Ally considered donning something smart but figured if she did stay the night at Caspar’s, she might as well change into what she’d need to wear tomorrow. She tucked her toothbrush and a clean pair of pants into her purse and pushed Caspar’s medal farther down with a guilty sigh. She’d pick her moment to tell him what she’d done. Ally locked the door, gathered up the two bags of perishable food and plodded up the hill.
When she stood on Caspar’s doorstep, her knuckles about to strike the wood, she paused. In all the upheaval, she’d forgotten he was pissed off about the flowers. Still, they were even now because she was pissed off about the champagne and Miss Lean Machine. She knocked on the door and jumped when it flew open. Caspar stood there with his shirt unbuttoned, his pants not done all the way up and a wary look on his face. For a moment, Ally couldn’t speak. Oh God, could I ever look at him and not feel this surge of pleasure? She took a deep breath.
“Good evening. I’m working in this area demonstrating a new business concept called Dinner Tonight. The idea is I turn up on the doorstep of a sad, deprived guy and offer to cook a fabulous meal. Of course the answer is yes.”
Caspar chuckled. “Yes.”
Ally smiled.
He took the carriers from her and went inside. Ally shrugged off her coat, slung it over the banister and followed him into the kitchen. The first thing she did was turn on the oven. As she bent, Caspar slid his hand into the gap between her pants and sweater, and traced a line with his thumb. Ally trembled.
“Fancy a glass of slightly flat but cold champagne?” he asked.
“That sounds enticing.”
Ally sighed when he removed his hand. He took the bottle from the fridge and two glasses from the cupboard. She smiled when she saw the cling film fastened around the top of the bottle with an elastic band. Ally unpacked the things she didn’t need into the fridge and laid the rest on the countertop.
Caspar handed Ally a glass. “I went all the way to Buxton and bought this for us but while I was otherwise occupied, Jane Eyre helped herself.”
“The staff these days. Give them an inch and—” Not going down that one.
“I knew her at Cambridge.”
Ally could guess what that meant. She grabbed a chopping board and attacked the onions.
Caspar sighed. “I wish you’d stayed.”
“Ah. Well, I had a hill that needed stamping up.”
He laughed. Ally grabbed a saucepan from the rack, added oil and began to sauté the onions.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
“Chop the mushrooms and boil a kettle.”
“Right.”
“I saw the trail of devastation you left,” Ally said. “I don’t know what that poor rose had done to you. Please tell me you weren’t the sort of little boy who trampled all over his mother’s flowers.”
“I was angelic.”
“Hmm. I gave the bouquet to Sean MacAlister.”
Caspar raised his eyebrows.
“I bumped into him in the bin store area. He’s living in one of the cottages. I was going to dump the flowers, but he’s obviously a great believer in recycling because he took them and gave them to Lina.”
Caspar laughed.
“You could have done that.” Ally lifted her head and looked at him. “Ripped off Mark’s lies and pretended the flowers were from you.”
“I’d never do that.”
“Good, because I wouldn’t have believed you. But I’d have liked that rose.”
Caspar moved closer and his hip nudged hers as they worked side by side. “I’m not interested in Lina Moon.”
“I’m not interested in Mark.”
“Or Sean MacAlister?”
Ally stamped her foot. “Don’t make me choose.”
When she saw the uncertainty on Caspar’s face, she backtracked. “He’s not my type. A rich and privileged superstar who doesn’t live in the real world? No thanks.” Give me a moody, impoverished masochist any day.
She added the ground beef to the onions and stirred.
“How did your ex know where to send the flowers?” Caspar asked. “I thought you said no one knew you were here.”
“I told one friend. Sadly she’s a blabbermouth. Probably the whole of London knows by now. Did Lina give you the message about tomorrow?”
“Yes. How did you wrangle that?”
“I’m coming too.”
Ally emptied the sachet of enchilada mix into a bowl, added tomato paste and poured on hot water from the kettle.
“No one else prepared to partner with me?”
Ally tipped the chopped mushrooms into the beef. “I had to fight them off with a stick.”
Caspar poured more champagne into Ally’s glass.
“Do you have a dish that can go in your oven?” she asked.
While Caspar searched, Ally added most of the sauce and half a packet of grated cheese to the meat mixture and took it off the heat.
“It smells really good,” Caspar said.
“Provided I don’t burn it, it’ll taste good too. We have to take a picnic tomorrow. Why don’t you make sandwiches and put them in the fridge while I stuff the tortillas.”
“I don’t have anything to make sandwiches.”
“I brought bread and fillings with me.”
“Ah.”
Ally looked up.
Caspar pinned her with his dark gaze. “So I’m not going to have to tie you up to keep you here tonight?”
“I dunno. That sounds interesting.” Ally’s heart did a loop-the-loop. “I thought the clothes might have given me away. These camouflage pants will be okay, won’t they?”
“I didn’t know they came in pink.”
“In case I need to blend in with a flock of flamingoes.”
He snickered.
They moved closer and closer together as they worked so that more and more of their bodies were touching. Caspar buttered bread while Ally filled the flour tortillas and arranged them in the dish. She topped the lot with the rest of the sauce and grated cheese and pushed it into the oven.
