menu was presented, as the evening neared a close.
‘I’m not sure if I’m hungry.’ She wasn’t hungry, but surely it was better to be here in the restaurant than saying goodnight, trying to resist his kiss. If he did kiss her again, which he would, she knew exactly where it might lead, so she stared at the dessert menu till it blurred out of focus.
‘If you’re having trouble choosing, we can get a couple,’ Zander offered. ‘We can share.’
‘It’s terribly warm,’ Charlotte said. She was babbling a little, Zander realised. ‘I won’t be a moment.’
He did not want to be here, fed by his brother. He wanted Charlotte for himself, on his terms.
He walked and found her easily, tucked away on the balcony, staring out to the Mediterranean, the wind blowing her curls around her face, and he could see from her profile she was troubled.
She knew he was approaching and was scared to turn around in case she fell against him.
So hard she wrestled with her conscience as she stood there.
She did not fall into bed with men. There had been a couple of relationships—one that had ended almost as soon as it had begun when she had told him about her mother’s illness and one that had meant a lot but had faded and died as her mother’s illness had become more and more consuming, but it was Zander consuming her now.
Zander was the first man in ages she had responded to, the first man she had ever reacted to with such force, and tonight, in this hotel, with this beautiful, beautiful man, it was not the champagne that reduced her inhibitions but the vibe of him, the presence that seeped into her pores, into her brain, and made her giddy with lust and with promise. It made twenty-four hours seem an impossible delay.
She had left for some privacy, to gather her thoughts, to convince herself she could hold out till tomorrow, but there was almost relief when she heard the door and his footsteps coming up behind her.
She felt the lips on the back of her neck and it felt like salvation, and she closed her eyes because all she wanted was to feel the tease of his mouth. He kissed her very slowly, and she felt the scratch of his unshaven jaw as lips slid across her flesh. She could stop him at any moment, his kiss so slow, so light, she could brush him off and turn around and pretend perhaps that it had never happened, except she gripped harder to the balcony wall and did not turn around, for she did not want it to end.
He kissed her harder, as if to warn her perhaps, as if to tell her she could end it here, but she wanted him more than she wanted a neat conclusion.
She wanted the hands that snaked around and slid to her stomach, she wanted the bruise she was sure he was leaving because he kissed low on her neck, so deep she felt like crying, felt like turning her head right round to suck on his mouth, but still she stood there. She wanted, how she wanted, the slight pressure on his fingers, the push back into him that gave her a daring feel of what was waiting, his solid length pressing into her bottom.
‘We could take dessert upstairs,’ Zander said, for he wanted her in his room. He wanted every morsel now that went into her mouth, every sip, to come only from him, everything to be untainted by his brother.
‘I shouldn’t.’ Still she could not face him, still she dared not open her eyes, because if she did, she must make decisions, and she struggled so hard to remember. ‘I’m working.’
‘Not now,’ Zander said. ‘You just clocked off.’
‘Your brother—’
‘Forget about him,’ Zander said, for he must be dismissed from this moment. Zander must not for a second reveal the bitterness that was there or she would run.
‘I don’t want to regret this in the morning.’ It was a plea almost, because around him she could not think.
‘Why would you regret something so nice?’
‘Because …’ she attempted, except his fingers were at the back of her bra and nimbly, easily, through her dress he unhooked her, and she was dressed except she felt naked, exposed. Shamelessly it exhilarated her. What did this man do? He turned her round and he gave her his mouth. He wrapped her in the heat of his arms and cooled her with his tongue. He kissed her, but Charlotte could never, she realised, recall it afterwards as just a kiss, for it stroked and it soothed and it beat in her mouth and dragged at her skin and it was faint-making and delicious and did things to her body that no mere kiss ever could. Even wearing her high heels he was the taller, and their bodies meshed. He pulled her right in, he leant on the balcony so his body was a curve for hers to melt into—and readily she did.
He gave all to that kiss and Zander had kissed many, many women. Had kissed through his youth to assure a bed that night, had kissed just to get dinner when his stomach had been hollow with hunger, had kissed just to survive, but never, not once, had a kiss tasted so good.
Her lipstick was gone, her inhibitions fading, her breasts pressed against him, he caressed her. His mouth adored her in a way that made her feel both reckless and safe.
He took her away with his kiss and then he brought her back with its absence. He handed her her bag, which told her he had come out to fetch her; he draped her in her wrap and covered the swell of nipples beneath her dress, looked into her blue eyes and told her, looked right into them and told her, ‘You’ll never regret this.’
And he lied.
WHY she trusted him she did not know.
Why she so willingly let him lead her to his room was not something she could readily explain.
In the bathroom of his luxury suite, she attempted to scold herself—to tell herself she knew nothing about this man, that he was a client of her boss, that she had known him for just a couple of days.
Not a single lecture worked.
He was the brother of Nico, whom she trusted, but it came down to something rather more basic than that, for there was no man on earth who made her feel the way Zander had in the time they had spent together.
She had not laughed so freely in years, had not talked so readily to another soul—and as for his kiss …
As she rinsed her mouth and looked up into her glittering eyes in the mirror, lifted the hair and saw the bruise he had left, she was also deeply honest with herself—in their few hours of contact he had offered escape. Tonight she was the dress and the shoes and the woman who looked back in the mirror, a woman who could handle things, she told herself as she removed her unhooked bra through the arms of her dress.
It was not love she sought as she walked from the bathroom to the lounge of his suite, it was escape and Zander offered it in spades.
Dessert had been delivered as loosely promised.
Shot glasses filled with mousses and brûlées, tiny pastries and potent custards, and not for a second was she tempted, at least not by the table, for she walked to him and was pulled down to his lap, to a kiss that did not need now to be tamed.
It was not the real Charlotte that kissed him
