Page 58 of The Trouble With Love

The artificial gravity began to affect my limbs. Arms too heavy to lift, legs like molten weight and truth was forced out of me by the nearness of him. ‘I don’t know, Kai. I don’t know what this is, and I’m scared.’

‘Hey. Past master at terror.’ A finger moved like silk over my skin. ‘Or is it some unfinished business that’s really frightening you? Something to do with Nicholas?’

‘Nick is going, Kai. He’s talking about moving in with Cerys . . .’

The finger continued to stroke, barely touching me. ‘Yeah. My daughter talks to me, you know. Tells me what’s happening.’ The stroking stopped but the fingertip hesitated, trembling, against my neck. ‘And that’s worrying you, because of us? Because you’re losing your barrier against caring for someone else?’ His hand rose, cupped the back of my head.

‘I’m worried about everything.’

‘Then let it go, just for now. Because I think everything just became very, very different for both of us.’

‘But Cerys . . .’

‘. . . is carefully not listening. You wouldn’t want to waste her dedication, would you, Holly?’

This was something else. I could feel it in every molecule in the room, it was in the edge to his voice, that little catch of his words that made them sound as though everything was for me. When he held out his hand I found myself rising to take it, feeling his fingers close around mine and pull me into his warmth until his mouth connected with mine. Unspoken, another dimension, a deep connection, stretched between us, like wire.

I held onto his hand as he led me upstairs. From Cerys’s room I could hear the sound of a lullaby as she sang to the twins, probably louder than was commensurate with actually putting them to sleep.

‘It’s okay,’ Kai whispered, ‘I can’t even hear the twins cry from my room.’

I wasn’t sure if he was reassuring me that Cerys wouldn’t hear us, or that we wouldn’t have to listen to her singing. The Welsh facility with music appeared to have skipped that particular generation.

Once inside his bedroom door, I stopped. ‘Kai . . . I don’t know if I can do this.’

He turned around and looked at me, that deep, hard look he did sometimes that felt as though it reached right inside my head. ‘You’re scared. Of me?’

‘Of the situation.’

His fingers brushed my face. His thumb ring was cold. ‘Can you tell me?’

‘When you said your relationships were short and intense . . . well, I don’t do them at all.’ I tried to read his expression but it was hard, those yellow eyes reflected emotion back, they didn’t let it out. ‘Hence Aiden and the whole fuck-buddy thing. I’ve never really had a proper . . . anyone I could talk to.’

A steady breath. ‘Do you have many friends, Holly?’

I dropped my eyes and scanned the wooden floor for something to focus on. Anything to distract me from that looking-glass stare of his. ‘Of course! Meg and I have been friends since my family moved back to Malton. We were at school together and . . .’ I stopped. My eyes traced round and round a knot in a floorboard lost in a loop of memory, ‘and she’s known me a long time.’ Wow, that floorboard was just thrilling to look at. Round and round and round . . . ‘Can we not have this conversation now, Kai. Please.’ And I forced my eyes up to meet his darkening stare.

‘Then say it.’

‘Say . . . ?’

‘Tell me this isn’t just some fly-by-night thing, that you don’t just want my body for an hour, a weekend. That I’m different. Because I want . . .’ He dropped his hands to my arms, sliding along to my wrists, my skin bunching under his touch. ‘I want it to be different.’

I watched his hands moving as though the touch of him was somehow separate to the sensations he was causing and my stomach lurched downwards as I tilted my head to see his face. ‘You are definitely different,’ I whispered. ‘And . . .’

‘And?’

‘And I want you.’

His hands moved from my arms to my shirt, unbuttoning so slowly and carefully that it was all I could do not to knock his hands away and do it myself. ‘Oh Holly,’ his words blew warm over my skin. ‘Holly.’ He dropped his mouth and kissed me with the same edge as he spoke, thoughts, feelings all on that knife blade that cut through these moments. Everything was sharper, the rush when he touched me, the head-whirling sensations of his mouth on mine, as though life had suddenly come into full focus.

We fell onto the bed, reckless and hungry. I yanked at his T-shirt, trying not to lose his mouth while I dragged it off over his head and skimmed my fingers over his chest, glorying at that first sight of his naked skin. Under his clothes his body was lean as a racehorse, fuzzed with dark hair between his nipples and down across his stomach, and he clearly knew how to use every inch of it. His mouth knew how to tease, where to tease, turning up new erogenous zones with relentless expertise, his hands stripping my clothes from me with such subtle ease that I didn’t realise they’d gone until I felt his cool skin against my own. And his fingers — well. They could pinpoint with almost military accuracy those places guaranteed to make me shiver and gasp.

He was a slender powerhouse. Every inch of him — and there were quite a few — was under control, carefully paced and placed for maximum effect. And when he seemed to consider that he’d done all he could with my outlying regions, he moved to lie above me, hair brushing against my shoulders and eyes burning a hole through my soul.

‘Okay?’

He was looking into the liquid core of me, watching me float about as though my body was so many tectonic plates swirling over a molten heart.

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