Hollywood Hills Collection. Lynne Marshall

      ‘I taste of your soap,’ Zack said. ‘If you need to check.’ His leg hooked her in closer and he made her feel all shivery as his hand played with one tender breast. ‘For someone who doesn’t like it...’

      ‘I didn’t like the idea of it,’ Freya said. ‘I’d never done it.’

      Zack frowned.

      ‘So in my office...’

      ‘It was my first time.’

      They’d never spoken about it. Sometimes, for Zack, it almost felt like a dream, only he knew that it hadn’t been. It had been the night they’d moved their relationship into work. They’d shifted the lines but in ways he hadn’t even known at the time.

      That should daunt him. No doubt it would soon—that something that was clearly an issue for her wasn’t when she was with him. Zack had thought oral the least intimate of sex, but not now.

      He slipped his hand between her legs and got the clamp of her thighs.

      ‘I don’t think I’d like it.’

      ‘Do you want to try?’

      Freya nodded.

      Her mind was going at a hundred miles an hour. She wanted everything while she had him. Always she stopped him, beneath the belly button a no-go zone for that beautiful mouth and she didn’t really know why.

      ‘I’m messed up, aren’t I?’ Freya said.

      ‘I told you the day I met you, that’s how I want you.’

      It hadn’t been what he’d meant then but it made her smile now. He kissed her long and deep until her thighs were loose to his hand. And then he moved down and her breasts were so tender, and Freya was starting to know why.

      Zack was oblivious, blissfully so. He just heard her fevered moans as he tasted and sucked and licked till she rolled from her side to her back.

      He slid down and paid the same attention to her stomach and then he moved lower and kissed her right up her thighs, nibbling at the top inner part that she had once hated so much.

      Zack made her body feel beautiful, every part of it. She had worked on herself for ever and had got to like herself enough, but he made her in love with it.

      ‘I don’t like it,’ Freya said when his mouth took possession, and he ignored her and probed at the tension, tasting her deep, and then back to her clitoris. Freya closed her thighs on his head and he burrowed in deeper and her hips lifted from the bed. She resisted the pleasure, she stayed tight to his tongue, and then Zack moaned into her.

      She felt the vibration, the sensual moan of his want and his turn-on. His focus was intent now and she succumbed. It was the most bliss she had known, to come to the most intimate kiss his mouth could give, to be tasted and adored.

      There was no triumphant smile as his mouth lifted, Zack was the one crossing his own lines now. He came up the bed and kissed her mouth as deeply as he had her sex. He had Freya taste herself on his lips, his cheeks, and then he moaned again as he slid in. The same moan he had given earlier, and they stopped holding back because this wasn’t just sex.

      ‘I’m going to come,’ Zack said, almost with regret, because he was loving her, he knew.

      Freya was frantic, coming, while making this strange attempt to climb out of arms that would one day let her go. They were saying each other’s names, breathing, kissing, coming and so close, so completely besotted and not fighting it now.

      ‘Zack...’ She pressed her lips together because she was going to say the wrong thing and lay there afterwards, with something else building—tears. The utter release to her body, the clearing of her mind and she was as close to crying as she dared to be.

      He held her so hard afterwards. ‘You can cry,’ Zack said.

      But she wouldn’t.

      He’d had everything, all of her, he had taken her right to the edge. She would not give him that.

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      ‘WHY DON’T YOU ditch the hotel?’ Freya said.

      She shouldn’t have.

      It was six a.m. and they lay chatting in the dark, talking about, of all things, his suits.

      ‘How much can you get into a backpack?’ Freya had asked. And then she’d found out he bought suits and that, when he moved on, he donated them.

      ‘It’s an expensive wardrobe.’

      ‘Yeah, well, it’s an up-to-date one.’

      And then he’d admitted that living out of a backpack was tiring at times, and had been about to say he was actually looking forward to going home for a few weeks, when someone, namely Freya, who had to fix everything this very minute, suggested he move in.

      ‘Freya,’ he half groaned in frustration.

      ‘I’m not asking you to move in as in live together, just...’ She could have kicked herself.

      Zack just lay there.

      ‘Forget it,’ Freya said. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’

      She simply could not stop thinking.

      About them.

      ‘I’m going to take Cleo out.’

      Freya stood in her dressing gown and she was too embarrassed to even admit to Cleo what she’d just said to Zack.

      ‘It’s not such a stupid idea,’ Freya said hopefully to her friend, but then gave in.

      Oh, it was such a stupid idea and, of all things, to say it on the first night that he’d come back to her apartment.

      Freya was worried, though.

      The clock was ticking on them and not only couldn’t she imagine him gone, Freya was rather worried that there might be a more permanent reason for them to keep in touch.

      She felt sick.

      Not a nervous sick feeling, more there was a taste in her mouth as she came back into the apartment.

      Cleo waddled into the bedroom and Zack lay there with his hands behind his head as she jumped up onto the bed.

      He was leaving LA at the end of his three months.

      He looked around the bedroom and he knew that he needed to head back to the hotel.

      ‘Hi.’ Freya came in, trying desperately to detract from the prior conversation. ‘I just got an email...’ Zack blinked, he was just waking up but Freya was in busy mode. ‘Do you remember when you were in Canada a few years back and that hockey player went into cardiac arrest...’

      Zack nodded. ‘Why?’

      ‘Well, I was just trying for a new angle. I get that you don’t want to be photographed with kids, but he’s here in LA and I thought we could get the two of you together.’

      ‘Freya,’ Zack said, sitting up, ‘how many ways can I say it? I don’t want to be a part of your publicity stunts. I’ll do the surgery—’

      ‘It’s just such a great opportunity.’

      ‘I don’t get involved, Freya, they don’t owe me anything. I do my best for them in Theatre, without obligation. I don’t want to be making small talk with some guy who had the misfortune to go into cardiac arrest in front of ten thousand people and now has to feel he needs to publicly thank me for doing my job.’

      Freya gave a tight shrug. ‘Just trying to do mine.’

      ‘It’s Sunday,’ he pointed out. ‘And I only get one off a month.’

      ‘Sure.’ Freya nodded.