“Excited?”
“Yes?” she answered unconvincingly. Zack laughed and held out her new lace-trimmed silk robe so Harper could slip into it. “No, no, I am. Really. But being excited doesn’t mean I can’t be nervous too.”
“You have nothing to be nervous about,” he said as he stepped back and looked her over. The robe fell to mid-thigh, the vee of the neckline just low enough for anyone looking to catch a glimpse of her cleavage. “You look fantastic. As far as celebrations go, I’m pretty sure this is one James is going to love.”
“If all I was doing was dressing up, I wouldn’t be nervous.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “So what else are you doing?”
“Nothing.” He was still grinning. “Nothing that’s any of your business anyway.”
“Naughty.”
“Maybe,” she said, laughing when Zack oohed. “Anyway, I told James to get here for nine o’clock, which means he’ll be here within the next five minutes so can you please do me one last favour and get the door for me when he arrives? Just tell him to come straight through to my room.”
“Will do,” he agreed. “And then I think I’ll leave the two of you alone. I might not know exactly what you’re planning, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be around to hear it.”
Harper slapped him lightly on the shoulder, which only made him bark another laugh, and then gently pushed him out of her bedroom. She settled on the bed, leaning back against the nest of pillows she’d built up at the corner of the room, and started to half-watch cat videos on youtube as she waited for James.
She shouldn’t have been so nervous. Her plans for the evening might have been something her and James hadn’t exactly done before, but she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t enjoy it. She was going to, her nerves nowhere near strong enough to dull the thrum of excitement going through her as she ran through exactly what she had planned.
The walls of the apartment were thin enough for her to hear when James knocked on the door. Even though she’d been excited, almost giddy, when the idea first struck her, broaching the topic with James suddenly seemed daunting. She twisted the hem of her robe in one hand, waiting for James to be directed to her room.
“Is Harper still getting ready?”
“I don’t think so,” Zack told James. “She said you should just go straight through to her room. I think she’s finishing up an assignment or something.”
James rapped on her bedroom door. Harper abandoned her phone on the bedside table before padding across the room to open it for him. He was dressed for an evening out, wearing one of his smartest sweater vest-blazer combos and holding a small bouquet of delicate pink flowers.
Maybe she should have made it clearer that she didn’t have any plans for them to be going anywhere but the apartment that night.
“Have a good evening,” Zack sang, not that James seemed to hear him.
And then the front door slammed behind him and they were alone.
The slam was enough to jolt James out of whatever trance her appearance seemed to have put on him, and his gaze travelled up and down her body one last time before he met her eyes. “You’re not ready,” he said, gesturing with his free hand at her robe. “Do you want me to give you a few more minutes?”
“I don’t need a few more minutes,” she told him, laughing when he furrowed his eyebrows and looked adorably confused. “Really. I’m ready.”
“You are?”
Harper nodded and, with a mischievous smile, reached out to take his hand and lead him into her room, towards her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed, expecting James to join her, but instead, he released her hand and took hold of her chin, angling her face up so he could bend and kiss her hello.
“Give me a moment, love, and then you can explain all of this.” He trailed a finger along the collar of her robe, his finger dipping between her breasts for only a second before he drew his hand back and stepped away.
She watched as he picked up the vase of flowers, still beautiful even though the petals were starting to curl, from her bedside table and left the room, returning a minute later with the same vase now holding the new flowers.
“Thank you,” she said, leaning forward to smell them. “They’re beautiful.”
“They’re hardly the most beautiful thing in the room.” He finally sat beside her on the bed, brushing a kiss to her flushed cheeks as he did so, and then took her hand in his. “Now, I was under the impression we were going out to celebrate my film deal. Not that I’m complaining about this change of plans.”
“We’re definitely celebrating,” she told him, sure that her cheeks were somehow burning even redder as she built up to the truth. “James, do you remember when we met?”
“Of course.”
“You found Kaitlyn and I reading a scene from Rosethorne Park,” she reminded him, and he nodded indulgently at her. “I asked if you wanted to read with us and you said you preferred two-person scenes.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I was thinking about you and that scene and how far you’ve come since we met, and I know you cut that scene from the script as soon as Vasquez asked us to stage it, but I was thinking that, to celebrate, we could maybe… act it out together?” She drew to a sudden halt, her nerves having made her words fast and rambling, and twisted the hem of her robe between her fingers. James was looking at her, his eyebrows raised, and she was suddenly sure he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She should have broached the subject with him first, long before she dressed up and learned the lines, so that she could save herself the embarrassment when he told her he wasn’t interested. “Or, you know, you can give me ten minutes and I can get dressed and we can-”
“You still have the scene?”
