Page 75 of Chasing a Highland Dream

He beamed. ‘Right, so there you go. Nothing is over. And if it’s okay with you, I’ll come over tonight.’

‘That would be good.’

He glanced over his shoulder to where the patrol car was waiting and then back at Bella. In a loud, over-exaggerated voice, he said, ‘Actually, I need to come in and ask you a few questions about what you’ve witnessed.’

She crumpled her brow. ‘Oh, okay.’ She walked back into the house and no sooner was she inside than Harris pulled her into his arms and kissed her with a need and an urgency she felt right down to her core because it matched her own.

He released her and said, ‘That was incredibly unprofessional of me but worth every second. See you tonight.’ And with that, he dashed from the apartment and jogged back to the waiting patrol car, leaving Bella weak-limbed and swooning.

Later that night, after she had spoken to her granny and her parents, she waited for Harris. At around 11 p.m., there was a knock on the door and she rushed to check who it was. Harris stood there in his civilian clothes, holding a bottle of white wine and freshly showered, judging by his damp hair.

She opened the door and he smiled. ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ She didn’t reply, instead she pulled him inside and closed the door. Before he could take off his jacket, she had him pressed up against the wall and kissed him. When she pulled away, he gazed down at her and exhaled. ‘That was quite a welcome.’

She took the bottle of wine from him and placed it on the hall table. She then took his hand to lead him down the hallway. She paused outside her bedroom door and turned the handle. ‘Can I take you to bed?’

Harris glanced back at the bottle of wine. ‘Oh, I brought you some Sauvignon Blanc, I thought we might stay up a bit longer, I’m not that tired surprisingly.’

‘Neither am I,’ she informed him.

His eyes widened. ‘Oh, you meant to bed…’

Bella nodded as she led him through the door.

He stopped her when they reached the bed. ‘Are you sure?’

She nodded, pulled his face to hers and kissed him deeply, passionately, releasing the feelings she had suppressed the night before.

She reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head.

He stood back and gazed down at her. ‘Beautiful,’ he whispered.

She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt this way. Every nerve ending in her body awakened, and every sense sprang into high alert as he gently moved his fingertips down the sides of her body, following the shape of her curves, causing her to shiver.

She pulled the jacket from his body, followed by his T-shirt, and kissed the bare skin of his chest as he sighed, head back, eyes closed. She unfastened the belt of his jeans and knelt as she slipped them from his body. When she stood, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her back onto the bed with him, ready to worship her for the very first of what she hoped would be many, many times…

Waking up in Harris’s arms again was wonderful. It was something she could definitely get used to. As this thought crossed her mind, however, Bella was suddenly reminded it wouldn’t be happening for much longer. Not regularly, anyway. Soon she would have to wait possibly weeks for it to happen again and that fact saddened her.

‘Hey, penny for them,’ Harris said, clearly noticing her change of expression as he lay beside her.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m getting ahead of myself and thinking about when you leave.’

He pulled her on top of him and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Don’t think about that. Not yet. We have two months of this, and I intend to make the most of it.’

She rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart beating a steady, hypnotic rhythm. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she said.

‘And I’ll miss you, but we agreed to make this work and we will.’ He fell silent and she could almost hear the cogs whirring in his mind. Eventually he said, ‘Are you free on Saturday?’

Bella lifted her head. ‘I can be, why?’

He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Let me take you to Skye. That way you can see where I’m going to be and where you’ll be coming to visit.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said with a wide smile. ‘Very much.’

‘I’ll take you on the bike.’

She glared at him and pushed herself to sit straddling his torso. ‘You certainly will not!’

Harris chuckled. ‘You trust me, don’t you?’ She nodded. ‘Don’t you find it a thrill to travel so fast?’ She pulled a face and he laughed. ‘And it means I get your arms around me for the whole journey.’