by Ruthie Knox
“Which was it, Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Cambridge. Trinity College.”
She resisted the urge to gloat. Gloating was well outside the range of acceptable responses to City on this particular morning.
So is flirting with him.
Right. But it was so much fun. She hadn’t flirted in ages.
“Let’s see,” she said. “I know you like to jog. Judging by those shoulders and arms, I’d say you also row, yeah?”
“Some. I play rugby, too.” He gave her half a smile, and she made an effort to suppress the image of City in a rugby jersey with pink cheeks and dirty knees, tussling over a ball. A human orgasm.
Her good sense was now officially yelling Mayday!
She was now officially ignoring it.
“What do I do for fun, then?” He stepped even closer. This flirtation had turned into a two-way party. She needed to find a method of steering the conversation back toward bacon sandwiches and, say, the location of her skirt, because it probably wasn’t good that she could smell him now, and on this man linseed oil was an aphrodisiac.
“Well, you go to the symphony, spend weekends in the countryside, and date women who wear twinsets and have names like—”
Without the least bit of warning, he kissed her. Not a preamble sort of kiss, either. No, he really kissed her, one huge hand cupping the back of her neck, and his warm, firm lips knew exactly what they were doing, which was driving every single thought from her head. Only the man remained, the mouth, the sensations coursing through her, heating her up from the inside. Heating her up fast. Could all bankers kiss like this?
Cath rose on her toes, angling her mouth and pressing closer, but he pulled back a few inches. Then a few feet.
She wanted to say something. The only word that came out of her mouth was a shaky “Whoa.”
She tried again. “What was that, City?”
“You tell me, Yank.” His lips curved into that sexy smirk again.
“I’m pretty sure you just kissed me.”
“Yes, I did. Shall I apologize?”
“What for?”
“It was terribly impolite. I didn’t ask your permission.”
Cath leaned back against the table, crossed her arms over the tight peaks of her nipples, and tried not to smile like a girl who’d just been kissed silly. She failed. She was failing a lot around this guy. It ought to have been worrisome, or at least embarrassing, but his lips had liquefied her brain.
First kiss in two years would do that, she supposed.
“I was much more impolite than you. What with the passing out and all. You’re being very nice about it.”
City scrubbed his hand over his jawline, pensive now. “I would appreciate it,” he said after a moment, “if you would stop calling me ‘nice.’ ”
He took a step closer, and her heart rate spiked.
“You are nice.” Her voice came out all weak and wavery. This was how Little Red Riding Hood had felt when she’d discovered the Big Bad Wolf wearing Grandma’s bonnet.
“No,” he replied. “I’m not.”
Another step, and his eyes traced a path over her arms, down her stomach to her hips. The brightly lit art studio made her purple underwear visible through the white T-shirt. She could tell that City noticed, and that he was enjoying the view.
She sat down on the edge of the table. “You brought me here with impure motives?” The idea gave her a stupid thrill.
He shook his head. “No. I developed them after you arrived.”
Cath fingered the hem of the shirt where it hit her mid-thigh. “You shouldn’t admit to that sort of thing. It’s perverted to lust after half-naked drunk girls.”
“Not perverted.” He stepped closer until his thighs brushed her knees. “Only male. And at any rate, you didn’t get me lusting with the strip show. Though it was … fetching.”
“No?” It was a wonder she could speak at all, considering there was a tall, hard, hot man crowding her and using up all the oxygen. “What irresistibly attractive thing did I do, then?”
One more step, and he was between her legs. “You talked. Rather a lot.”
“About what?”
“All sorts of nonsense. You’re not very fond of my country, I gather.”
Cath shrugged, sheepish. “Sometimes I miss Chicago.”
“I’d never heard you talk before. You ought to do it more. It’s charming.”
“People who talk to themselves at the train station are generally understood to be crazy. Especially in your country.”
“You could talk to me.”
“I hardly know you.”
