House Rules Read Free Page A

and then the sound of the toilet flushing. Eventually she came back, looking refreshed but still tousled. She was still smiling as she bent to unlock his handcuffs. She laid them on the bedside table before laying herself on the bed next to him.
    Free now, Richard turned over and gathered her against him. She rested her head against his shoulder and kissed him again. They lay together, and gradually she drifted off to sleep. Her head rolled on to the pillow. Richard looked for a long time at the girl lying beside him. Her hair, dark against the pillow, shone softly in the glow from the bedside lamp. He stroked it idly, drowsily, before falling asleep himself with an odd sense of better things to come.
    When he woke in the morning, the other half of the bed was empty, but there was a heartening smell of fresh coffee and breakfast being cooked. He got up and followed the noises to their source. The girl was standing at the stove wearing an apron.
    ‘Cooking in the nude may be provocative, but there is a real danger of getting hot spatters on one’s tits. Or other vital parts,’ she added, with a glance at Richard’s cock. ‘But come and sit down while I finish our breakfast,’ she continued.
    Richard sat at the scrubbed pine table and admired the girl as she moved familiarly about the kitchen. She poured coffee for them both and presently set two omelettes on the table. Toast, butter and marmalade completed the setting. As she sat down opposite Richard, he voiced the thought that had been on his mindsince they had met. ‘Do you think it proper we should have breakfast without knowing one another’s names?’
    ‘Is it any less proper than what we did last night without knowing one another’s names?’ she retorted with a smile. ‘But perhaps you’re right. Breakfast is a different matter, in the cold light of the morning. I am Helena Witt.’
    ‘Richard Stanfield. Are you related to Katarina, of figure-skating fame?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I am not from Chemnitz, or Karl Marx Stadt, as it used to be known. I come from Neumunster, near Kiel. Where do you live?’
    ‘In England. Near Bacton, on the North Norfolk coast.’ He went on to explain that he lived in a large old house in the country, a house inherited from his aunt, who had had ambitions for a large family but less success in acquiring one. ‘I was her favourite nephew,’ he told her. ‘I used to spend my school holidays with her and my uncle, rattling around in the old place and in the woods nearby. On special days we would make an expedition to the seaside: places like Mundseley and Cromer. They – my aunt and uncle – loved the North Norfolk coast and detested Great Yarmouth, which they thought unspeakably vulgar, with all those amusements and gawking visitors.’ He found himself eager to tell her more about himself. She was easy to talk to, and he felt impelled to share his confidences and experiences with her. But he stopped himself from running on about himself with an effort and asked her about her past.
    ‘Later,’ she told him. ‘I would like to keep some secrets. It makes me more mysterious and desirable, I think. Don’t you agree?’
    ‘You may be right,’ Richard agreed. ‘I know you’re mysterious and desirable enough for me as you are.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Helena said, with another smile. ‘And thank you for saying nothing about my surprising you last night. It was bad manners, to say the least.’
    ‘Not at all. I was flattered I could help you come as you did. No other woman has ever fainted in my arms, so to speak.’
    ‘I was surprised myself,’ she said. ‘That has never happened to me before.’ She looked at him solemnly.
    ‘Well, in that case, maybe we should keep one another company. Maybe something like it will happen again.’ Once again Richard was surprised to hear himself speaking so openly about his feelings with a stranger. The English reputation for reserve was not normally undeserved in his case.
    Helena