by Ruthie Knox
Chapter Nine
Cath got off the train at Canary Wharf, impulsively deciding just before the doors closed that she needed cookies. The Marks & Spencer at the mall attached to the station had these chocolate-orange ones she loved, and it had been a cookies-for-dinner kind of day.
It was all City’s fault. She couldn’t get him out of her head. Bad enough that she’d gone over there last night, but this morning she’d looked for him at the park on her run and had been disappointed when she didn’t see him. She’d thought about him in the shower, and things had steamed up so fast in there, she’d had to use her fingers to get some relief.
She’d lingered over her breakfast, telling herself she needed extra cereal and orange juice for what was bound to be a long day when really she was stalling so that she’d be on the train City always took.
Then he wasn’t at the station.
All day at work, she’d been distracted by thoughts of how his eyes crinkled up when he smiled, the feel of his hands on her hips, gripping her tight as he moved between her thighs.
She recognized the signs. This was Classic Cath Mooning Behavior, and she knew she’d suffer for it like she always did. Sure, Nev seemed wonderful now, but he’d turn out to be a jerk or boring or stupid or mean. He’d turn out to have a secret drug habit or to need a quick loan. He’d turn out to have a thing for blondes with big tits or two women at a time. He’d turn out to have a thing for guys.
He’d turn out not to have a thing for her.
She’d done this before, over and over and over again. She had no judgment when it came to men. Mom had considered her a bit of a hoochie, but the truth was that Cath always opened her heart when she opened her legs. She just had this unfortunate tendency to fall for guys too soon—long before she knew their secret flaws or had any reason to trust them. No doubt some women had one-night stands simply because they loved sex. Cath had them because she loved men. Two beers and two hours with some dark-eyed, lyrical stranger, and she was ready to be his good-time gal for the long haul. Until she woke up the next morning and discovered his apartment smelled like overripe kitty litter and there was a note on the fridge from his mother reminding him to buy groceries.
It was why she’d told herself to be glad when she left Nev’s place Saturday morning, the reason she’d congratulated herself for turning down his lunch offer and his dinner offer and his offer to walk her home yesterday afternoon and his request for her phone number. Finally, she’d learned something from her mistakes.
Not so much.
Because even knowing better, she’d gone and rationalized her way into sleeping with him again, convincing herself in the wee hours of the night that sex was sex, and she could totally have sex with City without letting it affect any other aspect of her life. She would compartmentalize him. Work would be work, City would be City, and never the twain would meet. They wouldn’t date. They wouldn’t share their feelings. They’d just have lots of really fabulous sex.
Rationalizing the sex was Stage Two of the Classic Cath Mooning Pattern. What she always managed to forget was that Stage Three immediately followed: infatuation. And she was in Stage Three now, big time.
Cath found the cookies and plucked a package off the shelf with a sigh. Maybe it was just her destiny to make bad choices about men. She wanted to be different. She was trying. But it was written in the stars.
Or not. Either way, even she couldn’t kid herself into believing she’d be spending tonight alone. Wild horses couldn’t keep her from knocking on Nev’s door in a few hours.
She was standing by the checkout, trying to decide whether Hello! or OK! magazine would make a better accompaniment to the cookies in the meantime, when she heard him.
“Tell me that’s not your dinner, Mary Catherine.”
Her arms broke out in goose bumps at the sound of his voice. Seriously, goose bumps. She was a junkie for this guy. It was humiliating.
“You want me to lie to you, City?”
Because she so badly wanted to look at him, she made herself wait. She placed her cookies on the checkout belt and started digging through her purse for a few pound coins. In her peripheral vision, she peeked at what he was buying. His basket was full of vegetables, eggs, bread, tomatoes. He was going to make something healthy.
She wondered if this was where he usually bought his groceries. It was the most convenient option for commuters—a quick hop off the train and then back on again—but too expensive for Cath. She used it strictly as a cookie stop and made the trip to the dodgy Tesco in Lewisham once a week for her real food.
“No, I want you to eat properly.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to have some milk with them.” She did look at him then, just a glance over her shoulder. Enough to see the dimple, the green eyes, the charcoal pin-striped suit with a red tie. Her favorite banker.
She started running her mouth so she wouldn’t have to deal with her runaway emotions. “The best part is, they won’t even make me fat.” She handed her money to the cashier. “We Talaricos are a short, scrawny crowd, genetically incapable of gaining weight. My dad was pint-sized. It worked for him, though. He looked like a young Frank Sinatra, with these big blue eyes and a smile that had the ladies practically throwing their panties at him. At least, that’s what Mom always said. It’s kind of hard to imagine anyone throwing panties at your own father.” After accepting her change, she tossed her purchase in a bag and finally turned around to face him.
It really wasn’t fair. He had to be the only man alive who was always more attractive in the flesh than in the imagination, and he was giving her a look. She’d seen that look before. They’d both been naked at the time and he’d been … mmm. Her goose bumps got goose bumps.
“Let me make you dinner.”
How many times in her life had a man offered to cook dinner for her? With vegetables, even? Zero, that was how many.
