Santa Baby: 5 Sexy Reads For Cold Winter Nights. Charlotte Phillips
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He had been the perfect distraction, a reason to disengage from everything that was going on around her.
No such excuse this time. In fact, all sense of rationality warned her off. Yet still there was the voice in her mind breaking through, reasoning with her, working with that physical desire for him. Where, really was the risk? He’d be gone in a couple of days, maybe even sooner. She would return to her life again just as she had before, unscathed. Couldn’t she just step back into that moment again, enjoy a rerun of the delicious past encounter?
She let her own hand slide over his hot, damp skin, over hard muscle. He caught her fingers in his free hand as she reached his shorts. Her hand was drawn away and held still while he continued to stroke her, adding a third finger, increasing his pace, stretching and teasing until she could think of nothing else but the sensation. The steam room was forgotten, hotel was forgotten, self-preserving life rules were forgotten and she cried out against his neck as he took her over that delicious edge.
As consciousness began to slip back she realised shadows were moving outside the glass door, the heat was intense now and they were both dripping sweat. He withdrew his hand, not rushing, just as the door clicked open and a middle-aged couple took the bench opposite, vague outlines in the steamy air. She kept her head down as if they might by some super power know what they’d just been doing in here, stood up and tugged him by the hand out of the steam room and immediately turned left into the circular aromatherapy shower. He curled his arms around her waist, pulling her hot skin against his and she forced herself to STOP THIS RIGHT NOW. Her body might have been conquered by the heady combination of hot steam and his intoxicatingly expert touch but her mind still just about had a handle on reality.
‘What now then?’ he said, his voice was thick and she could feel his rigid erection hard against her. ‘We could go up to my suite.’
The way they had five years ago? She’d been there, done that and moved on.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, disentangling herself.
‘Really?’
‘It’s just not a good idea.’
He looked down at her, grin creasing the corners of his grey eyes.
‘You’re actually going to leave me hanging like this?’ He glanced downwards.
She gave him a sweet smile.
‘Of course I’m not, let me just fix that for you.’
She pressed the button labelled COLD and pushed him into the shower well.
He caught up with her by the exit, as she walked through the spa bar, cheeks still pink as she attempted to pull off a swift exit.
‘Dinner?’ he said, clearly not remotely put off by the cold shower.
She carried on walking, heading back through to the lobby while her heart made a mad sprint. Even without their history, he was asking her to dinner, and there was that niggling little question of when she’d last been asked out. Two years was it now? Liz would know, she was always trying to pressgang her into dates she didn’t want. But her heart could sprint as much as it pleased, there were rules to be adhered to here, rules that she lived by for very good reasons and Tom Henley was a clear-cut case.
For speed, she figuratively threw Liz at him as an excuse instead of giving him the full on broken down reason that dinner was a non-starter, not least because her list of life rules seemed to bring out the exasperation in those of her friends that knew about them.
‘It’s been lovely to see you,’ she breezed, ‘but my friend should be arriving any time now and I really need to get properly settled in the room. And then of course we’ll be busy, shopping, sightseeing, you know how it is.’
Her mobile burst into life in her jeans pocket and she fumbled it out. Perfect timing. The screen informed her it was Liz. Obviously she must have arrived at Paddington and was checking in with a progress report. She flashed Tom Henley a confident see-how-busy-I-am roll of her eyes, and picked up. The line was awful. She came to a standstill on the thick pile carpet and moved to one side of the corridor to let other guests pass. Tom Henley didn’t excuse himself, simply leaned against the wall and watched her with an amused expression in his slate grey eyes.
‘You sound like you’re shut in a fridge,’ Ella said.
‘That isn’t so far from the truth.’
She had to focus hard to hear Liz’s voice over the background crackle.
‘You’re where?’
Surprise made Ella forget herself and exclaim without thinking and she clocked, a second too late, his eyebrows raising almost imperceptibly.
There went her perfect excuse.
Liz’s voice was faint.
‘I’m in a train carriage somewhere between Newark and some other station at the ends of the bloody earth, waiting for someone to rescue me. And the buffet car’s just run out of coffee.’
‘How long are you likely to be?’
She turned her body away toward the wall and tried to talk into the phone without moving her lips while Tom made no attempt whatsoever to avert his eyes or look busy. Instead he was watching her, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth. For Pete’s sake, where were his manners? He couldn’t have eavesdropped more openly if he’d grabbed her mobile and pressed speakerphone.
‘It isn’t looking good.’ Liz’s voice was apologetic.
Conscious of his eyes on her, she took a few paces away from him, out of earshot and lowering her voice just to be sure, although why she was bothering she had no idea. It was perfectly clear that her big fob-off was trapped in the snow somewhere up North.
‘You can’t give up,’ she pleaded through gritted teeth. ‘I need you here. I’ve bumped into some guy from my past, we had a…’ she searched for the right word. Just exactly what had they had? ‘…fling,’ she said eventually. ‘A few years ago. He’s asked me out to dinner.’
She couldn’t bring herself to mention their more recent steamy (literally) encounter in the spa. It had been a lapse of judgement, nothing more. He’d caught her off-guard.
‘And that’s bad because?’
‘Because I don’t do the past. You know I don’t.’
That attitude had afforded her a lot of face-saving and bravado in the past. It was tried and tested.
‘That’s just some stupid principle, Ella. It doesn’t mean you’re incapable of it.’
She might have known Liz wouldn’t see it her way. Her friend was forever trying to fit her up with blind dates.
‘You would say that though, wouldn’t you?’ she countered. ‘You and Alfie are on-again off-again so often I can’t keep track.’
‘That’s how the rest of us do it, Ella,’ Liz said patiently. ‘It’s called give and take. That’s how you get to know someone.’ A pause, then, ‘what’s he like?’
Ella glanced back down the corridor at him. Tom smiled at her and nodded and her stomach gave another of those small melty flips. She tightened her grip on the phone.
‘Too good-looking for his own good and won’t take no for an answer,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘What are the chances of you getting here tonight?’
Liz’s laughter was just audible over the crackly line.
‘Tonight? Try the whole weekend. Have you seen the forecast? Imagine a snowball in hell and then lengthen the odds. By a mile. I’m getting back home before we resort to eating the weak.’
‘For Pete’s