Playing With Fire

‘Tomorrow?’ she’d parroted, still not really getting it. ‘I’m working.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he’d insisted, the light of laughter in his eyes sharpened to a determined glint. ‘I’ll pick you up from Cluny’s. Just for a quick nightcap.’

And then, apparently still being able to read the invisible undercurrents running through her as easily as he’d been able to do from the very start, he’d cupped her face, his expression softening again. ‘I know this is all going to be a first for you, and I want to do it right. We’ll feel our way through it together,’ he’d vowed, and lowered his head to brush his lips against hers again, that time a bare whisper of a touch, gone almost before it had begun, a warm, soft tease that had left her instinctively leaning in for more as he’d pulled back to add, ‘We’ll take it slow.’

Eyes still closed, she’d nodded, even as her body had screamed at her to jump him for the instant earth-shattering satisfaction it craved, remembering all too well the torture of Aidan Flynn’s idea of slow. But slow also meant she could keep control of the crazy emotions bubbling up from deeply hidden places inside her – the ones already threatening to drown her common sense. So when she’d finally opened her eyes and looked into his, it had been to agree.

‘Slow is good.’

Chapter Two (#ulink_0fd6fc9f-9279-5bed-81b8-7d96bbad14be)

‘Hurry!’ Annabel gasped.

The only response Aidan was capable of giving was an urgent, animalistic growl of frustration deep in his throat as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. The smell, the feel, the taste of her had his blood fired and his senses reeling. If only she’d keep still, he could do as she asked. Hurry, as he so badly wanted to do.

But it appeared she was as far gone as he, caught in the grip of a frantic physical need that had them groping at each other like horny teenagers. Bodies rubbing and hands everywhere – sliding over smooth planes, moulding curves, fumbling in their haste to get past the barriers of clothing and revisit the pleasures of naked flesh their separation had denied them.

So much for taking things slow, Flynn. Despite wanting to do the noble thing, his good intentions were no match for the force of the attraction he felt for Annabel Frost. One second they’d been offering each other a tentative goodnight as she’d stepped over the threshold of her flat. The next he’d been inside too, his hands grasping the sides of her head as he’d pinned her tight between his body and the entrance-hall wall, lips fused, tongues sparring. All before her door had even had the chance to swing shut.

But it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Anticipation had been building all through their nightcap as he’d expected it would. How could it not, when coffee had been their drink of choice and they’d found themselves in Chinos, the café where she’d first touched him, albeit by accident, all those months ago? During the six long weeks he’d had without her, that encounter, and every increasingly intimate one after, had replayed in his mind over and over and over, filling him with the constant dull ache of need and longing. And as if that hadn’t been temptation aplenty, Annabel had ordered a slice of chocolate cake, reminding him of how much of a sweet tooth she had; every pleasure-driven flicker of her eyelids, every lick of her red lips and the icing-smeared spoon had shot straight to his groin.

‘Hurry!’ she urged again, the word a breathy spur right into his ear, robbing him of any last hope of reining things in. Raising his head, he smashed his lips over hers, plunging his tongue into her mouth to taste that chocolate sweetness as he wrestled with the buttons of her coat.

If he’d wanted to keep things slow, he shouldn’t have let himself come to the door. With the sexual tension that had been thrumming through him since their reunion yesterday, he should have stuck to his original plan of staying in the taxi out in the street while she let herself through the security doors of the modern, multi-storey residential block, before continuing the journey across town to his own place.

But after they’d shared a semi-chaste kiss on the back seat his honourable resolve had been overridden by an altogether more primal surge of protectiveness. Watching her walk away brought flashbacks of the last time he’d dropped her off – high and happy from the weekend they’d spent in Vienna – when she’d refused to let him see her to her door. The price she’d nearly paid for that … He’d never forget the moment he’d caught a glimpse of Tony Maplin’s face at her window as the taxi had pulled away, never forget the split-second timing of his intervention that had saved her from even worse injuries than she’d already sustained. The remembered horror of that day had gripped him as effectively as a choke-hold around the throat, making it impossible for him to stay sitting there while she went up alone.

