31 Days of Winter (15 page)

‘Thanks.’

‘You’d better give me your mobile number so I can
ring you when I’m ready to pick you up. We can go to the supermarket then.’ I
read it out and watched him key it into his phone and was surprised to see he’d
got the latest iPhone. For a guy that didn’t own a TV I hadn’t been expecting
that. ‘Stay there, I’ll come and help you get out,’ he ordered. I watched as he
walked around the front of the jeep and wondered exactly how tall he was, he
walked with such power and confidence and even that rough stubble, thick ski
jacket and black beanie hat he had pulled down low masked none of his masculinity.
He opened my passenger door and held out his hand and I put mine in it and felt
him squeeze it as he pulled me out of the car and I slid down his body, trapped
between the car behind me and the solid wall of muscle in front.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered. My boots were flat and I
was barely level with his pecs. He cupped my chin again and made me look up at
him.

‘Are you going to be ok?’ he asked softly. I
nodded and chewed on my lip then trembled as he slowly ran his thumb backwards
and forwards over my cheek. I watched as his eyes came back to life and felt
his chest expanding against mine on every breath he took. He bowed his head and
I nearly passed out.
Was he going to kiss me again?
He hesitated and
then planted a gentle kiss on my forehead, it may as well have been directly on
my clit as I felt it surge through my whole body. He suddenly straightened up,
shook himself and mumbled ‘Good luck,’ and stepped away, quickly returning to
the driver’s side and getting in, leaving me clutching the passenger door and
feeling like I’d just had knee buckling sex, from a
forehead kiss
.

‘See you later?’ I asked as I turned to look at
him and he nodded without looking at me as I closed the door. He didn’t look
back as he drove away, leaving me feeling more empty and confused than ever. I
checked my watch, it was just after two, it had taken us just over an hour to
get here, which meant that as he always returned to the loch at five, he’d have
to leave this area at four, which left two hours unaccounted for.
What the
hell did he do here for two hours every day between the hours of two and four?
Surely no part-time job warranted a two hour daily commute for so little time
each day?
What the hell would pay well enough to make him do that?
I
sighed and crossed the road, headed into the clinic and asked if I could be
seen and was told to take a seat and wondered if I was I ever going to learn
more about him.

I had to wait about half an hour before I was
called in, it was bad enough her Scottish accent was so strong that I had to
keep asking her to repeat herself, but when I had to explain that I needed to
be tested because my fiancé had been sleeping with other women behind my back,
I didn’t think I could possibly feel any lower than I did in that moment. I
asked to be tested for everything, so I had swabs and urine and blood samples
and was told that I would get my results by the end of next week. I asked them
to email them to me as it was unlikely that I’d get a phone signal up at the
loch and I had no idea what the landline number was.

As I left I headed straight for a quaint looking
tearoom and ordered a full afternoon tea with scones, jam and clotted cream with
a hot chocolate, then started making a list of all the food I’d need for a
Christmas dinner, and extra supplies if I was going to be feeding Dan every night.
I felt better for getting some food inside me and as I paid up I asked where
would be the best place for me to shop to get Christmas decorations and
wandered through the town, browsing some of the shops along the way. I stopped
in a Woollen shop and got a dark grey cable knit scarf, matching beanie hat and
thick wool fingerless gloves for Dan as a Christmas and thank you gift and
stopped in a convenience store and got him a packet of Werther’s Originals.

I was in heaven in the huge Christmas shop, it smelled
of mulled wine, gingerbread and cloves. I explained to the shop assistant that
I would be buying items to kit out two houses from scratch and her eyes lit up
with pound signs as she called someone else over to watch the till as she
became my personal shopper. I chose four small multi-coloured fibre optic trees,
one for the boathouse, then the main house bedroom, office and kitchen, and a
load of sets of the longest strings of fairy lights I could find to wrap around
the four supporting pillars in the house, for the top of the kitchen units, the
main tree and Dan’s mezzanine, then two pearl and gold fairy light mantelpiece
toppers and loads of silver and red baubles. I also chose some outside icicle
lights to edge the top of the overhang of the boathouse and a load of
Scandinavian style wooden decorations to pin up. I groaned with pleasure when
she led me into the candle section, and ended up filling a basket with Christmas
scented Yankee Candle ones, church pillar candles and three cream metal hanging
heart candle holders that could be put in the boathouse windows. I knew it
wouldn’t be cheap but was shocked at the bill and made sure I tucked the
receipt right down at the bottom of my bag, before paying for some Christmas
cards and wrapping paper for myself. My over helpful assistant offered to keep
it all and told me that Dan could pull the Land Rover up in the car park at the
rear to load it when he was ready.

