Undertaking Love Page 0,20
squeaked, and somewhere in her head, Emily actually meant it. It was scandalous on just about every level to steam up the windows of a hearse, but on the other hand, it was kind of perfectly proportioned for stretching out.
‘Oh yes we fucking can,’ he muttered, pulling her T-shirt over her head without breaking their kiss, like a magician pulling out the table cloth without upsetting any teacups. He unfastened her bra with the ease of a practised man, and Emily’s protests dissolved as his warm hands and wet mouth roamed over her body. He licked and sucked until she gasped and begged. Somehow, he managed to wriggle off both her trousers and his own in one go and settle back over her, warm skin against warm skin. He was hard and heavy between her legs, but it was Dan’s kiss that tipped Emily’s world upside down.
Slow, sweet and exquisite over her mouth.
Feather gentle over her squeezed shut eyelids when he pushed himself all the way inside her. Outside, the hearse creaked to the rhythm of INXS and Emily and Dan’s efforts.
Inside, she buried her tear damp face in his neck and clung to his broad shoulders for safe harbour while he rocked her to the moon and back.
Some time later, Emily opened her eyes as Dan’s mouth traced a lazy pattern on the sensitive hollow below her ear. She gazed out at the moonlit river, still and serene despite the fact that three lives had just changed forever on her banks.
Chapter Seven
‘Gerroffme …’
Marla grumbled at Bluey as he tried to nudge her awake with his huge head. She turned over and snuggled deeper into the crisp, white cotton duvet, desperatly trying to hang onto the coat tails of her delicious dream. She stuck her head under the pillow as the ever patient Bluey thumped his way around the bed to poke her again from the other side. She shot up with a guilty flush. She’d been dreaming about Gabe, who for some fathomless reason had been shirtless and fixing her wonky shower when it suddenly sprayed all over him. Jeez, he’d been very, very wet. She shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the disconcertingly sexy image.
Bluey stood by the door whining low in his throat with his head cocked to one side, and it finally dawned on Marla that there was someone knocking on the door. She scowled at the clock. It was just after eight on her first morning off for quite some time, so whoever the hell had decided to interrupt her much cherished lie-in had better have something vitally important to say.
She shrugged her white waffle dressing gown on over the top of her cotton slip and belted it tight. A peep through the white voile blind didn’t help, because whoever was at the door was too close to the cottage for her to see. She straightened the blind and pushed her toes into her white terry-towelling flip-flops. A gift from Dora – she’d snipped the little pink ribbons off the front before she’d worn them. Jonny had been appalled, and insisted that her obsession with white was a direct reflection of her uptight personality. Marla eschewed his attempts at pop psychology; her mother had analysed her to death over the years. White just made her feel clean, that was all. It helped her to breathe more deeply, to relax more easily. She shook her head at Bluey to warn him against climbing into her recently vacated warm spot on the bed, and ran her hand along the handrail as she picked her way down the steep cottage stairs to the front door.
Her attempts to peer through the bevelled glass pane in the old oak door proved fruitless; she couldn’t recognise the warped silhouette on the other side. It looked male though. She slid back the bolt and inched the door open. She was right in her assessment. Male. Very definitely male. Very definitely attractive, too. And naggingly familiar somehow, but without its first hit of caffeine her brain had some way to go to catch up with her feet.
His smile sailed through the Marla Jacobs teeth test, and his sparkling blue eyes melted her last vestiges of annoyance at being woken up. To his further credit, he rather heroically didn’t let his eyes wander down over her state of undress.
Belatedly, she noticed the newspaper in his hand.
‘Are you the oldest paperboy in the world?’
He laughed and ran a hand through his floppy hair.