“Uh, yes?” she said carefully, surprised by the question. “You gave it to me, remember? During rehearsals? You said you wanted to keep a part of your play for only us and you gave it to me too so I could do the same.”
“I know I gave it to you.” He lifted their joined hands to his lips to brush a kiss to the back of her hand. “I’m asking because I may have written the script, but that doesn’t mean I know the lines.”
“A little improvisation never hurt anyone,” she said, suddenly unable to stop smiling. “You don’t need to be word-perfect.”
He shook his head, a wide smile on his lips. “Harper-”
“Don’t you mean ‘my lady’?”
He laughed, deep, rumbling and very, very happy. “Of course. Now, my lady, should I leave the room and come back in so that we can start this properly?”
“If you want.”
James brushed a kiss to her cheek and left the room, flipping the light switch as he did so and leaving her room illuminated only by the moon and a nearby streetlamp. Harper got comfortable on her bed and ran through the lines in her head; she knew them, she’d read the scene more times than she would dare to admit to (and had done long before she ever thought of acting it out with James).
When he reentered, he’d lost the blazer and the sweater vest.
“Be warned, intruder!” Harper said on cue, forcing her own giggles away as James seemed to try and fail to hide his smile. “I keep a knife under my pillow.”
It was impossible to hide her own wide grin as she drew a kitchen knife out from under the pile of pillows and held it out towards him. James chuckled and shook his head as he took a few steps towards her bed. “Be careful,” he said, before taking a long pause as he tried to remember the next line. “I don’t want to die before I get to taste your lips again.”
She nodded enthusiastically. His words weren’t exactly verbatim but they were close enough; he might not know the lines, but he knew the scene.
Harper climbed out of bed, the knife held loosely in her hand, and crossed the few feet between her and James so she was standing right in front of him. He glanced at her lips, swayed closer, and she let herself almost meet him halfway, stopping just before their lips touched. “You… you know you can’t be here.”
He sighed and stepped away from her, his gaze locked on the knife in her hand. “Then stab me,” he said, so dramatically that she had to giggle. He undid all the buttons on his shirt, letting it fall open, and took her wrist in his hand so that she held the knife to his chest. “I don’t want to live without you.”
James looked so handsome in the soft orange glow from the streetlamp outside. The whole thing had seemed almost funny until he said those words; they had been romantic enough to read, but hearing him say them to her? She already needed him and they hadn’t even finished the script. She leant up to brush a kiss to his lips, so fast it barely felt like their lips touched, and then reached out to rest her hand on his chest, stroking down until she reached the waistband of his trousers.
In James’ script, Elizabeth used the dagger to cut through William’s belt, but Harper doubted that her kitchen knife would be sharp enough to do that to James’ (probably expensive) belt with little enough effort to still be sexy.
Instead, she reached out to drop the knife onto her desk and then dropped to her knees in front of him, her fingers busy at his belt buckle. Once it was undone, she kissed her way back up his chest, back to his lips, her hand cupping his cheek as she moved her mouth over his.
“My lady,” he breathed as she broke the kiss. She sighed and leant into him, stroking her thumb across his cheek. “I am at your mercy. Do with me what you will.”
It was the line she’d been waiting for. She stepped away from James, a breathless, excited giggle escaping her when he tried to keep her close. “I suppose I can find a use for you.” She felt him watching her as she pulled gently at the ribbon holding her robe shut, heard his sharp inhale the moment it slipped from her and pooled at her feet.
She knew she looked good. She’d seen herself in the mirror as Zack helped her into the corset she’d bought just for this moment, just for James. (“Not that tight,” she’d told him, “James already takes my breath away. I don’t need this doing that too.” and Zack had called them ‘’too adorable’ and tied it just loose enough.) Maybe it could be a bit tighter, but it was enough to make her waist look a little bit more defined, enough to push her breasts together and up so that they looked incredible.
From the look on James’ face, he definitely agreed.
“Harper, you-”
“Shh,” she told him. “Why don’t you start by helping me out of this corset?”
She turned around, looking over her shoulder at James and smirking when he stepped towards her. His hand was gentle on her shoulder, stroking down her arm, trailing along the top of the corset, and then knelt behind her and reached for the ends of the laces.
His hands were shaking.
“Not like that,” she ordered. “With your mouth.”
