Page 30 of The Love Game

‘I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,’ Violet whispered.

She’d been so startled by his out-of-the-blue suggestion that she hadn’t said no, and he’d taken her nervous laugh as a yes, tugging her down the stairs after shoving a couple of clean towels under his arm.

They were on the beach now, in the midnight shadows of the pier, the sand cool beneath their feet.

‘Ah, give over,’ he said, dropping the towels down in the sand. ‘Aren’t you a little bit excited?’

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and grinned, his eyes and his teeth bright against the tan of his face in the darkness. The beach was deserted; Violet knew from watching it from her bedroom window that Swallow Beach was always silent in the small hours.

Was she a little bit excited, she asked herself? Or was she totally terrified? A heady mix of both, in truth.

Cal stepped out of his jeans and dropped his clothes in a heap on the sand. ‘You don’t have to if you’ve changed your mind,’ he said. ‘We can just go back, no harm done.’

She looked into his open expression and knew he meant it, but she couldn’t help but think he’d be a bit disappointed in her if she bottled it.

And more to the point, she’d be disappointed with herself.

This, this was what she’d come here for.

Excitement, adrenalin, self-discovery. Was she going to discover that she really was a church mouse, that scurrying on home to her parents and Simon was actually the right path for her in the end?

The thought was enough to make her pull her PJ top over her head, then gasp a little as the cool summer-evening sea air touched her skin.

She’d chosen her underwear with more care than strictly necessary for a slumber party; dove-grey and nude silk, pretty but not in your face. Cal held her gaze, not looking down.

‘How brave are you, mermaid girl?’ he whispered, and then he stepped closer and slid his hand into her hair, kissing her; the briefest heat, the suggestion of his tongue. And then he stepped away, laughing, turned his back, dropped his shorts and made a naked dash for the sea.

Violet made a snap decision. She threw her clothes off in a hot panic, not stopping to think about the fact that she was naked as she lowered her knickers to the pile of clothes next to Cal’s, and ran for the cover of the water as if her life depended on it.

There was no moon, just ink darkness and ice-cold water and then Cal’s hand in hers tugging her deeper in.

‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, her teeth chattering. She was up to waist-height already, her other arm clamped across her boobs.

‘It shelves really gradually,’ he said, facing her, covered from his hipbones down. Violet’s eyes were adjusted enough to the darkness to be able to see the lean lines of his body, the dark hairs on his chest tapering down. She wondered if he did this often and who with.

‘I grew up here, Violet,’ he said, as if he’d read her mind. ‘I’ve been in and out of this water since I was barely old enough to walk.’

She was glad of the cover of night. All of her senses were screaming, It’s cold, I’m naked, he’s sexy, I’m freezing, I’m turned on, I can’t believe we’re doing this.

‘I don’t think I want to go any deeper,’ she said, hanging back when he backed out a little more.

‘I won’t let anything happen to you,’ he said, and out of nowhere a flood of emotion filled her chest. He really shouldn’t say things like that if he didn’t want women to get overly attached to him.

He held his other hand out, and she had a choice to make – if she took his hand, she bared her breasts.

She’d come this far; she was naked in the sea with him, and the truth was that a part of her wanted him to look at her.

So, holding his gaze, she lowered her arm and put her hand in his.

It felt like more than a simple physical act – symbolic, as if she was stepping out of her own shadow, finally becoming the woman she wanted to be instead of the woman everyone had always expected her to be.

‘Ready to dip down?’ Cal whispered.

‘After three,’ she murmured.

He nodded. ‘One. Two. Three.’

They submersed themselves fully, and then broke back up through the surface, gasping.

‘It’s so cold,’ Violet said, letting go of Cal’s hands to wipe the seawater from her eyes. He did the same, rivulets of water coursing down his body.

‘You look like Poseidon,’ she said, hot on the inside even though her skin was ice-cold.

He traced his hands down from her shoulders to her fingertips. ‘My beautiful mermaid,’ he said, swallowing hard, his eyes on her face, her body, her breasts.

Violet couldn’t say for sure if she stepped nearer or if Cal pulled her closer, but his arm slipped around her waist and he lowered his head, kissing her sea-salt lips slowly, deliberately, his mouth a shock of hot on cold.

Pure lust slithered through Violet’s bones.

She wasn’t cold any more. She was burning up, and when Cal’s warm, sure hand covered her breast she wound her arms around his damp shoulders and pressed herself against him, loving the answering appreciative moan low in his throat.

She felt unearthly, as if they were outside of usual human rules, just the two of them and the sea.

Cal’s hand tracked the line of her spine, sweeping down over the fullness of her backside, and without conscious thought Violet let the buoyancy of the water lift her, catching her leg around his thigh until he held her against him.

He kissed her again, harder then, his chest rising and falling heavily under hers, his hands underneath her, cupping her.

‘Oh God,’ she said, breaking off their kiss to bury her face in his neck because he was exploring between her legs, tender fingers, kissing her hair, saying her name as she moved over him, wrapped herself around him.

She was his mermaid, and he was her man of the sea, strong, her rock to anchor herself to.

And she did; her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, knowing there was only one way this was going to go and wanting it to happen.

‘Violet,’ he said, his lips roving her hair, her eyelids, her jawline. She kissed his shoulders, tasting the salt on his skin, and then he lifted her high enough to kiss her breasts, his tongue a hot shock over her cold, hard nipples.

When he lowered her slowly down his body again, she clung closer still, her mouth on his ear.

