The Dare Collection: June 2018. Lauren Hawkeye

the more reason to explore a one-night stand with the drool-worthy, confident American. She’d gain some much-needed experience in the one-night-stand stakes, and hopefully score herself the kind of orgasm that only existed in her world as a mythical will-o’-the-wisp, and afterwards they’d move on having both had a good time. Unless Ash was a serial killer, it was a win-win situation. She absorbed the foreign, heady thrill of his big warm body next to hers. Not that it was cold—her shivers originated purely from anticipation.

      The best kind of shivers.

      She sucked in a stuttering breath—she’d never felt more reckless. And, if she was honest, she also felt a little embarrassed. There was no law that stated that, before her twenty-fifth birthday, she should have experienced at least one night of no-strings sex, but, as she touted herself as something of a relationship expert, didn’t she owe it to the readers of her relationship psychology blog to experience what all the fuss was about?

      Ash’s hand looped around her shoulder. She reached up and clasped his fingers. They grinned at each other, Essie’s belly jolting in time with her excitable pulse.

      No serious scientist could rely solely on academic theory. She could finally verify her years of extensive research with some cold, hard, scientific data.

       Surely he must be able to hear the blood whooshing through her head?

      Because in practical terms, what did she really know about relationships, especially the functional kind?

      Her face fell at the momentary wobble. Her one serious boyfriend during uni had left her practically swearing off the opposite sex for good on the grounds she clearly couldn’t spot a decent relationship candidate if he was stark naked in front of her wearing a pick me, I’m a safer than houses bet hat.

      A trait she’d inherited from her mother perhaps... The woman had, after all, procreated with Essie’s lying, cheating, deserting father and spent many years playing second fiddle to his actual wife, his real family.

      Not that Essie had known all that back then. She’d simply been a girl who desperately missed her beloved father while he’d worked overseas for long stretches of time. Clearly she and her mother shared a desperate-for-love vibe that usually sent men running.

      But Ash wasn’t running.

      And she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Just sex. She’d gleaned from Ash’s subtext that, like her, he was only interested in a one-night thing. She shoved the buzzkill thoughts from her mind, focussing on the specimen of manly perfection beside her. Exotic Ash. A gentleman. Funny, intelligent and interested in what she had to say.

      So different from her ex, and she’d wasted two years in that flawed relationship.

      Her throat tightened.

      Perhaps she was ready for a change. It was, after all, the eve of a brand-new chapter of her life—her new job working for her until-recently estranged half-brother began tomorrow. Or perhaps it was just charming, sophisticated, sexy-as-sin Ash with his crinkle-eyed smile, his quick wit and his tales of New York that earned him a place at the top of Essie’s bucket list.

      Nothing at all to do with his muscular physique and his dark good looks, which were enough to attract smiles and stares everywhere they’d gone today. And she instinctively knew, as if it were stamped on her overworked ovaries, that Ash would be phenomenal between the sheets. High-calibre screaming orgasms—another experience sadly lacking from her rather pathetic repertoire.

      But she could still back out of this. Thank Ash for his company and bid his sexy American butt farewell. Her insides twisted while her indecision ping-ponged inside her skull, releasing an uncharacteristic verbal catharsis.

      ‘I’ve never done this before.’ She nibbled her lip, ignored the heat almost suffocating her and raised her eyes to Ash’s.

      Now he’d think her some sort of ingénue when really she’d simply tolerated mediocre for far too long.

      He turned to face her, drawing her closer with the arm banded around her waist while his glittering blue stare danced over her features. ‘Okay...’

      No judgment. Only the heat she’d seen in his eyes most of the afternoon.

      The sizzle and spark over lunch at the funky deli had turned into flirting around Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, where Essie had provided a ‘how to’ tutorial on travelling the Tube. Flirting had turned to inhibition-lowering drinking at a typical Victorian Soho pub, where Ash had insisted they sample pints of tepid real ale, which was strong enough to make Essie both giggly and bold. Which was probably how they’d come to their current location—on the pavement outside his hotel, with his arms around her and her lips tingling to kiss him.

      Still she wavered, caught between lust and caution.

      She wanted to slap herself. Her doubts, her desperation to get it right where her parents had got it so wrong, hadn’t helped her avoid heartache. She’d just had one bad experience...

      Ash didn’t have to be the perfect man—he could be perfect for now, this one night. Then she’d never see him again. And she could try out her sexually sophisticated legs.

      Ash smiled, his blue eyes sparkling with promise and his yummy mouth stretching in a sexy, lopsided way.

      Full lips so close.

      Warm breath laced with hops.

      Shrugging off the last reservation, Essie stood on tiptoes and kissed him, right there in the street where people walked around them. For a second he seemed frozen, his stubble chafing her chin and his lips slightly parted as she feathered the lightest of kisses on his beautiful mouth. And then his hand found the small of her back, pressing her close as he took control, angling his head and orchestrating the slide and thrust of lips and tongues, a thrilling concerto that left her head light and her legs weak.

      Wow. The easy-going, considerate gentleman she’d spent the day with had a demanding side. She wanted more. The street snog was so good, her stomach clenched like the final seconds of a free fall, and her heart ricocheted against her ribs.

      Ash groaned and pulled back from her kiss, his erection a hard length against her belly. He looked down as if trying to dissect her inner secrets from her irises. ‘Not that I’m bothered...’ he pushed back a stray wisp of hair from her face ‘...but I’m intrigued. Why not?’

      Essie captured her lip with her teeth, her insecurities rising like bile. What did she want this sexy tourist to know about her poor track record with the opposite sex? Despite her psychology degree and her PhD in human relationships, her own love life, and most of her non-romantic personal relationships, relied heavily on the theory she pored over for her studies and for her beloved blog, one she’d started as an undergraduate as a way to purge her own feelings of abandonment and constant rejection at the hands of her father.

      Ash wanted her; the evidence was crystal clear. Why burst the bubble? Yes, she normally avoided picking up hunky strangers in parks. But once he’d cracked his first genuine smile, Ash had relaxed into a fun, smart and entertaining guy. She hadn’t confessed she lived in South East London and was soon to graduate from her PhD. She’d merely gone along with his wrong assumption—that she, like him, was a tourist. It added to the mystique, the risqué recklessness currently pounding through her blood and fanning her libido to a blaze.

      But they’d never see each other again after tonight. Who better to take off her training wheels with than a sexy stranger, a temporary tourist, soon to be on a plane to a whole other continent?

      While Ash fingered the end of her ponytail, waiting, Essie shrugged. ‘My male role model growing up was an unreliable, lying shit. It kind of put me off men.’ Oversimplified, but true. She’d spent years trying to fit her subpar relationship with her ex into a perfect mould, desperate to have the opposite of her parents’ dysfunctional union and determined to flex her psychology muscles and prove she could practise what she preached. But when she’d finally conceded that the emotionally abusive relationship she’d pinned all her hopes on was over, she’d given