Gemini Heat Read Free Page A

pause. 'People call me "Dee".'
    It was true, she did get called 'Dee' - and Delia got it too, especially when people weren't quite sure which twin they were with.
    'And people call me "Jake", her companion replied, sliding his arm around her shoulders before she could stop him and turning her bodily towards the nearest exhibit. 'So, Dee, what you do think of this?'
    'This' was a frighteningly beautiful oil painting; the best thing she'd seen in the gallery and by far the most disturbing. Especially now, here, with this audacious Jake who was stroking the tender skin of her shoulder as if they were lovers and had been for years.
    Against the Parapet showed a masked woman, bent from the waist over a low, white plastered wall, and being taken from behind by a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man. His rumpled jeans indicated that he was unzipped in front, but otherwise the man was fully clothed. The woman, in contrast, was bared from the middle of her back to her ankles, her soft red dress bunched ruthlessly at her shoulders and her panties a crumpled blur and still draped around her feet. Her pale thighs and buttocks, where they could be seen behind her assailant, were criss-crossed with thin streaks of pink - implying that she'd been recently and cruelly beaten. She was handcuffed, and her thin wrists, crossed at the small of her back, seemed to command the eye more than any other part of the painting. It wasn't clear if she was being buggered or simply screwed. It didn't seem to matter.
    'Glorious, isn't it?' said Jake from behind Deana, his fingers drifting from her shoulder to the warm bare skin of her back. She felt the cuff of his silk shirt brush delicately against her, then his hand slide slowly around the curve of her rib cage to settle on her breast like a feather.
    Deana registered both his touch and the smoky arousal of his voice, but her attention was still claimed by the painting. The woman's face was barely sketched, but her attitude was not one of suffering. On the contrary, her willowy body was supremely sensuous and the marks on her smooth white skin were more like marks of pleasure than of pain. The man who was taking her was a cipher - a dark animal form, an accessory to the woman's enjoyment rather than a protagonist in his own right.
    And yet, somehow, the black shape seemed familiar. She didn't dare turn and look at him, but Deana could almost imagine that the long, dark marauder was Jake.
    The pressure of his fingers on her nipple dragged her rudely back from her imaginings. He'd taken the stiffly swollen stalk between his thumb and one finger and was swirling it slowly but determinedly. Deana could hardly believe what was happening. Or that she was letting it happen. Or, worse still, that she was responding to it purely on instinct, her hips slowly weaving as the pinching of her nipple transferred itself directly to her aching clitoris - the sensation remote but identical.
    'Does it arouse you?' Jake asked, his warm breath flowing across her neck as his free hand lifted her hair and his mouth settled lightly on her shoulder. She felt his teeth against her skin, very hard and deadly, then a single touch of his tongue. But just when she thought he was going to bite her, he let her hair fall back into place and reached around her to enclose her other breast.
    'Does it arouse you, Dee?' he repeated, gently kneading her, cupping the soft weight of her flesh, and holding both nipples in his fingers now. She'd no idea whether he meant the painting or the way he was holding her, and she didn't much care. She heard herself sigh 'yes' in the affirmative to either.
    'Good,' he whispered, and in a move of total vulgarity, he pressed the jut of his erection into the cotton-covered cleft of her buttocks.
    Deana knew she should try to break free, but instead her body swayed backwards to caress him, gripping at his hardness with the cheeks of her bottom, the gesture as gross as his had been. Under her thin dress she wore