“Twenty minutes and we can eat,” she said. “Want to open the wine?”
Caspar picked up the bottle she’d brought and winced. “Are you sure Finn won’t mind?”
“Why?”
“This is at least fifty quid a bottle.”
Yikes. “I’ll sip it more slowly then.”
Caspar held the bottle in one hand, the corkscrew in the other. “Sure?”
“Yes.”
They sat on opposite sides of the table and Caspar filled their glasses.
“We nearly fucked this up before it started,” he said, staring straight at her.
“Good thing I’m sensible and mature.”
“I thought you stomped up a hill?”
Ally shrugged. “I needed a bit of exercise.”
He smiled. “You’ll get plenty of that tomorrow.”
“I was sort of hoping I’d get some tonight.”
Caspar groaned.
Ally took a drink of the wine and licked her lips. “Oh God.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t tell the difference between this and the five quid bottle we had last night. It’s wasted on me.”
“No, it’s not.” He reached across the table, took hold of her hand and stroked her palm with his thumb.
“Sorry there’s no pudding,” Ally whispered. “I was going to make a blackberry and apple crumble but I had a bit of an incident when I went to pick blackberries.”
“What happened?”
“I heard a gunshot and worried for a split second it was the person trying to kill me. Only this horrible man had shot a deer almost at my feet.”
Caspar’s grip tightened on her hand. “Where were you?”
“In the woods at the back of Finn’s place. Apparently I was trespassing. He yelled and called me a stupid woman. The bastard.”
Caspar sighed. “In his late fifties? Flat cap? Green jacket? Golden retri
ever at his side?”
Ally gave a nervous nod. “Do you know him?”
“Not well.”
Thank fuck his father wasa good shot, but Caspar’s heart gave a painful lurch when Ally told him what happened, though it worried him she was still harping on about someone trying to kill her. Thoughts about that disappeared under the pleasure of finding her there when he opened the door. Caspar had assumed there’d be no meal, no Ally, no…nothing. If she hadn’t come to him, would he have gone to her? He’d never chased after a woman in his life.
Ally put the dish on the table, the melted cheese bubbling. “Enchiladas. Do you want salad as well?”
“No, that’s fine.” Caspar wanted to eat fast and get on to the more interesting stuff.
She gave him three stuffed tortillas, took two for herself and put the dish to soak in the sink. The first mouthful hooked Caspar, the combination of flavors mouthwateringly delicious. He could almost hear his stomach saying thank you.
Ally whistled. “Good grief you eat quickly. Is that a boarding school thing?”
“Yep,” Caspar said, and watched her face fall.
“Shit. It isn’t, is it? It’s prison. Sorry.” She reached for his hand and held tight.
He took a deep breath. “I learned to eat the three meals a day at high speed, whatever they tasted like. Almost. Some things I never did stomach.” He didn’t talk about this.
“Did your parents come to see you?”
Caspar swallowed hard. “Too far. A difficult journey.”
Ally huffed. “Four years and they never visited?”
“It made them think about Jem. I don’t blame them. A friend from the embassy came regularly. He brought me extra food and clothes until he was posted elsewhere.” Ned had been his lifeline to sanity.
“Did you have your own cell?”
“No. In that respect it was like boarding school. We slept in dormitories on mattresses. I was treated no differently from anyone else except I didn’t have a wife making monthly conjugal visits.” Only his hand making nightly ones until even that had seemed too much to bear.
“Seems very liberal.”
“The prison—to be accurate—penal institution was miles out in the middle of nowhere, so they gave couples twenty-four hours in their own room.”
“Have you ever spent twenty-four hours in bed with anyone?”
He looked straight at her. “No, have you?”
She gave him a cock-lifting grin. “No, but I‘d like to try.”
Caspar growled. “Not fair to tell me that when we have to get up at the crack of dawn.”
“Better get an early night and go straight to sleep.” Ally got to her feet. “I’ll just wash—”
Caspar grabbed her arm. “Leave them.”
“You’re not going to drag me outside and show me the moon?”
“No, I’m going to drag you upstairs and show you my cock.”
Ally laughed. “I’ve already seen it.”
“So you have.”
Caspar pulled her around so they stood toe to toe and then rested his hands on her shoulders. Ally slipped a hand up his chest, flattening her palm over his heart. He felt the jump in the rhythm and smiled. She turned her hand and moved it down until her fingers were curled around his balls, her palm lying on his erection. One squeeze and Caspar gave a noisy exhalation. She rubbed and pressed and teased until he groaned. When she trailed her fingertip down his zipper, his hips bucked into her.
He wanted her here, right now, on this spot in the kitchen. He didn’t want to waste a moment dashing upstairs. Oh God. Caspar needed Ally to take charge before he did something stupid.
“We can undress on the way,” she whispered, and tugged him by his waistband toward the door. “First one naked gets to go on top.”
Caspar laughed. “And I’m supposed to care either way?”
“Okay. First one naked—”
“Will be me. I’ll give you a hand.”
He yanked his shirt free and began unfastening his buttons while Ally tried to pull her sweater over her head. Halfway across the hall, she bent to— Well, he didn’t know why the hell she’d leaned over, but it was a dangerous thing to do.
