gave her a wink and took her right back to their first conversation and straight back to when all they had been was sex. Freya stood there, her dress damp from his freshly showered body, and she tasted him as she licked her lips. She was unsure what to do as Zack carried on the conversation and she could actually see the tension in his back as he tried to keep his patience as he spoke with his mum.
‘Alice has a right to have a life...it’s been ten years,’ Zack said. ‘She’s allowed to go out on his anniversary. We don’t have to sit behind the curtains to grieve.’
Oh, God, it was the anniversary of his brother’s death, Freya realised as he spoke on.
On top of it all he was dealing with that today.
He went over and got out another glass and went to pour her some wine from an open bottle.
Freya shook her head and he held up some water and she nodded.
‘Why don’t we at least try it tomorrow?’ Zack said. ‘It’s all set up and we can speak face to face wherever I am in the world.’
He gave Freya a smile that said, thank God he wasn’t video chatting with his parents today, because the towel was lifting and Freya, who hadn’t properly smiled in a long time, found that she was.
He put ice and lemon in her water and then, while dealing with this very difficult conversation, he came over and placed it down on the desk. And there was one little problem, Freya realised.
Well, there were many, many problems, but he thought she was there for sex and the sight of him naked and a taste of his tongue, and, as his hand slid around her waist, she was turned on.
Okay, sex tonight, and she’d tell him tomorrow, Freya thought, and she stood.
Or, should she just write ‘I’M PREGNANT’ on the little hotel pad now and pass him a note?
Zack was just finishing up the conversation as his fingers worked her breasts. Her thick nipples told him she was just on the edge of getting her period and he loved the intensity of a woman’s orgasm then.
He turned off the phone and was just so relieved that call was over and especially that she was here and his response told her so.
This kiss was as fierce as their first. It was actually more so because it toppled her back onto the bed.
‘Freya.’ He said it like a moan. He was kissing her face, her mouth, her ears and just pressing her into the bed. Her legs were over the edge and he was roughly parting them and just tearing at her knickers but Freya was hungrily kissing him back.
She was holding his face just to keep it still enough for her mouth and then she gave in and held onto his shoulders as Zack seared inside.
His feet were on the floor and his elbows were each side of her head.
He thrust in hard and the friction they generated meant neither would last. Her legs wrapped around him as all the hurts of past weeks were gathered into an intense peak.
Freya came, a beat before he did, and it was a come so deep that it demanded him now and Zack spilled into her.
‘God, but I needed you tonight.’ He really did, so much so that he had been planning to head to Freya’s because living like this wasn’t working. ‘What made you change your mind and come over?’
He saw her rapid blink.
‘Freya?’
‘I came here to talk to you...’
‘What?’
He replayed the events and Zack pulled out and got up and whipped a towel around his hips and looked at her as she pulled down her dress.
‘I didn’t force you?’
‘Zack,’ Freya said, ‘I might not have come with the intention of sex but I was a very willing participant.’
‘But you came here to talk?’
‘Yes.’
He was still going over it in his head. ‘For a moment there I thought...’
‘Thought what?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Zack said. ‘What did you want to talk about?’
‘I’m pregnant.’ It came out faster than she’d intended.
It just came out.
He hadn’t had even a hint that she was and there was no lead in, no warning, she just hit him right with it.
‘You choose your moments, don’t you?’ Zack said.
‘I thought I’d tell you when you weren’t working...’
‘I lost a six-week-old today, I’ve got my parents on the phone, crying about St Toby and all the grandchildren they haven’t got. Should I ring them back and tell them I’m going to be a father?’ He went on, ‘But do you know what, Freya? I wouldn’t do that to them on a day like today!’
‘I didn’t know it was the anniversary of your brother,’ Freya said. ‘We don’t know enough about each other to do specific dates.’
‘I lost a six-week-old today!’ Zack said. ‘How’s that for a specific day because his parents will remember it for ever!’
‘Zack?’
‘You know for a moment there, I thought...’
‘What?’
He shook his head. He had honestly, for a moment there, thought that Freya had got him.
That the woman he had first met had come to his room and that they were back to the beginning but with history and understanding now.
That maybe, just maybe he’d met someone who things might work out with, but he had only just been starting to think like that and now Freya had her voice on.
‘Now, I know it’s a lot to take in, Zack, but—’
‘Don’t do your psychologist voice with me,’ he warned. ‘Don’t tell me it’s a major life-changing event, but that soon I’ll—’
‘It doesn’t have to mean a major life change.’
He looked at her.
‘Er...do I have a say here?’ Zack checked, but there was still a warning note to his voice. Was she popping by to tell him she was on her way to get a termination?
‘That’s why I’m here, Zack.’
‘Stop calling me Zack in that voice,’ he hissed. Freya was using her patient and reasonable and very together voice and it was driving him insane.
‘I’m not having a termination.’
Zack looked at her as she told him how things would be, as Freya, because it was Freya,