No dates, she reminded herself. No emotions. Just sex. But it was hard to remember why when he was standing in front of her being all sexy and friendly and sexy.
The obvious solution was to refuse to look at him. She kept her eyes on the floor while he packed his groceries into a bag and thanked the cashier.
Then he touched her, a light caress of his hand at her waist that flipped her ON switch and started her whole body vibrating. “Mary Catherine?”
“No.” Just don’t look up. “I can’t. No.”
He tipped her chin up with one finger, forcing her to meet his eyes. A slow smile spread over his face, devastating her defenses. “If I didn’t know better, I’d begin to think you don’t like me.”
“Who says I like you?” But the question didn’t come out as ballsy as she wanted it to, not when he was close enough to make her skin itch.
He chuckled. “How many times did you come last night?” he asked in a low voice.
Three. “I’m not answering that question.”
“You don’t have to. I remember every one. You like me fine.”
She turned and headed back out to the platform, City at her heels. Just how long would she have to keep turning him down before he stopped asking? Not long, she hoped, because turning him down wasn’t getting any easier.
The train pulled up as they arrived. It was rush-hour crowded, and she ended up pushed against the plastic wall in front of the first row of seats, City directly in front of her. Great.
He was close enough that she could smell him, the delicious blend of pepper and cedar and man that did something a little crazy to her body, a sort of jungle-drums-pounding-in-her-blood thing that was hard to ignore. She kept her eyes fixed on his chest, which didn’t really help because it was a very nice chest in a very nice suit, and she knew exactly what it would feel like under her fingertips.
Time to look somewhere else.
She raised her eyes to the hollow of his throat, the stubble on his jaw a shade darker than the blond of his hair. She had marks on her inner thighs from that stubble.
Look somewhere e
lse.
His mouth. Bad choice. Oh, the things he could do with that mouth. She wanted him to kiss her so bad she could hardly think. Hell, she wanted him to jump her right here on the train.
This wasn’t infatuation. This was obsession.
They hit a bumpy section of track, and Nev pressed full-length against her for a moment—not altogether accidentally, she suspected. It wasn’t for long, but it was long enough for her to learn that he was hard as a rock and ready to party.
He braced his arms on either side of her head. “Cath. Look at me.”
She did, and his eyes told her he wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. He leaned closer. “You’re driving me mad, woman. I’ve been thinking about you all day. Tell me you’ll come home with me.”
She shouldn’t. She definitely shouldn’t.
“Okay. But I’m having the cookies for dinner.”
As soon as they’d passed through the street-level door, he pressed her up against the stairwell wall and kissed her senseless, taking her from want to desperate need in about five seconds with his hungry tongue and the press of his erection against her stomach.
“Upstairs,” she managed to say on a gasp.
She started to strip the second she crossed the threshold to his flat, pulling her shirt over her head and spinning around so she could watch him while she backed toward the bedroom. Nev kept his eyes on her as he shrugged out of his jacket, yanked his tie loose, untied his shoes. She kicked off her heels and shimmied out of her skirt in the doorway to his room; he unbuttoned his shirt and let his pants drop to the floor.
Then they were on the bed and his tongue was in her mouth again, her hips pressing upward and wriggling around until what she wanted was pressed firmly against her warm flesh through the barrier of her panties and she got even wetter, which hardly seemed possible.
“Anytime now, City. For the love of—”
His mouth closed over hers again, harsh, impatient. He got her panties off one-handed while kissing her, which would have impressed her if she’d been in any state to be impressed. The only thing she was in any state to do was spread her legs wide and pull him close. He got the message.
When he thrust home, Cath’s eyes flew open to meet his. The moment was intense, electric with sex and something else, a connection between them she wasn’t going to examine right now or possibly ever. Whatever it was, it felt freaking fantastic.
“Christ, that’s good.”
He grinned. “See, I knew you liked me.”
When she rose to her elbows, lifting her hips to bring him as far inside her as possible, he went still, and then his forehead knitted up and he said, “Shit. I forgot the sodding Durex.”
He didn’t withdraw, instead prolonging the full-body contact while he reached one long arm toward the side table where he kept the condoms. She put her hand up to stop him. “Wait. We don’t necessarily need it.”
“You’re on birth control?”
“No. But I can’t get pregnant.”
His gaze flicked down to where their bodies joined at the hips, then just as quickly returned to hers, and she knew at some point he must have noticed the faint scar running low across her pelvis. It had been her first tattoo, in a way. Her first reminder of how cruelly life could punish recklessness in love.
“Don’t ask me about it.”
He met her eyes and shook his head slightly. He wouldn’t. Not now.
“Before you, I hadn’t had sex in two years,” she said, “and your fine National Health Service says I’m in prime condition. So unless you have something nasty—in which case you’ve probably just given it to me and you’re an evil bastard—we’re okay without the condoms.”
He smiled, sweet and a bit bashful. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know.” He wouldn’t hurt her. Never on purpose. Nev was going to hurt her accidentally, and when he did it would be her own fault. It turned out that it was just as easy to make a mistake with your eyes open as it was to make one out of ignorance. She hadn’t understood that before. It was something she was learning from him.
