Page 8 of Secret Paths

“You are ruining my kitchen.”

“I am improving it.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“You invited me in.”

Her answer is to kiss me harder.

My fingers find the buttons of her blouse. Hers find mine. A button pings against the counter and vanishes somewhere near the toaster.

“Was that yours or mine?” she asks.

“Does it matter?”

“Not remotely.”

I lift her onto the counter.

Her breath catches, and she grips my shoulders. I kiss her neck, then the soft place beneath her ear, and she tilts her head back with a quiet sound that makes me lose the last bit of sense I have left.

“Mandy.”

“Yes?”

“You are sure?”

She looks at me, cheeks flushed and eyes dark. She hooks one leg around my hips and pulls me closer.

“As sure as your dick. It’s clearly already a few steps ahead of us.”

The heel of her foot presses into the back of my thigh, anchoring me against her, and I can feel the heat of her through the layers that remain between us.

That is answer enough.

I kiss her again, slower this time, my tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opens for me with a sound that is not quite a moan but heading in that direction. My hands push the blouse from her shoulders, the silk sliding away with a whisper.

She reaches for my shirt with the same efficiency she brings to everything, tugging it free from my jeans, her palms flat against my stomach. The touch is cool against skin that is running considerably warmer than it should be.

I pull her closer, standing between her thighs, and the friction of fabric against the hardness in my jeans draws a hiss from between my teeth. She rolls her hips forward, deliberate, and I can feel her smile against my mouth at the sound I make.

"You are doing that on purpose," I say.

"I am doing everything on purpose." She leans back on one hand and gives me a cheeky wink.

I kiss the laugh off her mouth. My hand slides up her thigh, pushing the skirt higher, and the skin beneath my palm is impossibly soft. She shivers at the contact, her leg tightening around my hip, and I trace the edge of her underwear with my thumb. Lace. Of course it is lace. The woman wears silk blouses to surgery and fancy earrings to breakfast. The underwear was always going to match.

I hook my thumb under the lace and pull it aside. She is wet. Unmistakably, gloriously wet, and the sound she makes when my fingers find her is something I am going to think about for weeks. Her head drops forward against my shoulder, her breath hot, and her hips shift to meet my hand.

"Peter." My name in her mouth sounds different than it does across a pub table. Stripped of banter, stripped of irony. Just the syllables, fractured by breath.

I stroke her slowly, finding the rhythm as she moves against my hand. She is responsive in a way that makes me want to take my time, to learn every shift and hitch and catch, to file away each reaction like something worth keeping. My fingers slide lower, pressing into her, and her thighs clench around my hips as her back arches.

"More," she says, and the word is not a request.

I give her more. Two fingers now, curling upward, my thumb working in tight circles around her clit that make her grip the counter edge hard enough to whiten her knuckles. The earrings swing with every movement of her body, catching light, and I watch her face as the tension builds. The composure she wears like armour fractures piece by piece. Her mouth opens. Her eyes close. The tendons in her neck stand taut.

"Stop," she says, and I freeze. She opens her eyes, grabs my wrist, and pulls my hand away. "I want you inside me when I come."