The Unexpected Mistress

“I am living. This is what I want. Love me. Love me!” she continued.

Her own body was so aroused that she wondered how it could still obey her. But then she was operating on instinct. And love.

Cassian tore his mouth away, his face strained. “But afterward—”

“Forget afterward. This is now,” she said fiercely.

The ecstasy in her body was nothing to the joy in her head, her heart and her soul. Cassian would possess her.

She’s his in the bedroom,

but he can’t buy her love….

The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality

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The Unexpected Mistress

Sara Wood

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

CASSIAN lounged contentedly on the roof of the large rented house which he shared in typically cosmopolitan style with two English strippers, a Buddhist from Florida, and a Moroccan herbalist. It was late, the sky a dense black scattered with stars, the air warm and still.

He and his literary agent were watching the snake charmers and acrobats performing in the Djemaa el Fna, Marrakesh’s extraordinary market square. His agent’s mouth had been almost permanently open since they’d emerged onto the roof ten minutes ago and Cassian’s dark eyes hadn’t stopped twinkling in gentle amusement.

‘A tad different from central London,’ his agent marvelled with great understatement, goggling at a group of Saharan nomads who were sweeping majestically through the square.

Men in rags, walking like kings, Cassian thought, reflecting on his belief that outer trappings often concealed the real person beneath.

‘Same world. Different values and desire. Life stripped to its bare necessities. The need to eat, to find shelter and love,’ he observed lazily.

Stirred but not staggered by the scene below, Cassian poured coffee from the silver beaked pot and offered his agent a sweet pastry. After living here for a year, it had all become gloriously familiar to him; the huge lanterns illuminating the storytellers, the contortionists, the clowns and boy dancers, and the crowd of Berbers mingling with an incongruous sprinkling of awestruck tourists.

By now his ears were attuned to the din. Drums, cymbals and western music drowned the hubbub of voices—and also, mercifully, the groans coming from the stall of the dentist who was enthusiastically wielding his pliers.

A willing slave to intense feelings and sensuality, Cassian delightedly inhaled the powerful aroma of humanity mingling with spices and the smell of cooking from the blazing braziers dotted around the square. And he wondered curiously where his passion for living life to the hilt would take him next.

‘So,’ said his agent in bright cocktail-speak, clearly uncomfortable with the culture shock he was experiencing. ‘Now you’ve finished the book, I suppose you and your son are both going home for a while?’

Cassian sipped his Turkish coffee, appreciating its richness. ‘Jai and I have no home,’ he said gravely.

And yet… As if to contradict that statement, an image had come unexpectedly into his mind. Instead of the black night and the ochre buildings, the blazing torches and the patchwork of bright colours below, he saw emerald-green hills laced with grey stone walls, ancient woodlands and small stone villages by a cool, rushing river. The Yorkshire Dales. And, specifically, Thrushton.

Astonished, he inhaled deeply as if he could feel the freshness of the champagne air in his lungs. For the first time in his life he felt a pang of longing for a place he’d once known and loved.

That startled him: he who’d spent his adult life passionately embracing a setting, teasing out its darker side to create one of his popular thrillers…and then leaving without regret for new sensations, new horizons.

‘Still, you must have a great sense of relief,’ his agent persisted. ‘You’ve got your freedom back, for a start. No more sitting hunched over a PC for hour after hour,’ he added jovially, attempting to penetrate the mysterious psyche of the man he knew only as Alan Black.

‘I never lose my freedom. If I ever felt it was threatened,’ Cassian replied quietly, ‘I’d stop writing at once.’

‘Hell, don’t do that! We’ve got another film producer offering us an option on your next book!’ panicked his agent, seeing twelve per cent of a fortune vanishing overnight.

But Cassian had stopped listening. His sharp ears had heard an unusual noise in the narrow alley beside the house. Moving to the low parapet, he could see a man there, curled up in a foetal position and moaning with pain. Someone was running into the darkness of the souk beyond. Without making a fuss, he politely excused himself and went to investigate.

