Page 34 of A Summer Scandal

‘And to be honest, I’m a bit humiliated. It’s as if you’ve awoken my inner sex goddess and then told her you don’t fancy her.’

‘Fucking hell,’ he said, scrubbing his hand over his jaw.

‘But that’s okay too, because I might just be on the rebound from Simon and projecting onto you. I probably don’t fancy you at all really and our sex would be hideous, so you don’t need to feel bad about it.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ he said, sudden and exasperated, and then he twisted to face her and slid his hand into her hair until he was cradling her head in his hand.

‘You’ve had a strange effect on me too, Violet. You turn up here with your blue hair and sea-foam eyes, looking like someone who needs rescuing, then acting like a warrior princess, and I tell myself don’t go there because she’s someone else’s, and because we’re living next door to each other and that would be massively awkward afterwards, and I don’t want to screw it up because I actuallylikeyou rather than just want to get you naked. And then you go and say stuff about your inner sex goddess and all I can think is I want you.’

They stared at each other, both breathless and giddy from saying too much and drinking too much too fast. She turned to face him too, one hand on the floor holding her upright, unsure what to do with the other until she realised she’d reached out and laid her fingertips on his lips as if to stop any more words coming out.

‘Shall we kiss, just to confirm it’s hideous?’ she whispered, because she’d lost her senses.

He stared at her, his fingers warm and massaging the back of her neck.

‘And then we can just relax because we’ve cleared the air,’ she said. ‘And go back to being platonic friends again.’

As she spoke, he kissed her fingertips. If she’d stopped to think about it she’d have realised the folly of her words, because even that barely-there touch of his mouth was enough to tell her she was kidding herself. Then he shifted her hand up and kissed her palm, his lashes lowered, tilting his head to let his lips slide down slowly over the pulse point in her wrist. She leaned into the heat of his body, gasping at the touch of his tongue on her skin.

And then he circled his arm around her body, holding her against him, and she tilted her head back as he lowered his. He kissed her slowly, deeply, opening her lips under his own, sighing into her mouth at the slide of her tongue over his. He controlled it, built it, until she snapped and pushed her hands into his hair and took the kiss from sensual to X-rated. He leaned into her until her back pressed against the glass, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, scared by how turned on she was.

‘You’re crying,’ he whispered into her mouth, slowing the kiss down to agonising and sweet. ‘Don’t cry, mermaid girl.’

‘It’s just that …’

‘Shh,’ he sank his teeth into her bottom lip then kissed it better. ‘It’s just a kiss. Hardly anything, really.’ He wrapped both arms around her, holding her tight.

‘I shouldn’t have asked you to do it,’ she said, still kissing him because she didn’t want it to end.

‘I think it was the best idea you’ve ever had,’ he said, licking his tongue back into her mouth, cupping her face, stroking his thumbs across her cheekbones. And then they didn’t say anything for a few minutes, because the kiss was too intense, too deep, too vulnerable, too fragile and close to be able to withstand conversation.

Cal had known that kissing Violet wasn’t going to be hideous. He’d been imagining how she’d taste from the first moment he met her, and his imagination hadn’t done her justice. Her skin smelt of fresh bed sheets after a shower and of the beach at sunrise, and the sea-salt on her warm lips gave way to rich, deep sweetness when she opened her mouth for him. He could taste the wine they’d shared, and her excitement, and the way she flipped from being kissed to kissing him was dynamite in his veins.

She was delicious, and for a few minutes he threw all of his reasons not to get involved with her off the end of the pier and just let himself be a man kissing a woman because she was lovely and she’d asked him to. He wasn’t the black sheep of the family, or the failed husband, or the perceived Jack the lad. For those minutes, he wasn’t any of the labels so frequently attached to him by other people. He was just Calvin Dearheart, a man with a temporary clean slate and it felt so damn good. She felt so damn good. She wastoodamn good for a man like him, but Jesus, when she kissed him like that he lost every rational thought in favour of just wanting more, and more, and more.

‘Cal? Violet?’

They jumped guiltily apart at the sound of Keris’s voice carrying through from outside the birdcage.

‘Shit,’ Violet said, wide-eyed and shaky.

‘I dropped the bolt when I came in,’ he said. ‘Don’t panic, it’s okay.’

She nodded, pressing her fingers to her kiss-swollen mouth. ‘I should go and let her in.’

Cal nodded. Fond as he was of Keris, he’d quite like to go and push her into the sea right at that moment.

Standing up, he held his hand out to Violet and helped her to her feet, straightening the neck of her blouse gently. They locked eyes, and he was blindsided by a distinct urge to protect this woman. What from, he didn’t even know. It was just … primal.

‘I’ve got you.’ He ran the blue ends of her hair through his fingers, and a small, curious smile touched her lips.

‘I better go and open the door before Keris wonders what we’ve been up to,’ she said, and when she left the room Cal buried his face in his hands and swore repeatedly.

When Violet opened the door, she found Keris wasn’t alone; there was a woman with her Vi hadn’t met before.

‘Violet, this is Lucy,’ she said, looking Vi up and down quickly as if she knew what she’d interrupted. ‘Lucy’s a photographer. We were chatting in the pub last night, and it occurred to me that the pier might make a great photography studio with all the light?’

As she smiled and invited them both in, Violet tried to absorb the information and work out how it slotted in with the adult theme of the pier. Lucy was all curves and curls and smiles, but her eyes were wary as she looked around the birdcage, assessing.

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