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‘Says the woman who lives in one.’
She smiled and Nik felt something lodge behind his breastbone. This beautiful woman, who had blinked back tears when he’d told her about his parents, and dissolved in his arms the other night and now was preparing dinner for him, was smiling at him.
Those eyes stayed locked to his and he was suddenly only aware of the hard, heated consequences of being around her for the past twenty-four hours beating against the buttons on his jeans.
‘Careful.’ He laid a hand on hers where she was chopping up the apple. She looked down to see she’d almost nicked her finger. ‘You’re not paying attention,’ he chided, stroking her finger with his thumb.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said with a small smile, those hazel eyes flitting to his shyly but with a look of unvarnished sexual yearning before they swooped down to his mouth, giving her away so entirely all he could do was remove the knife from her hand and wait for her eyes to lift again and dance to his.
He hadn’t planned to make a move on her. He’d only known he owed her an explanation and an apology and the temptation of seeing her again had been too strong.
She had lowered her lashes and he was able to study her face, the boldness of her mouth, the soft, full curve of her cheeks. She was so damn lovely.
The heat from the pot had turned her cheeks pink and curled the fair tendrils escaping from her bun around her face. The fragrance of rosemary and basil, along with the olive oil from the pan, was on her fingertips and he was imagining those fingers touching his skin.
He wanted to lift her onto the bench, lay her down among her fresh ingredients and plunder her soft pink mouth until she was his.
‘So your daughter is at her sleepover?’ Nik heard himself ask as if they were having a general conversation.
Sybella nodded, not trusting her voice. She knew what the question meant. Telling him there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d get a phone call from Meg at around eleven and Fleur would want to come home would probably sink things where they stood.
She could surely keep these two halves of her life separate for an evening. He would be gone tomorrow and she would go back to keeping all those balls in the air.
But she didn’t want to think about tomorrow. Just thinking about everything she had on her plate would surely close down her inner sex goddess completely.
She turned away from him abruptly and went over to the hob. She fumbled with the gas as she turned off the flame under the saucepan and pan, telling herself she could have this once. With this gorgeous man. Nobody needed to know.
Besides, it wasn’t anyone’s business…
Her breath caught as he put a hand around her waist and turned her and then laid a finger against her cheek and eased away an errant curl.
She gazed into his heated eyes and said, ‘Maybe we can skip dinner.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE TOOK HIS HAND, sliding her fingers along his, and he enfolded her slighter grasp within his own and she led him out of the kitchen into the narrow hall and to the foot of the stairs.
Nik saw a moment’s hesitation in her, as she laid a foot on the first step and then stopped. Which was when he picked her up. She said something ridiculous about being too heavy but he’d already mounted the stairs and she was looking at him as if no man had acted like a Neanderthal around her, when he could imagine most of the men she met probably fantasised about doing this with her. But didn’t make it past that first step. Her hesitation, the way she looked at him, told him this was not a regular occurrence in her life.
Her bedroom door was directly opposite the stairs and open. The double bed didn’t look big enough but as he lowered her onto it he could see there was enough room for their purpose.
‘Let me do this,’ she said, before he could kiss her.
She was climbing up on her knees, tugging and pulling his T-shirt up over his head.
He was surprised by her willingness to take the initiative given her nervousness, but he wasn’t complaining as he finished the job for her and tossed the T-shirt over his shoulder.
‘I’m going to do this,’ she said and he could have told her he wasn’t going to argue.
She ran her fingers down his torso, exploring the definition of his muscles and tendons beneath the skin intricately converging to form that V below his taut abdomen, undoing a few of the buttons on his jeans.
