Light and an unfamiliar pressure around Alicia’s waist woke her in a rush. Her eyes flew open, and she glanced around, tense and breathless.
Ah.
She forced herself to relax, to inhale, to exhale. The heavily muscled arm that pinned her to the equally hard chest behind her wasn’t strange.
Or it wasn’t too strange.
Moving cautiously, she lifted her head, inching away from Colin. He slept like he was in a coma, his arm a slack weight as she raised herself on one elbow to look around his bedroom.
She was always fascinated by the choices people made about the spaces they inhabited. Her eyes scanned the room. White walls reached up to the slanting ceiling, where a skylight provided much of the illumination. A big, roughly-executed landscape painting with a stormy sky took up a large part of the tall wall opposite the bed, a smaller one that looked like it was by the same artist hung to the side of the door leading to the hall. Over the bedside table on her side of the bed hung a smaller, more traditional painting of what looked like an English garden. It looked out of place compared to the other art, and she wondered if it was a family heirloom or gift. It had to mean something to him for him to place it in his bedroom, she was sure. The sheets that softly draped around her body were also white, the duvet tan. The dark, coffee-colored headboard flanked on either side by two windows rose almost to the corner of where the sloping ceiling met the wall. Alicia wondered if he had had it made to order, it fit the space so well.
The overall impression was one of casual wealth, of solidity and security she had never known.
Rolling over to face Colin, Alicia bunched the pillow under her cheek and took a long look at him. Asleep, his features came together to form a compelling picture. A high forehead, that black hair, thick eyebrows, dark lashes resting on his cheeks, the sensuous mouth, and a stipple of stubble tempting her to run her fingers across it.
Why not? Lifting her hand, she cupped the angle of his jaw, stroking her thumb across the rough texture of his beard. Inhaling sharply, his eyes flew open, finding hers with alarming quickness.
Startled, she pulled her hand away, only to have him wrap his fingers around hers, pulling her palm to his mouth. The combination of soft lips and rasping scruff sent a bolt of lust through her, and she shivered as his teeth gently nipped the inside of her wrist.
I would have missed this if I had run out last night.
She had succumbed to instinct—no, to habit—last night when she had scurried to dress and leave.
It would have been safer, though.
The thought drowned in a wave of sensation as his lips traveled up her arm, nibbling at the sensitive flesh at the inside of her elbow. Transferring his attention to her neck, he brushed the lightest of kisses up the side.
“What say you…” A light nip that made her shiver. “…To a hot shower?”
Colin saw he had managed to surprise her. Lines fanned out from the corners of her eyes as she smiled, and the morning light picked out amber flecks in her brown irises that he hadn’t noticed before.
Granted, this was the first time they had ever seen each other in daylight.
“Is that a nice way of saying I’m smelly?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
He nipped along the column of her neck, making her shiver. “No, it’s a devious way of getting your luscious body hot and soapy.” And keeping you naked as long as possible.
“As long as I get to brush my teeth, yes.”
“Right.” Pushing himself up, Colin strode to the bathroom and rummaged under the sink until he found a spare toothbrush. Setting it on the counter, he opened the linen closet and pulled out a towel, setting it beside the toothbrush. Beginning to clean his teeth, Alicia entered, and he winked at her in the mirror. She ripped open the toothbrush package and attacked her own teeth with vigor.
Stepping to the glassed-in shower stall, Colin turned on the water. Alicia dried her mouth with the towel he had laid out for her, a small, feline smile on her lips. After testing the temperature, he clasped her hand, tugging her over to the shower. He stepped into the spray, pulling her in after him.
“Two shower heads,” she observed.
“His and hers. At least this morning,” he replied, pulling her to him and kissing her deeply. The water beat down on both their backs, hot and invigorating. Colin reached for the soap and rubbed it between his hands. Setting the bar back down, he stroked the lather onto her breasts then slid his hands around to her back and down to cup her ass. The slick slide of her soapy nipples across his chest as he pressed her to him made his pulse surge, and he gripped her tighter, his erection throbbing between them. Her hands were in his hair again, fingers sliding through the wet strands as the kisses intensified.
