Burning With Passion

It was purely an accident of birth that her ribcage was high enough to give her a tiny waist. It had the effect of making her hips and breasts look more voluptuous than they were. Caitlin knew David found the arrangement fascinating, provocative and exciting.

There was a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. No desire. His hands moved down his shirt, buttoning it at a steady pace. No hesitation. No wavering. No change of mind, or heart, or inclination. He had had his fulfilment for the moment. He had no need for more. She doubted he ever gave consideration to the possibility that some of her needs were different from his.

Caitlin was deeply wounded by his ability to love her and leave her. The urge to jolt him into reappraisal mode was overwhelming. She realigned her body across the bed for full visual impact, levered herself up on one elbow, rummaged the long, layered mane of her tawny hair with her other hand, and eyed him with smouldering challenge.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said quietly but firmly.

David rolled his eyes and threw a beseeching look towards the heavens. As his gaze was interrupted by the ceiling, there was no result to this supplicating action except to pique Caitlin somewhat more than she was already piqued.

He glanced pointedly at his watch and bent to pick up his underpants from the floor. ‘I have a busy schedule to keep, Caitlin. You know that. You entered it in the diary.’

She watched him draw on the black silk briefs. They formed a tantalising pouch for his virility and emphasised the powerful muscularity of his thighs. He looked sexy. He was sexy. But Caitlin wanted more than sexiness from him. She wanted to know how important she was in his life.

‘Please, David...couldn’t you give me today? I’ll make you happy.’

‘I am happy. I’m delirious with happiness. Thank you for already making me so happy.’

To Caitlin’s mind he didn’t look the least bit happy. His words sounded sarcastic. She was quite certain he wasn’t at all happy with the way things were developing between them.

‘I want you to stay with me.’

Caitlin knew she was on very dangerous grounds with that plea. She was also probably wrong to put such a demand on him, but her need was acute. In a desperate attempt to interest him she pulled a long tress of her hair forward to dangle between her breasts, reminding him of the foreplay he enjoyed.

He gave her a sharp, penetrating look. ‘Are you saying I didn’t satisfy you?’

She flushed, unable to deny that he had brought her to a tumultuous climax. He was well aware of it, too. But, in a far more important sense than the purely physical, he didn’t satisfy her. Caitlin wanted—needed—intimate contact with his innermost feelings.

‘I want us to spend more time together,’ she said, willing him to respond with some suggestion that would help make things better for her.

‘We spent the night together,’ he said drily. ‘How many nights do you want?’ He reached for his trousers.

Caitlin fought against a sense of worthlessness and failure. She knew that in David’s mind nights were associated with sex. He wasn’t getting the message at all.

‘I want to talk to you. About something serious.’

‘In another two hours we’ll be in the office together. Isn’t that serious enough?’

‘It’s not the same,’ she retorted, hurt by his lack of understanding, knowing she was losing but too frustrated by his intransigent attitude to back off from the disagreement.

‘You want more?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘I’d very much like, just for once, for our pleasure and togetherness to come before your business.’

The act of rebellion was complete. Words had been spoken which could never be retrieved. The Rubicon was crossed. Caitlin waited to see what stormy waves she had stirred. The cobalt-blue eyes took on a wary, calculating look.

David never mixed business with pleasure. It was one of his rules. In the office, he was the boss, she was his assistant and amanuensis, and he never did or said anything to lead anyone to suspect they were lovers. That was private. It was personal. It was never to be revealed.

The two separate phases of his existence were divorced from one another. Caitlin couldn’t help thinking the arrangement suited his convenience. She worked his hours. She was free when he was free. But business was business and nothing else was allowed to interfere with running that part of his life as he saw fit. Nothing!

‘It wouldn’t hurt to take one day off and spend it together,’ she pressed.

‘What would it achieve that we haven’t already achieved?’

‘It would be something spontaneous, unplanned.’ She made one last attempt to get through to him. ‘It would make me feel good.’

‘I left my schooldays behind me a long time ago, Caitlin.’

He was downgrading her to ‘petulant schoolgirl’ status.

‘You could cancel your appointments today. I’ll make the excuses for you,’ she pleaded.

‘No.’

‘You could come back to bed and hug and cuddle and kiss me.’

His look of disdain downgraded her from schoolgirl to child.

He tucked in his shirt, zipped up his trousers, then sat on the stool, stony-faced as he began to pull on his socks.

‘Those are yesterday’s socks,’ said Caitlin with an uncharacteristic spurt of bitterness. ‘You’ll have to go home and change.’

‘I know that,’ he replied with some asperity.

She had invited him to leave a fresh set of clothes in her apartment for the times he stayed overnight. It would have saved him the trouble of going home to change. He would not have to rise so early. He could stay and have breakfast with her.

His reply had been succinct and dismissive. He wouldn’t burden her with his dirty laundry.

He didn’t burden her with anything. His only concession to practicality about their relationship was to keep a toothbrush, a shaving kit and a comb in her bathroom. To Caitlin it smacked of a clinical detachment from getting involved in any way except the obvious. She didn’t like it.

It hurt.

It made her feel temporary.

She desperately wanted to feel special to him, more special than any woman he had been with before.

‘Why don’t you ever invite me to your home, David?’ she asked, driven to wring some sign from him that she meant more than a pleasurable convenience and receptacle.

‘It’s easier for you if we stay here. You can do as you please and be answerable to no one,’ he replied, not bothering to look up from tying the laces on his shoes.

Her convenience. That was a nice twist. In effect, she was kept excluded from his home life. Caitlin knew he lived at Lane Cove, not far from his business headquarters at Chatswood. Within the ambit of the northern suburbs of Sydney, it was no further away than her place at Wollstonecraft, but their intimacy was contained to her apartment.

Caitlin was chillingly conscious of how expedient this situation was if David chose to end their affair. No bothersome complications. He could simply walk out and never come back.

Her sense of insecurity with him deepened.