"Just because... just because of what happened," I said, over a cappuccino in a Caffe Nero just around the corner from my Covent Garden office. "Just because of that... well, don't you start thinking that anything has changed, okay, Charlie? Don't you start thinking there's an 'us' again, okay? That's over. That's thirteen months over, okay?"

Charlie. I'd lived with Charlie for close to twelve months, in the small Islington apartment I still called home a little over a year later. The last I'd seen of him as he was leaving was that nimble sidestep and duck as the ashtray hurtled past his ear and made a nasty hole in the inner wood panel of the door.

Charlie. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and, as I discovered when I b.u.mped into him again at Ethan's wedding, a man who still had the easy knack of being able to wrap me around his posh little English finger. A man who knew all the b.u.t.tons to press, all the vulnerabilities, all the weaknesses.

A man who could spend an hour seducing me and I'd only worked out that was what he was doing when he had me up against the church wall, his thigh hard between my legs, his hand crushing my left breast.

That was where the knickers came in, or rather where they left.

I'm a professional woman, a commissioning editor at a venerable British publishing imprint. I have a Yale education, I come from a respectable New York family that had moved out to a large Connecticut home when I was little. I had been brought up to be strong, and to know my place in the world.

So why was my self-esteem at such a low ebb that when I went to Ethan's wedding I wore suck-me-in Magic Knickers to keep everything slim and firm? I'd felt safe wearing them because I just knew n.o.body would ever get to see them.

So... that grinding, the leg between the thigh, the rush round to the back of the church where we were out of sight, the wandering hands, the pressing bodies... that thing that happens when two people realize just how desperate they are for rude, raw s.e.x...

That.

Well suck-me-in knickers that go up to at least your second rib simply aren't made for rude, raw s.e.x. Too much beige, for starters.

So I did what any resourceful girl with a good education would do. I pinned him to a gravestone, blindfolded him with his tie, then whipped off the Magic Knickers and hurled them as far away from us as I could manage.

And so it was that, some time later at the stately home where my brother's wedding reception was being held, I found myself running away from the heir to the family estate in high heels and no knickers (not that Will knew that I'd stopped his wandering hands before that point), feeling incredibly vulnerable and more than a little confused by the rush of events.

And now, a few days later, I found myself sitting in a Covent Garden coffee shop gently explaining to my ex-boyfriend that just because we'd got it on like wild animals at the weekend "...don't you start thinking that anything has changed, okay, Charlie? Don't you start thinking there's an 'us' again, okay? That's over. That's thirteen months over, okay?"

He sat there, both hands wrapped around his cup as if he was trying to warm them even though it was still August and in the mid-eighties outside, and he smiled that lazy smile of his, and I knew he wasn't listening. Or, more likely, he was listening and laughing because, arrogant schmuck that he was, he simply chose not to acknowledge what I was saying.

You know that kind of conversation? I'd had so many of those with Charlie during our year together. All those trivial exchanges where he'd got his way and ignored anything I might want or think... That's the kind of thing that almost always culminates in an ashtray flying through the air, or at least it does in my experience.

But Charlie wasn't always like that, or so I was learning. On the day of my brother's wedding I'd seen a whole new side to him. The man had hidden depths. He had, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, sensitivity. Now how had I missed that before?

Since our folks had died eighteen months ago, Ethan and I had been the only family we had. We may not have been that close in the last year, but we were still family.

When I'd gone to the wedding I'd wondered why Charlie was being so attentive and why I was so edgy. It had taken a touch from Charlie, him leaning closer and saying, "I understand." And then finally I got it: there was Ethan marrying into a family with a large network and ancient traditions if he had found a new family did that mean I risked losing all I had left of my own?

Charlie.

Irritating, smug and surprisingly sensitive Charlie.

"There is no 'us'," I said again, as he sat there cradling his coffee and outside in the street London rushed past in all its glorious variety.

So... at what stage does denial become futile? And at what stage would denial get laughed out of any court in the country?

There is no 'us'.