“No waving your butt in my face until we get into the bedroom,” Caspar said with a growl.
His shirt flew somewhere and he almost fell trying to get his shoes off. Oh right, that’s what she was doing. His brain focused on only one thing. Caspar had already popped the button on her pink pants, his cock had managed the same feat on his pants. They had their hands on each other’s zipper and tumbled onto the stairs as they tussled.
“Socks off.” Ally slid down to grab one of his feet.
As her fingers massaged his toes, Caspar whimpered. He rested on his side and watched her tugging at his pants. Her tight t-shirt hugged her breasts, the outline of her nipples pressing against it. One lustful groan from her and a burst of pre-cum wet his boxers. His other sock came off and so did his chinos. He sprawled on his back as she clambered up the stairs and over his body to straddle him.
Caspar slid his hands onto her t-shirt and wrapped them around her breasts.
“34B,” he said.
Ally gaped and then laughed. “That shouldn’t impress me but it does.”
He dropped his hands to her hips and tugged at her pants. “Help me here.”
Another tussle and she lay on top of him minus pants. Caspar had his hands planted on her beautiful butt, a strip of black lace between his skin and hers, and he wasn’t sure he could remember how to breathe. Didn’t matter. He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe.
She peeled her t-shirt over her head and threw it away. Black lace bra to match the panties, and Caspar’s mouth watered. Her skin was firm and toned, except— “What?” he blurted as he looked at her arms. And legs.
“The train. From when I fell,” Ally said. “Sorry.”
Caspar clutched her. “Don’t be fucking sorry. It’s not your fault.” A collision with a train or a shove by an abusive boyfriend? He wished she’d open up to him.
“Looks bad but doesn’t hurt anymore. You don’t need to be gentle.”
If the sight of her almost naked wasn’t enough to drive his cock and balls into a frenzy, those final words were. Caspar scooped her wriggling body over his shoulder and carried her into his bedroom. He flicked on the wall light as he passed and threw her on the bed.
Ally bounced and fell off.
Chapter Twelve
“Oh fuck.” Caspar leapt to help her up. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
Ally flopped facedown onto the mattress. “Oww, my butt. You’ll have to kiss it better.” She looked over her shoulder and pouted. “You’ll have to kiss all of me better.”
As if he’d find that a hardship. Caspar lay alongside her and licked her ear.
Ally moaned. “Before we lose our minds, put your alarm on so we’re not late tomorrow.”
“I don’t have one.”
Ally turned her head to look at him.
“I’ve never had anything to get up for.”
“There’s not an alarm on your phone?” she asked.
“That piece of crap? It’s a miracle it receives calls.”
“I’ll go and get mine.”
“Please tell me it’s downstairs and not back at Finn’s.”
Ally laughed. “Back in a sec.” She rolled off the bed and walked to the door.
“Don’t fall down the stairs,” Caspar shouted. “Don’t talk to any strangers. Don’t accept a lift from one either.”
He felt as if he’d been waiting all his life for this one moment, which was crazy. He’d lost count of the women he’d slept with—no, fucked. He hadn’t slept with any of them, except for a brief post-coital snooze if he’d been energetic. He’d never relaxed enough to fall into a deep sleep. Not that he ever slept deeply.
“I’m back,” Ally said in the doorway. “Miss me?”
Yes. “Who are you again?”
She ro
lled her eyes and sat with her back toward him as she pressed buttons on her phone. “Six thirty okay?”
“Mmm.”
Caspar knelt behind her, his knees pinning her hips. He took her phone from her hand and put it on the box of books that served as a bedside table. Wrapping his palms over her shoulders, Caspar slid his hands down her slender arms until his large hands blanketed her small ones.
He nuzzled her neck. “You smell good.”
Ally flipped their hands and pulled them to her breasts. Caspar’s cock discovered another degree of hardness, another level of desperation. He could feel control slipping through his fingers and he was shocked. This wasn’t him.
While he kissed and licked and nipped Ally’s back, he caressed her hands as they covered her breasts, threading his fingers through hers, squeezing and brushing her nipples. Ally’s choppy breathing matched his. When he unfastened the clasp of her bra with his teeth, she shook as she laughed. “Mr. Smooth.”
Except he’d never done that before.
Caspar pulled the lace free from her body and rested his chin on her shoulder. He held her breasts, her fingers now resting on top of his. His cock twitched in impatience and heat pooled low in his belly.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
She reached over her shoulders to loop her hands around his neck and tipped her head back so their lips met. The kiss electrified Caspar, his veins transferring sizzling current to every part of his body. The feel of her tongue riding his, the pressure of her sweet mouth on his as she arched back against him sent Caspar’s head spinning into bliss. If he’d thought their kiss under the stars was the best, this proved him wrong and he knew, deep down, that every kiss with Ally would be more perfect than the last.
They twisted on the bed until Caspar lay on his back with Ally above, her hands resting on either side of his head and her knees on either side of his hips. His cock had tented his boxers into a wet peak. The thin layer of cotton wouldn’t save him from eruption.
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