It was a few minutes before he realised that the bruised and battered man he’d hauled into the house was Tony Morris, his old enemy from that very part of England which had sprung to mind so surprisingly at the mention of the word ‘home’.

As Tony blubbered and whimpered, and he silently washed the blood from the flabby face, Cassian found his longing for Yorkshire increasing quite alarmingly, the memories coming hot and fast and extraordinarily insistent.

Ruled by his instincts, he acknowledged that perhaps it was time to go back. Time to immerse himself in the landscape which had reached like loving arms into his unhappy soul and given him solace and peace of mind. Time also to face the devils that haunted his dreams.

And then Tony offered him the opportunity on a plate to do just that.

Laura slammed two mugs on the table and doled out the last of the coffee granules with a preoccupied expression. Coffee wasn’t the only thing she’d have to eliminate from her shopping list. Poverty was staring her in the face.

‘Sue,’ she said urgently to her life-long friend, ‘I’ve got to get a new job sharpish.’

Sue looked sympathetic. ‘Nothing yet, then?’

‘No. And I’ve been searching in Harrogate all this week!’

‘Wow!’ Sue exclaimed, suitably impressed.

Her friend was the only person who knew what a huge step that had been. It was a month now since she’d lost her job. Night after night, Laura had lain awake worrying about her child’s future, his poor health, his fragile state of mind. For Adam’s sake she must find work! She must! she’d thought with increasing panic.

No work was available in Thrushton where she lived, nor in the small community of Grassington nearby. None, either in nearby Skipton.

Up to now her entire existence had been confined to the rolling dales and picturesque stone villages surrounding the River Wharfe. Of the rest of Yorkshire, she knew nothing—let alone England—and the thought of travelling further to work had made her blanch with apprehension.

It was a stupid reaction, she knew, but not one of her making. If she had ever been born with self-assurance and confidence, then it had been crushed by her restrictive up-bringing. If she’d ever had ambition then that too had withered and died, thanks to the critical tongue of her adoptive father’s sister, Aunt Enid, and the scorn and cruelty of her father’s son Tony.

She knew she was submissive and reticent to a fault. But the needs of her own child meant a radical rethink of her life. It didn’t matter to her that she wore jumble sale clothes, but she had to earn good money and buy some decent gear for Adam—or he’d continue to be bullied unmercifully.

‘I’d do anything,’ she said fervently, ‘to ensure we can stay here. This house is my…my…’

‘Comfort blanket,’ supplied Sue with a grin. ‘Be honest. It is.’

Laura glared at her horribly perceptive friend and then let her tense mouth soften in recognition.

‘You’re right. But I need stability and familiarity in my life. Adam too. We’d both go to pieces anywhere else.’

‘I know, duck. I think you’ve got real grit to pluck up the courage to hunt for work in Harrogate.’ Raising a plump arm, Sue patted Laura’s long and elegant hand in admiration. ‘But…it’d be a bit of a nightmare journey without a car, wouldn’t it?’

Laura grimaced. ‘Two buses and a train and a long walk. What choice do I have, though? Nine-year-old boys can eat for England. Mind you, employers weren’t exactly falling over themselves to take me on. I’m fed up! I’ve exhausted every avenue,’ she complained crossly.

‘Must be something out there,’ Sue encouraged.

Laura rolled her eyes. ‘You bet there is. Lap dancing.’

Tension made her join in with Sue’s giggles but it was frustrated resentment that made her jump up and perform a few poses around an imaginary pole. She adopted an ‘I am available’ face and moved her body with sinuous grace. It seemed an easy way to earn money.

‘Crikey. I’d give you five quid!’ Sue said admiringly. ‘Madly erotic. But then you’ve got the most fab legs and body. That monumentally baggy shirt would have to go, though,’ she advised. ‘Wrong colour!’

Hastily smoothing her tousled hair, Laura subsided breathily into the chair and wriggled down her slim skirt—which she’d acquired like most of her clothes from the local jumble sale and which was almost a size too small.

