Ripped (6 page)

One look at Rosie’s face told me she not only thought she’d already played the first game, she was the winner.

She wafted past me and murmured under her breath, ‘Happy Christmas. Enjoy your present.’

Nico was my present?

That was what she’d meant when she’d said it would be arriving later?

I wondered if she’d told him he was my gift. I sincerely hoped not, but knowing my sister she probably had.

I followed her into the living room, avoiding his gaze. Not that I was particularly shy or anything, but I’d been thinking about nothing but sex with him for the past four days. I wasn’t confident that my eyes wouldn’t light up like slot machines.

Thank goodness he couldn’t read my mind.

He sat down on the sofa, nudging my laptop to one side. He’d abandoned Tom Ford, presumably because I was now in possession of half of it, and was wearing a pair of black jeans. They molded themselves to his long, powerful legs as if there was nowhere they’d rather be than snuggled against those hard thighs. I didn’t blame them. In fact I envied those jeans. Through the gap in the neck of his shirt I could see a hint of dark hair against bronzed flesh.

I was just pondering the etiquette of accepting a gift who didn’t know he was your gift, when he reached idly for my laptop.

‘I don’t normally work on Christmas day, but do you mind if I just check something?’

I opened my mouth to tell him to help himself when I remembered that not only had I not shut my laptop down the night before, but that the last search had been ‘vibrator—the Niccolò’.

I flung myself across the room but it was too late. He’d already opened it and I stood, marinating slowly in embarrassment for the second time in less than four days. It seemed I was destined to humiliate myself around this man. First he’d seen the outer me stripped bare, and now he was seeing the inner me similarly naked.

I was doomed.

‘Nico can’t stop himself checking the court cases.’ Kiara walked across the room balancing the bowls of nuts and crisps my sister had given her. ‘Normally he does it on his phone, but I unplugged his charger last night, so I’m in trouble.’

Nowhere near as much trouble as I was in.

Shit, shit,
shit
.

I waited for him to skewer me with one of his severe, disapproving looks, but he didn’t. Instead he tapped the keyboard with those strong, clever fingers that knew exactly how to drive a woman crazy and checked whatever it was he wanted to check.

His expression didn’t flicker. He was the most inscrutable man I’d ever met. In fact he was so calm and controlled, I wondered if maybe my memory was failing me. Maybe I
had
closed that page down. I must have done, or he would have said something or at least given me one of his looks.

The doorbell rang again and other people started streaming into our apartment, leaving me no opportunity to dwell on it.

It was a good job Rosie had bought those extra presents because pretty soon we were up to twelve people. I knew about eight of them, but it didn’t really make any difference because I wasn’t looking at them anyway. They might as well have not been there for all the impact they made on me. For me there was only one man in the room.

We popped bottles of bubbly, opened presents, then helped Rosie carry the food to the table. And all the time I was aware of Nico. Kiara had suddenly become the life and soul of the party, but he’d barely opened his mouth. I knew that, because I kept looking at it. I loved the shape of his lips and kept remembering how they’d felt as they’d moved over mine.

‘I should give you your jacket.’ I blurted the words out, wishing I had a tenth of his control.

‘No hurry.’

That was all he was going to say?

The atmosphere was so tense that by the time my sister placed the turkey in the centre of the table I was hotter than any of the food.

Because our table was designed to seat eight at the most, twelve was a squash. I sat down at the end, because at least then I’d be up close and personal with just one other person.

Nico sat down next to me.

My heart bumped. I tried to work out if this was accident or design and decided he wasn’t a man who did anything by accident. He didn’t look at me and as usual there was nothing in his expression that gave me any clues as to what he was thinking. His arm brushed against mine. We were jammed together like atoms in a molecule. Anyone looking at us would probably have assumed it was lack of space that necessitated the closeness, but I knew differently.

I’d like to say lunch was delicious, but honestly I couldn’t have told you what I ate because Christmas lunch was all about the man seated next to me.