“I’m superb,” he said. “You’re going to like me.” Big, warm hands covered her bare thighs, and she shivered. “Though I should probably reiterate, I’m not at all nice.”
“I am,” she whispered. “I’m a very good person. Not the kind of girl who gets drunk and has to be rescued from train stations.”
“I know.” He moved his hands up a few inches to the crease where her thighs met her hips.
“Or who makes out with strange men on tables. I’m a thoroughly respectable woman.”
“You don’t kiss like one.” He smiled that shark smile again.
New Cath had a death grip on the tattered vestiges of her willpower, but she’d lost control over her body. Her palms smoothed over the muscles of his forearms, and her butt scooted her closer to the edge of the table by an inch or two. Or four.
At least her mouth still worked. “I’ve reformed. The kissing is sort of a holdover.”
“Don’t reform. I like you bad.”
“I don’t want to be bad.” But her arms had reached up and twined around his neck, and she had to murmur the last part against his lips.
“I do,” he said, and took over.
This kiss was harder, hotter. He hauled her tight against his chest and pushed his tongue into her mouth. Maybe it was some sort of twisted morning-after Stockholm syndrome, or maybe it was waking up in the guy’s bed. Maybe it was those two sexless years. Whatever it was, Cath welcomed the invasion in a big way. He tasted deliciously of bacon. Her skin burned where his hands cradled her hips, and her nipples tightened painfully against his chest. The ache between her thighs insisted she wrap one leg around him, so she did that, putting her in direct contact with the hardening ridge in his jeans. Exactly where she wanted to be. Oh, God, just exactly there.
Groaning, he pushed her back and slid his hands under the T-shirt, exploring the contours of her nearly naked body with long, slow strokes. Some minuscule part of her brain nagged that this was irresponsible, this was wrong, this was so not blip behavior, but then City’s fingers closed over her nipple through her bra and she gave it up. He made her crazy hot. Crazy. Hot.
Arms around his torso, she laid back, dragging him down with her.
“Wait,” he said, bracing himself with one hand and using the other to shove something aside.
“Can’t,” she breathed, her legs locked around him, her pelvis pressing against his heat. She needed to be claimed, to feel nothing on earth but his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her neck. Two years since she’d had a man, and now she wanted this one. Right now. Right here on the damn table.
Greedy for oblivion, she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried.
The sound of breaking glass and the sharp smell of turpentine brought things to a halt. City straightened, and Cath reluctantly sat up and peered over the edge of the table to assess the damage. A jar full of soaking brushes had rolled off and shattered, depositing a murky puddle of spirits on his nice pine floor.
“Bugger,” he said.
She couldn’t agree more.
Chapter Four
Nev glanced up from the mess on the floor to the woman on his table and immediately regretted it. Her legs were still spread, his shirt bunched high on her thighs, her bare feet dangling. Parted lips, dreamy eyes, peaked nipples. Temptation itself.
He didn’t even know her name.
/> He held on to the thought, since it was the only thing keeping him from stepping over broken glass to finish what they’d started. “Bugger,” he muttered again.
Grabbing some rags from the table, he knelt and began sopping up the turpentine, plucking out the brushes and pushing the shards into an untidy pile as he went.
You don’t even know her name.
He knew who she was, of course. She was the girl from the park. A little dynamo who always wore black, she passed him a few mornings a week on her way up the hill, ball cap on her head, music blaring in her ears, determined expression on her face. A bit intimidating, really, all that ferocity in such a small package. He’d fancied her all the same, particularly once he’d started noticing her on the train, the way she curled herself around the black book she wrote in and shut out the rest of the world. Usually, she scribbled straight through the half-hour journey from Greenwich to Bank. Sometimes she sketched with a charcoal pencil. He’d found himself angling for a peek at her notebook more than once, but he’d never managed to get one.
He probably ought to say something. He would, only his reason had so thoroughly deserted him, he couldn’t think what to say.