She felt quite shaken by her erotic performance. She was a natural. Perhaps these things could be passed on genetically, she thought gloomily. After all, she was a bastard. That had been rammed into her enough times.

If only she knew what her real mother had been like! Then she wouldn’t have to wonder if her mother had been a tart, as Aunt Enid had claimed.

‘She was a slut!’ Enid—her father’s sister—had claimed. ‘Your mother slept with anyone and everyone. And married to your father, a respectable solicitor! Diana brought the name of Morris into disrepute.’

Laura would never know the truth. Would never know why her mother had been unfaithful. Would never know the identity of her real father. Nobody else knew that she wasn’t George Morris’s child.

As soon as Laura was born, her mother had run away and George had had no choice but to bring Laura up as his daughter. Which he’d resented. That explained his indifference and total lack of affection.

Misty-eyed, she looked around the comfortable, stone-flagged kitchen with its huge Aga and deep inglenook fireplace, wincing as she imagined the uproar when her mother’s infidelity had been discovered. And she understood how hard it must have been for her ‘father’ to accept his wife’s bastard.

Together with Aunt Enid, he had created a regime so narrow and unbending in an effort to keep her on the straight and narrow, that she had turned into a timid mouse. Albeit, she thought wryly, with unrivalled domestic skills and a posture a ramrod would be proud of. Pity she didn’t have other qualifications. She might be more employable.

‘You know, Sue,’ she confided, ‘sometimes I’ve felt as though I’m prostituting myself at interviews with all that smiling, all that looking eager and charming and willing…oh, I hate it all!’

Close to losing control, she thumped the table, and Sue jumped in surprise at Laura’s unusual vehemence.

‘Something’ll turn up,’ her friend soothed, not very convincingly. ‘I’ve got my dental appointment later, in Harrogate. I’ll get the local paper for you to look through the Jobs Vacant column.’

‘I’ll do anything decent and legal. I’m willing to learn, conscientious and hard-working…but the downside is that I’m plain and shy and my clothes are out of the Ark,’ Laura muttered. ‘I see all the other applicants glowing with confidence in their make-up and attractive outfits and I know they’re laughing at me behind their smooth, lily-white hands!’ Glaring, she held up her own. ‘Look at mine! They’re rough enough to snag concrete. I tell you, Sue, I’d be just as good as them, given a lick of lippy, a decent haircut and a ten-gallon drum of hand cream!’

‘I’ve never known you so forceful,’ Sue marvelled.

‘Well. It’s because I’m angry.’ Laura’s blue eyes flashed with rare inner fire. ‘When will the world recognise that appearances aren’t everything? That it’s what’s here—’ she banged her chest vigorously ‘—and here—’ her head had the same treatment ‘—that’s important! And what’s that removal van doing outside?’ she wondered, breaking off with a frown.

‘Getting lost,’ suggested Sue without interest. ‘Nobody round here’s moving that I know about.’

Built from local rock in the Middle Ages and enlarged in the Georgian period, Thrushton Hall stood at the far end of the twenty other stone houses that comprised the tiny village, a cheerful cottage garden separating the handsome manor house from the narrow lane outside—which led only to the river.

Laura leaned across the deep window embrasure and peered through the stone mullioned window. Clearly the van driver had missed a turning. And yet the name plaque on the low drystone wall seemed to satisfy the removal men who’d jumped from the cab, because they brought out a flask and sandwiches and proceeded to settle themselves on the wall to eat.

‘Well, unknown to us, we’ve become a designated picnic spot!’ Laura declared wryly. A battered four-wheel drive cruised up and drew to a halt behind the small van. ‘Here’s another picnicker!’ she called back to her friend. ‘Huh! We’ll have a coachload of tourists here in a minute and I’ll have to give them sun umbrellas, waste bins and loo facilities! Sue, come and…!’

But her words died in her throat. From the Range Rover emerged a tall, slim figure in black jeans and T-shirt. The breath left her lungs as if they’d been surgically deflated.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sue hurried up, then grabbed Laura’s arm with a gasp. ‘Blow me! Isn’t that…?’

