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‘Action. Definitely action,’ Jess replied. They were stirring up plenty of atmosphere without adding fictional romance to the mix. They settled on an eighties classic and Jess crossed the room to pull the heavy curtains, where the low winter sun was flooding the room with light and reflecting off the tv screen.
‘It’s really coming down out there now.’
Rufus came to stand behind her, reaching past her shoulder to pull the curtain back a little. The sky was heavy and dark, and the footprints they had made earlier were rapidly disappearing under a layer of fresh snow.
There was a draught coming from around the old leaded windowpanes, but Rufus’s body was throwing out heat behind her. He smelled faintly of the fire and spices. All her Christmas fantasies rolled into one man.
She breathed in a big lungful of him, and couldn’t help the smile on her face, just from knowing he was close. She could lean back, just a fraction, and she would be t
ouching him. She could soak in that heat, feel her body relax into him. All as long as she could promise herself that she was going to be able to walk away afterwards.
She’d never had that problem before. But then, she’d never felt so drawn to someone either. The practicalities were going to take care of that. There were hundreds of miles between their lives. For now, at least. They had no reason to see one another again. It was two or three days. Four at most, surely. How hard could she fall for him in four days?
It had been forty-eight hours, and she’d managed to resist touching him, mostly. If things carried on moving at that pace... She wouldn’t have done half the things she wanted to by the time she left. No, if she was going to act out even a quarter of the fantasies she’d been nursing since she’d clapped eyes on him, she was going to have to start asking for the things she wanted. Rufus had told her that he had his own reasons for not wanting to get too close. But if he wanted a fling, they could make this work.
One way to find out.
She turned her head to tell him exactly what she was thinking, and there was his mouth. She didn’t want to talk any more. She glanced up and found his eyes on her, and then her eyes were on his mouth again, watching it move closer, until her eyelids fell closed and she gasped as she finally felt the brush of his lips against hers, just for a fraction of a second before he pulled away. She leaned in this time, reaching up on tiptoe to reach him, brushing their lips together a second time, feeling the curve of his mouth as he smiled. His fingers brushed against her jaw on their way to her hair, and she let his palm take the weight of her head. His other hand came up to thread into her hair, and she abandoned all control to him, feeling her face relax into a smile as his fingers wound through her hair and tilted her head. Taking his time to give her exactly what she wanted. When his mouth found hers again, it was hungrier, more demanding, and she opened her mouth to him, tasting him and taking what she wanted. Her neck and her toes were burning from trying to compensate for the difference in their height, and, just as she was starting to think that something was going to have to give, Rufus’s hands left her hair and wrapped around her waist, lifting and turning her and pinning her to him so the whole of the front of her body was plastered against him. And he was every bit as hard and as soft and as hot as she had been imagining.
The cool draught from the window behind her raised hairs on the back of her neck, and all the time she was burning to be closer to him.
Her fingers eased between their bodies, seeking out the buttons in the soft flannel of his shirt, and she let out a growl of disappointment when she eventually found her way underneath and discovered more cotton rather than the bare skin she was desperate for.
Rufus broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers, and all she could hear was the rapid gasps of their breath and the pounding of her blood in her ears.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that since the minute you dragged me in here the other day.’
She laughed quietly. ‘You were barely conscious.’
‘And I still wanted to kiss you. I must have it bad,’ he murmured.
She stiffened slightly. She’d got distracted and forgotten that she was meant to be doing this with boundaries in place. She probably should have got that out of the way before anyone started talking about having anything.
She tried to step away, before remembering that her toes had left the ground some time ago. She looked behind her, reaching for the windowsill, and Rufus let go as she hitched herself onto the cold tile.
‘We should maybe talk about what that was,’ she said, hoping that this wasn’t going to throw too much cold water over the situation. ‘And what it wasn’t.’
Rufus ran a hand through his hair. ‘Yeah. Well. I suppose we should.’
‘You already know I don’t do relationships. But if you wanted to do this, whatever this is, while we’re here, then I’d like that. But nothing more.’
‘I said I had it bad. Not that I was going to propose. You don’t need to freak out.’
‘I’m not freaking out. I just don’t think it’s fair to do this without us both having our cards on the table.’
‘Good. I’ve seen your cards. Can we get back to doing what we were doing before we started talking about them?’
She grinned. If this was ‘the talk’ over and done with and they could get back to ‘the kissing’, then she was very okay with that.
She wrapped her legs around his hips in response and let out a squeak as he lifted her from the windowsill and carried her over to the sofa. He dropped back onto the seat so she fell in his lap, knees straddling his hips. She could just lean in and take everything that she had been fantasising about for the last two days. But she wasn’t going to. Not yet. Not now she was allowed to just look. She’d been sneaking glances and trying not to let him see how she felt for too long, and the freedom to look at him without hiding how thirsty she was for him was almost as good as kissing him. At the very least, it was a delicious appetiser.
‘You’re not kissing me,’ Rufus said, raising his eyebrows a fraction as his hands moved lazily from her butt along her thighs, leaving a path of heat in their wake. ‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I like looking at you.’
‘I like you looking at me.’ She lifted a hand to his chest, undid another button or two, and slipped her hands inside. ‘I like you touching me.’
‘Good. I was planning on doing it some more.’
