The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(79)

Freddy tightened her grip on the prop embroidery she was holding. The intensity when those two were together was undeniable. Considering Sabrina was her sister, it was a bit awkward that they absolutely radiated sexual tension.

She had once thought that it was love between them. Passionate and exciting and turbulent, but underneath, something real.

Now, having seen Akiko and Elise support and shelter each other through some very difficult times, and...and feeling the way she did herself, she thought that what was between Sabrina and Ferren was sex, and history, and mutual destruction.

When Griff came to find her after rehearsal, she was sitting outside the theatre on a wooden bench, watching the sky streak into shades of pink and orange, the trees becoming dark silhouettes against the pastel horizon. She held her phone on her lap. Lots of messages, but still nothing from her father.

Griff’s hair was damp from a shower and he looked exhausted. He sat down next to her, and put his hand over hers. Their fingers twined together.

It was very quiet for once, all the people and work and madness temporarily banished. All she could hear was the faint trill of an insect nearby.

After a moment, Freddy leaned her cheek against his shoulder, and felt his fingers tighten on hers.



Chapter Sixteen


Friday morning—Just hours to go

There was a knack to shower sex. And they didn’t have it.

Freddy fell back against the wall of the stall, pushing her wet hair out of her face, giggling helplessly. Every morning this week, she’d woken up with that tense, anxious expression that sat so poorly on her naturally happy face, and it was a relief to see her laughing. Even if it had come at the expense of a mutual failed orgasm and a near drowning.

Griff propped his arm against the opposite wall and slicked back his own hair. “I’m assuming that wasn’t quite what you had in mind.”

“Well.” Freddy grinned at him. “No. When I said ‘cinematic shower sex,’ the film I was thinking of wasn’t The Abyss. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out alive at one point. I take full responsibility for blocking the drain with my foot.”

“And I apologise for knocking down the faucet.” Griff shook his head. They were both naked and wet, but even with a hint of bite back in the air today, his chest warmed as he looked at her.

Her cheeks were flushed and her curls were straggling in ropes over her shoulders, and his precisely ordered life seemed to have exploded into chaos since he’d met her.

And he was so bloody in love with her.

He’d wondered if the intensity of his feelings for her could possibly last or if he’d feel differently in an hour, a day, a year.

Already, he did feel differently. As each minute passed, and the hours clustered into days, his attachment to her, the connection between them, seemed to strengthen and take root in every part of his mind and body. From those first tentative, whisper-fine threads into a knot of solid platinum.

She shivered. Still smiling a little, she crossed her arms, rubbing at the goose bumps appearing on her skin. Griff reached out and hooked a finger through one of hers. He tugged, and her smile took on that mischievous, provocative tilt. She came forward, her arms sliding around his waist. Cuddling into his body, she nuzzled her cheek against his chest in a gesture that was almost catlike, and so transparently affectionate that his heart fucking clenched.

Sliding his hand down over the soft curves of her arse, he nudged her temple with his nose. She looked up, a spark igniting in her eyes, but being so delightfully... Freddy, didn’t just obligingly lift her mouth for his kiss. Looping one arm about his neck, she yanked him down to her and pressed her lips enthusiastically to his.

She broke the kiss long enough to lean out of the stall and snatch up another condom, and he gritted his teeth as she rolled it onto him with adept strokes that sent jolts of sensation down his legs and up his spine. Griff lifted her in a swift movement, her legs twining around his waist, his tongue delving deeply back into her mouth.

“Mmm.” Freddy made a muffled sound, tilting her head to kiss the side of his mouth, his cheek, his jawbone. “I don’t think I’ll bother with morning runs ever again. You’re much better exercise.”

His laugh was ragged as his breath ran short and his blood shot southward. “As pillow talk goes, I’m not sure you’d have Shakespeare looking to his laurels.”

Her reply was lost as his mouth returned to hers, and the kiss grew long and hot and drugging. Bracing Freddy against the wall, Griff held her up with his body, and her heels dug into the small of his back when he pushed slowly back inside her.

It was significantly easier with the water off.

Sex with Freddy had so far been an incredibly intense rush. This was far more relaxed, an almost leisurely build of pleasure as he stroked into her and she smoothed her fingertips over his cheeks and smiled into his eyes.

He could feel the movement of her chest, the push of her breasts against him as her breath quickened, and the quivering in the muscles of her thighs as her legs started to clench around him. Then internal muscles gripped down hard on his erection, and the rocking of her hips faltered.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his head, and he kissed her neck as the pulsing rippled through her body.

He increased the pace of his thrusts, driving his own spiralling pleasure upward, but trying to keep his movements relatively shallow, despite the urge to push and hold in deep. She’d sworn up and down that her pelvic pain had subsided, but—