the fuck up, she thought. What did you expect?
She tucked her headphones in her ears. With a snort of irony she chose Sia’s album Some People Have Real Problems and the track Buttons, a song about seeing ghosts in everything. It seemed appropriate.
Harry sat on the broad windowsill, wrapped in a soft, white hotel robe watching the flow of traffic out the window. This wasn’t the first time she’d missed a flight, but it was the first time she’d done it for less than professional reasons.
Her less than professional reason was asleep. Sprawled across the king-size bed, half covered with the sheet. And what wasn’t covered—one long muscular leg, one ridge of hip bone and one incredibly well-muscled torso, inked with bright colours and geometric images that ran across his chest and over one shoulder—was enormously appealing.
After the romantic wasteland of her youth, Harry had made up for lost time. She’d had trysts in various size beds, variously starred hotels, the back seat of a Holden Commodore, a public spa and, shamefully, in the disabled bathroom of a wedding reception centre. But nothing had prepared her for the excitement and mind jolting thrill of being with Rand.
Getting to fourth base had been the singularly most delicious experience of Harry’s life. It bypassed three serious relationships, one live-in lover, one naughty ‘shouldn’t have gone there fling’ and, one proposal. It stood at the top of the heap of her wildest imagining and danced about waving a victory flag, whooping and yelling. Her body was still humming from the way Rand had touched her. And looking at him lying there, abandoned to her gaze, made her want to wake him, crawl all over him and do it all again.
She was in deep trouble. Now there was no debating it. This thing with Rand was so much more than a hot and heavy infatuation fuelled by their aborted teenage false start. It was a high speed bullet train, a supersonic jet—revving the engines of her desire, and roaring its way into her heart. And there was no getting off it. She was a passenger for life.
Rand had been very clear that what was left of the dawn and the day was theirs. No phones, no limos, no airport, nothing that wasn’t already contained in the walls of his suite or couldn’t be brought in by room service. She hadn’t complained. She’d sent off a text to Ted and shut off her phone.
Now she wanted to let him sleep. He must have been exhausted; the show, the party at Cherry and the intensity of their prolonged lovemaking had to have left him needing rest. It had left her so wired she’d been unable to sleep at all. She felt alive, awake and inflamed, nervously excited for more of his touch.
And damn, he wasn’t easy to ignore. She knew his skin would be firm and warm and supple under her fingers. She knew his lips would be soft and hard and wet and probing. She wanted to slide against the length of him and explore the patterns on his chest with her tongue. She wanted his hands in her hair, on her breasts and dragging on her hips. She hugged herself, pins and needles of lust coursing down her spine.
She checked her watch, another half an hour and she would wake him. Another half an hour and she’d be crazy from waiting for him and imagining what he might do to her, what they might do together.
She stared out the window and tried to distract herself. Think of work, the footage she wanted to show him, the ideas she had for their video shoot. Think of anything but how she craved his nearness, wanted to own his lazy smile, and get lost in the deep green forest of his eyes.
She lasted twenty-two minutes, the longest twenty-two minutes she could remember, before she ran her palm over the rise of his instep, his ankle, up his shin to his knee. He was awake and making little growling noises in the back of his throat before her hand made it to his thigh.
He stretched, arching his back, bringing his arms down to scoop her against him. “Where have you been?” he murmured, eyes still half lidded, voice low and croaky. “Why’d you let me sleep?”
She braced her towelling covered elbows on his chest. “You needed to.”
He sucked in a breath, eyes properly open now, his body twitching slightly under her. “Shit, I didn’t just crash out on