Read Online Night Watcher by Chris Longmuir - Free Book Online Page B

his feelings about her being the main provider, the payer of the bills, the breadwinner, whilst he churned all his profits back into his software business in a determination to be the biggest and the best. On paper he was probably a millionaire, but it was only figures, it was not the folding stuff. And so he took it out on her.
    ‘Sit down and finish your dinner,’ she said, modulating her voice so he would not detect the resentment, ‘then we can have a brandy in the lounge. I managed to find a rather nice one in that specialist wine shop that’s just opened.’
    The rest of the evening passed without any further unpleasantness, although now and again Nicole shivered as she imagined watching eyes in the darkness outside. She said nothing to Scott, not wanting him to make any more disparaging remarks about silly, nervous females.
    Later, in bed, when he reached for her she fleetingly thought of turning her back to him, but as usual her love for him, or lust, she was not sure which, flared through her body with a heat that made it pliable and moist. Opening her arms she pressed her body against his, twining her legs round him so he could not escape her. In this, at least, she could retain her power over him.
    ***
    The moon filtered its silvery glow through the bedroom window dusting everything with an eerie frosting. Nicole had wanted him to close the curtains, but Scott had refused. ‘You’re like a little cry-baby afraid of the dark,’ he had taunted and, although she had glared at him, she had not argued.
    Nicole had been acting strangely tonight. First there had been her anger – although he’d rather enjoyed that – and then her insistence that there was a prowler outside, he could almost smell her fear and it gave him a perverse pleasure to ridicule her. It was for the same reason he had made her sleep with the window open and the moon shining on their lovemaking. There had been a moment when he had thought she would refuse, but she did not. She never did.
    Scott liked the quiet of the night, the dark, and most of all the solitude. It was restful and allowed him to be the man he had always been. Recently he had felt swamped by Nicole who seemed to be an entirely different person to the girl he had married. He lay in the dark, and acknowledged just how tired he had become of her voice, her demands and her needs.
    A moonbeam bathed Nicole’s face, spreading upwards to silver the hair fanned over the pillow in frosted strands. She was almost beautiful in a sensuous kind of way, although it was a beauty that no longer appealed to him.
    A flash of anger stirred in his gut. It appealed to other men though, and he was sure she was making a fool of him again. If he found out who it was he would take care of him, in the same way he had taken care of the last one.
    Scott turned over, so he did not have to look at Nicole puffing the air out of her mouth in the beginnings of a snore, and wondered where the little girl he had married had gone. He had to admit though, that she was still fantastic in bed, even if her breasts were too full and her hips too curvy.
    His thoughts turned to his last visit to Manchester and to Emma. Now there was an attractive girl, small and with the body of an adolescent, for although she was twenty-one, she looked fourteen. His wife certainly could not compare with Emma, because Nicole’s body had developed a voluptuousness that did not appeal to him.
    He only stayed with Nicole because of her success and her ability to bring in a top salary. In some ways it made him feel less of a man, but although he was usually reluctant to admit this, it also made her indispensable. It was Nicole’s money that left him free to invest and expand his own business, but the day would come when he did not need her anymore and then it would be goodbye Nicole, and he could plan a future with Emma.
    Nicole muttered in her sleep, turning over and slinging her arm around his waist. It felt alien and uncomfortable,