At the shrill ring of the phone, Imogen jerked out of her imaginative bubble with a pop and realised she was hot, blushing and tingling. Goodness, what had happened to her? Twelve hours of some seriously great sex and she was addicted.
She heard Jack’s voice echoing through the flat asking the caller to leave a message, and yanked a pillow over her head to blot it out. For one thing, listening to that voice, even on a machine, was not conducive to her attempts to calm down, and for another she didn’t feel entirely comfortable about eavesdropping.
However, as the beep sounded and dulcet female tones began to replace his seductively deep ones any scruples she might have had about not wanting to eavesdrop vanished. Tossing the pillow to one side, Imogen lay there, her ears pricked and her antennae quivering, but rigidly still, as if the woman on the other end of the line would be able to tell she was listening if she moved.
‘Jack?’ came the soft voice that made all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristle and jump to attention. ‘It’s Emily. I’m just ringing to confirm we’re seeing you later. I hope you haven’t forgotten or anything. Daisy’s so looking forward to it … Hang on … What?’ There was a pause. The sound of a phone being muffled and the mumble of another female voice in the background. And then she was back. ‘Oh, and Anna says don’t forget to bring something to sleep in.’
Huh? What? Imogen jerked upright, the curiosity racing through her so powerful it could have killed a dozen cats.
‘OK, then, we’ll see you later. Bye, darling.’
Darling? Darling? Who on earth was Emily? Who was Daisy? And who the hell was the Anna who knew so much about what Jack wore or rather didn’t wear in bed? Were they all friends? Ex-girlfriends? Current girlfriends? Or—
Imogen bit her lip and slammed the brakes on her spinning imagination before she had Jack getting up to all kinds of dissolute and debauched antics. Her stomach could stop that churning and those little arrows of jealousy could get lost because she wasn’t bothered one little bit by what he got up to. She was only after his body, and even that on a highly temporary basis.
Nevertheless, it did hammer home how little she knew about him. For all she knew he might be into threesomes. Foursomes. Orgies. He might have fetishes, visit clubs and who knew what else?
With her body and brain on the point of overheating, Imogen let out a groan of frustration at her inability to control her wayward imagination. What with all this extra work it was having to cope with, it was a surprise it hadn’t short-circuited.
She threw back the sheet and swung her legs to the floor. It really was none of her business. Jack could get up to whatever he wanted to with whoever he wanted to. And as he clearly had plans for later, that might or might not involve three women and very little clothing, she ought to head off and leave him to it.
Besides, she reminded herself as she padded into the bathroom and flicked on the shower, she’d already jumped to a dozen erroneous conclusions where he was concerned and she was not going to jump to any more.
Of course, she’d never dream of asking, but there was bound to be some logical innocent explanation for why Jack had a woman ringing him up requesting he remembered his pyjamas when he came round later that night. Absolutely bound to be.
Jack strode through his flat, draped Imogen’s wrap on the back of the sofa and dumped the bag of pains au chocolat he’d picked up on the way back on the kitchen counter. It really was extraordinary, he thought. After the night—and morning—they’d had, he ought to be exhausted. At the very least be done with her for a while. But was he? It would appear not. He’d only been out for ten minutes but the image of her lying sprawled and sated in his bed had accompanied him all the way to the hotel and back, and every second he was away from her had felt like an hour. So no, it seemed he wasn’t done with her at all.
But that was hardly a surprise. Never had a woman responded so swiftly, so instinctively or so wildly to his touch. Never had anyone thrown caution so splendidly to the wind nor been quite such an enthusiastic research assistant.
Jack grinned at the memory of the sexual gymnastics they’d practised, and headed to the bedroom. The whole night had switched between being intense, dark and explosive then light, teasing and fun. And he wanted more. A lot more.
He paused mid-stride and frowned, his heart skipping a beat as alarm bells rang. More? Oka-a-ay. So that was new. It wasn’t that he chose to have one-night stands exactly. It was simply that that was how things generally turned out, which was fortunate as he liked variety.
But there was no need to panic. Just because sex with Imogen had surpassed all his expectations—and he’d had a few—and just because it put pretty much every other sexual experience he’d ever had in the shade, it didn’t mean anything. It was the roller coaster of the build-up that had made it so explosive. That was all.
Given that they’d put it off for so long wanting more was only natural, and, if he kept things strictly to sex, what was the problem with seeing her again? As far as he could work out there wasn’t one because he never did anything else. He certainly never combined sex with anything as messy as emotion. Quite apart from the fact that he didn’t do emotion, he never made—nor would make—the mistake of thinking that sex ever meant anything other than the mutual satisfaction of completely natural needs.
So it—he—would be fine.
Satisfied that he’d got things clear in his head, Jack switched his attention to the sound of running water coming from his bathroom.
At the thought of Imogen in the shower hot and wet and covered with bubbles his body instantly hardened. He stripped off his jumper and jeans, then plucked a condom off the bedside table, tore open the packet and, gritting his teeth against the exquisite agony, sheathed himself.
As desire whipped around inside him, he walked into the bathroom. Steam billowed around the marble surfaces and curled off the limestone-tiled walls, and a fine film of sweat coated his skin.
The outline of Imogen’s body was just about visible through the foggy glass. She had her back to him and her arms were raised, her hands in her hair, and the intensity of what he wanted to do to her slammed into his head and made his heart thunder.
Oh, he wanted more. Much more.
Opening the door, Jack stepped in and flinched as needles of hot water pounded his skin. Blinking the water out of his eyes, and mindful of what had happened the last time he’d startled her—and how much more damage she could inflict this time—he lifted his hands and wrapped them round her wrists.
Imogen froze then jumped. She let out a gasp and made a move to turn but he held her where she was and pulled her back against him. He felt her shiver. Heard her murmur, ‘I thought I warned you not to startle me.’
‘Why do you think I have my hands on your wrists?’
‘Restraint, Jack?’
‘Not my kind of thing.’
‘Then let me go.’ She squirmed against him, but not in an effort to get free, and it sent need shooting through him.
‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘I think I could be changing my mind.’
He inched her forwards and pressed her hands up against the cool limestone tiles that lined the wall of the shower.
‘I thought that was supposed to be my prerogative,’ she said, her voice laced with such hoarse desperation that it did dangerous things to his self-control.
‘You can stop me any time you like,’ he muttered, thinking that nobility was all very well, but if she did stop him he might expire.
So just in case she was tempted to think along those lines, he slowly slid his hands down her arms, then round to cup her breasts. Her head dropped back against his shoulder, and when his mouth came down on the pulse throbbing at the base of her neck, he felt her shudder.
‘Now why would I want to do a thing