“My turn,” she murmured, pulling away and soaping her own hands. He closed his eyes and groaned, bracing one hand against the wall as she wrapped soapy fingers around his length and began to stroke, tracing a line under his balls with her other hand, then gripping gently. His other hand landed on her shoulder as his knees began to shake. She was stroking faster, and the soap had almost rinsed entirely away, lending delicious friction to each slide of her palm. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes, and he heard himself shout as his cock pulsed with ecstatic release. She stroked more slowly as his orgasm subsided, then he felt her move closer, her skin against his, her hands cupping his face, bringing his lips down to hers for a searing kiss.
After the shower, Alicia’s hands shook as she dragged a comb through her wet hair. Waking up with Colin, brushing their teeth together, there had been a strange sort of intimacy this morning, a domesticity that wasn’t at all like her.
Putting the comb down, she shot a wry smile at Colin’s reflection in the big mirror. “Getting home should be interesting. I hadn’t thought about a morning walk of shame in an evening gown when I agreed to this.”
“Let’s defer that for a bit,” he said, tugging at the towel that was wrapped around her. It fell away from her body, and he tossed it to the floor. Winding their fingers together, he backed out of the bathroom, tugging her with him until they were standing by the bed again. Without a word, he grasped her waist and tossed her onto the bed, making her shriek and laugh.
Pushing herself to sitting, she gasped as Colin crawled onto the bed toward her, tugging her toward him by her ankles. Bending forward, he kissed up the inside of one thigh, his stubble rasping along her sensitive skin, making her nerves zing with anticipation. Running his hands under her ass, he tilted her hips and gave her a long, languorous lick. Sinking back, she let her knees fall apart as his tongue circled her clit and two long fingers sank into her, pumping gently. Another circuit of her clit and a third finger joined the first two. Flattening his tongue, he brought greater heat and pressure, pulsing his hand faster and bringing his whole mouth down around her.
He held her at the peak of tension for what felt like forever, her body torqueing tighter and tighter, eager for release that didn’t quite come until he sucked gently and hummed. The vibration sent her spiraling over the edge, shouting and bucking as he sucked and curled his fingers inside her until her release subsided and her hammering heart slowed.
Alicia inhaled a long, shuddering breath as he sat up and pulled his fingers out of her. His face was shiny with the evidence of her arousal and his grin could only be described as smug.
“Good grief,” she said, flopping one hand across her eyes.
“That bad, eh?” She could hear the laugh in his voice.
“I’m deceased,” she said. “Completely wrung out. Dead.”
“Excellent.”
“Here.” Colin stepped out onto the deck behind his house and offered Alicia a cup of coffee. Wrapped in his white toweling bathrobe, face tilted toward the morning light, she was utterly stunning. “How can you manage to make terry cloth sexy, woman?”
She squinted sideways at him, taking the cup. “Says the guy who put on track pants…and no shirt.”
He shrugged, repressing a smile. “It’s hot today.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” She eyed him skeptically and sipped.
Colin settled himself into one of the chairs as she sank into in the other. “Are you complaining?” he asked.
“Not at all. You go right ahead and do what you need to do to…accommodate the temperature. I am enjoying the view just fine.” Her eyes ran down his torso, and Colin resisted an absurd urge to flex and pose. Her eyes glinted as if she knew what he was thinking, and he sipped his coffee, the heat in his cheeks having nothing to do with the sunshine.
“So,” he said, trying to gather his composure. “How should we spend our day?”
Alicia drew her feet up onto the seat of her chair and wrapped the hem of the robe under her toes. “Our day?”
“Beg pardon. That was presumptuous. I should have said, ‘Would you like to spend the day with me, and if so, doing what?’”
“Well, I’m currently a little limited as to wardrobe,” she said.
