by Jennie Adams
‘You’ve got a cramp.’ She came to her knees in the bed and tossed the covers out of the way. ‘Let me.’
Her words were sleep-slurred. So was her vision. Soph ignored those things and massaged his clenched muscles. For minutes he reclined back on one elbow, teeth gritted, while she worked the knots out for him.
Gradually, as the muscles relaxed under her ministrations, Soph became aware of other things. The chill of the room against her bare arms. Grey’s leg beneath her fingers, hairy and masculine and warm.
The candle that still burned, adding its mellow aroma to the room. And Grey’s scent, mingled with hers, of warm sheets and close bodies and nighttime and desire.
Her hands stopped moving. He sat up at the same time and their gazes locked. There was no rain outside now. No sound but that of their breathing in the stillness of the room, nothing for Soph to see but the heat and the questions in his eyes.
Confusion, desire, hunger and need, all shone there for her to see. His gaze dipped to her mouth, rose back to lock on her eyes. His fingers circled her wrist. No other part of their bodies touched. Yet fire sliced through her, a hot burn that made her fears insignificant, her uncertainties a mere foolish blockade that stopped her from being in his arms, from having the chance to make love with him.
So what if it was only tonight? Why couldn’t they take that and let it go in the morning? Lots of people did that. Grey had almost certainly done that, though she didn’t want to think of him in another woman’s arms.
‘I want what’s in your eyes. I want you to make it real, Grey, right now, tonight.’
He froze for a moment and then said in a tone that was almost menacing, ‘Do you understand what you’re saying?’
But she knew all his grouches and growls now, knew they didn’t mean a thing, not really. ‘I know.’
‘Dear God, I can’t not do this. Not when you look at me that way.’ He pulled her against him, swept her against his body, back on to the pillows, as he kissed her and kissed her.
Ravishing, plundering kisses and soft worshipful ones until she was breathless and desperate, her hands everywhere, touching him, revelling in him as he seemed to revel in her.
Then he started all over, so gentle with her as he learned her curves and encouraged her to learn him too. His body was hard, his touch so tender. He pressed kisses to her face and her neck and her eyelids; propping himself half over her, he stroked her face, shaped the curve of her shoulder. Finally, he cupped one breast and then the other through the soft material of her sleeveless top.
He curved his hand down, over the indent of her waist, over the soft rise of her belly. His gaze never left hers and his eyes told her he liked her body, found her attractive.
This was Grey and she wanted him to want her. More than she had cared what any other person thought of her in any way there was.
‘I want to touch you, Sophia, skin to skin,’ he murmured and hot and cold shivers filled her, and then his hand was there again and her top was gone. Her heart raced as tension and need built inside her at each touch of his hand, each deep, drugging kiss.
Soph touched him too—touched him everywhere she wanted to touch—until finally there was no clothing any more and he prepared himself. She wondered about his plaster cast and his ankle and whispered her worry out loud, ‘How…?’
‘Don’t worry about how.’ He kissed her again, moving her until they lay facing each other. He shifted so they could fit together and, as he pushed forward, the barrier in her body yielded to take him in.
‘Soph.’ The word was agonised. He stopped very still and swallowed hard. ‘Oh, God, Sophia.’ He kissed her then, and his mouth trembled over hers.
‘It doesn’t hurt.’ Not as much now. She knew it would ease—it already was. ‘Please, don’t stop.’ She held him fiercely and, after a moment, she whispered, ‘Love me, Grey. Love me as much as you can.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
GREY’S heart thundered in his chest. Emotion threatened his control as he drew Sophia even closer against him. His throat worked as he held her, stroked her back, wondered what he had done to deserve this moment, this gift. He didn’t deserve it, but Soph had given it to him anyway.
He blinked his eyes hard and dropped a kiss on her parted lips, praying she couldn’t see.