Charlie had a place in Aldgate now. Not quite the heart of the city, not quite the incredibly up-market whirl of docklands. Charlie was always neither one thing nor the other. He could be so obvious a lot of the time and yet, well, I'd never suspected him of sensitivity, for a start. Not so much hidden depths as not entirely surface. There's a difference, but I was only just starting to see it. Charlie was a man who tried, but didn't always succeed, to hide himself behind a glossy veneer, that posh English thing that could mask almost anything.

That posh English thing that he could use to wrap me round his little finger, even now.

Denial.

This doesn't mean anything, Trude. There is no 'us'. My inner voice, justifying the unjustifiable.

It was a modern apartment, some kind of industrial building that had been stripped out and completely refitted. A concierge to buzz us in to the airy lobby, an elevator already summoned and waiting.

That elevator, its mirrored walls all around us. Even the inside of the doors were mirrored. As I looked over Charlie's shoulder it was as if I was watching another couple. A man in a blue suit, pinning his lover's arms up above her head, her wrists enclosed in his strong hands. His hips twisting and pressing, his neat a.s.s just visible below his jacket, tightening with each thrust.

I could feel him, hard against me. His face smooth, just a fuzz of stubble, almost velvet-like, a coa.r.s.e velvet. His lips firm, moist, working along my jaw, then teeth, needle-like, sharp on the lobe of my ear. Those teeth, sc.r.a.ping down the side of my neck.

He had me pinned, trapped with his body, with his tight grip on my wrists. He was a rough lover, Charlie; that was another reason the sensitivity had surprised me. He liked to control. He liked to pin me, to hold me, to take out his pleasure, and there was something about that roughness, the surprising brutality of this well brought-up English man, that made me buckle, made me wet, made me want nothing but to feel him inside me once he'd got me like this.

Charlie.

There is no us, Charlie. There is no us.

Denial.

Denial is no good when you're on your knees, his hands in your hair, holding you still as he drives himself deep into your waiting mouth.

We'd tumbled out of that elevator, into a small lobby area with four apartments opening off it. He'd keyed his door, manhandled me inside, and even as the door was swinging shut behind us I found myself dropping to my knees, his hands buried in my hair.

I freed his belt, yanked at his pants, his shorts, and then his manhood was free, swinging from side to side, hard and wet. The swollen end pressed against my lips, then slipped away across my cheek. He adjusted position, holding me closer, and then his length was sliding into my waiting mouth, pushing so deep that I gagged.

There is no us, Charlie. This is something else. Something different. This isn't us, Charlie. This is need.

I wrapped my fingers around the base of his shaft, gripping him tightly, working him with my hand. With my other hand, I reached through between his legs, moving upwards, my fingers sliding along his crack, pressing and teasing.

Charlie. The man with the newly revealed sensitive side.

His thrusting was hard and fast, hurting my mouth. I squeezed shut around him, increasing the resistance, the friction and suddenly he slowed and I could feel a throbbing as he tried to stop things happening too fast. I squeezed with my hand, held him there, and slowly the pulsing eased.

Now it was my turn.

He liked it rough, but he also liked to receive as well as to give.

I stood, put my hand to his face, cupping his chin between forefinger and thumb.

"I'd just like to remind you," I told him, "that there is no us." And then I kissed him, my mouth salty from his juices, my hand still gripping his chin.

There was a door, and I pushed him back against it, manhandling him with my body.

The door swung open and there was a wide bed, windows from floor to high ceiling, the room lit only by the city spread out beyond the gla.s.s.

Charlie's legs buckled when the backs of his knees. .h.i.t the edge of the mattress. He tumbled backwards, and then I was on him, my black pencil skirt riding high. No Magic Knickers tonight, as I ground down against his hardness with the coa.r.s.e lace of my thong.

Denial, I know. How long can you deny something like this?

Does denial end at that point when you remove his neck-tie and thread it in a figure of eight around his wrists and then through the conveniently placed loops in the wrought iron headboard of that ma.s.sive bed?

This was still need. This was not an 'us' thing.

That day, that thing we did at Ethan's wedding... that had been the start of something and now I was simply seeing it through.

I pulled at my blouse, freeing the b.u.t.tons, discarding it on the floor.

I found the zipper at the back of my skirt, the catch. I climbed briefly away from him so I could shimmy out of it, kick my Karen Millen slingbacks away, and then I was on him again, pressing down on him, lost in the heat of the moment, the heat of the encounter... the heat.

