Page 71 of 72 Hours

“Look, Niall....”

“I heard you,” he said, simply. The smile got softer. “I heard what you said. About what you want and what you need.”

“Shit.” I sighed. “That smile of yours. Does it for me every time.” We gazed at each other like grinning, inarticulate teenagers for a bit longer, but neither of us seemed to care. “So how soon can we have this place back to ourselves again? What I really need are some elephant-arse painkillers and some rest and some fucking privacy.”

“Never a truer word spoken,” he murmured. “But then you always did try to speak enough for us both.”

Guess he caught me unawares, because there were people moving through the room around us and I was half watching them. Whatever the reason, the next thing I knew was him leaning down and sliding a hand around my neck. Then, ignoring any of those other damned people, he kissed me full on the mouth.

It was nothing short of pure, perfect bliss. It was sweetness and sympathy and a rough, sexy sensuality, all rolled into one, deep kiss. I opened my lips and his tongue thrust hungrily inside me. I reached my good arm around his torso and pressed my mouth back against him, murmuring my pleasure. He tasted of tiredness and tension, but every damned flavour of Niall Sutherland was nectar to me. Maybe someone else around us grunted, maybe someone laughed nervously. Like I cared. This was all I wanted to do for at least the next three months of my life, and I wasn’t too sure whether I’d even bother to break off for food and some washing of my essentials.

And I heard the words, whispered into my mouth, for me alone. I love you.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

We broke at last, gasping for breath, shared saliva still glistening on our lips and our fingers curled into each other’s clothing, gripping us together like we didn’t want to be parted. And like I said—that was exactly what I wanted.

“Niall,” I panted, and watched the desire flicker in his dark pupils. “Whatever I said to that maniac earlier, I’d say that entitles you to have my arse any day of the week you care to choose.”

He smiled. He understood. And he wanted me too. Just as I was.

Judith cleared her throat in the background. “Time to go,” she said. Junk and Phil were still whooping away until she caught their eye. They sobered up pretty quickly.

I glanced at my watch. 05:30. Good God.

Now wouldn’t you agree that all I needed was for all those other guys to hurry up and get the fuck out of my trailer?

​​​Epilogue

Four weeks later

I rolled over slowly on the mattress and groaned. An elbow dug into my waist, and a stray fingernail scratched down my arm as I pulled it out from under the sleeping body beside me. Got to get a bigger bed. But then I thought the same thing every morning, these days. It was a large single, and let’s face it, the trailer didn’t really allow for king-size anything, but sharing it regularly with another person was far from comfortable.

But then, comfort can be way overrated, can’t it?

The sun was that special colour of too-early bright, making my brow crease with complaint. My body ached, and it felt like I was dragging myself up from a really late night and some unusual physical exercise that utilised muscles that had been sleeping for far too long. I was squashed up on one side of the bed so that my foot hung down over the edge, and the pins and needles were just starting to aggravate me. My right leg was bent awkwardly under my left knee, cramping the muscles of my thigh.

I grinned.

Like I’d want things to be any different.

I slipped my legs over the side of the bed and shook my foot back to life. I stretched my arms up, feeling a couple of joints pop satisfactorily. We’d spent the previous day out on the trailer park, working with Junk and Phil and the others to finish up the repairs on the damaged homes. Things were almost back to normal on the site now. The only thing left to be fixed was my set of steps. I wasn’t sure I’d bother to change them now. They were a kind of memorial to the end of a scary time.

Niall stirred behind me and breathed out a half-snore.

I grinned again. The unusual physical activity wasn’t just to do with working around the site, of course.

I flexed my shoulders, feeling his steady breathing tickling my back.

“You do that one more time,” came his voice, muffled into the pillow, “and you can forget about breakfast for another hour.”

I licked my lips. Then I flexed my shoulders again. Breakfast was another overrated thing.

His hand curled around my bare waist and tugged. Hard. I tumbled back on to the bed, and the sheet slid carelessly to the floor. He rolled me on to my side and spooned up behind me. I could feel the whole line of his bare body up against mine. We liked to sleep naked. Actually, we liked to do all sorts of things naked.

“You said I could have your arse any day of the week,” he growled. “This is another day starting, right?”

“I’m not keeping a diary.” His cock rubbed a thick, damp, early-morning warmth against my thighs. “But twice already since we came to bed last night sounds kind of self-indulgent.”