Read You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me for Free Online

‘She didn’t use it on you, did she?’
    ‘Of course not,’ Neve said, though her Granny Annie had never been able to resist pinching her cheeks hard enough to leave bruises. ‘She owned the roughest pub on the Stroud Green Road and she was always wading into the middle of fights to throw people out and tell them they were barred for life.’
    ‘And you weren’t tempted to go into the family business?’
    Neve shook her head. ‘No. I punch like a girl and the smell of beer makes me dry heave.’
    ‘You and Celia: you’re really not at all alike,’ Max murmured again. Maybe Celia was more his type. Maybe Celia and Max had already … No! Celia would definitely have said something. She always over-shared to a horrifying degree about her sexual escapades, even though Neve clamped her hands over her ears each time. But if Celia was more Max’s type …
    ‘We have tons in common,’ Neve insisted. ‘In fact, I taught Celia everything she knows.’ Which was the only reason that Celia had managed to pass her GCSE in English. ‘Apart from the fashion-related stuff.’
    ‘Is that so?’ Max enquired with a sultry purr to his voice that hadn’t been there before. ‘Why don’t you snuggle in a bit closer?’
    ‘Are you going to kiss me again?’ It probably wasn’t the sexiest thing to ask but Neve wanted to know that Max was on the same page as her. The page where there were passionate kisses and her heaving bosoms were crushed against a manly chest and …
    ‘I was definitely thinking about it,’ Max agreed. He patted his knee invitingly. ‘Well, come here then.’
    Sitting on Max’s lap really wasn’t viable but Neve scrambled to her knees so she could shuffle along the couch and drape herself carefully over him. It wasn’t very comfortable, but with some wriggling and an elbow in Max’s ribs, which made him grunt in surprise, Neve could mash her lips against his.
    The first moments of kissing were all teeth and tongue as Neve attacked Max’s mouth with a lot of enthusiasm and absolutely no finesse. But then Max retreated, regrouped and showed her how to do it slowly so each kiss was like biting into the richest darkest chocolate and pausing to savour the taste. Neve could feel herself getting more and more light-headed, not from the alcohol, but from being drunk on kisses and the feel of Max’s fingers threading through her hair, then sliding down to stroke her neck. When his hand cupped her breast, Neve moaned approvingly and flattened her hand against Max’s chest so she could feel the thud of his heart.
    It would have been perfect if it weren’t for the crick in her neck.
    Neve rose up on her knees, one hand resting on the back of the couch while she caught her breath, and she didn’t care that her belly might be sticking out or that Max was still caressing her breasts as if they were his absolutely favourite thing in the world. She just wanted to stay on the sofa, kissing him, for ever.
    ‘So does this flat of yours have a bedroom?’ Max drawled, and Neve had never made anyone drawl before.
    She’d planned to keep this kissing experiment within the controlled environment of her lounge, but snogging furiously on the sofa seemed so adolescent. Max already thought that Neve was cut from the same glittery cloth as Celia, and maybe she was because in the space of one evening she had mastered light flirtation and aced kissing. Now it was time to maybe kiss in a room with a bed in it. She might even let Max slide his hands into her bodice, Neve decided recklessly. She’d play it by ear, after she’d downed what was left in her wineglass.
    ‘This way,’ she said, attempting to get off the sofa gracefully and hearing her dress rip in the process. Inwardly she winced but outwardly she held out her hand and tugged Max up. He squeezed her fingers tightly in a gesture that was strangely comforting as Neve led him out of the lounge, up one half-flight of stairs, pulled him back from the bathroom, and