Lovers in law (28 page)

“You are the most beautiful man
I’ve ever known,” I began, letting my heart and not my head do the
talking for once. “You complete me – emotionally, intellectually,
physically. From the moment I laid eyes on you my life changed for
ever.”

“Mine too
,” he admitted, running his hand down the length of my
spine. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone else.”

“Scary, isn’t it?”

“I’m brave enough if you are.”

Not that it needed a great
deal of courage to take the road I’d
recently turned onto. Behind me lay my career path with its
long hours, partnership prospects and snatched relationships. Ahead
was unexplored territory – no road maps, no guidebooks and no
guarantees, except for the knowledge that Radford would hold my
hand all the way and never let me miss a step.

“I’m in love with you,
Radford,” I said, my heart finally coming to rest after spending
all night in freefall. “It feels like I always have
been.”

“Are you sure?” His question
had urgency and an edge of anxiety.

I’d never been more sure of
anything in my life.
“Utterly, completely
and totally. I love you with parts of my heart I didn’t know
existed. Head over heels. Body and soul. Past the point of no
return.”

I swear he blushed with
pleasure like a naïve schoolboy. “Sounds pretty positive to me.” He
raised his head for a kiss, our lips barely touching but the
connection felt intense.
“Would you mind
if I loved you back?”

I pretended to think about
it. “I
suppose it would be
okay.”

“Good. Because I was going to
anyway.” He rolled over on top of me and kissed me as though he
hadn’t seen me in an age and had been longing to kiss me in all
that time. “I love you too, Allie Lawless. I fell in love when I
watched you sleeping at Claridges but I was too stupid to recognise
it then and too proud to stop you going to Rome.”

I curled myself around him
and kissed the underside of his throat
,
hearing him sigh contentedly. “If you’ve known all that time, why
haven’t you told me before now?”

“Because I didn’t want to put
you under pressure and drive you away again. I couldn’t stand the
thought of losing you a second time. I wanted you to make up your
own mind at your own pace.”

My h
and drew light circles across his bum. Ticklish as ever, he
squirmed against me and pushed me deeper into the
mattress.

“You have a sexy bum,” I told
him needlessly.
He had forty-eight hours’
worth of evidence to prove I found every inch of him
irresistible.

“Is that what made you fall
in love with me?”

“Quite possibly.”

I joked but a lump came to my
throat and I pulled
Radford tighter,
unable to believe I’d been lucky enough to find him and have him
fall in love with me too. He’d opened up a whole new world of love
and belonging I’d never known existed and which I couldn’t wait to
move into.

“My sexy bum hates the
thought of waking up without you tomorrow morning.
Let’s go to your flat now and collect the first
of your things?”

The first of
your things. It had a ring of permanence about
it and I hesitated. “You mean move my stuff in here?”

Radford stopped kissing my
breasts for a moment and looked up at me, puzzled. “Of course. I
want to wake up to the warm smell of your skin and hear you
breathing next to me as I drift off to sleep. What’s the point in
living apart any longer?”

Loving Radford was one thing
but moving in with him was something else entirely. The question
was, how was I going to explain the difference to him? “Aren’t we
taking things a little too fast?” I asked, hating the last remnants
of caution holding me back from surrendering myself completely to
him.

“Loving you
has hit me like a steam train. We can’t go fast
enough for my liking.” He moved back up the bed and switched on the
bedside lamp to banish the gathering dusk. “What’s wrong?” His
professional instincts smelled trouble and he scrutinised me for
clues. “Your moving in is the next logical step in our
relationship.”

I knew I’d sound pathetic but
said my piece anyway. “I don’t want a relationship with you,” I
explained, kissing away his words when his lips parted to argue.
“
I want a love affair.”

“A love affair?” For the
first time ever, Radford came across something he couldn’t
understand. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to run that by me again. What
does that involve – no sex?”

“God forbid! I might be
strong willed but I’m not
carved from
stone.” The thought of spending time with Radford and denying
myself access to that sexy body of his made me go weak at the
knees. “We met, we kissed, we fell into bed together. Twice over.
We’ve completely skipped the dating part,” I explained. “And I want
to date you. I want to flirt and send you stupid texts. To miss
you. To look forward to seeing you.”

“Why miss each other when we
can spend every waking minute in bed like this?”
To back up his argument, Radford’s hand followed the curve
of my breast and hips before moving inevitably between my legs. His
thumb worked my clit while his fingers pressed inside me and my
treacherous body responded immediately. “We can’t have this if
you’re sleeping in Islington and I’m here.”

Fighting down my rising
desire, I tried to maintain focus. “Getting ready
for dinner on Friday, I had butterflies in my
stomach. I loved dressing up for you, buying new underwear, meeting
you at the restaurant. The anticipation was incredible.”

“For me too,” Radford
admitted. “I was horny all day knowing we’d end up in bed
together.”

He’d proved my point and I
watched realisation dawn. “I’
m in serious
lust with you,” I said. “Head over heels, propped against a window
and fucked from behind, lust with you. But it’s less than a month
since we saw one another again. A week since we first kissed. I
just want a few more weeks to date you before we move in
together.”

“A few weeks?” He sounded
like he’d hold me to it. “And then you’ll reconsider?” His lips
found my nipple and closed around it, sucking away the last of my
resistance.

“Depends how attentive you
are
,” I managed to gasp. “I want to be
courted and won over.”

“Seduced and sent filthy
texts.” Radford
apparently had his own
interpretation of dating.

“Charmed and wooed.”

“Kissed senseless and talked into
bed.”

