Playing With Fire

Chapter Two

‘Fuck,’ he gasped harshly, head snapping back as hot needles of pleasure lanced through him. One look at Annabel’s half-closed green eyes and half-open smudged red lips had him crushing their mouths together again as his hands tunnelled beneath her overcoat. Under it, she was dressed in her usual severe work attire – a black skirt suit so sharply tailored he was surprised not to feel his fingers sliced to bits. Her hair was pulled back in its trademark perfect twist, leaving her looking as impeccably, formidably stunning as the first time he’d seen her in Cluny’s dining room. She hadn’t been at all happy that day, returning to work from a week’s leave to find he’d been taken on as head barman without her consent. Yet even as he’d endured the full blast of her icy disdain, he’d known he’d do almost anything to muss up that perfection she wore as armour.

And that thought was all it took to have the caveman part of his brain stomping its big hairy feet to know why the hell she wasn’t mussed right now. He retracted his hands from the recesses of her coat and raised them again to her head to hunt out and remove the clips that held her hair tightly tamed. Spearing his fingers into the long, heavy mass, he fanned them through to the ends.

Pulling back to watch the soft locks cascade over her shoulders, he realised he had a correction to make. Annabel wasn’t as stunning as she’d been the first time he’d seen her. She was more so. The colour of her hair then had been a dyed ruby red, but she’d allowed it to return to its natural flaming riot of spun gold and copper and cinnamon – a sight that made him very happy indeed. He’d always had a thing for redheads, but most especially for this one.

Before he could lean in to claim her mouth again, Annabel used the small distance he’d put between them to push a hand against his chest. ‘Taxi,’ she panted. ‘Now.’

He’d already forgotten. ‘Wait right there.’ He tore himself away, heaved the door open and raced for the stairs before his synapses could relay the urgent message to stop and turn around. 

He was back in less than five minutes. And she was waiting for him. Watching through her little spyhole. Flinging the door open before he had to knock.

Then he was inside again, noticing she’d ditched the coat as, without a word, he pushed her back up against the wall and kissed her hard until neither of them had any breath left.

She pulled away first, sucking in air through lips his rough kiss had left red and swollen. Her hands were busy with the remaining buttons of his coat while his skimmed down over the tailored curves of her waist and hips.

‘Off!’ She wrenched the lapels back over his shoulders. He took his hands from her only long enough to help shake the coat from his arms and then he put them right back where they’d been.

 ‘Your turn,’ he ordered, bending to kiss her jawline while his fingers began gathering the fabric of her skirt, rucking it up. ‘Lose the jacket.’ 

Annabel moaned and let her head drop back against the wall, surrendering to his mouth as it closed over the pulse banging below her ear.

Hands working urgently in the tight space between their torsos, she managed to wrestle her jacket off while he got her skirt bunched up around her hips. As he felt her palms clasp his shoulders, his own slid downwards over her newly exposed thighs. What his touch discovered there had him smiling against the tender skin of her neck.

 Straightening, he looked down into her upturned face. ‘Tights, Ms Frost?’ he questioned with a whiff of disapproval, as he’d done once before – on the day he’d decided that the only way he’d ever get past his manager’s frosty defences was to risk something daring. ‘Really?’ 

Her eyelids snapped open at the words and, when she would have lifted her head, he wrapped a hand around her throat, setting the pad of his thumb against her chin to hold her where she was.