Working With Heat (3 page)

She bent her head to rest on his shoulder, felt the heat of his skin through the fine cotton of his shirt, smelled the scent of him, so elemental. Soap, skin, the heat he absorbed all day. He’d been her friend for months, but now there was the possibility of something more. “Invite me up.”

His fingers trailed through her hair to her jaw. He brushed his thumb across her lips and said, “Are you sure?”

There were a dozen good reasons not to do this, not to sleep with her friend. Ruining the friendship. Making things awkward between all five of them. But the look in Charlie’s eyes was one really good reason to do this, and Milla had never been one to act out of fear. She’d take a chance on the chemistry, knowing she’d put their friendship at stake.

“I’m sure,” she said, and kissed him again.

Chapter Two

In the split second after Milla whispered, “Invite me up,” Charlie thought through all the reasons why this was a really bad idea. By the time he was Milla’s age, his ex-wife had burned him to a husk, both personally and professionally. He’d changed everything for her, moved out of the East End, polished up his accent, ignored the way glass called to him as an artist because he’d believed her dreams for them were better than his.

Then she’d shattered those dreams in the most public, humiliating way.

He’d crawled back to his roots, sown deep in the East End, to friends like Billy, to his family (who, for the most part, refrained from saying
I
told you that wouldn’t work
when he’d stumbled out of the divorce with not even his pride). He’d apprenticed himself to a master glass artist, learned his art, nurtured relationships with the overseas galleries immune to his ex-wife’s influence, giving him an outlet for the work he created once he could even think about art again.

Milla was impossible to slot into a neat little compartment like East End boy or West End girl. American, but born in England and raised all over the world. Living her life through her mobile to the point where he wanted to wing the bloody thing in the Thames. Maybe that was worse, falling for someone whose roots were sown in the internet.

For four long years he’d fought to rebuild his life and career. Risking it all on someone whose idea of privacy was so warped it included asking total strangers to pick her dates wasn’t just a really bad idea. It was madness. But his body, home to the animal instincts that had led him wrong with Chelsea, the desires he’d taught himself to ignore, was saying this was the best idea he’d ever had.

Lightning round to break the tie. His body won, his brain taken down by the roundhouse punch of desire lighting him up like molten glass. Peering into her big brown eyes, feeling the lush softness of her body against his, lit him up like only the best kind of risk could. So very, very wrong, and yet so very, very right. Dangerous combination, that.

But then she said she was sure and kissed him again, and he remembered what it was like to want, the power it gave another human being, the ceaseless grind of it.

His hand slid from her jaw, down her shoulder, to clasp hers to lead her up the stairs. Unwilling to let go, he fumbled with his keys one-handed until he unlocked the big black door leading to his flat. Once he had them inside, he backed her into the door. Milla dropped her purse and phone and linked her now free hand with his. Charlie lifted them and pinned the backs of her hands to the door on either side of her head. She arched against him, soft and strong, giving him every reason to use his hips to push her hard against the door, channeling everything he had into the kiss. She angled her head and licked the upper bow of his lip, a maddening, teasing promise that was so like Milla. All surface, until you dove in and discovered the depths.

His beard, now scratchy-soft from a string of days and nights at the hot shop, rasped against her chin and cheeks, the sound audible in the silence of his flat, and incredibly sexy. She writhed between him and the door, tugging first one wrist free, then the second. Reluctant to let her go completely, he rested his weight on his forearms on either side of her head. She ran her hands through the fine thick hair until her fingers met at his nape. He sank into the touch while she brushed her thumbs over his jaw.

“I can shave,” he offered. Her chin was already pink. He usually forgot anything more than the basics of hygiene when he was in the middle of creating a piece, remembering when he startled himself in the mirror with his wild-man growth, and then he’d trim it down and start all over again. It was a good sign. During the weeks when all he made were the curving, swirling glass ornaments he sold regularly, he always remembered to shave.

“Please don’t,” she said. She trailed her fingers down his throat to the first button on his shirt, and unfastened it, spreading the fabric and placing her open mouth against the hollow at the base of his throat.