Shit! He tore his mouth away from the kiss. ‘The taxi.’ He’d told the driver he’d be back in a few minutes.

‘Send it away. Now,’ Annabel ordered, even as her questing hands ran down his back to grasp his arse cheeks and pull him impossibly closer. It seemed whatever the circumstances that had led to his current loss of control, she wasn’t complaining. ‘Hurry,’ she demanded again, this time grinding herself against the rock-hard ridge of his erection.

‘Fuck,’ he gasped harshly, head snapping back as hot needles of pleasure lanced through him. One look at Annabel’s half-closed green eyes and half-open smudged red lips had him crushing their mouths together again as his hands tunnelled beneath her overcoat. Under it, she was dressed in her usual severe work attire – a black skirt suit so sharply tailored he was surprised not to feel his fingers sliced to bits. Her hair was pulled back in its trademark perfect twist, leaving her looking as impeccably, formidably stunning as the first time he’d seen her in Cluny’s dining room. She hadn’t been at all happy that day, returning to work from a week’s leave to find he’d been taken on as head barman without her consent. Yet even as he’d endured the full blast of her icy disdain, he’d known he’d do almost anything to muss up that perfection she wore as armour.

And that thought was all it took to have the caveman part of his brain stomping its big hairy feet to know why the hell she wasn’t mussed right now. He retracted his hands from the recesses of her coat and raised them again to her head to hunt out and remove the clips that held her hair tightly tamed. Spearing his fingers into the long, heavy mass, he fanned them through to the ends.

Pulling back to watch the soft locks cascade over her shoulders, he realised he had a correction to make. Annabel wasn’t as stunning as she’d been the first time he’d seen her. She was more so. The colour of her hair then had been a dyed ruby red, but she’d allowed it to return to its natural flaming riot of spun gold and copper and cinnamon – a sight that made him very happy indeed. He’d always had a thing for redheads, but most especially for this one.

Before he could lean in to claim her mouth again, Annabel used the small distance he’d put between them to push a hand against his chest. ‘Taxi,’ she panted. ‘Now.’

He’d already forgotten. ‘Wait right there.’ He tore himself away, heaved the door open and raced for the stairs before his synapses could relay the urgent message to stop and turn around.

He was back in less than five minutes. And she was waiting for him. Watching through her little spyhole. Flinging the door open before he had to knock.

Then he was inside again, noticing she’d ditched the coat as, without a word, he pushed her back up against the wall and kissed her hard until neither of them had any breath left.

She pulled away first, sucking in air through lips his rough kiss had left red and swollen. Her hands were busy with the remaining buttons of his coat while his skimmed down over the tailored curves of her waist and hips.

‘Off!’ She wrenched the lapels back over his shoulders. He took his hands from her only long enough to help shake the coat from his arms and then he put them right back where they’d been.

‘Your turn,’ he ordered, bending to kiss her jawline while his fingers began gathering the fabric of her skirt, rucking it up. ‘Lose the jacket.’

Annabel moaned and let her head drop back against the wall, surrendering to his mouth as it closed over the pulse banging below her ear.

Hands working urgently in the tight space between their torsos, she managed to wrestle her jacket off while he got her skirt bunched up around her hips. As he felt her palms clasp his shoulders, his own slid downwards over her newly exposed thighs. What his touch discovered there had him smiling against the tender skin of her neck.

Straightening, he looked down into her upturned face. ‘Tights, Ms Frost?’ he questioned with a whiff of disapproval, as he’d done once before – on the day he’d decided that the only way he’d ever get past his manager’s frosty defences was to risk something daring. ‘Really?’

Her eyelids snapped open at the words and, when she would have lifted her head, he wrapped a hand around her throat, setting the pad of his thumb against her chin to hold her where she was.

