Anything for You Ch. 02

"Sure." He concentrated on the by-pass for a moment, easing the car into a stream of traffic. "Which side of the bed do you like to sleep on?"

"Drew!"

"'Course, I could dare you to sleep with me."

I stared at him, appalled. "You wouldn't," I breathed. In the seventeen years of our acquaintance, I'd never refused a dare—and God help me, he knew it.

"Wouldn't I?" He gave me a sideways glance, already grinning. "Oh-ho-ho, Samantha..."

"Don't you dare!" I could feel my pulse quickening. "Please, Drew? Don't. Don't do this—"

"Sam." The panic must have been blatant in my voice because a moment later, I felt his hand sliding over mine. "I'm kidding, okay? I told you—and I meant it. We're not going to do anything you don't want to do, all right?" And then to my utter astonishment, he lifted my hand to his lips and gently kissed the backs of my fingers. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I muttered once he'd laid my hand back down and resumed his grip on the steering wheel. "It's not like losing your virginity's such a big deal anyway, is it? At least, it shouldn't be."

I could feel Drew's eyes on me again but this time he said nothing.

"Though just for the record, we wouldn't need the condoms," I ventured, finally daring to meet his gaze. "'Cos I'm on the pill. Not that you need to know that, of course."

The corners of his mouth twitched. "You're on the pill?"

"Yes." I frowned. "What's so funny about that?"

"You—Sam-I-don't-take-medicine-Bloom—you're on the pill?"

I scowled at him. "The pill's different."

He gave me a disbelieving look. "How exactly is it different?"

"The pill's not medicine—it's contraception," I protested, feeling my cheeks flame with heat again as he started to laugh. "Besides, they're tiny little things!"

"Still medicine," Drew retorted, shaking his head now. "Medicine you're taking every day. Medicine you don't even need to take. When you won't even pop a couple of paracetamol for a headache."

"It's not the same and you know it," I muttered, painfully aware of just how illogical that sounded. "You know why it's different."

"Oh, I know whyyou think it's different."

"Itis different!" I wailed, wondering why the hell I'd even felt the need to tell him. "Taking the pill's not like taking painkillers. It's not like taking antibiotics. It won't..."

"Kill you?" Drew finished for me when I left the sentence hanging, no trace of laughter in his expression now. "You never read that little leaflet that comes in the packet, Sam? There's a list of side effects as long as your arm."

There was nothing I could say to that. Of course I'd read the leaflet—and I could probably quote the risks to him right now, chapter and verse. But that was the thing about having a phobia, wasn't it? All phobias were irrational. Though I figured I probably had more to fear than most. There was at least some foundation to my phobia; it wasn't like I had a morbid fear of earwigs or something.

"So." I watched as Drew flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, heard his slow intake then exhalation of breath. "When did you start taking the pill?"

"About a year ago."

He fired me another sideways glance. "When you were with Joe?"

I chewed my lip, embarrassed. "Yep."

"You were going to have sex withhim?" Once again, his voice held a note of incredulity. "That tosser?"

"Well, I didn't, did I?" I reasoned, touched and infuriated in equal measure. "Fairly obviously. But he went on and on about it—just like you are now, actually," I added, getting in the dig. "And so I thought I'd better sort myself out with some protection. Just in case."

"Great. You were prepared to have sex with Joe Addison, but you won't even consider having sex with me," Drew murmured, the amusement in his tone softening the challenge of his words.

"But Ididn't have sex with Joe Addison," I reminded him as we turned into Park Lane at last, a knot of anticipation tightening in my stomach when I glimpsed the hotel at the end of the road, floodlit and imposing. "And you can't say I haven't considered your kind offer."

"No," he conceded, steering the car into the car park and pulling straight into a space by the far wall. "No, you can't. And hey..." Putting on the handbrake, he turned to me with an evil grin. "I've got all night to change your mind."

"Drew!"

His grin widened. "Come on, let's party," he said, unfastening my seatbelt. "The Regent Suite awaits."

*

"Oh my God." As the door closed behind the porter who'd carried our bags the whole ten yards from the lift and then had the cheek to hover for a tip, I spun around to see the expression on Drew's face, gratified to discover he looked as delightedly gobsmacked as I felt. "Would you look at this place? Would you just...look?"

