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Jodie lasted four long days without Mitch. No, scratch that. It wasn’t Mitch that she missed, it was the damn benefits that came attached to him. No strings, she scoffed as she snuck up the back stairs to the hotel rooms above the pub. The man came with so much string he could be one of those huge balls that people visited on American road trips.
And yet here she was, like an addict, desperate for her next fix, because all she could think about was sex. With Mitch. The rat-bastard.
He’d forced her to skulk around in the middle of the night. It was his fault she’d lied to Dougal. She’d rented a room at the hotel, telling the owner it was for a new member of staff who was coming in from Edinburgh in the morning. Part of that was true, she did have a staff member arriving, but there was no way the woman would stay in the hotel. Nope, Jodie had told the lie just so she could get her hands on a key card to the outside door. And why did she want her own key? So she could sneak about the hotel, in the middle of the night, to get her fix!
It made her so mad that she’d cracked before Mitch. She’d expected him to come crawling back to her. She’d daydreamed of him apologising for even suggesting that they take their relationship out of the bedroom. Her dream had been so vivid that she’d actually heard him say, “I was wrong, you were right. Please treat me as your sex slave. I won’t ask for more.”
But no. He’d out-stubborned her. And here she was, standing outside his hotel room, ready to swallow her pride and tell the man what he needed to hear, in order to get into his pants.
She was a pathetic excuse for a slut and she was totally letting down all slutty women everywhere. Unfortunately, she was also desperately horny, and every woman knew that horny trumped guilt and common sense any day of the week. Jodie let out a heavy sigh as she stood staring at Mitch’s door. The hotel corridor was quiet. Everyone was asleep. Most likely Mitch was too. She took some small pleasure in the fact she was about to disturb him. The addictive bastard deserved it.
It wasn’t just being horny and desperate that had driven Jodie to sneak into the hotel. She’d become so irritable and short-tempered that her staff had cornered her and begged her to sort whatever was bothering her out. That was how bad things had become—she was scaring her staff.
Argh, she was being pathetic. No woman had ever died of sexual frustration. Had they? She was tempted to pull out her phone and google it, but she knew she was just delaying the inevitable. She wanted Mitch. That was all it came down to. She was weak and she wanted Mitch.
With utter disgust at herself, Jodie knocked on his door.
––––––––
Mitch couldn’t sleep. It was impossible. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Jodie. And seeing Jodie led to remembering how she felt, and that led to yet another cold shower. He’d had so many cold showers over the past few days, just from imagining Jodie’s touch, that he was beginning to wonder if he should ask Dougal for a cut in his room rate, seeing as he didn’t use hot water anymore.
He’d been so sure that she was as addicted to him as he was to her, sure that she wouldn’t be able to resist being with him. And he’d been wrong. Arrogance, that’s what it was. He’d been arrogant and now he had the blue balls to show for it.
Mitch let out a sigh. There was nothing for it but to grovel. First thing in the morning, he was heading over to the spa and he was going to do whatever it took to get Jodie back in his life. He’d been impatient. He’d wanted her so badly that he’d pushed too hard. She wasn’t ready yet, he knew that now. He could slow down. He could. Slow was way better than stop. He hated stop almost as much as he hated cold showers.
A knock at his door got him climbing out of bed. If it was one more guest in the hotel looking for free legal advice, he was going to pummel them. Josh was right—he needed a house of his own. One that was far away from the cheap-assed Scottish public. He scoffed at himself. Look at him, thinking of settling down with his own place. At the ripe old age of thirty-eight, he was finally growing up.
Mitch threw open the door, without looking through the peephole first, and instantly froze.
She was here.
He glanced around, half expecting a hallelujah chorus to pop up behind him. Nope. Just an empty room with a bed—and Jodie in front of him.
Mitch didn’t wait for her to talk. All he cared about was that she was there. He reached out, grabbed Jodie’s hand and pulled her into the room.
“About time,” he said before his mouth was on hers.
He felt her hands slide up his body and his t-shirt disappeared. He was frantic for her. Jodie’s hands pushed his pyjama pants down over his hips and he felt them pool at his feet. Mitch was just as desperate to get her naked, she was topless within seconds and he moaned at the feeling of her bare breasts rubbing against him. His lips stayed on hers, kissing her with desperation rather than finesse. He felt her kick off her shoes and shimmy out of her jeans and then they were both naked.