When he reached across and forked turkey onto my plate all I saw were lean, bronzed hands and a dusting of dark hair on his forearms. He’d rolled his sleeves to the elbow. I guessed that was as close to casual as this man got.

‘Enough?’

I looked at him blankly.

‘Turkey,’ he said gently and I blinked.

‘Yes. Thanks.’ What was it about a man’s forearms? Although, if I were honest, it wasn’t just his forearms. It was all of him.

He leaned forward to pick up a dish of potatoes and I saw the muscle flex in his powerful shoulders. Then he sat down again and this time he was thigh to thigh with me. Our legs might as well have been glued together.

I experimented and eased my leg away slightly, but his followed.

My heart swooped upwards like a paraglider hitting a thermal, taking my mood with it.

Rosie glanced at me. ‘Is it good?’

‘Oh, yes.’ I focused on my plate even though I knew she wasn’t talking about the turkey. ‘Brilliant.
You’re
brilliant.’

People were swapping stories about their Christmas traditions, but I didn’t hear a word because I had this noisy, happy sound ringing in my head.

Nico was here.

Sitting next to me.

And whatever our relationship had been in the past, right now it was hot and electric.

I decided one of us had to say something or we’d draw attention to ourselves. ‘So what sort of lawyer are you?’

He reached for his glass, although I’d noticed earlier that he was drinking water. Maybe he was afraid his control would slip if he drank alcohol. ‘A good one.’

‘That’s not an answer.’ I turned my head to look at him and of course that turned out to be a mistake because his wasn’t a face you wanted to look away from. I could have stared at him until I’d died of hunger, thirst or frustration, whichever came first. I could tell you at this rate it was going to be frustration.

And of course, he knew. ‘You really want to talk about law?’

There ought to be a law preventing a man driving a woman this crazy
.

His voice was so soft I knew no one else would be able to hear him.

The blood was pumping through my veins and I could still feel his thigh pressed hard against mine.

I was just about to make a second attempt at polite conversation, when I felt his hand slide over my thigh. The warmth of his palm pressed through my jeans and I almost jumped out of my seat with shock.

I could no longer pretend any of this was an accident or that we were fused together because of a lack of space. He left his hand there, as if testing to see if I was going to jump, jog the table and knock all the glasses over.

When I didn’t move, he slid his hand higher up my thigh and no matter what anyone said about some men, I could tell you there was nothing wrong with his sense of direction. He knew
exactly
where he was going.

My stomach clenched. The excitement was almost painful. The chemistry was off the scale. I didn’t understand it, and I was good with all the sciences. I could explain nuclear fission but I couldn’t explain this. What I felt made no sense at all to me, but that didn’t stop me feeling it and also the frustration that came from being in public.

There always seemed to be something between me and sexual satisfaction. In this case it was denim and a room full of my friends.

I wished I’d worn a dress with stockings instead of skinny jeans and thigh-length boots, but he was obviously a man who didn’t let obstacles get in his way because his fingers moved higher and higher until he was pressing right
there
.

I knocked my wine glass over. Fortunately I’d already drunk half of it, so we had a puddle, not a lake.

‘Oh,
crap
.’

My sister threw me a look and a napkin. Then she turned back to her neighbour and continued the conversation.

Nico didn’t move his hand, nor did he relax the pressure. As I said, obviously not a man to let anything stand in his way. I felt shivery and weak. The atmosphere between us was heavy, thick and so scorching hot I was surprised we hadn’t set off the smoke alarm.

I decided I might as well make the most of the thigh-length boots and ran my foot up his calf.

‘More turkey, Hayley?’ A guy I knew vaguely from Rosie’s gym smiled at me from across the table and I smiled back, shook my head and murmured an acceptable response. It was a surprise to me I could still string a sentence together because I was gripped by raw desire and the delicious friction created by Nico’s clever, persistent fingers. The frustration was almost unbearable. I decided pleasure this good shouldn’t be one-way and slid my hand up his thigh and covered him. If I’d needed confirmation that he felt the same way, I had it now. His erection was a thick, hard ridge under my hand, pressing through the constraining fabric of his jeans. For a moment I was tempted to pull that zip down, but I decided I’d had enough public exposure for one year.