‘I can’t…’ Find the words for what I feel, can’t tell you. He dipped his head and tried to show her. Kissed her mouth, felt that brush of her lashes against his cheek that he had imagined, and now knew he had longed for.
She smiled—a soft, sweet parting of her lips—and her face softened and relaxed as her body adjusted to his presence.
He loved her then, just as she had asked, as much as he could. Their gazes locked together and he thought he could stay this way for ever, her arms twined around his back, her soft skin everywhere against him.
Each breath she took made him shudder with need. He held back his completion until she arched, his name a cry on her lips. He fell with her then, fell into satiation, fell with feelings he had never experienced before and couldn’t comprehend, even now. He could only feel them, their depth and their strength, and acknowledge they were tied up in her.
She sighed and wrapped her arms around him, all the way around his waist, and hugged up close against him.
Grey stroked his fingers through her hair and let the silky-soft texture play over his skin. The thought of tomorrow pushed forward. He pushed it back and knew he wanted her now more than ever.
‘You were beautiful.’ The emotion rose again. Soph had unmanned him with her generosity and her innocence and her openness. ‘I wish I hadn’t hurt you.’
I wish I would never hurt you again.
‘You made me forget soon enough.’ Her eyelids fluttered half-closed as her words began to slur. ‘I think I’d like to snuggle with you now. You’re probably better than a hot-water bottle. I’ve always thought you would be…so warm…’
Grey bit back an unexpected overwrought laugh.
The words had only just left her when her lashes fluttered one final time and she went under.
‘I want to hold you while you sleep.’ He whispered this truth as he slipped from the bed and padded into the bathroom. He thought she might wake when he joined her again, but she didn’t.
With a deep sigh, he shifted close, drew her head to his chest and tucked her body into the shelter of his own.
Now that he had made love with Soph, instead of feeling assuaged, he wanted something more with her. Grey didn’t understand what that something was, or how to get it, or even if he could get it.
All he knew was he didn’t want to let this end now. He wanted her in his arms, under him, her body his to love and know and cherish over and over.
Until?
Until it finished, he supposed.
Until they parted company when she finished working for him?
His arm tightened around her and his mouth firmed. With Soph locked against him and his thoughts locked against letting her go, he slept.
When the candle had burned out and the night was so dark and all Soph could do was feel, Grey woke her and made love to her again. She fell into the experience before she had time to think and then she couldn’t have stopped if she tried.
He worshipped every inch of her, made her feel treasured and glorious and powerful. Then that feeling of power fell away as her need for him took over. He shook in her arms too, whispered broken words to her as they tumbled over the brink a second time.
He fell asleep stroking her hair, but Soph didn’t sleep straight away. Her thoughts wouldn’t let her. Tonight she had done a monumental thing. She couldn’t go back from it. She couldn’t regret it either. Being with Grey this way felt right. Soph had given him a part of her heart tonight. She couldn’t deny that.
Now she had to work out what to do, but with Grey’s deep-seated need to avoid emotional entanglement, where could this go? She ignored any thoughts that she might need to examine her own attitudes and thinking. G
rey didn’t want commitment. That was a fact.
Chilled suddenly, Soph retrieved her nightclothes and put them on, and then drew the quilt over the bed.
‘You don’t have to say a thing.’ Soph took a covert glance at Grey, where he sat up in the bed with his breakfast on a plate on his knees. It was morning and before she’d woken him she had slipped away to prepare their meal. She had worked out what she needed to say, had determined how she would go about saying it. But now that the moment was here, her courage wanted to desert her.
They had shared so much last night. She hadn’t understood how that sharing would make her feel. How much she would feel, how it would stir longings in her, make her want things…
Soph didn’t want to examine those longings in detail. Suffice it to place them under the general label of risking too much of an attachment to Grey if she let last night’s intimacy continue. She had a job to do here. When it ended she would leave and help the next person the agency found for her. A certain level of emotional distance had to be maintained. And making love with Grey last night… Well, it hadn’t been good for that distance.
