The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(30)

And they were barely touching.

Their mouths came apart, and Freddy took a shaky breath. She tore her eyes from his and looked down as their knuckles brushed and hooked. They brought their arms up, interlocking their hands. The fingers of his right hand played with the fingers of her left. Then her gaze returned to his.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

The second kiss was a rush of heat, urgent and hard, his tongue in her mouth, hers in his, wetness and fire. His hands had left hers and were tangled in her hair, holding her head; her arms were around him, sliding up his back. She could feel his skin, smooth and warm. Muscles moving and shifting. Breaths jagged and snatched.

They stumbled against the desk and it knocked her away from him, so abruptly it was like tearing a page from a book, thrust from one scene into the next, a shock to the system. Gripping the wood, Freddy stood staring at Griff, breathing heavily.

His hair was a ruffled mess and his shirt had been yanked out of his belt, baring a slice of skin up his abdomen. One of her dress straps had fallen down her arm, and she didn’t like to think what her own hair looked like. When she lifted a hand to smooth it, her fingers were shaking.

“Holy shit,” she said, blankly.

It must have been a stunner of a kiss—the hardened critic was temporarily lost for words. He managed a sort of grunt. As he put his own clothing back to rights, Freddy was almost frightened to see that his hands weren’t totally steady either.

“Results of the experiment?” A rasp in the words.

Freddy still felt jumpy, like she was darting about on molten coals even as she remained frozen to the spot by the desk. Her response was fervent. “Explosive.”

Her lips felt tender, bruised from the hard pressure of his, and she rested her fingertips on them.

“I don’t know why I find you so beautiful now.” He’d regained control over his pitch and he said it like he was commenting on the weather, but the words fell into the silence between them with the impact of a heavy weight shattering a piece of glass.

Freddy dropped her hand and stared at him, and he turned his head. As compliments went, it was a bit backhanded, but somehow it didn’t come across that way.

There was a moment of quiet breath and assessing eyes.

“I don’t know why I fancy you so much,” she said, with equal frankness.

“I would have thought Charlie was more your type.” It was still like talking to the ice sculpture his mother had once tossed out as a comparison, but Freddy didn’t make the mistake of looking at the surface.

She felt like she’d lied by omission to everyone lately, keeping so much of what she was thinking and feeling about her career to herself, but she’d at least always tried to be honest in her private life. She might be a flirt, but guile was not a weapon in her romantic arsenal. “I don’t think there is a type.” She swallowed and looked blindly at the surface of the desk, where the earrings were still glinting suggestively under the glow of the ring light. “Right now, I think...there’s just you.”

In the silence that followed, her hand clenched into a fist against the desk.

Then Griff touched her bare arm, and her cheek, just two light touches. Freddy breathed in, a long, slow inhale.

“I promised not to interrupt your work,” she said on the exhale.

“Yes.” A familiar note of the sardonic, which was actually a relief in the current tension. “That lasted about as long as I expected.”

She cast him a look over her shoulder. “Foresaw this, did you?”

“No. This definitely wasn’t the scenario I imagined.”

“I expect not. After all the very gallant things you’ve said about me over the years. Just think, if this had happened earlier, you might have given me a better review for Masquerade.” She reflected on that for about two seconds. “No, you wouldn’t.”

He snorted and said at the same moment, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Perversely, that made her laugh. That wash of unexpected gladness suddenly wrapped around her again, and she smiled at him. It was a bright, instinctive gesture, and it made something change in his face. “Isn’t it great?”

The question just bubbled up spontaneously from that pool of happiness, and he shook his head. It wasn’t a negative action. More like someone recovering from a sharp punch to the nose, actually, which she chose not to read too much into.

There was a faint smile on his usually tense mouth, and when she couldn’t resist lifting up to dust another feathery kiss there, just because he felt good to touch and right now he made her feel good, one of his hands came up to the back of her head.

And when the door opened with only a cursory knock and his brother sailed in holding two mugs, Griff didn’t behave as Freddy might have anticipated, with an instant retreat and an invisible gate slamming shut. He did lift his head and step away from her, but with no haste, and it was several seconds before his hand fell away from her hip.

Charlie was doing a deer-in-the-headlights in the doorway, gaping at them with almost ludicrous surprise.

“Is one of those for me?” Griff asked calmly, when no words seemed to be forthcoming.

Charlie looked blankly down at the mugs. “Oh. Yeah. Dad said he saw you heading outside at the arse-crack of dawn and I thought you might be ready for a coffee.” He seemed to get a grip on himself and offered the other one to Freddy. “Coffee, Freddy? I haven’t touched it, and I already had two cups of tea at the house. It’s got milk and sugar. I don’t know how you like it.”