He was looking at me. Those blue eyes. The smirk in the eyes more than in the mouth.

I didn't want him looking at me. I didn't want him to see the effect he had on me, even now, after all this time. I didn't want him to see the need.

I put a hand over his eyes, hiding them, blocking his view.

This made me lean forward, low over him.

He was still in his suit, the front pulled open, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s still in a low-cut black bra squashed against his chest, sliding against him.

A twitch, a slight movement of the muscles in his jaw, and I smothered his mouth with my own. I didn't want him to say anything, didn't want him to make a noise.

We kissed hard, our bodies still joined below the waist, grinding so hard against each other.

There was iron in that kiss, the metal tang of blood. His or mine, I didn't know, as our teeth, tongues and lips swirled and clashed.

Finally, I reached down and pulled my thong aside, found his length so hard! so wet! and guided him so that the swollen head was pressing against my opening, poised, pushing up into me.

I bore down and felt him enter me, filling me in a way I'd only ever been filled by Charlie. Driving, so slowly, home.

I closed my eyes, giving myself up to that sensation of being slowly, relentlessly filled. I pushed down until I was impaled on him and I could feel every twitch and throb of his shaft as I held still, savoring the sensations.

I started to move, almost nothing at first, a slight twist of the hips, a slight pressing against him.

A little more each time, a deeper swing of the hips, a harder grinding.

Harder and faster and suddenly it was a wild animal thing, my every sense focused on what was happening where our bodies joined.

You can lose yourself in s.e.x. Lose yourself to sensation. You can hit that point where nothing else exists, where there is just touch, stimulation of nerves, senses that only come alive during rare moments like this. The sense of being full. The sense of your nerves pulsing, an electric thing. A sense that is somewhere between pure pleasure and pain and utter, desperate need.

Senses that suddenly come together, explode deep inside you, surge through all that you are, over and over again until you are left gasping ragged breaths and then you remember who you are, where you are, and the sensations come back, different, a different kind of ache, and you look down and it's Charlie, and you can tell that something of that order has just happened for him, too, for both of you.

When all you can do is slump down onto him, struggling for air, waiting for your head to stop spinning and a small part of you hopes that it never will.

Charlie.

How did I find myself in that position with him, after all this time? How had I let this happen?

Charlie.

There was no 'us', no Charlie and me.

It was over, so G.o.d-d.a.m.ned over.

The rose.

I shouldn't have allowed myself to push that solitary rose out of my thoughts.

Will Bentinck-Stanley was a man who got what he wanted, and that rose was a clear indication of intent.

I should never have let myself dismiss it so easily. A man who can arrange for a rose to be delivered with a signed card faster than I could drive home from the wedding that night was not a man to dismiss so lightly.

He called the morning after that moment of madness with Charlie.

I was in my office at Ellison and Coles, working through the proof of an early reader I'd offered to help with, even though kids' books were way out of my normal field of literary fiction and memoirs. It was a fun change to my usual fare, and so I found myself that morning, staring at gaudy ill.u.s.trations of cartoon characters, my head full of images of the night before.

Concentrate, Trudy. Focus. That inner monologue thing again, something I'd done since I was a kid, constantly talking to myself, coaching myself, pushing myself.

I was a serious professional, a successful young woman. I wasn't going to allow myself to be distracted by memory-images of Charlie, tied to his bed, my hand covering his eyes as I ground against him.

No, not at all.

My desk phone rang and I jumped. I'd been miles away.

"Trudy Parsons, Editorial."

"Ah, good. h.e.l.lo, Trudy Parsons-Editorial."

A man's voice. It took me a moment to place it. Charlie... no, not Charlie, but a similar clear tone, very English, very refined.

"Will. Will Bentinck-Stanley"

Of course! And then it came back, the reception, running away from him on those ridiculously high Jimmy Choos, the long drive home to Islington, and that solitary rose on my doorstep. Will.

"I wanted to apologize. I was rude, presumptuous. There is no excuse for my behavior."

"And...?"

Silence. I'd thrown him.

"The apology?"

"Oh. Yes. The apology. Yes, of course."