The Honeymoon Trap by Kelly Hunter

apart, and he put it on because it was soft and Zoey liked soft almost as much as she appeared to like hot and hard.
    She’d abandoned browsing through the room service menu in favor of a nap. He could probably get on board with that plan as well except that his stomach chose that moment to protest his lack of nourishment. ‘See anything you like on the menu?’ he asked. Her hand came out to pat the menu beside her on the bed, and then she picked it up and waved it in his general direction but she didn’t open her eyes.
    ‘All of it.’
    ‘How about the tapas for two? Pork belly in ginger and sweet plum.’ He had a weakness for pork belly. ‘Crispy duck with cucumber, spring onions and a drizzle of chili and orange glaze. Atlantic salmon with charred lime and béarnaise, teriyaki chicken sticks, BBQ pearl perch – oh, hell yes.’
    ‘You’ve a sweet tooth, Eli. But it sounds divine.’
    ‘Sweets,’ he muttered and turned to the sweets pages in the menu. Three pages of sweets. He liked this hotel. ‘Can’t forget the sweets.’
    ‘Amen,’ she mumbled and slid into sleep with a sigh.
    He put in their order, wandered over to the mini bar, cracked a beer, opened his laptop and set about doing some relaxing of his own.
    He woke her when the food came, she could sleep like the dead, and she waited until the hotel staff had loaded the dining table and lit the candles on it and left before slipping from the bed, her hair a tousled cloud around her pale face.
    She was almost to the table when she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and with a horrified expression detoured towards one of her bags. ‘Give me one fine minute,’ she said, and started pulling out clothes.
    He’d never dined with a woman wearing a white cotton shift, pin-striped grey vest and a black bowler hat before. To be fair, her smile was nothing but appreciative as she surveyed his raggedy grey shirt.
    ‘Why the hat?’ he asked as he reached for a pork belly tapas square.
    ‘Hides the hair.’
    ‘I like your hair.’
    ‘I forgot to condition it. And then I slept on it. It’s barely hair anymore, it’s felt.’ She set about loading her plate in methodical fashion and then she was gone and back between what seemed like one blink and the next, this time with her phone in hand. ‘Gotta take a picture for Sophie. She’d go ape over this food and this table – the presentation anyway.’
    Photo taken and sent, Zoey once more took her chair.
    ‘Do you call your sister every day?’
    ‘I do at the moment. She wasn’t altogether at one with me sharing a room with just anyone. Happily, you were you. If this were a real honeymoon I’d be well pleased with your initiative and creativity.’
    ‘It was just a bit of water, Sherlock.’
    ‘Yes, but it was so well placed.’
    He grinned, even as he ducked his head.
    ‘You look smug, Eli.’
    That’s because he was. He ate his little square of pork belly and then did what his not-so-lady wife had done and piled his plate high with enough pretty finger food to sate him.
    Five years since he’d last held a woman in his arms. Five years, and all the hand jobs in the world hadn’t prepared him for anything more than following her so fast over the edge of pleasure that it was almost embarrassing. It probably would have been embarrassing had he been with anyone else, but this was Zoey and she had a habit of wallowing in sensation and letting it take her where it would. She hadn’t been embarrassed by her body’s eager response.
    It seemed a little churlish to be embarrassed by his.
    He could do this: savor the moment, live for the now, slake his hunger and walk away with no regrets. Be like his brothers – not that his brothers’ exes ever stayed friends.
    ‘Are we friends?’ he asked suddenly, and Zoey looked up in surprise. Her expression grew thoughtful, and then wary as she studied him.
    ‘Friends as in we’ve known each other forever, went to school together and can recount each