Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
When I tap on his door, the knock is so quiet it’s almost like I’m hoping he won’t hear it.
‘Well,’ he says, when he opens up, raising a nonchalant eyebrow to mask his surprise.
He is wearing a white T-shirt and navy bed shorts. I don’t know why the sexy sight of him in his sleepwear, the soft, soapy scent of him, his mussed hair, almost takes the resolve out of me, almost makes the red pen hover again. How can I be intimate with this man and then have to walk away? How can I do this to myself?
‘Don’t get the wrong idea here,’ I tell him.
He glances down at my white cotton tank and red tartan PJ bottoms. ‘How could anyone possibly get the wrong idea about you showing up at my bedroom door at two in the morning, braless?’
In my haste, I forgot to put a dressing gown on. I stupidly cross my arms in front of me, scan his sleepy face, his rumpled hair. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘It’s two in the morning. What loser would possibly be asleep at this hour?’
‘Basically, you were out for the count, weren’t you? I can totally tell.’ I reach out and touch his hair; I can’t help it.
‘My mother used to do that to me,’ he says, with a very straight face.
I pull my hand away. ‘So that’s a passion killer right there, then.’
His gaze coasts across my collarbones, wanders down my cleavage, then he meets my eyes again, and says, quite seriously, ‘Very little about you, Moira Fitzgerald, could dampen my passion.’
‘We didn’t get to finish our conversation,’ I tell him. I need to get this out before the proximity of him can throw me further off course. I say it in my best no-messing tone. ‘There’s a couple of things I need to set straight…’ I clear my throat. ‘First of all, I’m not here because I’m looking for a life with you. There’s not even the remotest chance I’d consider walking away from a marriage, straight into a relationship with someone else. I’d have to be insane. And if you think that about me, then you’re the one who’s insane. This is real life we’re in. Not a Julia Roberts movie.’
He beams, but I plough on anyway.
‘I don’t fear being alone, and I don’t need someone to save me.’ I have to focus on his ear, rather than on those eyes that are brimming with affection for me. ‘There. I’ve said it.’
‘Are you finished?’ he asks.
‘I am.’
After a slow sweep of my face, he says, ‘Might we be talking in circles again?’
I nod. ‘We might.’ And then I find myself adding, ‘But the thing is, I like going round in circles with you.’
‘I like it too,’ he says, quietly. ‘It’s pretty mega, is what it is.’
This warms me until I am almost melting.
‘What was the second?’ he asks. ‘You said there were a couple of things you wanted to set straight.’
‘Oh.’ I look down into the negligible space between us. My tartan PJ bottoms, and his navy shorts. Our bodies so close to touching. The gravitational pull I almost can’t resist, of my pelvis towards his. The almost dizzying memory of us in my apartment. The ‘match to gasoline’ of my finger making contact with his chest.
‘The second is… Do you want to ask me in?’ I say it before I can lose my nerve. ‘One last night before we both go back to our lives?’
‘I do,’ he nods. His gaze performs a lazy wander down my neck, the way his lips once did, the way I long for him to do again. ‘Very, very much. In fact, pretty much more than anything in the world.’
And yet he doesn’t move.
His eyes search my face again, that expression back in them that I want to hold there and just keep seeing. The warmth. The affection. The passion. But also some uncertainty.
‘Moira,’ he finally says. ‘I need you to really have thought this through – what you’re doing here. Because I will say that if I let you in here right now, I’ll be incapable of continuing to be a gentleman.’
The snort is out before I can stop it. ‘You know if you wrote that line in a novel it would be universally panned, right?’
He tries not to smile. ‘This must be why I no longer write novels. I save my cheesiest self for real life.’
‘Well, then…’ My eyes drop to his ridiculously kissable Adam’s apple. ‘I think you need to stop analysing everything, and just let me in.’ Then I add, ‘So I can get acquainted with your cheesiest self…’
His kiss is something I fall into behind a closed door. It is hot, yet equally tender. We merge like two streams flowing into the same river. I cannot get enough of his mouth devouring mine. The bulk of his sexy shoulders. The damp heat under his hairline. The feel of him growing hard against my thigh.
When he mutters, ‘God, I’ve wanted you so much…’ his voice rasps against my throat and I almost taste the tiny vibration. ‘I want you.’ He repeats it like he could be arguing with himself.
‘I want you too!’ It comes out in a gush, like it’s life or death for me.
He groans at this and whips my tank top off over my head. My breasts are in his hands, and I inhale sharply. We are off on a collision course with various items of furniture, him steering us towards the bed while I practically try to climb him like a ladder. Hands and kisses landing imperfectly, and wherever. When we bump into the bedframe it halts us, and we catch our breath. His eyes plunder mine, an electric search of my face, while he lifts his hand almost languidly to play with my hair, letting the strands slip through his fingers.
The space where he’d just been sleeping is still warm from his body as he lowers me gently into it, my hips raising so he can peel off my PJ bottoms. I have his heat underneath me, and I want it on top of me, but for a moment, all he can do is stand there. His eyes caress the contours of my naked body like he wants to know me by heart.
And then he says, ‘You are beautiful, Moira Fitzgerald. And right now, I’m about the luckiest guy in the world.’