‘Answer me a question—’ His voice was soft and just for me.

Given where my hand was, I was worried about what the question might be.

‘Only the one?’ I had millions I wanted to ask him, and then I remembered my resolution to have a sex-only relationship. I’d never done it before, but I was fairly sure a sex-only relationship involved—well, sex only. Asking questions about other things, particularly family, was a fast way of turning it into something I didn’t want. ‘What’s your question?’

At the far end of the table Kiara was laughing with the man from Rosie’s gym. Either Nico hadn’t noticed, or he didn’t care. Obviously he wasn’t his sister’s keeper.

‘Are you broken-hearted?’

He’d asked me the same question at the wedding. I hadn’t answered it. Why would I offer up something so personal to someone who disapproved of me?

But now—?

‘No,’ I croaked. ‘I’m not broken-hearted.’

He turned his head and gave me a look that told me nothing. ‘What time does your “friend Christmas” usually end?’

‘It’s been known to continue until New Year. Once we had a guest who enjoyed himself so much he stayed until we kicked him out on January 1. We were about to start charging him rent.’

His gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered there.

God, he was serious. I mean
really
serious. Most of the time I was pretty silly. My instinct was to joke around a lot, although I’d worked hard to rein that side of me in, especially around Charlie’s family, who had made no secret of the fact they found my sense of humour inappropriate (and that was
before
I’d burst out of my dress at the wedding).

Nico confused me. I’d thought he disapproved of me, but here he was with his hand…where it was.

I sensed something lurking behind those layers of ruthless control, something dark layered under the poker face he presented to the world.

I wondered what his secrets were.

Everyone had secrets, didn’t they?

I wouldn’t have minded discovering a few of his.

For once I wished our apartment were bigger. I loved it, but it wasn’t big enough for me to vanish to the bedroom without all twelve people around the table noticing. It was a miracle they hadn’t already noticed what was going on under the turkey. It was a good job Christmas was chaotic.

I really should have helped clear the table, but honestly I couldn’t stand up, let alone walk. All that gentle under-table stroking had driven me crazy. I was so,
so
close and the building desperation was killing me and yet still he was relentless, stroking and teasing until I had to clamp my thighs together to stop him.

I could feel him throbbing under my hand. Turning my head to look at him I met his gaze and saw that his eyes were darker than usual. Almost black. I shivered, wondering what it would take to make him drop his guard the way he had at the wedding. I’d never seen him laugh, but it occurred to me I’d never seen him show any other emotion either. Except desire. There was no missing that. It simmered in the depths of those black eyes and pulsed between both of us. I looked at his mouth and remembered how it had felt when we’d kissed. I knew that jaw would feel rough against my palms, because I’d had my hands on it only days earlier. I wanted to have my hands on it again.

I was so absorbed by him I was only dimly aware of my sister bringing in the Christmas pudding, a perfect dome of alcohol-infused dried fruit brought as a gift by one of our guests. Rosie had put holly in the centre, doused it in more alcohol and set fire to it in traditional British style. What wasn’t so traditional was that as she put it down on the table, the flame licked one the napkins. It caught fire.

Nico was on his feet instantly. Calmly, he doused the flames with a jug of water and then grabbed a pile of napkins and mopped up the water before it could do more damage. And all without ruining the pudding.

‘Hey, quick work.’ My sister looked shaken but she smiled at Nico and then at me, as if she was approving my choice.

I was starting to approve of my choice, too. The man might be a little uncommunicative, but he was good to have around in a crisis. First my dress, and now this. He wasn’t a man who hesitated. And I liked the way he helped my sister with clearing the table before sitting down again.

I was surprised our little fire hadn’t set off the smoke alarm, but Nico and I were producing far more heat than the flames on that pudding, so the smoke alarm was probably unconscious by now.