Kelly Hunter - All He Wants For Christmas... - Flirting With Intent / Blame it on the Bikini / Restless

‘Contrary, Ruby.’

‘Well, yes. Surely you hadn’t forgotten already?’

He had such busy hands. They slid beneath her skirt, and the next thing she knew he’d leaned back against the low-slung sofa and lifted her up, and her knees were finding purchase on it the better to plaster herself against him.

Damon’s thumb slipped between her panties and stroked.

Ruby gasped and he ate it straight from her mouth.

She pushed forward and they toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the cushions and it didn’t matter any more that she’d wanted to shower, she needed to feel Damon’s touch on her skin and his lips caressing hers.

‘I dreamed of you,’ she told him as he ran his hands over her thighs and positioned her exactly where she wanted to be. ‘You were lawless. Bad. And I wanted you even more because of it.’

He took her mouth again and this time his kiss held a hint of savagery in it. ‘I have ethics,’ he whispered. ‘Boundaries. I can even be hospitable when I really put my mind to it. You’ll see.’

His questing fingers slipped beneath the boundaries of her panties again and Ruby shuddered with need of less boundaries and more contact. He dipped a long finger inside her and Ruby gasped her pleasure and she held his hand in place and closed her eyes the better to concentrate on his touch.

‘I dreamed of you, Damon. Lord, how I dreamed of you.’

‘I dreamed of you too,’ he murmured as she dealt with the buttons and the zip at his waist and took him in hand.

‘What was I doing?’ she whispered as she slid her panties aside and positioned him for entry.

‘This.’ His voice guttural as he surged up inside her, his hands at her waist, vicelike as he held her in place. He slowly withdrew, and then rocked up into her again. ‘You were doing this.’

They swam in the surf much later in the day, and then showered together and she used the bubbles Lena had left for her on him, and after that he sat her down at the kitchen counter in her underwear and fed her a toasted BLT sandwich on sourdough with mayonnaise.

He was handy in the kitchen—not fussy about what he put together but competent nonetheless. He put things away when he was done with them. He knew where things lived.

Definitely a point of difference between Damon and the rest of the men in her life. Missing fathers and stepfathers and the like. Staff inhabited kitchens in their world—not them.

‘Have you ever surfed before?’ he asked her later that afternoon as they sat on the sand and watched the waves come crashing in.

‘I’ve skied before,’ she said lazily. ‘I have very fond memories of a winter in Switzerland where I was a fearless snowboard queen of the mountain.’

‘I’m very impressed,’ he said. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Then we went to live in Bahrain.’ A fond sigh escaped her. ‘I learned to drive in Bahrain.’

‘Please don’t tell me you learned to drive in a racing car unless you want to see me weeping with envy.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’ She stood up, brushed sand from her rear. ‘I learned to drive in a Hummer in the desert. My instructor’s name was Carl. Carl set my girlish heart aflutter with his commando impersonation but, alas, he wasn’t much of one for reckless endangerment. Even in a Hummer.’

‘Surfing could be a little sedate for you,’ said Damon in reply. ‘If the wind picks up this afternoon we’ll break out the kiteboards.’

Surfing was not sedate. Nor was the kite-surfing they attempted later that afternoon. The hang-gliding they did the following day didn’t qualify as sedate either. There was more swimming. More love-making. And for Ruby, plenty of naps and lazing about in between the next action-man adventure.

Damon didn’t nap. Not ever. He slept well through the night—when they slept—and needed no rest whatsoever during the day.

He wasn’t one for television unless it was as background to whatever else he happened to be doing at the time. He cooked. He charmed. He rarely sat still. Even when sitting in his computer room he did ten things at once and all of them at warp speed.

When he ate, he liked to do it standing at counters. He could do a restaurant meal—he’d managed it in Hong Kong and he managed it again when they went into Byron Bay for dinner one night—but it wasn’t his preference.

If there was a pool nearby he’d be in it. A pool table in the room and he’d be at it. The ocean and the toys he took to it could hold him for hours. Making love could also garner his undivided and sustained attention.

For now.

A suspicion formed in Ruby’s mind about the type of kid he’d been, based on the man he’d become. How hard it must have been to educate a boy who couldn’t sit still and whose mind worked that much faster than anyone else’s. How hacking would have been such a natural fit for him given he’d had to sit at a computer and cut a snail’s pace through all the schoolwork anyway.

Damon’s lifestyle choices made far more sense to her now. His work kept him focused, delivered up the adrenalin he craved and kept him on the move. New places, new people, a world’s worth of distraction—chances were he needed all those things in order to be content, and always would.

Not a man to plan a settled, predictable life around, but then, he’d never once suggested doing so.

‘You’re hyperactive, aren’t you?’ she asked him one night as he put together a late-night fruit platter that neither of them wanted, and tried—with limited success—to watch a movie with her.

Damon shot her a wary glance before deciding that the platter needed some biscuits.

‘That’s one label,’ he offered up finally. ‘There have been others.’

‘Like what?’ And when he didn’t reply, ‘Let me guess. Intellectually gifted, easily bored and distracted, physically reckless. How am I doing so far?’

‘You’re very astute.’

‘ADD?’

He wouldn’t look at her. Had to dump a load of mango peelings down the garbage disposal instead.

She took that as a yes, and gave up on ever getting to the end of the movie. Time to leave the sumptuously comfy lounge and take her bare feet and her stripey boyleg panties and vest over to the kitchen counter instead. His side of the counter, mind. They were way past having a bench in between them.

Mango slices had rapidly become a favourite snack of Ruby’s. She selected one, ate it, and smiled when a freshly wet hand cloth landed with a splat on the bench beside her. ‘Thank you.’

She’d need that later. It wouldn’t do to have sticky hands once she started running them all over Damon’s irresistible flesh.

‘So how do you feel about flying to Sydney tomorrow for a couple of days’ exploration?’ she said next. Change of subject, after a fashion. No change of craving for this man detected. ‘I hear there’s a bridge there to climb. The internet tells me there’s a racetrack on offer too. Maybe we can rustle up a car or two and a pair of willing instructors to ride shotgun and have ourselves a little wager on the outcome? I can’t let all that experience on Bahrain’s international circuit go to waste. Because I did get there eventually. I may not have mentioned that earlier. Memories of Carl weeping inconsolably over his Hummer’s split gearbox casing may have distracted me.’

‘You destroyed a man’s gearbox?’

‘Well, not on purpose. Good thing I was wearing my buzzy bee headband at the time, otherwise he may have taken one look at me and seen red.’ She picked up another mango slice and offered it to him. ‘Mango?’

‘You don’t have to scatter your conversation for me, Ruby. Or give me a hundred and one conversation threads to choose from. I can follow a one-track conversation just fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Labels and all. And, yes. Doctors diagnosed me ADHD as a kid.’