Sunday morning being traditionally a day of rest, we were of course woken up at eight by the phone ringing. Given the night I’d had, I wasn’t too pleased about having to roll out of bed and root around in the heap of clothes on the floor until I finally located my phone in my jeans pocket.
It was Lilah. “All right, love?” I greeted her, trying not to let my lack of enthusiasm show in my voice.
“What the bleedin’ hell’s going on?”
I held the phone further from my ear, her voice being a little louder and more piercing than I was feeling up to at that hour of the morning. “What?” Was she calling to complain about our abortive attempt to corner her beloved son without her to act as chaperone?
“That lad from the Smithy. Oliver. He’s brown bread!”
Dead, my knowledge of little-used cockney rhyming slang provided, the fact I’d been the one to discover the body adding a helpful hint my sleep-fogged brain sorely needed. “Uh. Yeah. How do you know?”
“Pete called my little girl and told her about it this morning. She’s in a right state.”
Huh, so Hazel and Pete were friends. And it sounded like Pete hadn’t slept any better than I had.
“She said you found him. With your whatsit.” There was a touch of awe underlying her The world’s gone mad tone.
“Yeah . . .” I glanced over at Phil, who was sitting up in bed looking unfairly with-it, not to mention gorgeous. “Hang on a mo.” I covered the bit you speak into with my thumb. “It’s Lilah. She’s heard about Oliver.”
“Tell her we’ll be over in an hour.”
I relayed the message and hung up. Then I slumped back onto the bed. “An hour? Great. Just time to bung some clothes on and shove down a slice of toast.”
“Shower first.”
“Have we got time?” I asked wearily, staring up at the ceiling.
“If we do it together.” Phil’s face appeared in my field of vision wearing a hint of a smirk, and although thirty seconds ago I’d have said I hadn’t got the energy for anything like that, suddenly all I wanted was to forget about this bloody case for five minutes.
“You’re on.” I held out my hand.
Phil pulled me up and kept on pulling so I landed smack against his hard, naked body. It wasn’t the only thing that was hard, either. I shivered, either from the chill of the room or from the feel of his skin on mine, and he grabbed hold of a buttock and squeezed.
“Shower,” he reminded me, and kissed me roughly, sending a jolt of desire straight down to my groin.
It’s not exactly huge, my shower. Well, not when you’ve got a bloke in there with you with shoulders the size of my Phil’s. We had to get really close. Not that I was complaining. I buried my head in Phil’s neck as he jerked us off, both our dicks together in one big hand. “Christ, that’s good,” I moaned. “Want me to—”
I didn’t get to finish offering to blow him, much less go through with the act, because he stopped my mouth with a kiss. It was forceful and hungry like his grip on my dick, just the right side of pain. His other hand was on the back of my head, stopping me breaking the kiss—not that I wanted to.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d had bad dreams last night. With the water cascading down on us, it was difficult to breathe and our chests were heaving.
Light-headed, I dug my fingers into the slippery mounds of his arse, not bothering to worry about leaving marks. I wanted to leave marks. I wanted everything. I ran my hand down his crack, my fingers teasing his hole, letting him know what I intended in case he had a problem with that.
Phil grunted into my mouth as he shoved his arse back against my touch. Nope, no problems there. I circled his hole once with my middle finger and then pushed it deep inside him, owning him. I felt it in my dick as his inner muscles gripped me tight, pulling me inside—and then spasmed as he came, shooting hot jets of spunk up between us.
He’d barely stopped shuddering before he pushed me away—and dropped to his knees.
Christ. I nearly came from the sight. His blond hair was soaked several shades darker, and water was beaded on his muscular shoulders where they were outside the spray. The streaks of his spunk on my belly were disappearing as the water washed them away. I backed up about an inch to lean against the tiles. They chilled my shoulders to the bone, but I didn’t care. The rest of me was feverish with want.
Both hands on my hips, he bent his head—but not to my dick, as I’d expected. Instead, he gently kissed my belly, right where Reid had punched me. Christ. Even after all the time we’d been together, his tenderness still blew me away. My heart melted—then he dipped his head further, and suddenly it wasn’t my heart that was uppermost in my mind.
My knees trembled as Phil’s mouth enveloped me. Bloody hell, he was good at this. My world narrowed to the heat and pressure on my dick. God, I never wanted this to end. Phil’s head bobbed up and down as he rolled my balls in his hand, and I groaned wordlessly.
Then he looked up, straight at me, still sucking on my cock, and that was all it took. Pleasure and release ripped through me. Possibly I shouted something. It was fucking glorious.
And then the water went cold, my knees gave out, and I collapsed onto Phil. We were both laughing like a couple of sex-drunk hyenas as we staggered out of the shower to grab our towels.
“Feeling better now?” Phil asked, rubbing his hair dry with a lot more than a hint of a smirk. His towel was an Egyptian cotton bath sheet personally hand-woven by Nefertiti and fluffed up by the breath of baby angels, while mine was the washed-out, cardboard-textured dishrag I’d got in a bargain-price bundle from Tesco. The bath sheet had moved in with my beloved, along with a load of other top-notch linens currently giving my airing cupboard ideas above its station.
I might just possibly have developed a touch of towel envy. “Git.” It was the wittiest thing I could think of after that brain-shattering orgasm.
“Your git,” he reminded me. “Coffee and toast?”
“You’re a lifesaver.” I gave up trying to dry myself off with my sorry excuse for a towel, and nodded at Phil’s not-so-little bit of luxury. The towel, I meant, although obviously the description also applied to something else of his. “You finished with that?”
Phil laughed and chucked it at me. “Why didn’t you grab one of these for yourself in the first place? It’s not like we’ve only got the one.”
“Yeah, but they’re yours,” I said awkwardly, wrapping myself up in what felt like a very posh cloud that somehow managed to smell subtly of Phil even though he’d just showered.
He gave me a look. “We’re getting married, remember? That means joint custody of the household linens. ‘With my worldly goods I thee endow.’ Sound familiar?”
“Nope. Don’t remember that part at all. I never got past ‘With my body I thee honour.’” And don’t think it hadn’t been traumatic hearing Greg vow that to my sister in a packed-out cathedral. Trust him and Cherry to have the most archaic service possible that didn’t actually call for her to promise to obey him.
“We’ve done that bit. Now do me a favour and take the towels. That one of yours isn’t fit for lining the cats’ baskets.”
“They never sleep in their baskets. I’ve had the flippin’ things under the bed in the spare room for the last five years.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. That towel isn’t fit to be a cat’s reject.”
“Harsh, mate. Harsh.”
Phil wrapped his arm around my be-towelled self and gave me a squeeze. “But fair.”