepy head, and he didn’t want to do that either. Poor girl was exhausted, it was plain to see. Growing a person inside your stomach must take it out of a girl.

All the same, it would be nice to be able to reach the remote control and switch over from Hallmark True Movies. He was missing the Grand Prix highlights. And where the hell was Mimi? By now he should have been happily ensconced between her thighs, giving John Stone’s guest bed a proper workout.

His eyelids began to slide downwards, tragic violin music building to a crescendo on the television and sending him into a half-world where grief and sexual frustration were somehow bound together, floating with him into a dream.

Footsteps. Somebody was coming. His head jolted back upright.

“Mimi,” he croaked, looking over towards the door.

Oh.

Shit.

Not Mimi.

John Stone strolled over, his face a mask of vengeful loathing, picked up the remote control and snapped the television off. Standing before it, he folded his arms and glowered at Liam, who hadn’t felt every nerve on alert like this since the Year Eight rugby team trials.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

“I-I was at your wedding,” Liam stammered. “Liam McGlynn. Friend of Anna’s.”

“Clearly.”

Liam sprang to his feet, dislodging Anna, who began to regain consciousness at a slow and bleary pace.

“No, fucking hell, no, you’ve got the wrong idea!”

“Oh have I?”

“John!” Anna’s eyes were open now and she tried to lever herself off the couch, ineffectually at first. “You’re home!”

The joyful wonder in her voice, made Liam stretch out his arms as if vindicated.