“Up.” It was an order barked against his lips.
Mitch clasped her waist and lifted her until she was trapped between the wall and his body. Her long legs wrapped around his waist. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as she fought for control of their kiss. She didn’t need to fight, Mitch gave it up willingly. All he wanted was Jodie. He didn’t care how he got her.
“Now.” Her hips shifted and he felt himself slide into position at her entrance.
Every fibre of his being demanded that he ease inside, where he belonged. But his mind suddenly had another idea. His brain fought out from the lust-induced daze it was swimming in and demanded that he sort out the terms of their relationship while he had the upper hand.
His dick twitched with annoyance, but for once, Mitch was more interested in what his brain had to say.
“Mitch, now!” Jodie wriggled against him, trying to get him to impale her.
Mitch gritted his teeth and didn’t give in to her demand.
“I want to be inside you just as badly as you want me to, baby. But first we need to sort a couple of things out.” Yeah, it was physically painful to say those words.
“What?” She smacked her hands down hard on his shoulders and her thighs clenched. Damn, this was the worst kind of torture.
“I want the friends part of our deal.” There, he’d said it. Now if she’d just agree, they could get back to the important stuff.
No. That was his dick talking. His brain knew the friendship was the important stuff. It also reminded Mitch to make an appointment with a shrink first thing in the morning to find out if he suffered from schizophrenia, as he was pretty sure normal men didn’t have arguments with their dicks.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jodie screeched. “Stop messing around. We’ll talk about this after we’re done.”
He shook his head, even though it pained him to do it. Again, his dick was telling him, after the deed was a much better time for discussion.
“No can do.” Mitch fought for control using sheer will. “You’ll wriggle out of the conversation. So we sort this now, or you can leave and we’ll sort it another day. Your choice.”
Please choose now! his dick silently screamed.
Oh, now she was mad. Her eyes turned mean and her legs tightened. “You’re telling me that you won’t have sex with me? While we’re naked? While you’re less than an inch away from completing the deal? You’re telling me this now?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.” He shook his head vehemently, which made his body sway and his dick rub against the part of her that it really wanted to get into. Mitch struggled to focus on what was happening above his neck. “I just want a commitment before we go any further. The deal was friends with benefits. I want the friends part. Starting now. I want you to agree to the friends part before we go any further.”
“This is blackmail!” She was outraged, and he didn’t blame her. “What kind of idiot wants more than sex?”
Mitch thought it was wise to treat that as a rhetorical question.
“So, what?” Jodie glared at him. “You want to hang out? Talk about our days? Watch TV together?”
“Yes, Jodie, that’s what friends do.” He was beginning to wonder if he was going to be her first ever friend.
“Why the hell do you want that?” She looked so incredulous that he almost started laughing.
Almost. It had been his life experience that when you were on the precipice of having sex with a woman, laughing wasn’t the best move.
“I like you. I want to get to know you. Suck it up, Jodie. Make the deal and move on.” This was going down in history as the least romantic conversation ever.
She looked like her head was about to explode. “Fine. We can be friends.”
He should have been elated that she’d given in, but instead he felt slightly terrified. She had the same look on her face that she’d had the night she dealt with the protesting old men.
“What are you planning?” he said.
“Nothing. I’m giving you what you want, so that I can get what I want.”
Yeah, he didn’t believe that for a minute. “We’re talking friends. No ignoring me in public. We hang out. We do stuff together. We talk. You get that, right?”
She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I know what friendship is, Mitch.”
“And you’re agreeing to it?”
“You’re really beginning to piss me off now.” Her nails dug into his shoulder.
“So we have a real friends-with-benefits deal?” Which in his mind meant they were dating, because seriously? What was dating if not hanging out, getting to know each other and having sex?
“Yes,” she snapped. “Now can we stop this ridiculous conversation and get on with things?”
“You’re so romantic. It makes me feel special.”
She grabbed handfuls of his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers. Her kiss was a punishment. One that made every cell in his body come alive. His brain sighed and passed over control of his body to his dick. He’d won. He had what he wanted. He was in a relationship with Jodie. So what if he was a little wary about what she had planned? He’d deal with that bridge when he got to it.
“Mitch.” She pushed her hips up towards him.
“Bossy woman,” he said with a grin.
Then he kept his part of the deal and slid home. Taking them both to heaven along the way.