“Coaxed and flattered.”

“Groped in doorways and
fucked
at inopportune
moments.”

“Worshiped and adored.”

“Corrupted at every available
opportunity.”

I slapped Radford’s shoulder
and he looked up from my navel, grinning broadly. “You’re not
taking this seriously.” I glared and tried to look angry but he ran
his tongue the length of my pussy and I melted against
him.

“On the contrary, getting you
naked in my bed is a very serious business indeed. Expect no mercy.
I don’t like to lose. And as my opponents will tell you, I always,
always¸ get exactly what I want.”

I have to admit that, when
Allie first told me she wanted us to date rather than move in
together, I didn’t like the sound of it. At all.

After six, lonely
months
of missing that incredible body of
hers, I didn’t relish the thought of wasting another night sleeping
alone. But, if courtship was what Allie needed, it’s exactly what
she was going to get and I launched an all-out, play-to-win charm
offensive.

Until I
’d met Allie, seduction had been a few chat up lines in a
bar, a bottle of good champagne and bit of slow dancing. I don’t
like to brag, but it sometimes amazed me how many women fell for
the same old tricks that resulted in mindless sex and my quick
getaway.

Dating Allie took flirting up
to a whole new level and, I confess, I loved thinking up new ways
to woo and seduce her. In return, she was spectacularly creative
and had me living in a permanent state of horniness that often
knocked the sharpness off my cross examination in court and had my
opponents asking whether I’d lost my edge.

“Meet me at the Corinthian
Bar at seven thirty,” she’d text
half way
through the afternoon. “I’ll be wearing a blue dress and a blonde
wig.”

We’d meet as strangers,
s
he’d talk dirty to me, get me very drunk
and then give me a hand-job in a dark alley before relieving me of
£20 for the taxi ride home.

Demeaning and
sordid, I know, but I’d never been so excited by
a woman.

Another time she turned up at
my apartment wearing nothing but a raincoat
, red stilettos and a big smile. Or she’d surprise me in
chambers where she’d kiss me like she had that first day and pull
up her skirt to show me she wasn’t wearing any
underwear.

And all within ten minutes of
clients arriving for a conference.

She didn’t have it all her
own way, however.
When she moved back
into her own flat in Clerkenwell, I’d turn up delivering pizza, or
to mend the washing machine, or whatever other fantasy I could
dream up, and which always resulted in tumultuous sex on the hall
floor.

There was a hotter than hot
week in Dubai over Christmas
when the
most Allie wore was a bikini and flip-flops and I thought my
permanent hard on might get me arrested for indecency. In February,
I surprised her with a weekend in the wilds of Yorkshire during
which we were snowed in for four days. Trust me when I tell you
that those fantasies about sex on the hearth rug in front of a log
fire are all completely true. It might have been ten degrees below
zero outside but we were boiling over nicely in the living
room.

And all the while I found
myself falling deeper and deeper in love with this beautiful
woman
who’d charged into my life, taken
it over and made me happier than I deserved to be.

Beyond all reasonable doubt and
with no leave to appeal.

She
could enslave me with a look and inflame me with the merest
touch, and we were naked so often it hurt to put my clothes on and
go to work some days.

Not that it was all about the sex.
As I’ve already told you, Allie brought out the hopeless romantic
in me and there were nights I simply wanted to spend time with her,
having dinner, holding hands across the table and telling her how
much I loved her. She was beautiful, funny, extraordinary, sexy,
and made me feel more of a man than any woman ever had.

Allie Lawless brought out my
best side – and very often my naughty side too – but either way was
just fine by her.

But
, by far the best nights of all, were when I let myself
into my apartment at the end of a long day to find her there
waiting for me. Face scrubbed clean of make-up, hair piled up and
wearing an old pair of jeans. She’d kiss me a long hello, hand me a
glass of wine and send me for a shower while she finished cooking
something amazing dinner. Afterwards we’d curl up on the sofa
together to watch the late night news before going to bed to make
love slowly and fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Wh
en I woke up the next morning and saw her face on the
pillow next to me I’d fall in love with her all over again and
spend the rest of the day aching for her.

Who
’d have thought it of a cynical, old flirt like
me?

One
Friday night I arrived home to find her naked and on her
knees in the hallway, with a suggestive look on her face and a
bottle of champagne in her hand. After the obligatory filthy blow
job, I caught my breath and asked her what we were
celebrating.

“I’m letting out my flat
again,” she said. “By the end of the month, I’ll be homeless unless
I can find someone to take me in.”

“There’s a bed here for you
in return for a few light, domestic duties,” I told her, stripping
off the rest of my clothes and lying her down on the sofa so I
could
give her pussy the attention it
deserved.

She gasped at the first sweep
of my tongue across her clit
and
virtually purred. “But if I move in, I’m worried how often you’ll
take advantage.”

I grinned up at her from my
favourite place in the world – on my knees, between those endless
legs of hers. “I promise to take advantage every single night of
the week.”

“It’s a tempting
offer.”
She bit her lip against the
rising sensations and tilted her hips to meet my hungry mouth. “I
think I’ll sleep on it.”

“Stay over tonight and I
guarantee there’
ll be no time for
sleep.”

And
there rarely was after that. It was the happiest, sexiest,
most exciting time of my life.

My minimalist interior gave
way to
Allie’s books, clothes and
countless pairs of shoes. Cushions and throws appeared from
nowhere, there were fresh flowers on the table, her toiletries took
over the bathroom cabinet and my DVD player always had a
chick-flick in it.