Laura’s eyes had grown huge, her lashes dark against the unnatural pallor of her face.

‘Yes!’ she choked. ‘It’s Cassian!’

His appearance was so unexpected, so utterly bizarre, that she stood rooted to the ground in numb disbelief while he chatted to the men. And then he began to turn to the house. Like children caught doing something naughty, she and Sue hastily dodged back out of sight.

‘What a hunk he’s become!’ Sue declared. ‘He’s absolutely scrummy. But…why’s he here—of all places?!’

Laura couldn’t speak at all. Her mind was whirling, confused by the sight of the dark and sinister figure, whose sudden arrival seventeen years ago—and equally sudden disappearance five years later—had split her family apart.

She’d been ten at the time. Her father had begun to talk of nothing but a female client who’d come to his legal practice. One day he had announced that he was to marry the artist he’d been defending—and that his bride and her twelve-year-old son would be moving in. It was only then that Laura had realised George must have divorced her mother.

Tony, up till then the adored and spoilt only son, had been scarlet with fury at the news. For her, the arrival of Bathsheba and Cassian had been a revelation. Suddenly the house had burst into life with colour and laughter and music and Laura had quickly become familiar with the smell of turpentine mingling with that of the herbs and spices of exotic dishes.

But almost immediately there had been titanic rows over Cassian’s behaviour. Laura could see him now; a silent and glowering boy who couldn’t behave conventionally and who’d refused to fit into the community.

Vividly she recalled his defiance in the face of Aunt Enid’s rigid rules and the way he’d disappeared for days, seemingly existing without food or comfort.

And while she’d envied his independence and stubborn refusal to be anyone other than himself, she’d feared that very freedom he exemplified. He had been untameable, with an adventurous, bohemian past and he came from a greater world than she or her friends could ever know or understand.

And so they were strangers to one another. She had admired and watched him from afar, wishing she had his nerve, envying his daring.

As he had grown into a young man, the depth of his inner assurance had attracted the girls like bees to a honeypot. He was the local Bad Boy, and women longed to be noticed by him. One or two were. The chosen dazed and dazzled girls had huddled in Grassington square, discussing with awe the passion they’d unwittingly unleashed, while she’d listened in horror.

And, she was ashamed to say, with a secret excitement. Not that she’d want to be part of his life at all. He scared her though she didn’t know why, and she couldn’t fathom what made her heart race whenever she set eyes on him.

It was quickening now, bringing a flush to her cheeks. Squirming with dismay, she took a cautious peek out of the window. Cassian had resumed talking to the removal men, one foot on the low wall, an expressive hand gesticulating as he described something.

A strange exhilaration caught hold of her, something that coiled warm and throbbing in her veins. She stared, mesmerised. Cassian had charisma. He had always been different, magnetic, special.

Laura shot a glance at Sue. Even her sensible, down-to-earth friend was gazing open-mouthed at him, her expression nakedly admiring. And Sue was in a state of tension, her fingers gripping the curtain tightly.

Just as she was, Laura thought in surprise, releasing the creased curtain in embarrassment. She didn’t like being disturbed like this and she felt uncomfortable that her nerves were jiggling about all over the place.

Why should he make her pulses leap about so erratically? It didn’t make sense. Oh, he was good-looking enough in a foreign kind of way. Handsome, she supposed. But so were many other men who’d walked into the hotel where she’d worked: young, affluent and personable, and she’d been indifferent to them. And they to her, of course!

Bemused, she scrutinised him carefully in an effort to solve the mystery. And felt her fascination go up a notch or two. His hair was still dark—black and gleaming with the richness of a raven’s wing—but it was shorter now, the rebellious curls sleekly hugging the beautiful shape of his head.

His face… Well, those high cheekbones and carved jaw would make any woman’s heart beat faster coupled with the dark, intense eyes and sexily mobile mouth. She suppressed a small quiver in her breast.

‘What’s he doing?’ hissed Sue.

‘Don’t know.’

