then, out of nowhere, he announced, ‘This isn’t working.’
Every minor rejection she’d ever had in her life congealed into an aching ball midway down her chest.
Of course he wasn’t actually interested, she jeered at herself. Why would he be?
She reached for the edges of a blouse she no longer wore to pull them over her lace-covered breasts. But before she could do more than half shrivel at the finality of his tone, Harry pulled her to her feet, exchanged positions and then drew her back down with him.
On him.
She had no choice but to straddle his hips.
Oh … right!
Power surged through her as she stretched astride all that hard bare flesh, his eyes and hands roaming all over her torso, and then fell forward to pick up the kissing where they’d left off.
‘You’re very good at this,’ she breathed as he sucked torturously on her ear lobe.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured against her neck.
Not quite ‘ditto’ but infinitely better than ‘practice makes perfect’ and so she’d take it.
The kissing went on for hours. Surely hours must have passed, possibly days. London might have sunk away into the Thames and been rebuilt on stilts while they were kissing.
‘Iz, maybe we should slow it down a bit?’
His voice sounded pained and it occurred to her that maybe he was in physical discomfort. Certainly he had reason to be. She ground her pelvis against him in sympathy and whatever he’d been about to say next turned into an unintelligible gargle.
She’d done it to torture him, but all it did was add a burning kind of need to the pressure ache already resident between her own legs. As she repositioned herself more comfortably on him, she thought about her half handful of post-school partners, who’d ranged from eager but inexperienced to accomplished but in it for themselves. Yet, here she was closer to completion with a virtual stranger faster and more surely than any of them had ever inspired.
And in the next heartbeat, she decided how very much she wanted to see if Harry Mitchell was everything he thought he was.
And the decision was liberating.
‘We’re not stopping,’ she announced between heavy breaths.
Harry’s eyes blazed hot and dark back up at her. ‘Okay.’
Her hands reached behind her but paused at the snaps to one of Agent Provocateur’s most artful and clever lingerie pieces. ‘And you’re spending the night.’
‘Roger.’
Izzy took a breath, knowing what would happen to her slight cleavage the moment she removed the magic suspension. Knowing disappointment would probably stain Harry’s hot gaze when he saw he’d been taken in by false advertising. But this was a one-night stand and he was getting laid and—PS—she didn’t owe him anything. Least of all pendulous breasts.
She flicked the bra free. ‘And you’re going to show me whether you’re worth all your own hype.’
The devil grinned back at her and, bless him, if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed to hers even though a pair of boobs was now on offer. Secret points for that.
‘Abso-frigging-lutely.’
Izzy pressed up on her knees slightly and then reached down between them, fussing at his belt.
‘Look at that,’ she purred. ‘Something we finally agree on.’
IZZY STARED AT the broad, tan back just an inch from her nose and totally got why people would do the legendary walk of shame after a one-night stand. It was all well and good in the heat and hormones of the moment with a virtual stranger, but in the cold hard light of morning it was just plain …
Awkward.
Some time in the night she’d slipped from her exhausted slump across Harry’s chest down between him and the wall. That made it impossible to get out of her small bed without clambering over him, naked and undignified, and tumbling off the other side. And the ornate foot of the tiny bed made sliding out feet-first just as problematic.
Entombed between plaster and hot male body.
Radiating male body. The longer she lay here, the more like a sauna her bed was feeling. Who needed central heating with Harry around?
She could wake him, but she wasn’t at all comfortable about him seeing her body—especially her least favourite bits—in the full light of morning. Not that the tiny boxroom window let in much light at all but it was certainly brighter than the steamy dark they’d shared last night.
So then … what? Lie here, clenching her bladder until Prince Harry, there, deigned to wake?
Screw that.
Izzy arched off the bed and reached one hand beneath herself, grasping the edge of her pretty duvet—king-sized on account of her old bed—then she begged her abdominal muscles to cooperate and pushed up into a sitting position, dragging the covers up with her.
Cool morning air rushed in behind her.
Clambering over Harry’s legs wasn’t quite as confronting as his hips and she twisted left—taking great care to keep the duvet between them—and half crawled, half rolled over his calves, her eyes firmly closed as she robbed him of covers.
She only opened them when the timber floor was beneath her feet and escape was in front of her.
‘Elegant,’ a sleep-thick voice rumbled from behind.
Busted.
‘You sleep like the dead,’ she muttered back over her shoulder, tugging on the pyjama bottoms that had tumbled to the floor from under her pillow with all the on-bed activity.
‘I wasn’t asleep. And you didn’t even try to wake me.’
‘I’ve been lying there, legs crossed, for eternity. You could have let on you were awake.’
It was clumsy but she managed to get her PJ top on, too, beneath the downy protection of her covers.
‘And miss the Cirque du Soleil dismount?’
She had landed with quite a flourish. She threw back her duvet and only turned back when she felt certain it would have fluttered down onto Harry sufficient for everyone’s modesty.
He tugged it back up around him for warmth. But the move looked too easy, as if he was settling in for a long stay. The rest of her squeezed up as tight as her bladder.
‘Do you want first run at the bathroom?’