I could hear him laughing as I kicked off my shoes then raced across the floor to the enormous bed dominating the room. "Oh. My.God!" And with a squeal, I took a flying leap right into the middle of it, landing amongst the lavishly-embroidered cushions there, a confection of Regency green and cream. "Drew!"

A second later, I found myself airborne, the force of Drew's landing at my side bouncing me several inches from the bed. "Wow," he pronounced with satisfaction, the bedding yielding indulgently beneath me as I returned to earth. "This is good. This isreally good."

"And look—look!" With Drew still testing the springiness of the mattress, it was quite a struggle to sit up, but I'd never seen anything like this room in real life, only in glossy magazines and on television shows about the lives of the rich and famous. "Look at all this. Look at the curtains. Look at the sofa. Look at thepictures!"

Everything matched, each furnishing colour-coordinated in the same shades as the cushions on the bed, the drapes a perfect length—even the carpet was the same colour green, a luxurious deep-piled swathe.

Drew sat up, grinning broadly. "That's my girl, the frustrated designer. Trust you to notice all that and notthat." He motioned to the giant flat screen television mounted on the wall right in front of us and I felt my mouth drop open. "Now that's what I'm talking about," he said happily.

"Dear God," I breathed, feeling oddly weak all of a sudden. "Drew—exactly how much did all this cost?"

He rolled off the bed, landing on his feet like a cat. "It's the last week in November," he said airily, proffering his hand to me and swinging me up off the bed when I accepted it. "Low season. Maybe not quite as much as you think. And certainly nothingyou need to worry about. Come on, let's check out the bathroom." He tugged me back across the vast room to the vestibule area, towards a door I hadn't noticed when we first walked in.

"No way." The words came out as a whisper, but the acoustics of the large tiled room were such that they almost seemed to echo around us. "Fuck me."

As Drew was standing behind me in front of a floor to ceiling mirror, I caught his hastily-repressed smirk. "I'd love to," he said, narrowing his gaze. "But you keep saying you don't want me to."

Deciding to ignore him, I took another step forward, aware my eyes were like saucers as I gazed around the gleaming bathroom. At the toilet, the bidet, the sinks and the shower—and at the centrepiece of the room, a huge, sunken bath.

"It's a swimming pool," I murmured at last, my tone suitably reverent.

"It's a Jacuzzi," Drew corrected cheerfully.

"Really?" I stared some more, awestruck. So far today, I'd had a bath and a shower—but it couldn't hurt to wash again, could it?

Though washing seemed far too tame an idea for what you could do in that tub...

"Sam, you're blushing."

"What?" I clapped my hands to my face, mortified that he might even have begun to read my thoughts. "No, I'm not—I'm just hot. Aren't you hot? It's warm in here," I gabbled, spinning away from him and ducking back out of the door.

I could hear him laughing again, his fingers landing on my upper arm as he caught up with me. "One more room to see, I think," he said, guiding me towards another door I hadn't seen, this time because the panelling had been decorated to match the surrounding walls. "Et voila..."

It was another perfectly colour-coordinated bedroom—with one immediately obvious difference to the room we'd just left. Instead of there being one, super-king-sized bed, there were two single divans. And just as in the main room, there was a sofa, a wardrobe and another wall-mounted flat-screen television. Though unless it was my imagination, the latter seemed somewhat smaller.

Drew's gaze met mine. "It's still a very nice room," he said conversationally.

I nodded, glancing back at the single beds. "Very nice," I agreed.

"And I'm sure those mattresses are just as comfortable."

"Oh, I'm sure they are." I took care to keep my tone breezy.

His grin was impish. "Race you for it?"

"First person to get back to the other bed gets it?"

He tilted his head on one side. "First person to lie down on the other bed gets it?" he amended.

"You're on." I raised my eyebrows. "On three?"

I watched in amusement as he raised his eyebrows in turn. Neither of us had ever been known to play fair in these situations. The likelihood that at least one of us was about to cheat stood at a hundred percent. The only thing that wasn't certain was which one of us would cheat first. "On three," he acknowledged.

I grinned. "Okay."

We assumed racing positions, Drew crouching down low, like an Olympic sprinter about to cover one hundred metres, me, knowing I had the distinct advantage of being in charge of the countdown, leaning forward just slightly, my left foot in front of my right.

