‘Actually, I’ve never been thinking straighter. Avoiding it doesn’t seem to be working, does it? So what other choice do we have but to confront it? Because it’s not going to go away.’
‘It has to.’
‘What if it doesn’t?’
If it didn’t they’d have a lifetime of it, tearing them up inside.
At the thought of that Marcus went dizzy, his heart hammering and his stomach churning. A lifetime of this? How would he stand it?
Especially when he didn’t even have to.
Collapsing under so much pressure, so much need, Marcus felt what was left of his self-control disintegrate. He’d clung on for as long as he could and he knew it was the worst idea in the world to take Celia up on her suggestion but he was only a man. He had his limits like everyone else and she was pushing him way past his.
He’d tried to resist, so hard, he had for months, but the pleading in her voice, the hunger in her eyes, the sense she was making when it was everything he wanted had chipped his resolve right away. He was a man at the end of his tether, and, really, she was right. What was one night?
‘Whatever happens after,’ she said, stepping closer, putting her hands on his chest and splaying her fingers, her proximity scrambling his head even more and making him feel quite weak, ‘I know what I want, Marcus, and I know what I’m doing.’
‘Do you?’ he grated as the last of his resistance shattered and he gave in, body and soul. ‘Really? Because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.’
And with that, he pulled her into his arms, one round her waist and the other at the back of her head, and crashed his mouth down on hers.
Her hands slid up his chest, burning a trail he could feel right down to his toes. She wound them round his neck and locked them there as she pressed against him.
She moaned and he pulled her tighter and it was as if someone had thrown a match on a tinderbox. Heat surged between them. Fire ran through his veins. His heart thundered and desire surged through his blood, thick and drugging and nearly making him forget where they were.
But not quite.
He pulled back, breathing harshly, and she whimpered.
‘Don’t stop,’ she mumbled, pulling his head down and kissing him again.
‘We have to,’ he said, somehow finding the strength of will to unwind her arms from around his neck and peel himself away.
‘No,’ she protested. ‘Why? Surely you’re not going to turn all scrupulous on me now.’
‘God, no,’ he said, thinking he was too far beyond the point of return to come up with all the reasons they shouldn’t be doing this.
‘Then why?’
‘Because for one thing,’ he said, taking her arm and scouring the street, ‘if we don’t we’ll be arrested for indecency, and for another we need to find a taxi.’
THIRTEEN
The journey to Celia’s flat passed by in a bit of a blur, although not because they were going particularly fast.
In fact, after that first frantic kiss on the pavement during which she’d nearly gone up in flames with longing and relief because his strength of will was such a powerful force that for a moment she’d doubted her ability to break it, she and Marcus were now going achingly slowly.
The minute he’d slammed the door behind them and the driver had pulled away from the kerb, he’d slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. She’d leaned into him and lifted her hand to the back of his neck, and their mouths had met and they stayed like that, necking like teenagers as they crossed London, sharing long, slow, drugging kisses that blew her mind and obliterated her control.
At one point, she tried to straddle him, desperate for the feel and the friction of his hardness against the place where she needed it most. She didn’t get very far, though. She’d just slid her leg over his and Marcus had just clamped his hand to her thigh to help her climb onto his lap, when a not so discreet cough from the taxi driver had them stopping in their tracks and sticking to kissing.
She was so dizzy with desire and desperation, so out of her mind with need, she barely noticed the taxi coming to a stop outside her building. When Marcus peeled away, her brain was too frazzled to be able to work out why until her head cleared enough to see that he’d got out and was thrusting a couple of notes through the window and muttering something about there being no need for change.
How she managed to get her key in the lock when her hands were so shaky she didn’t know. And as for climbing all the stairs to her flat, well, since her limbs had turned to water she must have floated. Either that or Marcus had somehow carried her up as they carried on kissing.
But eventually, still entwined but now grappling at clothing, they made it through her front door, and she slapped at the light switch before they stumbled into her sitting room and tumbled down onto the sofa.
Marcus landed first. Celia followed, straddling him the way she’d wanted to in the taxi. She shed her jacket and her shirt while he shrugged off his and then his hands were around her back unhooking her bra.