This time his hands tightened in her hair, pulling just enough to make her gasp and rub into his hand. He forced his hands to relax, forced his mind to stop cataloging all the ways their touches turned possessive. Milla was like molten silica and small concentrations of gold blending together to produce the rubino oro or cranberry glass he favored. Tart, sweet and a deep color he couldn’t stop looking at. She wore a halter dress with a plunging neckline that tied behind her neck, baring her cleavage and her shoulders, a very ‘50s look she wore with combat boots on the weekends. That was Milla in a nutshell—pretty as a pinup and taking no shit.

She nuzzled into his shirt and nipped at his collarbone, and his brain shut down when a wave of lust crashed over him. He reached for the bow securing the top of her dress, untied it and dragged the backs of his hands over her collarbones, then her breasts as he let the fabric drop. Then he pulled her hair forward, so the blunt-cut ends just brushed the tops of her breasts.

She peered at him from under her heavy fringe and pushed his shirt off his shoulders. Her fingers smoothed back up his abdomen, pausing at his nipples, then sweeping down his arms to lift his hands to her breasts. Her tight nipples pressed against his palms as he cupped the soft, pale flesh. She traced the collection of scars and burns flecked over his hands until he pinched her nipples and bent to kiss her again. Her mouth was soft, open under his while she worked at his belt and zipper.

“Take me to bed,” she murmured against his mouth.

“Absolutely,” he said, and wrapped one arm around her waist, hoisting her right off her feet. She giggled, then whooped when he dropped her on the bed. His jeans sagged low on his hips when he went to his heels to slip off her shoes. Braced on her elbows, she watched him, completely unself-conscious about being half-naked with her skirt rucked up around her thighs.

He squeezed each foot and watched her sigh with pleasure, then slid his hands up her calves, over her knees to the tops of her thighs, taking the skirt with him. When he found the elastic edge of her knickers, he curled his fingers into it, and, eyes fixed on hers, tugged them down.

Without blinking, she lifted her hips and let him bare her. It was maddeningly sexy. The dress had to zip somewhere, the back, or the side, maybe, but he didn’t care. He tugged her knickers to the floor, then stood between her legs at the foot of the bed, his gaze irresistibly drawn to little glimpses of her sex as he pushed his jeans and pants to the floor. He scooped her up in one arm and shifted her higher on the bed to reach for the condoms in his nightstand. He tore one off the strip, opened the package, then hissed in his breath when Milla took it from him and rolled it down.

He made himself wait, pouring all the tension and longing into kiss after kiss, until she was lifting her hips and digging her nails into his shoulders. The next time she arched into him, he slipped just a little bit inside, and inhaled her shuddering exhale. Slowly but surely, he let her draw him in, until he met her searching hips with his first full thrust, powering her back into the bed. She arched her neck and moaned, shivering under his touch as he trailed his fingers over her breast, down her ribs to gather her skirt and grip her bare hip.

“You like the dress?” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, too far gone to say anything more eloquent. It was feminine and sexual, enticing and powerful, all at once.

She wrapped her leg around his and used her hips to roll him to his back. Her hair curtained her face as she bent and kissed him, her mouth hot and sweet against his. “How about now?” she asked as she lifted off him, then slid back down.

He looked down. The loosened top and full skirt hid their joined bodies until she took all of her weight on one hand and gathered the fabric with the other, giving him teasing glimpses of his slick cock gliding in and out of her body.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” he said.

He gripped her ass with both hands and shifted with each thrust until her eyes drooped closed and her head dropped back on her neck. A deep flush bloomed on her cheeks and collarbones, then spread along her throat and chest as he lifted his hips into hers. He dug his heels into the bed and held on to his control by the skin of his teeth until she came apart above him. He closed his eyes and gave in, release sweeping through him in sharp, pulsing waves.

The first thing he heard when he recovered his hearing was Milla’s satisfied panting breaths in his ear. The second thing he heard was laughter and a door slamming downstairs.

The third thing he heard was his brain reminding him that the risks were great, but the consequences would not be ignored.

“I smell curry. They must have given up on getting a table somewhere and gotten takeaway instead,” Milla said, stretching like a satisfied cat.

He rolled out of bed to deal with the condom. When he came back, Milla was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, all dark hair and red mouth against his white sheets. “Let’s not—” he started, then stopped. Shit.

“Tell anyone?” she finished, listening to the faint clink of plates and laughter coming from the ground floor. “I don’t usually kiss and tell, but sure, if you want to keep it quiet, I’m fine with that.”

