Sorry it's been so long since the last update.

Chapter 43

It didn't seem real somehow, like a fragment of life snatched from the past. With her eyes shut tight, she could be anywhere and in any time but she knew she was with him because only he could make all her senses scream in harmony like this.

Her fingers stroked through the back of his hair, grazing across his neck with tantalizing fingernails. She too remembered how he liked to be touched but it was with an automatic instinct that she responded to him. There was no real thought process involved, just an all-encompassing blanket of desire.

Their mouths clung greedily, their bodies pushing and pressing against each other in silent battle. When they eventually stopped for breath, they drew away laughing in wonderment at their unexpected rush of lust.

"Must've forgotten it was by birthday," Dempsey smiled down at her, a hand gently cupping her jaw. "And I think you threw Christmas in there too."

Harry's hands moved up behind his back, holding herself to him. "I hadn't planned on that happening," she told him with a hint of bashfulness.

"Spur of the moment works for me just fine." His mouth dipped back to hers and his lips were slow and teasing this time, designed to elicit a parallel response. But Harry couldn't keep her need for him at bay any longer than a few moments and her mouth crushed hard against his, demanding more and gratefully receiving it. When his hands slid ravenously over the hourglass of her body to cradle her buttocks, Harry readily allowed him to drag her into him, revelling in the feel of the most intimate of contact between them.

"Oh Lord," she moaned, latching hungry fingers over the waistband of his trousers as he drove her roughly up against the mirror.

"You've got no idea how much I want you, Harry," he growled against her hear, "how much I've missed you."

He suddenly became very still as he repeated, "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too." And she had, had known it since she went to the bar that first time. She raised a hand to his cheek and gazed into his soft brown eyes. It was then that the reality of the situation struck her and her conscience, that until now had remained dormant, chose to bite deep. Those beautiful brown eyes and all of the deceit they implied hit her harder than she had ever thought possible.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sensing her reticence.

"It's too soon," she whispered.

Dempsey smiled at the irony and then said, "Feels like perfect timing to me."

"I'm sorry."

"Okay," he said slowly. "Just that it seemed like we were both headed in the same direction there." He didn't move his hands away but gave her some space by leaning back. She'd gone cold on him – again. She got a little closer to him each time and then the alarm bells sounded and the barriers came crashing down.

"We were… we are."

Dempsey lifted his eyebrows. "I'm hearing' a but comin' up," he gave her bottom a small squeeze, " and I'm guessin' it ain't gonna be as pretty as this one."

"I don't want to rush into something," she began awkwardly, "until things are sorted out."

"Things?"

"Well, this business with Sam, for one."

"Okay," he conceded that.

"And I think we should take the time to… well," her fingers played with the open neck of his shirt, "get to know each other again."

Dempsey grinned. "Are we talking about dating?" he ribbed gently.

She eyed him warily. "I don't know if I'd put it in quite those terms, Dempsey. Let's not run before we can walk."

"Wow! No strings – this just gets better!"

She nudged herself against him, giving him 'the look'. "I'm just offering you a get-out before things get too messy."

"Now there's a euphemism with a real visual quality."

"James!" she exclaimed. "I'm serious. Twenty-three years changes people. I know it's changed me; I'm not the same person I was." Her hands rested at his shoulders. "And I don't want you to be disappointed when you realise that the reality doesn't live up to the memory."

Dempsey casually brushed his fingers against the lock of hair by her ear. "No complaints so far."

"I mean it," she pressed, frowning slightly. "There're things that… " she hesitated, "well, it isn't like you know everything about me."

"True but I hope I'm gonna have fun findin' out."

Puzzled by her weak smile, he asked, "What, you working undercover for al-Qaida? You've served time in jail?"

"Don't be silly," she answered softly.

"Then stop with the negativity."

Harry felt his fingers inch around her waist in such an old, familiar action. "What I've seen of you these past three weeks, Harry… you ain't no different inside – where it counts. The twenty-three years is just so much window dressing."

Harry smiled. It was true, wasn't it? However long it had been, time was just a veneer. They had known each other's soul and no matter how many years you covered that over with, those souls would remain the same. And yet she felt in a sort of limbo, stuck between her deep-seated need for him but aware that it was a ridiculous notion, to expect that they could just start again as though everything was perfect.

"You make it sound so easy." She smoothed his hair back at his left temple.

"Maybe it is," he suggested, catching up her hand and kissing it tenderly.

Harry kept her eyes on his lips as she hung her arms about his neck. "Dempsey?" she asked coquettishly.

"Uh huh?"

"D'you know what I'd really like you to do for me – right now?" Her fingernails stroked lazily up and down above his collar.

Dempsey grinned. "How many guesses do I get?" he asked her measuredly.

"Three of course."

"Yeah, yeah, of course," he played along. His eyes roved her face inquisitively as he wondered how this game was going to run. This was the old days when she threw him a little corn and he let her coax him in. "So maybe… " he lowered his mouth to the spot just behind her ear, "you'd like me to kiss you right here?" His lips moved very, very softly against the sensitive skin, making Harry squirm.

"No," she denied, laughing, "that isn't it."

"Okay. Second guess." His eyes held hers for a moment, making Harry in turn hold her breath.