"One," I announced dramatically, struggling not to giggle. "Two..."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him twitch and knew without question that he had no intention of waiting for 'three'. And in the split second it took me to reach that conclusion, he was off. "You cheat!" I shrieked, grabbing his arm and hanging on for dear life. "You filthy, rotten,cheat!"

Breathless with laughter, Drew kept moving, half-towing, half-dragging me behind him—until I kicked him in the shin and he staggered to a halt. "Hey!" he roared as I relinquished my grip and tore on past him towards the bed. "Foul play. Foul play!"

The goal was in sight—almost in reach—when I made the rookie mistake of looking back to see where he was, screaming again as his hands landed on my waist, then gasping as he literally swept me off my feet. And then I was turning, flying through the air—and a moment later, landing heavily on my back, Drew beneath me, the bed beneath us both, the mattress giving an indignant squawk at the impact.

"You cheat!" I reiterated, just as soon as I'd regained enough breath to speak. "I demand a rematch!"

"I don't think so," Drew said, his voice muffled owing to the fact I was still sprawled across his chest. "I won, fair and square."

"You won?" I sneered, lifting my head so that he could breathe—far more than he deserved. "I don't think so. If anything, this is a draw. We're both lying on the bed."

"Correction." I turned to see that he was smiling triumphantly. "I think you'll find that I'm the one lying on the bed. You're lying on top of me."

"What?" I scrambled off to glare at him. "That's not fair!"

He grinned. "I think you'll find you agreed to the terms, Miss Bloom. The first person to lie down on the bed gets it. And—see?" He used both hands to pat the bed. "I'm lying on it."

"Lawyers," I muttered. "You're all the bloody same. Always winning on minor technicalities."

"Absolutely," he agreed solemnly. "The devil is in the detail, as they say."

"Bastard." I stared at him in dismay. "You mean I have to sleep in the other room?"

"Well no, not necessarily. You've got an open invitation to stay right here with me, remember?" he drawled, once again patting the bed for emphasis. "It's not too late to change your mind..."

He laughed when I groaned, then bounced upright like Tigger, his eyes widening as though he'd had a brilliant idea. "Now what?" I demanded as he leapt off the bed. "Don't tell me. You're bagsying first go in the Jacuzzi as well?"

But he wasn't heading for the bathroom, he was heading for the wardrobe. And as he opened the door, I suddenly remembered what he was expecting to find. Sure enough, when he turned around, I saw that he was holding out a pure white bath robe, an identical robe still hanging from the rail within.

"Yay," I cheered half-heartedly. "Would you look at that? What a wonderful surprise."

Drew gave me a contemplative look. "Nah," he said after a moment, shaking his head.

"What?" I frowned, realising a second later I'd inadvertently swallowed the bait. "Nah—what?"

He grinned. "I have a proposition for you. A dare if you will."

Deep down, I think I already knew where this was going, knew exactly what he was going to suggest—and given it was a dare, the terms I'd have to accept. "I'm listening."

"You can sleep in that bed—" he jerked his head towards the bed I was still sitting upon "—on one condition."

I waited, once again raising my eyebrows.

"You have to take off all your clothes and only wear this bathrobe."

I fixed him with a withering look. "Have you got a bathrobe fetish or something?"

He smirked. "If it helps you to reach a decision, you should know that I'm going to do exactly the same."

"Really?" I murmured, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from my tone.

"Really," he murmured back, his smile almost saintly.

I sighed, scarcely able to believe I was considering such an outrageous idea. "And if I do this, I get to sleep in this bed? No tricks? I won't have to share it with you? I won't have to have sex with you?"

Much to my suspicion, something about the words I'd chosen seemed to entertain him greatly. "No tricks, I promise," he agreed, his tone remaining solemn. "Does this mean you're accepting my dare?"

For an answer, I slid off the bed. And trying to ignore his victorious grin as I plucked the robe from his fingers, I marched straight into the bathroom, allowing the door to bang shut behind me.

"What the hell are you doing?" I muttered at my reflection in the mirrored wall, holding up the bathrobe as if showing it to myself for the first time. "Would it have killed you to say 'no'? Just once?"

Funnily enough, my reflection didn't reply. Shaking my head, I turned to hang up the robe on the back of the bathroom door and started to unbutton my shirt. But when at last it was off and I'd stepped out of my skirt, I paused, fingering the silky cream-coloured material of my camisole top.

