She shrugged again and looked away.
“You know just some . . . issues.”
“What issues? Don’t they lock?”
“Yeah, sure, they lock. It’s just I don’t . . .” she lowered her voice to a whisper “. . .alwaysremember to lock them.”
I looked down at my shoes for a long moment. Of course she didn’t bother to lock her door. She was only an attractive, defenceless single woman living in one of the most dangerous areas of London. Why bother?
“Please tell me,” I said slowly, dragging my gaze from my feet to her small face, “that you double lock the fucking door when you’reinthe fucking flat.”
“Woah! That’s a lot of f-words Pollyanna. Alert the media! Politician McUptight uses profanity.”
“Kira.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah.Sure. . . I lock the door.”
Her eyes slid to the side.
“You’re a crap liar.”
“No, I’m not, I–”
I grabbed her keys off the counter and turned back to her door (it wasn’t very far away, but, then again, nothing was very far away in Kira’s tiny flat). It wasn’t long before I realised that the Yale lock did not work, at least not with the key that Kira had.
“I’m calling a locksmith.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
I made a dash for the biscuit tin and reached around her to open the pig’s mouth. Oinking sounds filled the kitchen as I tried to extract my phone, but my hand only came up with a couple of custard creams. Kira inserted herself between the kitchen counter and me, her small hands attempting to push me away. I could feel her body up against mine, her soft breasts pushing against my lower chest and that citrusy smell surrounding me again. The head rush that followed was so strong I had to blink it away again. She’d started giggling as she pushed against my chest with all her strength.
“Christ, you’re stubborn,” I said in a rough voice as I pulled out a Jaffa Cake from the tin, but still no phone. She encircled my wrist with both hands, trying unsuccessfully to pull it away. Then, she did something so completely unexpected, I blame it for all the events that followed. She tickled me. I hadn’t been tickled since I was a child. In truth, I’d forgotten justhowticklish I was. Her small fingers snuck up under my arm and danced over my ribs, and I let out a startled laugh, letting go of the biscuit tin lid (and thankfully shutting off the oinking sound) as I tried to fend her off.
I had strength on my side but she had speed, and she was so small that she managed to avoid my attempts to repel her. Soon, I was laughing so hard that my eyes watered. I managed to get hold of both her hands in one of mine and, before I knew what had happened, I had her pressed against the kitchen counter with her hands trapped behind her back. We were breathing hard, grinning at each other, but as I looked down at her beautiful, expressive face surrounded by all that soft, fiery, pink-streaked, citrus-smelling hair, my smile waned and all I could think about was how much I wanted her. There was nothing I could do about it. My old friend self-control had left the building. Her eyes went wide and her pupils dilated as I leaned in further.
“Kira,” I breathed. My lips were inches away from hers. I felt her shiver in my arms before she closed the gap between us. I released her hands to plunge mine into her glorious hair, and her arms came up around my back. Her lips were soft and she tasted of champagne. When I deepened the kiss, she opened her mouth to let me in, letting out a small moan, which short-circuited my brain even more.
I heard a low, feral noise fill the kitchen, and it took me a moment to realise that it was coming from the back ofmythroat. It felt like I couldn’t get close enough to her with the disparity in height, so I lifted her up and set her on the kitchen counter. She gave a shocked little squeak, then another groan as I moved between her legs, tilted her head back to exactly where I wanted it and kissed her again. I used my other hand to press her into me and she moved against me. My mouth shifted from hers almost of its own accord and down her cheek to graze her neck, then behind her ear. The hand that wasn’t wrapped around her back, pressing her into me, moved to slip underneath the hem of her dress, now rucked up around the tops of her thighs. Just as my fingers reached the lace of her knickers and she’d let out another small moan, the biscuit tin started ringing.
We both froze.
What the bloody hell was I doing? My hand was up her skirt for badger’s sake. And now I was using weird Kira-speak . . . in my head. I was losing it. Abruptly, I pulled back and took a step away from her. Her body swayed where it was perched on the counter, but she managed to keep her balance. She closed her legs and pulled her skirt down to cover herself, her wide eyes blinking rapidly and her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. The biscuit tin stopped ringing.
Kira pushed her thick hair behind her ears then jumped down from the counter to land on her bare feet. The goddamn tin started ringing again. “Hadn’t you better get that?”
I moved to the tin and opened the mouth, which set off the oinking again, and managed to find my phone on the first attempt. It was covered in crumbs.
“Is there a problem up there, sir?” Sam’s voice rumbled down the phone and I rubbed my hand down my face.
“I’m just trying to sort out Kira’s door. I’ll . . . I’ll be down now.” I ended the call and then stared at my phone for a full minute.
Chapter 13
Time to stop moping around like a wet ferret
Kira
