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He folds his arms across his chest, his hip steadying himself against the wall, and nods. “Yeah, I'll have one.”
“I can make you coffee if you want?” I take an exaggerated look at my watch. “Although it isn't quite nine o'clock yet, I don't want to make you angry.”
Callum raises his eyebrows, silent for a moment. Finally, he steps towards me, his movements strong and intent, trapping me against the work surface, as he cages me in with his arms.
“Are you ever going to let me forget that?” he murmurs. “I just wanted to show you who was boss.” He presses his lips to my neck, and I jump at the coldness of his skin.
“You're freezing,” I protest. He laughs, pushing his hands beneath my shirt. Their iciness makes me squeal as I try to escape, but there's nowhere to run. “I'm not a bloody hot water bottle.”
He laughs. “Says the girl who spent most of last night with her feet between my thighs.”
“It's not my fault you're too miserly to have your heating on all night,” I retort, trying hard to ignore the way his hands are feathering up and down my sides. When my nipples harden, it has nothing to do with the cold.
“If you think this is cold, you should try living in Scotland.” He unbuttons my shirt as he talks. “Ice on the inside of the windows and snow drifts eight-feet high. This is Hawaii compared to that.”
“I've never been to Scotland.” My words catch as he reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. When he slides his hands inside the cups, his ice-cold fingers create a kind of pleasure-pain that makes me squeeze my eyes shut.
“We'll have to remedy that. We should fly up to Edinburgh for the weekend, I'll show you my old haunts.”
I can't understand how he’s so calm, so methodical, while I'm slowly being wound into a frenzy. He keeps the one-sided conversation going, telling me about the Royal Mile, about his apartment, the bars, the beautiful view from the Castle. He only quietens when he captures my nipple between his lips, sucking hard enough to make me arch my back.
The next minute we're running into his bedroom, burying ourselves beneath his white duvet, tearing each other's clothes off and throwing them on the floor. By the time he's inside me, all thoughts of ice and cold are forgotten, replaced by burning need and desire.
* * *
Later that night, we're sitting in front of the fireplace, eating pale fluffy omelettes and listening to his stereo. I take a sip from a large glass of red wine—decadent for a work night—and push my bare feet between his firm thighs.
“I told you,” he says, capturing my feet between his hands. “Have you got some kind of thigh fetish?”
I smile because it's a Callum-fetish I'm suffering from. “Once again, Scrooge McDuck, I refer you to your miserliness. If you cranked up the heating I wouldn't need your body warmth.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” he asks. His hands rub at my soles, the friction defrosting them. “Maybe I like having your feet close to my cock.”
“Who's the one with the foot fetish now?” I murmur. Then I move my feet, feathering them against the hard ridge beneath his pyjama pants.
Callum grabs my toes again, this time stopping me from touching him. “Hey, I wanted to prove to you that we can have a conversation without it ending in sex.”
I arch my eyebrows but don't struggle, repeating his words from a moment before. “Where would the fun be in that?”
We tease each other for the next hour, with our words as well as our touch. Then we climb back into bed—still unmade from our earlier, unplanned visit—and he holds me closely. The second night I slept here, the one after his confession, I'd tried to keep my distance so I wouldn't stir up his memories again. But he'd dragged me across the king-size bed and refused to let me go as we fell asleep.
Since then, I've draped myself around him every night, for the closeness as much as for the warmth. His nightmares, when he's had them, have been mercifully short and fast to dissipate.
“I meant what I said about taking you to Edinburgh,” he whispers, running a hand lazily through my hair. I prop my chin up on my hand, as my elbow presses into the mattress.
“Okay.” I can't hide my excitement. A dirty weekend with this gorgeous man in his home town? Hell yes.
“We could go next week, except there's that bloody party on Friday. Maybe we can travel on the Saturday morning after we get up.”
Though there's a glow inside when I realise he's taking my staying over for granted, it’s soon chased away by the thought of Caro Hawes’s party. “I haven't been invited,” I confess.
Callum frowns. “What?” he asks, his voice disbelieving.
“I haven't been invited, Caro hates me. I think it's because I wasn't born a duchess, or maybe my accent. I don't know, but she's had it in for me from the start.”
He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth. “That's sorted then, we'll travel up on the Friday night. I'll book our flights in the morning.”
“You're willing to miss out on the party of the year?” I ask him. “She won't be very pleased about that.”