‘Remember what happened the last time I found you in tights?’ he asked, because he sure as hell did. He recalled every heart-pounding second of the scene that had started as a tease and had spun way out of control down in the wine cellar of Cluny’s, leaving Annabel standing in a ruined pair of tights and him wondering if he’d lost his job as well as his sanity.

Her throat moved against his palm as she swallowed. ‘How could I forget? You were so over the line I should have had you charged with indecent assault.’

He flashed a grin. ‘Indecent?’ He leaned close to bring his mouth to hers and licked slowly from one corner of her bottom lip to the other. ‘I doubt you have the first clue of just how indecent things would have become if I’d not called a halt to that little episode – if I’d carried on and done all the things I’d wanted to do to you.’

‘I would have stopped you,’ Annabel said, baited no doubt by his deliberately cocky tone.

Although the heat sparking in her eyes had little to do with anger.

‘Would you?’ he asked, unable to resist teasing her a little more. ‘So far as I remember, you didn’t look like you were up for stopping much of anything.’

She stiffened. ‘Of course I would have. I didn’t want it.’ She tried to escape his hold, but he tightened his grip at hip and throat and lowered his mouth to hers again. This time he captured her bottom lip between his teeth and sucked on it until her eyelids fluttered closed and he felt her annoyance start to melt back into desire.

He loosened his hold on her hip and ran his fingers along the leg seam of her briefs, tracing the inward line through the sheer barrier of the tights. Releasing her lip, he murmured, ‘Do you want it now?’

Her lashes parted to give him a flash of green as she sighed and murmured back, ‘Fuck yes.’

With that he hooked his fingers into the sheer fabric and with a sharp tug, tore through the tights.

Annabel jolted, her mouth and eyes rounding in shock. While he locked his gaze onto hers he ripped an opening large enough to allow him access, then his fingers were burrowing into her silky underwear, brushing against soft curls and into the slick, soft heat of heaven. He groaned deep and low in unison with Annabel – felt her push against him, forcing his touch to slide deeper into the welcoming wetness.

God Almighty. He wanted her naked and on her back now. Wanted her legs spread and his face buried hard between her thighs. Wanted her mindless and arching against his mouth as he tasted every inch of her and drove her to come on his tongue.

Withdrawing his hand, he silenced her sudden aggrieved growl with a deep, demanding, open-mouthed kiss that conveyed the promise of the more intimate kiss to come. Enfolding her in his arms, he lifted her off her feet and made his way down the hall.

The feel of Annabel’s legs wrapping around him, the plucking of her fingers at his clothes as he carried her towards her bedroom, only maddened his lust further. He heard her shoes hit the floor behind him as he turned into the darkened room and kept walking until he met the edge of the bed. Toppling forward, he released her at the last minute and caught himself on his arms as he lowered her to the mattress. Enjoying the feel of her smaller, curvier body cushioning his, he let his weight settle on her. She seemed to enjoy the sensation too, grasping his face as they continued to kiss, and tightening the legs still wrapped around him so she could grind her pelvis against his.

And suddenly, thoughts of getting her naked could wait. They both needed his mouth on her. Now.

He broke the kiss and levered himself back onto his feet, running his hands down over Annabel’s breasts and ribs and stomach as he did so. When her legs fell from around his hips, he caught them behind the knee, pushed them wide and dropped to kneel between them.

He slid his palms up her inner thighs, hooked his fingers into the tear he’d already made in her tights and pulled to make it larger. With the only illumination in the room the light filtering in from the hall, he turned his attention to the scrap of lacy silk underwear still keeping him from his goal. As it shredded like tissue paper in his fists, he hoped it wasn’t her favourite pair.

‘Hey–eee!’ Annabel’s yelp of outrage turned to a squeal of pleasure as his mouth found her. Under the fast, furious strike her whole body convulsed. Instinctively, her thighs tried to clamp shut but he pushed them apart, opening her to him, holding her there as he lost himself in the womanly taste of her.

A second later her fingers were tangling in his hair, her nails sharp against the top of his scalp as her hands balled into fists and pulled him closer. ‘Yes!’

She wanted more? He was only too happy to oblige.