Page 72 of Book People

She screams as I thrust and then it’s over for her, and she’s shaking and shaking, and I’m shaking along with her as the orgasm hits me over the head and I go down.

We don’t move. I’m physically unable to. She’s panting in my ear and I can hear my own heartbeat, thudding, deafening. I feel the way I do after a long, hard run, when the endorphins kick in and you’re on that physical high.

Christ. I’ve just screwed a woman in my bookshop, and what a woman she is . . . I’ll never be the same again.

There’s a circle of fallen books around us, which feels appropriate. But I don’t bother picking them up. I deal with the necessities first, including locking the front door of the shop, then, when I’m done, I pick her up from where she’s slumped against the shelves and gather her close.

She puts her arms around my neck, lying back against my chest, all sleepy and sated. Her gaze is dark as she looks up at me from beneath her lashes. ‘Where are we going, Mr Blackwood?’ she asks, husky and sensual.

I stride towards the entrance to my flat. ‘You know very well where we’re going, Miss Jones.’

‘Miss Jones again. Hmmm. Have I been bad?’

‘You’ve been excessively disobedient. I’m going to have to punish you.’

She smiles as I kick the door open. ‘Oh, goody.’

Chapter Nineteen

I am fine. Nothing is wrong. I just didn’t sleep well last night.

C

KATE

I lie naked on Sebastian’s bed with my chin on my folded hands, watching him. We’ve just talked about what we need to do to get stock ofColoursin for Lisa’s book-signing and then discussed including Portable Magic as a venue for some of the festival events, and now I’m helping him set up Blackwood Books’ first newsletter.

He’s sitting beside me – also naked – apart from the absurd little glasses he wears on the end of his nose. It’s quite the dichotomy, the glasses in contrast with his magnificent body.

And he is magnificent.

Really, the village doesn’t know the half of what lies beneath this man’s clothes and it’s a damn shame they don’t. There should be a naked statue of him outside the bookshop so everyone can see and worship him.

Then again, I’m not sure I want them to. I want the sheer beauty of him to remain my little secret. The thing that onlyIknow. And there are many things that only I know.

The growl he makes when I take him in my mouth.

The way his eyes glow fiercely when he thrusts inside me.

The sound of my name when he comes.

The women in the village don’t know what they’re missing out on and I’m glad. Because that makes him mine. All mine.

‘Stop distracting me,’ he says, without looking up from the laptop screen.

‘I’m not.’

‘You are.’

‘How am I distracting you?’

That earns me a flash of intense blue as he glances at me. ‘You exist, Miss Jones.’ And smiles.

My heart turns over in my chest.

That’s another thing the village doesn’t know. What he looks like when he’s naked and smiling, and desire is in his eyes.

Only I know that.

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