Her voice had been hoarse because his liquid and relaxed gestures had caused the muscles to ripple beneath his black T-shirt in a way that left her breathless.

‘He’s beautifully toned,’ Sue whispered, eyes agog. ‘Not over-developed—just perfect. Wow! And he used to be so skinny.’

No, Laura wanted to say. He was always strong and wiry. But she didn’t want to betray her ridiculously chaotic hormones by speaking. His shoulders and chest had certainly expanded. Cassian’s torso was now a devastatingly attractive triangle of powered muscle and sinew.

She watched him, her eyes wide and puzzled. He was more than just a perfect body. He…

She stiffened, suddenly realising what drew her to him. Cassian possessed what she—and many others—might search for all their lives. Something that money couldn’t buy. Total self-assurance.

She let out her tightly held breath. Cassian was sublimely at home in his own skin, whereas she had lived in the shadow of someone else’s rules and had moulded her behaviour to the will of others. She was someone else’s creation. He was his own.

And she longed to be like him.

Suddenly he laughed, and she felt a sharpness like a vice in her chest as she was almost bowled over by the sheer force of life which imbued his whole body—his brilliant white teeth flashing wickedly in the darkness of his face, the tilt of his chin, the warmth in those hot, dark eyes.

‘Now that’s what I call sex appeal!’ Sue whispered in awe. ‘Isn’t he like his mother? What was her name?’

Laura swallowed and found a husky voice emerging. ‘Bathsheba.’

‘Unusual. Suited her.’

‘Exotic,’ Laura agreed.

His mother had been the most beautiful and vibrant woman she’d ever known. Bathsheba had dark, wavy hair, eyes that flashed like scimitars when she was happy, and a face with the same classically chiselled bones as Cassian’s.

For the five years that Bathsheba had been her stepmother, neither she nor Cassian had taken much notice of her. But then Enid had kept them apart as much as possible.

And tragically, during the time that Bathsheba and her father were together, Laura had witnessed how two people could love one another but be incapable of living with one another. They were torn asunder by their differing views—particularly where the disciplining of Cassian was concerned.

‘Bathsheba and Cassian vanished overnight, I remember,’ Sue mused.

Laura nodded. ‘They walked out into the night, taking nothing with them! I was appalled. I wondered where they’d live, how they’d cope. George never recovered, you know.’

Her eyes softened. It seemed incredible that one person could have such an effect on another. Her stern, unbending father had died of a broken heart. She shivered, shrinking from the destructiveness of passion. In her experience, it had never done anyone any good.

‘Well, Cassian’s got over his feelings about Thrushton. He’s coming up the path!’ Sue marvelled. ‘Oh, why does something riveting like this have to happen, when I’m going on holiday tomorrow?!’

Laura couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘He’s hardly likely to stay long. He hated this house!’ she said, feeling an irrational sense of panic. ‘This can’t be a social call. He never noticed me, hardly knew I existed. And he just loathed Tony—’

She gasped. A key was rattling in the lock. There was a pause. Cassian must have realised that the kitchen door wasn’t locked at all. The latch was lifted. Laura couldn’t breathe. Why did he have a key?

The door creaked open a fraction. And then it was flung back with considerable force.

In an instant, the room seemed to be filled with him, with the blistering force of his anger. She cringed back instinctively by the half-concealing fall of the curtain, afraid of his potency and bewildered by the physical impact he had on her.

Cassian simmered with a volcanic rage as he scanned the kitchen with narrowed and glittering eyes. And all too soon, the full force of his incandescent fury became focussed directly at her.

CHAPTER TWO

THE smell of freshly baked bread had hit him immediately as he’d opened the door—even before it had swung fully open. Although his senses had enjoyed the aroma, he’d tensed every muscle in his body.

It meant one thing. A sitting tenant. And a legal minefield ahead.

Unsettled, he’d paused to collect himself. He had wanted to be alone here when he first arrived. To chase away the past. That was why he’d left Jai in Marrakesh, exploring the High Atlas mountains with one of their Berber friends.