Christmas-Eve Baby Read Free Page B

scooping her up and carrying her up the steps and across the stones to his car.
    ‘Ouch,’ he muttered, limping, and she laughed breathlessly.
    ‘That’ll teach you to behave like a caveman,’ she teased, and he dumped her over the door into her seat, vaulted past her and slid down behind the wheel.
    ‘I’ll give you caveman,’ he growled, and she felt a delicious shiver of anticipation.
    ‘Want your shoes?’
    ‘No. The only thing I want is you,’ he said tautly, gunning the engine and shooting backwards out of the space, then hitting the coast road in a spray of granite chips while she grappled for her seat belt and wondered if it had been quite wise to wake this sleeping tiger…
     
    ‘Lucy?’
    She opened her eyes and stared up at him, reaching up a hand to rub it lightly over the stubble on his jaw. That siren’ssmile hovered on her lips, rosy and swollen from his kisses, and he wanted to kiss her all over again. ‘Well, if it isn’t my very own caveman,’ she said softly.
    He laughed, then bent his head and touched his lips to hers, tasting her smile. ‘Good morning,’ he murmured, his mouth still on hers, and he felt her lips curve again.
    ‘Absolutely,’ she replied, and opened her mouth to his, drawing him in, her arms sliding round him and cradling him closer. He felt the heat flare between them, felt her pelvis rock, felt the soft, moist heat of her against his thigh as she parted her legs to the urging of his knee.
    Hell. He hadn’t been going to do this again. He’d been going to talk to her, to tell her all the reasons why this was such a lousy idea, but her body was hot and naked against his, her soft, welcoming flesh too much for him to resist. He’d wanted her for years, ever since they’d worked together, and if it hadn’t been for her mother’s death…
    Damn.
    He shifted, pulling away, but she followed him, her hands holding him to her, rolling after him and taking over, her body hot and sweet and so, so lovely, and as she lowered herself and took him inside her, he lost rational thought.
    He groaned her name, arching up as she rocked against him, taking him deeper, and then, grasping her hips, he drove into her again and again, feeling her passion build, feeling the tension spiral in her until her breathing grew ragged and she sobbed his name. He felt her body contract around him, felt the incredible power of her climax, and followed her headlong over the edge.
     
    It was her phone that woke them, ringing from somewhere downstairs in the depths of her handbag.
    ‘I’ll let it ring,’ she said, but then it rang again, and again, and finally she got up. ran downstairs naked and answered it.
    He followed her slowly, pulling on his dressing-gown and going into the kitchen to put on the kettle, the shirt he’d worn the previous day flung over his shoulder.
    ‘Dad, I’m fine. No, I’m not at home,’ she was saying as he threaded her arms one at a time into the shirt. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old, for heaven’s sake! I don’t need your permission to leave my house on my day off!’
    She rolled her eyes at Ben, and he smiled faintly and turned back to the kettle, listening by default to her side of the conversation as he made them tea.
    ‘Yes, I’m sorry, too. Yes, I think you do. Yes, I’ll tell him if I speak to him. OK. I’ll see you on Tuesday, after the bank holiday.’
    He heard her cut the connection, heard the soft sound of her bare feet on the floor and turned with a smile. ‘You looked a little underdressed,’ he said, glad now that he’d covered her because she looked sexier in his shirt than he could have imagined in his wildest fantasies.
    ‘Thanks.’ She threw him a fleeting smile and pulled the shirt closed, buttoning it and running her hands round the neck and lifting her hair out in a soft, gleaming tumble of curls that made him want to gather them in his hand and tug her gently back to his arms. Or bed. Whatever. Closer, anyway.
    He turned back,