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They stripped in increments, pulling at each other’s clothing, marveling at each other’s skin, stealing each other’s breath. Tom was close to forgetting the fantasy because in Flick’s arms, he had all he needed, but she pulled away and walked naked out onto the balcony.
He trailed her to the edge of the room. The whole city could see them if it looked. Take photos, shoot film. Send it live. Make them social media porn stars with pixelated bits, and strategically placed black boxes and rough humiliation deep enough to derail a career, a life. They’d both seen it happen. The up-and-coming politician, the high-profile sportsman, the business leader, the ordinary citizen caught doing an unacceptable thing, dragged down by a tantalizing slip of information, a peep at them undressed and unbecoming. Undone. Reputation torn and tattered, able to be mended but never fully repaired.
That was the risk.
Flick stood against the half wall, arms along the railing. She was exposed in ambient city lights and bathed in enticing shadows and braver than he would ever be, and he didn’t care about the downside, only about having her, making her a part of him for as long as she would grant him the privilege.
“It’s a pretty night and we
should worship it,” she said, arm up to beckon him. “You have no idea how much I want this. Just looking at you. That extraordinary body. I can see the fear in you, know you want me anyway. Come get me.”
Blood thundered in his ears. He didn’t hear his own reply, but he felt the cooler night air on his skin as he stepped outside, and then the heat, the unbearably glorious silken heat of Flick’s skin as they came together. The sliding wetness of her mouth and the glistening sweetness of her core, and the way they fit, a miracle of form and fluid need that broke the logic of their badly matched physical selves and wrapped them safe and wild inside an impermeable atom of their own matter.
Flick’s first orgasm came as he took her from behind while she gripped the railing. Her second came beneath him on the sun lounge after he woke the heavens shouting her name, the roar of his voice part of the shock wave that took them both.
He carried her to bed and held her so she wouldn’t leave it. It was an act of utter futility. The real fantasy.
In the morning, she kissed his throat, delighted when his voice was more than usually husky.
“All it takes is a little semi-public nudity and nastiness to get you to shout,” she said.
That wasn’t it. What it took was how she’d accepted him, right through his dull brick-wall exterior, to his failure to love her enough. That had loosened something wound tight inside him, spooled it out like a long hike soothed his temper, cooking a meal eased his tension.
Joy made him shout. Flick was its agent provocateur, and he needed a way he could keep hold of that feeling while their clock ran down. She’d already given him the agenda.
He’d moderated his hours in the office, peeling them back as far as possible so he didn’t miss time with Flick. Wren kept giving him silly looks, which was better than when she wanted to smack him, and he took control of the remaining coupons.
He brought Flick breakfast in bed. Took her out for a picnic lunch. Laughingly failed a sixty-nine. Wrong proportions. Cornered her for a quickie before she dressed for work, and gave her a massage that went from pretend professional to spectacularly, bone-jarringly erotic. It all happened in the wrong order—the massage should’ve come last—it was a gap in his thinking because Flick always caught him by surprise.
Meanwhile he waited to hear from Denise Revero, and he didn’t miss the next call from Beau.
Despite having rehearsed the conversation, and being in a better state of mind, it didn’t quite go as planned.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Flick had only ever agreed to be tied up for sex once, and even then she’d only offered one arm and one leg, unwilling to give over total control to a hit-it-and-quit-it partner. He’d been a gentleman. It’d been a fun night and she’d been overly cautious for no good reason.
She was downright reckless to let Tom tie her up.
Not because he did it with any savagery, with any mock threat—he was kind and slow-moving, watched her face carefully and constantly asked for permission—but because of those things.
Tom wasn’t comfortable with this, but he tied her to his bed, spread-eagle on her back, because he thought it was what she needed, just like he’d made breakfast in bed, given her an erotic massage and brought her a picnic lunch. It wasn’t her wrists or ankles that felt constricted by silk scarves, it was her throat and the muscle behind her eyes and the emotions jammed tight in her chest.
Since her blurted declaration and calm reconstruction of the state of play between them, he’d been quick to run the coupons his way. He was trying to earn the forgiveness she didn’t owe him.
She didn’t have to cook again, and his servant-for-the-day activity was limited to providing the snacks and operating the pause button on the TV remote while they binged on Game of Thrones.
If this kept up, he would wreck her, leave her unable to stand, to walk about in her body. He would ruin her for other relationships and stop her wanting other men in her life, and that was impossible. She was lovesick and it might be seriously injurious to her long-term health.
He stood at the foot of the bed. He’d tied a sloppy bow at her ankle, and with a wriggle she could get free. She was naked and he was still dressed in his suit, a deliberate move that was a masterstroke of a turn-on.
“Not too tight?” he asked.
“It’s not.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a pillow?”
“I want some action.” She needed some other way to mask the feelings crowding her vision and shorting her breath, or he’d think he’d done this wrong.
