Page 61 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“Truce!” she shouts after several more minutes of running and ducking and pelting and laughing. Their faces are red with the exertion, their panting breath misting in the streetlight. Their smiles, though, are wide, their eyes bright.
Her gloves are wet through and she pulls them off, to find her fingers icy beneath. Jamie comes to stand in front of her, as she rubs them together.
“Cold?” he asks, approaching tentatively, presumably in case it’s a ruse.
She nods and says, “Time to go in, I think.” She shakes her hands to try to get some warm blood back into them.
Jamie steps closer, then clasps his hands around hers, pulling them up to his face. Her eyes follow them up until their hands are at his mouth, where he puts his lips to them and blows, long and steady. Her eyes rise to his, fixed on her face, and she almost sways with the intimacy of it. His lips at her thumbs, his breath on her fingers, the warmth spreading across her skin, his eyes locked on hers; it is sensual and caring all rolled into one, and almost more than she can bear.
“Time to go in, Jamie,” she says again, but this time her tone is pressing and her voice husky.
* * *
Inside, he helps her off with her coat. She’s painfully aware of his nearness. Given their afternoon, the soothing warmth of the pool and the balmy air in the room, the awareness of his body, the not-touching, and now the playing, it all has herthrumming. She knows what she wants to do, but she cannot work out how to do it in a subtle, but alluring, way. Everything about her wants to leap on him, but her brain, thankfully now back in action, has the last word, and that word iswait.
She waits while he hangs the coats on the peg. There is something vibrating in the air between them as he stands behind her and she realises that he too is experiencing The Thrum.
She waits for him to move past her, but he doesn’t. Apparently, Jamie, too, is waiting. For her, and that’s the sign her head has been needing. Anna takes a step backwards. Small but deliberate, so it isn’t confused with any kind of a stumble or hungover sway.
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move.
At her next breath, she takes another backward step, bringing her spine to his chest.
Wait.
And then, she feels his hands rest lightly at her hips. Or rather at the hem of her jumper, which slowly, oh-so-slowly, he begins to peel up and off her. She raises her arms, noticing the stretch of her breasts as she does, hoping he’ll run his hands along that skin soon. She hears the light sound of the jumper landing on the floorboards. It adds to her tremble.
Wait.
He runs his fingertips down her from her wrists, the length of her arms, past her shoulder blades, down her sides, returning his hands to her waist, where the hem of her next layer starts, and he repeats his upward draw. The slowness is both delicious and excruciating. The only way she can handle it is with her eyes closed, focusing on every inch of her skin as it’s exposed to the air. Up and over her aloft arms, the top joins the jumper on its heap.
Wait.
He runs his hands all the way back up to her wrists and grasping them, draws her hands slowly down to her sides, before sinking his lips to the curve at her collarbone and neck, sending her eyeballs rolling backwards beneath her eyelids. Instinctively, she leans her neck away to offer him more skin. She lasts all of ten seconds before her resolve is decimated. She turns to face him.
No.
More.
Waiting.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
It takes Anna a moment to realise why the room seems weird. It’s not her room. It’s Jamie’s. It’s not her bed, or her white bedding. He favours a navy-blue check, and what’s more, it’s a double duvet, unlike the Danish standard of two singles. An arm is wrapped about her body, heavy and warm, and he must sense her waking up as he pulls her in to him. Other parts of Jamie are apparently awake, too. She wiggles into his morning glory, with plans. It’s all the invitation he needs as she’s suddenly swept on top of him, and off they go again.
She had told him, as he carried her up the stairs, her legs wrapped around his hips, their kisses hungry and incessant, that this could only be a one-off. That nothing had changed and that she didn’t want to hurt him, so this was it and all it could be. Once-and-Done. He paused for the merest of beats, that eyebrow raised, then pulled her lip lightly with his teeth and growled, “We’ll see.” Right now, Anna is reasoning that Once-and-Done means onenight, and it’s not fully light outside, so.
The second time she wakes, after an exhausted snooze, she’s facing him, her arm now draped over his chest. He’s propped up on his pillow, gazing at her.
“Have you been watching me sleep?”
“Like a stalker?” he asks.
“Yep.”
“Totally. Who wouldn’t?” He drops a kiss onto the crown of her head. “You’re gorgeous.”
She’ll take the flattery, but Anna worries about her sleep face, whether she’s dribbled or snored, but as he’s neither kicked her out of bed, nor run screaming from it, it can’t have been too bad.
