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Not with him, though.
And then she looked up.
Oh, my... Freya thought, and another of Edward’s sleazy come-ons left her mind.
If Mr 2812 had been sexy before, he was sinfully so now—dishevelled and just raw male, he made her toes curl in her very painful shoes. His hair was messy, his T-shirt was all crumpled and, alongside all the suits and formal clothes, in those dark jeans and tight T-shirt he stood out, deliciously so.
Freya dragged her mind away from rude thoughts. This shot was important and the countdown had started. Beth and Neil were in position and everyone was in place and she should be able to relax soon. All she had to do was wave the happy couple off and the rest of the night was hers.
Concentrate, Freya.
She couldn’t.
There was just this prickling awareness all over her as she recalled his scent and the feel of his hand on her arm.
Oh, God. She gazed up at him and hoped her eyes weren’t frantic, but that was how she suddenly felt—frantic for him.
‘Ten!’ everybody shouted. ‘Nine!’
They could not stop staring and, as the countdown drew to its conclusion, as everyone started cheering and kissing, Beth’s carefully organised photos were ruined by a tall guy bursting through and dashing down the stairs.
‘Auld Lang Syne’ was being sung out around them as his hands took her by the upper arms. Briefly she wondered why, instead of kissing her as she badly needed him to do, he was moving her away. But then Freya found out exactly why.
This wasn’t a kiss suitable for public exposure.
They were in a small booth to the side of the hotel’s reception when his mouth first met hers. They came together so hard that their teeth met and his tongue was strong and thick and very indecent. Her hips were held by him, and animal passion, which had never taken up residence in Freya before, rapidly made itself right at home.
Her hands were pressing into his chest, not to push him away, just to feel him, to rub those solid muscles beneath greedy palms. Then they went up to his head and her fingers dug into his hair. She kissed him back on tiptoe, so that her heels lifted up out of her shoes in an attempt to scale him.
He pulled back and gave her an intense look and there was no mention of going up for a drink.
‘I have to get back...’ It was a feeble protest she made. ‘I just need ten more minutes to sort the wedding party out.’
‘We can’t wait.’
His erection was in her groin and Freya herself was pressing hard into him.
‘I have to make sure that they get off okay...’
He peered out.
‘They’re waving and the bride is about to throw the bouquet. Do you want to go and try to catch it?’
The question was a loaded one.
What was she looking for—an amazing night with no names, or to dash off and catch the bouquet and the dream that it might one day be her?
‘God, no,’ Freya said. She was more than happy with being a third-time bridesmaid and so she took his head in her hands and got back to that mouth for one more deep kiss before they hit the elevators.
Freya pressed the button for the twenty-eighth floor.
‘You remembered,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes!’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1df5226c-0fb7-5486-9db4-68b3f8b44c83)
SADLY FOR THEM the elevator was full.
The wedding guests were dispersing and either heading to their rooms or to the bars. There were many, many opportunities for Freya to change her mind on the long and frustrating ride to the twenty-eighth floor and say that this was a terrible idea and so not like her.
It never entered Freya’s head to do so.
Her rigid, controlled life was in desperate need of fun and adventure, and he offered that and more.
He was beautiful.
Even with her back to him she could feel the energy between them, it was utter attraction and arousal at its most basic and Freya could not wait to indulge.
‘What floor are you on?’ he asked, running a finger over her bare shoulder as they crawled towards her floor. His touch was electric and, yes, it was terribly tempting to get off at the tenth floor, but there might be a problem as she hadn’t packed her toiletry bag with a wild night in mind.
She gave a small shake of her head and then turned and looked him right in the eye as the elevator came to her floor and a couple got out.
‘I haven’t got...’ she mouthed.
‘I have,’ he mouthed back. Of course he did, Freya thought. This guy had nearly had her at five p.m. after all—no doubt he came prepared for women dropping their knickers on sight—but they were already past her floor and so they waited—oh, how they waited—for them to hit his floor.
As the crowd thinned out there was a bit more space but they didn’t utilise it. She could feel his eyes on her shoulder, on her spine, and then she got the bliss of his mouth on the part of her she hated the most.
She leant back into him even as the doors opened.
‘Thank God,’ Zack said, and he took her hand and they just about ran the length of the corridor.
He opened up the door and they fell into the room. Their mouths locked and they didn’t bother with the lights. Just hot, hard kisses as Freya kissed him with abandon up against the wall.
He more than partook because he tore that dress off and the sound of it ripping was as delicious as the feel of his hands on her bare skin.
‘Oh, God,’ he said as he played with her breasts and tweaked her nipples as if he’d been waiting for them all night.
He had been.
Freya had never been more grateful for ignoring the bride’s plea because, unable to resist a taste, he lowered his head and took one nipple into his hungry mouth.
‘She wanted me to wear sticking plasters over them.’
‘We don’t like the bride,’ he said as he withdrew his mouth, and it made her laugh. It was just such a relief after a very long and difficult day to laugh and vent to someone who got her. He took the other breast in his mouth and sucked hard. Freya pushed him off, only because it was her turn to taste his salty chest. Oh, he tasted amazing, like he’d been swimming in the ocean and had then showered in ice. Salty, refreshing and so firm.
Freya dealt with his heavy leather belt as best she could with her mouth on his chest, licking him, tasting him and then moaning her frustration.