Until last night, he hadn’t known she was beautiful. In the half-light of the station platform, she’d smiled at him through her tears—the sort of wide, openhearted grin normally reserved for close friends or lovers—and he’d lost the thread for a moment or two. Looking down into her huge brown eyes, he’d thought she might be the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
She’d also been completely pissed and badly in need of an escort. On the train, she’d slung one arm across his chest and snuggled sleepily against him as she prattled on about Patsy Cline and train schedules and possibly something about a straitjacket, and he’d wondered what sort of woman treated a total stranger this way. He found it both disarming and oddly comfortable at the same time.
He tossed the larger shards of glass into the bin along with the wet rag. The sight of her bare feet in his peripheral vision sent him to the spare room for the broom and dustpan. “Don’t move,” he said over his shoulder, risking a look at her on his way out of the room.
She’d covered her thighs, but she still appeared shell-shocked, a bit dazed from what they’d just done. He couldn’t blame her. He was rather dazed himself.
He hadn’t intended to kiss her the first time, though heaven knows he’d wanted to from the second she walked into the room. Bad enough to know she was naked in his bath. At least then he’d been spared the torment of the sun shining straight through the thin cotton shirt, revealing the dark shapes of her bra and panties.
Shapes he was altogether too familiar with. Under that shirt, she wore purple satin trimmed with black lace over creamy white skin, and she wore it well. He’d had no intention of seeing her nearly naked last night, but it had happened, and the experience had kept him awake for hours. He wanted her. Badly. The hunger of it surprised and disconcerted him.
Whoever she was, she seemed to have a knack for surprising and disconcerting him.
When he’d kissed her, he’d meant it to be a little thing. An experiment. A way to wipe that uncertainty from her eyes and make her feel better, as she was obviously unhappy about the state he’d found her in last night.
Though, if he were being honest, his primary reason for kissing her hadn’t been charitable. Nev had wanted her to notice him, to shake her up the way she did him.
He hadn’t stopped to think whether she’d kiss him back, nor had he had the faintest notion how quickly things would heat up between them. They’d practically set the table alight.
Another surprise.
She was so small, just a wisp of a woman, and so … brash. Not at all the sort he usually went for. But he’d fallen asleep thinking of the shape of her body, the softness of her skin under his palms when he’d lifted her from the floor. Those tattoos. At the center of her lower back, a songbird with its wings spread wide. Swirling lines surrounded it—some thin and curling, others thicker and more angular. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but there had seemed to be other figures embedded in the pattern, which curved around onto her stomach. He’d wanted to trace the lines of the ink with his fingers and his tongue.
He hadn’t, of course. He wasn’t a complete cad. But the impulse remained.
He came to himself standing in his office, staring blankly at the cupboard. For heaven’s sake. What had this woman done to him?
Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, Nev grabbed the broom from the cupboard and returned to the studio. He kept his attention on the floor as he swept up any tiny pieces of glass that remained. Safer not to look at her.
Safer, because he’d been a hairbreadth from taking her on the table in his studio without so much as knowing her name, and he absolutely would’ve done it if the jar hadn’t fallen and broken. Even now, he wasn’t sure how long he could remain in the flat with her without dragging her off to bed.
It wasn’t the sort of thing “City” would do, he expected.
The thought made him want to do it all the more.
He dumped the contents of the dustpan into the bin and looked up at last. She was clearly ready to bolt, all coltish legs and nervous energy.
If she leaves now, you’ll never get to kiss her again.
The thought prompted him to say the next desperate thing that popped into his head. “How about a cup of tea?”
“Yeeeah,” she answered, drawing out the word in her brassy American accent. “That would be good.”
Maybe it was the hangover, but it was the best sandwich she’d ever had. Or maybe it was City. He moved around his tiny kitchen like he knew what he was doing, and he’d fussed over the sandwich for a long time.
