stepped back to let her be the boss. Reminded himself that breathing was necessary to life. Assured himself that very soon he’d touch her again.
‘6:00 p.m.,’ he confirmed before any feminine doubts surfaced and she tried to cancel. He could see her wavering, not looking at him. Sure enough she shivered, her body battling to contain conflicting emotions. Desire versus uncertainty. But he wasn’t going to let her withdraw. It was too late, the chemical reaction had begun and the explosion was inevitable.
He’d only taken a couple of steps out of sight of her doorway when he heard it. The laugh. The husky, nervous but naughty laugh. The desire to inhale that intoxicating mix almost overpowered him. It had drawn him to her in the corridor, had been echoing in his ears since. His fists clenched as he fought the impulse to turn back and tumble her to the floor. He was damn well going to have that laugh beneath him before nightfall.
CHAPTER THREE
LENA staggered round her desk and curled into her chair. She wanted to hide, laugh, cry. All at once. Had she just done that? Had she brazenly come on to the Seth Walker—insisting he take her on a dinner date? At home? She laughed even more helplessly than she had before. Then it turned into panic. She glanced at her watch. It was just after 5:00 p.m., which meant that she had less than an hour before she was going to … what exactly?
She froze for the next ten minutes, struggling to believe she’d voiced her desire so bluntly. Struggling to believe she’d felt that desire to such an extreme. Then she heard them, the male voices, that low drawl, then laughter. She braced, her heart stopping for a seriously damaging twenty seconds.
They didn’t come to see her. Didn’t even glance in as they passed by her open door. She heard Dion calling out goodbye, heard the footsteps fade. So he’d gone, the guy she’d all but offered herself on a platter to—fresh. Was he really going to come back?
Time twisted, slowed, tormented. Her embarrassment multiplied. Why would the guy who could have any woman in the world want her? Things like this didn’t happen to Lena. The rugby guys asked her out only because she was famous for saying no, not because they meant it. She must have imagined the intensity of that whole thing. Seth was a playboy. Lena, while not an innocent in a few too many ways, was utterly one in the world of the one-night rendezvous.
Oh, hell. She could laugh it off, right? He probably wasn’t going to show anyway. She held out her hand and checked to see if the all-over trembling she felt inside was visible. Totally was. As the seconds ticked she knew she couldn’t follow through. She’d been on another planet to think she could. She might once have been labelled a minx who tried to destroy a marriage, but she was no femme fatale. She never did this. Never thought about hot, sweaty, super-naughty sex.
Well, hardly ever.
Her heart thundered, splitting her body in two with its contrary desires—one half wanted to run far and fast to a safe, isolated corner, while the other half couldn’t get past that so-carnal kiss and wanted more, more, more.
Maybe what she’d said to him earlier hadn’t been that far off the mark. Maybe being around all those nearly naked men had somehow turned her sexual thermostat on high. Maybe it hadn’t been Seth heating her so devastatingly, it had been the situation.
That would be it.
Except she’d been around all those seminaked rugby boys so many times before and had never had this kind of reaction to any of them. Somehow Seth Walker had slid right beneath her rigidly imposed barriers and flicked her switch on high. And it had been so long, she couldn’t seem to turn herself back off. She drummed her fingers on her tidy desk and as the clock ticked on her bravado seeped out. She’d call him and cancel, except she didn’t have his number.
Oh, hell, she didn’t want to wait round for either a no-show or an awkward end to what had been a simple flirt for him and a lightning bolt for her. She grabbed her bag a good ten minutes before she’d told him to meet her and started down the empty corridor, a second away from sprinting.
‘Lena.’
Her skin crisped as if she’d been plunged into boiling oil. She turned slowly and saw him leaning against Dion’s doorjamb. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, girlishly breathless.
His smile broadened. ‘Waiting for you?’
‘I said Exit Four.’ Her heart stuttered like a first-generation machine gun. The reaction began instantly—his proximity heating her so fast she tingled all over.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ he drawled, eyes twinkling. ‘I forgot.’
She didn’t think so; he was far too intelligent to forget anything like that.
‘Exit Four …’ He glanced at the wall and the signs that were so helpfully posted there. ‘That’s down that corridor, isn’t it?’
Lena didn’t answer yes because, if she’d been going to Exit Four, she should have turned left five paces ago.
‘Lucky we bumped into each other here, isn’t it, otherwise you might have been waiting for ages at Exit Four and thought I’d stood you up. But I’d never do that.’
He spoke softly, but she felt the light bite he intended. He knew she’d been going to bottle it and be the one to stand him up.
She just looked at him, at a loss for everything because he was wreaking havoc on her system again. As had happened the second she’d first seen him, nerves, hormones, needs began to shriek.
‘Shall we get going?’ He jerked his head towards the stairs.
Her mouth was gummed, so she couldn’t get the ‘sorry but no thanks’ out and he’d already cupped her elbow and started walking them down the stairs. Her response surged higher. Incredible how the sound of his voice and the lightest grip on her brought on such giddy anticipation.
She was melting—into a mess. This wasn’t going to work. She’d never spoken so suggestively in her life. In her last relationship it had been her ex who’d done the running; only at the end had she acted so desperately. Now she’d been more forward than she could believe, to someone so out of her league. Seth Walker was probably used to having women in his bed who did the splits five ways while swinging from a chandelier. She’d never been anything better than average in anything, not even sex. Her best course of action was a speedy withdrawal before she made more of an idiot of herself.
‘I’m sorry about your jacket,’ she muttered as they got to the entrance level.
‘No, you’re not.’ He laughed. ‘But that’s okay, it wasn’t a favourite.’
She walked with him across the car park, because she couldn’t decide how to phrase her escape and because he moved with such assurance it was easier to go with him than against him. He’d put sunglasses on and she couldn’t read his expression. She’d have put hers on, too, except she was holding her bag in a death grip and couldn’t relax her fingers enough to operate the catch.
‘This is mine.’ He stopped by a beautiful gleaming black car. Its design spoke volumes—not some flashy low-to-the-ground sports number with a huge stereo system like most of the rugby guys drove, but sleek, solid, offering extreme comfort. ‘You ready to go?’ he asked.
‘Actually, no.’ She tried to