I left the shop and checked my watch, it wouldn’t
be long before he was ready to collect me. I hadn’t really packed any nice
outfits, other than the gold and cream maxi dress I’d got for Zac’s birthday. I
thought I’d be all alone up here and not going out often, and it was a
tradition in our household that you always dressed up for Christmas day and
made an effort, but a maxi dress seemed a bit over the top. I wandered in and
out of a few stores until I found a black scoop neck knitted mini dress, some
killer heeled silver sandals, like I didn’t have enough pairs at home, and I
found a luxury lingerie store and I couldn’t resist an emerald green lace bra
and matching boy shorts and a black set as well. I jumped as the items were
being wrapped when my phone rang and I apologised to the cashier as I answered
it.

‘Hello?’

‘Where are you, Ellie? I’m ready for you.’ His
voice conjured up an image of him lying naked in bed waiting for me with a
white sheet draped over his privates as he beckoned me in.

‘O God,’ I groaned before I could stop myself.
‘Please stop saying things like that to me, it’s not fair.’

‘Like what?’ he asked, but I could hear the
amusement in his voice. He knew exactly what he was doing to me.

‘You know like what.’

‘Where are you?’

‘A lingerie shop on the main street,’ I replied
and heard his breath catch.

‘Now who’s not playing fair?’

‘I’m not lying, would you prefer to pick me up
somewhere else?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ he answered gruffly. ‘I’d just
prefer you don’t show me what you’ve purchased.’

‘Well, I wasn’t exactly going to model them for
you.’

‘Ellie please, stop talking. I’ll be outside in
five minutes.’

‘Ok, I’ll see you …’ I sighed as I realised he’d
gone again.

‘Men, hey?’ smiled the assistant.

‘Tell me about it,’ I smiled and went to wait
outside, it was starting to get dark and seriously cold. I only had to wait a
couple of minutes before he pulled up and hopped out leaving the engine
running.

‘You like to shop,’ he nodded at all the bags in
my hands.

‘I’m a woman,’ I shrugged with a smile.

‘Hmmm, I’ll put them in the back.’ He held out his
hands and took them all off me and I quickly scrambled up without his
assistance and felt the frown from the back door. I shut myself in and buckled
up and he came and checked my door was properly closed before walking around
and getting in.

‘How was your afternoon?’ I asked casually, hoping
he’d let something slip.

‘Uneventful, as ever.’

‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a man of very few
words?’

‘Yes,’ he replied flatly and I burst out laughing,
which made him smile. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you ask too many questions?’

‘It may have been mentioned in passing, but if I
didn’t ask you’d never tell me anything.’

‘Why are you so desperate to know things about
me?’

‘You’re fascinating,’ I replied, then blushed and
quickly looked out of the window as he pulled out.

‘Fascinating?’

‘Yes.’

‘How so?’

‘O please, you’re like male model
seriously
sexy
hot, you’re single which is a crime against women kind, you live in the middle
of bloody nowhere like a recluse and won’t tell me anything about yourself.
It’s infuriating.’

‘A crime against women kind?’ he laughed.

‘Yes, if you lived in London do you realise how
many women would be competing to even get you to look at them? And that’s
before they’ve even seen you shirtless.’

‘They don’t look at me up here?’ he asked with a
wry smile as he drove.

‘For some reason I doubt you give them the chance
to look at you.’

‘What makes you think I don’t give them a chance?’

