Page 38 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Cycling herself will do her good, the physical motion helping to clear the cobwebs, but then she thinks of sitting like a princess on the front of the bike again.

She’s not going to turn down the treat of being ferried in style.

Who knows when she’ll ever have an offer like that again?

The wind in her face can do the head-clearing.

“On it,” she says, trying to sound upbeat, but it’s hard. It feels like one of her smarter decisions of the last twenty-four hours to refill her cup on her way.

* * *

As it turns out, it is as far from harbour swimming as possible. Jamie has got them into the spa for the afternoon at Manon les Suites. “Called a friend,” is all he’ll say, as she questions him walking into the swanky hotel.

And as it also turns out, floating in the indoor pool amid hanging vines, feeling like you are truly in “a slice of Bali” as they advertise it, is both an excellent way to clear a hangover, but also a fun step away from the reality of living in a snowscape.

“Not that I don’t think it’s beautiful outside,” Jamie says, as they float around each other, Anna doing her best not to stare at his chest, “but I thought this might mix things up a bit.”

Mixing things up a bit sounds good. With him, specifically.

Since Katrine gave her the push, and set the Once-and-Done thought racing in her head for real, she’s been on the brink of simply saying, “Please can we do this?” He’d recognise the addition of “please”, from a Dane, makes this a serious request. Once-and-Done sounds like the most sensible approach to this …

this desperate but doomed yearning she apparently has for him.

And it feels like this is back in her court.

He’s making her take the first step. Which she technically did last night, but she gets why he didn’t take it further.

Sober Anna making the first move is what he wants.

Sober Anna isn’t quite so sure. Sober Anna still holds various reasons front of mind as to why this is a folly.

For now, though, and the following hours, she parks the overthinking and the worry.

They float and they flirt. They laugh and lounge.

They move around each other, eyes roving over each other, sometimes subtly and sometimes absolutely not, bare-skinned but for the bikini and his shorts, but there is absolutely no touching. Not once.

It almost kills her.

* * *

“Best hangover cure ever,” she says, getting out of the cargo bike. It’s dark again, and the fairy lights in the trees make the street look magical.

“And unlikely to appear on social media tomorrow,” he adds.

“Well, I was hatless, so they’d never have suspected.”

“That bikini, though,” he says, sounding doubtful. She can see he’s grinning in the glow of the streetlight.

Instinctively, she scoops up a handful of snow and flings it at him. Her aim is good and it hits him square in the chest.

There’s a silence as they both realise what she’s done. Jamie’s eyebrows slowly rise. A laugh escapes her, at his face and also at the trouble she is now in.

“Oh dear, Anna,” Jamie growls dangerously, “you had to go there…”

With a small squeal, she ducks behind the crate of the bike, grabbing more soft snow in her gloved hands as she goes, but not fast enough to avoid a snowball catching her shoulder.

It makes her laugh harder. She hasn’t done this in years.

She sends one flying at Jamie, who is trying to hide on the other side of the low fence, but she’s lobbed it in a high arch and it lands on his head.

The groan from the fence makes her howl with laughter.

In doing so, Jamie is awarded his chance and lands a slushy one right in her face.

“Gotcha!” he shouts and performs a victory dance, which in spite of her giggling, she brings to a halt by pelting him with three in a row.

“Truce!” she shouts after several more minutes of running and ducking and pelting and laughing. Their faces are red with the exertion, their panting breath misting in the streetlight. Their smiles, though, are wide, their eyes bright.

Her gloves are wet through and she pulls them off, to find her fingers icy beneath. Jamie comes to stand in front of her, as she rubs them together.

“Cold?” he asks, approaching tentatively, presumably in case it’s a ruse.

She nods and says, “Time to go in, I think.” She shakes her hands to try to get some warm blood back into them.

Jamie steps closer, then clasps his hands around hers, pulling them up to his face.

Her eyes follow them up until their hands are at his mouth, where he puts his lips to them and blows, long and steady.

Her eyes rise to his, fixed on her face, and she almost sways with the intimacy of it.

His lips at her thumbs, his breath on her fingers, the warmth spreading across her skin, his eyes locked on hers; it is sensual and caring all rolled into one, and almost more than she can bear.

“Time to go in, Jamie,” she says again, but this time her tone is pressing and her voice husky.

* * *

Inside, he helps her off with her coat. She’s painfully aware of his nearness.

Given their afternoon, the soothing warmth of the pool and the balmy air in the room, the awareness of his body, the not-touching, and now the playing, it all has her thrumming.

She knows what she wants to do, but she cannot work out how to do it in a subtle, but alluring, way.

Everything about her wants to leap on him, but her brain, thankfully now back in action, has the last word, and that word is wait.

She waits while he hangs the coats on the peg. There is something vibrating in the air between them as he stands behind her and she realises that he too is experiencing The Thrum.

She waits for him to move past her, but he doesn’t. Apparently, Jamie, too, is waiting. For her, and that’s the sign her head has been needing. Anna takes a step backwards. Small but deliberate, so it isn’t confused with any kind of a stumble or hungover sway.

He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move.

At her next breath, she takes another backward step, bringing her spine to his chest.

Wait.

And then, she feels his hands rest lightly at her hips.

Or rather at the hem of her jumper, which slowly, oh-so-slowly, he begins to peel up and off her.

She raises her arms, noticing the stretch of her breasts as she does, hoping he’ll run his hands along that skin soon.

She hears the light sound of the jumper landing on the floorboards. It adds to her tremble.

Wait.

He runs his fingertips down her from her wrists, the length of her arms, past her shoulder blades, down her sides, returning his hands to her waist, where the hem of her next layer starts, and he repeats his upward draw.

The slowness is both delicious and excruciating.

The only way she can handle it is with her eyes closed, focusing on every inch of her skin as it’s exposed to the air.

Up and over her aloft arms, the top joins the jumper on its heap.

Wait.

He runs his hands all the way back up to her wrists and grasping them, draws her hands slowly down to her sides, before sinking his lips to the curve at her collarbone and neck, sending her eyeballs rolling backwards beneath her eyelids.

Instinctively, she leans her neck away to offer him more skin.

She lasts all of ten seconds before her resolve is decimated. She turns to face him.

No.

More.

Waiting.