“So we’re good?” she asked.
“We’re bloody amazing,” he answered, seating himself so deeply inside her she had to bite her lip.
“Start moving then.” She lifted her hips, insistent.
“You’re so bossy.” He rolled onto his back, pulling her along so that she ended up on top. “I had a long day, love. Why don’t you take charge, since you seem determined to give orders?”
“Suits me.”
Cath positioned her knees beneath her and sat up, reveling in the sensation of his hard, hot length inside her. Nev’s hands rose to her breasts, pushing the lace cups of her bra aside. He levered himself up enough to draw a nipple into his mouth, then sucked hard. Her head dropped back as her eyes drifted shut. He was normally such an attentive lover, but today he was rougher. Their teasing barely disguised something primal in both of them.
She wanted him completely uncivilized. Stripped bare and starving.
Crumpling the sheet in her fists, she rode him. Her focus narrowed to the tight pull between her breast and her clit, the slow drag of his cock producing enough pleasure to swamp her nervous system. When he bit her nipple, she cried out and rode harder—rode him until her thighs trembled and she had to brace one arm against the headboard and push his mouth away, because her orgasm was bearing down, slamming through her, tearing her apart.
Nev’s hands found her hips then, and he drove into her without restraint, half a dozen strokes was all it took to bring his own release.
They were loud and messy together. Sweaty and transcendent. Alarmingly, wonderfully out of control.
They were the closest thing to perfect she’d ever known.
Fantastic sex weakened her resolve. That, or the sight of Nev wearing pin-striped trousers and nothing else while cooking her dinner was just way too good to pass up. When he chopped garlic and pepper and tomatoes into tiny pieces, the muscles of his forearms flexed, and her eyes were drawn to the small, sure movements of his fingers and hands on the knife. It was terribly sexy.
Infatuated didn’t begin to describe it.
She pulled another cookie out of the package, determined that if she was going to have dinner with him, she would at least spoil her appetite first. You know, to make a point. Though for the life of her she couldn’t say what the point was.
Nev tossed the vegetables into a skillet with some olive oil and let them cook while he sliced bread and grated fresh Parmesan, mixing it with soft butter.
Seriously, was there nothing the man couldn’t do? He was employed, handsome, smart, funny, good in bed, and he cooked. He had to have some horrible hidden flaw, but so far she hadn’t seen any trace of it.
“Are you married?” she asked, thinking maybe she’d missed the obvious. He didn’t wear a ring, but that was no guarantee.
He smiled and started spreading the Parmesan butter on the bread. “Does it look like I’m married?”
He had a point. The flat was small, neat, and utterly devoid of any sign of female presence. “No, but it occurred to me this could be your secondary residence. You know, like you could stash your mistress here and keep a wife somewhere swankier.”
“Sorry, this is it. I don’t have a wife. Or a mistress, for that matter.”
“What about a girlfriend?”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I’m not your girlfriend.”
“You don’t think very highly of me, do you?”
“I do, that’s the whole problem. I keep trying to figure out what your horrible flaw is, and I’m not having any luck. By all appearances, you’re perfect.”
“Why must I have a horrible flaw?”
“All the guys I sleep with have horrible flaws.”
“Perhaps I’m the exception to the rule.”
“Nah. I’m not that lucky.”
He took the vegetables off the heat and started cracking eggs into a bowl.
�
�Maybe you have a drug habit?” she proposed.
“Does whiskey count?”
“Depends how much you drink.”
“A few glasses a week.”
“Nope, that’s not enough. Do you suck your thumb?”
He gave her a bemused glance. “No.”
“How do you feel about men?”
“If I haven’t yet managed to convince you I’m straight, love, I’d be happy to give it another go.”
She waved a hand at him dismissively. “Don’t distract me. I’m on a roll here.”
He mixed the vegetables and eggs together and tilted them into the skillet with more olive oil. She grabbed another cookie. When she looked up at him again, he was leaning against the counter and watching her, his arms crossed over his bare chest. She wondered if he had any idea how much she wanted to lick him right now.
“What?” she asked, never much good at waiting.
“Have you ever had better sex with someone else?”
Taken by surprise, she blurted out the obvious answer. “Not even close.”
“Nor have I. Not even close, Cath.” He turned back to the pan, lifting the edges to let the uncooked eggs flow underneath.
What, he was just going to ask her that and let it hang?
“And?”
“And it seems to me that when I meet a woman with whom I have a phenomenal physical connection, who I think about so much it disrupts my ability to do my job, not to mention sleep, and who I find attractive and interesting and funny and enjoy spending time with, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to get to know her better. Which is why I find it a bit baffling, to be honest, that you’re so determined to keep me at arm’s length.”
As far as she could recall, no one had ever said that many nice things about her at once before. All the compliments gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling she didn’t quite know what to do with. She decided another cookie was the way to go.
He had a point, she thought, chewing. She wasn’t approaching this thing with City in the most conventional manner. But he didn’t know her track record. She wasn’t the most conventional girl.