heart hammered, reminding her how in-deep she really had been last time she saw him, and proving that she’d been kidding herself all these years; telling herself it hadn’t been mindblowing, that it was just her memory playing tricks, in the way that in your childhood memories it always seemed to be sunny.
She’d been caught out by her memory playing tricks once too often. It had been easy to convince herself Tom Henley wasn’t the dream she’d thought he was. She had her stupid ill-judgement of her father right there to prove that point. Memories couldn’t be trusted. And going back was a bad idea.
Yet here he was, bucking that trend.
He backed her away from the door at urgent speed and she moved with him blindly, not thinking or caring whether furniture was in the way. His arms slid around her, grinding her against him as if he couldn’t hold her closely enough. One of his hands tangled in her hair, tilting her head back to deepen his kiss and she could taste the faint twist of spiced apple on his tongue. She could feel the press of his erection against her, rock hard, and she ground her hips against him, secretly thrilled that she invoked that acute arousal in him.
Carefully laid safety nets pinged away in her mind. Guards slipped. She could think of nothing except that she was back in his arms.
Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt, the urge to feel his skin against hers so strong that nothing else mattered. She tugged them free, slid impatient hands up the taut warm skin of his chest. Her mind vaguely registered differences, similarities. The faint scent of his aftershave, still the same brand, something fresh that reminded her of the sea. A scent she associated with the salt air of the coast and a time when she’d felt truly happy. He felt broader now, his pecs rock hard, his arms roped thickly with muscle. He must work out.
His hands caught up a twist of her sloppy joe sweater and tugged it over her head. The instant it was gone his mouth groped for hers again, his hands moving to her jeans with unstinting urgency. She found his buttons, pulling at his clothes with an urgent kind of madness, and then the back of her knees hit the edge of the nearest twin bed and she was falling back. The soft velvet of the counterpane against her bare back, his bare skin against her own.
And it felt like she was meant only for him.
****
Naked now, clothes thrown aside randomly around the room, he cupped the firm swell of her breast in his hand, followed it with his mouth, closing his lips over the hard peak of her nipple and teasing gently with his tongue until she moaned and arched her back. He trailed his fingertips lower, tracing the smooth hollow between her breasts, lower still over her flat stomach and between her thighs to stroke softly at her swollen core. Delight surged in his stomach as he felt how wet she was. He slid two fingers inside her, a further spike of desire kicking in as she moaned her pleasure against his neck, then found the swollen nub at the very core of her and circled it slowly with the ball of his thumb, feeling her jump and writhe beneath him as he found a slow rhythm.
She clutched at his shoulders, her head thrown back against the counterpane, exposing the smooth cream of her slender neck for him to kiss. He moved back in surprise as she wriggled from beneath him, batting his shoulder aside, wondering if this was about second thoughts. She scrabbled through one of the open cases, toiletries and clothes flying as she tossed them aside and returned to him with a condom between her fingers. A surge of desire rushed through him at her smile and put paid to any further delay. Wanting to possess her fully, nothing else mattering, five long years of her memory driving him forward, he rubbed the swollen head of his erection against her slick entrance until she was writhing against him with desire, and when he could stand it no longer he thrust forward smoothly to the hilt. The moan of visceral desire escaped his lips before he could stop it.
Forcing himself to move slowly now, building up a delicious friction between them, he tangled his hands in the softness of her hair and took her with long and tantalising strokes until her breathing quickened and her legs curled around his back, her hands sliding down his back to try and push him deeper inside her. Responding to her every movement, he pushed them both towards that delicious pinnacle, taking his time, holding back to keep them hovering there as long as possible until her cries of pleasure pushed him over the edge and he could control it no longer.
Afterward, she lay panting, clutched in his arms, her own fingers digging into his shoulders in a tight grip, his breath deep and hard against her neck. Slowly, the firm stroke of his hand against her climbed down to a soft caress. Her mind began to filter in awareness of surroundings and background sounds.
A continuous high pitched eeee-aaaawww eeee-aaaawww cracked its way into her formerly preoccupied consciousness. It sounded like a donkey on acid.
‘What the bloody hell is that noise?’ Tom whispered softly into her hair.
****
She jerked her head up like a meerkat and gave the room a quick once-over. Tom sat up and rubbed a hand through his hair as she pulled herself off the bed, dragging the sheet along with her, giving him a glimpse of perfect creamy thigh and smoothly curved backside. His stomach began to heat up again just at the sight.
She picked her way across the shoe strewn floor to the corner, one hand holding the sheet against her chest, and righted the table he vaguely remembered knocking over. Next to it was the telephone and she replaced it on the table and put the receiver back. The high-pitched squawking stopped.
Noise removed, he glanced around the room. It looked as if there’d been some kind of explosion in a department store.
‘Bloody hell, what happened in here?’ he said.
He raised eyebrows at her and she tilted her chin up indignantly and folded her arms around the sheet.
‘What do you mean, what happened? We happened.’
‘We didn’t do all this.’
He waved an arm around the room. Every available surface was littered with belongings, make-up, clothes. The opposite twin bed was covered in clothes and he shifted uncomfortably and pulled a trainer out from underneath him.
‘I hadn’t finished unpacking,’ she said defensively.
‘I thought you were staying here for the weekend, not moving in,’ he said as she crossed the room back to him, picking up an armful of clothes as she went with her free hand.
She swatted him on the arm as she passed. The physical contact made him jump, his consciousness was so finely tuned to her every touch that it didn’t seem to matter whether that touch was affectionate or not. Add in the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that sheet and he wanted her again. More urgently by the second.
‘I remember your hotel room back in Devon,’ she said, dumping the clothes on the opposite bed and sitting down next to him, sheet swathed around her body, creamy shoulders exposed that were just made to be kissed. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘That one perfect suit-carrier and matching designer holdall. Everything in its place. I bet you even use the trouser press and laundry service, don’t you?’
He grinned at her good-naturedly, leaning up on one elbow.
‘That’s what they’re there for. Enables you to travel light.’
‘Yeah well, I’m never sure what I’ll fancy wearing until pretty much the moment I put it on,’ she said airily. ‘Makes sense to bring a broad selection.’
‘And are you always this untidy?’
She glanced around the chaotic bedroom.
‘This is not that untidy,’ she said. ‘You’re obviously not used to sharing a room with a woman.’
She had him there. He wasn’t used to sharing. Either a room or his life. For a while after he’d last met her he’d had a run of short relationships. None of them had been serious, not that he had given them the chance to become that.
So the no-second-time rule was well and truly broken and she would just have to work with what she had. Part of her was so busy feeling like jelly