a kiss. Soft, sensual and steadying.
Then with a light scrape of fingernails across the stubble of his cheeks, she moved away, stepped into her skirt. Padded through his still-open front door to find her clothes, putting them back on as she went before twisting her long, dishevelled hair back into a makeshift knot.
And then she was in the lift and gone, leaving him with his pants still around his ankles.
‘Dear God,’ Gabe said, running his hands over his face. That had been hot. Scorching. And they hadn’t said a single word to one another the entire time.
He pulled up his jeans, leaving the fly undone, and leant his weary self against the kitchen bench, imagining her in the lift, skin pink from ravishing, clothes rumpled, lips swollen, pretty blue eyes as dark as night. And impossibly he found himself getting hard for her again.
Gabe pushed himself away from the bench, and padded into his bedroom on the way to his shower. He nearly tripped over his laptop bag, which had remained unopened since he’d walked in the door. In fact it had remained unopened all day.
He couldn’t remember a day in the past several years he hadn’t spent glued to the thing, searching out the next big idea. Collating, researching, and filling his head with every nuance of it so that he would not fail to land it. His gran had raised him to work hard, and make her proud. And since the time he’d failed her so spectacularly on the latter, he’d redoubled his efforts at the former. And while he’d never quite managed to regain that flicker of brilliance he’d felt the night BonaVenture was born, he’d never seen failure since.
But rather than feeling antsy at not working himself to exhaustion, he felt smug as hell. BonaVenture was so healthy it was radiant. And he’d had himself some mind-blowing sex with a beautiful woman who seemed so in tune with his preference to have a good time and not push for anything more, finding her was nothing short of serendipitous.
If he didn’t let himself enjoy the spoils of his labour every now and then, what the hell was the point?
As Paige waited in the foyer for the lift the next afternoon, she was still in a bit of a daze, wondering where she’d found it inside her to head to a man’s apartment, strip for him, have her way with him, then leave.
She’d never done anything like that before, but she liked it. After years of being so categorically careful, a little recklessness was a revelation. Even a relief. The world seemed that bit brighter, colours richer, the spring in her step springier. She’d even had an even more awesome day at work. Probably something to do with great sex being good for the blood vessels or some such thing.
Maybe she should indulge in a fling every now and then from now on; find some stranger to give her life the occasional splash of panache. Airports could be the new bar. Find someone looking lost and lonely and bam! Her next date.
She was laughing out loud when the lift doors opened, but all her confidence turned to mush when she got in the lift that afternoon to find Gabe already on board, lounging resplendently in the back corner. His dark eyes connected with hers, lit, burned, and it was all she could do to keep blushing from head to toe.
Funny, because now they were even, or nearabouts. Though perhaps she still owed him an orgasm. She stepped inside the lift, feeling his dark eyes on her, and thought it seemed as good a time as any to remind him as much—
‘Good afternoon, Ms Danforth,’ a female voice said.
And Paige leapt fair out of her skin. Her gaze jumped sideways to find Mrs Addable from the ninth floor tucked into the front corner, stroking Randy, her Russian Blue whose hair was the same solid dark grey as his owner’s.
‘Mrs Addable, hi,’ Paige mumbled as she slipped into the gap, behind Mrs Addable, and beside Gabe, who looked straight ahead even while his body heat reached out to her like an invitation. ‘Randy okay?’
Mrs Addable rolled her eyes. ‘He’s decided he’s too good for his litter tray. We now have to take a constitutional down to the garden near the parking lot four times a day.’
Mrs Addable’s eyes slid over lounging Gabe to Paige, who was standing as still and upright as a tower. The older woman’s sharp eyes softened to a dull gleam.
‘You’re Gabe Hamilton,’ Mrs Addable said.
‘That I am,’ Gabe’s deep voice rang out.
Paige had to swallow hard so as not to tremble as the sound reverberated deliciously through her bones. She remembered all too well the feel of his breath against her cheek that came with the exquisite sensation of having him inside her.
‘Gloria Addable. 9B. I heard Sam the Super talking to Mr Klempt the other day about your arrival.’
‘Pleasure to meet you, Gloria.’
‘Likewise, Gabe.’
No Mr Hamilton, Paige noticed. She’d lived in the building for two years and had yet to progress from polite surnames from anyone in that apartment bar the cat.
‘Sam said you’d had some trouble with your bed?’ Mrs Addable added, eyes now front, watching the movement of floor numbers, the slow strokes to Randy’s back causing the cat to purr.
‘True, yet I’ve managed remarkably well,’ he said, pulling himself upright, bringing him closer.
Paige looked directly ahead, not daring to meet his eyes. Yet she felt a beat pulse between them. Two. Three.
‘I have a spare mattress I can send up,’ Mrs Addable tried again. ‘It’s only a single, but …’
While Mrs Addable droned on about the history of her single mattress, Paige felt Gabe move closer still. Close enough when she breathed the sleeve of his jacket brushed against the sleeve of hers.
Then he said, ‘My bed arrived this morning.’
Forgetting propriety completely, Paige shot her gaze straight to his. ‘It did?’
Mrs Addable’s snort of triumph barely touched the edges of her sub-conscious. Gabe’s dark and dangerous eyes had a funny way of blocking out everything else.
His voice was low as he said, ‘The service lift, it seems, is less touchy.’
‘That’s great,’ Paige said, adding a belated, ‘For you.’
Gabe’s cheek lifted in the beginnings of the kind of smile that meant big trouble for her. ‘I’m glad—for me—too.’
The lift binged and when Paige and Mrs Addable both turned with expectation towards the doors, Gabe took the chance to slide his finger down the edge of Paige’s. The shock of his touch shot through her like a bushfire, spreading in half a second flat to the whole of her chest and the ends of her curling toes.
The door opened to the fourth floor. Where nobody was waiting. And stayed there.
Mrs Addable sighed. ‘It’s okay, Randy. We’ll get there eventually.’
As the lift went up and down the next ten minutes, Paige locked her knees, and bit her bottom lip, and prayed for the strength not to moan out loud as Gabe’s thumb traced circles over the wildly fluctuating pulse at her wrist, making her so woozy she saw spots.