“That’s fine,” he said quickly. Better than fine, actually. He sprawled in the bed and braced his head on one hand. With the creative jag he’d been on lately, the powerful, intense, all-consuming demand that he work until he dropped, he’d been able to ignore how he felt about Milla dating. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could ignore it, but he wasn’t ready to have that conversation now and potentially throw off his work.

“Just stay?” he asked. “They’ll be up for hours.”

“That works,” she said. “I’m a heavy sleeper and I left my bedroom door shut, so they won’t miss me.”

The sun had finally set, casting evening shadows across the floor and bed. He found the zipper at the side of her dress and drew it down. She rocked from side to side so he could pull her dress off and toss it at the foot of the bed. He lifted the sheet and blanket, inviting her under the covers.

“I’ll sneak in early tomorrow,” she said drowsily.

Charlie watched her drift, her face no less vibrant as sleep claimed her. The jury was still out, but he knew one thing for sure. As of now they were more than friends, and all the neat compartments he’d built for his emotions were falling apart.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning, the other side of the bed was empty. He rolled onto his back and knuckled sleep from his eyes while he took stock. Sunshine poured through the windows, heating the air enough to bring out a faint hint of Milla’s perfume. The bathroom door was open, the shower curtain dry, so she’d not risked the clanking and banging the old pipes made and had sneaked out before dawn, when everyone in the house would be asleep. He knew why. He’d been a talented scholarship student from the East End trying desperately to make his way with art-world royalty from Kensington, hyperattuned to everyone else’s thoughts, feelings, desires. Milla had spent her life as an outsider, a stranger in a strange land. With an outsider’s keen awareness, she’d picked up on his mixed messages and given him that combination of sweet heat and silence he’d wanted, and not seemed to mind at all.

So why did he feel like a tosser?

He rolled out of bed and started the water running in the bathroom. Before this combination of girls moved in, he’d set his own schedule, starting his day slowly, working through the afternoon and into the evening with only Billy for company, knocking off in time for a late supper alone, in front of the telly. Now he found himself faced with tenants who didn’t take no for an answer. Before he’d quite known what was happening, he was stopping down for breakfast, or brunch on the weekends, rounding out their table for the pub quiz, giving Kaitlin his input on logo redesigns, sampling coffee and pastries for Elsa.

Milla changed that balance. She was always at the center of things, the chemical agent, the catalyst that made it all happen. She didn’t do anything tangible, not like Kaitlin’s designs or Elsa’s pastries. She went places, saw things, took pictures, posted them, and yet she brought everyone in the house together.

He toweled off and dressed in his work uniform of battered jeans, work boots and a long-sleeved waffle undershirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, then snagged Milla’s right shoe and sidestepped down the stairs to the girls’ floor. Knowing that he’d have to rent out the first-floor flat to help pay off the renovations of a house his grandparents had worked their entire lives to buy, he’d added a layer of soundproofing that almost, but not quite, muffled the steady stream of laughter, chatter and music emanating from the girls’ flat. The babble of sound grew louder as he descended. Moving quietly, he pushed open the door and dropped Milla’s shoe by its mate, then knocked.

“Morning,” he called as he pushed open the door.

A chorus of good mornings and scents reached him, the usual morning chaos. The girls continued their conversation over each other in the kitchen, Elsa in a belted robe, yawning as she opened the oven and shook a pan of granola. Kaitlin, wearing a nightie, sidestepped the open oven and set a jar of marmalade by the toaster. “You’re staying for breakfast?” Elsa asked.

I
can’t
formed in his mouth, but then he saw Milla, perched on the counter in a pair of pedal pushers, a three-quarter-length cardigan buttoned to her collarbones, and her damp hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She looked like everyone thought the ‘50s were supposed to look, if everyone in the ‘50s had had a smartphone stapled to her hand.

“Yeah,” he said.

He caught Milla’s eye and tipped his head at the jumble of shoes, boots, flip-flops, sandals and heels by the door.
I
brought back your second boot
, he mouthed.

Her eyes widened, then shifted to the side as she thought it through. Then she smiled.
Ta
, she mouthed back, and went back to her phone. “She’s experimenting,” she said casually. “No fry-up today.”