‘Don’t stop now, Cal. Please don’t stop.’

It was enough. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand in her hair, the other banded around her hips as he lowered her onto him, taking the sound of her gasp into his mouth when his body locked inside hers, an intimate thrust of hard heat, a rush of delicious relief that it had happened.

‘Fuck.’ He shuddered, holding her down on him.

Seawater shimmered on his lashes when Violet opened her eyes and looked into his, and for a moment they held perfectly still, not even breathing.

If she could have pressed stop there and then, she would have, because there had never been a moment in her life when she’d felt more womanly or powerful or sensual.

But then she’d have needed to press go again, and then fast-forward, and then rewind and play again in slow motion, because she wanted Cal in all of those ways; fast and then slow, and then again and again.

She might have said those things, she couldn’t remember forming the words, but she heard his murmured, ragged replies, his hands all over her, the rhythm of his body moving steady and sure and then more urgent, his grip on her sexy and then fierce and almost protective when she started to shudder, her cries muffled against his shoulder.

He held her, watched her, kissed her hard as she came, and she kissed him back, wild, their roles reversed as his hips jerked and his dark eyes flooded with animal, primal release.

‘Jesus, Violet,’ he whispered, holding her weight in his arms, his body still inside hers. It was a moment of beauty, her head on his shoulder, their eyes closed, their bodies cooled by the seawater.

‘You’re part of Swallow Beach forever now,’ he said, his breath warm on her ear as he stroked her back.

She didn’t have any adequate words; what had happened between them in the sea had felt like magic; ethereal, spellbinding.

He carried her from the water to their clothes, setting her down and wrapping a towel around her shoulders.

They dressed, snatching looks at each other, and when she straightened, dressed again, he reached for her hand and pulled her closer.

‘No regrets?’ he said, his eyes searching her face as he finger-combed her hair.

She smiled, almost shy as she turned her face into his palm. ‘None. It was perfect.’ She saw his throat move as he swallowed. ‘How about you?’

He cupped the back of her neck and pressed a kiss against her forehead.

‘It was more than I expected it to be,’ he said. ‘You’re under my skin, mermaid girl.’

From his words, Violet couldn’t discern if that was a good or a bad thing; he sounded conflicted. She knew enough of him now to understand him a little.

‘Look, Cal. It was … well, it was unplanned, and it’s happened, and it was far too lovely to say it shouldn’t have happened.

But you’re not in over your head, and neither am I.

We’re neighbours, and we’re friends, and what just happened out there stays out there, in the sea, in some place that isn’t real. ’

It cost her to say those words. It cost her to detach emotion from the physical act, but she knew it was what he needed to hear.

She had her own fears and hang-ups, but he had his too and right now she was taking care of him the way he’d been taking care of her ever since she’d arrived at Swallow Beach.

He studied her face as she spoke, his fingers still in her damp hair.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, and then he lowered his head and kissed her, slow and sweet and full of the emotion that Violet had denied existed.

‘I didn’t bring you to the beach for this.

I didn’t plan to have sex out there, Violet, I promise, but your body and mine …

you and me … I don’t know what it is, what this is. I don’t want to lead you on.’

His words were a plea: Don’t fall for me, because I can’t fall for you.

So that hurt. ‘You’re not, Cal. You’re not leading me on.

You’ve told me you have a wife, and you’ve told me you might even still love her.

I’m not a child. I made the choice to have sex with you.

I even asked you to, out there in the sea.

You haven’t done anything wrong; we haven’t done anything wrong.

We’re consenting adults, and we had sex.

Please let’s not beat ourselves up or ignore each other for days after this, okay? ’

As she spoke, Violet’s mind wandered to her grandmother’s diary back in the Lido, to the secrets she’d kept and the lies she’d told. If there was one thing she was going to learn from Monica, it was that secrets and lies can tear you apart from the inside.

‘Let’s go home,’ she said, holding her hand out to him, in charge of the situation because he needed her to be.

He looked at her, and then he took her hand and kissed the back of it. ‘I’m glad you came here, mermaid girl.’

Violet smiled, even as her throat thickened with tears. ‘Me too.’

He slung his arm around her shoulders as they tracked up the beach, damp and tired, and they didn’t speak much as they let themselves quietly into the Lido and made their way up the stairs.

On the first landing, Cal snagged Violet’s hand and pressed her against the wall, kissing her in a deep, languorous way that made her sigh his name against his lips.

‘Come to bed with me,’ he said, resting his forehead against hers. ‘I don’t want to let you go tonight.’

‘Yes,’ she said, because there wasn’t a thought in her head or her body to say no.

Her hand moved over his skin beneath his T-shirt as she opened her mouth under his lips, taking his kiss in, his tongue over hers, intimate and personal.

She wanted him in a way she’d never wanted anyone, her heart and her body wanted him in a euphoric way that made her want to cry and laugh and come apart over and over.

They took the remaining two flights of stairs, her hand in his, her heart banging behind her ribcage.

It was only when they turned to take the final flight of stairs up to the top landing that they saw someone sitting on the top step.

Violet noticed them first and slowed, surprised, and then Cal stopped altogether, dropping her hand like a stone as the long-limbed stranger unfurled herself into a standing position. Even before anyone spoke, Violet knew.

‘Hey Cal,’ the woman said, all smokey eyes and bed-head blonde hair. ‘Long time no see.’

Vi looked at Cal, but he didn’t look back. His eyes were trained on the woman at the top of the stairs.

‘Ursula.’