Joss Wood - Your Bed or Mine?

Tori turned his words over in her mind, knowing that there was a fundamental truth within them but not able to grasp it, believe it. It was as if it were a finger of fog drifting past and her fingers kept sliding through it. Eventually she gave up trying to capture that nugget of truth and just listened to the thump-thump of Matt’s heart.

Tori had no idea when she fell asleep…just that she did and it felt good and right. For the first time in a long time, in a stranger’s arms, she felt safe.

Accepted. Enough.

Feeling as if she could just be…

TORI WOKE UP with a massive erection pushing into her lower back and she sighed with pleasure. Keeping her eyes closed, she stretched and wiggled her butt into that thick, hard long length of him. The hand on her breast tightened in response and a masculine thumb flicked over her nipple, pulling it into a hard peak, the cotton fabric adding to the pleasure.

Cotton fabric, T-shirt…Matt’s T-shirt. Dear God, she was in bed with Matt, the sexy stranger from last night who’d held her, for the longest time, while she’d cried.

She’d cried? God, no.

She could cope with people thinking she was a diva, a bitch, a crazoid, but fragile? No bloody way! Dammit, she seldom cried and she never, ever, ever cried in front of anyone, she thought as her body tightened with tension. She’d never felt safe enough, especially not as a child, and that habit had carried over into her adult life. No, it was a lot easier, safer to put a smile on her face and fire off a joke…

She couldn’t believe that she had blubbed all over Matt, all over a stranger! She’d had a couple of one-night stands over the years but the walk of shame was nothing to how mortified she felt right now; this was like doing the walk of shame naked, across broken glass and hot coals.

He must think she was weak and helpless and…wimpy.

She was Tori Phillips and she didn’t do wimpy…and there was no way that she could let this man, this gorgeous, sexy über-masculine man think that she was delicate, helpless…vulnerable. She wasn’t any of those things…and, if she was, she didn’t want him realising that she was.

She’d prefer to poke her eye out with a hot stick.

‘Bad idea, Cross,’ she thought she heard him mutter as his hand left her breast. Tori felt him kiss the top of her head; it was a placating, gentle, there-there kiss and it raised every hackle she had. She didn’t need his pity or his sympathy…and she’d make damn sure that when he thought of her he wouldn’t think of the snivelling, pathetic creature that had fallen asleep in his arms.

And there was only one way she knew of that would burn that image out of his head…

Sitting up, she whipped the T-shirt over her head and swung her leg over his hips and straddled him, her feminine core pressed into his erection. Tori cursed the fabric of his sweatpants and wished she’d yanked them down before positioning herself. Now she’d have to get off him, pull his pants down…

Matt’s huge hands on her hips kept her from wiggling and he looked up into that part-angel, part-devil face and sighed. Her eyes radiated determination but he could still see mortification lingering there. Yep, there was too much of her brain involved in this decision. She wanted him, it seemed that they were instantaneously, fiercely attracted to each other, but there was something else in her eyes, in her expression that hinted at an emotion other than ‘let me lick you from top to toe’.

‘What are you doing, Tori?’

Tori lifted her perfectly arched eyebrow and sent him a naughty smile as her hands skimmed over his stomach. Pity her eyes didn’t echo it. She wiggled against him and he couldn’t help pushing up into her. Damn, she felt hot and wet and so amazingly wonderful.

‘You seem bright enough, you figure it out.’ Tori leaned forward and nibbled his bottom lip with her teeth. His tongue shot out to taste her mouth and he pulled it back at the last minute. If he kissed her, if he moved his hands off her hips, he wouldn’t be able to stop rolling her over and plunging inside her.

She was perfect: long neck, slim shoulders, perky breasts that filled his hands and topped with blush pink, ultra-responsive nipples. A flat, flat stomach and a meticulously groomed strip of light brown hair that hinted at her natural colour. And the heat and moisture between her legs suggested warm, wet honey…

‘This isn’t a good idea.’ he muttered against her lips. It so is, Mr Long and Strong protested. ‘Not. A. Good. Idea.’

‘You saying no?’ Tori teased, her pointed tongue licking the dent in his cheek that his mum used to call a dimple but he called a pain-in-his-shaving-ass.

Was he saying no? Well, he was trying to…He had no moral objection to making love to a gorgeous woman but he wasn’t sure of her motives, of why she was doing this. If it was only about pure sex he’d be all over her like a rash but he could still feel the tension in her, could see the flickers of emotion in her eyes that told him that there was a whole bunch of this puzzle he was missing.

He knew what pure lust looked like and there was nothing like it in her eyes. Mortification, determination, a little crazy maybe…pure lust, not so much.

Matt didn’t like puzzles and he didn’t like uncertainty and false motives.

‘I’m saying no.’ They were the hardest words he’d ever said but he forced them between his teeth, made his lips spit them out. Tori sat up slowly, her face utterly confused.

‘What?’

Matt gripped her hips, bunched his muscles and with a grunt lifted her off him and onto the mattress next to him. He rolled his legs out of the bed, stood up and walked towards the door and scooped up her dressing gown, which he threw in her direction.

His mobile chirruped that he had a message and he glanced at the screen. A client, of course. He ignored the message, thinking that he should deal with one problem at a time.

‘You’re saying no?’ Tori demanded.

Matt winced.

It wasn’t even seven o’clock and he needed an aspirin. Actually he needed sex but since he’d just shot that in the foot, he’d settle for aspirin. His mobile chirped that he had another message.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Tori demanded, finally pulling on her dressing gown and covering up that take-me-now body. Long and Strong sighed and began to settle down. Thank God for small, or, in his case, not so small mercies.

Matt kept his voice calm. ‘Look, I just don’t think it’s a good idea…It’s never a good idea to nail someone else just after you were dumped.’

‘I wasn’t dumped!’ Tori’s face scrunched up in fury as she scrambled out of his bed. ‘I left him!’

‘Whatever. And you’re in someone else’s bed not twelve hours later. You’re vulnerable and sad and it’s a recipe for a disaster.’

‘It was a recipe for a mutual orgasm!’ Tori howled. ‘What are you, the male equivalent of a prick tease?’

Whoah, that wasn’t fair. His eyes narrowed in warning. ‘I never led you on—you were the one crawling all over me. Look, Tori, we’re going to be living in the same flat for the foreseeable future…and all we’re going to do is complicate the situation. Alex will rip my head off if I sleep with you when you are feeling vulnerable and hurt and I’m just a rebound screw for you.’

‘I am no t vulnerable. I am fine,’ Tori said through gritted teeth.

He didn’t believe her and wanted to call her on it, but thought he’d just inflame the situation more. Instead he just motioned to the door. ‘Why don’t you get going before the rest of the flat gets wind of this…if they haven’t already?’