Page 87 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘I think so.’
‘Something that’ll help?’
Maybe. Honestly, Jodie couldn’t quite process what she’d found now. Was Saira working on her special project alone? Or for John? Or was Fiona involved as well? ‘I can’t think straight.’
‘Me neither.’ Pavel was standing right in front of her. Close to her. Now Jodie couldn’t think at all. They were alone together in a room nobody else was likely to come into in the next hour or more.
‘We should go back…’ she started, but neither of them moved.
‘Do you want to go back?’
‘No.’ She couldn’t face looking into his eyes when she asked, ‘Do you?’
‘No.’
Now she looked up. ‘Good.’
She’d spent weeks since the ballroom imagining his lips on hers. She’d imagined it hard and full of desire. She’d imagined it slow and brimming over with promise. What happened next was better than anything she’d imagined. What happened next was real.
The taste of him, the touch of his lips on hers, and his hands on her waist, the firmness of his body against hers, the stretch as she pulled herself onto tiptoes to reach more of him and the feeling like flying when his arms encircled her and lifted her off the ground altogether. All of it was so very, very real.
Without thinking she wrapped her legs around his body and pulled her lips back just a fraction. ‘I’m not too heavy?’
He laughed for a moment. ‘I’d bench-press you as a warm-up, darling.’
‘Darling?’
‘Too much?’
She shook her head. ‘Call me that again.’
‘My darling.’
‘My darling.’
The endearment touched something in Jodie’s soul. This wasn’t going to be just sex, because there was no doubt in her body right now that they were going to have sex, but this was something more than that. She wasn’t just a shag. She was somebody’s darling. She touched a finger to the side of his face, and pressed her lips back to his.
And then the tempo shifted, incrementally harder and faster and more desperate. He lowered her to the floor, only to free up his hands to pull at her elf tunic, and help her wriggle out of her tights. She grinned slightly. ‘Sorry. This isn’t my sexiest look.’
‘I’m not complaining.’
She caught his eye. ‘Good.’ She stepped back towards him and pulled his sweater and T-shirt up from the waist, revealing a taut, slightly tanned torso.
Pavel pulled one of the fur rugs that had been acting as North Pole set dressing onto the floor, before sweeping Jodie’s legs from under her to lift her up and lower her down onto the rug. He kneeled in front of her. ‘Oh, I don’t know if I have any…’
‘I’m on the pill.’
‘Are you sure?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure I’m on the pill?’
‘You’re making jokes now?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Why?’
‘What?’
