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She thrust her tongue into his mouth, letting the hunger consume her, determined to turn the kiss into something carnal and predictable—instead of random and scary. He groaned, encouraging her. She laid her hand on his knee, stroked the hard thigh heading towards his groin. She needed to get this seduction back on track.
Not that it was a seduction, she reminded herself.
But he placed a hand over hers, halting her exploration, and ended the kiss before it could get properly filthy. ‘Hold that thought.’ He gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze, which didn’t do much to reassure her stuttering heartbeat, or quell the throb of arousal making her nipples pinch into hard peaks.
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re here.’ It was only then she noticed the cab had stopped in front of the thoroughfare that led onto Millennium Bridge. Known as the Blade of Light, the pedestrian bridge spanned the Thames in a sleek steel arch, connecting St Paul’s to Shakespeare’s Globe and the Tate Modern on the south side of the river.
She’d always loved this bridge, thinking its striking yet functional design encapsulated all the things that marked London as a thriving modern metropolis with a rich and vivid history.
She wasn’t loving it much at the moment, though. ‘Let’s tell the driver to take us to the nearest hotel. How’s that for straight talking?’
‘Nothing doing,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got plans for this evening that don’t involve jumping you.’ He lifted her hand, pressed a kiss into her palm before climbing out and holding the door open. ‘Yet.’
The cheeky wiggle of his eyebrows made her feel a little less foolish. But not much.
He handled the fare, then clasped her hand to lead her towards the bridge.
‘I hope your plans involve something better than sex,’ she grumbled. ‘Be
cause otherwise I’m going to be disappointed.’
He slung a hand round her waist, drew her against his side. ‘Nothing’s better than sex. Not the way we do it.’
‘If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working.’ She glared at him, the freshness of the autumn breeze between her legs not helping. Maybe leaving her knickers behind had been a tactical error. How on earth was she supposed to stop herself from giving him anything he wanted when she was on a knife-edge of arousal?
‘Suck it up, kid.’ He dropped an easy kiss on her lips, matching his steps to hers.
‘I’d rather suck you.’
‘Quit it.’ He gave a strained chuckle. ‘And stop pouting. Hasn’t anyone ever told you anticipation is nine-tenths of the fun?’
His large hand skimmed down to the slope of her bottom to emphasise the idiotic notion in a deliciously agonising caress that promised much and delivered not nearly enough.
‘Yeah, right.’ She groaned. ‘More like nine-tenths of the agony.’
Chapter Ten
#NewRule: Ignore all previous #NewRules cos the 1st rule of hot dating is: THERE R NO RULES. Only you + him (+ optional knickers)... #Whoknew?
‘Do you think the architect actually intended for it to look like a huge phosphorescent phallus at night? Or is that a lucky coincidence?’ Tally pressed a hand to her stomach to still the swoop of vertigo as she stared at the luminous green panels of the Gherkin and the fortress turrets of the Tower of London from their vantage point on the thirty-ninth floor of the Heron Tower.
Brent’s laughter stirred her hair as he wrapped his arms around her waist to draw her back against his chest. ‘I’m not sure I’d call it lucky.’
She laughed too, the sound equally strained as she allowed herself to settle into his embrace—grateful for the strong arms anchoring her to the spot and preventing her from floating off into London’s starry night sky.
The evening had been enchanting. Brent had thought of everything, escorting her first to an exhibition at the Tate Modern that had only opened last weekend and which she’d been trying to get tickets to for weeks. Then he’d whisked her off to the Shard for a three-course dinner at AquaShard, the restaurant halfway up Europe’s tallest building. The new British cuisine on the menu had been delicious, or it would have been if she’d been able to swallow more than a few bites. Finally they’d arrived at the cocktail bar in Samsushi in the Heron Tower a half an hour ago—supposedly to admire the view. But she’d spent most of the time admiring him—jolly green giant phallic symbols notwithstanding.
As pity dates went, she’d never had better. In fact, as any dates went, she’d never had better. If she’d felt good the night before, she felt cherished now. But she knew not to read too much into it. Brent had wanted to apologise and, as she’d discovered yesterday, he was a man with enough focus and concentration to ensure he always achieved his goals. Whether that involved giving the woman in his bed a mind-blowing orgasm or a woman he’d insulted the blind date of her life.
Luckily she wasn’t the sentimental sort, or he would have gotten more than he bargained for tonight, because she’d found herself enjoying his company. Maybe a tad too much.
With that in mind, she’d made sure to steer the conversation away from any more personal observations about his past—and neatly side-stepped all his probing questions about hers. Even that small insight into the failure of his marriage had shown her that Brent would be an easy man to fall for. She didn’t plan to make that mistake. Not again.
Unfortunately she hadn’t accounted for the fact that even small talk with someone like Brent could be dangerous. Who would have guessed they’d find so much to discuss outside of sex?
They’d argued, good-naturedly, about the difference between American football and the beautiful game (which Tally had categorically refused to call soccer), whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman (Brent, it turned out, didn’t have as lurid an imagination as she did when it came to convoluted conspiracy theories), and whether a mojito could claim to be a real drink (Brent’s imagination also being fairly conservative on the subject of cocktails—either that or he had something against mint). But best of all had been their lengthy debate on that all-important question for the ages: Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman? Brent, being a total guy and a tech geek to boot, had refused to acknowledge the magnificence of Henry Cavill’s chest as one of Superman’s prime assets and declared Batman the winner by virtue of his cool gadgets. Tally had eventually conceded defeat in the face of Brent’s in-depth knowledge of Batman’s arsenal of geeky hardware and his enthusiasm for arcane comic-book factoids.
