Innocent in the Ivory Tower

When he didn’t answer she hurled the brush she had in her hand at him, aiming for his legs and missing entirely. Her brush bounced on the luxurious carpet. He merely gave her a quelling look as if to say, That’s the best you can do?

Not quite knowing what she was doing, but powered by the unfairness of it all, Maisy stripped off the simple shift she had been wearing all day, unhooked her plain cotton bra, slid off her knickers.

She kept her back to him. She had never undressed in front of him in all these weeks. There was something unfailingly intimate about it. Once she was in bed with him it was different. But the act of actually going about her daily robing and disrobing made her feel vulnerable, and she didn’t need more of that.

She emptied out the bag of frothy nothings she had bought to wear for him, picking up a sheer black bra and knickers that had cost more than her pretty dress. The knickers had little bows at the side to be tied, and the bra had a bow at the front. Neither was at all practical for wearing anywhere other than in a bedroom to seduce a man.

Which had been her intention when she’d purchased them. Right now she had no idea what her intention was.

She adjusted her breasts into the cups, making sure they were secure, then cast a look at Alexei over her shoulder. He had got no further with his buttons from the moment she’d started stripping.

‘Come and help me,’ she requested, sounding petulant.

He didn’t hesitate, which fired her confidence, and when he was only a hand-span away from her she turned around and untied the bow, so that the weight of her breasts tugged the bra cups apart.

‘Do me up,’ she instructed.

His hands moved obediently to slide under the fabric, his thumbs circling her nipples so that her head fell forward onto his chest. ‘That’s not helping me,’ she murmured.

His voice was gratifyingly a register lower. ‘You started this. I’ll finish it.’

A lick of lust moved over her and she grabbed hold of his waistband, her hands trembling so that she was woeful at disengaging the buttons. But it didn’t matter. He lifted her and she wrapped her bare legs around his hips. Ignoring the bed, he propelled her back against the wall, yanking the bows on her knickers free, testing her readiness with his fingers, lifting her again to slide his erection into her, his back and shoulders bunching up under her hands as he took the strain of doing it slowly and steadily and completely.

Maisy’s head flopped forward, her hair cloaking them both as he buried his face in her neck and began to thrust into her with little finesse but a great deal of energy. Maisy couldn’t stop the noises that were answering his rather effective grunts as she lost herself in the flashing pleasure.

That it could be like this startled her. That he could do this to her was almost overwhelming. No condom, she thought presently, straining against him. It must have hit him at the same time, because he seemed about to pull away from her, but his body continued to thunder forward and won out. Yet as he slid her down the wall and her feet touched carpet he pulled free and came over her bare stomach, holding himself with such an expression that Maisy never thought she had ever seen anything so beautiful. She felt like a goddess, all of her anger spent, all of him on her.

He was apologising to her, leaning against her, his head heavy, bent low, his breathing laboured, those big shoulders heaving. Maisy loved this. Loved the way she could do this to him. It made everything that had gone before somehow meaningless, as if this thing they shared overwhelmed the prosaic realities of the life they were living together.

Alexei was still in his shirt. He had stepped out of his boxers and trousers and Maisy had pushed the shirt back over his shoulders as they’d grappled. It hung suspended halfway down his back.

‘You didn’t come,’ he muttered in her ear.

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wound her arms around him, burrowing, needing that closeness.

‘You can wear what you want to dinner. We’ll eat here. Whatever you want.’

Maisy hung on to him, but she had gone very still and quiet inside. Her instincts were telling her something and she didn’t want to hear it right now. Easier just to take him at his word. But those words settled like stones in her belly.

This was her power over him. This was what she used for leverage. She had just manipulated a situation her way with sex. Those games he had tried to play with her early on and quickly given up she had now instigated as her own, however unconsciously.

But something about this relationship—probably to do with how it had started, the imbalances between them and Alexei’s history—was changing her. Changing them.

She didn’t want to be this woman. She didn’t want to be this way with Alexei. She wanted honest, and real, and for him to love her. The realisation flashed with neon clarity across her mind. She was in love with him.