Beyond asking her how she liked her tea, though, he didn’t say a word, and that was fine with Cath. She wasn’t sure what social script applied when you’d passed out on someone, woken up in their bed, and then immediately thereafter come very close to mating with them on a table. The best strategy would no doubt have been flight, but she’d needed the sandwich.
The food gave her necessary fuel, and it also provided time to regroup. Bad Cath and Good Cath were duking it out in her head, and she was having trouble keeping her wires from crossing.
Good Cath was screechy, slightly hysterical: What do you think you’re doing? Sex on a table with a stranger? You don’t do that anymore! Hell, you didn’t even do that before. Knock it off. Put your clothes on. Go home. It’s still possible to turn this into a blip! It’s not too late, but you’re cutting it close, missy.
Bad Cath, by contrast, practically purred with lust: That man can kiss, Mary Catherine. What could it hurt to do it again? You’re already here. You made your mistake. What’s the big deal if you make it a little bigger? And speaking of big, did you notice the way City felt pressing between your legs? Yeah. That. You’re going to walk out on that? Don’t kid a kidder, babe.
What could she do but feed her stomach and try to drown out the voices?
Plus, it wasn’t like she could simply flee the scene. She was only half dressed. At least she knew where her clothes were now. She’d spotted them drying on a rack in the corner as soon as she walked into the kitchen. City must have put them through the wash for her, but he, like so many of his backward countrymen, didn’t have a dryer.
He could deny being nice all day long, but the guy was definitely a Boy Scout. A Boy Scout who kissed like a Hell’s Angel. Not that she’d ever kissed a Hell’s Angel. And not that anyone had ever kissed her quite like City just had. Zero to sixty in three-point-four seconds. The man knew how to ring her bell.
But she was done with the bell ringing, right? Right. New Cath didn’t sleep with strange men on studio tables. New Cath said, “Thanks a bunch,” got dressed, and clomped on home.
Do that, New Cath instructed. Do that right now.
“Listen, City,” she said. “About last night. Thanks for—”
For getting me back on the train? For
taking me home with you, undressing me, letting me sleep in your bed, washing my clothes, setting out a towel and a toothbrush for me, and making me breakfast? Oh, and let’s not forget kissing me and touching me until I damn near lost my mind.
“—for taking care of me,” she finished.
It was lame, but it would have to do.
“You’re quite welcome.” He didn’t look over at her, just carried on washing dishes at the sink as if this were a perfectly normal morning and they were having a perfectly ordinary conversation. He wore yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. She’d never before met a man who could pull off yellow rubber gloves, or who was even willing to risk his masculinity by trying, but City was managing nicely. The jeans, the T-shirt, the gloves: he was really doing it for her, tip to toe.
It wasn’t just the way he looked, either. She kinda liked him. Now that she’d met him, she could see that the pink cheeks weren’t the only thing about City that didn’t square with the portrait in her journal. Hardly anything about him did. She’d thought he’d be rigid, cold, and uptight, but the real-life City was a painter. He was wry and relaxed.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
His tone was nonchalant, but she would swear she saw his mouth twitch with the effort of repressing a smile. She waited. The dimple appeared, and his lips slowly began to curve upward, widening into a grin. He turned around to look at her full-on, leaning one hip against the countertop.
Cath couldn’t help smiling in response.
It was a little bit funny.
Okay, it was a lot funny. This whole thing with City had to be the single most bizarre experience of her life, and she’d had more than her share of bizarre experiences.
He pulled off the rubber gloves, crossing his arms and letting them drape over one forearm, and she started to giggle. The gloves. The jar breaking on the floor as they went after each other like animals. Waking up in his room after her disastrous expedition back into the bar scene. His kindness, and the sharp contrast between the City she’d imagined and this guy, this real-life guy with the Big Bad Wolf smile and the magic tongue. The powerful urge she still had to jump him or, failing that, to see if he could make her another one of those incredible sandwiches.
