Your Bed or Mine?. Joss Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 not 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?’

      ‘I don’t care if—’

      ‘You should,’ Matt interrupted. ‘You should care what the people who love you think.’

      Tori tightened the sash of her dressing gown and pushed her messy hair away from her face. Her chin lifted as she gave him a look that was meant to eviscerate all his internal organs. ‘You’ll regret this.’

      Matt scrubbed his face with his hands and then placed them on his hips. He watched as Tori stalked over to the bedroom door, yanked it open and slammed it so hard that the entire building shook. Well, if their flatmates weren’t awake yet they would be now…

      Matt crossed over to the window, yanked the sash window up, placed his hands on the sill and breathed in the chilly morning air. It was a good substitute for a cold shower and he felt himself shrink to everyday proportions. He’d done the right thing, he assured himself. He didn’t need any complications in his life—and Tori had complications graffitied all over her in DayGlo spray paint—and sleeping with his brand-new flatmate would cause complications he didn’t need.

      He especially didn’t need the protective Alex beating the snot out of him for taking advantage of her.

      Okay, so…interesting start to his month in London.

      She wasn’t his type? Seriously?

      His words reverberated around her brain as Tori sat at the kitchen table later that morning, scowling into the mug of coffee cradled in her hands. How could he say that when she had the proof that she was exactly his type pressed hot and flush and throbbing against her, begging to slide on in?

      Not her type? She was old enough to know that men thought that any naked woman floated their boat.

      As God was her witness he was so going to regret those words. It was the second time she’d been verbally, emotionally slapped by a man in two days and she was sick of it. She was Tori Phillips, the life and soul of any party, champion flirt; she made people laugh and people liked her, dammit. Men loved her…

      And he would too. Tori narrowed her bright blue eyes, deep in thought. Her pride demanded that she take some sort of action to bring him down a peg or two—or sixty thousand—and she was just the girl to show him the error of his ways. She tapped her French-manicured nail against her coffee mug; she could unleash the full power of her charm on him and when she had him at her feet and begging, she’d watch him squirm as she walked away.

      Poppy might be smart, Iz ambitious but, by God, she was the most charming and, undoubtedly, the most stubborn and…and…and unforgiving of the bunch.

      And, also the most screwed up of all of them. Why couldn’t she just shrug off his words and let it go? Was she that insecure, that crazy? Yeah, she was. She wasn’t book smart like Poppy, who was her stable rock, calm and in control. She wasn’t like Iz, ambitious and driven. Iz had recently given up her high-flying career to work as a fund-raiser for charities, she had found Harry and was deliciously happy, but she knew what she wanted and how to get it.

      No, Tori was the clown of the group, the emotional firecracker, the one they worried about, talked about and tried to keep grounded. She was capricious—she worked in PR, could anything be more flighty than that?—and she was emotional and high-maintenance. Or so they kept telling her.

      Her friends loved her, dearly, but she knew they despaired of her. She knew that they desperately wanted to say ‘I told you so’ about Mark. Poppy, the mother hen, wanted to scoop her up and wrap her in cotton wool.

      She would be fine…She’d pick herself up and dust herself down.

      Tori smelt Poppy’s scent before she even heard her and sighed with pleasure when Poppy’s slim arms wrapped around her chest from behind. Poppy rested her temple against hers while Tori held her arms. Her best friend, her oldest friend. It was so good to be home…

      ‘You okay, Toz?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Tori replied as Poppy let her go. She looked up into Poppy’s doubtful face. ‘I’m fine, Popsicle. I promise. СКАЧАТЬ