“We’ll go to your place before anything else, of course.”
“Hmm.” She looked across his little garden, a bit of green lawn surrounded by flowering plants enclosed in a high wooden fence. “What would you do if I wasn’t around? If you were spending a Saturday on your own?”
Colin shrugged, the sun hot against his shoulders. “Go for a run, meet Russell at the gym maybe. Catch up on some work…”
“Sounds like a laugh riot.”
He lifted his eyebrows as he drank his coffee, acknowledging the truth of the statement. “Boring old barrister, that’s me.”
“Okay.” She cocked her head at him, assessing. “When was the last time you went to an art museum?”
Colin thought for a long moment. “Probably when my family last visited me.”
“And when was that?”
“Last year.”
“Philistine.” She put her cup down on the little table. “We’re going to look at art.”
Alicia dug her bare toes into the plush carpet of Colin’s car and tried not to feel ridiculous. The running shorts and the tee shirt that he had loaned her were better than trying to put on her evening gown and heels again, but she felt like she was wearing a particularly silly costume in a completely ridiculous play.
And at the same time, wearing his clothes…it was another intimacy, another quirky piece of domesticity that unsettled her.
Pulling up in front of her apartment, he gestured at her front door. “Go on ahead. I’ll find a parking space and come back. I don’t want you walking any farther than you have to on bare feet.”
Nodding, she got out of the car and retrieved her dress, shoes, and evening bag from the back seat, clutching them to her chest and picking her way across the brick walkway and down the stairs to her front door. Inside, she hurried back to the bedroom, hanging up the gown before digging out her own shorts, shirt…and underwear.
A tap on the open door of the apartment announced Colin. “All right if I come in?” he called.
“Sure,” she replied, fastening her bra and tugging on her shirt. Running her fingers through her hair, she grabbed a pair of sneakers and walked out into the living room, sitting on the couch to lace them up. Colin looked like he was taking inventory, his eyes roaming over the furnishings and framed posters of her little apartment.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said.
She looked around, nonplussed. “Me? I’ve done nothing with the place. It’s a furnished sublet. None of this is mine.” Her gesture took in the Turkish rug, the tan sofa, the Art Nouveau posters in their stark, black frames.
“Ah. That’s right. I had forgotten. Shall we?” As she locked up, he asked, “So, what is your own apartment like?”
Suppressing a surge of irritation, Alicia reminded herself that this was a reasonable question for most people. “I don’t have one.”
“Come again?” He looked confused.
Resisting the urge to grit her teeth, she said, “I don’t have an apartment. Not one of my own. No long-term lease, no condo.”
Colin stopped, his feet shuffling to half-turn back toward the little apartment as if it held answers. “But…where do you live when you’re not here?”
She huffed a brief laugh. “I sublet, I house-sit. Sometimes I even couch surf, but I know enough people who own or lease their own places and tour a lot, so that’s pretty rare.”
Now he didn’t look confused, he looked appalled. “No home of your own?” he asked as they reached the sidewalk.
She shrugged. “No.”
“Whyever not?” As they walked, the occasional mature trees provided intermittent shade, leaves rustling in a slight breeze.
“I’m an actress. My base is New York, but I go off on location, on tours, on out of town gigs. I can’t afford to keep a place in New York when I’m not always there. Most of what I own fits in two suitcases. Large suitcases, but still.”
Colin was silent for a moment. “That’s…astonishing. I can’t conceive of not having a place of one’s own.”
Alicia dug deep for a reserve of patience that was rapidly dwindling. Keeping people at arm’s length meant she didn’t often have to defend her choices, an exercise that brought childhood insecurities roaring back. “A home may be a necessity for you, but it’s a luxury for me. Or worse, it’s a trap.”
Colin looked around at the quiet residential street with its neat façades and tidy gardens. “Forgive me for saying so, but that sounds rather melodramatic.”
“Well,” she said, allowing an edge of irritation color her voice. “I am an actress.”