‘Why button-ups...?’ Freya whimpered.
‘So I can picture your fingers undoing them and getting it out.’ She was doing just that and Freya herself wasn’t gentle. He was so thick and long and already there was a silver drizzle that trickled onto her fingers as she explored him.
‘Get naked,’ he told her, and he went into his pocket. He wished he’d kicked off his boots so he could do the same but there really wasn’t time. As she shed her knickers he dressed his erection and Freya toppled a little as she took off her shoes.
‘Come here,’ he said, and she just stepped to him and he lifted her to where she’d wanted to be all along.
‘Oh...’ He didn’t guide her on, he held her hips as her hands went behind his neck.
‘Lean back,’ he told her, and as he held her by the hips he rubbed her wet sex over his stomach and scented himself with her.
‘I’m going to come...’ Freya was, the feel of the hairs on his stomach, the rough guide of his hands, the way he was holding her, and she couldn’t hold on.
‘That’s the intention,’ Sexy Bastard said.
She had kind of got this wasn’t going to be like anything she’d experienced before but she found out for certain then. As her body arched, as she let out a building moan, he took her coming. He just drove into her tight and twitching and moaned at the pleasure.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said.
Oh, yes, Freya thought.
He just parted her orgasm, it was like being a virgin all over again, or not, Freya thought because that had been such an underwhelming encounter.
This wasn’t.
She went limp for a moment and he took full advantage, grinding her down to meet his thrusts. Her hands took in his muscled shoulders and she dug her nails in, and then she just had to taste that shoulder, sucking it as her hands explored his broad upper back.
Her nails dug in again, deeper, and he took her a bit slower but with measured tension. It was an odd consent but she read it—he wanted more of the same so she scratched him hard.
‘Careful,’ he warned as her mouth sucked skin, but he wasn’t telling her to stop, she knew that. ‘You’ll pay for each bruise.’
Oh, she would gladly pay.
He took her to the desk, or she guessed that’s what it was, because it was cold and hard on her back. Freya went to wrap her legs around him but his hand pressed her thighs apart and he took her hard and so deep that she just about performed a sit-up as her entire lower abdomen contracted.
‘Come on,’ he said, and she opened her eyes to his gruff command but then her eyes met his and he smiled down at her.
‘Nice,’ he said, bucking into her.
‘So...’ Freya couldn’t finish. She had never known anything like it. His face tensed and then he released into her, and she met the impact with a deep force of her own. Her orgasm just rolled through her like thunder and then lightning clapped her tight with no pause in between. It just dissolved her from the inside out, and as it left she quivered and then he collapsed onto her.
He was so heavy, and breathless, but then his mouth was an unexpected soft caress. Even as he came out of her he kissed her. Even as he unsheathed he kissed her back to earth, and as he stripped off his boots and jeans, his mouth never left her skin. Naked now, he picked her up from the hard desk and carried her to the bed.
He got in beside her and scooped her into his body. His hand stroked her breast and he kissed her shoulder as she lay feeling bewildered yet drowsy and sedated.
‘Go to sleep,’ he said.
He seemed to know just what she needed and yet they didn’t even know each other’s names.
‘How...?’ She attempted to gather a thought into a sentence.
‘Chemistry,’ he answered.
And to sleep they went.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_a08fa0a9-9cfe-53d2-a3c3-a8660bc65885)
‘I SHOULD HAVE paid way more attention in science class,’ Freya said a few hours later as she woke to the thought of his last word and the feel of her loose, relaxed body in his arms as he spooned in behind her.
‘Oh, I’ll make you pay attention,’ he said low and deep into her ear. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘And you,’ Freya said.
‘It already is.’
Last night he’d barely been able to get the words out to his mother, knowing how pointless they were, but now Zack was happy, indulging in one of his passions.
The other was work and that was so intense that he lived for escapes like this.
‘Were you going to come to my room?’ he asked. ‘Honest answer.’
‘I was thinking about it,’ Freya said. ‘I wasn’t having the best night.’
‘What did you say to that guy?’
Freya frowned.
‘The one who walked off just before you saw me...’
‘Oh, that was Edward—’
‘No names,’ he interrupted, and Freya lay there, feeling his fingers gently kneading her stomach.
Freya wanted to know his name, she wanted to know more about him, and yet he’d reminded her that there would be no exchange of names. But as she lay there, enjoying the gentle massage of his fingers, and thought about it, she realised that it was actually quite freeing. There would be no I’m Freya Rothsberg. Yes, Aubrey St Claire and Michael Rothsberg are indeed my parents. And if he recognised the name, then he’d know about their messy divorce. And there would be no I’m thirty-one, single, perfectionist, infertile but trying not to be, recovered anorexic. She didn’t have to say she was a big shot in PR. Or that she was stressing about taking on the charity side of her brother’s medical centre. Or that, though she’d pushed James to let her, really she wanted to use her psychology degree.
No names didn’t mean no past but it meant she didn’t have to reveal anything that she didn’t want to.
Who was she without all of that? Freya lay there and pondered.
She.
The woman in his arms, and that was enough for him.
He.
Freya understood now the bliss of no names.
‘He’s an ex.’ Freya answered the question after a very long pause. ‘And he tried it on last night. Several times.’
