Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

Her eyes narrowed.

“We’ll talk about it.”

He pulled her close and whispered in her ear.

“We can negotiate in bed,” he promised.

Kirsty doubted those sorts of negotiations would go in her favour. She felt herself melt against him anyway.

“What about me?” Betty grumped. “I don’t want to be stuck with the knickers while you do all the fun stuff.”

Lake looked towards heaven, it seemed he was counting to ten. Kirsty smiled, she loved this new expressive side of him.

“I thought,” Lake told Betty patiently, “that you might like being the security business mascot a little more than being the underwear mascot.”

“Do I get to carry a gun?” she said hopefully.

“No.”

“Investigate?”

“No.”

“Go undercover?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the bloody point in that then?” she fumed. “I’d rather stay with the lingerie shop. Your business doesn’t sound any fun at all.”

“I’ll let you interrogate people.”

“It’s a deal,” she said with a grin. “Now that’s sorted, I’m going home. Cardboard Lake and I are watching the Coronation Street omnibus.”

With one last grump she was gone, waddling out of the house like their own wee tartan duck. Lake grinned after her before turning to hug Kirsty. She leaned into him and breathed deeply. So this is what contentment smelled like.

“Want to go look at the space downstairs and see what we can do with it?” he said to the top of her head.

“Not right now,” Kirsty said. “We have more important things to do.”

She took his hand and led him along the hallway and into the bedroom. She opened the curtains wide. Over the road, white snow covered the remnants of her old life, making it clean. She turned to Lake, who did that raised eyebrow thing he thought was cool. Kirsty pointed to the old armchair beside the bed.

“Have a seat,” she ordered.

He did as he was told, with an amused smile on his face.

Slowly, Kirsty began to untie the belt of her blue wool dress. Lake’s eyes went wide. She let the dress fall open. Lake licked his lips.

“I owe you a striptease,” she told him. His eyes shot to hers. “In daylight.”

He thought for a minute and then he grinned widely.

“Caroline,” he said.

“Yep,” Kirsty said as she let the dress fall to the floor. “You should never have expected her to lie.”

His gaze darkened as it followed the length of her. Kirsty’s heart raced within her.

“Remind me to thank her,” he said in that husky lust laden voice of his.