She had to make her attitude clear. It was for the best.
So get on with it!
‘I know you must agree with me.’ In truth, she had no idea of Grey’s thoughts. They were side by side in his bed. He had cardamom coffee clasped in one hand and a half-eaten plate of eggs on his lap. His jaw was like granite and his eyes a very bright, sharp green.
With his hair rumpled and the muscles of his chest and shoulders so beautifully displayed, he looked like every woman’s fantasy. Soph just wasn’t sure what mood the fantasy was in.
‘We’ll carry on as before and that will be fine, more than fine. I have no expectations here.’ She stopped to tug uneasily at her pyjama top. ‘I want to thank you for…last night. It…well…it satisfied our mutual curiosity.’
‘I think it addressed more than a little inquisitiveness.’ The frown between his brows deepened and, somehow, without appearing to do anything but stare at her, he made her tingle all over with remembered heat.
Soph forced herself to eat a bite of egg from her plate and took care not to let the fork clatter as she put it down again. ‘Yes, well…um…that’s right but it was sort of spur of the moment, wasn’t it?’ She took a sip of her coffee.
‘Yes. That’s not the point.’ Grey set aside his coffee and jabbed his fork into a lump of egg.
She supplied helpfully, ‘I flavoured the eggs with maple syrup and orange marmalade and chunks of dill pickles. I hope you like the taste.’
‘The eggs taste just fine.’ He jabbed some more on to his fork and chewed.
‘Please don’t be offended.’ She offered the words in a voice that bordered on timid and forced herself to speak in a louder tone as she went on. ‘You would have said the same thing this morning. I just happened to say it first.’
‘How can you possibly know what I would have said?’ He looked as though he wanted to turn his face to the ceiling and snarl until the roof caved in.
He couldn’t be that upset, though, not really. ‘I know because you’ve made it clear you don’t want any entanglements. We have a working relationship. That needs to be preserved and, with that in mind, it’s best if last night doesn’t happen again.’
‘So you’ve decided to end it here and now.’ He said it in such a mild tone, but his gaze burned through her.
‘Well, yes, but we’ve decided. We’re just agreeing about something, we’re both being adult about it.’
Did he think her odd for tackling it this way, curled up in his bed, eating breakfast she had prepared before he could wake? She hadn’t wanted to make a big deal of it, had wanted to seem sophisticated and in control of it all. But now she had reached her limits, felt the edge of despair trying to pull her down because a part of her didn’t want him to agree, didn’t want to stop this here.
‘You’re right, Sophia.’ His fingers tightened around the mug he held. ‘You’re completely right. This does need to end here and now. It’s best.’
‘Well, that’s good. I knew we could come to an agreement about it. Now, I think I’ve had enough breakfast.’ She slipped from the bed, away from him, as she made the excuse. Away from the need to curl into a desperate lump in the bed and cry her eyes out. He’d capitulated. That was what she wanted. ‘It’s time I tended to Alfie, anyway. He seemed content in his basket when I checked but he probably wants to be taken outside by now, and you’ll want a bath.’
They had shared so much, and she had realised too late that one taste of Grey—one week, one month, however long he might have kept her with him—could never be enough. That was the real fact, and Soph had managed this so-called ‘calm and sophisticated’ discussion about it with very little control to spare.
That control threatened to abandon her completely now. ‘I’ll get rid of the dishes and take care of Alfie and find some fresh clothes from my room and take a shower in the other bathroom. I can cope with a bit of water damage in there.’
It was the damage to her heart that was the problem now. Just as well she had only let herself love him a little. She backed out of the room.
Grey cursed his way through bathing and dressing. Fortunately, the water heating system was on a downstairs circuit, though a cold shower might have been a good idea. He went downstairs. The one reasonably good thing about this morning was that Soph hadn’t said that she wanted to leave him completely, though he had no idea how he would cope with her small touches and kindnesses without reaching for her. It was a hell of a tangle, and he’d let it get this way. He could have restrained himself last night.
