Kiss Me on This Cold December Night Read online

  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 from post-shag euphoria that it overshadowed the more sensible part of her that couldn’t believe what she’d gone and done, giving in to impulse over sense. Well, done it she had, and the only option she had now was damage limitation. Communicate a don’t-care attitude and make it clear this wasn’t going to lead any further than it had five years earlier.

  ‘Don’t be getting any ideas,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at his obvious inability to take his eyes off her. ‘I might have let myself get sucked into your whole ‘loophole’ argument. But hey, it’s Christmas right? I figure I’m allowed a little fun. You could be gone as soon as tomorrow. This is never going to be more than a day or two. So…’ she took a deep breath, stood up, looked down at his amused expression ‘…same as last time. No looking forward or back. This is only ever going to be a fling. No strings, no thinking outside the moment. We enjoy it while it lasts and when it’s done, we go our separate ways.’

  She smiled into his gorgeous grey eyes and invested everything she had in the guard she’d honed to perfection over the years. She wasn’t about to lose her heart to him. Not when she’d just about managed to hang onto it the first time. She was even stronger this time around, she was prepared. She’d built herself a career, a future, that didn’t rely on anyone else and which therefore couldn’t be lost or messed with. She wouldn’t be giving up any of that on a whim.

  ‘Deal?’ she prompted.

  Tom leaned forward and grabbed her around the waist, sweeping her into an arc over his body until she was lying on her back on the messed-up bed, and he began to unravel the sheet from her body inch by delicious inch.

  ‘Deal,’ he said. What else would he say? What else could this ever be? In the New Year he’d be taking on further responsibility, another step in his life plan, no room for impetuousness or rash decisions – he had people relying on him. What the hell else could he do – tell his sick father to stuff it, that the medical practice would have to manage for the first time in fifty years without a Henley at the helm because he wanted to jet out to warzones and charity work?

  Just like last time, all she wanted from this was a fling. And just like last time, that was all he had to give.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The vibration of his phone brought Tom round and he automatically reach
ed out to grab it from its customary spot on the bedside table without even really waking up. One semi-conscious hand closed over it just as he leaned a smidge too far and then there was a disorientating jerk as he managed to stop himself falling out of bed at the last moment by slamming a hand and foot out onto the floor.

  Why the fuck was the bed so tiny?

  No sun streaming in through billowing muslin curtains across the glass door that led out to the verandah. Instead the room was shrouded in the semi-darkness of a dawn in winter, in London. It thudded into his sleep-fuzzed brain then in one big tumble and his eyes widened in shock.

  Grounded flight at Gatwick. Bonkers British weather. Lavington Hotel.

  Except when he stayed at the Lavington the room was always one of their best suites and the bed was always a king-size. He turned over as best he could on the foot-wide chunk of single bed that was available, and there she was. His stomach gave a crazy flip at the sight of her.

  She’d been curled up against his back like a child, hogging at least two-thirds of the narrow bed. The sheet was bunched up around her waist, revealing the long slender legs that made his pulse race just by looking at them. The soft swell of her breasts was visible above a twist of sheet that she clutched to her chest and her light brown hair fell softly against her cheek. No wonder the bridge between sleeping and waking had seemed blurred. She really was the stuff of dreams.

  Somewhere in the small hours they’d finally fallen asleep after screwing every ounce of energy out of each other. And for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he felt alive. He reached out to stroke her cheek, just for some confirmation that she was actually real and not some figment of his imagination. Her skin was cool satin. She shifted slightly in her sleep and he moved off the bed as gently as he could so as not to wake her.

  His mind shifted back to the previous night. Her crazy rules. Live in the moment, no regrets.

  The impulsiveness of being with her was intoxicating, a soothing antidote to what had become his suffocating, stifling life. It felt like sweet freedom, and he wanted to savour every second of that, because he knew it couldn’t last.

  He moved away from the bed, and went into the tiny ensuite to check his phone. A voicemail message from his mother in Barbados (‘…when are you arriving, Darling? Everyone’s been asking after you…’) The age-old sense of responsibility tugged at him. Under normal circumstances that message would have brought a surge of exasperation at the unexpected delay, anger even that he was letting everyone down.

  He checked the weather app on the phone, all ready to see the tiny snow icon that had dominated the wretched thing the day before. He frowned. No sign of the blanket fog lifting but there was no more snow on the way for now, and that meant the airports would be back in action pretty soon, right?

  The information should have had him jumping for joy. So why the hell was he closing the app down with a sinking sensation of disappointment coursing through him?

  He moved back out of the bathroom and glanced across the room at her, shoving the disappointment aside. This was a fling. It couldn’t be more. She didn’t want it to be more, he couldn’t give more. They’d made the situation clear the previous day. They barely knew each other beyond the physical, hardly enough to base even the most short-term future on.

  He could cross the room right now, slide his hands under the sheet, pull her against him and pick up right where they’d left off. That would be all she expected, those were the parameters they’d agreed to.

  Instead, he found himself picking his way quietly around the room, collecting up his clothes and trying not to trip over her insane mass of belongings. She didn’t stir in the semi-darkness, and he didn’t expect her to since it was still too early for winter light to brighten the room, but he let the door snick shut quietly just in case.