"Go on then," she told in slyly, her top lip snagging slightly at the corner, "second guess."

Dempsey shivered inside with anticipation.

This time, his lips moved along her jaw-line, slowly moving in towards her mouth. She found herself murmuring his name and as she turned her head, surrendering to the pleasure in feline ecstasy, she saw their reflections in the mirror. The sight of him seducing her, their features indistinguishable in the darkness was immensely sensual to her and she swallowed down hard on her stirrings of lust. She forced herself to look away.

"Is this what you wanted me to do?" There was a trace of humour in his voice and Harry wondered if it was just because of this game they were playing or because he had realised the over-powering effect he was having on her libido. Well it was she who had started it again; she who had asked the ridiculously provocative question.

"You're getting warmer." She couldn't help herself.

"Tell me somethin' I don't know."

Dempsey drew away, looking deeply into her eyes, his smile melting her from the inside out.

She smiled back, her heart beating so fast it hurt. "It does involve my lips… " her eyes flickered over his face, "if that's any help."

"Music to my ears." The fingers of his right hand tangled into her hair. "Third time lucky?"

Harry raised her eyebrows in acquiescence. The kiss began as a teasing nudge against her mouth but quickly developed into something deeply sensuous as Harry returned Dempsey's tentative exploration with a welcoming passion.

When they eventually parted, there was a heady excitement between them. They laughed and Dempsey kissed her nose.

"So?" he asked. "You gonna tell me I'm still wrong?"

Harry nodded, wrinkling her nose. "I'm afraid so."

"You're lying."

"You think an awful lot of yourself, Dempsey," she smirked.

"I'm outta guesses. What happens now?"

"You get a forfeit."

"Uh huh." He waited.

"I'll tell you what it was I wanted you to do for me, as long as you actually do it."

"And this thing involves your lips," he confirmed. "Sounds like I've been into a win, win situation here."

She shrugged and leaned back a little, her hands idly stroking his shoulders. "What I want, James," she said quietly yet firmly, "is for you to…" her lips parted seductively but suddenly her nose wrinkled again and she screwed her face up, "make me a nice cup of tea. I'm parched."

Dempsey roared with laughter. "A cup of tea! You want me to make you a cup of tea."

"Why? What did you think I was going to say?" she asked with perfect innocence.

"Okay. Come on." He let her go abruptly and grabbing her by the hand, lead her smartly from the room.

His kitchen, Harry discovered, was what you would call 'homely'. The focal point was a very large, rectangular scrubbed pine table, laden (obviously) with his clutter; a pile of opened mail awaiting his attention, several newspapers and magazines, a tangled set of earphones, a watch, sunglasses, an assortment of unidentifiable computer peripherals and a lot more extraneous 'junk'.

"Never seem to get to the bottom of that," he said, noticing her looking.

She just smiled. "If you want to point me in the right direction, I'll make the tea. I assume you never mastered the art of brewing the perfect cuppa?"

"Actually," he raised his hand to remonstrate but slowly lowered it again, "no, I never did," he admitted.

"Right then," she said briskly and proceeded to take over Dempsey's kitchen.

He watched her as he leaned up against a cupboard and he had to smile at the way it made him feel inside. She looked so at home, so comfortable in her surroundings like this was where she should be… or was it simply his imagination playing tricks? Was it an act with her? Was she making an effort to appear this relaxed? He hoped not.

"… and you thought it was a type of tea like Darjeeling or Lady Gray or something, d'you remember?"

He continued to smile, watching Harry pouring the milk.

She turned to him then. "James?"

Milk carton in one hand, her other hand on her hip, she asked, "Have you been listening to a word I've said?"

He had been listening but only to the sound of her voice, not the actual words themselves. He'd been enjoying those modulated vowels, the ever so slightly lazy timbre that manifested itself when she was happy and the animated tone that lightened his heart.

"Of course I have. You were just sayin' 'bout you and Lady Gray havin' tea together in John Lewis," he improvised.

Harry gave him a disparaging look. "No, I asked if you remembered that time in John Lewis in the gift food department when we were looking at some fancy little canisters of loose teas and you asked why there wasn't any 'builder's tea',"

"I never said that," he dismissed with a wave of his hand.

"Oh yes you did. I remember it quite clearly because it was a good five minutes before I managed to stop laughing."

"Nah, that wasn't me."

"It most definitely was," Harry said with conviction, "although to be fair, I think you'd only been in London a couple of months. Up until that point, I'd never realised that 'Builder's Tea' was a term only the Brits used. It was so funny though." She handed him his mug. "I was using that little anecdote for weeks after."

"Yeah, well I don't recall you seein' the funny side when the woman we were tailin' turned Ninja with a baseball bat in Sporting Goods."

Harry grinned. "Ah, so you do remember! And that baseball bat was another bloody American import I could've done without!"

Dempsey sipped at the scalding hot tea. "Used to keep one at Camberwell Grove as I remember."

Harry didn't reply to that, just watched him with a teasing smile over the rim of her mug.

"A baseball bat," he clarified, "by the front door."

The mug didn't budge but then neither did the smile and the air between them crackled.

"D'you wanna go sit outside with this?" he asked. "Kinda hot tonight."

"Good idea."