Chapter 44
Tabitha
Tim gave me a devastating grin, and his eyes flashed. “Oh fuck, this feels like all my holidays have come at once. No. Better. It’s like I’ve just scored that try against Swindon and I’ve just sold my latest house and I’ve just landed in the Greek Islands.”
I laughed, my nerves tingling, my belly tightening, until his lips slammed on mine, his kiss hard, ravenous, and I loved how desperate he felt. I’d never been with a man who wanted me so badly that he uttered such ridiculously enthusiastic things, not able to hide his lust for me.
And I was able to release myself too. Laugh easily, show him how much I loved him, be silly, be intimate with him, utterly abandoned to him because of the huge level of trust I felt for him now.
And it wasn’t just about his grand declarations of his love for me.
He’d opened up about his mother, his worry for her future, and he’d agreed with me that he needed to immediately come clean to his sister, accept her help, and share the load of the decisions with her.
It all added up to me tossing my reservations and inhibitions out the truck window, to roll across the grass, into the river, and away forever.
I was so caught up in a haze of kissing, my body felt combustible.
I tugged off his T-shirt as he stripped off my suit jacket and then started unbuttoning my shirt.
Even the scrape of his rough fingers against my bare skin sent me breathless.
“Shit, how can there be so many buttons on a shirt?” he gasped out between snatched kisses. Then finally, he was done, and he tore the shirt off me and stared, voracious. “Oh, but it’s so fucking worth it.”
His fiery gaze ripping a thrill through my body, I ran my hands over the hard muscles of his chest. He gave me a look that made my hands shoot down his abs.
Parting the seam of my lips, his tongue pushed in and danced over mine, dirty and wet.
My hips pulsated against him at the feel of his hardness rubbing into my belly.
“Skirt off,” he growled out, pulling it down over my hips. We both pushed at the fabric, our elbows and knees bumping against each other. “Fuck. Okay, back seat.”
He flung himself over the console, in his jeans, bare-chested, and landed splayed over the back seat.
“Don’t do it like that,” he said with a grin and held out his arms to help me over.
I wriggled my skirt off, and just in my bra and knickers—my white-cotton serviceable ones because I hadn’t prepared for this night—I climbed over the console to the back seat.
Giggling, crouched and poised to jump onto the seat, I toppled onto him.
“Oh my God, I just realized I could have just used the doors,” I said, still giggling, one of my legs up around his neck, the rest of me spread sideways.
“Yes, but I would have missed the show,” he said, rubbing along my leg from my ankle to my thigh. I was laughing so much, he had to help right me. He pulled me back onto his lap. “And I will pay good money for a repeat of that show, Ms. Balfour.”
“Is that right?” I squirmed as his fingers trailed up the backs of my thighs and traced over my underwear, pulling them down.
“That is definitely right,” he said, lifting and circling his hips suggestively at me, his forehead against mine. He kept doing that until I was restless, antsy, gasping.
“These have to come off,” I said, unbuttoning his jeans.
“One for one,” he bargained.
Beneath me, he hooked his thumbs and shoved down his jeans and boxers in one as I unclipped my bra.
“I got the best out of that.” He lowered his mouth to my chest, his clever tongue sending sparks of pleasure into my core and right to the tips of my fingers and toes.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, bucking and writhing on him. “Oh God.”
I traced down his chest and reached farther down, sliding and stroking.
“Ah.” His head shot up. “I’m not going to last long like that.”
“Well then,” I said.
I rose up on him and, with a groan from both of us, eased down onto him.
This was different from our night in the hotel, more frantic, with our emotions stripped down raw.
I dragged my nails down the hard ridges of his stomach as I slowly, excruciatingly, rode up and down his length, taking my time, bliss coiling and radiating inside me.
“Oh, fuck me,” he growled out. He pulled at my hair with his hands, sending a ripple of pleasure down my back, and he slung his head back against the seat.
Then our lips bumped, our teeth bit, hands grabbed whatever skin they could. He gripped onto my hips and rubbed his pelvis where I needed it most, melting me, then building, tighter and tighter.
Abandoned, we linked our limbs into each other, our mouths crushed together in a messy, fogged-up desperation.
Then he yelled out, and too quickly, we both crashed even harder into each other and tumbled over the edge together.
Panting, he eased me down the seat so I was lying on my back, collapsed on me, and buried his face in my neck. I traced the ridges of his spine, while goose bumps shivered across my skin.
He smoothed my hair and kissed my neck. “You are amazing.” He sighed. “And much as I’d love to stay in the back seat forever draped over you naked, I think we need to get dressed in case anyone happens along.”
“Agreed.” I loved that he was worried about protecting me from prying eyes.
We cast around for our clothes and tugged them on and, using the doors, got back into the front seats.
He turned on the heating and sighed. “I don’t want to face the cameras tomorrow.”
I felt it too, that suspending ourselves from the outside world had ended for now, and we had to discuss the show.
“I know,” I said. “But we have to plan what we’re going to do onscreen.”
“We both want to win this, and Simon made clear our antagonism is the winning ticket. I always thought your designs were, but…”
I giggled, flattered and amused and a little bit gloating. “Interesting. My designs are the winning ticket? Someone has changed their tune.”
“I’d better appreciate your skills and assets.” He reached under me and gave my arse a good, hard squeeze.
I spluttered out a laugh. “Why do I feel like I’m in a bad comedy skit?”
“Sorry, but being around you, my brain is turning into terrible television. I can’t think straight. I’ll keep it to business now.”
I thought about how we could fake the conflict. We didn’t have any choice in doing this, but we did have a choice in how we presented ourselves.
“I agree, but let us be in control,” I said. “Let’s talk about exactly what sort of antagonism we want to put out there. It has to be about our working differences and nothing personal. We don’t want to destroy our reputations in the process.”
“You’re right.”
We talked about what we were going to fight about.
He pulled me back onto his lap, and between kisses, we talked for a half hour, dreaming up scenarios for tomorrow and next week, where we could fight about the design, me sticking to my vision, him being a bit of a pedantic, unimaginative builder, and then rehearsed the scenarios.
Until we were both yawning.
“I’d better take you home,” he said. “I want nothing more than to sleep wrapped around you all night, but it’s a few more weeks of this arrangement with me living in Mum’s flat and nowhere for us to be alone together.
Tomorrow night, I’m booking the Bumblebee B&B.
I know there will be loads of comments when we arrive—and even more as we disappear up the stairs.
After that, somehow, we can make it work. ”
I’d tell Mum and Dad that I was staying with an old friend. “We will make it work.”
“You and I, we’re a good team.” He wrapped me even closer and kissed the top of my head. “A great team.”
Whatever was ahead of us, we were in this together.