And missed the chance to hold her, possess her?
No. He wasn’t sure he could have held back from that, not when she had been with him every step of the way.
Yet she was right. Deep inside, he knew it. It was better to stop this now, before either of them started to look for impossible things.
A helicopter arrived while he was on the phone, talking to the local authorities, finding out the extent of the flooding, which, as it turned out, was comprehensive. The worst this area had seen in a hundred years, with three separate bodies of water flooded across the main exit points in all directions.
Grey watched the helicopter land in the field near the house. Leanna and the pilot climbed out. His stepmother, incongruously, had gumboots on with what from this distance Grey guessed was probably a Chanel suit, complete with fancy hat. At another time he might have smiled at the sight. Instead, he watched her slosh across the waterlogged paddock towards the house and spoke quietly into the phone.
‘No need to worry about us.’ No need for him to share his bed with Sophia again tonight. No need to sleep with her scent close to him, to listen to the sigh of her breath and feel her warmth at his side. ‘It appears the cavalry has arrived to execute an evacuation.’
He ended the call and met Sophia’s gaze across the width of the living room. They’d done that since they’d discovered they were flooded in. Since he’d emerged from his room and found her in the kitchen, dressed in a deep red skirt and blouse with her hair gelled up in spikes. She had proceeded to act as though last night hadn’t happened or, at the least, hadn’t changed their working relationship.
They’d looked across rooms at each other and taken care not to get close. His arms hurt. His chest felt tight. As though, if he held her, it would all go away.
‘The cavalry in the form of what?’ Soph asked.
His stepmother answered Sophia’s question for him.
‘Yoo-hoo! Is anybody home?’ she called and rapped smartly on the outer door. Grey moved forward to open it.
Leanna immediately wrapped him in a hug. ‘We were all so worried when we heard about the terrible storm in this region.’ She squeezed him and stepped back. ‘Naturally, we investigated further. When we realised you wouldn’t be able to get out, we organised transport. Since I’ll be paying the largest portion for the helicopter hire, I got to
be the one to come and see you safely back to Melbourne.’ She looked concerned and relieved to find him in one piece.
‘I’ll cover the costs of the helicopter.’ Had he been so tough when they’d talked about money that they’d all felt they had to do this? He hadn’t meant to be. ‘I would have needed to organise something anyway.’
‘I don’t think you should pay, Grey dearest. The helicopter wasn’t your idea.’ She seemed discomfited but determined, and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Let me introduce our pilot, anyway. I think he wants to talk to you about the need to move on quite quickly.’
Introductions duly made, the pilot, a competent-looking man in his fifties, dipped his head. ‘It’d be best if we could leave within the next half hour. The weather is looking to close in again and I don’t want to still be here when that happens.’
‘Then we’ll pack.’ The time passed in a blur as they gathered their belongings and closed the house up as safely as they could and hustled to the helicopter.
Grey carried a travel bag on his shoulder and one in his hand, and hobbled along on a foot wrapped in three layers of plastic bags because Soph thought getting it cold and wet might be harmful to the sprain. He didn’t give a damn, but he hadn’t wanted to argue with her.
It was only as they settled into their seats that he let himself look at Soph and saw that her nerves were stretched tight. They’d brought Alfie along, of course, and Soph had him clutched in her arms. She and the rabbit both looked miserable.
‘Give him to me.’ He helped himself without waiting for Soph to agree and steeled himself not to react as their hands touched in the exchange. ‘I’ll tuck him against my jumper. It might feel a bit more secure for him.’
‘Thank you.’ She looked ready to cry and Grey’s heart clenched at the knowledge.
He settled the rabbit. It was kind of comfy to hold, really, in a blobby-scared-fur-ball sort of way. He hoped it wouldn’t choose now to break its house-trained record.
Leanna glanced at them once, and then turned her gaze to the scenery outside.
