Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Joshua
This might go down as one of the best days of my life.
I squeezed her hand as I led Hartford out of the lift to the penthouse floor.
“It’s been such an incredible afternoon, Joshua. Thank you. When you do something, you really go all out.”
It had been worth getting up at five to finalize the Calmation pitch so I could have the afternoon off to be with Hartford.
I’d only just got it finished with ten minutes to shower and change.
I’d left the hard copies printing off on the printer I’d set up on the dining room table, and the team were fully briefed.
We were ready to go on Monday, and I was enjoying my time with Hartford before then.
Life was about balance. Business and rest. Work and play.
The way Hartford’s eyes had lit up when she’d seen the picnic in the park would stay with me forever.
She’d looked overwhelmed. Delighted. Like I’d given her the moon.
I could have punched the air. I hadn’t quite been sure how it would go down.
She didn’t often relax, so taking her to drink champagne and eat cake in the park had been a risk.
It had been worth it to see her expression.
And then when she’d called it a date, it was as if the blood in my veins had stopped.
She’d figured out this was no practice run for me.
I just needed to know if she was still pretending.
We came to a stop outside her door and I leaned against the doorway, taking in her relaxed smile and bright, ice-blue eyes. She seemed to get more beautiful the more I got to know her.
“You’re worth it.” I took a step closer to her so we were toe to toe, tipped her head back and kissed her. Because that was what a date should do after an afternoon like we’d had. And because I wanted to. I wanted this afternoon to be real. For her as much as me.
She tasted of sunshine and heat, and I couldn’t help but let out a groan as I explored her mouth. Her hands dug into my hair and I pushed her against her door, my hands buzzing with urgency and need.
“Joshua,” she whispered as I kissed down her neck.
“It’s not . . . you feel . . .” Her hands trailed down my chest to my belt, her fingers slipping behind my waistband.
Christ, I wanted to feel her hands wrapped around my cock.
I wanted to feel every inch of her skin under my tongue.
I wanted to make this woman orgasm so hard she’d never think of another man again.
I reached and scooped up the layers of her dress, smoothing my palm up her leg, reaching higher and higher.
I pulled back to look at her, to ask the question burning me from the inside out.
Her face was flushed, eyes hazy with what I hoped was wanting.
“Hartford.” My eyes dipped to her full, plump mouth.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
Did I have an answer? I wanted to tell her that I’d thought of nothing but her for months now. That nothing between us had ever been faked. That I hadn’t been her teacher but her pupil.
“What do you want us to be doing?” I asked.
She sighed. “You want to come in?”
Yes, I wanted to get naked with her as soon as possible, but I wanted more than that. I wanted her in my place. The place reserved just for me, where I never brought other women. “I want you to come into my flat.”
I pulled her toward me with one hand and opened my front door with the other, then stepped us both over the line.
“You’re so beautiful,” I said. “That dress . . . your eyes . . .”
“Joshua,” she said, her voice a mixture of pleading and disbelief.
“It’s true, Hartford,” I said as I unzipped her dress. “You’re as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside, and that’s bloody stunning.”
She stood on tiptoes and pulled my mouth onto hers as her dress slid to the floor.
She fumbled with my shirt buttons. I just wanted to rip my shirt off, to get rid of another barrier between us, but I didn’t want to risk her thinking she wasn’t doing it right.
So I waited, watched as she concentrated on my buttons, her delicate fingers pulling at the cotton of my shirt.
Once it was off, she smoothed her hands over my shoulders.
“You’re . . . big.” Her fingers trailed down and across my stomach. “And hard.”
I smiled, enjoying being inspected and explored. I wanted her to know my body. Know what was inside my heart and soul.
Then she poked my right pec. “Is that even natural?”
I laughed. “You’re the doctor.”
She tipped her head back. “I guess I am. My diagnosis is that you’re an excellent physical specimen.”
“Back at you.” I snaked my hand down her back and grabbed her arse.
She winced. “Excuse my granny knickers.”
“They didn’t even hit my radar.” The only thing I was interested in was her. “It’s not the knickers that have my attention.”
Her eyelashes fluttered as if she were blinking away rain. “You know you’re ridiculously smooth, right?”
“But you know that I mean it, right?”
She reached up around my neck and I lifted her up, pulled her legs around my waist, and walked us into the bedroom.
She stopped our progress with a hand on the doorframe.
“Joshua, my forcefield is down,” she said, her eyes lined in silver.
“I’m not pretending anymore. I can’t wake up tomorrow and pretend tonight never happened. ”
Relief flooded through me and I closed my eyes, trying to focus on what she’d said.
“I can’t be a Miss Tuesday Night.”
“There is no Miss Tuesday Night. Not for months now. Not since . . . you.” I hadn’t made a conscious decision not to see Kelly or any of my other regular partners.
Having Hartford in my life had filled the holes so completely, there was no room left for any other woman.
It had just taken me a while to accept how I felt.
“And I don’t want to pretend this didn’t happen. ”
She trailed her fingers to the back of my neck and I lost all sense of reason. As we lay on the bed I caged her with my arms, wanting to take her in.
Over the last couple of months, this woman beneath me seemed to have coaxed me out of a shell I didn’t know I was living in.
Every day since she moved in, I couldn’t wait to get home.
To her. To hear about her day, to watch as she’d carefully take a slice of cake, to enjoy her teasing and her complete lack of pretention, to revel in her kindness and the way everything was just so easy between us.
There was no denying it. I had fallen for Hartford. Pretending otherwise was pointless.
She slid her hands down my sides. “You okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Just thinking.”
“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
I swept her hair from her face. How could she think I would want to back out?
“I want to. I want to more than it’s possible to explain.
” I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted anyone more.
The dates and the kissing had started as something else for her.
Even when we’d slept together that first time, we’d agreed it wasn’t real.
Not irreversible. Now it was different for her. And me.
I unfastened my trousers and kicked them off then knelt back over her, trailing kisses down her throat, licking and sucking and enjoying the taste of her warm, soft skin against mine.
She sighed, her body sinking into the mattress.
I pulled down the straps of her bra and flicked her nipples with my tongue, bringing them to tantalizingly sharp points.
I grazed my teeth over them, and at her moan, a chill of satisfaction snaked down my spine.
I was going to make her come so hard.
I moved lower and stripped off her knickers in one swift movement. She twisted away from me. “Don’t you dare,” I said, grabbing her thighs and pushing them apart. “I want to taste you.”
“Joshua,” she said, her legs relaxing.
I reached between her legs and slid my fingers into her folds, finding her deliciously wet. “This was what I was looking for,” I said. I pushed into her silky softness, blinking my eyes shut to try to keep out how good it felt.
How very right and perfect everything about this moment was.