Page 60 of The Payback Plan
He’d woken on the coat-tails of another erotic dream about Paige withanotherraging hard-on. Day times were difficult enough without the nights. Co-existing with her in an atmosphere so cordial, they could have been on the set ofDowntonfreakingAbbey. Pretending he hadn’t had her under him, hadn’t kissed her and stroked her, hadn’t swallowed down her moans and those tiny, desperate whimpery noises she’d made at the back of her throat, that guaranteed him a crippling fucking erection the second they snuck into his brain.
They’d reverted to their own corners, intersecting when necessary but keeping their distance behind polite smiles and inane conversation. At least she was lessfull onthan when she’d first arrived. Sure, the T-shirts were still amusing and there were always crumbs in her wake and cold, squeezed-out tea bags in the sink – which made his eye twitch – but she’d given up all pretence of veganism.
Halle-fucking-lujah.
That combined with zero Hamster Facts texts this week and things had definitely improved on the home front.
And, she was still working with him on the book. Maybe not side by side but she’d been transcribing his daily ramblings diligently and dumping them into the master document, moving them around, piecing them together into something cohesive for when it came to wrangling the manuscript into some kind of coherent state. And she’d been steadily sorting through the jumble of paper from Saturday night, cataloguing and slotting it into the timeline of the master document, too.
Saturday night. He stifled a groan as his dick tightened even further. He hadn’t been prepared for what had happened that night.
He’d gone to London to talk to a publisher and retrieve the boxes then meet up with some old friends the next day for the usual pub crawl starting at lunch and pushing well into the evening. But, as he’d read the messages flying around their WhatsApp group about getting hammered and picking up, nothing had appealed less.
Oliver hadn’t wanted to sit around noisy bars drinking to excess with a bunch of low-rent celebrities possibly getting hassled by paps. He’d missed Cornwall. He’d missed Paige. Despite the chaos – the tea bags, the mug rings, the menagerie – it had been good having her in his life. She’d bullied and pushed and inspired him to stop feeling so fucking sorry for himself anddo something.
Not dabble, not pretend. Stop doing what wasn’t working. Change track.
He’d haveneverstarted this book without her. Not in the head space he’d been in anyway but her insistence that hetryhad poked a hole in his mindset, letting in the light and the memories – the good as well as the bad. And it was proving to be an entirely cathartic experience. Better than any therapy he’d ever had.
He had a renewed sense of purpose now and that was entirely down to Paige. Hell, just the exercise alone, walking on the beach with Casper every day had helped declutter his head. Helped him see clearer. And that in itself had been a revelation.
But that wasn’t all. In a little over a month, Paige had worked herself under his skin. She was the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing he thought about as he went to sleep. Not himself, not the fucked-up mess he’d created, not the aimless drift his life had become.
Paige.And that was as inconvenient as his hard-ons.
He was starting to think there was something way more serious going on than just intense physical attraction although, God help him, he was so fucking hot for her. She was nothing like his usual type and yet all her soft curves, her bountiful cleavage, her goddamnfreckleswere fast becoming an obsession.
But it wasmorethan that.
Something he felt way north of his dick. Something more… cerebral. Something he felt down to the core of his being. He liked her. He justreallyfucking liked her – anarchy and all. Something he’d never felt about another woman. Not to this degree.
The closest he’d come had been Bella, who he’d liked enormously. Hell, he’d loved her in that way love grew from familiarity, admiration and respect. But this was different. His feelings for Paige had been much more visceral from the moment she’d landed on his doorstep, in all her frazzled ginger glory.
There’d been nothing bland about any of the things he’d felt since that day. They’d been acute and jumbled and intense, flickering from exasperation to outright laughter to frustration, buzzing around him like fireflies, irresistible to look at but damn hard to pin down.
And then there’d been Saturday night.
His dick twitched again at the memory of her soft and breathy under him, her hands in his hair, her tiny moans filling his head. Not their first kiss. But nothing like the one on the stairs, either. That had been more a first kiss kind of kiss. Tentative, cautious, exploratory. Good –sogood – but not Saturday night’s explosive fiesta of passion.
The very last thing he’d expected as he’d stepped into his own house. From the violin attack to the kiss to the cops, it had all been slightly bewildering. Although, he should have known to expect the unexpected with Paige. But it wasn’t the other stuff that fed his dreams or the blood flow to his cock.
It had been the kiss.
Their second kiss. Nothing like the first. Hot and heady and charged from the second her mouth has mashed against his and run out of control. Knocking every thought from his brain, the world narrowing down to just the space between the two of them and God knew, there’d been precious little of that.
But, more importantly –shehad kissed him.
Sure, she had blamed the booze. And the fact she’d been drinking before his arrival had been sobering in the aftermath. Had probably been the thing that had stopped him from pushing her more on the topic that night when she’d wanted to leave it alone. A kiss given under the influence was something entirely different to one given when fully in charge of one’s faculties. He knew that from his own cognac-infused faux pas.
Would she have lunged at him like that had she not consumed a bottle of wine? Wouldhehave kissed her on the stairs hadhenot been affected by alcohol?
Oliver had kissed women under the influence before. Hell, there’d been a few times he’d slept with women he barely knew when they’d both been three sheets to the wind and barely remembered it the next morning. But those times had been in the setting of dates where both parties had known where it was leading.
The impulse to kiss Paige had come out of nowhere. Just like the feelings he was both struggling to define and scrambling to deny.
BecauseBella. His ex. Paige’s friend. Seriously, how much more muck could he land himself in. He’d already hurt Bella once. Kissing her friend, feeling whatever the hellthiswas… he couldn’t go there. He knew Paige felt bad about it and he pretty much felt as low as a slug too and yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about her…
Idly he wondered if it was too early to start drinking? It was Saturday after all and there’d been a lot of days since he’d walked away from his wedding that beer for breakfast had been his go-to. But then he remembered he’d made a commitment to Paige not to drink.