  ****

  The cold silver of winter morning gave the room a muted light that woke her up slowly. The usual second of disorientation that always happens when you stay somewhere new for the first time kicked in. It wasn’t something that had ever bothered Ella. Moving around so much for craft fairs and just her itchy-footed desire to keep moving before things went tits-up meant she was used to adapting quickly to new places. Travelling heavy helped of course. She sometimes wondered what it said about someone that everything in their life with sentimental attachment could be squashed into a couple of suitcases.

  Tom slipped back into her mind on the back of that second when she found her bearings, just the way he had done every morning at first after she’d left five years ago. How long had thoughts of him persisted? Not long. She was good at bricking things up in her mind, was a past master at it in fact. Crushing of memories combined with telling herself it hadn’t been all that. A tried and tested self-preservation exercise.

  He wasn’t here.

  The bedroom was a pigsty, clothes and half-unpacked belonging all over the place, where she’d never got around to putting them away since he’d come back to her room, after that interim goodbye that neither of them had been able to stick to. Not a single item belonging to him fell into her sightline.

  She threw the sheet back and crossed to few paces to the small en suite. The shower unit was bone dry. It was as if he’d never been here at all, as if he’d disappeared.

  Which, her fully-awake mind now insisted, was clearly the point.

  Now she knew what yesterday had been about for him, why he’d pursued her so insistently until she agreed to first coffee, then dinner, then bed. After the delicious night they’d spent together it turned out that it had all been about closure. She’d walked out on him five years ago, leaving him hanging. For Pete’s sake he’d even told her openly last night that she was the only person ever to do that to him. It had been all about taking back control, reclaiming the upper hand. And what a fool she’d been for thinking it could possibly have been about anything else. This was her life after all, he was only doing the inevitable. It seemed everyone she ever came across had an exit strategy from her life. There was something about her, something intangible that she’d never been able to identify, that put people off, that put their teeth on edge, like running fingernails down a blackboard. Unable to work out what it was, her only option had been to stop people mattering so it wouldn’t hurt when they made the inevitable exit.

  She’d got in first last time and the no-second-time rule would have meant she left it at that. But no, she had to meddle with it, didn’t she?

  The sick feeling of disappointment in the pit of her stomach was only matched by the anger she felt at herself for making the same mistake she’d made so many times before.

  ****

  Back to Plan A, from which she should never have deviated.

  Half an hour later and she was showered and dressed, ready to head out. The whole point of the weekend had been to Christmas shop, not that she had a shedload of people to buy for, but there were lots of Christmas markets to check out, full of crafts and gift stalls, and even if she didn’t have a big shopping list, she could look for some inspiration for her own jewellery designs. Perhaps next year she might be able to take a stall here instead of doing the usual waitressing. In a few years time she might even be able to drop the backup waitressing work altogether. The only area of her life with any long-term plan was her work and she refocused her mind on it, hard.

  The brief double-tap at the door came just as she was ready to leave and she opened it, assuming it would be housekeeping wanting to service the room. Not one tiny speck of her thought it could possibly be Tom. That’s how resigned to this kind of thing she’d become. She’d learned not to hope because there never was hope.

  The gorgeous lopsided smile on his face as he leaned casually against the jamb melted away when he took in the expression on her face and the fact she was wearing an outdoor coat.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He stood up straight. She floundered for a grasp on the situation and went with her original plan. OK so he might not have disap
peared under cover of darkness, but reality had still bitten. She should never have let things get this far. She’d been swept up in the magic of Christmas and fun excitement and she’d taken her eye off the ball. And that led to nothing but trouble, and down the line, hurt.

  ‘What I came for,’ she said, winding her scarf around her neck to make a point, although the temperature inside the room was tropical. ‘I’m going shopping. Christmas lights on Oxford Street. What’s the point of coming here if I don’t go and look at them?’

  He stared at her with a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘Did I miss something?’ he said.

  ‘Your flight, maybe?’ she said, picking up her enormous tote bag from the luggage rack beside the door and hefting it over one shoulder.

  There was a sudden movement behind him and she looked up to see him step aside to let a skinny hotel porter through the door, pushing an enormous silver trolley in front of him that was groaning under the weight of silver platters, plates and cutlery. He glanced between them, Tom still waiting to be invited in and herself in her coat and scarf.

  ‘Room Service?’ he said doubtfully.

  She locked confused, questioning eyes with Tom’s mellow gaze.

  ‘Full English breakfast, selection of pastries, toast and preserves, coffee, tea, muesli and selection of fruit…’ the porter’s voice trailed off as neither of them acknowledged him ‘…for two?’

  A pause, and then Tom said, ‘I ordered a selection. I wasn’t sure what you’d like.’

  Her mind reeled and heat began to work its way slowly up her neck to burn in her cheeks.

  ‘You ordered breakfast,’ she said, as if saying it out loud might make it seem more believable. She could hear the surprise in her own voice. Far from hightailing it out of her life without so much as a word, he’d ordered half the dining room to be carted up to her bedroom.