What if I didn't take everything off? How would he ever know? Unless he had reason to suspect, Drew wouldn't ask me to prove I was naked beneath the robe. Besides, there might be a way I could gethim on a technicality this time, I realised, smiling at the thought. True, my bra would have to go; the straps were likely to show. But the much skimpier, spaghetti-like straps of my camisole probably wouldn't, not if I loosened them so much they fell off my shoulders.

I slipped the camisole over my head, trying hard not to catch sight of myself in the mirrors—no easy feat in this bathroom—and unfastened my bra, dropping it on top of the rest of my clothes. Then after replacing the top and shrugging into the robe, I twisted back around to assess the result.

Oh, there was no question I'd be one hell of a lot happier if I was wearing more underneath than a glorified lace-edged vest with matching bikini briefs—but at least I could cope with this, I thought, tying the belt as tightly as I could. And taking one last glance to make sure there was no visible evidence of my undergarments, I reached for the bathroom door handle and wrenched it open.

Recumbent on the bed with his hands folded behind his head—and also apparently wearing nothing but a calf-length white towelling robe—Drew gave a low appreciative whistle. "Well, look at you," he said with a grin, pulling out a hand to beckon me nearer. "Care to join me?"

I surveyed him in silence for a moment, repressing a smile at the sight of his muscular but hairy legs sticking out from beneath the robe. "I think you'll find that bed's mine."

"Uh uh." He shook his head, looking amused. "I said you couldsleep in this bed. This room's got the bigger telly."

It was then that I spotted the remote control on the pillow and saw that the television was on. And somehow, it was no surprise to discover what he was watching: football, the volume on mute.

The only thing missing from this picture was a six-pack of lager.

"Run it past me again," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "Whose birthday are we celebrating here?"

He patted the bed, looking boyishly innocent. "Just checking out the equipment, gorgeous."

With a world-weary sigh, I clambered alongside, instantly mollified when he began arranging pillows behind me. "Madam," he announced when he was sure I was comfy, handing over the remote like a prize.

I beamed, I couldn't help it, a rush of contentment pouring from me. It all felt so gloriously decadent. This huge soft bed, the luxurious surroundings... "What's on pay-per-view?" I asked, snuggling up to his shoulder, certain he'd have found out in my absence.

"Ah," he murmured, sliding his arm around me. "For your delight and delectation, we have three quality choices. Romance, action—and porn."

I smiled up at him sweetly, laughing when he groaned. He already knew what I'd choose.

Sighing deeply, he reclaimed the remote, passing me the room service menu while he waited for the on screen instructions to load. "Pick something good," he advised. "You know how hungry you get when you're watching America save the world."

"We need popcorn," I muttered, scouring the card.

"It's not on there?" he said, pretending to be shocked. "What kind of establishment is this?"

Actually, there didn't seem to be much I fancied on the menu at all. Oh, I could have any amount of seafood by the look of things—a curious offering given we were currently more than a hundred miles from the nearest coast. But I'd never been partial to fish. And I was on the brink of suggesting I'd settle for a ham sandwich when I spotted the section on the back.

"That's what I want," I told him, stabbing my finger at the page.

Drew gave me a look. "Seriously? That's what you want?"

Shaking his head as I nodded happily, he grimaced and reached for the phone.

*

Did life get any better than this? Probably not, I decided, tipping my head back against Drew's chest and sending him a sleepy smile. He grinned down at me, clearly amused. "Comfortable there, are we?"

Oh God, yes. Not that I could quite remember how I ended up in this position, propped up between his outstretched legs, his arms folded loosely around me. "Fine," I sighed contentedly before squinting at the television, surprised to see that the credits were rolling. "Oh. It's finished?"

"Mmm, it's finished," he agreed, mock solemn. "And it was fantastic, it really was. You missed a great twist there at the end."

"There was a twist?"

"Oh yeah. You know that guy that Anne Hathaway was pretending not to lust over?"

"The one with the stupid haircut?"

"That's the one." Drew smiled down at me again, brushing a stray curl away from my face. "Well, right at the end, he came back and shot everybody."

I sniggered, closing my still-heavy eyes. "Is that right?"

"Yep, everyone died."

"Really?"

"No." The disappointment in his tone made me giggle. "It would've been a much better film if he had, though. I can't believe you fell asleep and left me to watch that crap on my own."

I opened my eyes. "I didn't fall asleep."