Harper heard James groan and then his hands settled on her hips and she felt the corset loosen around her. She twisted round just enough to catch a glimpse of him behind her, the lace between his teeth as he pulled the bow loose. The corset might have been getting looser, but breathing was getting harder and harder, her chest – all of her – felt tight, on edge, and all she needed was James.
The corset finally fell away and she felt James press a series of kisses up her spine as he stood up again. He wrapped his arms around her waist, tugged her closer so her back was pressed against his chest and she could feel him hard against her. She pressed back, pressed closer, and he muffled a groan with an open-mouthed kiss to the curve of her shoulder.
“What do you want from me now, my lady?” he asked in a low whisper, punctuating the question with a kiss behind her ear. “Don’t ask me to say I don’t love you. You know I do.”
“I know.” She reached down to lace her fingers with his, his arms still wrapped around her waist. “I could never ask that. What I want is for you to love me, the way I do you.”
“Even if it’s only for tonight?”
For a moment, Harper didn’t respond. She knew what the next line was supposed to be, but she didn’t want to stick to the script anymore. James didn’t seem to notice her lack of response, busy kissing down the back of her neck, along her shoulders.
“For as many nights as you love me.”
“That’s not the line.”
“No,” she admitted, as she released his hands and turned in his arms to face him. “But I don’t want to pretend we only have one night. I don’t want to play a scene that ends in tragedy. I want us to have a happy ending. I know it’s not what you wrote, but-”
She stopped talking when he cupped her face in his hands and brushed a kiss to her forehead, more across her cheeks – it was probably too dark to see her faint freckles, but maybe James had kissed them so many times now he no longer needed light to kiss constellations into her skin – before finally pressing his lips to hers.
“You did say a little improvisation wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “Next time, I’ll make sure to write us a happy ending.”
“Oh, is there going to be a next time?” she asked, a coy smile curving her lips. “Are you going to write us something new? Something that’s only for us?”
He smiled and kissed her again. He bit lightly at her bottom lip, his tongue soothing when it ran along her lip. She sighed at the taste of him, sliding her hands up his chest and pushing his open shirt off his shoulders. His hands left her cheeks so he could finally take his shirt off and then his arms were around her, lifting her off the ground.
Harper hadn’t noticed him carrying her over to the bed, but soon they were falling onto it together. Her breath was forced from her when his weight landed on her, but his murmured apologies were only met by her laughter and another kiss, her fingers pushing at the waistband of his trousers.
They parted briefly, only so James could kick off his shoes, strip off his socks and pants, and then he was kissing her again. His lips followed a path away from hers, light kisses at her neck that turned into hot, bruising kisses on her breasts, down her abdomen. He tugged her underwear down her legs, kissed her inner thigh and then his mouth was on her. He licked into her, teased her with his tongue. Her body was tight, trembling, so warm, and she came with his name on her lips.
James wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then he kissed her. His lips moved to her neck when she broke the kiss, trying to catch her breath. It was impossible to do so, when he had one, two, fingers inside her and was thumbing at her clit. Instead, she tried to kiss him again, taking his face in her hands to keep him still so her open-mouthed, messy, breathless kisses met their target.
She was so close to falling apart, almost sobbing his name when he stopped touching her. He was only away from her for a few moments, just to get a condom from her bedside drawer, and then he was finally sinking into her. It was so good, so good, but too slow, she needed more, she needed him. She only had to nudge at his shoulder for him to know what she wanted, and the two of them rolled together so she was sitting above him, his hands on her hips holding her steady as she moved over him.
It was faster, deeper, her body burning, her heart racing. She let her eyes close, her head fall back, small whimpers falling from her lips with each roll of her hips.
“Harper-” his breath hitched. “Harper, love, come here.”
She leant down, one hand on the pillow by his head to hold herself up. James raised himself up on one elbow, his other arm around her back, and then his lips were on her chest, pressing soft kisses to the pink marks he’d given her earlier, tonguing at her nipple.
James came first, but it only took some quick, slightly awkward, manoeuvring for him to get his hand between her leg. He only needed a light touch for her to tremble and follow him over the edge, collapsing forward and falling into his embrace.
They shared a comfortable silence for a few minutes, nuzzling together as they both tried to catch their breath. James’ fingers drew small relaxing patterns at the small of her back, slowly lulling her into sleep. It was only when she’d almost drifted off that he spoke. “That was-”
“Not what you were expecting when I said we were going to celebrate?” she interrupted, her voice sleepy. “I wanted to do something special.”
He kissed her forehead and she could feel his smile against her skin. “How was I ever lucky enough to find you?”
“I think we were both lucky.”
“I’d feel even luckier if you told me you were keeping the corset.”