Richter throwing a major tantrum at the newsagents on Friday,” she confided in a low voice. “Rajid asked for ID, and Klaus went mental! Here, look.”
As Hannah watched the video, her eyes grew wide. “Did you post this?”
“No! Are you crazy? If Klaus – or Sasha! – found out, I’d lose my job. Klaus is very important in the fashion world.”
“But he treated Rajid horribly…and he’s a racist git.” Hannah leaned forward. “Hols, you have to post this. Offer the story to the tabloids, make yourself a bit of money—”
“No! If I go to the tabs, everyone including Klaus will know I took that video, and I’ll be sacked.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Just say you want to be a – what do you call it? –an unnamed source,” Hannah said.
Holly shook her head firmly. “I can’t take the chance. My job means too much to me.”
“Send me the video,” Hannah offered. “I’ll post it, and no one need know you had anything to do with it. Come on! What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Losing my job, that’s what. I’m not at home any more. I have to pay rent, not to mention buy groceries—”
Hannah snorted. “You eat nothing but salad and veg…a head of lettuce can’t cost that much. And even if you lost your job, you could always come back home.”
“No thanks!” Holly said, and shuddered. “I like being on my own. And I like my career as well, thank you very much.”
“So you won’t do it? You won’t expose this guy’s racist behaviour to the world?”
“No. I’m staying well out of it. Now let’s order, I’m starving. Split some chips with me?”
Hannah nodded, distracted. The minute Holly went to the loo, she’d grab her mobile and forward the video to her own phone. And tonight, she’d upload it straight onto YouTube.
After all, Hannah reasoned, she was doing the right thing for Rajid and his father. Holly would thank her. Eventually.
“You never said you could cook like this,” Natalie told Rhys that evening, as she squeezed lemon juice on her scallops.
Rhys dished out a generous portion of asparagus risotto onto her plate. “You never asked.”
The scallops melted in her mouth, buttery and sweet. She closed her eyes. “This is really, really good.”
He poured her a glass of Sancerre and sat down across from her. “I thought white was safer than red, in the event you decided to toss your glass at me.”
“You’ll never let me forget that, will you?” she demanded, indignant.
“Certainly not. I lost a perfectly good shirt to you that night. Not to mention a shoe.”
“That’s it – I’m buying you a shirt and a new pair of shoes. I should have done, anyway.”
“You’re on a budget. You can’t afford it.” He lifted his brow. “Besides, I have twelve other shirts just like it. I hardly need another. And I didn’t like those shoes, anyway.”
“You’re impossible to please, you know that.”
“I may be impossible,” he conceded as he set aside his glass and leaned forward to take her hand in his, “but I’m not impossible to please.” He turned her palm up and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.
A shiver of desire shot through her at the touch of his lips on her skin. Suddenly any clever remarks – or any remarks at all, for that matter – went straight out of her head.
Rhys glanced at her. Spending the day in the sun and wind on the motorbike had put a bloom of colour on Natalie’s cheeks and left her hair tousled and messy.
“Riding on the back of a motorbike suits you,” he said, his lips moving against her skin. “We should do it more often.”
“Rhys,” Natalie murmured as his lips moved slowly along the inside of her forearm, inch by delicious inch, “I wasn’t quite finished with my risotto…”
He stood and pulled Natalie to her feet as he wrapped his arms around her. “You are now.” His mouth came down on hers.
She gave herself over to the taste and feel and sheer physicality of him – the muscled length of his arms, the heat of his body against hers, the thick softness of his hair beneath her fingers. He smelled of a heady mix of soap and the outdoors, fresh and very, very masculine.
As his lips moved down the column of her neck to her throat, leaving a wet trail of heat, Natalie groaned.
“I want you,” she breathed, “now…”
He undid the top buttons of her shirt with agonising slowness, until her lacy black bra was revealed. “I want to make love to you properly, on sheets with an indecently high thread count, and I intend to take my time doing it.”
Natalie’s hands slid over his shoulders and down the muscled length of his torso. “I can’t wait,” she said huskily against his mouth, and reached down to unclasp his belt.
He stayed her hand. “I don’t want our first time to be on the kitchen floor.”
“I don’t care where it is.” She put her hands on either side of his face and crushed her mouth against his.
He picked her up and carried her into his bedroom. “You’re very impatient, Miss Dashwood,” he said, his blue eyes fixed on hers as he lowered her onto his bed. “I had no idea you were so demanding.”
“I hope you’re worth the wait, Mr. Gordon.”
“Oh, I am,” he promised, and hooked his fingers on either side of her jeans and slid them slowly, teasingly, down the length of her legs.
Natalie kicked them off and reached behind her to unclasp her bra. Rhys’s mouth collided with hers, demanding and receiving and giving all at once. When he lifted his lips from hers and devoured his way down her neck to her breasts, she let out a low whimper.
Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair as his tongue laved first one nipple with wet heat, then the other.
“I’ve wanted this since the night of that bloody party,” he growled. “I don’t know how I resisted you.”
“Lots of very long, very cold showers,” Natalie murmured, her skin tingling as his mouth began to move lower, down her stomach. “You…told me so yourself.”
“Do shut up, darling.”
Natalie clutched at the sheets as his lips and tongue moved slowly, oh so slowly, along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, closer and closer to her most sensitive centre…
“If you want me to shut up,” Natalie breathed, desperate with desire for him, “then you’d better make it good…”
And he proceeded,
