She shrugged. ‘I came.’
She stepped backwards again, but he moved forward, across his threshold, keeping the space between them the same.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘No. No. You’re home …’ What did that even mean?
He smiled wryly. ‘Which is how I can ask you in.’
‘I mean I should get back.’
‘No, you really shouldn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t.’ It was as if something else was working her voice.
‘So come in.’ He stepped back into the dark interior, and left the door open wide.
The room had a masculine sparseness – the work surfaces were devoid of clutter, almost minimalist. There were no photographs, just a couple of landscape watercolours framed on the walls. No ornaments. But everything was clean and neat. The space was calm, like he was. One wall, though, was entirely full of books, floor to ceiling on sturdy oak shelves. Large heavy ones at the bottom – the kind about art or animals or exotic locations – up through hardback biographies and history books to paperbacks at the top. She scanned the spines – Nevil Shute, Ian McEwan, Mark Billingham. A complete mix, in complete order. There was a deep old cognac-leather armchair in front of the shelves, worn and cracked, with a tall Anglepoise lamp behind it. Three books were piled on the arm, and on top of them a folded pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses she had never seen him wearing. It looked stylish – almost like it had been posed for a magazine or something.
It was a good space.
He watched her taking everything in.
‘Alphabetical. By genre. Wow. That’s a little …’
‘OCD?’
‘OCD. Yep.’
‘What can I say? I’m a neat guy.’
‘I’m a messy woman.’
‘Don’t believe you.’
‘Oh. Believe. Total slob.’
He was still watching her. Watching her mouth as she spoke.
She hadn’t expected to be here. She was suddenly acutely aware of herself. He seemed so still and cool and calm. That quality she’d always noticed was magnified indoors. By contrast, she was hot, possibly even a little sweaty, and she couldn’t seem to breathe quietly.
She forced herself not to witter into the silence.
‘So. That’s sorted, then.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a little bit OCD. You’re a little bit messy. Laura Harcourt.’
He was closer now, although she hadn’t been conscious of him moving. His tone was light, but still challenging.
Something in the way he was looking at her and speaking to her made her want to say something real and true about herself.
She repeated her own name. ‘Laura Harcourt. Not sure who she is any more. That’s the thing. The whole pathetic thing …’
She could feel tears in her eyes. ‘Not a wife, barely a mother. Nothing useful to offer society. Lousy daughter. Too busy being pissed off to be a decent friend. Not even good company.’ Her shoulders dropped.
‘Not true. I enjoy your company.’
She almost snorted.
‘Don’t do that.’ He took another step towards her. Laura might have backed away, had she not already been leaning against the wall, close to the books. ‘Shall I tell you who I think you are?’
Silence was her answer. Her heart raced faster still.
‘I think you are a beautiful woman who hasn’t been told she’s a beautiful woman nearly often enough, and certainly not recently enough. A clever woman who hasn’t had anyone to spark off lately. A funny one, with no one to make laugh. A sexy one …’
God, if it was a line, it was nothing short of genius.
Closer. A step at a time. Barely moving. His voice was calm, his breathing slow. Just that spot of red on his chest gave him away, just above where the blond hair grew, and just below that pale hollow at the base of his throat, where she could see his pulse. She loved the spot of red. It seemed to prove to her that this meant something to him. That she did. She reached out and touched it with one finger.
This time there was nothing safe or careful about the contact. They both knew it was different.
Something snapped in her. It felt like a guitar string. Ping. The tension gone. She launched herself at him, and kissed him. His stubble scratched her face. He took her shoulders in his hands and pushed her away from him. For a dreadful moment she thought she’d horribly misjudged him. But he just wanted to look into her eyes, and then, with a small, triumphant smile, he wanted to be the one who initiated the kiss. He brought his hands from her shoulders to her face, and held it on a tilt, his palms covering almost all of it, his fingers in her hair, while he kissed her back, hard.
It had been such a long time. For ever. Laura had perhaps thought, certainly considered, in the middle of the long, lonely nights, that this part of her was dead. That she might never feel like this again. But lust flooded back, like a tsunami. And you never really forgot how it worked.
Then again, she’d never done it in a leather armchair, until now. She couldn’t remember Alex ever being so keen to be inside of her that he hadn’t taken his trousers off, so that her heels, clasped around his back, felt denim, not flesh. He’d pulled her dress over her head, but he hadn’t bothered to take off her bra, just pulled the cups aside, not gently, to get at her, and it was as sexy as hell to be only partly undressed. His skin was warm, and soft, except for his hands, which were as rough as she’d thought they would be, calluses adding to the sensations as he stroked her everywhere he could reach. The leather was strangely cool and hard against her skin. But it all felt good. So, so good. He kept his eyes open and he kept them on her. She looked away at first, because it was too much, but it got easier to meet his stare. When he cast it over her body, she was surprised to feel not self-conscious but powerful.
Alex had been a quiet lover, even in the early days. Joe was the opposite. He spoke to her at first, murmuring that she was beautiful, that she felt so good. Later he seemed happy to abandon himself to noises. His grunts and groans were hugely affirming to her. She felt … desired. When he closed his eyes at last and lost himself in the rhythm, pounding into her, there was something magical about his oblivion, and it carried her along with him. And when he collapsed heavily onto her, his breathing ragged, his mouth open against her shoulder, and his heartbeat fast, she threw her head back and laughed triumphantly, the sound neither strange nor discordant.
He spoke first. ‘Christ. My knees.’ He reached behind her and pulled a cushion from under her.
‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to move, but he held her still. She realized he was still inside her, more intimate now than in motion.
‘Don’t you dare be sorry.’ He deftly slipped the cushion under his knees on the floor, one arm holding her firmly against him. ‘You’ve got absolutely nothing to be sorry about.’
She laughed again. ‘That was –’
‘Bloody fantastic.’
She flushed with the compliment. He thought it had been fantastic. Not just fantastic – bloody fantastic. ‘I was going with unexpected.’
His face was on her chest, and his voice was muffled, and still a little, gratifyingly, breathless. ‘You mean you didn’t come here with the express intention of seducing me?’
‘That’s what happened, is it? I seduced you?’