‘If you wanted to play the field, you wouldn’t be
living on a remote island on top of cardiac mountain. When did you last have
sex?’

‘I’d prefer not to answer that.’

‘So you get to ask loads of personal stuff about
me, but I get to know nothing about you? Great, thanks. You need to go and park
up at the back of the Christmas store. At least I know you’re good at carrying,’
I huffed as I turned away to look out of the window.

‘You’re angry again.’

‘Wow, you’re as observant as Jessica Fletcher,’ I
replied with more than a hint of sarcasm.

‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘You get
one
really personal
question a day that I promise to answer truthfully, if it isn’t a topic that
I’m unwilling to share.’

‘
Thanks!
You may as well just have given me
a chocolate fire guard, as a question you can just choose not to answer leaves
us right back where we started, doesn’t it?’

‘Three years,’ he sighed.

‘Three years what?’ I asked as I looked around at
him.

‘You asked how long since I last had sex,’ he
shrugged as he navigated a roundabout and I just sat looking at him completely
stunned.
Three years?!
He was telling me that he hadn’t had sex for
three whole years? I was completely flummoxed. How could a man as gorgeous as
Dan not have fucked someone in all that time?

‘You don’t like sex?’ I eventually uttered. He was
built for sex, I hadn’t even seen his manhood, but he seeped sex from every
pore, even when he wasn’t trying.

‘That’s another question Ellie, and I’ve answered
my one
very
personal question for the day.’

‘O, come on,’ I groaned. ‘You have to be lying.’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothings wron …’ he quickly began to reply, then
narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Nice try, that was another question.’ I buried my
face in my gloved hands and screamed and heard him laughing. ‘I’m really not
that interesting, Ellie.’

‘You know the less you tell me, the more
interesting you become, right? You’re like a really hard Sudoku puzzle wrapped
in this ridiculously handsome and sexily hot package and I’m determined to
solve you.’

‘You think I’m ridiculously handsome?’

‘Yes,’ I responded quietly and quickly looked out
of the window again as I felt my stomach flutter.

‘And sexily hot?’ he asked as he pulled into the
back of the store.

‘
Dan,’
I protested as my cheeks flamed.

‘Would
you
be competing for me if I was in
London?’ he asked. I looked over at him surprised as he parked up and put on
the handbrake and watched my face.

‘I think I’d compete for you anywhere,’ I
whispered without having a chance to think before the words tumbled out. Before
I knew what was happening my seat belt buckle was released and he’d slid me
across the worn shiny leather seat to the middle of the car and grasped my face
as he started kissing me frantically, like his life depended on it. I closed my
eyes as the sensation of pins and needles filled my head as our lips swelled
against each other’s and I felt his tongue searching for mine. I wanted to
climb onto his lap and shove my fingers in his hair, to hold him to me, but the
gear stick and steering wheel were in the way. My body was craving his in a way
I couldn’t ever remember experiencing before. It had been a long time since Zac
and I had kissed properly, like we just couldn’t get enough of each other, but
I don’t ever remember it feeling as intense as this was. Our tongues tangled,
duelled and teased and I groaned his name into his mouth and immediately felt
him tense up and slightly pull away. He held my face just out of reach of his
as he closed his eyes and sighed.

‘You’ve got to stop
doing this
to me,
Ellie.’

‘Doing what?’ I asked as I tried to catch my
breath, which he completely took away again as he opened his beautiful eyes and
looked straight into mine.

‘Tempting me.’

‘But I did nothing Dan, and why does it matter if
you kiss me? I don’t understand.’

‘I just can’t be there for you like that.’

‘
You
kissed
me.
Again! And you’re
the one still clasping my face as your eyes are telling me that you
definitely
want
to be there for me like that.’ He continued to keep looking at me
as his thumbs stroked my cheeks and I could see the confusion on his face, it
reflected my own. He hadn’t had sex in so long, he wanted me, he kept teasing
me, yet he wasn’t prepared to take that next step? I suddenly felt stupid,
stupid for letting another guy jerk me around. I quickly pulled myself back
over to the other side of the car, opened the door and jumped out grabbing my
bag.