‘I think we should establish some sort of boundaries, don’t you?’
Bella’s husky voice cut across Will’s musings and he opened one eye and glanced down at her, his eyebrows snapping together in a frown.
Hmm. Boundaries. Good point. Slightly strange that it had been brought up by her when he was always the one to dictate the terms of his affairs, generally before they’d even started, but never mind. Whoever had brought it up was irrelevant. Establishing boundaries was the priority and he rather thought he’d be interested to see what she came up with. A novel approach for him, perhaps, but then everything about his dealings with Bella was novel.
‘What do you suggest?’
She caught her lip and hmmed. ‘A time limit would be good. At the very least.’
Ah, his favourite kind of boundary. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Well, I don’t know really … How long is the collection on display?’
‘A month.’
‘Great. Then how about we stop when it does?’
Will twirled a lock of her hair around his finger and watched it change colour in the dim light as he contemplated her proposal.
A month ought to be fine. It was longer than some of his affairs, not as long as others. Perfectly reasonable, and would give him plenty of time to satisfy his craving for her. ‘That sounds sensible.’
‘Of course if either of us wants to get out before then, maybe if you get bored or something, then we can stop.’
Will felt his eyebrows shoot up. ‘You really think I might get bored?’ That didn’t seem likely from where he was lying.
She smiled up at him. ‘It could happen.’
He rolled her over, his body tightening as he stared down at her and lowered his head. ‘Then we’ll just have to get inventive, won’t we?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
BELLA was about to get very inventive indeed.
But not because she was bored. Far from it. She and Will had been seeing each other every night for the last fortnight. Some lunchtimes too, and she was loving every minute of it. Deciding to have an affair with Will was without doubt the best idea she’d ever had.
They’d been out for dinners and met up for walks in the park. They’d stayed in and she’d cooked. Last week he’d dropped by her shop. He hadn’t even said hello, had just flicked the sign on the door to closed, then fixed her with a gaze that had her heart thundering, taken her hand and pulled her into the workshop at the back. He’d lifted her onto her workbench, bunched her dress up and given her the quickest, hottest sexual experience of her life. When she’d fin
ally managed to get her breath back, she’d dragged him up to her flat and they’d spent the rest of the afternoon there, testing out the strength of various pieces of her furniture and discovering that while her sofa was sturdy, the bar stools in her kitchen were less so.
So she was far from bored.
No. The reason she was marching through Soho, heading in the direction of a very specific shop, was while the sex was fabulous and more thrilling than she could ever have imagined, Will’s reluctance to talk about himself, the reasons for his aversion to commitment in particular, was driving her nuts.
On the rare occasions she had broached the subject, or any subject of a personal nature for that matter, he’d employed more effective countermeasures than an intercontinental ballistic missile. If they were out, he’d shoot her a dazzling smile that scrambled her brain to such an extent that she forgot what she’d been asking. If they were in he’d give her a look that had her horizontal and writhing beneath him within seconds.
She’d tried to work it out for herself but had drawn a blank. That something had caused it was obvious. It was all very well not wanting to be tied down at the age of, say, twenty-one, but to be single at thirty-six, when Will was gorgeous and intelligent and sometimes really quite funny, simply wasn’t normal. Under normal circumstances he’d have been snapped up years ago.
But what was at the root of it remained a mystery. He was as reluctant to chat now as he’d been keen to before the launch party, and that she found strange.
Arriving at the shop and pushing the door open, Bella reminded herself yet again that it shouldn’t matter. Their fling was temporary so she had no need to know why Will was so averse to commitment. But knowing that she had no need to know anything that personal about him didn’t stop her wanting to know. It didn’t stop her wanting to know what made him the man he was. What had caused the shadows in his eyes that she caught glimpses of from time to time.
Wanting to know everything about him, in fact.
Her heart stumbled and she jerked to a halt in front of a display stand. She frowned while her head swam. Uh-oh. That didn’t sound too good. That sounded kind of dangerous. Emotionally dangerous.
And then she pulled herself together and told herself not to be so absurd. She wasn’t in any danger, emotionally or otherwise. She hadn’t lost track of what she ultimately wanted. And she hadn’t fallen into the trap of hoping that Will might be able to provide it, or that, despite her assurances to Phoebe to the contrary, she might be able to change him.
No, she thought, eyeing up the racks of merchandise as heat began to race through her veins and desire hummed in the pit of her stomach. It was curiosity. Simple as that. And as she was pretty sure Will was never going to tell her what she wanted to know of his own accord, she was going to torment him into talking.